1647 RICHARD OVERTON. Baptist / Leveller Work on Religious Liberty & Populism.

A very scarce work written, as some claimed, by fellow Baptist and advocate of religious liberty, Richard Overton [d.1664]. Rogers Williams, author of The Bloudy Tenent and perhaps the most influential early theologian of American religious liberty, was friends with Overton and Overton's writings actually influenced Williams' ideas of religious toleration. It is not improbably. Both Williams and Overton produced works in 1644 and 1645 reproving the Westminster Assembly [of which the present is Overton's] for their having now embodied the bullying, religious intolerance they had just been opining against two years before. They were against the Baptists, marking the Quakers heretics, and proving themselves to be just as carnal as the Anglican church with regard to religious liberty. The present seems consistent with that populist approach. Overton insistend he was not the author, but agreed with the work strongly enough he said he would suffer whatever punishment was due its author for t