Nature, Grace and John Cotton: The Theological Dimension in the New England Antinomian Controversy

Abstract

In 1636 the Puritan Commonwealth of Massachusetts Bay was confronted with a sectarian outburst which rent the religious and civil peace of Boston and temporarily threatened that of the whole colony. Certain of the Boston congregation, led by Anne Hutchinson and abetted by John Cotton, the teacher of the church, charged that the clergy of the Bay, almost entirely, were not true ministers of the gospel but in fact a company of unregenerate “legalists”, preaching a “covenant of works” instead of a “covenant of grace”, and there by hindering the work of redemption. For nearly two years the “Antinomian Controversy” darkened the radiance of the City on the Hill, and echoes of the affair returned in the next decade to plague apologists for the New England Way. Part of the apologists' difficulty was the fact that their star, the illustrious Cotton, had been on the wrong side.