dvantage of the accident or power that allowed her to predict the future. She never entertained ambitions of power; she was simply content in her role as a wife and mother.Upon her arrival with her family, Anne was not welcomed as warmly by John Cotton as in the past because of her increasingly unorthodox views. Reverend Cotton advised Anne, "Here it be tactful to hold one's tongue." (D. Crawford, p. 87.) Due to her assertions that God had revealed to her the day of their arrival, Anne was forced to say, "I have been guilty of wrong thinking" to be accepted in to the Puritan church there. Anne justified doing this in her own mind by referring privately to mistakes in small domestic decisions, not her religious convictions. (D. Crawford, p. 90.) She was willing to compromise in this so she could be a member of the Puritan church. Much of this desire was due to her admiration of John Cotton and her wish to again be part of his congregation.Anne Hutchinson had originally had high expectations for finally having the freedom to express her beliefs, away from the confines of the established church in England. However, there was no religious freedom at all in the Massachusetts Bay Colony except to agree with the doctrines set forth by the Puritan church there. This denial of freedom of religion to others by the Puritans was ironic in light of the fact that dissenters were merely declining to conform to the Puritans, as the Puritans had declined to conform to the Church of England. (C. M. Andrews, Colonial Period of American History, p. 478.) However, at this point the Puritans were so popular that they didn't need to relax any of the principles in order to draw in new members to the church. This did change later in the Seventeenth Century, when the original foundation of Puritanism was worn away by church leaders hoping to attract newcomers to their congregation by decreasing the harshness of Puritan law.Puritanism was never very unified or de...
