With minds perpetually concentrated on subtle interpretations,
agreement was impossible. Natural life, denied and set aside at
every point, gave place to the unnatural, and every colonist was,
quite unconsciously, in a state of constant nervous tension and
irritability. The questions that to us seem of even startling
triviality, were discussed with a fervor and earnestness it is
well nigh impossible to comprehend. They were a slight advance on
the scholastic disputations of the preceding century, but they
meant disagreement and heart-burnings, and the more intolerant
determined on stamping out all variations from their own
convictions.

Any capacity for seeking to carry out Robinson's injunction in his
final sermon at Leyden seems to have died once for all, in the war
of words. "I beseech you," he had said, "remember that it is an
article of your church covenant, that you be ready to receive
whatever truth shall be made known to you from the written word of
God." There was small remnant of this spirit even among the most
liberal.

Dudley was one of the chief movers in the course resolved upon,
and mourned over Cotton, who still held to Anne Hutchinson, and
wrote and spoke of her as one who "was well beloved, and all the
faithful embraced her conference, and blessed God for her fruitful
discourses."

Mr. Welde, on the contrary, one of her fiercest opponents,
described her as "a woman of haughty and fierce carriage, of a
nimble wit and active spirit, and a very voluble tongue, more bold