whereby the nakedness of the arms may be discovered.' Women's
sleeves were not to be more than half an ell wide. There were to
be no 'immoderate great sleeves, immoderate ... knots of ryban,
broad shoulder bands and rayles, silk ruses, double ruffles and
cuffs.' The women were complained of because of their 'wearing
borders of hair and their cutting, curling, and immodest laying
out of their hair.'"[13]

Petty details that would not receive a moment's consideration in our own
day aroused the theological scruples of those colonial pastors, and
moved them to interminable arguments which nicely balanced the pros and
cons as warranted by scripture. One of John Cotton's most famous sermons
dealt with the question as to whether women had a right to sing in
church, and after lengthy disquisition the preacher finally decided that
the Lord had no special objection to women's singing the Psalms, but
this conclusion was reached only after an unsparing battle of doubts and
logic. "Some," he declares, "that were altogether against singing of
Psalms at all with a lively voice, yet being convinced that it is a
moral worship of God warranted in Scripture, then if there must be a
Singing one alone must sing, not all (or if all) the Men only and not
the Women.... Some object, 'Because it is not permitted to speak in the
Church in two cases: 1. By way of teaching.... For this the Apostle
accounteth an act of authority which is unlawful for a woman to usurp
over the man, II, Tim. 2, 13. And besides the woman is more subject to
error than a man, ver. 14, and therefore might soon prove a seducer if
she became a teacher.... It is not permitted to a woman to speak in the
Church by way of propounding questions though under pretence of desire
to learn for her own satisfaction; but rather it is required she should
ask her husband at home."

Thus we might follow Cotton through many a page and hear his ingenious
application of Biblical verses, his carefully balanced arguments, his
earnest consideration of what seems to the modern reader a most trivial
question. To him, however, and probably to the women also it was a
weighty subject, more important by far than the cause of the high
mortality among both mothers and children of the day--a mortality
appallingly high. It would seem that the fevers, sore throats,
consumption, and small pox that destroyed women and babes in vast
numbers might have claimed some attention f