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EXPERIMENTS
OF
Spiritual Life & Health,

And their

PRESERVATIVES

In which the weakest Child of God may get Assurance of his Spirituall Life and Blessednesse

And the Strongest may finde proportionable Discoveries of his Christian Growth, and the means of it.


By Roger Williams of Providence in
New-England.

Decorative lines

London, Printed, in the Second Month,
1652.

RE-PRINTED BY
SIDNEY S. RIDER,
PROVIDENCE.
1863.


INTRODUCTION.

As the existence of the following tract was, untilquite recently, unknown,[A] a few words of introduction,exhibiting its character and the circumstances underwhich it was written, may not be inappropriate.

The object of the work is, briefly to present tothe christian the evidences of personal piety andguard these evidences from abuse and misapprehension.It is divided into three parts. The authorfirst treats of the evidences of a piety, which, thoughreal, is weak and imperfect; secondly, the evidencesof a vigorous and maturer piety; and the thirdpart contains directions for maintaining and increasingpiety in the soul of the believer. It is writtenwith clearness and discrimination, and much resemblesthe treatises of Baxter on the same subject. It isas well adapted to the condition of christians ofthe present day as to the condition of those forwhom it was written, two hundred and ten yearssince. There cannot be found in it a word ofsectarian bitterness; on the contrary, it everywherebreathes the spirit of catholic, christian charity.

The circumstances under which it was writtenare certainly peculiar. It seems that his wife, towhom he appears to have been tenderly attached,had been dangerously ill, but was now recovering.During her sickness he had been from home, laboringamong the Indians; and while absent, he wrotethis little treatise in the form of a letter to her,his object being simply to promote her spiritualimprovement. At the request of his friends, itwas published in London; and a dedication wasprefixed to it, addressed to Lady Vane the Younger.In this dedication, occurs the following remarkablepassage: "The form and stile I know will seemto this refined age too rude and barbarous, andthe truth is, the most of it was penned and writ,(so as seldom or never such discourses were,) in thethickest of the naked Indians of America, in their verywild houses, and by their barbarous fires, when theLord was pleased this last year (more than ordinarily)to dispose my abode and travel among them."

As a writer, Roger Williams has generally borne thereputation of a violent and bitter controversialist. I believethat in this respect he has suffered great injustice.It would seem from this tract, that, on the contrary,his spirit was eminently candid and catholic,and that controversy was to him a painful duty.In the same dedication he says: "It is true, Ihave been sometimes prest to engage in controversies,but I can really and uprightl

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