Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/62

Rh and, it must be admitted, criticised the preachers, for this powerful woman was not afraid to express her opinion with dangerous candor. Boston was really at that period under a religious despotism. Looking back upon those times, it seems strange that the early Puritan settlers, beset as they were with bodily danger and physical hardship, should have spent so much of their time in splitting hairs upon theological subjects. It was, nevertheless, significant of an intellectual unrest, which was to result in people doing their own thinking. This has always been a marked characteristic of the American—one of which we are justly particular, and it should be remembered that this young woman was its pioneer. Mistress Anne Hutchinson taught that the Gospel of Christ had superseded the law of Moses that no matter what sin overtook one who had received the gift of the "Crest of Love," he was still one of the elect; that the spirit of the Holy Ghost dwells in a "Justified Person," and other things that nobody understands and nobody is foolish enough to bother about in these days. In 1634, Mistress Hutchinson and her followers and the ministers of the Boston Church wrangled over these confusing and unnecessary doctrines until it is very likely they themselves became very much mixed up. It is what historians call the Antinomian Controversy. Antinomy being opposed to the law, Winthrop and Endicott considered it a very dangerous heresy. Mistress Anne was finally brought to trial for her teachings—a thing she could hardly have failed to expect, for though she was a gentle and patient nurse to the sick, a fond wife and mother, and a Godly woman, still she was transgressing her right in openly setting up a new creed among, the people with whom she had chosen to dwell. Among the ministers there were two of whom she earnestly approved, the Rev. Mr. Cotton and Joseph Wheelwright, her brother-in-law. But the preachings and teachings of all the others she earnestly condemned, which made