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Show 'Page 10 PaS e 10 near what is now Pelham Bay Park in New York City. Anne Hutchinson owed her isolation to her free-thinking religion, her belief that faith alone was necessary for salvation, and, probably more to the point, for "traducing the ministers" and defying their dictatorial attitude over the growing restlessness of the Puritan mind. Mistress Hutchinson had eloquently led the so-called "Antinomian Schism" in Boston in the 1630s, holding to the doctrine of "inner light" and disregarding what she considered "the lesser laws." That she insisted on the right of the individual conscience to guidance by direct inspiration from heaven is borne out in the document which reported her trial: "The ground work of her revelations is the 16 immediate revelation of the spirit, and not by the ministry...." For these beliefs she and her family were cast out. The only survivor of the 1643 massacre was Susanna Hutchinson, bride of John Cole and ancestor of Charity Dickinson. Jared and Charity Pratt both descended from manifold spiritual "exiles" and had inherited, therefore, a powerful religious individualism. Orson Pratt testified that, though he and his brothers were taught every principle of morality and honesty, his parents had "no faith in the modern sectarian 17 principles of Christianity." This is corroborated in the biography of Parley, Orson's older brother - "father did sometimes manifest a decided disapprobation of a hireling clergy, who seemed...to prefer the learning 18 of man to the gifts and power of the Holy Ghost." This erstwhile couple, cursed with poverty in an abundant land, nevertheless combined the best liberal principles of the Puritan . Their families were the very fountain-head of American democracy, and they imbued their children with a faith in the right of each individual to his own "inner light." As exiles in Canaan, they nourished the culture of religious independency in which Joseph Smith's restoration movement could take root. |