And there was another reason why the women liked her. The colonists had two church services on Sunday, with sermons sometimes three hours long; Thursday lectures, and a Saturday night meeting. There was also during the week religious discussion for the men. Mrs. Hutchinson started meetings for women--a new departure, for never before had women met for independent thought and action. At first this won high approval. The women--forty, sixty, sometimes eighty of them, even a hundred, for they came from near-by towns as well as from Boston homes--were soon holding regular meetings to review the sermons of the Sunday before, with Mistress Anne’s comment and interpretation. “All the faithful embraced her conference,” a contemporary record describes the gatherings, “and blessed God for her fruitful discourses.” But from a review of the sermons to discussion and criticism of them and the ministers as well was a short step. It soon began to be said that Anne Hutchinson cast reproaches on those who preached “a covenant by works” instead of the “covenant by grace” in which she fervently believed. Such freedom of speech could not be tolerated by the good Puritans, and a theological dispute arose which threatened the very life of the colony. There were two parties, grace and works. Politics became a matter of Hutchinson opinions, for political lines and religious lines coincided exactly. Indeed there was no separation of church and state; the leaders of one controlled the policy of the other. From the beginning of the colony the preachers had had an unlimited influence. Now they complained that “more resort to Mrs. Hutchinson for council about matters of conscience than to any minister in the country.” Moreover this grace and works difficulty was carried into every phase of life. Some people turned their backs contemptuously and walked out of meeting when a preacher not under a covenant of grace entered the pulpit. Others interrupted the services with questions of controversy. Indeed it was carried so far that when the Pequot Indians became aggressive and dangerous and it was necessary to send troops against them, the Boston soldiers refused to be mustered into service, because the chaplain, drawn by lot, preached a covenant of works, and they disagreed with his Sunday sermon! The whole town of Boston, the whole colony of Massachusetts, church and state, were set in commotion and turmoil. This theological quarrel was a stumbling block in the way of all progress. The ministers so freely criticized were embittered and determined to call Mistress Hutchinson and her doctrines to account. So they summoned a synod, all the clergymen and magistrates of Massachusetts, who met in Cambridge for full three weeks, discussing some eighty-two opinions which they condemned--some as dangerous, some blasphemous, some erroneous, and all unsafe. The women’s meetings were forbidden as “disorderly and without rule.”