IX
Attempts to prevent removal. It is no part of our purpose to unravel the tangle of ecclesiastical and civil politics in which the proposed emigration had now become involved. The Dorchester church and a part of that of Watertown were ready to follow the lead of Hooker and Newtown. Days of fasting and prayer were appointed to prevent the removal of these "candlesticks," as the churches were called, out of their places; but in spite of humiliations and of Cotton's persuasive eloquence, which at one time almost charmed away the discontent, the emigration set in, stragglingly at first.
Explorers and pioneers. John Oldham, an adventurous man of a rather lawless temper – one of those half-ruffians that are most serviceable on an Indian frontier – had been expelled from Plymouth. 1633. He was now a resident of Watertown, one of the centers of discontent and next neighbor to Newtown. He had gone with three others on a trading expedition to the westward overland. Walking along trails from one Indian village to another they discovered a large river, which they found to be the Fresh River of the Dutch and the Connecticut of the Plymouth traders. They probably brought back to Watertown accounts that produced a fever for removal. Oldham was not a man to stand on the manner of his emigration. Waiting for nobody's consent, he led out a small company from Watertown the next year. These settled at what is now Wethersfield. From Dorchester, which had no alewife fishery with which to enrich its fields, settlers removed in 1634 to the Connecticut, where the soil did not need to be "fished." In 1635 the number of emigrants was larger, and there was much suffering during the following winter and many of the cattle perished.
X
Emigration by churches. But the unit of New England migration was the church. No doubt the cohesiveness of the townships, and of the churches which were the nuclei of the towns, was re-enforced by provincial differences between the several communities. 1636. In 1636 Hooker, the real founder of Connecticut, and his congregation of Essex people, sold their houses and meadows and home lots and acre rights in the commonage in Cambridge to a new congregation led by Thomas Shepard. 117 From Newtown and from Dorchester the churches emigrated bodily – pastors, teachers, ruling elders, and deacons – carrying their organization with them through the wilderness like an ark of the covenant. New churches were soon afterward formed in the places they had left. Naturally, town government became the principal feature of civil organization in states thus planted by separate and coherent groups.
XI
The new government. The Connecticut rulers acted at first as a government subordinate to Massachusetts; but the settlements, except that of people from Roxbury at Springfield, were south of the line of the Massachusetts colony, and it was not in the nature of things that Hooker and Haynes should subordinate themselves to Cotton and Winthrop. There was indeed no little exasperation between the two colonies. An independent constitution was adopted in Connecticut, on principles which Hooker thought he found in the first chapter of Deuteronomy, and which were not exactly those that Cotton had managed to deduce from Scripture in his Model of Moses his Judicials. Conn. Hist. Soc. Coll., i, 20, 21. The Massachusetts people, whose government aspired to dominate all New England, seem to have been angered by Hooker's secession and by his refusal to subordinate the new state to their own. Massachusetts asserted its authority over Springfield, which was within its limits, and every effort possible was made to prevent new emigrants who landed at Boston from going to the west. Conn. Hist. Soc. Coll., i, 3, and ff. Even in England accounts adverse to Connecticut were circulated. Hooker, the real head of the new state, resented this in a letter of great vigor and some passion.
XII
Instability of a theocracy. In its early years Massachusetts had no rest. Three profound disturbances – the expulsion of Williams, the secession of Hooker and his followers, and the Hutchinsonian convulsion – followed one another in breathless succession, and a dangerous Indian war ran its course at the same time. That the early settlements were founded on "rocks and sands and salt marshes" was not the chief misfortune of the Bay colony. Its ecclesiastical politics proved explosive, to the consternation of its pious founders, who like other settlers in Utopia had neglected to reckon with human nature.
XIII
Severity of Puritanism. It has been the habit of modern writers on the subject to dismiss the Hutchinsonian controversy as a debate about meaningless propositions in an incomprehensible jargon. Yet there was in it but the action of well-known tendencies in human nature which might almost have been predicted from the antecedent circumstances. Puritanism had wrapped itself in the haircloth of austerity, it took grim delight in harsh forbiddings, and heaped up whole decalogues of thou-shalt-nots. Nor did it offer, as other intense religious movements have done, the compensation of internal joys for the gayety it repressed. Theoretically Calvinist, it was practically an ascetic system of external duties and abstentions, trampling on the human spirit without ruth.
Reaction toward a subjective joyousness. But the heart will not be perpetually repressed; kept from natural pleasures, it will seek supernatural delights. Men were certain sooner or later to soften the iron rigidity of Puritanism by cultivating those subjective joys for which Calvinism provided abundant materials. While preachers like Hooker were scourging the soul into a self-abasement that could approve its own damnation, and while ingenious scribes were amassing additional burdens of scruple for heavy-laden shoulders, there arose in England a new school of Puritan pietists. These shirked none of the requirements of the legalists, but their spirits sought the sunnier nooks of Calvinism, and they preached the joy of the elect and the delight of a fully assured faith. Magnalia B. III, c. I, 32. Cotton, whose fair complexion, brown hair, and ruddy countenance attested a sanguine temperament, belonged by nature to this new order. Compare Cotton's Fountain of Life, 35. He rejoiced that he had received the "witness of the Spirit" on his wedding day, and he delighted to draw out Scripture imagery to a surprising tenuity in describing the "covenant of marriage" and the intimacy of the "covenant of salt" or of friendship between God and the soul of the believer. Preachers of the same sort brought relief to multitudes in various towns of England. The people, tired of churchly routine on the one hand and of legalism on the other, thronged to hear such divines "filling the doores and windows." It was the evangelicalism of the following century sending up its shoots prematurely into a frosty air. 118 The old-fashioned Puritan had always conceived of religion as difficult of attainment. It was a paradoxical system wherein men were saved by the works they theoretically abjured. 119 Conservative Puritans complained of the preachers who spread a table of "dainties," as though it were meritorious to sustain the soul on a rugged diet of rough doctrine. Shepard's Memoirs in Young, 505. In Thomas Shepard's Memoirs of his own Life we may overhear "a godly company" of the time in familiar "discourse about the wrath of God and the terror of it, and how intolerable it was; which they did present by fire, how intolerable the torment of that was for a time; what, then, would eternity be?"
XIV
Cotton's revivalism. Cotton professed that he loved to sweeten his mouth with a piece of Calvin before he went to sleep. Winthrop's Journal, i, 144. His emotional rendering of Calvinistic doctrines wrought strongly on the people of the new Boston, and his advent was followed by widespread religious excitement. More people were admitted to the church in Boston in the earlier months of Cotton's residence than to all the other churches in the colony. Report of Record Com. ii, 5. Boston Town Records, 1635. Hutchinson Papers, p. 88. Boston seems to have become religious in a pervasive way, and in 1635 measures were taken to prevent persons who were not likely to unite with the church from settling in the town. In this community, which had no intellectual interest but religion, and from which ordinary diversions were banished, there were sermons on Sunday and religious lectures on week days and ever-recurring meetings in private houses. The religious pressure was raised to the danger point, and an explosion of some sort was well-nigh inevitable. Cotton's enthusiasms were modulated by the soft stop of a naturally placid temper, but when communicated to others they were more dangerous.
XV
Mrs. Hutchinson's character. Mrs. Anne Hutchinson had been one of Cotton's ardent disciples in old Boston. She crossed the sea with her husband that she might sit under his ministry in New England. She was a woman cursed with a natural gift for leadership in an age that had no place for such women. Wonder-working Providence, ch. lxii. "This Masterpiece of Womens wit," the railing Captain Johnson calls her, and certainly her answers before the Massachusetts General Court go to show that she was not inferior in cleverness to any of the magistrates or ministers. 120 Winthrop, whose antipathy to her was a passion, speaks of her "sober and profitable carriage," and says that she was "very helpful in the time of childbirth and other occasions of bodily infirmities, and well furnished with means to those purposes." Short Story, etc., p. 31. In the state of medical science at that time such intelligent and voluntary ministration from a "gentlewoman" must have been highly valued. Almost alone of the religionists of her time she translated her devotion into philanthropic exertion. But a woman of her "nimble and active wit" could not pass her life in bodily ministrations. Power seeks expression, and her native eloquence was sure to find opportunity. Cotton's The Way of the Churches Cleared, Part I, p. 51. Short Story, 31. Mrs. Hutchinson made use of the usual gathering of gossips on the occasion of childbirth to persuade the women to that more intimate religious life of which she was an advocate. It was the custom to hold devotion at concert pitch by meetings at private houses for men only; women might be edified by their husbands at home. Mrs. Hutchinson ventured to open a little meeting for women. Short Story, 34. This was highly approved at first, and grew to unexpected dimensions; fifty, and sometimes eighty, of the principal women of the little town were present at her conferences.
XVI
Mrs. Hutchinson's doctrines. In these meetings she emphasized Cotton's favorite doctrine of "a covenant of grace." Her sensitive woman's nature no doubt had beat its wings against the bars of legalism. Compare Whelewright's Sermon in Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., 1866, 265. Cotton's Sermon on the Churches Resurrection, 1642. She was not a philosopher, but nothing could be more truly in accord with the philosophy of character than her desire to give to conduct a greater spontaneity. Cotton himself preached in the same vein. In addition to the Reformation, of which Puritans made so much, he looked for something more which he called, in the phrase of the Apocalypse, "the first resurrection." Mrs. Hutchinson, who was less prudent and more virile than Cotton, did not hesitate to describe most of the ministers in the colony as halting under a "covenant of works." Her doctrine was, at bottom, an insurrection against the vexatious legalism of Puritanism. She carried her rebellion so far that she would not even admit that good works were a necessary evidence of conversion. It was the particular imbecility of the age that thought of almost every sort must spin a cocoon of theological phrases for itself. Spontaneity of religious and moral action represented itself to Mrs. Hutchinson and her followers as an indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the believer and as a personal union with Christ whom they identified with the "new creature" of Paul. Such a hardening of metaphor into dogma is one of the commonest phenomena of religious thought.
XVII
Vane's arrival, 1635. Sir Henry Vane the younger, who had become an ardent Puritan in spite of his father, landed in Boston in October, 1635. He had already shown those gifts which enabled him afterward to play a considerable part in English history. His election as governor, 1636. His high connections made him an interesting figure, and though only about twenty-six years of age he was chosen governor in May, 1636. Ardent by nature, and yet in his youth when he "forsook the honors and preferments of the court to enjoy the ordinances of Christ in their purity," nothing was more natural than that he should be captivated by the seraphic Cotton and that he should easily adopt the transcendental views of Mrs. Hutchinson. Winthrop, the natural leader of the colony, having given place in 1635 to Haynes, perhaps in order that Hooker's party might be conciliated and the Connecticut emigration avoided, was a second time thrust aside that a high-born youth might be honored. Winthrop was utterly opposed to Mrs. Hutchinson, in whose teachings his apprehensive spirit saw full-fledged Antinomianism, and, by inference, potential anabaptism, blasphemy, and sedition. The Hutchinsonians were partisans of Vane, who adhered to their doctrine. The ministers other than Cotton and Whelewright, stung by the imputation that they were under "a covenant of works," rallied about Winthrop. Political cleavage and religious division unfortunately coincided.
XVIII
Arrogance of the Hutchinson party. Supported by the prestige of the young governor and of some conspicuous citizens and inspired by Cotton's metaphorical and mystical preaching, which was interpreted with latitude, the enthusiasm of the Hutchinsonians tended to become fanaticism. We have to depend mainly on the prejudiced account of their enemies, but there is little reason to doubt that the advocates of "a covenant of grace" assumed the airs of superiority usually seen in those who have discovered a short cut to perfection. The human spirit knows few greater consolations than well-disguised self-righteousness. The followers of Mrs. Hutchinson, if we may believe the witnesses, sometimes showed their sanctity by walking out of meeting when a preacher not under "a covenant of grace" entered the pulpit. They even interrupted the services with controversial questions addressed to the minister. Wilson, pastor of the Boston church, was condemned by them as being under "a covenant of works," and also incidentally criticised for his "thick utterance." Nor can one find that Cotton interposed his authority to protect his less gifted colleague. It is quite conceivable that he looked with some satisfaction on the progress of affairs in Boston. 1636. The heavenly minded young governor who had chosen to suffer reproach with the people of God was his disciple. The brilliant woman who was easily the leader of the town was the very apostle of his doctrine. The superiority of his opinions on a union with Christ that preceded active faith as compared with those of Hooker and the lesser divines was enthusiastically asserted by the great majority of the Boston church, led by Mrs. Hutchinson. Seeing so much zeal and sound doctrine he may have felt that the first or spiritual resurrection of which he was wont to prophesy from the Apocalypse, had already begun in his own congregation, and that among these enthusiasts were those who had learned to "buy so as though they bought not" – those who had been lifted into a crystalline sphere where they had "the Moone under their feet. Cotton's Churches Resurrection, p. 27. And if we have the Moone under our feete, then wee are not eclipsed when the Moone is Eclipsed." Thus did Cotton's imagination revel in cosmical imagery.
XIX
Bitterness of the debate. The arrogance of the elect is hard to bear, and it is not wonderful that the debate waxed hot. The concentrated religiousness of a town that sought to shut out unbelieving residents made the dispute dangerous. In the rising tempest a ballast of ungodly people might have been serviceable. But in Boston there were few even of the indifferent to be buffers in the religious collision. While the covenant-of-grace people made themselves offensive, their opponents, – Winthrop, the slighted ex-governor, Wilson, the unpopular pastor, and the ministers accused of being under a covenant of works – resorted to the favorite weapons of polemics. They hatched a brood of inferences from the opinions Mrs. Hutchinson held, or was thought to hold, and then made her responsible for the ugly bantlings. They pretended to believe, and no doubt did believe, that Mrs. Hutchinson's esoteric teaching was worse than what she gave out. They borrowed the names of ancient heresies, long damned by common consent, to give odium to her doctrine. That the new party should be called Antinomian was plausible; the road they had chosen for escape from Puritan legalism certainly lay in that direction. But Antinomianism had suffered from an imputation of immorality, and no such tendency was apparent, unless by logical deduction, in the doctrines taught in Boston. The hearers of Mrs. Hutchinson were also accused of having accepted the doctrines of the so-called Family of Love which had of old been accused of many detestable things, and was a common bugaboo of theology at the time. The whole town of Boston and the whole colony of Massachusetts was set in commotion by the rude theological brawl. Overthrow of Vane, 1637. Such was the state of combustion in Boston that it was thought necessary by the opponents of Vane and Mrs. Hutchinson to hold the court of elections at the former capital, Newtown. The excitement at this court was so great that the church members, who only could vote, were on the point of laying violent hands on one another in a contest growing out of a question relating to the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. Vane was defeated, and Winthrop again made governor.
XX
The Synod of 1637. A great synod of elders from all the New England churches was assembled. All the way from Ipswich and Newbury on the east and from the Connecticut on the west the "teaching elders" made their way by water or by land, at public expense, that they might help the magistrates of Massachusetts to decide on what they should compel the churches to believe. Short Story of the Rise, Reign, etc., passim. For more than three weeks the synod at Cambridge wrestled with the most abstruse points of doctrine. Winthrop's Journal, i, 284, and following. The governor frequently had to interpose to keep the peace; sometimes he adjourned the assembly, to give time for heats to cool. Cotton's Way of the Churches Cleared, passim. A long list of errors, most of which were not held by anybody in particular, were condemned. A nearly unanimous conclusion on certain fine-spun doctrines was reached at length by means of affirmations couched in language vague or ambiguous. Cotton, who had been forced after debate to recant one opinion and modify others, assented to the inconclusive conclusions, but with characteristic non-committalism he qualified his assent and withheld his signature.
XXI
The persecution. The field was now cleared for the orderly persecution of the dissentients. Whelewright, Mrs. Hutchinson's brother-in-law, had been convicted of sedition in the preceding March on account of an imprudent sermon preached on a fast day. But his sentence had been deferred from court to court, apparently until after the synod. Mass. Rec., i, 207. At the November court following the synod Whelewright was banished, and those who had signed a rather vigorous petition in his favor many long months before were arraigned and banished or otherwise punished. The banished included some of the most intelligent and conspicuous residents. Not until this November court had her opponents ventured to bring Mrs. Hutchinson to trial. Whelewright, standing by his hot-headed sermon, had just been sentenced; the abler but more timid Cotton had already been overborne and driven into a safe ambiguity by the tremendous pressure of the great synod. Vane had left the colony, and the time was ripe to finish the work of extirpation. The elders were summoned to be present and advise.