"
[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 .
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