Anne Hutchinson and the Puritan Attitude toward Women Author(s ...

loves: where, 1. Christ embraceth the souls of his
people, and casteth into their hearts the immortal
seed of his Word, and Spirit, Gal. 4.19. 2. The
Chruch conceiveth and bringeth forth fruits to Christ."
Morgan suggests that this sexual metaphor was the
dominant one in the characterization of the union
between man and God. So Hutchinson's challenge to
the set forms of the contract between man and God,
and her demand that it be replaced by simple "justi-
fication" unmediated by God's male friends, and Win-
throp's response to challenge and demand, were couched
in such a sexual idiom.16
On the face of it, there does not seem to be
much difference between Hutchinson's calling Christ's
"the voyce of my beloved," and Winthrop's ecstatic
account of his relationship with Christ: "methought
my soule has as familiar and sensible society with
him as wife could have with the kindest husbande;
I desired no other happinesse but to be embraced of
him; I held nothinge so deere that I was not willinge
to parte with for him; I forgatt to looke after my
supper, and some vaine things that my heart lingered
after before; then came such a calme of comforte
over my heart, as revived my spirits, set my minde
and conscience at sweet liberty and peace."17 Win-
throp here represented himself as a woman being em-
braced by Christ, whose apparent sexual identity was
male. Winthrop's use of such a mode required him to
change his view of himself (from male to female)--
something Hutchinson did not have to do. Women could
slip into Christ's arms without any preliminary step
--that is, had not the male caste intervened in the
relationship. All creatures, including women "had
access to God only through their superior, man."18
Hutchinson and her associates asked that the
priesthood of all believers be body-blind. That
was a central purpose of her concentration on the
nature of "union" with Christ. One result of "justi-
fication," of conversion, was the shedding of the
body, and of sexual delimitations: "the soul is
mortal, till it be united to Christ, and then it
is annihilated, and the body also, and a new given
by Christ." As if to underscore this assertion of
the insignificance of the earthly body, another of
Hutchinson's"errors" was the belief that "there is
no resurrection of the body." According to the radi-
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