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CHAPTER isters of Massachusetts, assembled to take this matter

IX. into consideration, thought otherwise. Volunteers were 1636. called for; and four companies, ninety men in all, comAug. manded by Endicott, whose submissiveness in Williams's affair had restored him to favor, were embarked in three pinnaces, with orders to put to death all the men of Block Island, and to make the women and children prisoners. The old affair of the death of Stone was now also called to mind, though the murder of Oldham had no connection with it, except in some distant similarity of circumstances. Endicott was instructed, on his return from Block Island, to go to the Pequods, and to demand of them the murderers of Stone, and a thousand fathoms of wampum for damages-equivalent to from three to five thousand dollars-also, some of their children as hostages; and, if they refused, to employ force.

The Block Islanders fled inland, hid themselves, and escaped; but Endicott burned their wigwams, staved their canoes, and destroyed their standing corn. He then sailed to Fort Saybrook, at the mouth of the Connecticut, and marched thence to Pequod River. After some parley, the Indians refused his demands, when he burned their village, and killed one of their warriors. Marching back to Connecticut River, he inflicted like vengeance on the Pequod village there, whence he returned to Boston, after a three weeks' absence, and without the loss of a man.

The Pequods, enraged at what they esteemed a treacherous and unprovoked attack, lurked about Fort Saybrook, killed or took several persons, and did considerable mischief. They sent, also, to the Narragansets to engage their alliance against the colonists, whom they represented as the common enemy of all the Indians. Williams, informed of this negotiation, sent word of it to the Massachusetts magistrates, and, at their request, he

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visited Canonicus, to dissuade him from joining the Pe- CHAPTER quods. This mission was not without danger. In the wigwam of Canonicus, Williams encountered the Pequod 1636. messengers, full of rage and fury. He succeeded, however, in his object, and Miantonimoh was induced to visit October. Boston, where, being received with much ceremony by the governor and magistrates, he agreed to act with them against the Narragansets. Canonicus thought it would be necessary to attack the Pequods with a very large force; but he recommended, as a thing likely to be agreeable to all the Indians-so Williams informs us-that the women and children should be spared, a humane piece of advice which received in the end but little attention.

The policy of this war, or, at least, the wisdom of Endicott's conduct, was not universally conceded. A letter from Plymouth reproached the Massachusetts magistrates with the dangers likely to arise from so inefficient an attack upon the Pequods. Gardiner, the commandant at Fort Saybrook, who lost several men during the winter, was equally dissatisfied. The new settlers up the Connecticut complained bitterly of the dangers to which they were exposed. Sequeen, the same Indian chief at whose invitation the Plymouth people had first established a trading house on Connecticut River, had granted land to the planters at Wethersfield on condition that he might settle near them, and be protected; but when he came and built his wigwam, they had driven him away. He took this opportunity for revenge by calling in the Pequods, who attacked the town, and killed nine of the inhabitants. The whole number killed by the Pequods during the winter was about thirty.

A special session of the General Court of Massachu- Dec. 7. setts organized the militia into three regiments; the magistrates to appoint the field officers, called sergeant ma

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CHAPTER jors, and to select the captains and lieutenants out of a nomination to be made by the companies respectively. 1636. Watches were ordered to be kept, and travelers were to go armed.

The pending Indian hostilities were not, however, the sole subject of interest, the attention of this court being still more seriously occupied by some new religious dissensions lately broken out. It was very difficult to reconcile the doctrine of the special personal enlightenment of each believer with that strict unity of faith and discipline esteemed in Massachusetts no less essential than at Rome. Already had several of the churches been sorely rent by local controversies-accidents to which they were ever exceedingly liable, and which it cost the magistrates and ministers much pains to compose. A still more serious schism now threatened to divide the whole colony into two bitter and hostile religious factions.

In power, their career of opposition and reform finished, heads and fathers of a church and state of their own, the founders of the Massachusetts polity had lost that position which gave its chief glory to the Puritan name. The established authorities of the new theocracy, assuming the power and actuated by the spirit of the English bishops and the hated Court of High Commission, themselves pursued, without mercy or remorse, as heretics and schismatics, the very persons by whom their own late position was occupied; for, however satisfied the New England fathers might have been with the system they had established, the spirit of opposition to forms and authority was by no means extinct. The new comers, now so numerous, brought with them from England new notions, to which the fermentation of opinion in that country was every day giving rise. Among these new comers was Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, a woman of talent, ready

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eloquence, and great self-reliance; an acute disputant, CHAPTER but, like most of the leading colonists, very much under the influence of religious enthusiasm, not unmixed, as 1637. often happens, with a little vanity and a great love of power. Though occupied with the cares of a numerous family, she presently assumed to hold meetings in Boston, at which, under pretense of repeating sermons, she soon began to criticise them, assuming to instruct the sisters of the Church in the most recondite doctrines of theology. She maintained with energy that leading tenet of the Reformation, justification by faith alone— an involuntary faith, as, indeed, all faith must be, God's free grace to the elect. It was this faith, she alleged, not the vain repetition of acts of devotion, nor the vainer performance of acts of morality, that made the religious man-a doctrine, indeed, which the fathers of Massachusetts were very forward to admit. But if So, what was the value, what the necessity or use, of that formal and protracted worship, that system of life so ascetic and austere, to which those fathers ascribed so much importance? This question, rather covertly insinuated than openly asked, was the basis of what was denounced in New England as Antinomianism-a heresy revived in our own day under another form-the more detestable, because it was so very difficult to meet. In the mouth of Luther that same question had availed to overthrow the ancient and gorgeous fabric of papal superstition and Roman ceremonial; how, then, could the new, frail, illcompacted system of New England Congregationalism expect to stand against it?

This doctrine struck, in fact, a most deadly blow at the self-esteem and the influence of the present leaders. Their "sanctification," Mrs. Hutchinson alleged, on which they so much prided themselves, their sanctimonious car

CHAPTER riage and austere lives, furnished no evidence whatever IX. of their "justification," their change of heart, and ac1637. ceptance with God. The only evidence of that was an

internal revelation, an assurance, an intimate consciousness on the part of the believer that the Holy Ghost dwelt in him, and was personally united to him.· Here again Mrs. Hutchinson's opponents were very much embarrassed. They held, also, to internal convictions and supernatural assurances; but all such assurances must be false and deceptive, they alleged, unless accompanied by outward evidences of sanctity in life and conversation; and they denied the pretended personal union with the Holy Ghost as no better than blasphemy.

Mrs. Hutchinson had a friend in Vane, the young governor, a man of kindred spirit, who delighted in enthusiastic subtleties. She was also supported by Wheelwright, her brother-in-law, a minister lately arrived, and much in favor with the Boston Church. Even the influential Cotton, in whose house Vane lodged, seemed to lean to her opinions, while she carried with her a decided majority of the Boston Church. But in Winthrop and Wilson, and in most of the other magistrates and ministers, she found stern and active opponents, very cautious, indeed, how they impugned the doctrines of faith and free grace, but zealous in upholding the value, indeed, the absolute necessity of that system of worship and austere self-denial which they had come so far, and had labored so hard to establish, and which they commended and Mrs. Hutchinson derided, under the name of "good works."

Discussions had already occurred on this subject, in which the governor, two assistants, and two ministers had been found on the side of Mrs. Hutchinson, who presently distinguished the ministers and church mem

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