Familism had been nursed into vicious life in Holland; 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 foes Legalists; “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 maintained the 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 afterwards pleaded 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 his protégé.”[1001]
This remarkable woman was now in her element. She was calm, and she was firm, and she was keen; for,