recover his former splendour throughout ... New England.” [Footnote: Hubbard, p. 302.] He was not a sensitive man, and having once determined to do penance, he was far too astute a politician to do it by halves; he not only gave himself up to the task of detecting the heterodoxy of his old friends, [Footnote: Winthrop, i. 253.] but on a day of solemn fasting he publicly professed repentance with many tears, and told how, “God leaving him for a time, he fell into a spirituall slumber; and had it not been for the watchfulnesse of his brethren, the elders, &c., hee might have slept on, ... and was very thankfull to his brethren for their watchfulnesse over him.” [Footnote: _Hypocrisie Unmasked_, p. 76.] Nor to the end of his life did he feel quite at ease; “yea, such was his ingenuity and piety as that his soul was not satisfied without often breaking forth into affectionate bewailing of his infirmity herein, in the publick assembly, sometimes in his prayer, sometimes in his sermon, and that with tears.” [Footnote: Norton’s _Funeral Sermon_, p. 37.] Wheelwright was made of sterner stuff, and was inflexible. In fact, however, the difference of dogma, if any existed, was trivial. The clergy used the cry of heresy to excite odium, just as they called their opponents Antinomians, or dangerous fanatics. To support these accusations the synod gravely accepted every unsavory inference which ingenuity could wring from the tenets of their adversaries; and these, together with the fables invented by idle gossip, made up the long list of errors they condemned. Though the scheme was unprincipled, it met with complete success, and the Antinomians have come down to posterity branded as deadly enemies of Christ and the commonwealth; yet nothing is more certain than that they were not only good citizens, but substantially orthodox. On such a point there is no one among the conservatives whose testimony has the weight of Winthrop’s, who says: “Mr. Cotton ... stated the differences in a very narrow scantling; and Mr. Shepherd, preaching at the day of election, brought them yet nearer, so as, except men of good understanding, and such as knew the bottom of the tenents of those of the other party, few could see where the difference was.” [Footnote: Winthrop, i. 221.] While Cotton himself complains bitterly of the falsehoods spread about him and his friends: “But when some of ... the elders of neighbour churches advertised me of the evill report ... I ... dealt with Mrs. Hutchinson and others of them, declaring to them the erroneousnesse of those tenents, and the injury done to myself in fathering them upon mee. Both shee and they utterly denyed that they held such tenents, or that they had fathered them upon mee. I returned their answer to the elders.... They answered me they had but one witnesse, ... and that one both to be known.” ... [Footnote: Cotton, _Way of New England Churches_, pp. 39, 40.] Moreover,