Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
Truths of God)”--as Roger Williams acknowledged--were for the moment
sadly “over-clouded and bloud-shotten.” For this the age was more to
blame than the man. It was no fault of John Cotton’s that he was the
child of a generation reared under the shadow of absolutism, fearful
of underling aggression, unable to comprehend the excellence inhering
in the democratic faith. He reasoned according to his light; and if
he rather too easily persuaded himself that the light which shined to
him was the single divine light, he proved himself thereby an orthodox
Puritan if not a catholic thinker. It is a pity that the priest in his
later years overcame the intellectual, nevertheless the epitaph carved
on his headstone does no violence to truth:
JOHANNES COTTONUS
_Cujus Ultima Laus est,
Quod fuerit inter Nov-Anglos Primus._
To have been accounted by his fellows first among the notable company
of Puritan emigrants was no slight testimony to the sterling qualities
of Master John Cotton.
II • John Winthrop • Magistrate
If John Cotton embodied the ideal and polity of the theocratic
ministry, John Winthrop represented the ideal and polity of the
theocratic magistracy. Rulership in the new church-state, while
nominally the function of lay officers, in reality was quite as much
ecclesiastical as political. The civil authorities were chosen by a
narrow body of orthodox electors with a single view to theocratic ends.
To the traditional conception of magistracy, in which the gentlemen
of the Migration had been reared, was now added a special function,
the care of the church, “the maintenance of whose peace,” John Cotton
asserted, “is the chief end which God aimed at in the institution
of magistracy.” The career of John Winthrop in Massachusetts must
be judged, therefore, from this twofold point of view. He was not
exclusively, or chiefly, a civil governor, but a magistrate-elder; and
his political conduct was determined by this dual character of his
office. Unless one keeps in mind the theocratic framework of the early
Massachusetts commonwealth, one cannot understand the limitations of
his authority, or judge his conduct intelligently.
John Winthrop was a skillful executive upon whose shoulders largely
rested the success or failure of the undertaking during the difficult
early years. But he was very much more than that; he was a Puritan
steward of temporal affairs, who accepted his stewardship as a
sacred duty lying upon his conscience. A cultivated gentleman,
“browghte Up amonge boockes & learned men,” with a tender and
sympathetic nature--inclining overmuch to mildness, as he confessed
apologetically--by every right he belongs with that notable group
of Puritans, with Eliot and Vane and Hutchinson and Milton, in whom
the moral earnestness of Hebraism was tempered to humaner issues by
a generous culture. There was in him not a little fruitful sap of
Elizabethan poetry to quicken his thought, lifting him out of the
petty world of Jacobean lawyer and landed gentleman, and opening his
eyes to a vision of the future significance of the great venture to
which he dedicated his later years. Grave and dignified, he looks
out at us from his portrait with a certain stoic calm not untouched
with sadness, as if this life had proved a serious business, filled
with responsibilities and weighty matters, and darkened by sorrow and
disappointment. The pagan _joie de vivre_ of Elizabethan times is gone,
and in its stead is a serious intelligence that must grapple with
realities and shape them to its will.
He had lived amply in England before his removal, with much that was
feudal lingering in the habits of his patriarchal household; and in
the little village of Boston he kept twenty male servants, some of
them heads of families. A decay of fortune had come upon him during
his last years on the family estate, and the hope of recouping his
losses may have been an additional reason for venturing to remove to
the new world. In his _Considerations for J. W._ he explains that “he
cannot live in the same place and calling (as before) and so, if he
should refuse this opportunity, _that talent which God hath bestowed
upon him for publick service were like to be buried_.” Something to the
same purpose is suggested in another passage, which touches upon the
economic disturbances of the time, with the attendant extravagance and
ostentation of the new rich:
This Land growes weary of her Inhabitants.... We are growne to
that height of Intemperance in all excesse of Riott, as noe man’s
estate allmost will suffice to keepe saile with his æqualls.... The
fountains of Learning & Religion are soe corrupted as--men straine
at knatts & swallowe camells, use all severity for mainetaynance of
cappes & other accomplyments, but suffer all ruffianlike fashions &
disorder to passe uncontrolled.[18]
Writing to his wife Margaret in 1629, he gave expression to
apprehensions that were very likely quickened by his own failure to
keep pace with his neighbors:
My dear wife, I am veryly persuaded, God will bringe some heavye
Affliction upon this lande & that speedylye.... The Lorde hath
admonished, threatened, corrected, & astonished us, yet we growe
worse & worse, so as his Spirit will not always strive with us, we
must needs give way to his furye at last.[19]
But material considerations alone scarcely suffice to explain the
motives of one who wrote: “It were happy for many if their parents
had left them only such a legacy as our modern spirit of poetry
makes his motto, _Ut nec habeant, nec careant, nec curent._” Such
consolation--that the Christian should possess nothing, desire nothing,
trouble about nothing--may have been only the refuge of the stoic
from the impending loss of material possessions; but the conscious
discipline in ascetic Hebraism which was to change the Jacobean
gentleman into a militant Puritan had already created a temper to
which such stoic abnegation must appeal. Winthrop’s diary, running
from his fourteenth to his thirty-second year, is a homely record
in self-discipline, not unlike Bunyan’s _Grace Abounding_. It is
introspective and tediously moralizing, but it reveals how long and
arduous was the training before he felt confident that he was “improved
in all the points of experimental Godliness.”
But Winthrop was the child of a great age before he was born into
the fellowship of the Saints; and when we come upon the natural man
beneath the theological wrappings, we discover a many-sided, rich and
sympathetic human nature. He had gone to school to the English Bible,
and the noble Hebrew poetry stirred the poetic imagination that was
his Elizabethan birthright. Like so many of his fellow Puritans he
delighted in the Book of Canticles, and the rich oriental imagery
flowed easily from his pen. In one of his last letters before he
quitted the old home, he took leave of a friend in these words:
It is time to conclude, but I know not how to leave you, yet since
I must, I will put my beloved into his arms, who loves him best, &
is a faithful keeper of all that is committed to him. Now, Thou,
the hope of Israel, and the sure help of all that come to thee,
knit the hearts of thy servants to thyself in faith and purity.
Draw us with the sweetness of thine odours, that we may run after
thee--Allure us, and speak kindly to thy servants, that thou mayest
possess us as thine own, in the kindness of youth, and the love
of marriage--Seal us up, by that holy spirit of promise, that we
may not fear to trust in thee--Carry us into thy garden, that we
may eat and be filled with those pleasures, which the world knows
not--Let us hear that sweet voice of thine, my love, my dove, my
undefiled--Spread thy skirt over us, and cover our deformity--Make
us sick with thy love--Let us sleep in thine arms, and awake in thy
kingdom--The souls of thy servants, thus united to thee, make us
one in the bonds of brotherly affection--let not distance weaken
it, nor time waste it, nor changes dissolve it, nor self-love
eat it out; but when all means of other communion shall fail,
let us delight to pray for each other: and so let thy unworthy
servant prosper in the love of his friends, as he truly loves thy
good servants ... and wishes true happiness to them and to all
theirs--Amen.[20]
When his heart was touched Winthrop’s tenderness flowed out in a wealth
of affectionate sympathy, that lends a rich and lovely cadence to his
English prose. To a sister who had suffered the loss of her husband, he
wrote:
Go on cheerfully (my good sister), let experience add more
confidence still to your patience. Peace shall come. There will
be a bed to rest in, large and easy enough for you both. It is
preparing in the lodging appointed for you in your Father’s house.
He that vouchsafed to wipe the sweat from his disciple’s feet,
will not disdain to wipe the tears from those tender affectionate
eyes. Because you have been one of his mourners in the house of
tribulation, you shall drink of the cup of joy, and be clothed with
the garment of gladness, in the kingdom of his glory. The former
things, and evil, will soon be passed; but the good to come shall
neither end nor change.[21]
At another time, writing to his son of the death of his father, Adam
Winthrop, he said:
He hath finished his course; and is gathered to his people in
peace, as the ripe corn into the barn. He thought long for the day
of his dissolution and welcomed it most gladly. Thus is he gone
before; and we must go after in our time: This advantage he hath
of us--he shall not see the evil which we may meet with ere we go
hence. Happy those who stand in good terms with God and their own
conscience: they shall not fear evil tidings; and in all changes
they shall be the same.[22]
A lovable man was John Winthrop, richly endowed and admirably
disciplined, gracious in manner, persuasive in speech, generous in
action--in all England there could scarcely have been found a leader
better equipped for the work in hand, when at the age of forty-three
he became head of the emigrant church-state, which by reason of its
charter and the removal of the corporation to New England, was become
effectively an independent commonwealth, free to shape its domestic
polity as seemed best. During the score of years that remained to him,
he was the guiding spirit of the Massachusetts settlements, impressing
his will upon others by sheer force of character. It was inevitable
that in so strange and unprecedented an experiment, undertaken in
an environment so unfamiliar, serious and often bitter divisions
would arise touching the fundamental principles of government. In
the frequent discussions Winthrop bore a leading part; he marshaled
his arguments with the skill of a lawyer; he separated the broad
principle from the special circumstance; and in the end he usually
carried the assent of his fellow counselors to his proposals. His
social and political philosophy, in consequence, greatly influenced
the development of Massachusetts Bay during the early years when its
institutions and polity were taking shape, and throws much light on the
spirit and purpose of that development.
Winthrop’s political bias was unconsciously shaped by his experience,
of which the determining fact was the principle and practice of
Jacobean magistracy. As an English squire he had long served as
magistrate, and this experience he brought to New England as a legacy
from an autocratic past. In that old world the magistrate exercised
a patriarchal police power well-nigh absolute, sanctioned by ancient
custom, upheld by the church, and acquiesced in by subjects well