Daily Inspiration Quote by Anne Hutchinson

Dragged into a courtroom to be disciplined, Anne Hutchinson doesn’t plead innocence so much as she contests the legitimacy of the entire proceeding. “I am called here to answer before you” sounds dutiful, even deferential, but it’s a setup: the passive construction makes her “called” rather than culpable, summoned by authority that must justify itself. Then she turns the screw. “But I hear no things laid to my charge” is procedural language weaponized as moral critique. If there is no articulated accusation, then this isn’t justice; it’s intimidation dressed up as due process.

The line works because it forces her judges to reveal their hand. In Puritan Massachusetts, Hutchinson’s real “crime” wasn’t a tidy list of heresies; it was influence. She held meetings, interpreted sermons, and implied that inward grace mattered more than the colony’s gatekeepers. The magistrates and ministers needed to make an example of her without admitting the fear underneath: a laywoman out-arguing them, re-routing spiritual authority away from the pulpit and toward individual conscience.

By insisting on charges, Hutchinson presses them into a dilemma. Name the doctrine and you invite debate on theology she’s equipped to win. Keep it vague and you admit this is about power, gender, and control of speech. The calmness of the sentence is its provocation: she speaks like someone who believes law should bind rulers, too. In a theocracy, that’s close to sedition. The subtext is blunt: if you can’t say what I did, you’re punishing what I am.