WILLIAMS, Roger, C. H. Cayce We have received a letter from a brother in which he says, “H. B. Taylor, of Murray Ky., says the Hardshells originated with Roger Williams in 1835. I wish you would answer this falsehood, and also get him to tell about the Welsh Tract Church, of Delaware.”
If the brother writing the letter made no mistake in the date, and H. B. Taylor made such a statement, he certainly did display ignorance. Roger Williams was born in 1599 and died in 1683. Then how he could have originated a church in 1835, when he died in 1683, is beyond us, and beyond the ability of H. B. Taylor to explain, even as great as he thinks he is. Roger Williams established the colony of Rhode Island in 1636 and established his church there in 1639. That church was founded upon the principle of religious freedom, or liberty of conscience, but never was identified with the Baptists, though founded upon Baptist principles. The first Baptist Church founded in America was by John Clark at Newport, Rhode Island, in 1638. If Roger Williams was the founder of the Baptist Church, or the “Hardshells,” as Taylor calls our people, then they are older than the Fullerites. The people Taylor is identified with were never heard of before the days of Fuller and Carey.
Welsh Tract Church, in Delaware, was organized in Wales in the spring of 1701, and in June of the same year they came to America as an organized church. They first settled near Philadelphia and then moved to their present location, where they still continue upon the same principles upon which they were constituted in Wales 225 years ago. Concerning this church and the doings of the Missionary Baptists when in debate with a Campbellite or a Methodist J. H. Grimes said, in the Baptist Flag of April 11, 1907:
When a Campbellite or a Methodist assails Baptist succession, or tries to cram the Roger Williams ruse down their throats, they fly to old Welsh Tract Church, and through her, link themselves on to the Welsh Baptists, through which we have clear sailing to the days of the apostles. In my imagination I see a Baptist debater in a tussle with a belligerent Campbellite; the Campbellite attacks the succession of Baptist Churches, when the Baptist, as with a flashlight, throws old Welsh Tract Church out before the audience, and with a triumphant air defies the onslaughts of his bombastic opponent. He takes the pains to inform his opponent that this old Welsh Tract Church, which was constituted in Europe more than 200 years ago, is still in existence, coming down to us from Wales without change. All these things are facts. But there is still another fact which he does not tell. This Welsh Tract Church is a Hardshell Church.
This old church was organized long before the Fullerite sprout, with which H. B. Taylor is identified, was born. The Primitive Baptist, April 15, 1926.