The first case shows, in a curious and instructive way, how religious dissensions were apt to be complicated with threats of an Indian war on the one hand and peril from Great Britain on the other; and as we come to realize the triple danger, we can perhaps make some allowances for the high-handed measures with which the Puritan governments sometimes sought to avert it. [Genesis of the persecuting spirit]

As I have elsewhere tried to show, the genesis of the persecuting spirit is to be found in the conditions of primitive society, where “above all things the prime social and political necessity is social cohesion within the tribal limits, for unless such social cohesion be maintained, the very existence of the tribe is likely to be extinguished in bloodshed.”  The persecuting spirit “began to pass away after men had become organized into great nations, covering a vast extent of territory, and secured by their concentrated military strength against the gravest dangers of barbaric attack.” [13]

Now as regards these considerations, the Puritan communities in the New England wilderness were to some slight extent influenced by such conditions as used to prevail in primitive society; and this will help us to understand the treatment of the Antinomians and such cases as that with which we have now to deal.

Among the supporters of Mrs. Hutchinson, after her arrival at Aquedneck, was a sincere and courageous, but incoherent and crotchetty man named Samuel Gorton. [Sidenote:  Samuel Gorton]

In the denunciatory language of that day he was called a “proud and pestilent seducer,” or, as the modern newspaper would say, a “crank.”  It is well to make due allowances for the prejudice so conspicuous in the accounts given by his enemies, who felt obliged to justify their harsh treatment of him.  But we have also his own writings from which to form an opinion as to his character and views.  Lucidity, indeed, was not one of his strong points as a writer, and the drift of his argument is not always easy to decipher; but he seems to have had some points of contact with the Familists, a sect established in the sixteenth century in Holland.  The Familists held that the essence of religion consists not in adherence to any particular creed or ritual, but in cherishing the spirit of divine love.  The general adoption of this point of view was to inaugurate a third dispensation, superior to those of Moses and Christ, the dispensation of the Holy Ghost.  The value of the Bible lay not so much in the literal truth of its texts as in their spiritual import; and by the union of believers with Christ they came to share in the ineffable perfection of the Godhead.  There is much that is modern and enlightened in such views, which Gorton seems to some extent to have shared.  He certainly set little store by ritual observances and maintained the equal right of laymen with clergymen to preach the gospel.  Himself a London clothier, and thanking God that he had not been brought up in