aithful attendance at church, her
care of the sick, and her benevolent attitude toward the community. Even
her meetings for the sisters were praised by the pastors. But, not
content with holding meetings for her neighbors, she criticised the
preachers and their teachings. This was especially irritating to the
good Elders, because woman was supposed to be the silent member in the
household and meeting-house, and not capable of offering worthy
criticism. But even then the matter might have been passed in silence if
the church and state had not been one, and the pastors politicians.
Hutchinson, a kinsman of the rebellious leader, says in his _History of
Massachusetts Bay_:

"It is highly probable that if Mr. Vane had remained in England, or had
not craftily made use of the party which maintained these peculiar
opinions in religion, to bring him into civil power and authority and
draw the affections of the people from those who were their leaders into
the wilderness, these, like many other errors, might have prevailed a
short time without any disturbance to the state, and as the absurdity of
them appeared, silently subsided, and posterity would not have known that
such a woman as Mrs. Hutchinson ever existed.... It is difficult to
discover, from Mr. Cotton's own account of his principles published ten
years afterwards, in his answer to Bailey, wherein he differed from
her.... He seems to have been in danger when she was upon trial. The ...
ministers treated him coldly, but Mr. Winthrop, whose influence was now
greater than ever, protected him."

Just what were Anne Hutchinson's doctrines no one has ever been able to
determine; even Winthrop, a very able, clear-headed man who was well
versed in Puritan theology, and who was one of her most powerful
opponents, said he was unable to define them. "The two capital errors
with which she was charged were these: That the Holy Ghost dwells
personally in a justified person; and that nothing of sanctification can
help to evidence to believers their justification."[16]

Her teachings were not unlike those of the Quietists and that of the
"Inner Light," set forth by the Quakers--a doctrine that has always held
a charm for people who enjoy the mystical. But it was not so much the
doctrines probably as the fact that she and her followers were a
disturbing element that caused her expulsion from a colony where it was
vital and necessary to the existence of the settlement that harmony
sho