In the 1630s a controversy swirled around Anne Hutchinson in the Boston Colony which eventuated in her trial for heresy and in her excommunication. The controversy served as a watershed, defining what the Puritan fathers stood for and what they would and would not tolerate. It serves today as a warning, for those with eyes to see and ears to hear, of what happens when Christianity weds itself to the politics of power, however noble the vision.
A Word About Sources
The Puritan leaders who banished Anne Hutchinson produced *all* of the records upon which subsequent evaluations have been made. We do not have available to us, nor have any historians had available, any of Anne's own writings to which to turn to verify her teachings and beliefs once and for all, or with which to dispute the reports of the Puritan fathers, who were at once both her prosecutors and judges. The original sources were published in Charles Francis Adams' __Antinomianism in the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, 1636-1638__ (Boston 1894) and David Hall's __The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638 (Middletown 1968).
Throughout the 1700s, all of the authors who wrote works which dealt with the Hutchinson dispute (Edward Johnson, Cotton Mather, Thomas Hutchinson) treated the Winthrop/Puritan side sympathetically and the Hutchinsonians as heretics. Most studies written in the 1800s (Palfrey) were likewise sympathetic to the Puritan Fathers' perceived need to maintain authority.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, there was a reversal of sorts from the traditional view amongst some historians, and works began to appear which treated Hutchinson and other dissenters of her time as champions of religious liberty and conscience, with Anne often presented as a heroine who battled bigotry for the sake of religious freedom.
Around the 1930s sometime, a re-evaluation of New England's Puritan heritage took place. Consequently, some post-1930s historians (Miller, Petit) came to believe that the Antinomian crisis resulted from the departure of the orthodox, i.e, the Puritan fathers, from their traditional Calvinist heritage, while others (Stoever) disagreed, but generally speaking the post-1930 treatments are regarded as more realistic, based, as they are, upon a more accurate and complete understanding of Puritan theology, and especially of how the Puritan fathers would have defined "heresy."
I will cite my sources for the information I present, but think it's important to note again, that not all historical sources are equal-- far from it. Historians are people and have perspectives. They cannot always be objective, though they may try. It is important to this discussion to understand that the primary sources for information about Anne are, in fact, works written by her bitterest foes. The situation is akin to having to rely on Roman Catholic sources alone for information about the excommunication and post-banishment life of Martin Luther.
Anne and William Hutchinson
Anne was born in 1591, the second of the 13 children of the Anglican Rev. Francis and Bridget Marbury. Her father is said to have had strong convictions and spirit and a commitment to learning, so that Anne not only received a better education than most girls of her time but became quite familiar with scripture and dogma at an early age. (Bremer 3) Her father preached in London until he died in 1611 and one year later, Anne married William Hutchinson, then 21.
William Hutchinson was a cloth merchant at first. He and Anne lived comfortably in Alford (England) for 22 years, surrounded by a growing family. In all they had fifteen children, fourteen of them born while the couple was still in England. In 1634 the Hutchinson family arrived in Boston. William prospered in the Bay colony, first in the cloth trade, later broadening his activities to include land purchases and various other investments and was eventually elected a town selectman and a deputy to the General Court, the colony's legislative assembly. (Bremer 3)
Anne is said to have had an outgoing personality and concern for the sick, devoting many hours serving those in need in various capacities, including as a midwife and herbalist. (Barker-Benfield 106)
The newcomers to the Bay Colony loved a good church meeting, so much so that the magistrates complained important work was being neglected for the sake of yet another sermon. (Bremer 3) Their enthusiasm probably was owing in part to the fact that the colonists missed the "conventicles" or secret, intimate religious meetings which had been held in England, and in part to the revival of 1630-1633, a revival sparked by the preaching of John Cotton, Anne's mentor earlier in England and Pastor of the First Church of Boston. It was an exciting time. Suddenly people could meet as often and for as long as they liked and openly, without persecution. Responding to the desire of fellow church members to assemble to discuss Cotton's sermons, Anne and William began to host meetings in their home which eventually were held twice weekly and attracted 60-80 people, predominantly women. These meetings went well while Cotton was the senior pastor at the First Church of Boston, but when John Wilson returned to the church from England and assumed the role of Senior Pastor, the difficulties began, for unlike Cotton, Wilson's sermons stressed the need for preparation and the value of sanctification as evidence of salvation, which the Hutchinsons equated with the hated Covenant of Works, the notion that man could earn his eternal reward. (Bremer 5)
Although scholars agree with Edmund Morgan that, "Mrs. Hutchinson ... carefully refrained from committing herself in public...[and] had never publicly advanced [any] tenet of personal revelation. Neither had she openly professed any doctrines that could be sanely regarded as contrary to the Law of God," (Morgan 55) nor had she signed a petition in favor of associate pastor Wheelwright (who is said to have preached a seditious sermon as Jeri notes above), which served as the basis for banishing many of her followers. Nevertheless, she was "rumored" to be the source of some 82-odd heretical teachings drawn up by the synod of Bay Colony ministers. In October of 1637, Anne was summoned before the General Court to answer what one writer describes as a "scanty list of charges that the magistrates had been able to draw up." (Morgan 55)
Anne's two-day trial for having "broken the Law of God" took place in March of 1638, before John Winthrop, who served as both prosecutor and judge and is said to have prosecuted her with unaccustomed relish, although he was otherwise known to be magnanimous, poised and dignified (Morris 59). There was no jury, and Anne had no legal counsel of any kind but was required to defend herself alone against the charges of the three judges and prosecutors, John Endecott, Winthrop, and Thomas Dudley. Scholars agree that all of the original charges brought against her she successfully refuted. She was found guilty, however, and was excommunicated and banished, along with anyone, ministers included, who had dared to speak up in her defense or challenge the Court in any way. In all, 80 men and their families (not a small group of followers as someone described earlier) left with the Hutchinsons, obtaining title to Aquidnick Island from the Narraganset Indians, and built a town which became Portsmouth, Rhode Island. There they drew up a compact pledging themselves to live under the kingship of Christ and the law of the Bible. William Coddington, who was banished for having entreated the Court on Anne's behalf at the close of the trial against her: "I do not see any clear witness against her, and you know it is a rule of the court that no man may be a judge and an accuser too. I would entreat you to consider whether those things which you have alleged against her deserve such censure as you are about to pass...Here is no law of God that she hath broken nor any law of the country that she hath broke, and therefore [she] deserves no censure," (Morris 62) was chosen to rule as an Old Testament style judge, and the manner of worship of the inhabitants of Aquidneck was much like their former neighbors in Massachusetts. Coddington's dominance of the community irritated many of the Portsmouth settlers, and eventually he and his followers moved south to establish the city of Newport. (Bremer 6) At this time, Anne's husband, William Hutchinson was elected judge in Portsmouth, the government of Portsmouth having been reorganized under English rather than biblical law.
William Hutchinson died in 1640, and Anne was silent for the following year, in mourning. When she re-emerged in 1641, according to Winthrop, she had become an Anabaptist, having adopted the traditional Anabaptist convictions of nonresistance and what some modern writers might call a theology of exile or suffering (Koehler 122) (See Mark McCulley, Studies in History and Ethics). Her views became popular enough in Rhode Island to contribute to the dissolution of Coddington's church at Newport but not enough to remove him from power. Fearing Massachusetts would seize the Rhode Island settlements (for indeed, Bay Colony authorities continued to pursue Anne even to Portsmouth, where they had no authority, as Ginny mentioned earlier; see Morris 64), Anne sought refuge in the colony of New Netherland in 1642. In August 1643, she, two of her sons, and three of her daughters, were killed by Indians who had quarreled with her Dutch neighbors. (Koehler 122)
The Theological Issues
Setting
Having eschewed the Roman Catholic "Covenant of Works," many of the new Puritans struggled with assurance of their own personal salvation. Remember, in England, the Reformers were regarded as outlaws and heretics, and it is to be expected that laymen in the Reformed camp, faced with intense religious persecution, would, from time to time, wonder privately whether the new ways were the right and biblical ways. In the old system, they had relied on elaborate systems of confession, penance, indulgences, and observations of rituals which they had been taught would lead them eventually to heaven, rituals which the Reformers had abandoned as unscriptural.
On the other hand, the Puritan ministers taught that everyone could indeed know whether or not he was saved (Hall 23). Indeed, from the pulpit both in England and in the new land people, were implored to make sure of their estate, warned for the safety of their souls against resting in a false or mistaken assurance, and reminded that hypocrites are able to counterfeit the outward marks of grace. (Stoever 32) This kind of preaching aroused the anxiety of those who doubted their salvation, causing them to clamor for tests or other means of assurance that they were, indeed, among the elect. In an attempt to provide the anxious with some objective measure of grace, the Puritans spent a lot of time developing the teaching that outward sanctification, the daily course of living a godly life, could be taken as a sign of justification (even though they acknowledged a life of righteousness could be simulated) (Hall 22).
The problem of achieving assurance was intensified in New England, where revival was underway. Scholars disagree somewhat as to what prompted this time of religious fervor, but the consensus is that it was a combination of the exhilaration of religious freedom after years of secret meetings and persecution, the promise of the new land, and the anointed preaching of some of the ministers, notably John Cotton (Hall 23), Anne Hutchinson's mentor. New members were being quickly added to the Boston church, and faced with an influx of new believers, the colonists debated what standards of church membership should be adopted, since only those who the church deemed regenerate would be qualified for enfranchisement in the colony. By 1633, several requirements had been established, including soundness in doctrine, evidence of good behavior, and the requirement that "such as were to join should make confession of their faith, and declare what work of grace the Lord had wrought in them." (Hall 23) Being required to demonstrate by their confession that they were among the elect contributed to the tension the new Puritans experienced as they sought to find, then defend, their election.
By 1636, the revival had faded, and there was unrest in the colony, particularly among those who weren't sure they were among the elect, who tended to blame or to be critical of the ministers for not providing a satisfactory means for attaining assurance. In this time of spiritual depression, John Cotton, whose sermons prompted the earlier revival, attempted to spark revival again. He preached that the colonists had become proud and self-satisfied, complacent, that hypocrites could perform "works" and that looking to works alone was to look to man's own righteousness. He said that the true measure of a saint was that he was "Meek in Spirit and Merciful, and Mourning for Sin." For Cotton, the righteousness of sanctification was not properly man's but Christ's, and indeed *is* Christ, who is "made ... our righteousness and sanctification." (Hall 24)
These themes Anne echoed and taught. Before the controversy, she had won Winthrop's admiration (Hall 24) and Cotton's "loving and dear respect" for her efforts to overcome the spiritual deadness which prevailed. She feared that some of the other preachers were allowing people to "thinke [themselves] to be saved because they see some worke of Sanctification in them," missing the point that good works alone are not proof of election. She insisted that those who turned for comfort to the performance of "duties" were resting their assurance on "sandy foundations." (Hall 25)
The Antinomian Controversy
The study of the Antinomian Controversy of the 1630s in Puritan New England has been one of the most personally valuable I have ever undertaken, in part because I think I am finally able to better understand the traditional Reformed view of grace and sanctification and why it seems to put those in the Reformed camp so at odds with those in other camps (as can be observed in this folder).
The Reformers' Position
The Reformers believed that "'graces of sanctification' inhere in the regenerate" (Stoever 33), and although they derive their power from the Holy Spirit's sustenance, they are active in the saints themselves and are thus a human work. In regenerating individuals, they said, God does not work *directly* upon men. He does not override creation or violate the ontological order established at creation , by, for example, speaking directly to individuals, revealing Himself personally to them, or acting directly upon them. Instead, God acts through concrete instrumentalities, created things, like the Word, the sacraments, in other words, a series of "second causes", which things the Reformers called "means of grace." While they quickly pointed out that these second causes -- i.e., teaching, preaching, baptism, communion -- cannot produce their grace-full effects without the First Cause, the action of the Holy Spirit, they nevertheless asserted that God *will not produce a given effect without the appropriate second cause*. God moves upon, co-works with, and assists the second cause in its operation. He "causes the burning of the fire, yet we do not say God burns, but the fire burns." God moves man by appealing to the understanding with arguments, thereby presenting motives to the will; and he moves the will according to its nature as a free agent by supplying it with a gracious power to will well. (Stoever 31) Sanctification, the Reformers said, was an infusion of gracious habits, a positive change in a man's person which manifests itself in distinctive actions and distinctive motives which may be recognized over time and are proof of election. They agreed, righteousness could be imitated by the unregenerate, so they pointed the doubtful to the existence or nonexistence of "conditional promises." They said that if someone finds he possesses the biblical "qualification," then he knows he has the concomitant promise, too. In point of fact, these "conditions" themselves were aids in identifying the regenerate, because things like humility, earnestly desiring Christ, waiting on Him, cannot be imitated by the unregenerate, who are without inherent sanctifying graces. If one possesses these heart conditions, it is an indication that God has singled him out and marked him for justification, then sanctification.
Thus, to attain assurance of salvation, the hopeful saint must examine his behavior rigorously in light of conscience and God's revealed will to determine that whatever acts of obedience he is performing are inspired by right and biblical motives. If he finds that they are, then he can be sure he is not a hypocrite.
John Cotton, Anne, and others called "Hutchinsonian" resisted the notion that graces "inhered" in the regenerate, believing instead that good works were only human works apart from the direct action of the Holy Spirit. They taught that all spiritual gifts exist first and fully in Christ, whence they are derived by the Spirit's agency to those who are in union with Christ. Without Christ's continuous activity in the saints, their gifts would "fly away". (Stoever 34) The outworking of this belief was that Christ must act directly upon human faculties by His Holy Spirit if individuals are to act holily.
The Hutchinsonian Position
Cotton and the Hutchinsons believed that regeneration can be discerned only by the Spirit's own testimony to the individual, "without respect to a work," that is, "without sight of any work of ours." Anne held that "there are no created graces in ...believers after union [with Christ]," in other words, the elect are not inherently grace-full or infused with grace, that the Holy Spirit acts upon men directly, without the need of so-called second causes. The Hutchinsonians tended to minimize the instrumentality of created things and asserted that in accomplishing and revealing regeneration, the Spirit operates directly upon the individual's mind and will.
Anne always had a personal sense of deep communion with the Holy Spirit and did not see that ministers or other second causes were needed as an intervening "means of grace" between God and man, although she certainly participated in Bible studies, listened to sermons, taught the Word herself, and partook of the sacraments. She believed that those who received the Holy Spirit never had to doubt their estate again-- that striving after "signs of grace" as the Puritan fathers advocated was, in fact, a sure sign that grace had not been granted. (Caldwell 88) The believer possesses an inner witness that he is Christ's; His Spirit bears witness with the believer's spirit that he is a child of God.
Mrs. Hutchinson's testimony at trial is tangled and the issues complex and deep, but as one scholar notes, "there is one point on which Mrs. Hutchinson never wavers: she consistently and relentlessly focuses on the person of Christ and on the moment of union." (Caldwell 88)
Anne says:
Here is a great stirre about graces and looking to hearts, but give mee Christ, I seeke not for graces, but for Christ, I seeke not for sanctification, but for Christ, tell not mee of meditation and duties, but tell me of Christ."
In Anne's view. there is "nayther faith, nor knowledge nor Gifts and graces no nor Life itselfe but all is in Christ Jesus and not in us."
This doctrine she held of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is familiar to us today and continues to be affirmed among those who believe in the perpetuity of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but in Puritan New England, it was one of the two "dangerous errors" which were at the root of the Antinomian Controversy, i.e.,
(1) That the person of the Holy Ghost dwells in a justified person;
(2) That no sanctification can help to evidence to us our justification.
In fact, one of the accusations against Anne is that she held that "we have no Grace in our Selves but all is in Christ and thear is no inherent Righteousness in us". In this belief she echoed Cotton, her teacher, who stressed that "all your owne parts are empty things in comparison of Christ" and that "such as have Christ in truth, and so having him, have life by him, they do not rest in having any of the benefits of Christ, though they be spirituall, but they cheifely affect to have himselfe, not so much his benefits, as himselfe." Anne would point men to exclaim with Paul, "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me, and the life that I now life I live by the faith of the Son of God." For Anne, "it is as though everyone's 'parts' or abilities are doomed to perpetual emptiness in comparison of Christ, that even after union, there is no assurance of that 'elevation of reason' and that 'freshening and quickening of understanding'" (Caldwell 89) which characterizes the Puritans' idea of grace and which permits a measure of confidence in enlightened human discourse.
It should be noted that Anne almost never claimed that the Lord actually spoke to her. She said God "shows, reveals, opens, gives promises," He "let me see," and He "let me to distinguish." (Caldwell 88) Further, says Caldwell, Anne's "dependence on the Bible suggests that the complaint by the ministers that Mrs. Hutchinson rejects scripture is not ... accurate. What is apparent is that she cannot find a point of contact between the scriptural words of the men inspired by God to write the Bible and the extra-scriptural words of men. Her final answer is always Scripture, yes; agreement on interpretation, no. God, yes; man, no." (88)
As to the charge that she did not believe in bodily resurrection, there is a question that this was ever, in fact, her belief. She distinguished between men's "souls" and "spirits" and believed that men's souls were forever linked with the flesh as distinct from the spirit that comes from and returns to God, and for this she cites passages from Ecclesiastes, Luke, I Thessalonians and Hebrews. When at trial, Winthrop confronts her with additional scriptures, she does seem to recant and to indicate that this is something she has considered while in the isolation of her prison experience, but that she is not fully persuaded of an opinion.
"I did not hould any of these Things before my Imprisonment," she says. (Caldwell 90)
The Conflict
Hutchinsonian views were unacceptable and dangerous in the Puritans' mind first of all because the Puritans had dedicated themselves to holding together in delicate balance the contact between the supernatural and the natural, insisting that grace is an infusion of qualities from God, so that the righteous themselves possess, they believed, *within themselves* inherent graces, though God-given. It was absolutely essential to the success of their colony that the Puritans be able, to their satisfaction, to identify the elect, so as to admit them to full colony participation while by the same standards, those deemed unregenerate would be eliminated. If a person could simply contend he was of the elect because the Spirit had borne witness with his spirit that this were so, if the "striving-after-works" test were eliminated, how would any ministers possibly determine with finality who was and was not regenerate so as to know who to keep in and who to banish? It would be impossible to maintain the authority structures which existed to regulate membership in the colony.
Further, if complete union with Christ were preached as attainable, the Puritans feared people would claim by virtue of being in union with Him, that they did not have to obey magistrates or ministers, husbands or parents, or the law, for that matter. It did not seem to occur to the Puritans that people in union with Christ would have the mind of Christ and would be no more likely to resist authority than Jesus was when he walked the earth as a man subject to civil and religious authority, Himself, except when such authority directly controverted the will of God or acted to suppress and oppose the truth.
Anne worried that the Puritan concept that outward behavior or a righteous life was a sign of justification or redemption would have a deadening effect on the spiritual life of the community, because instead of encouraging the fixing of one's attentions and affections on the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, it encouraged constant scrutiny of behaviors and works, external, observable things, which led inexorably, despite protestations to the contrary, to formalism or legalism via the establishing of rules or standards of behavior which, consistently observed, would prepare one for or offer evidence of election by God to the company of the redeemed. Kai Eriksen notes that Mrs. Hutchinson was correctly sensing and pointing out a new strain that had appeared in New England thinking:
"The ministers were not arguing that outer conformity was necessary to *earn* salvation, but they seemed to be saying that outer conformity was a convenient way to *prove* salvation; and thus the covenant of grace had lost so much of its inner mystery that it did bear resemblance to the old Covenant of Works. The clergy were quite positive that they could explain the difference logically, but they spent so many awkward hours in this pursuit that they appeared to betray their uneasiness every time they mounted the pulpit or took their pens in hand." (Eriksen 81)
The Hutchinsonians were likely also recognizing and reacting (and over-reacting) to a new dynamic of which they were, perhaps, only dimly aware. Between England and New England, the Puritans had been transformed from "an opposition party" to a "ruling elite". A new brand of Puritanism was taking shape in which the individualism of the original movement was being transformed into the loyalty and obedience necessary to a civil establishment. The early theorists had emphasized the private nature of each person's covenant with God; the New England theorists began to talk about covenants God was making with the entire people of the colony as a group, stating that God would only deal with the elect through their governing agencies. In truth, a control apparatus was emerging which bore striking resemblance to the one the Puritans fought against in England. As Kai Eriksen says, "In theory, at least, each soul was left to negotiate his own way to heaven and was encouraged to act upon the promptings of his own conscience, but in fact, administrative machinery was slowly developing to make sure that each private conscience was rightly informed and loyal to the policies and programs of the state."
Church Discipline or Power Politics?
It cannot be emphasized too strongly that it was in the best interests of the Puritan fathers to banish Mrs. Hutchinson as a heretic and thus to eliminate whatever remained of what had come to be known as the Opposition Party. Whether, in fact, she was a heretic or not was not really the issue; by what we can gather from her testimony and the records, again, of her foes -- which are the only records we have -- it does not appear that her views were aberrant; certainly they were not beyond the pale of orthodoxy. For this reason some scholars have treated her trial as purely a political trial, which in effect, it was. The state was being purified. The deviant was being eliminated. The charges against Anne were not essentially religious charges but were political charges-- slandering the ministers, holding unauthorized meetings, disturbing the peace of the community. She broke no laws, either of God or man. These are very much like charges which might be brought against citizens today in any totalitarian state when their activities are perceived to threaten the party in power.
As Withington and Schwartz note:
"In fact...Hutchinson cannot be proved right or wrong, nor can the state. The case of the governors of Massachusetts Bay Colony versus Hutchinson was not a case in which the rightness of one side proved the wrongness of the other. Hutchinson was not proved wrong by any standard or any law that can be applied by judicial process. She was wrong only in the terms of the state. The trial was not a trial of justice to solve the problem of guilt or innocence, but a trial of power to solve the political problem of maintaining social order...There is never any doubt of the outcome of a political trial-- the resister will certainly be condemned if he does not first submit-- but the trial absolves the state of any guilt for his elimination."
(66-67)
The Trial
As has already been stated, Anne was tried and judged by Winthrop, Dudley and Endecott in a trial lasting two days. It bears repeating that her trial was unfair and probably illegal, for Anne was denied even the most minimal procedural safeguards. She was brought to trial without indictment or information, without being informed of the precise charges against her, and without even knowing what her penalty would likely be. It was not unusual that she did not have an attorney, since there were no attorneys as yet in Boston, but the denial of a jury trial is significant. Judge Winthrop was Anne's greatest foe among the laity and should have disqualified himself, yet he assumed the dual role of both prosecutor and judge. It is said that although he was normally a "poised and dignified" man, during Anne's trial he "treated the spectators to frequent unjudicial outbursts of rancor and exasperation." (Morris 59)
Anne appeared before the judges, a woman in her late 40s and in an advanced state of pregnancy. She was forced to remain standing and allowed to sit "only when her countenance discovered some bodily infirmity." (Morris 60)
According to scholars, Anne was a tough, intelligent and learned woman with remarkable charisma. One writer described her as a woman who "might have changed the course of Massachusetts history had she been a man." (Dunn 143) She was the judges' match theologically, and repeatedly throughout the trial, they reverted to silencing her by invoking the Pauline teachings against women speaking and teaching. In other words, they would ask her a question, and when her answer confounded them, they would claim they couldn't argue or discuss it further with her because she was a woman. Hutchinson insisted she had always operated and was continuing to operate within the rules laid down by the Apostle Paul in his epistles; the judges insisted she did not. Dunn says that the heart of their disagreement was that Hutchinson applied Paul in a positive way to her situation, while the judges insisted on the reading of Paul which would be most restrictive to women.
Winthrop opened the trial first by trying to get Anne to confess her errors. She responded, "I am called here to answer before you but I hear no things laid to my charge." Because, as has been noted, Anne had been careful to avoid any kind of public or written defiance, Winthrop's indictment was shaky.
The first charge against her was of having broken the fifth commandment by dishonoring the governors in entertaining those who had been subsequently convicted of sedition, to which she responded: "But put the case, Sir, that I do fear the Lord and my parents, may not I entertain them that fear the Lord because my parents will not give me leave?"
In response, Winthrop said, "We do not mean to discourse with those of your sex but only this; you do adhere unto them and do endeavor to set forward this faction and so you do dishonour us."
He then shifted attention to the next charge, that she justify the meetings held in her house. In answer, she quoted two passages of Scripture, Titus 2: 3-5, which indicates that the elder women should instruct the younger, and Acts 18:26, wherein "Aquila and Priscilla tooke upon themselves to instruct Apollos, more perfectly, yet he was a man of good parts, but they being better instructed might teach him." She maintained that in the large meetings held in her house to discuss sermons she could speak because this was private, that is, not in the church; that she could, as an older woman, teach younger women; that she could, when asked, teach and counsel men in private. She also declared a right to public utterance of prophesy, for which she found Biblical precedent, citing, among other scriptures, Gal. 3:28, that "there is neigher male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus."
Undaunted by their failure to prove the first two charges, the Court moved to the most serious charge, that Anne had insulted the ministers. In this they referred to a conference between Anne and the ministers months earlier, which was to have been private, with the ministers having promised Anne confidentiality. Disregarding their promise, they now testified that Anne had designated all but Mr. Cotton and Mr. Wheelwright as laboring under the Covenant of Works. It is possible that the ministers felt bound to override their promises of confidentiality for the sake of truth, but the fact is, the Court and everyone witnessing knew Anne had been betrayed by them.
That night she went over Mr. Wilson's notes of the conference. When his notes confirmed that the ministers' testimonies against her were inaccurate, she demanded, the next morning, that the ministers all be put under oath. This put Winthrop in the position of having to either admit the unsworn testimony of the ministers or humiliate them by refusing to do so and administering an oath. Instead, John Cotton was called to testify. By this time, Cotton had withdrawn his support from Anne, and he had the confidence of all of the ministers. He stated that he did not recall Anne stating that the ministers were under a Covenant of Works, nor that they preached a Covenant of Works. Finally Winthrop asked Cotton whether Anne said they were not able ministers of the New Testament, and Cotton stated that he did not remember her saying any such thing. Cotton's firm testimony added up to a "serious modification of the black and white version of the conference insisted on by the elders" (Morgan 62). In essence, all of the charges against Anne had been disproved.
It should be remembered Anne was one lone, middle-aged woman, pregnant at that, defending herself against three learned Puritan judges in a courtroom full of equally-learned opponents. That she disproved their the charges against her can hardly be attributed solely to her "wit" or her ability to "sidetrack" them or how good she was at debate or how able to"confuse" her accusers.
The Words Which Condemned Her
As Cotton sat down, after vindicating her of the final charge, Anne spoke the prophetic utterances which sealed her fate. There are several versions of what she actually said; these are the two most popular.
She is said to have asked the court for "leave to give you the ground of what I know to be true." She said, The Lord knows that I could not open Scripture...He must by his prophetical office open it unto me...Now if you do condemn me for speaking what in my conscience I know to be truth, I must commit myself unto the Lord.
Mr. Nowell: How do you know that was the spirit?
Anne: How did Abraham know that it was God that bid him offer his son, being a breach of the sixth commandment?
Dudley: By an immediate voice.
Anne: So to me by an immediate revelation.
Endecott: How! An immediate revelation!
Anne: By the voice of his own spirit to my soul.
She then goes on to say:
Anne: Then this place in Daniel was brought unto me and did shew me that though I should meet with affliction yet I am the same God that delivered Daniel out of the lion's den, I will also deliver thee. Therefore I desire you to look to it, for you see this scripture fulfilled this day and therefore I desire you that as you tender the Lord and the church and commonwealth to consider and look what you do. You have power over my body, but the Lord Jesus hath power over my body and soul, and assure yourselves thus much, you do as much as in you lies to put the Lord Jesus Christ from you, and if you go on in this course you begin, you will bring a curse upon you and your posterity, and the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.
According to a different version, she said:
Anne: Take heed how you proceed against me, for I know that for this you go about to do to me, God will ruin you and your posterity, and this whole state.
In stating that the Lord spoke to her by an immediate revelation, she gave the court all it needed to charge and convict her of heresy. Historians disagree as to whether her speaking was impulsive or reasoned and deliberate. Some feel she had to get in the last word, to her own hurt. Some say she was a foolish, impulsive woman who had to have her say, regardless. Others, observing how carefully she had, for years, refrained from making public statements in the presence of her opponents, especially, believe she intentionally allowed the Court to have its way with her. Some believe she did, indeed, speak "by immediate revelation." She had already demonstrated that she could use the legal system far better than her opponents (Withington 69). She forced them to justify their positions from the Bible, pointed out their logical inconsistencies, and although she likely never doubted what the Court's ultimate decision would be, she forced the judges to publicly scrutinize their justifications for condemning her. Her demand that the court's justification be legal (by asking, for example, that the ministers be sworn on oath), when legal justification actually was impossible, exposed the Court's attempt to circumvent the requirements of the law to their own ends. She then, in effect, went on to declare that winning no longer concerned her by openly expounding by immediate revelation! She knew that to fight the continuing rumors and bad reports was a losing battle, that it would only be a matter of time before more charges were brought against her, maybe more serious charges. She was no match for virtually all of the ministers of the Bay Colony. Had she confessed, she would have been banished. Having "won," she knew she would only be watched the more vigilantly and eventually brought to trial again, for the ministers found her presence in the colony dangerously threatening. In any event, the Bay Colony had become hostile territory for Anne. Withington discusses Anne's actions in the context of melodrama versus tragedy. In a melodrama, participants argue and struggle in the hope of escape; in tragedy, the participants say what they say not to change the course of events, but because what they say ought to be said. It is likely that Anne, by declaring her position on immediate revelation, is announcing that she has accepted her fate and is speaking according to her conscience
Conclusion
Anne's name initially was mentioned in the Beyond Reproach folder in Christian Living as an illustration of how some were persecuted unjustly by the Puritans, the point being that the Puritan/Reformed/Westminster-Catechism-Revering camp, admirable as its founding fathers may have been in some ways, has its share of skeletons in the closet and ought not be idolized or overly revered or its leaders afforded prophet-like status. Even scholars sympathetic to the Puritans agree that Anne was harshly treated and illegally tried.
What I have found most disturbing about this discussion is the continuing determination of some to idolize and glorify the beliefs and actions of the Puritans, who were fallen people with feet of clay, while minimizing, excusing and denying the significance of some of the inexcusable acts these people did, in fact, commit. I've found it puzzling that the "naked Quakers" have been repeatedly mentioned, as though this behavior is the defining characteristic of the entire group, while the burning of 23 witches, the hanging of Mary Dyer, and Anne's banishment, are downplayed as somehow understandable or as insignificant "aberrations" among the Puritans. (I'd rather see a naked body any day than be banished, hung or burned!) I've wondered why Anne has been held to account for all of the behaviors and actions of those known as Antinomians (i.e., the incidents of heckling) while the Puritan fathers are excused from responsibility for the nefarious activities of some of their orthodox brethren and charges. (As in, "Only one minister burned the witches.")
Why would such things as Anne's claim that the Spirit enlightened her as to the salvation of others, including ministers, pose any greater threat than the Puritan fathers' insistence that they could determine salvation on the basis of external behaviors? Anne had no authority to act on the basis of her views, while the Puritan Fathers had the right even to execute those under their authority on the basis of their own similar determinations.
The discussion of the treatment of Anne Hutchinson is especially compelling at a time when there are voices urging a return to the Puritan vision of theocracy, voices like those of Gary North, R. Rushdoony, Greg Bahnsen, and David Chilton. One look at life as it truly was in Puritan New England should relieve us of notions that those were the good ol' godly days:
Describing the meeting houses in Plymouth: "On the meeting house green stood those Puritan instruments of punishment, the stocks, whipping post, pillory and cage, and on lecture days the stocks and pillory were often occupied by wicked or careless colonists, or those everlasting pillory replenishers, the Quakers. ..Pillories were used as a means of punishment until a comparatively recent date-- in Salem until the year 1801, and in Boston till 1803..."
"...John Lewis and Sarah Chapman, were accused and tried for 'sitting together on the Lord's Day under an apple tree in Goodman Chapman's Orchard'...In Plymouth, a man was 'sharply whipped' for shooting fowl on Sunday... A Plymouth man, for attending to his tar-pits on the Sabbath, was set in the stocks...Captain Kemble of Boston was in 1656 set for two hours in the public stocks for his 'lewd and unseemly behaviour,' which consisted in his kissing his wife 'publicquely' on the Sabbath day, upon the doorstep of his house, when he had just returned from a voyage and absence of three years...
"Severely were the early colonists punished if they ventured to criticize either the ministers or their teachings, or indeed, any of the religious exercises of the church. In Sandwich a man was publicly whipped for speaking deridingly of God's words and ordinances as taught by the Sandwich minister...Mistress Oliver was whipped, then forced to stand in public with a cleft stick on her tongue for 'reproaching the elders'...A New Haven man was severely whipped and fined for declaring that he had received no profit from the minister's sermons."
(Earle)
In the years following Anne's banishment, many women were subjected to increasingly harsh punishments. In 1638, the Boston church cast out Judith Smith for her "obstinate persisting in sundry errors". That same year Katherine Finch was whipped for "speaking against the magistrates, against the Churches, and against the Elders." Phillipa Hammond in 1639 was excommunicated as a "slaunderer and reviler" of the churches for arguing publicly that Mrs. Hutchinson did not deserve the censure she received. Joan Hogg was punished for "disorderly singing and idleness..." Anne Eaton was excommunicated in 1644 for heresy for her disavowal of infant baptism and accused of failing to seek guidance from her husband. To the charge of heresy was added lying and stubbornness because she refused to argue the matter at trial. (Dunn 144) (I can only guess that had she argued, she would have been accused of violating the Pauline injunctions against women speaking and teaching!) In the first five years of the Boston colony only 1.7 percent of people convicted of criminal offenses were women. During and after the Antinomian controversy, the percentage of females convicted and punished grew, to 6.7 % from 1635 to 1639, and 9.4% from 1640 to 1644. Particularly persecuted were midwives, who often treated other women with herbal medicines and for this were accused of witchcraft.
When Christianity becomes wedded to political authority, or even the quest for political power, then history demonstrates that political and religious oppression and persecution have been the inevitable result. Edmund Morgan stated that Governor Winthrop could not recognize Anne's views as views which had a right to exist. "He could not regard the case as that of one opinion against another; *it was personal opinion against truth*. And the terrifying fact was that this personal opinion was gaining ground; the Word of God was being undermined by a woman...He could not help regarding that woman... as an enemy of God...[and] instrument of Satan." (Morgan 53-4) (Emphasis mine.) It is apparent that there are many in this time who see as Governor Winthrop saw.
David Hall notes that following Anne's banishment, "Gone was the spiritual enthusiasm that had prompted the revival...[and] in its place was a formalism that the ministers in New England would lament for another century." (27) As it turns out the Puritan experiment finally failed, though not before many more were seriously harmed. It is interesting that in the end, Anne's final prophetic "revelation" was fulfilled.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Ben Barker-Benfield, "Anne Hutchinson and the Puritan Attitude Toward Women" in Bremer, below.
2. Francis J. Bremer, Ed. ANNE HUTCHINSON: TROUBLER OF THE PURITAN ZION, (Huntington, New York 1981)
3. Patricia Caldwell, "The Antinomian Language Controversy," HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW (1976)
4. Mary Maples Dunn, "Saints and Sinners: Congregational & Quaker Women in the Early Colonial Period," AMERICAN QUARTERLY, Vol. 30, No. 5.
5. Kai Eriksen, WAYWARD PURITANS: A STUDY OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF DEVIANCE (New York 1966)
6. David Hall, THE ANTINOMIAN CONTROVERSY 1636-38: A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY (Middeltown, CT 1968, Wesleyan University.
7. Lyle Koehler, "The Case of the American Jezebels: Anne Hutchinson and Female Agitation during the Years of Antinomian Turmoil, 1636-1640), in Bremer, above.
8. Edmund Morgan, "The Case Against Anne Hutchinson," NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY, 1937
9. Richard B. Morris, "Jezebel Against the Judges," FAIR TRIAL (New York, 1952)
10. William K. B. Stoever, "Nature, Grace and John Cotton: The Theological Dimensions in the New England Antinomian Controversy", CHURCH HISTORY, 44, (1975)
11. Anne Withington and Jack Schwartz, "The Political Trial of Anne Hutchinson," NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY, (1978)
