Analysis of John Winthrop’s “A Model of Christian Charity”
America’s roots in Puritanism are still evident nearly 400 years after the establishment of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. John Winthrop, in his sermon, “A Model of Christian Charity,” not only lays out the mission ahead, as he sees it, for the settling of the New Land, but he lays the foundation for American society. Seeing the founding of this colony (and by extension this country) as a holy, sacred mission, Winthrop contends that absolute unity, even conformity, must be insisted upon.
Through his diction and use of metaphor that both reinforce that unity and combine the sacred and governmental, his targeted biblical and historical allusions, and his dramatically shifting tone, Winthrop elevates unity to a sense of urgency, arguing that the Puritans’ colonial effort resides comfortably in the history of the world and God’s relationship with it: the stakes could not be higher.
Throughout his sermon, Winthrop’s figures of speech related to bonds and ties and his language choices that often address the same theme tend to reinforce his idea that absolute, even rigid, unity and conformity must be maintained for the colony to succeed. The entire sermon is delivered in the first person plural, suggesting that the Puritans, Winthrop included, are one undiversified group for which he speaks. He states twice that they are “knit together” “as one man” in a bond of common cause and common destiny, every individual’s fate bound to and subject to that of the group. He also refers to the Puritans, saying, “We must be as a city upon a hill,” suggesting once
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Seventeenth-century sermon techniques in Benjamin Franklin's "Way to Wealth" communicate his secular eighteenth-century principles. First, Franklin’s structure contains a text, a doctrine section, and an application section as a Puritan sermon would. Franklin addresses a question concerning the financial problems of the day, and he takes his text from “Poor Richard’s Almanac. Based on the issue ...
more that the disparate individuals are all bound into one larger entity, one to which the world will look for guidance. Not only does he insist on unity between and among the individual Puritans, he also seeks unity between God and humans, the spirit and the flesh, the sacred and the governmental. He speaks of “the more near bond of marriage between [God] and [the Puritans],” binding them not only to one another but to the higher purpose God intends. Phrases such as “government both civil and ecclesiastical,” “holy ordinances,” and “God ratif[ying] this covenant and seal[ing] our commission,” combine the language of government with that of religion, foreshadowing the theocracy to come and at the same time dramatically exemplifying the spiritual-physical unity Winthrop seems to desire among his people and between his people and God.
Winthrop, not surprisingly, quotes from scripture and makes biblical allusions throughout the sermon, but it seems that always his point is to place prominently the Puritans and their struggle to escape oppression and found a “holy commonwealth” in the continuum of world and religious history, insisting, so it seems, that this event is as important as any of the others he mentions. He compares the “special commission” God has given the Puritans to the commission given Saul to destroy Amaleck in the Old Testament. He quotes Moses speaking to the Israelites on their way from slavery to the promised land, “’Beloved there is now set before us life and death, good and evil,” implying himself as a kind of law giver directly from God and the Puritans as a new chosen people. Of all the colonies established in North America and elsewhere around the world, it seems to Winthrop that the creation of this colony is of
biblical importance, as though when scripture is read in the future, the Puritans’ founding of Massachusetts would be included.
This sense of self-importance on behalf of his people pervades Winthrop’s sermon, and to dramatically emphasize this grandeur, Winthrop’s tone shifts from the most elevated, lofty and celebratory in describing the colony’s success to the most dark, dire and foreboding when describing the consequences of potential failure. Winthrop states that in success, God will “make [them] a praise and glory,” for people of all time to look to as an example. He constantly refers to the Puritans as though they were the most important people to God, commanding all of His attention. On the other hand, should the Puritans fail God in their sacred mission, Winthrop uses language suggestive of ultimate damnation and ruin, saying that “[they] shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God… [and] shame the faces of many of God’s worth servants,” and that “the Lord will surely break out in wrath against us, and be revenged of such a people.” The concept of individual damnation through sin is here applied to a whole people, binding them in their destruction. It seems to Winthrop that the Puritans, so important to God in comparison to others on earth, hold in their hands the future of the world and how they as well as God will be thought and spoken of.
The Essay on William Bradford God Puritans People
Literature has always revealed a great deal about the attitudes and beliefs of different cultures. Puritan authors in the late 17 th and early 18 th centuries wrote poems, persuasive speeches, stories, and first hand accounts that reveal their thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. Described especially was the Puritan's deep regard for religion and their fear and love of God. William Bradford's Of ...
Winthrop’s sermon definitely impresses upon his audience, the Puritans themselves, the incredible importance of what they are doing and the frightening, universe-shaking consequences if they fail. He makes his audience see even the most mundane tasks of clearing land and building barns to be parts of a pivotal moment in the
history of the world and God’s people. This is motivational to the extreme: Winthrop breeds an elevated sense of pride in accomplishment and fear of failure into his audience and demands of them an absolute sense of unity between each other and with their faith, making dissent equal to destruction or damnation. This sense of America being the center of the world, a favorite of God, and a nation of individuals bound together in unity or even flag-waving conformity, e pluribus unum, still exists. Despite the diverse cultures that make up America, it seems our Puritanical roots remain a strong part of our national character.
