Response Paper

Choose ONE (!) of the topics below and write a response, using 500-700 words, about 2 pages (unless you doublespace your paper and use a 24 font, or something like it). I don’t actually handcount words, so you don’t need to, either. If you use literature to back up your argument (and I recommend that you do), be sure to reference it either in footnotes or, if you have several entries, in a bibliography attached to the end of the paper. Still, mind that you are not writing a term paper – use the limited space and try to give an answer to one of the questions as precise as possible. For some of the questions, you might have to refer back to texts we have been reading in class.

The deadline to meet is June 13 – no exceptions. I would suggest you hand in the thing on that date, in class, and I’ll return it to you a week later.

1) Apocalyptic Voice

As we have seen at the beginning of the class, John the apocalyptist is extremely touchy on the issue of authority. He makes it very clear that his text is to be read verbatim, and no mistakes here:

I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes words away from this book of prophecy, God will take away from him his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book. (Revelation of St. John 22.19)

First of all, try to explain and paraphrase the final sentence (“And if anyone takes words…”) in your own words! Then try to find three apocalyptic thinkers or apocalyptic communities in history and explain/compare how seriously, how verbatim they took the word of John and what they made of it in their lives! You might think of part-time apocalyptists like Isaac Newton and Christopher Columbus here, but also of apocalyptic communities like the medieval Joachimites, the 19^th-century-USA Millerites, or, of course, the Puritans (you can easily find comprehensive information on all these groups, and on various others, online, of course!).

2) Puritan Apocalypse

Go back to John Winthrop’s sermon on The City upon a Hill (1630) (online here - http://history.hanover.edu/texts/winthmod.html - among other places). Explain in your own words what the city upon a hill stands for. Then go into the first few decades of Puritan history in America – how did the city upon a hill fare? Did it prosper? Did it fail? Try to give evidence: you might think of the Puritan war against the Pequod nation here, or of the witch trials, or of…you name it!

3) Reagan’s Shining City

In his farewell address, delivered on January 11, 1989, then US-president Ronald Reagan famously used the image of the city on a hill –

And that's about all I have to say tonight. Except for one thing. The past few days when I've been at that window upstairs, I've thought a bit of the "shining city upon a hill." The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important because he was an early Pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we'd call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free.

I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it and see it still. (the full text of the speech is here - http://www.localvoter.com/speech_rr6.asp - go ahead and read it, it’s not too long).

Explain in your own words how Reagan was using the image of the city on a hill! What does it mean to him? Then go ahead and compare the historical circumstances – 1630 (when Winthrop held his sermon) and 1989 (when Reagan held his) – are there differences, are there similarities?

4) Wigglesworth and The Day of Doom

We read parts of Michael Wigglesworth’s The Day of Doom (on your handout! Also, the complete text is online here - http://www.puritansermons.com/poetry/wiggindx.htm). Go back to the poem, read it or parts of it and find out about the following:

• formal qualities: what meter is he using? Give examples from the text!
• What images and metaphors is he using? Find three and describe how he uses them!
• Reception: how was The Day of Doom being received in 17^th century New England? Why did people react the way they did? Do you think it is a convincing, maybe even a strong poem? Give reasons!

Could you wait like 15 minutes before you start that apocalypse, please?

Beware!

I will be a little late for class on Wednesday, so the session is more likely to start at 6:15, not at 6 sharp.

Meanwhile, try to think of whales...white whales, if you want, and Mississippi steamboats: Melville is so waiting! I know, he looks very stern on the photographs that are around of him, so very stern and serious-minded: you wouldn't think he had a self-ironic humor in his works that was around 200 years ahead of his time...

Session V - May 23 - Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)


Information on his -

Life: here, here, and here.

Thought: here, here, and here.

____________

I now realize it was a mistake to focus on his Notes on the Apocalypse, but then, the mistake is made, and gone is the chance to focus rather on, say, some of his excellent sermons - we read through his collage of newspaper items on what he made out as the fall of France and the Vatican, and man - isn't it unexciting and repetitive.

If there is something we can take from the lesson, it is that Edwards' apocalypse was more cosmopolite and suave than Mather's: where Mather was summonig witches on the colonial stage, provoking trials at one place and one time, Edwards is looking into worldly events for proof of the final things to come. Of course, as we noticed - he is very biased in doing so, establishing a record that imparts all heroism to the British and all cowardice to the French (and some to the Italians, of course): they're drinking, starving, corrupt, and burdened with a haphazard king whose only outstanding ability is the exaction of taxes.

And, yes - the whole thing we read is so boring, I think, because it is exactly no more than a collage without personal references, either to himself or to the reader/listener. Once you find out that he is shooting at the French, the text disappears as an object of interest.

It's interesting to note that, to him, history is going on before it ends for good: human progress, in secular and in religious terms, was a real possibility to him, and we'll return to that next time - soon after his death, history was moving mighty fast, with monumental revolutions going on both sides of the Atlantic, and I'll say a few words on the importance of apocalyptic thought for the events of the late 18th century: on independence, tea floating in Boston harbor, and the role of apocalypse in the whole ensemble.

Session IV - May 16, 2007 - Wonders of the Invisible World Continued

The Intellectual and the End of the World as he knew it

That there is a Devil, is a thing Doubted by none
but such as are under the Influences of the Devil.
(Cotton Mather: Wonders of the Invisible World)

The witch trials were not the end of innocence and meekness – innocence had been decapitated violently decades and decades before when the Puritan settlers had taken possession of the colonial site with all due and undue brutality, thereby nearly extinguishing the Pequod. Innocence had in fact been lost, but now, at the end of the 17th century even the idea of innocence was at danger – the notion of a simple, unburdened Puritan community life was no longer an option. It still was very alive in Michael Wigglesworth – his doomsday verses are all dedicated to a return to innocence (whether or not he thought that return was possible is another question, but at least he plants it into his poem as a motive: people would repent and things would be fine once again).

Cotton Mather, like Wigglesworth, is painfully aware of the steep fall the Puritans had taken – in “Enchantments Encounter’d”, the first main part of the work (not on your handout), he finds that –

All this notwithstanding, we must humbly confess to out God, that we are miserably degenerated from the first Love of our Predecessors.

He goes on at great length in this introductory chapter to stress the opposition of the first generation Puritan martyrs – the predecessors – and the present-day Puritan population. The predecessors had accomplished the impossible – they had subdued the territory of the devil (that is, a country inhabited not by Protestant Europeans, but by indigenous people) and made it a Puritan land. What did their descendants have to compare with that?

A bunch of apocalyptic witches at their door, to begin with.

Still in the introduction, he finds that –

Wherefore the Devil is now making one attempt more upon us; an attempt more difficult, more surprising, more snarl’d with unintelligible circumstances than any that we have hitherto encountered; an attempt so critical that if we get well through, we shall soon enjoy Halcyon Days with all the Vultures of Hell trodden under our feet.

He’s claiming that a “Horrible PLOT” is at work, executed by witchcrafty evildoers against the Puritan population. On these first few pages, he’s mentioning so many, many devils, demons, and witches – you really start to know he’s serious the way he is beating it into you. There is no way, he argues, to take witchcraft as a local phenomenon – no, it is everywhere in the country, practically the whole American site is infested with it. From here on, the battle was everyone vs. everyone. There was no longer an presumption of innocence: everybody could be guilty of witchcraft, everybody could be a potential bearer of Satan who may work his evil even while his bearer may seem innocent. Since everyone was a potential witch, methods had to be devised to reveal the true witches out of the potential mass.

One of these was badmouthing your neighbors. In a highly revealing passage Mather states that

If any Man or Woman be notoriously defamed for a Witch, this yields a strong suspicion. Yet the judge ought carefully to look that the Report be made by a man of honesty and credit.

If needs be, even a woman would do to raise the accusation, of course. The passage is contradictory in its own way - over the whole length of the Wonders he makes an effort to make witchcraft comprehensible as also an intellectual phenomenon that you had to invest brainpower on to get behind its tricky disguises and ruses - but then he says that, basically, anyone can recognize it, at least to such an extent that made it possible to raise a finger against neighbors, townsfolk, anyone.

Next, after the introduction, he’s giving us a chapter called “A Discourse on the Wonders of the Invisible World” – basically a sermon on a passage from the book of Revelation, a very famous passage. The sermon, or parts of it, was held in early August 1692, while the Salem trials were still unrolling.

In it he is talking about the following quote from Revelation, as he gives it:

Wo to the Inhabitants of the Earth, and of the Sea; for the Devil is come down unto you, having great Wrath; because he knoweth that he hath but a short time. (Rev. 12.12 - in the manuscript it's given with that chapter reference, but chapter 12.12 is, actually, a very different verse in any version of Scriptures I'm looking it up in. Hmmm.)

Without going into too much detail – it’s a long sermon, explaining in all ways possible why and how the devil is at work in the world and why his threats need to be taken seriously – there is one passage that stands out, rigorously:

There is little room for hope, that the great wrath of the Devil will not prove the present ruine of our poor New England in particular. I believe, there never was a poor Plantation, more pursued by the wrath of the Devil, than our poor New England; and that which makes our condition very much the more deplorable is, that the wrath of the Great God Himself, at the same time also presses hard upon us. It was a rousing alarm to the Devil, when a great Company of English Protestants and Puritans, came to erect Evangelical Churches, in a corner of the World, where he had reign’d without any controul for many Ages; and it is a vexing Eye-sore to the Devil, that our Lord Christ should be known, and own’d, and preached in this howling Wilderness. Wherefor he has left no Stone unturned, that so he might undermine his Plantation, and force out of our Country.

It is our country, The Puritans' country, not the country of Satan’s supposed agents – and as such he lists the usual suspects: the heathen Indians and the Catholic French, against who the British were fighting at in the First French and Indian War at the time Mather was preaching the sermon. Both were not too available as sparring partners: the Indians, as far as they were pertinent to Massachusetts at the time, had already been fought and killed, and the French were, of course, a major world power that the British mother country had to bring up all its forces to fight. In cooperation with their Indian allies, they also directed raids at British settlements - one of these became notoriously known as the Schenectady massacre (February 8, 1690). Still, they were more a vague danger than a palpable threat to the community - and the community needed someone to put to trial, publicly.

Hence, in come the witches: these were easily available. Hell, anybody could be a witch, even your best neighbor!


An Intellectual's Reservations

The following passages are taken from The Third Curiositie and the table of contents on the first page of our handout.

III. If a Drop of Innocent Blood should be shed, in the Prosecution of the Witchcrafts among us, how unhappy are we! For which cause, I cannot express my self in better terms, than those of a most Worthy Person, who lives near the present Center of these things."The Mind of God in these matters, is to be carefully look'd into, with due Circumspection, that Satan deceive us not with his Devices, who transforms himself into an Angel of Light, and may pretend Justice and yet intend Mischief." But on the other side, if the Storm of Justice do now fall only on the Heads of those Guilty Witches and Wretches which have defiled our Land, How Happy!

&

II. Some Counsils, Directing a due Improvement of the terrible things, lately done, by the Unusual and Amazing Range of Evil Spirits, in Our Neighbourhood: and the methods to prevent the Wrongs which those Evil Angels may intend against all sorts of people among us; especially in Accusations of the Innocent.

What is his problem here? He needs to reconcile two irreconcilable claims: first, that everybody may be guilty of witchcraft, even while appearing innocent, second, that no innocent person may be penalized. He needs to unite a theological belief in the universal guilt of the Puritan colonies and a juridical belief in the presumption of innocence.


What is his self-understanding, as it is expressed in the text?


He's making much of being a historian, as we have seen - as a scholar, so his story is supposed to go, he approaches his topic impartially and emotionally uninvolved. Of course, he also had to sell his work - and there was actual editorial (maybe even: artistic?) work going on here. The book did not go from the pulpit straight into the heart.

There might have been more of these, if my book would not thereby have been swollen too big; and if some other worthy hands did not intend something further in these Collections for which cause I have singled out Four or Five, which may serve to Illustrate the way of dealing, wherein Witchcrafts use to be concerned; and I Report matters not as Advocate but as an Historian.

He also stresses that he “was not Present at any of them” (same paragraph) and that he didn’t hold personal grudges and prejudices against the people accused – that is, he is putting a distance between himself and the subject of inquiry, or appears to do so.

Strangely however, he begins his first case narration with a very personal note –

Glad should I have been, if I had never known this man, or never had this occasion to mention as much as the first Letters of his name. But the Government requiring some Account of his Trial to be Inserted in this Book, it becomes me with all Obedience to submit unto the Order.

G.B. stands for George Burroughs, a Puritan minister who seemed to have some brutality issues with his wives (who, obviously, he didn’t treat too well). This allegations of violence blended over into a trial in Salem (to where he was deported), where several indicted women named him as Satan’s chief messenger: a super-witch or – wizard, if you will.
When standing at the gallows he reputedly claimed, once again, his innocence and then said the Lord’s prayer, which witches and wizards were supposedly not able to do. People demanded he be exonerated from the gallows, when they heard him praying, but to no avail: he died.

The charges against him were pretty generic, as Mather presents them - your regular witchcraft compendium deported from Europe to America: supernatural strength plays a role, the invisible devil man that, Mather tells us, only GB is capable of seeing, and his leading and seducing a circle of female witches.

Obviously, Burroughs was not able to tell his story, so Mather had to do it for him (see the bottom of page 4 of out handout) – how is GB portrayed as speechless? Why does Mather do that? What are his interests in doing it? Would it even matter at all if Burroughs had been very conversant about defending himself?


Yes!

Mather wants to be authentic: his Wonders of the Invisible World was to be an authentically Puritan account of the witch trials, and as such it had to be dominated by a Puritan voice – his, Mather’s, voice. There was no way to portray Burroughs as anything else than a tacit and silent man who lies the moment he opens his mouth. Mather also doesn’t mention Burrough’s prayer at the gallows – guilt had to be absolute to make sure no innocent person was harmed, hence Mather makes sure not to take note of any mitigating circumstances.

Note how Mather tries to attach a strict dogmatical line on the Puritan experience - we read The First Curiositie, where he is spending some time on the Indian settlement of Mexico as a sort of hoax on the Old Testamental story of the 40 year pilgrimage through the desert, which the Puritans might take as very similar to their own situation in the new world. Also, he makes clear in that chapter that miracles were fine only as long as they happened under Christian auspices, not, however, under the hands of witches.

Session III - May 9, 2007 - Wonders of the Invisible World: The Corruption of the Apocalyptic Site

Alright then - here is the complete etext of the Wonders of the Invisible World (by Cotton Mather) - we will be reading the table of contents he gives us (THE WONDERS OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD), of course - as well as the
the Author's Defense, (which says a lot about the perception of the role he saw for himself!), and we will read one of the trials he describes, that of the Reverend George Burroughs (note what he is saying about Indians!)...he's also getting back to the Indians in his first Curiositie (aka, observation)....


The Context

Last week we read selected passages from Michael Wigglesworth’s apocalyptic mega-bestseller The Day of Doom, which describes, basically, a day of doom for absolutely everyone, and no exceptions. Of course, people did not even want to be an exception – the coming apocalypse would be a judgment for everyone, and therefore people wanted to be on the right side – God’s side – once the judging would begin.

Wigglesworth’s long poem is all about guilt – he’s looking for guilt inside himself and inside his audience.

In vain do they to Mountains say,
Fall on us, and us hide
From Judges ire, more hot than fire,
for who may it abide?
No hiding place can from his Face,
sinners at all conceal,
Whose flaming Eyes hid things doth 'spy,
and darkest things reveal.

Guilt, to him, is a Puritan thing – he does not take it and project it on some external forces (such as "barbaric heathens", "Barbaric Indian heathens", "Atheists" [who he nevertheless thinks are stupid]. Hence, the remedy for guilt is self-reflection – people were to take something from the poem and use it to look into their, supposedly, wrong ways and then to change them and themselves.


All that changed pretty soon – evil had always been sort of around for the Puritan settlers. It took them only a few years after their arrival to clash violently with the Pequot Indians, who were, to them, no more than a bunch of heathens.

Then in came witchcraft and gave evil a whole new face.



The Witch Trials

The American colonies were, fortunately, hesitant to adopt that feature of the early modern life: the witch hunt. Europe had had its first share of witch hunts back in the 15th century, and the witch craze lasted well into the 18th century. In America, on the other side, the phenomenon was restricted to a rather short period of time around the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, and it is closely linked with the name of Salem, Massachusetts. As in the old world, the fear of witches was not primarily a populist thing – rather, it was expressed most explicitly by the leading intellectuals of the day. One of these, in fact: by far the most important one in late 17th century America, was Cotton Mather (1663-1728), the son of Puritan minister and writer Increase Mather and, of course, the grandson of Reverend John Cotton, who had been the leading intellectual force of the first-generation Puritans. Increase Mather, the elder Mather had somewhat preceded his son and had written

An Essay For the Recording of
Illustrious Providences

which was published in 1684. The essay is a sort of supernatural best-of, recording strange and supernatural incidents, not only related to witches and witchcraft, in the New England area.

In 1688, Cotton Mather, the son, continued the family tradition and saw the publication of

Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions

where he describes his personal experience with Goody Glover, a woman who had been prosecuted and finally hanged for supposedly bewitching the 13 year old Martha Goodwin and her siblings. Mather had talked to her before her death and insisted that she confess and repent her deals with the devil. Naturally, she didn’t do that. Unlike his father, the younger Mather focused his attention on witchcraft as the most prominent sign of evil and decay.


Now, some of the points I wanted to stress in our lecture of the text, were -

Sin/Sinfulness: what role does sin play for Mather? Who are the sinners?

Decay: how does Mather see the New England site? When he published the book, some 70 years had passed since the arrival of the first Puritan settlers - is he optimistic about the state of the Puritan colonies, or pessimistic?

Mather's Role: what role does he see for himself in the development of New England as the site of an apocalyptic hope for salvation? What is his role?

In the Memorable Providences, Mather is recording a singular and unique case, that of the Goodwin family.

The witch craze was bigger when it returned in Salem, Ma., four years later, in 1692 - and for a short time, people in the colony were whipped into a witch frenzy, with all the dire consequences.

What happened?

The daughter of the Reverend Parris, Elizabeth Parris, and her cousin Abigail Williams showed symptoms similar to those of the Goodwin children four years before - talking in tongues, moving in a strange fashion, hallucinating, and so on. Pressured by their parents and the community, they finally accused three women of bewitching them. One of these was Tituba (once again, the picture we had in class: she has the weeds and herbs dangling from her basket, supposedly to brew some witches' brew. And note how stylish and snazzy Cotton Mather looks in the picture: where did that extravagant haircut go all out of a sudden?), who lived captured as a slave in the Parris household.

Between March and November 1692, more than 20 people were charged and executed in the Salem trials, until the Salem community finally came to its senses and stopped the witch hunt. The final trials were held in the spring of 1693, and noone was convicted there. Cotton Mather published The Wonders of the Invisible World in 1693 – the book chronicles parts of the Salem witch hunt, but it also defends, above all, the belief in witchcraft. Next time, we'll go deeper into the text - especially into Mather's notion of evil (and good), and how it relates to the history of New England!

Session II - May 2, 2007 - The City upon a Hill...will fall

To begin with - a link, namely to the library tutorial you need to sign up for some time over the next few weeks...
__________
__________

The class! On Columbus...and the Puritans...and Apocalypse!


The header for the day was -

The Apocalyptic Inception of American Literature

- I wouldn't want to push the point too far, but it's remarkable at least that the Puritans were not just happ-go-lightly nation builders who went to the new world because in the old world realty was really too expensive to build the site for a decent dissident community.

Once again, we started with John, the apocalyptist -

John, as we have seen in the excerpts we read is very specific that what he is preaching about is immanent, it must soon come to pass –

(Revelation 1.1) – The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place.

This was written some 1.900 years ago. No matter how much time is passing since the original Apocalypse/Revelation, the apocalypse-event is always immanent and about to pass – and if it is not yet, the believer must do his or her best to bring it about, to work for the apocalypse.

This mission – to bring about the apocalypse as a way to end history – pops up time and again throughout the development of Western civilization, and often it is taken up by thinkers or scientists or explorers who we explicitly think of as really modern and ultimately important for the development of modern civilization.

Isaac Newton (1643-1727) is one of these – one of the greatest scientists of modernity, he formulated, among other things, the general law of gravitation. Less known is the fact that he invested an awful lot of time and space on religious writings – and he concentrated largely on apocalyptic prophecy. Once again, apocalypse and prophecy become ways to approach the historical timeline – looking back on history, Newton thought, the prophecies of the book of Revelation and the book of Daniel would help make sense of the contents of history -

God gave the prophecies, not to gratify men's curiosity by enabling them to fore know things, but that after they were fulfilled they might be interpreted by the event, and His own providence, not the interpreter’s, be thereby manifested to the world. (Newton)

His work on The Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John was finally published in 1733, six years after his death.

While Newton’s apocalyptic take on history was reactive, you might say, taking it in an retrospective act to create an understanding of history, the reverse might be said about Christopher Columbus – his voyages to the Americas had the aim not only of expanding Spain’s sphere of influence but also, implicitly, of raising money and gold for a final crusade into the Middle East to regain Jerusalem. This, he thought, would happen under the leadership of one last world king reigning over the final age of planet earth, and that king would have to be Spanish, of course. He compiled a host of apocalyptic prophecies into one book, the Book of Prophecies, and used it to advertise his travels at the Spanish court, in order to raise money. When his ships arrive in the Americas in the 1490s, this seems like the beginning of a whole new chapter of history – to Columbus, however, this was only the first step in the end of human history. When Europeans had first set foot on the new continent, they had also ushered in the Last Judgment of the World.

The Puritans

The term Puritanism designates various religious groups of the 16th and 17th centuries who were united in the belief that the Anglican Church had not gone far enough in breaking with the Roman Catholic Church. It’s important to note that these people (who, for most the time, didn’t call themselves “Puritans”) were not stigmatised outcasts – they participated in the daily political and religious life of 16th century England and were represented in Parliament. Still, one of their concerns was to purify the English church from Roman influences (hence, “Puritans”) – and from the beginning that was an agenda they wanted to pursue from within the state. It was only later, after several internal schisms and struggles, that some of them did indeed break away from the English state and the Anlican state church.

Belonging to this group were the Pilgrims – a group of Puritan dissenters from the English midlands who had migrated to Amsterdam in 1607/1608 to escape religious pressure back home in England. After some 10 years in their Dutch exile, the congregation of dissenters was starting to fall apart – some were even moving back to England. In order to preserve the congregation and also attracted by the possibility to do missionary work, thoughts of an oversea colony came up. This would not be the first English colony on American soil, of course – a colony had been founded in 1607 in Jamestown, Virginia (and we also shortly hinted at the mysterious and spooky end of the colony in Roanoke, Virginia).

On September 6, 1620, finally, 102 members of the congregation set sail from the Netherlands, on board the Mayflower, and reached the American coast by the middle of November. They landed in present-day Massachusetts and founded Plymouth Colony.
The Plymouth group was comparatively small and tightly locked together – dissenters who went to the new world because the old world didn’t anywhere come close to offering them the religious and spiritual environment they sought for. As a group of migrants, the Plymouth pilgrims are often confused with a later and substantially larger group of Puritan emigrants.

After several smaller colonization attempts in the 1620s (one of them at Salem), the late 1620s saw other groups of Puritans depart from Europe, sail the Atlantic and found what became famously known as the Massachusetts Bay Colony – a relative mass migration setting in around, when governor John Winthrop (who was elected governor before the train even arrived at the American mainland) commanded a fleet to Massachusetts that would bring almost 1.000 Puritan settlers to the New World. They first settled around Salem, but soon relocated to what was later to become Boston. It was an exclusive community – political power in the colony could be shared only by those who where also full members of the congregation. They believed that mankind as a whole was under eternal damnation, but that a few had been chosen for salvation – the elect – and these few were consequently in a covenant with God. That covenant, or: contract, included that the elect had to take care that God’s laws were exercised in society.

Winthrop’s most famous and lasting contribution to the world of letters is the sermon he supposedly gave on board his ship, the Arbella, before the settlers disembarked. Most likely he gave the sermon when he and his fellow Puritans were still in Europe, but in any case it is an introductory sermon, setting the tone for the colonization enterprise these Puritans were about start. Originally, the sermon goes under the name of A Model of Christian Charity, but it is more widely renowned as the City upon a Hill sermon. In it, he is not talking at length about architecture and infrastructure of the new settlement, nor is he talking about building regulations or whatever: the city upon a hill comes in as a concluding image at the end of the sermon – he gives a very detailed list of the ideal virtues of the new settlers (such as charity), and then states that the colony will be to the world like a city upon a hill, that is out in the open, highly visible to everyone as a potential moral model and therefore under the obligation to be a moral model.

The following passage is taken from the very end of the text (and here is the complete text).

Now the onely way to avoyde this shipwracke, and to provide for our posterity, is to followe the counsell of Micah, to doe justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, wee must be knitt together, in this worke, as one man. Wee must entertaine each other in brotherly affection. Wee must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of other's necessities. Wee must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekeness, gentlenes, patience and liberality. Wee must delight in eache other; make other's conditions our oune; rejoice together, mourne together, labour and suffer together, allwayes haueving before our eyes our commission and community in the worke, as members of the same body. Soe shall wee keepe the unitie of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as his oune people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our wayes. Soe that wee shall see much more of his wisdome, power, goodness and truthe, than formerly wee haue been acquainted with. Wee shall finde that the God of Israell is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when hee shall make us a prayse and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, "the Lord make it likely that of New England." For wee must consider that wee shall be as a citty upon a hill. The eies of all people are uppon us. Soe that if wee shall deale falsely with our God in this worke wee haue undertaken, and soe cause him to withdrawe his present help from us, wee shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. Wee shall open the mouthes of enemies to speake evill of the wayes of God, and all professors for God's sake. Wee shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and cause theire prayers to be turned into curses upon us till wee be consumed out of the good land whither wee are a goeing.
I shall shutt upp this discourse with that exhortation of Moses, that faithfull servant of the Lord, in his last farewell to Israell, Deut. 30. Beloued there is now sett before us life and good, Death and evill, in that wee are commanded this day to loue the Lord our God, and to loue one another, to walke in his wayes and to keepe his Commandements and his Ordinance and his lawes, and the articles of our Covenant with him, that wee may liue and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may blesse us in the land whither wee goe to possesse it. But if our heartes shall turne away, soe that wee will not obey, but shall be seduced, and worshipp and serue other Gods, our pleasure and proffitts, and serue them; it is propounded unto us this day, wee shall surely perishe out of the good land whither wee passe over this vast sea to possesse it;

Therefore lett us choose life
that wee, and our seede
may liue, by obeyeing His
voyce and cleaveing to Him,
for Hee is our life and
our prosperity.

These good intentions – justice, mercy, love – lasted only a few years, if at all, before things started falling apart. Over the following few decades after Winthrop’s arrival in 1630, the Puritan community fell from grace step by step. Winthrop, alas, died in 1649, before things got really bad.

A short chronicle of the fall would include points like –

- Heresy: the Puritans’ strict interpretation of Protestant theology was soon expanded by heretics who revolted against it. The two most famous of these are Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643) and Roger Williams (1603-1684). Hutchinson was an independent preacher who held bible classes in her home. She was very successful in it and soon became a notable influence on the Massachusetts Bay Colony. She was finally expelled from the colony in 1638. Williams, of course, was one of the founders of Providence, RI – a pastor and theologian, he arrived in 1631 and proved to be just a little more radical than the Puritan establishment in his complete renunciation of any links with the Anglican church. He also believed that the state was in no position to interfere with its citizens’ religious beliefs, and that put him at conflict with other Puritan leaders who, in their communities, established their religion as virtual state religions.

In the late 1640s, the colony in Rhode Island was established officially – and one of its almost revolutionary features was the liberty of conscience its inhabitants enjoyed: everyone could choose every religion he or she pleased, and the colony soon was home to groups of Baptists and Quakers, for example, who had been persecuted and driven away in other parts of the colonial American world. There was a constant rhetorical fight going on between the liberal Rhode Island Colony and the older colonies.


- War: as early as 1637, the settlers went into open war with the Native Americans of the site, the Pequots. During the Pequot War of 1637, the largest part of the tribe was killed, while survivors were sold as slaves to the West Indies.


- Dogmatic Sloppiness: the first generation of Puritan settlers had generally been very pious and devoted to their faith. Their descendants in the new world, the second and third generation Puritans, began to shift their interests to more secular areas, especially into commerce. The colonies, after all, were rich in resources, and exploiting these could easily be regarded as more attractive than Puritan piety and spirituality. The original idealism – that desire to be a city upon a hill, a religious beacon to the world, had quickly faded under the strain of reality, and believers had somehow to be brought back to discipline.

That was one of the motivations of Michael Wigglesworth (1631-1705). A second-generation Puritan who had come to America in 1638, he was a minister, a medical doctor, and also a poet. By far his most popular work is the Day of Doom (1662 - see the link for the complete text, if you feel brave enough to read it), and we read parts of that. While it’s not exactly high-class poetry – in fact, it’s pretty boring in parts and somewhat long to read – it was incredibly popular in the 17th and 18th centuries and is generally hailed as the first American bestseller ever. He doesn’t do and say anything much in the poem, except:

- that things have gone really, really bad. The end is near, and you’d better believe it.
- that noone is going to get away with it. Everyone is guilty of sin against God, and everyone will have to pay.
- that there is hope only for the Saints to behave as piously as Puritans should.

Obviously, many Puritan settlers at the time felt that Wigglesworth was indeed right, that they had fallen to sin and that they had to reform their ways right away to avoid the worst, going to hell. Note that apocalypse/the day of doom is a very sudden and unexpected thing (it comes in the night) – there is no way to anticipate it. Its most interesting parts, to me, are revealed when Wigglesworth, the man, comes through and pushes away Wigglesworth, the die-hard Puritan rhetor on the end of the world. We talked about the following stanza -

All filthy facts, and secret acts,
however closly done,
And long conceal'd, are there reveal'd
before the mid-day Sun.
Deeds of the night shunning the light,
which darkest corners sought,
To fearful blame, and endless shame,
are there most justly brought.

Throughout the poem, he's almost consumed by guilt, literal, stone hard guilt gnawing at him before it gnaws at his audience - the "filthy deeds" are supposedly his before they are anyone else's. Where did a 17th century Puritan minister and teacher turn to when he wanted to discuss his apparent homosexual leanings? To his diary, of course.