Americans are now recognized as
a nation throughout the globe." To a sentence so admirably formed,
possibly there is nothing to add.

MISTRESS ANNE HUTCHINSON.

Mistress Anne Hutchinson, founder of the Antinomian party of New
England, was a woman who exerted great influence upon the religious
and political free thought of those colonies. She was the daughter of
an English clergyman, and with her husband, followed Pastor Cotton, to
whom she was much attached, to this country in 1634, and was admitted
a member of the Boston church, becoming a resident of Massachusetts
one hundred and forty years before the Revolutionary war. She was of
commanding intellect, and exerted a powerful influence upon the infant
colony.

It was a long established custom for the brethren of the Boston church
to hold, through the week, frequent public meetings for religious
exercises. Women were prohibited from taking part in these meetings,
which chafed the free spirit of Mistress Hutchinson, and soon she
called meetings of the sisters, where she repeated the sermons of the
Lord's day, making comments upon them. Her illustrations of Scripture
were so new and striking that the meetings were rendered more
interesting to the women than any they had attended. At first the
clergy approved, but as the men attracted by the fame of her
discourses, crowded into her meetings, they began to perceive danger
to their authority; the church was passing out of their control. Her
doctrines, too, were alarming. She taught the indwelling of the Holy
Spirit in each believer, its inward revelations, and that the
conscious judgment of the mind should be the paramount authority. She
was the first woman in America to demand the right of individual
judgment upon religious questions. Her influence was very great, yet
she was not destined to escape the charge of heresy.

The first Synod in America was called upon her account. It convened
August 30, 1637, sat three weeks, and proclaimed eighty-two errors
extant; among them the tenets taught by Mistress Hutchinson. She was
called before the church and ordered to retract upon twenty-nine
points. The infant colony was shaken by this discussion, which took on
a political aspect.[30] Mistress Hutchinson remained steadfast, and
was sustained by many important people, among whom was the young
Governor Vane.

Church and State became united in their opposition to Mistress Anne
Hutchinson. The fact that she presumed to teach