Page:Anne Bradstreet and her time.djvu/128

112, agreement was impossible. Natural life, denied and set aside at every point, gave place to the unnatural, and every colonist was, quite unconsciously, in a state of constant nervous tension and irritability. The questions that to us seem of even startling triviality, were discussed with a fervor and earnestness it is well nigh impossible to comprehend. They were a slight advance on the scholastic disputations of the preceding century, but they meant disagreement and heart-burnings, and the more intolerant determined on stamping out all variations from their own convictions.

Any capacity for seeking to carry out Robinson's injunction in his final sermon at Leyden seems to have died once for all, in the war of words. "I beseech you," he had said, "remember that it is an article of your church covenant, that you be ready to receive whatever truth shall be made known to you from the written word of God." There was small remnant of this spirit even among the most liberal.

Dudley was one of the chief movers in the course resolved upon, and mourned over Cotton, who still held to Anne Hutchinson, and wrote and spoke of her as one who "was well beloved, and all the faithful embraced her conference, and blessed God for her fruitful discourses."

Mr. Welde, on the contrary, one of her fiercest opponents, described her as "a woman of haughty and fierce carriage, of a nimble wit and active spirit, and a very voluble tongue, more bold than a man, though in understanding and judgment inferior to many women."

How far the object of all this confusion realized the