Anne Hutchinson Quotes
In considering found that the papists did not deny him to be come in the flesh, nor we did not deny him - who then was antichrist? Was the Turk antichrist only?
"The Examination of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson at the Court at Newtown." The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638: A Documentary History, edited by David D. Hall, 2nd ed., Duke University Press, 1990, p. 336.
Many of the Church wanted Wycliff excommunicated, but the King and Parliament seemed to like his writing and sermons. So he was protected in his lifetime. He died at the age of 60 of a stroke. After his death the Church burned all his books that had been banned, and exhumed his body. That was burned at the stake and his ashes scattered in a river. Martin Luther did not try to reform the Church in a vacuum. There had been various critics of the Church before Luther and Wycliff was one. The last statement in this quotation was the one that really hit the then mostly corrupt clergy where it hurt.
This was early in his career. As he got older, he was very frustrated with the Jews who would not convert to Christianity even after he had “purified” the religion and freed Christians from the “evils” of the Papacy. He became a virulent anti-Semite. See {617773}.
This is a particularly interesting historical quotation because it succinctly gives a history of the various horrors of religious strife in British history—a history that was very well known to the American Founding Fathers and the general American Colonial population. This history was the major driver behind the public insistence for the Bill of Rights and the 1st Amendment which erected a wall of separation between church and state with government never favoring or abetting any particular religion.
Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan Parliament was opposed to the celebration of Christmas on religious grounds. See {629849} for more on the Puritans and Christmas. Generally, it was the Catholics who celebrated Christmas and typically they had a Christmas Mass. The anti-Catholic bias was so great that the Pope was often accused of being the Anti-Christ - a terrible insult.
Anne Hutchinson was a Puritan spiritual advisor, religious reformer, and an important participant in the Antinomian Controversy which shook the infant Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1636 to 1638. Her strong religious convictions were at odds with the established Puritan clergy in the Boston area and her popularity and charisma helped create a theological schism that threatened to destroy the Puritans' religious community in New England. She was eventually tried and convicted, then banished from the colony with many of her supporters.
