we are able really to separate the facts from jealousy and bitterness.  During the first few months of her stay she seems to have been commended for her faithful 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 should prevail.  There had been great hardships and sacrifices; even yet the colony was merely a handful of people surrounded by thousands of active enemies.  If these colonists were to live there must be uniformity and conformity.  “When the Pequots threatened Massachusetts colony a few men in Boston refused to serve.  These were Antinomians, followers of Anne Hutchinson, who suspected