"But now having seen him which is invisible I fear not what man can do unto me"
About this Quote
The line speaks from a heart braced by an encounter with the divine that outweighs every earthly threat. To say she has seen him who is invisible is to claim a certainty born of direct experience, the kind of spiritual assurance Puritans prized yet feared when it bypassed clerical mediation. Courage flows from that vision: if God is vividly present, the power of human judges dwindles to shadows.
Anne Hutchinson spoke under pressure in the crucible of the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the Antinomian Controversy of 1636-1638. A midwife and lay theologian, she hosted meetings where she emphasized grace and inner assurance over outward conformity, unsettling ministers who guarded the boundaries of doctrine and order. Brought to trial, she drew strength from Scripture, blending echoes of Hebrews 11:27, where Moses endures as seeing the invisible God, and the psalmic refrain, I will not fear what man can do to me. By appropriating these texts, she cast herself in the mold of biblical dissenters who faced rulers with conscience anchored in God.
The rhetoric is bold and paradoxical. The invisible becomes most real; visible authorities lose their ultimacy. It is also gendered defiance. A woman, in a culture that constrained female speech, invokes the highest authority to justify public testimony. That move unsettled the colony not only theologically but socially, suggesting a vertical allegiance that could upend horizontal hierarchies.
Her words crystallize the Puritan tension between communal discipline and individual assurance. Ministers feared that claims of immediate revelation loosened the cords of covenant; Hutchinson insisted that the Spirit’s witness secures the soul more firmly than any human sanction. Banishment followed, yet the sentence could not erase the idea. The line survives as a compact credo of conscience: when the unseen God is apprehended as near, coercion falters, and a person stands free to speak, suffer, and remain unafraid.
Anne Hutchinson spoke under pressure in the crucible of the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the Antinomian Controversy of 1636-1638. A midwife and lay theologian, she hosted meetings where she emphasized grace and inner assurance over outward conformity, unsettling ministers who guarded the boundaries of doctrine and order. Brought to trial, she drew strength from Scripture, blending echoes of Hebrews 11:27, where Moses endures as seeing the invisible God, and the psalmic refrain, I will not fear what man can do to me. By appropriating these texts, she cast herself in the mold of biblical dissenters who faced rulers with conscience anchored in God.
The rhetoric is bold and paradoxical. The invisible becomes most real; visible authorities lose their ultimacy. It is also gendered defiance. A woman, in a culture that constrained female speech, invokes the highest authority to justify public testimony. That move unsettled the colony not only theologically but socially, suggesting a vertical allegiance that could upend horizontal hierarchies.
Her words crystallize the Puritan tension between communal discipline and individual assurance. Ministers feared that claims of immediate revelation loosened the cords of covenant; Hutchinson insisted that the Spirit’s witness secures the soul more firmly than any human sanction. Banishment followed, yet the sentence could not erase the idea. The line survives as a compact credo of conscience: when the unseen God is apprehended as near, coercion falters, and a person stands free to speak, suffer, and remain unafraid.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
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