American history, as wonderful and tragical as any contains.

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It was the custom in Boston at the period of her arrival, for the brethren of the church to meet every week for the purpose of impressing still more deeply upon their minds the discourses and other exercises of the previous Sunday. Following out this custom, Mrs. Hutchinson very soon instituted weekly religious meetings for females; and so attractive and interesting did she make them, that almost all the ladies in the place attended. The exercises were conducted and superintended by Mrs. Hutchinson herself, and it soon followed, as a matter of course, that she exerted a controlling and almost irresistible influence upon the whole community.*

The clergy of the colony, startled at first, were not long in discovering the danger that threatened them. Here was a power suddenly brought to bear upon the religious feelings and views of the people, irresponsible to them, wholly beyond their control, and withdrawing from their reach that very portion of society, which is always, perhaps, the chiefest source of such authority and and influence as their's. Of the religious opinions which prevailed generally among these clergy, it will be enough to say, that the doctrines, as professed by the reformed churches, were received with almost unanimous consent by their order throughout New England, while they permitted themselves to regard with very great jealousy and aversion the exercise of free inquiry, whenever it in any way threatened to lead to results different from their own. Their views of Mrs. Hutchinson's particular case were not likely to be propitiated by the very disagreeable comparisons, to say the least of them, which her powers and talents were likely to provoke among the people.

Mrs. Hutchinson, in her turn, was neither wise nor considerate in the style and manner she adopted. To say nothing of the somewhat unbecoming position in which,

* Upham, p. 124.

as a woman, she placed herself, it soon became obvious that one of her great objects in these weekly audiences, was to utter disparaging criticisms upon the discourses of the preceding Sunday or lecture-day, to circulate imputations against the learning and talents of the clergy, and even to start suspicions respecting the soundness of their preaching. Any thing like moderation, where a system of personality has been once adopted, is a thing vainly looked for, and now not a day passed which did not, in the matter of these attacks, add to Mrs. Hutchinson's offences and indiscretions, and tend to drive beyond all fair and reasonable ground, the hostilities of which she had become the object. The ministers, the magistrates, all the leading men in the colony, rose in array against her, and—not confining their animosity to the point on which she was in the wrong, and might easily have been shown to be in the wrong fied with proceeding against her as a contentious and busy calumniator and disturber of the peace-they imputed to her grossly and openly what was then considered the darkest crime in the catalogue of depravity, and demanded against her criminal penalties of the deepest dye. She was a HERETIC, they said, and must be crushed by the punishment due to heresy. At this point Vane interfered - the ever gallant and generous defender of the rights of faith and conscience — and a sharp religious controversy was soon fairly developed, which of course led to crimination and recrimination, "introduced innumerable questions of doubtful disputation, and finally wrapt the whole country in the raging and consuming flames of a moral and religious conflagration."

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The real and substantial points at issue, in the discussion of the truth or falsehood of her doctrines, shall now be laid before the reader, apart from the cloud of words and (not to speak it irreverently) cant phrases which enveloped them. Mrs. Hutchinson's opponents were doubtless the aggrieved parties, and might as surely have

* Upham, p. 127.

kept that vantage ground; but they surrendered it when they chose to impugn her doctrines rather than her conduct; and it is no matter of difficulty to us, profiting by the diffusion of the blessed principles of religious liberty and toleration, to determine on which side of the controversy truth and justice lay. Vane and Mrs. Hutchinson were far in advance of their age.

One of her favourite topics ("whether selected with a design, at the beginning, of diminishing the confidence of the people in their ministers cannot now be determined"), on which in her weekly meetings she dwelt very often and very largely, was the proposition, that the existence of the real spirit of the Gospel in the heart of a man, even if that man should happen to be a minister of extraordinary gifts, could not be inferred with certainty from the outward displays of sanctity. She simply paraphrased, in fact, the language of the apostle, who hath told us that a man may speak with the tongue of angels, and have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and have all faith so as to remove mountains, and bestow his goods to feed the poor, and give his body to be burned, and still be nothing in a religious and spiritual view. The Saviour himself hath said that men may prophesy and cast out devils, and do many more wonderful works in his name, and be rejected and disowned by him at last.

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But it was soon suspected, and it is to be feared, says Mr. Upham," upon too good grounds, that Mrs. Hutchinson was aiming at a particular object in dwelling so pointedly and so much upon this proposition. And when it once became a prevalent opinion that she was actuated by personal designs, it can be easily conceived how intolerably provoking her discourses must have been. was a period of great formality and austerity in religion. The outward manifestations of piety were much greater than they have been since. Every minister and every professor of religion was expected to give evidence in his whole manner of life, in his most familiar conversation, in his movements, dress, countenance, and even in

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the tones of his voice, that he was not of the world. followed of course it would have been unjust had it not that the evidence thus demanded by public opinion was very much relied on by the people. The praise of holiness and spirituality was freely and confidingly bestowed upon the sanctimonious and austere. But Mrs. Hutch

inson's doctrine cut up the whole matter by the roots, destroyed the very foundation upon which her reputation had been made to rest, poisoned the fountains of confidence, and, in consequence of the personal and satirical design imputed to her, had a direct tendency to make men suspect of hypocrisy all whom they had before been disposed to revere for their piety." Most true is all this, and most grave and difficult of answer must have been a charge founded on improprieties of conduct which were evidently fraught with mischief to many of the best interests of the colony*, but such a charge would

* In such a state of society as these colonies presented, it was beyond every thing expedient to impress the people with an implicit veneration and respect for their ministers, and this had been done to a degree altogether unreasonable and excessive, and far beyond the point to which it was really and justly merited by that, on the whole, pious and excellent class of men. To have gone against Mrs. Hutchinson for disturbing, as it were, this necessary equilibrium in the government, would have been the wise course, and in the main impossible of resistance; but the accusation of heresy, on the other hand, raised up defenders of her doctrines everywhere throughout the colony, among people even who understood them least, and carried agitation and division into every church and family throughout the province. Mr. Upham gives the following extract from a pamphlet entitled, "A short Story of the Rise, Reign, and Ruin of the Antinomians, Familists, and Libertines, that infected the Churches of New England;" and ascribed to a clergyman (the Rev. Thomas Weld, of Roxbury) of great influence at the time. It conveys some idea - though of course a partial one-of the form in which the controversy was conducted, the origin of the difficulty, the charges alleged against Mrs. Hutchinson and her followers, and the spirit of the parties:-"But the last and worst of all, which most suddenly diffused the venom of these opinions into the very veins and vitals of the people in the country, was Mistress Hutchinson's double weekly lecture, which she kept under a pretence of repeating sermons, to which resorted sundry of Boston and other towns about, to the number of fifty, sixty, or eighty at once; where, after she had repeated the sermon, she would make her comment upon it, vent her mischievous opinions as she pleased, and wreathe the Scriptures to her own purpose; where the custom was for her scholars to propound questions, and she (gravely sitting in the chair) did make answers thereto. The great respect she had at first in the hearts of all, and her profitable and sober carriage of matters, for a time, made this her practice less suspected by the godly magistrates and elders of the church there, so that it was winked at for a time, (though afterwards reproved by the Assembly and called into court), but it held so long until she had spread her leaven so far, that, had not Providence prevented, it had proved the canker of our peace, and ruin of our comfort. These opinions being thus spread, and grown into their full ripeness and latitude, through the nimbleness and activity of their fomenters,

not satisfy her unwise opponents, who, eagerly seizing a remote and very false pretext for the accusation of heresy, prosecuted her for maintaining (to use the formal terms in which the complaint was laid) that "sanctification is no evidence of justification."

Never was the natural tendency of angry disputants to push each other to extremes so fully exemplified as on this occasion. From the proposition that the outward expressions of sanctity are not infallible evidences of the inward residence of the Christian spirit, Mrs. Hutchinson was driven to speak disparagingly of external and visible morality, and her opponents, on the other hand, to assign too high a value to it; until at last the two watchwords or countersigns of the controversy became,

began now to lift up their heads full high, to stare us in the face, and to confront all that opposed them. And that which added vigour and boldness to them was this, that now by this time they had some of all sorts and quality, in all places, to defend and patronise them; some of the magistrates, some gentlemen, some scholars and men of learning, some burgesses of our General Court, some of our captains and soldiers, some chief men in towns, and some men eminent for religion, parts, and wit. So that, wheresoever the case of the opinions came in agitation, there wanted not patrons to stand up to plead for them; and if any of the opinionists were complained of in the courts for their misdemeanors, or brought before the churches for conviction or censure, still some or other of that party would not only suspend giving their vote against them, but would labour to justifie them, to side with them, and protest against any sentence that should pass upon them, and so be ready not only to harden the delinquent against all means of conviction, but to raise a mutiny, if the major part should carry it against them; so in town meetings, military trainings, and all other societies, yea, almost in every family, it was hard, if that some or other were not ready to rise up in defence of them, even as of the apple of their own eye. Now, oh their boldness, pride, insolency, and alienations from their old and dearest friends; the disturbances, divisions, contentions they raised amongst us, both in church and state; and in families, setting division betwixt husband and wife! Oh the sore censures against all sorts that opposed them; and the contempt they cast upon our godly magistrates, churches, ministers, and all that were set over them, when they stood in their way! Now the faithful ministers of Christ must have dung cast upon their faces, and be no better than legal preachers, Baal's priests, popish factors, scribes, pharisees, and opposers of Christ himself! Now they must be pointed at, as it were with the finger, and reproached by name. Such a church-officer is an ignorant man, and knows not Christ; such a one is under a covenant of works; such a pastor is a proud man, and would make a good persecutor, &c. Now, after our sermons were ended at our public lectures, you might have seen half a dozen pistols discharged at the face of the preacher (I mean, so many objections made by the opinionists in the open assembly against the doctrine delivered, if it suited not their new fancies), to the marvellous weakening of holy truths delivered. Now you might have seen many of the opinionists rising up, and contemptuously turning their backs upon the faithful pastor of that church, and going forth from the assembly when he began to pray or preach." See, also, Baxter's Life, 1.74., and Somers's Tracts, vii. 109.