It is safer to say little of the theological scheme of the Puritan
ministers, lest the present writer be pronounced a Wanton Gospeller, and
have no tithingman to take his part. But however it may be with the
regular standards of theology of that period, every one could find a
sufficient variety to suit him among its heresies. Eighty-two "pestilent
heresies" were counted as having already sprung up in 1637; others say
one hundred and six; others, two hundred and ten. The Puritans kept
Rhode Island for what housekeepers call an "odd drawer," into which to
crowd all these eccentricities. It was said, that, if any man happened
to lose his religious opinion, he might be sure to find it again at some
village in Rhode Island. Thither went Roger Williams and his Baptists;
thither went Quakers and Ranters; thither went Ann Hutchinson, that
extraordinary woman, who divided the whole politics of the country by
her Antinomian doctrines, denouncing the formalisms around her, and
converting the strongest men, like Cotton and Vane, to her opinions.
Thither went also Samuel Gorton, a man of no ordinary power, who
proclaimed a mystical union with God in love, thought that heaven and
hell were in the mind alone, but esteemed little the clergy and the
ordinances. The colony was protected also by the thoughtful and
chivalrous Vane, who held that water baptism had had its day, and that
the Jewish Sabbath should give place to the modern Sunday. All these,
and such as these, were called generally "Seekers" by the Puritans,--who
claimed for themselves that they had found that which they sought. It is
the old distinction; but for which is the ship built, to be afloat or to
be at anchor?

Such were those pious worthies, the men whose names are identified with
the leadership of the New-England colonies,--Cotton, Hooker, Norton,
Shepard, the Higginsons, the Mathers. To these might be added many an