著者

久保田 泰夫

出版者

東京工芸大学

雑誌

東京工芸大学芸術学部紀要 (ISSN:13418696)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.3, pp.57-69, 1997-03-31

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This paper is intended to provide the Japanese readers with some idea of the organization and the argument of Roger Williams' The Blovdy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience published unanimously in London in the summer of 1644. This book is considered as the most important of Williams' writings, and has most often been referred to in the academic discussion of the protracted argument between Willimas and John Cotton over religious liberty and the church/state relationship. Essential points of Williams' argument are presented succinctly and straightforwardly in the three prefaces of the book rather than its main body ; which, in the form of dialogue between two imaginary sisters, Peace and Truth, and full of Scriptural and historical references, consists of two parts. The first part is devoted to Williams' confutation of Cotton's reply to the plea for religious liberty which was allegedly written by an Anabaptist imprisoned in Newgate. The second part is Williams' examination and criticism of A Model of Church and Civil Power composed by New England ministers to defend the cooperation of the church and the civil government. That part will be dealt with in another paper. In the present paper, I intend to focus on an accurate philological interpretation of main points of Williams' argument in the prefaces and first half of his book and also to trace his Separatist principles to a fifteenth-century French theologian Sebastien Castellion.