means of reconciling their theories with such phases of the Puritan creed as were in sympathy with them. But a far different mind held his place, and had become the leading minister in the Colony. John Norton, who had taken Nathaniel Ward's place at Ipswich, was called after twenty years of service, to the Boston church, and his melancholy temperament and argumentative, not to say pragmatical turn of mind, made him ready to seize upon the first cause of offence.
News of the doings of the obnoxious sect in England had been fully discussed in the Colony, and the law passed as a means of protection against the heresies of Anne Hutchinson and her school, and which had simply waited new opportunity for its execution, came into exercise sooner than they had expected.
It is difficult to re-create for our own minds, the state of outraged susceptibility—of conviction that Jehovah in person had received the extremity of insult from every one who dared to go outside the fine points for a system of belief, which filled the churches in 1656. The "Inward Light" struck every minister upon whose ears the horrid words fell, as only less shocking than witchcraft or any other light amusement of Satan, and a day of public humiliation had already been appointed by the General Court, "to seek the face of God in behalf of our native country, in reference to the abounding of errors, especially those of the Ranters and Quakers."
The discussion of their offences was in full height, when in July, 1656, there sailed into Boston harbor a
