Decoding Roger Williams
Subtitle: the lost essay of Rhode Island's founding father
By: Linford D. Fisher, J. Stanley Lemons, Lucas Mason-Brown
Publisher: Baylor University Press
Published: 2014
Place of publication: Waco, Texas
Language: eng
Number of pages: 198
ISBN-13: 9781481301046; 9781481301060
Subjects: History of doctrines; Baptism; Key into the language of America (Williams, Roger)
Description: "Near the end of his life, Roger Williams, Rhode Island founder and father of American religious freedom, scrawled an encrypted essay in the margins of a colonial-era book. For more than 300 years those shorthand notes remained indecipherable...until a team of Brown University undergraduates led by Lucas Mason-Brown cracked Williams' code after the marginalia languished for over a century in the archives of the John Carter Brown Library. At the time of Williams' writing, a trans-Atlantic debate on infant versus believers' baptism had taken shape that included London Baptist minister John Norcott and the famous Puritan "Apostle to the Indians", John Eliot. Amazingly, Williams' code contained a previously undiscovered essay, which was a point-by-point refutation of Eliot's book supporting infant baptism. History professors Linford D. Fisher and J. Stanley Lemons immediately recognized the importance of what turned out to be theologian Roger Williams' final treatise. Decoding Roger Williams reveals for the first time Williams' translated and annotated essay, along with a critical essay by Fisher, Lemons, and Mason-Brown and reprints of the original Norcott and Eliot tracts."-Jaket cover.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Foreword / Ted Widmer; title: Part I. A key into the language of Roger Williams: Cracking and interpreting the Roger Williams code; title: Part II. "A brief reply to a small book written by John Eliot" (ca. 1680) / Roger Williams; title: Part III. Baptism discovered plainly and faithfully, according to the word of God (London 1675 [1672]) / John Norcott; title: Part IV. A brief answer to a small book written by John Norcot against infant-baptism (1679) / John Eliot.