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 applicabil