Elisha Williams

The Reverend Elisha Williams (26 August 1694-22 October 1755) was a Congregational minister, legislator, jurist, and rector of Yale College from 1726 to 1739.

Works

• Divine grace illustrious, in the salvation of sinner - 1727
• Death the advantage of the godly. ? 1728
• "A Seasonable Plea for the Liberty of Conscience and the Right of Private Judgment in Matters of Religion Without any Controul from Human Authority" (also known as Essential rights and liberties of Protestants) - 1744

"As reason tells us, all are born thus naturally equal, with an equal right to their persons, so also with an equal right to their preservation . . . and every man having a property in his own person, the labour of his body and the work of his hands are properly his own, to which no one has right but himself; it will therefore follow that when he removes anything out of the state that nature has provided and left it in, he has mixed his labour with it, and joined something to it that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. . . . Thus every man having a natural right to (or being proprietor of) his own person and his own actions and labour, which we call property, it certainly follows, that no man can have a right to the person or property of another: And if every man has a right to his person and property; he has also a right to defend them . . . and so has a right of punishing all insults upon his person and property."

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