There is an old Latin proverb,
“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 the salons of 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; Antinomianism was one, and Familism was the other. The Antinomians were a sect of German extraction, and their name meant against 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]