The English world was then in a state of theological
fermentation. People who fancied themselves favoured with direct
revelations from Heaven; people who thought it right to keep the seventh
day of the week as a Sabbath instead of the first day; people who
cherished a special predilection for the Apocalypse and the Book of
Daniel; people with queer views about property and government; people
who advocated either too little marriage or too much marriage; all such
eccentric characters as are apt to come to the surface in periods of
religious excitement found in Rhode Island a favoured spot where they
could prophesy without let or hindrance. But the immediate practical
result of so much discordance in opinion was the impossibility of
founding a strong and well-ordered government. The early history of
Rhode Island was marked by enough of turbulence to suggest the question
whether, after all, at the bottom of the Puritan's refusal to recognize
the doctrine of private inspiration, or to tolerate indiscriminately all
sorts of opinions, there may not have been a grain of shrewd political
sense not ill adapted to the social condition of the seventeenth
century. In 1644 and again in 1648 the Narragansett settlers asked leave
to join the Confederacy; but the request was refused on the ground
that they had no stable government of their own.
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