1638. SECT. II. should be found in this jurisdiction, they should either confess their fault, or obligate themselves, on pain of imprisonment, to be seen no more hereafter within the limits of the state. At this court also several military officers of distinction, who had espoused the fanaticism of Mrs. Hutchinson, were sent for and examined. They acknowledged, that they had been misled by the pretence of exalting Christ and debasing the creature. Experience had taught them, that they had followed a delusion, the natural tendency of which was to promote schism among churches and individual christians. They blessed God, that he had showed them their errour, before it had become fatal to their peace. Thus ended one of the most intricate, vexatious, and unhappy disputes, that ever distracted an infant community. Much blame undoubtedly belongs to the antinomian party, by whom it originated; but the magistrates and ministers are not wholly to be exculpated. Our ancestors had settled this country for the sake of enjoying the rights of conscience and the liberty of private judgment. Yet here was a woman arraigned, condemned by the court, expelled from the church, and banished the commonwealth for doing nothing more, than the exercise of this freedom implies. The catastrophe of this deluded and unfortunate woman and her family it is melancholy to relate. Her husband, being one of the purchasers of Aquetneck, sold his estate in Massachusetts, and removed with his family to that isl 1638. and. On the death of Mr. H. in 1642, Mrs. SECT. II. Hutchinson, dissatisfied with the people or place, removed to the Dutch country beyond New Haven; and, the year after, she and all her family, consisting of sixteen persons, were killed by the Indians, with the exception of one daughter, whom they carried into captivity.* Several strange stories respecting this woman and her companion, Mrs. Dyer, are to be found in Winthrop's journal, which at this day are hardly credible. They are of little importance, and hold no proper connexion with the merits of the controversy. Although we have reprobated the spirit, with which this long dispute was managed, on the part of the governour and the majority of the clergy, yet perhaps they could hardly have been more lenient. On a first view of the affair, we are ready to wonder, that the private opinions of a woman, and even the parlour lectures, she was pleased to hold at her house, should excite so strongly the apprehensions of the most learned and powerful men in the state. We are ready to ask, what harm could have arisen from the sentiments, lectures, and even calumnies of this infatuated female, so long as she enjoyed no peculiar political privilege, and could nowise direct the power of the magistrate. Yet reflection teaches us, that human nature was the same at that period, as it is now; and we know, that those, * Holmes's Ann. i. 298. 1638. SECT. II. who then held the reins of government in the state and church, were wise and good men. Candour therefore would lead us to conclude, that they did what, on the whole, was best to be done, and that the peace of the christian community could not otherwise have been preserved. The temper of these times is visible in the care taken by the court to guard against extravagance in dress. It was imagined by some of the magistrates, that the women indulged themselves in too much expense this way. They accordingly conferred with the ministers on the subject, and charged them to address themselves to the consciences of their hearers. The ministers promised to attend to the matter; but it was found, that their own wives participated in this fault, and therefore little was effected in the business. Two years since, a Mr. Bernard, of Batcomb, Somersetshire, England, transmitted a manuscript to the magistrates, and another to the ministers,the object of which was to show, that the mode of gathering churches in this country was wrong. So busily had the clergy been occupied, since the arrival of this work, with the hutchinsonian dispute and its consequent mischiefs, that none had found time to answer it. It was now answered by Mr. Cotton, who, about this time also, replied to another treatise written in defence of a form of prayer. In December, this year, a woman was hanged for murdering one of her children. She had been a member of the church at Salem, but had been excommunicated for antinomianism; and she pre- SECT. II. tended to justify her crime by internal revelations. On the recommendation of the magistrates and ministers, a fast was kept to deplore the prevalence of the small-pox, the want of zeal in the professors of religion, and the general decay of piety. Mr. Cotton, in his exercises on that occasion, copiously and particularly lamented his own and the church's indolence and credulity, whence it happened, that the errours, which had required immense labour to extirpate, had become so generally disseminated. He stated the particular rea. sons and manner of his deception, and justified the measures, which had been adopted to expatriate the fomentors of ecclesiastical discord. The behaviour of the hutchinsonians but too well justified the severity, they had experienced. At Aquida, whither they had retired, they were constantly broaching some diabolical errour. Among other foolish notions, they maintained, that women had no souls, that moral virtues were the antichrist mentioned by the apostle Paul, and that the devil and the Holy Ghost had an indwelling with every believer. Those, who went to the falls of Piscataqua,gathered a church there. They wrote to First Church, desiring the dismissal of Mr. Wheelwright, whom they were about to employ, as an officer. First Church refused to comply with the request, because Wheelwright did not himself join in the 1638. SECT. II. request. A personal application on his part was afterwards made, which was immediately granted. 1639. . A Mrs. Oliver of Salem, whose temper had been soured by sufferings in England for nonconformity, caused the court, about this time, no little uneasiness. The magistrates and churches of Massachusetts were also much disturbed by the contentions at Providence. The degree of ecclesiastical liberty, which Mr. Williams there introduced, seems to have been greater, than the people were able to bear; and he had acted on maxims, the consequences of which were not clearly foreseen. A church, recently formed at Weymouth, settled a minister by the name of Leathall, who became unpopular at court. It was alleged against him, that he innovated upon the order of the churches, and, in particular, that he was for the general admission of baptized persons to the communion, without a particular examination of their faith. However salutary this species of reform might be, in certain circumstances, it was inexpedient at that age of the Newengland church. It brought upon Mr. L. and his church the whole weight of the odium theologicum. His measures were controlled; and he was compelled publickly to retract his opinions. This was not all. It was unsafe to express an opinion, that the christians at Weymouth had a right to institute whatever discipline they conceived to be agreeable to the scriptures. Every man, in short, who attempted to act unfettered by the decrees of the court, and |