Anne Hutchinson
1591-1643 17th century
Inward freedom before those who sit in judgement, and the word one does not take back.
Who was Anne Hutchinson?
Born in Lincolnshire, daughter of a minister imprisoned for his preaching, she emigrated to Massachusetts in 1634 with her husband and children. A midwife, she gathered the women of Boston in her house to go back over the Sunday sermons (as many as eighty on some evenings) and held that grace comes before any work. Tried in 1637 before the court at Newtown and banished, she settled in Rhode Island and then near New York, where she was killed in 1643 with almost all her family.
In their own words
I bless the Lord, he hath let me see which was the clear ministry and which the wrong.
The Lord knows that I could not open scripture; he must by his prophetical office open it unto me.
I had like to have turned separatist. Whereupon I kept a day of solemn humiliation and pondering of the thing.