I want to speak this morning on the
controversy on assurance in New England in the
years 1636-1638.
And as I said yesterday, I think this
was the very first theological controversy in North
America, and certainly one of the most important
that has ever occurred on this side of
the Atlantic, and I hope of great relevance
to us today.
In the 1630s, New England was almost the
only haven for the English Puritans who were
being silenced and harried by the persecution of
Archbishop Laud and the monarchy in England.
And therefore, from the year 1629, you will
remember the landing of the first Puritans on
Massachusetts Bay, followed by a much larger landing
in 1630.
And from then on, the number of settlers
and ministers rapidly increased.
But if New England was a haven for
the Puritans, it was by no means a
secure haven.
They were watched very carefully by the monarchy
in London, they had a hostile and often
fierce Indian population at their doorstep, and their
safety, their security was by no means certain.
And one consideration that was very foremost in
their thinking was their own profession that they
had left old England, not for material gain,
but for spiritual prosperity under the ordinances of
Christ.
And they felt that if their hope failed,
that they would bring discredit upon the gospel
itself.
And for these reasons as well as others,
the one thing that the New England Puritans
could not afford in the 1630s was a
controversy that would endanger their unity.
And yet in 1636, that is precisely what
happened.
Its beginning was small, says John Winthrop, like
Elijah's cloud, but it afterward spread the heavens.
And this is the controversy that has been
called the Antinomian Controversy, or sometimes the Hutchinsonian
Controversy, after the name of Anne Hutchinson, who
was one of the principal instigators.
Now, a word on the literature surrounding the
controversy.
The documentation, of course, comes from the 17th
century, and a great deal of it was
printed in the 17th century.
And the judgment of the churches right through
into the middle of the 18th century to
the time of Jonathan Edwards, the judgment of
the churches established the guilt of the Antinomian
Party and vindicated the position taken by the
New England ministers.
But in the last century, a new school
of writers emerged which turned the tables on
that interpretation.
And they alleged the guilt of the ministers
and the innocence of the so-called antinomians.
John Albro, writing in Boston in 1852, complained,
and writing, you understand, as an evangelical Calvinist,
he said, speaking of this new school of
writers, that this controversy has, through the ignorance
of some and the perverse spirit of others,
been spoken of to the reproach, not of
the guilty, but of those wise and holy
men who, by the word of God and
prayer, effectually resisted the evil and preserved the
churches from this destructive era.
Well, he says, now we are seeing men
reproaching, not the guilty, but the innocent.
Well, as the last century advanced and more
books were published on the New England Puritans,
the general attitude that was taken by the
writers was simply to say that this controversy
was very complex and obscure and, to use
the words of George E.
Ellis, who wrote 600 pages on the Massachusetts
colony, he said it was a strife about
words, abstruse metaphysical and technical forms of expression.
He says, terms were used as symbols and
technicalities of strife and recourse must now be
had to an unabridged dictionary to learn even
their meaning.
The technicalities of the old polemics ran into
words of six and even seven syllables.
It might even be, he said, that some
haphazard reader catching under his eye this formidable
word, antinomianism, may have supposed that it had
something to do with a drug called antimony.
Well, that's pretty representative of the men who
were writing about 1880, 1890.
They looked upon the whole controversy as a
matter of jargon and words.
And, therefore, you would have supposed that with
the 20th century, this controversy would finally have
been laid to rest.
But, as many of you know, the very
opposite has been the case.
In the last 20 years, there has been
an extraordinary output of books on this theme
with innumerable authors, biographies bearing directly on this
old controversy.
Now, as we turn to the controversy, let
me try to divide it in the following
way.
First, a brief introduction on the figures in
the controversy, some of the leading figures, and
a short account of the controversy itself.
Then, secondly, the modern interpretation of the controversy
and the reasons why that interpretation are so
important.
Second, the modern interpretation and why that modern
interpretation is important for our consideration.
Thirdly, John Cotton's teaching on assurance.
And, fourthly, hopefully, a reassessment of the modern
interpretation of the controversy.
Well, a sketch of the controversy and some
of the leading figures first.
As I mentioned, one principal figure was Anne
Hutchinson.
She crossed the Atlantic with her family in
the year 1634 when she was a woman
of 43 years of age.
In that same year, 1634, she was admitted
with her husband and with four of her
children into the membership of the First Church
of Boston.
There was, of course, at that time only
one church in Boston with a membership of
about 160-150 people.
And the Hutchinsons joined this congregation then in
the year of their arrival.
The congregation had two, as we would say,
ministers, elders, as they were then called.
One, a teaching elder, and the other called
the pastor.
The pastor was John Wilson.
He had crossed in 1630 among the first
comers and he was the first elder of
the Boston congregation.
But then in 1633, the great John Cotton
had come.
And John Wilson was one of the first
men in Boston to see the need for
cotton being kept in the town.
So, John Cotton became the teaching elder and
John Wilson remained as pastor in the congregation.
Now, amongst the members of the congregation, living
just across the road from Mrs. Hutchinson was
the man whose name was mentioned yesterday, John
Winthrop and his wife, Margaret.
John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts.
And he took considerable part in the controversy
and his history, his journal, is essential reading
in the understanding of the whole story.
Then there was John Wheelwright, the Reverend John
Wheelwright, who was the brother-in-law of
Anne Hutchinson.
And apart from these individual names, almost all
the ministers of Massachusetts were involved in some
degree in the controversy that followed.
There were then between 25 and 30 men,
more than half of them graduates of the
University of Cambridge, a few from Oxford, some
of them the very foremost of the English
Puritans.
These men, as I say, in some degree
were involved.
Now, the controversy developed in this way.
Had you been living in Massachusetts in 1636,
there were many preachers that you might have
wished to hear.
And in the first church at Boston on
Sunday mornings at nine o'clock when the
service began, the preacher generally was John Carton.
And Carton was preaching on the subject of
the New Covenant.
Or if you had gone a little way
outside Boston to Newtown, now Cambridge, you could
have heard Thomas Shepherd preaching on the Ten
Virgins.
Now, both Carton and Shepherd had a similar
concern, though they were approaching it differently.
We mentioned yesterday the Puritan emphasis that true
conversion is demonstrated by the evidence of holiness
and sanctification.
A new principle of life which brings forth
fruit unto God.
But that emphasis had its own danger.
In fact, it had more than one danger.
One of the dangers was this.
The inner community where so many people were
Christians, where the standard of morality and godliness
was high, it was a temptation for many
to adopt the outward life of godliness without
the inward experience of grace.
That was one danger.
The other danger of this emphasis on holiness
as a sign of conversion, the other danger
was that it could easily develop in such
a way that the basis of assurance became
not the work of Christ alone, but the
evidence in us of His grace.
In other words, assurance could come to be
built upon what was to be found in
us and in our hearts rather than wholly
upon the work of Christ which we receive
in justification.
And of course, if that situation developed, you
would have had a kind of legalism.
And as you know in church history, unhappily,
that has often been the case where holiness
has been so emphasized as a mark, as
a proof of regeneration, you can get an
introversion of the church upon the evidences of
grace so that the centrality of justification can
be obscured.
And there you have legalism.
Now, I say in 1636, Thomas Shepard, John
Cotton and other ministers were concerned in these
directions.
And Cotton's concern as he preached on the
new covenant was to show the real basis
of assurance and to show that a certain
standard of behavior is no evidence of true
salvation in itself because there must be behind
that behavior, if it is true, real personal
union with Christ by the Holy Spirit.
Now, this was the subject that was in
the air.
And bear in mind that in the last
three or four years there had been a
considerable spiritual awakening in Massachusetts.
For example, the Boston church alone had received
63 new members.
I don't know how many of that number
was made up of new arrivals.
Some must have been.
But it's quite apparent that there was a
movement of the Spirit in the colony in
the years from about 1633 to 1636.
And this discussion now on assurance was in
part related to that.
Now, the controversy surfaced and became a controversy
in October 1636.
And it was connected with this lady, Mrs.
Anne Hutchinson.
Her husband was a deacon in the church
and quite a well-to-do man in
Boston.
Mrs. Hutchinson was gifted as a nurse and
as a midwife.
She was also a woman of much personality
and eloquence of speech.
And she had come to hold a women's
meeting in her home to repeat sermons initially.
But in the course of time, one can't
exactly put a date to it.
In the course of time, Mrs. Hutchinson herself
became somewhat of a speaker, if not a
preacher.
In October 1636, it was alleged that Mrs.
Hutchinson was teaching that the Holy Spirit does
not impart habits or fruits of grace to
the Christian, but rather He is so united
to the believer as personally to be their
sanctification.
He doesn't impart grace to the believer, but
He is so united to the believer that
the Holy Spirit is their sanctification.
And accordingly, it was alleged that she argued
that no sanctification can help to evidence our
justification.
Our assurance of salvation is only in the
Holy Spirit.
Now these opinions were not accepted by Mrs.
Hutchinson when they were put to her.
But the controversy from this point onwards developed.
The General Court of Massachusetts meeting in December
1636 discussed it.
The ministers were present.
John Wilson, the pastor of Boston, warned the
dissension that was evidently spreading.
And it was agreed that a fast day
should be held in January 1637 on this
account as well as others.
And when this fast day was held in
Boston, John Cotton first preached from Isaiah 58,
Behold ye fast for strife and debate.
It was a sermon well designed to pacify
feelings and to fit the purpose of the
day.
But he was followed by John Wheelwright who
dealt with his text in a very different
manner and insinuated and implied that there were
a good number of ministers and others in
New England who weren't preaching in a truly
evangelical way but who were legal in their
thinking.
Well, what Wheelwright was suggesting was plainly stated
shortly afterwards by a man called Stephen Greensmith.
He asserted that all the New England ministers
excepting Cotton, Wheelwright and perhaps Thomas Hooker, all
of them taught a covenant of works.
They were legalists.
The general court examined Wheelwright about his fast
day sermon and he was placed upon a
charge of sedition.
Well, at this point the controversy was spreading
far and wide.
The governor of this year was not Winthrop
but Sir Henry Vane who was a young
man of 24.
He didn't remain governor for long but while
he was there, he stirred up a good
deal of agitation on behalf of what later
were proved to be Mrs. Hutchinson's opinions.
And one writer says, speaking of how these
opinions spread through society, from the governor right
down to the barber in Boston.
The barber, it was said, as soon as
any were set down in his chair, he
would be commonly cutting off their hair and
the truth together.
Well, the man who wrote that was Edward
Johnson who arrived from England just at this
point.
And he was amazed at the dissension that
he found in what he had expected to
be a haven in New England.
And he says how in Boston there was
a little nimble-tongued woman I met who
said that she could bring me to one
with whom she was acquainted of her own
sex that would show me a way if
I could attain to it even revelations full
of such ravishing joy that I should never
have cause to sorrow for sin as long
as I lived.
Well, Johnson not caring for this teaching left
Boston for Newtown.
And he reached it, he said, just as
a drum was being beaten to call people
to church.
Who is it, he said, who lectures at
this town?
Meeting a man on the road.
The man replied, I see you are a
stranger, newcomer, seeing you know not the man.
It is one Mr. Shepherd.
Verily, said Johnson, you have hit it right.
I am newcomer indeed and have been told
since I came that most of your ministers
are legal preachers.
Only, if I mistake not, they told me
that this man, Shepherd, preached a finer covenant
of works than the other.
So, Johnson accompanied this other man down the
road to hear Thomas Shepherd.
Thomas Shepherd, he said, preached for more than
two hours.
The hourglass was turned over twice.
Said he was a pale man.
But Johnson was enraptured with Shepherd's preaching.
By the time Shepherd had finished, Johnson knew
for sure that here at least was one
fully evangelical preacher in New England.
Well, the controversy spread.
Other people weren't satisfied as easily as Johnson.
And it all came to a head in
August of 1637 where the ministers of Massachusetts
and Connecticut met in General Synod, the first
synod or assembly held on this side of
the Atlantic, August 30, 1637.
And a list of 82 errors were drawn
up which were condemned by this synod.
The synod continued for three weeks.
And these errors center around this fundamental error.
The error that Christians know that they are
in Christ only by the immediate witness of
the Spirit of God.
And that every true Christian has this immediate
witness.
In other words, the error was the Christian's
assurance is related neither to his subjective condition
nor to his spiritual conduct.
Now, let me just read you one or
two of the errors in their own words.
There is no inherent righteousness in the saints
and graces are not in the souls of
believers but in Christ only.
Nothing but Christ is an evidence of my
good estate.
A man is not effectually converted until he
has full assurance.
A man may not prove his election by
his calling.
A man cannot evidence his justification by his
sanctification.
Or further, it is a fundamental, they said,
and soul damning error to make sanctification an
evidence of justification.
Well, you can see the drift of 82
errors and they were all around this theme
that we know that we are the sons
of God only by an immediate assurance granted
to us by the Holy Spirit.
And that assurance is not to be related
in any way to what we find within
ourselves.
These errors were unanimously rejected by the entire
body of ministers with the one exception of
John Wheelwright.
But although the errors were rejected, the Synod
did not specify any individuals who actually taught
these errors.
And that, amongst other things, gave John Wheelwright
and Mrs. Hutchinson the opportunity to continue with
their teaching.
And that they did vigorously.
So that in the November following of 1637,
a general court was held.
And it was adjudged that there could be
no peace in the colony until Wheelwright and
Mrs. Hutchinson were sent away.
Wheelwright then was banished.
Mrs. Hutchinson was given to the following spring
in view of the state of the winter.
She was put under house arrest through the
winter months and she was to be removed
from the colony in the following spring.
Well, when the following spring came, the Boston
church examined Mrs. Hutchinson for the first time.
At the first meeting before the church, she
recanted of one error, but she held to
others, at which she was solemnly admonished by
John Cotton.
And then she was told to appear in
a further week's time before the church to
gauge the effect of the admonition.
When she reappeared for the second time, she
produced a recantation of her errors.
But she had no sooner produced the recantation
than she went on to allege that these
errors had never been her judgment.
So it wasn't, strictly speaking, a recantation at
all.
At which, says John Cotton, so many witnesses
rose up to speak the contrary that she
was cast out of our communion.
In other words, she was cast out for
lying.
The actual record in the church, First Church
of Boston, reads the 22nd of the first
month, that's March, 1638.
Anne, the wife of our brother William Hutchinson,
having on the 15th of this month been
openly in the public congregation, admonished of several
errors held by her, was on the same
22nd day cast out of the church for
impenitently persisting in a manifest lie then expressed
by her in open congregation.
You understand then that having offered a recantation,
she then went on to excuse herself that
she had never really held these things at
all, which was adjudged to be a manifest
lie by the congregation.
That then is a quick, as quick as
I could make it, sketch of the controversy.
Now the modern interpretation.
The modern interpretation is very different to the
one that existed, as I mentioned, at the
end of the last century.
Emery Battis, who has a biography on Mrs.
Hutchinson, he summarizes the last century attitude in
these words.
He says, Every American is acquainted with the
name of Anne Hutchinson.
Her heroic defiance of the Puritan autocracy has
won the admiration of liberal minds and gained
her acclaim.
Well that was the last century view.
Here was a woman who stood up against
this body of ministers, resisted their despotism, and
therefore was something of a heroine.
But that's not the modern view, although that
comes into the modern view a little.
The modern view has gone right back into
the theology of the controversy.
And the modern writers have judged that Mrs.
Hutchinson's claim that the ministers of New England
were legalists, that that claim, after all, is
true.
Now many of you know the name of
the late Perry Miller.
And he and others have argued this at
great length.
That these New England ministers taught a sort
of covenant of grace which was really a
covenant of works.
That God does something and man does something.
That faith is an act of the will.
That it requires man's cooperation to his salvation.
And therefore they said that Mrs. Hutchinson's claim
that the majority of these men were legalists
was true.
One recent writer says, with the exception of
John Cotton, the men in Massachusetts Bay and
later Connecticut stressed works more than grace.
Well, the mention of John Cotton brings us
to the foundation of the whole modern claim.
It is asserted that Anne Hutchinson was right
in distinguishing Cotton from his fellow ministers.
Cotton, it said, I quote, was preaching an
entirely different doctrine of conversion.
That's Norman Pettit's claim.
Lazar Ziff, who has written several books on
New England, he says that Cotton only among
the legalists, quote, was able to break through
to a new perception.
And they argue that Mrs. Hutchinson was really
only the mouthpiece of John Cotton.
Anne Hutchinson proceeded to act upon the teaching
of John Cotton.
And that is claims that from Cotton, Mrs.
Hutchinson drew the main minds of her doctrine.
Well, that's repeated endlessly in all the modern
books.
Mrs. Hutchinson was really only putting into words
clearly understood by the average Boston person what
Cotton himself was teaching.
Now, I believe and I am prepared to
say I'm sure that this modern interpretation is
of great significance.
And I give you two reasons.
One is that if it's true, it must
radically affect our judgment of John Cotton.
Well, you may think that doesn't matter very
much.
But really, John Cotton was one of the
greatest theologians in the English speaking world.
A man who ought to be read.
A man who ought to be esteemed highly.
But I say if this modern interpretation is
true, our judgment of Cotton is radically affected,
and in this way.
As I mentioned in that August Synod in
1637, all the ministers, including Cotton, condemned these
errors.
And yet, the modern writers say that these
errors were basically Cotton's own errors.
Norman Pettit argues that in the Synod, Cotton
denied what had been a basic tenet of
his public theology.
And another writer says that nothing in Cotton's
life is so hard to excuse as his
pronouncing sentence upon Anne Hutchinson that was in
March 1638.
In other words, if this interpretation is right,
John Cotton was a weak and cowardly man.
And when he saw that Mrs. Hutchinson was
being dealt with, he failed to stand by
the teaching that he himself had inspired.
So, some people have called Cotton a trimmer,
a coward, a false friend, and these words
are true, if the interpretation is true.
Now, there's a second reason why this interpretation
is important, and this is much more significant.
If the modern interpretation is true, then our
whole assessment of English Puritanism is affected by
it.
The preachers of New England were really the
flower of English Puritanism.
Now, I don't think, and I hope, that
nobody today would say that the Puritans have
to be read for the finest exegesis of
Scripture, for the most scientific handling of the
text of the Word of God in an
exegetical way.
I don't think that is true.
We all know, do we not, the great
work of commentators that have lived and taught
since the Puritans.
But although that is true, the Puritans, we
believe, par excellence, are the doctors of the
Christian life.
They are men who were physicians, true physicians
of souls, in experimental handling of the theology
of the Bible.
There, they have no superiors, and therefore, one
reads the Puritans today, one ought to read
them, for their value in that area.
But, if this charge is true, that these
men were really legalists after all, well then,
surely, there is no reason to read them
at all.
The one thing that makes them valuable is
that they were doctors of the Christian life.
If they weren't that, well then, they are
nothing at all.
And therefore, Perry Miller, having brought the New
England Puritans back into prominence, he only sinks
them lower than they ever were before.
I say this controversy is therefore very important
for our assessment of the Puritans.
Now, I have to try to move very
quickly onto John Cotton's teaching on assurance.
And I'll have to abbreviate here.
I have a number of propositions.
The first one, I can simply give you
as a heading.
Firstly, a man, says Cotton, may have an
assurance that he is a Christian, when in
reality he is still unregenerate.
Well, that was partly covered yesterday.
I need say no more about it.
A man may have an assurance that he
is a Christian, when in reality he is
unregenerate.
Secondly, a man, says Cotton, may be savingly
joined to Christ, although he has no assurance
that he is in a state of grace.
And here I quote him.
There be sundry children of Abraham, even of
his elect seed, that having been driven out
of their sins by a spirit of bondage,
and finding a need of Christ, and their
own insufficiency and unworthiness to receive him, do
therefore seek and wait for him by the
mighty power of God.
That is to say, God working in them.
And to wait for him in every ordinance
and duty.
Such men are already truly justified.
Though it may be as yet, they do
not know so much.
Because, he says, their seeking and waiting for
Christ in the sense of their own need
and emptiness and unworthiness is a true act
of lively, justifying faith, you see what he's
saying.
A person can be a Christian and not
have assurance.
Be looking for Christ, waiting for Christ, really
they are waiting for assurance.
But in reality, says Cotton, although they don't
know it, they already have justifying faith.
That's back to John Bunyan.
Through the straight gate, but the burden in
his own consciousness, not yet off his back.
Thirdly, says Cotton, although sanctification is concurrent with
justification, assurance of justification must be before assurance
of sanctification.
Shall I read that again?
Although sanctification is concurrent with justification, assurance of
justification should be before assurance of sanctification.
We need, says Cotton, to have assurance that
God accepts our persons before we are assured
that he accepts our works.
It's essential to follow him carefully at this
point.
In applying redemption to sinners, God first unites
men to Christ in effectual calling.
And all who are spiritually united to Christ
possess a new principle of life, the first
act of which is faith.
But although this faith is alone in justification,
it is not alone in the believer for
that same principle of life is the root
of sanctification.
In this sense, justification and sanctification are concurrent.
And consequently, Cotton and all the Puritans believe
that if a person claimed to be justified
and yet lacked a hatred of sin and
a love for holiness, the claim was false.
Yet, although nobody can be justified who is
not sanctified, sanctification or holiness of life should
not be made the basis of assurance.
Well, Cotton's argument here is as follows.
He distinguishes between absolute and conditional promises.
By conditional promise, he means such a promise
as says, blessed are the poor in spirit
for theirs is the kingdom of God.
Or a promise which speaks of those who
love the brethren as being the children of
God.
He means that they are conditional in the
sense that when a believer reads those promises,
he has to look to himself.
Blessed are they that walk upright.
What is my walk?
If such and such is true of me,
then that promise belongs to me.
He calls that a conditional promise.
He calls an absolute promise, a promise which
is not related to anything in me at
all, but a promise in which God freely
justifies the sinner on the grounds of Christ's
righteousness alone.
And he argues that in justification our assurance
is based entirely on absolute promises that we
are justified as ungodly.
Not because we find in ourselves love to
the brethren.
Not because we find that we are poor
in spirit, but on the bare, absolute promise
of God.
He uses the parable of the Pharisee and
the publican and the temple.
The publican found nothing at all in himself,
yet his cotton he went down to his
house justified.
So he writes, when the Lord reveals himself
graciously by his spirit in our justification, he
doth banish the sight of our works, so
that the soul doth look at himself as
the chiefest of all sinners, as not having
so much as the crawling or creeping of
a work of sanctification.
Well, you see what Cotton is aiming at.
Our first assurance has to be based upon
absolute promises.
We ought not, we must not, he said,
teach young converts to look to themselves for
evidence of grace before they can have assurance.
Our faith, he says, closes with Christ upon
a promise of free grace.
Otherwise, as John Calvin says, my faith would
always be trembling and wavering as my works
be.
Upon a promise of free grace my faith
is built.
Well, Cotton says a great deal more at
this point.
And let me just add in my own
words.
Cotton is not arguing, and this is so
significant.
He is not arguing that sanctification is not
an evidence of justification.
It is.
But what he went on to say was
this.
Be careful what you mean by sanctification.
Because if a person has true sanctification, that
comes primarily from faith operating and exercised on
the Lord Jesus Christ.
As we were hearing last evening.
The coming of the grace of God.
That is the source and the motivation of
sanctification.
So, Cotton says, nobody should say that I
have a sanctification and therefore I must be
justified if they don't see in their sanctification
the lively exercise of faith in Christ.
Because that is the root and the source
of sanctification.
So, I am now greatly abbreviating his argument.
He is not denying that sanctification is an
evidence of justification.
But what he is saying is that faith
is primary.
And that our initial assurance has to be
built squarely and solely on the work of
Christ.
I say initial assurance.
He would really say all our assurance.
What he would say would be that any
sanctification in us is never a ground of
assurance.
But sanctification is an evidence that we have
rightly appropriated Christ.
It is an evidence of the reality of
our faith.
But it is not the basis of our
assurance.
Fourthly, every degree of assurance, says Cotton, derives
from the agency of the Holy Spirit.
Every degree.
The weakest believer, says Cotton, is sealed by
the Spirit of God.
Ephesians 1.13. He has the earnest of
the Spirit.
But, says Cotton, there is more of the
Spirit's work to be received in the life
of the Christian.
Here, he says, here we have but a
little portion of the Spirit.
A little earnest penny.
But this little portion is an assurance unto
us that He will make it up until
we are able to receive no more.
No man hath part in Christ, but he
has the seal of the Spirit.
For if the Holy Ghost was not given
thee, thou couldst not have believed at all.
True it is indeed, there are many Christians,
yea, unsealed Christians, which have not the full
consolation.
Not every Christian has received that measure of
power.
You see, he is distinguishing there between full
assurance and the beginnings of assurance.
And I haven't time to develop it, but
my argument under that fourth point is that
every degree of assurance comes from the Holy
Spirit.
Now, I move on to a reassessment of
the modern interpretation.
It was said above that John Cotton's views
were really the views of Anne Hutchinson and
that she was really only popularizing Cotton.
I argue that that is entirely false.
Now, my argument will have to be abbreviated
here too, but here are the points.
If you read these modern authors, this is
what they generally say.
Mrs. Hutchinson was a pupil of Cotton's.
Well, Mrs. Hutchinson never sat under John Cotton
until she came to Boston in 1634.
She was under his preaching for a short
time.
And the evidence is that Mrs. Hutchinson came
over the Atlantic with her basic errors.
In other words, she never learned them from
John Cotton at all.
She already had them when she crossed the
Atlantic.
I believe that there is abundant evidence to
prove that statement.
Now, of course, some of you who have
read the books know that back in old
England, Mrs. Hutchinson lived just 24 miles from
where John Cotton preached in Boston, Lincolnshire.
And from that, authors have argued that Mrs.
Hutchinson used to happily ride along on her
husband's horse to go and hear John Cotton.
But, of course, that is nonsense.
24 miles is a long way.
A day's ride.
And what's more, back in old England, Mrs.
Hutchinson had 17 pregnancies in a matter of
the years that she was supposed to be
riding to hear John Cotton.
She was a very busy housewife.
Well, and yet, if you read some of
these books, you get beautiful pictures of her
jogging along on her horse.
There's not the slightest shred of evidence that
she sat under Cotton in England.
Now, secondly, against this modern interpretation, the facts
are against it.
In that, John Cotton himself and the ministers
of New England repudiated the existence of any
gulf between them.
That is to say, John Cotton denied that
he was divided from his brethren and they
denied that they were divided from him.
Now, there's too much to be said on
that subject to go into it here.
But, I believe that that could be demonstrated.
And we have to be thankful to a
man called Robert Bailey, who I'm sorry to
say was a very fearsome Harry Scott, and
a great hater of independence and Congregationalists.
And in 1645, Robert Bailey wrote a book
against the Congregationalists of New England and he
bitterly attacked John Cotton, and amongst other things
he attacked Cotton for being a supporter of
Mrs. Hutchinson.
Well, that led Cotton to answer this charge
and he answers it fully.
And yet it's quite amazing how modern authors
ignore the reply that Cotton made.
And, in brief, he argued that Mrs. Hutchinson's
claim that her views were those of Cotton
were wholly false.
Now, the modern books say that Cotton was
against the ministers of New England, and that's
why the controversy lasted so long.
But this is what Cotton says.
Cotton says that the ministers of New England
were deliberately misled about his teaching by the
Hutchinsonians.
That is to say, they spread as his
opinions what were not his opinions at all.
It's a very interesting thing and I hope
that some of you can read it in
more detail.
But, when the ministers of New England came
to John Cotton and they said, do you
teach this?
He said, no.
Well, they said, if you don't, you better
say so from your pulpit.
So he did.
And when he did, the ministers went to
the Hutchinsonians and they said, Cotton denies it.
Oh, they said, well, he may in the
pulpit, but you should hear what he says
to us in secret.
And that sort of thing was fed through
the colony until, by slander and misrepresentation, Cotton's
whole position was jeopardized.
Now, let me just give you in a
few words the differences between Cotton and Mrs.
Hutchinson.
Mrs. Hutchinson taught that there was no assurance
except through a direct witness of the Spirit
giving full assurance.
Cotton did not so teach.
She taught that full assurance accompanies justification.
That was not Cotton's position.
She held that no work of grace in
the soul, neither faith nor sanctification, could be
regarded as evidence of salvation.
Justification and all assurance were radically separated from
sanctification.
Cotton reprobated that opinion.
He called it antinomian.
And not seeing what Anne Hutchinson was propagating
behind his back, he did not at first
appreciate why his fellow ministers were so concerned
to stress that sanctification is an evidence of
justification.
My time is almost gone.
Let me pass to my brief conclusions.
I have two conclusions.
One is that the modern treatment of the
assurance controversy is a clear reminder that church
history, as well as the Bible, can fare
very unhappily at the hands of liberals.
Enough has been written on the New England
Puritans to show us the worth of George
Ellis' remark that a man can understand the
jargon if he has an unabridged dictionary.
That's not true.
A man has to first understand the New
Testament.
And only when he does that can he
understand such matters as this.
Martin Luther said in the 16th century, he
complained of those interpreters who, with unwashen feet
and hands, leap into the Holy Scriptures and
bring with them their human inclination.
They do their thinking about God with the
same sureness with which they argue about a
pig or a cow.
Well, that did not end with the 16th
century.
And if this controversy teaches us anything, it
teaches us that if we have to understand
the Puritans, we must read them first-hand.
There's no other security against being misled.
And secondly, this word shows us the fertile
cause of so many controversies.
And that is pride.
Pride of new opinions.
Mrs. Hutchinson says Winthrop was a proud dame,
a woman of ambitious spirit.
She cast discredit upon the ministers as legalists
and she did so, alas, to advance her
own cause.
Let me close with this quotation from Anthony
Burgess.
He says, Do not affect applause among people
as having found some new, nearer way to
Christ and grace than others have.
I have observed this itching humor in the
antinomian sermons, printed, where they call upon their
hearers to mark that if they shall hear
this, they will hear what they have not
heard before, which is false.
Or if it be true, it is no
more than ordinarily taught by others.
Now he says, This reminds me of Phazon,
the Libyan.
It is reported of this man Phazon, that
he kept ten tame birds at home and
he taught them to sing Great is God
Phazon.
And when he had done so, he let
these birds fly into the woods and mountains
where all the other birds learned the same
song.
And when the Libyans, perceiving and thinking it
was no plot, but a divine accident, when
they heard these birds, they decreed that sacrifice
should be made to Phazon and that he
should be put among the number of the
gods.
Well, that's very like this whole controversy.
My friends and brethren, pride is the root
cause of so many controversies and so many
divisions and pride was the fertile cause of
this controversy.
I therefore exhort you to look into it
further yourselves but to read at first hand
the Puritans, John Cotton, Hooker and his brethren.
Let us pray.
O Lord, our gracious God, we pray that
we may be humble before Thee.
How little we understand of Thy ways.
How great Thou art and how small is
our experience of that grace which is in
Christ Jesus.
We pray that we may know Thee.
We pray that Thy Holy Spirit this day
may continue to help us and lead us
in our fellowship together, in our hearing of
Thy Word.
Lord, grant that we may truly grow and
that together we may know the consciousness of
Thy presence in our midst.
Hear our prayers and receive our thanks and
praise for Jesus' sake.
Amen.