“We have strict statutes and most biting laws,The needful bits and curbs to headstrong steeds.”Shakspeare.
“We have strict statutes and most biting laws,The needful bits and curbs to headstrong steeds.”Shakspeare.
“We have strict statutes and most biting laws,
The needful bits and curbs to headstrong steeds.”
Shakspeare.
The Pilgrim Fathers were not students of Godefridus de Valle’s odd book, “De Arte Nihil Credendi”—The Art of believing Nothing. They did believe, from the bottom of their hearts; and, in obedience to Paul, they strove to “hold fast” that which they esteemed “good.” They had two passions, devotion to the common weal as citizens, and to the interests of the church as Christians. “They regarded themselves, not as individual fugitives from trans-Atlantic persecution, but rather as confederates in a political association for religious purposes.”[966]From this idea their mixed government naturally evolved; and this, in its turn, gave birth to the principle that the magistrate was armed with power to suppress all phases of internal opposition to the theocracy; because that type of authority logically carried in its train the necessary conditions of its perpetuity.
They neither invited nor desired the intrusion of elements at variance with their ideas; and to such they said, pointing to the broad continent,“There is room; leave us in peace.” And to secure themselves from molestation, it was enacted, in 1637, that “none should be received into the jurisdiction of Massachusetts Bay but such as should be welcomed by the magistrates”[967]—a provision somewhat analogous to the alien law of England and to the European policy of passports.[968]
Singularly enough, Massachusetts Bay, spite of its exclusive policy, possessed from the very outset a strong charm in the eyes of those who dissented from its formulas. Like thePetit Monsieurwho found himself left out of the tapestry which exhibited the story of the Spanish invasion, they longed to work themselves in the hangings of colonial history. They soon swarmed in Boston and Salem; and notwithstanding the banishment of Roger Williams, the “heretics” continued to thrive.
Ere long the public mind “was excited to intense activity on questions which the nicest subtlety only could have devised, and which none but those experienced in the shades of theological opinion could long comprehend; for it goes with these opinions as with colors, of which the artist who works in mosaic easily and regularly discriminates many thousand varieties, where the common eye can discern a difference only on the closest comparison.”[969]
From this fermentation there bubbled up a profound and bitter struggle. The strife filled the intersticesof the Pequod war, whose prosecution it sadly crippled; and indeed, at one time it threatened to rend the colony by civil war.[970]
Two distinct parties were early developed. One was composed chiefly of the older colonists, headed by Dudley, and Phillips, and Wilson, and Winthrop, an able coalition of clergymen and politicians. These were earnest to preserve the state as it was. They discountenanced innovation, and “dreaded freedom of opinion as the parent of various divisions.” They said, “These cracks and flaws in the new building of the Reformation portend a fall.”[971]They were anxious “to confirm and build up the colony, child of their prayers and sorrows; and for that they desired patriotism, union, and a common heart.” They dreaded change, because they knew that,
“Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.”
“Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.”
“Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.”
The other party was iconoclastic. It was “composed of men and women who had arrived in New England after the civil government and religious discipline of the Pilgrims had been established.”[972]They felt cramped under the theocracy; and having come self-banished to the wilderness to enjoy toleration, they resisted every form of despotism over the human mind, and “sustained with intense fanaticism the paramount authority of private judgment.” “They came,” observes Bancroft, “fresh from the study of the tenets of Geneva, and theirpride consisted in following the principles of the Reformation with logical precision to all their consequences. Their eyes were not primarily directed to the institutions of Massachusetts, but to the doctrines of its religious system; so to them the colonial clergy seemed ‘the ushers of a new persecution,’ ‘a popish faction,’ who had not imbibed the principles of Christian reform; and they applied to the influence of the Pilgrim ministers the doctrine which Luther and Calvin had employed against the observances and pretensions of the Roman church.”[973]
There is an old Latin proverb,
“Nulla fere causa est, in quâ non fæmina litemMoverit.”[974]
“Nulla fere causa est, in quâ non fæmina litemMoverit.”[974]
“Nulla fere causa est, in quâ non fæmina litem
Moverit.”[974]
The life and soul of the crusade against the theocracy was Anne Hutchinson, whom Johnson styled, “the chiefest masterpiece of woman’s wit.”[975]Antedating the Cordays, the Rolands, and the De Staels by more than a dozen decades, she was the equal, in tact, and zeal, and honest conviction, of the best of those brilliant women who, in thesalonsof the French capital, inspired the revolution of 1793.
Anne Hutchinson was the wife of a Boston merchant, the daughter of a Puritan preacher in England, and had been one of John Cotton’s most devoted parishioners ere he was driven into exile.[976]In 1634 she followed that eminent divine to America, and was received into his church at Boston,[977]spite of some strange theories which she had avowed on shipboard.[978]Her active benevolence and unflagging kindness to the sick soon wedded to her many hearts.[979]She planted herself deep in the affections of the city.
The male members of the Boston church had a habit of taking notes of the sermon on Sunday, and then holding week-day meetings for the recapitulation and discussion of the doctrines advanced[980]—a very commendable practice. Mrs. Hutchinson, thinking perhaps that woman’s influence and intellect were not sufficiently recognized in the church, inaugurated a similar series of week-day conventicles for the ladies of Boston.[981]
Mrs. Hutchinson’s lectures—for she was ever the chief speaker—attracted crowds, and they were countenanced by Sir Harry Vane, who then occupied the gubernatorial chair, and by his host, John Cotton;[982]below whom stood a crowd of warm adherents, flanked by John Wheelwright the clerical brother-in-law of the lady speaker, and by the hearty influence of John Coddington one of the wealthiest of the colonists.[983]“Thus the women,” says Cotton Mather, “like their first mother, hooked in the husbands also.”[984]
Soon the vigorous and daring mind of Anne Hutchinson struck off new watchwords. Much was said of a “Covenant of Works” and a “Covenant of Grace,” and between these many fine distinctions were made. “Under these heads she and her friends classified the preachers of the Bay. Those who were understood to rely upon a methodical and rigid observance of their religious duties as evidence of acceptance with God were said to be ‘under a covenant of works.’ Those who held to certain spiritual tenets were ranged ‘under the covenant of grace.’ These phrases began to be banded to and fro. ‘Justification’ and ‘sanctification’ were in all mouths; even children jeered each other; and there was no stemming the heady current of discussion as it swept on.”[985]
Winthrop and his coadjutors looked upon the debate with equal horror and alarm. Two words, which were then common, expressed to them a vague but frightful danger;Antinomianismwas one, andFamilismwas the other. TheAntinomianswere a sect of German extraction, and their name meantagainst the Law; for they held that “the gospel of Christ had superseded the law of Moses.”[986]But the word had been made the shelter of sad excesses and many base acts, so that it was in bad odor among the Pilgrims, who esteemed Antinomianism to be a cloak to cover the naked form of license.[987]
Familismhad been nursed into vicious life inHolland; where, in 1555, Henry Nicholas formed a “Family of Love,” who, in their opinions, “grieved the Comforter, charging all their sins on God’s Spirit, for not effectually assisting them against themselves.”[988]The Familists had long been numerous, factious, and dangerous, in England, and their practice was even worse than their doctrine; for their laxity of morals made them the sappers of social order.[989]
Anne Hutchinson does not seem to have been inoculated with the virus of Familism; but she was, of course, an Antinomian, since she assailed the theocratic law; and therefore, to the heated minds of the Pilgrims, she might easily appear to be the fleshly tabernacle of both—the incarnation of heresy.
Meantime the debate grew in bitterness. Mrs. Hutchinson, when taunted with Familism and Antinomianism, retorted by nicknaming her foesLegalists; “because,” she said, “you are acquainted neither with the spirit of the gospel nor with Christ himself.”[990]Boston echoed the phrase with wild delight, and “Legalist! Legalist! Legalist!” was dinned into the ears of the clergy of the Bay.
Winthrop and his friends were exasperated, and they invoked the courts to interfere. Several of the Antinomians were heavily fined.[991]Wheelwright, who, in a fast-day sermon, had strenuously maintainedthe Antinomian tenets, was formally censured by the General Court for sedition.[992]
Then the innovators were, in their turn, angered. “The fear of God and the love of neighbors was laid by;” Mrs. Hutchinson and her adherents clamored all the louder; and Vane, disgusted and dispirited, tendered his resignation, and craved permission to return to England;[993]but “the expostulations of the Boston church finally turned him from his design,” and kept him at his post.[994]
Meanwhile Wheelwright, provoked at his censure, had appealed to England. This wrecked Vane’s administration, and ruined the Antinomian cause; for the patriotic feeling of the colony ran so high, that “it was accounted perjury and treason to appeal to the king.”[995]In the elections of 1637 public opinion was made manifest; Winthrop, with the towns and the churches at his back, outvoted Vane, whose sole support was Boston, and the fathers of the colony once more grasped the helm.[996]
Winthrop originated, enacted, and defended the alien law.[997]This found in Vane an inflexible opponent; and, using the language of the time, he left a memorial of his dissent. “Scribes and Pharisees, and such as are confirmed in any way of error”—these are the remarkable words of the man who soon embarked for England, where he afterwardspleaded in Parliament for the liberties of all classes of dissenters—“all such are not to be denied cohabitation, but are to be pitied and reformed. Ishmael shall dwell in the presence of his brethren.”[998]
Now that the founders of the colony had emerged from their brief eclipse and regained their pristine influence, they decided to initiate measures which should definitely silence the unseemly “noise about the temple.” An ecclesiastical synod was convened.[999]Assembling in the summer of 1637, it branded eighty-two opinions then in vogue as heretical, and summoned Anne Hutchinson, Wheelwright, and others of that “ilk,” to their bar for examination.[1000]
They appeared; and Cotton, who had satisfied his brother clergymen of his orthodoxy, tainted for a space by his connection with the Antinomians, was set to examine Mrs. Hutchinson; “which was hard for him to do, and bitter for her to endure; for she had been hisprotégé.”[1001]
This remarkable woman was now in her element. She was calm, and she was firm, and she was keen; for,
“Spirits are not finely touchedBut to fine issues.”
“Spirits are not finely touchedBut to fine issues.”
“Spirits are not finely touched
But to fine issues.”
But one bold avowal sealed her doom. “We have,” she said, “a new rule of practice by immediate revelations;by these we guide our conduct. Not that we expect any revelation in the way of a miracle; that is a delusion; but we despise the anathemas of your synods and courts, and will still follow the whisperings of conscience.”[1002]
This speech caused wide-spread alarm. It seemed to squint towards anarchy. “The true parents of the brats began to discover themselves,” quaintly comments old Mather, “when the synod lifted the sword upon them.”[1003]An insurrection of lawless fanatics, “like a Munster tragedy,” seemed brewing. The magistrates decided that the danger was desperate; that Anne Hutchinson was “like Roger Williams, or worse;”[1004]and so, says Winthrop, “we applied the last remedy, and that without delay.”[1005]
Anne Hutchinson, Wheelwright, and Aspinwall, were solemnly exiled as “unfit for the society” of the Pilgrims; and those of their followers who remained were ordered to deliver up their arms, lest they should, “upon some revelation, make a sudden insurrection.”[1006]
Thus ended theecclesiarum prælia.[1007]“And thus,” says Cotton Mather, “was the hydra beheaded—hydra decapitata.”[1008]“This legislation may be reproved for its jealousy, but not for its cruelty; for it condemned the “heretics” to a banishmentnot more severe than many of the best of the Pilgrims had encountered from choice.” But it is a sad chapter; and perhaps the old divine was right when he wrote, “What these errors were ’tis needless now to repeat; they are dead and gone, and buried past resurrection; ’tis a pity to strive to rake them from their graves.”[1009]
The exiles, followed by great numbers of proselytes, on quitting Massachusetts Bay, wandered southward, “designing to plant a settlement on Long Island, or near Delaware Bay. But Roger Williams welcomed them to his vicinity,” and obtained for them a resting-place. They colonized Rhode Island, orAquitneck, as it was then called. “It was not price nor money that got Rhode Island,” wrote Williams; “it was gotten bylove; by the love and favor which that honorable gentleman, Sir Harry Vane, and myself, had with that great sachem, Miantonomoh.”[1010]
Being thus held by the same tenure that Providence owned, Aquitneck was based upon the self-same principle of intellectual liberty; and though the two were not united in one state until after the Restoration, they clasped hands in equal brotherhood, and were buoyed by toleration.
Thus the principles of Anne Hutchinson, thrown out of Massachusetts, sprouted in Rhode Island,and grew a well-ordered, sober state. A happy result flowed from an unhappy cause.
And now for a season internecine strife was hushed. All eyes were directed across the water. “The angels of the trans-Atlantic churches, sounding forth their silver trumpets, heard the sound of rattling drums” on every European breeze.[1011]Democracy was about to assert itself in England. The Pilgrim Fathers grasped hands, and silently marked the lesson; which was, that “courtiers, bishops, and kings, too, have a joint in their necks.”