Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, who had been born in England about 1590, landed at Boston on September 18, 1634. She came in the name of religious liberty, seeking that freedom which she was denied in the land of her birth; but even on her voyage to our shores she had excited suspicions as to her orthodoxy, and there was some delay, probably at the instance of the Rev. Mr. Symms, her fellow passenger, in granting her membership in the first church of Boston. She had been somewhat free, according to Mr. Symms, in "venting her revelations" on the outward voyage; but her kindly attitude toward friends and acquaintances soon reconciled most of the Bostonians to her presence in their midst. The fact was that Mrs. Hutchinson was what was in those days known as a "notable" woman. She could be helpful to those in trouble in mind, body, or spirit, and she was skilful in a very comprehensive pathology. Welde, of Roxbury, tells us that she was "a woman very helpful in the time of childbirth and other occasions of bodily disease, and well furnished with means for those purposes." True, he also calls her "the American Jezabel;" but even in his blame of her he admits, though he probably did not mean it as a compliment, that she was "of a nimble wit and active spirit and a very voluble tongue, more bold than a man, though in understanding and judgment inferior to many women." The latter part of this description simply meant that Master Welde did not agree with the theories promulgated by Mrs. Hutchinson.
And indeed it needed not to be very prejudiced to agree with Master Welde herein. For Mrs. Hutchinson, though she "sat under" Mr. Cotton and professed great love for his doctrines, was undoubtedly more than tainted by Antinomianism,--a word, in its broad acceptation, signifying the consciousness of "justification by faith," and an abiding justification that could not be shaken even by the commission of sin. Hence, said the enemies of the Antinomians, these latter took advantage of their presumed state of grace to live as they pleased, licentiously or cleanly, they being surely saved by their faith and therefore free to mould their works as they chose. This was carrying to its extreme the theory of sanctification professed by the Antinomians; yet it was not an unfair deduction from the tenets of that body. The Antinomians were looked upon as menaces to the morality of any land in which they took root, as pursuing pleasure and vice under the cloak of fanaticism. To make matters worse in the Boston colony just at this time with which we are concerned, the new governor, Henry Vane, was vehemently suspected of being an advocate of the hated sect; and therefore when Mrs. Hutchinson began to hold women's meetings at which she set forth her religious tenets, which were perilously close to Antinomianism,--though she, as well as her chief ally and brother-in-law, John Wheelwright, never admitted the applicability of the title,--there arose an outcry against these proceedings. Wheelwright was brought to trial on certain counts, and he and Governor Vane, with Cotton himself,--he having been gradually brought into the controversy in a rather singular manner,--formed a party which was opposed to the mass of the Puritans and was considered little less than a scandal. At the end of a three weeks' session, held in Cambridge to deal with this matter of heresy, the first American clerical synod condemned the opinions of the recalcitrants, and then proceeded to adopt a resolution which is of more importance to us than was their general condemnation; it ran thus: