was banished from
the colony.

The ideas of Williams were too relevant not to arouse controversy, but
too remote from the spirit of the age to win many adherents. Of another
sort was Mistress Anne Hutchinson, a woman of "nimble wit and active
spirit," one of those popular village characters who go about among the
poor and sick, bringing wholesome draughts of cordial, gossip, and
consolation. As a taster of dry sermons there was none better; so that
many women of Boston, and not a few men, fell into the habit of
assembling at her house, where she discoursed on the latest sermon or
Thursday lecture, and by exegesis and comment and criticism made all
clear. And her doctrine went straight to the heart and intelligence of
the average man in the seventeenth century, as it does to-day and has in
all ages. "Come along with me says one of them. I'le bring you to a
woman that preaches better Gospell than any of your black-coats that
have been at the Niniversity, a woman of another kind of spirit, who
hath had many revelations of things to come; and for my part, saith he,
I had rather hear such a one that speaks from the mere motion of the
spirit, without any study at all, than any of your learned Scollers,
although they may be fuller of Scripture." This, indeed, was the secret
of Mistress Anne's power, that she spoke the language of the untutored,
and infused into the scholastic categories of theology the elemental and
familiar emotions of daily life.

The issue raised by Anne Hutchinson soon passed into politics, and the
little colony was divided into irreconcilable factions. The good woman
had a great following in Boston, including not a few in high places.
Wheelwright was her avowed defender; John Cotton was half convinced. The
credit of the party was raised by the accession of the brilliant Sir
Harry Vane, lately come from England, and destined to return hither to
vex a greater than Winthrop. Vane was as radical in politics as Mistress
Anne was in religion; and the two made common cause against the
magistrates and clergy. Had the issue been confined to Boston the result
could not have been doubtful, for the Boston Church was predominantly
Hutchinsonian; but the ministers as a body supported Winthrop and
Wilson, and the old magistrates were returned in the election of 1637.
The victory was a crucial one. The erratic Vane went off to England;
Cotton returned to his first allegiance; and when the cause of all the
trouble was c