>> Alright, let's
get started today.
I wanted to start by reviewing
some of the stuff that we talked
about at the end of last
time, which the piece
by Bruce Kuklick should have
helped you to understand
and to put into context.
The concept of type
and anti-type is sometimes
confusing to people.
Remember I said last time
that the type should
be considered something
like the dye that produces a
coin or the stamper that you ink
and produces the stamped image.
It's almost like a
reverse of the thing
that is going to be produced.
And it has no meaning
really in and of itself.
You don't care about
either the dye
that produces the
coin or the stamper.
You care about what's produced.
In that sense, the type is
not what we're interested in.
It's the anti-type that
we're interested in.
The thing that the
type produces.
The thing you might
say is the fulfillment
of the potential
within the type.
So here's a little bit
about the etymology,
which comes from the
Oxford English dictionary.
And you can see that
the definition is
that which is shadow
forth or represented
by the type or symbol.
And they in fact use the idea
of the dye, and they talk
about the way in
which that's part
of the etymology of the term.
So once you get those things
start, type and anti-type.
Type, when you're
thinking about the way
in which the term typological
human hermeneutics arose,
it's a way of reading the Bible.
A form of Biblical exegesis in
which the Old Testament is full
of types which are fulfilled by
the anti-types which are present
in the New Testament, and
of course the anti-type
of all anti-types
if Christ himself.
Later on, I suggested to
you when the Puritans come
to the New World,
they start to get away
from what you might
think of as strict
or of conventional notions of
typological reading and start
to use it as a method of
interpreting their entire world.
So that is, and in which
they think the Bible
as a whole now becomes the type,
and they and their experiences
in some sense are now the
anti-types that the types
of the Bible have foreshadowed
and which can be
interpreted in that way.
Let me give you a quick
example of this that comes
from some reading that actually
isn't I don't think for today,
but we'll take a look at it.
It's in the Norton anthology.
It's from the journal
of John Winthrop,
and this is on page
159 of your text.
And you can see how even the
littlest thing can be subjected
to a typological reading,
although this I guess is
somewhat unusual event
that therefore begs to
be interpreted typology.
It's the little section
of Winthrop's journal
on 159 that's called
overcoming Satan.
July 5th, 1632, at
Watertown there was,
in the view of diverse
witnesses, a great combat
between a mouse and a sick.
And after a long fight,
the mouse prevailed
and killed the snake.
The pastor of Boston,
Mr. Wilson,
a very sincere holy man hearing
of it gave this interpretation.
That the snake was the devil.
The mouse was a poor
contemptible people,
which God had brought hither
which should overcome Satan here
and dispossess him
of his kingdom.
Upon the same occasion,
he told the governor
that before he was resolved
to come into this country,
he dreamed he was here and
that he saw a church arise
out of the earth, which grew up
and became a marvelous
goodly church.
Right, it's a strange
little thing.
How does the, we don't really
know how the mouse defeats the
snake, but you can
see how something
like that immediately what
they'll do is, they'll go
and think of a way to
relate that to a kind
of Biblical reading and then
to take that Biblical reading
and apply it to their
own situation.
You might say that in fact this
little journal entry has the
structure of a sermon as
we'll see in a little bit,
but in this case, the text
comes not from the Bible
but from this little anecdote
of the mouse and the snake.
It is then read and interpreted
by means of the Bible
and then applied
to the situation
of the Puritans themselves
in the New World,
which is exactly what
Winthrop does in his sermon
as we'll see in a little while.
So, just want you
to see the ways
in which typological
thinking can work,
and part of what we'll do
is investigate typology
at work both in Bradford's
history
and in Winthrop's sermon.
But first, let's make
sure we've got some
of these basic principles down.
So John Calvin's institutes
of the Christian religion is a
founding text for the Puritans
who we might say are one
variant of Calvinism that arose
in the aftermath of
Calvin's life and teaching.
Calvin places particular
emphasis on God's sovereignty
and therefore on the idea
of fatedness, of providence,
on the lack of human free will.
And that's again something that
we should keep thinking about,
the way that the Puritans and
others interpreted this is
that in fact free will
does exist in one sense.
In the sort of earthly sense,
the sense of individuals
making choices,
at any moment you're
given a choice.
That for you is the
exercise of your free will.
The only catch is that God
always already knows how you're
going to choose in that moment.
So in some sense, it's already
destined or providential.
Calvin wants salvation not
at all to rest on good works,
which are not pendable,
but on God's eternal
and unwavering will.
So, remember I talked to you
last time about the covenant
of works and the covenant of
grace and the way in which
as a result of the fall,
evil comes into the world,
or at least the knowledge of
evil comes into the world.
This original sin is
something for which Adam
and his progeny are
all responsible.
It creates a debt to
God through disobedience
that can never be fully repaid.
Except that God sends down
Jesus Christ to repay that debt
at least for some people.
So, that is the only way
that salvation can occur,
through the agency of Christ
for a few chosen people.
So this Calvinist to a doctrine
of what we call election
in which God has chosen
some people for salvation
and others are not
chosen for salvation.
And the Puritans believed that
they are those who are elect.
They are the ones who
are chosen for salvation.
So, the principles that
are discussed by Calvin,
in a philosophical way and not
a schematic way, are codified
into this variant, which
is created in a meeting
of church elders, Synod, which
takes place in Dort in Holland
from 1618 to 1619, which is
the year before the Bradford,
and the pilgrims go from
Leiden to the New World.
And, the Synod of Dort is
directly addressing a heresy,
an anti-Calvinist heresy,
that they are worried
about which is called
Arminianism, which his named
after the Swedish
philosopher Arminius
who emphasized the ability of
sinners to respond to do good
or evil as they chose.
And therefore, he said, they
would earn their way into heaven
through good works, and
this is something akin
to other doctrines you
would find in other versions
of Christianity such
as Catholicism.
Good works have a
certain kind of efficacy,
not so for the Puritans.
There is no way to earn
your way into heaven,
and that is a result of the
total depravity of human kind.
So remember we came up with
this acronym tulip last time
to help you remember these five
different principles that come
out of the Synod of Dort.
The idea that after
original sin,
human beings are all damned,
they are totally depraved.
Their election is unconditional.
There's no strings on it.
You might say, there's no
way of human intervention
into the process of election.
God has already decided, and
there are no strings attached.
It is limited.
It's for some people
and not for others.
It's irresistible in the
sense that you don't get
to choose the time or the
place when you receive grace,
and when you receive,
you really receive it.
So that there's no
resisting it at all,
and once you have
it, you have it.
That's what they mean by the
perseverance of the saints.
Of course, what they
also mean is
that who the saints
are is already set.
God has already foreseen who
the saints are going to be.
So the elect already you might
say have a place in heaven,
the problem is they don't know.
Or they can't be sure.
No one can be sure that he
or she is among the elect.
That wouldn't be so bad except
for the Puritans were also
trying to create a polity,
a social organization, and
a politics that was based
on these principles in which
they wanted people who were full
of church members were the
ones who were running society.
So you need to figure out a
way to make the earthly church,
what they called the visible
church, resemble as closely
as possible the invisible
church.
So this is part of the Puritan
project in the New World.
Today we'll be talking a
little bit about the startup
or the setup of this project.
Next time, we'll be
talking about the ways
in which it starts to go awry.
And, in which compromises need
to be, but if you hold on to
that paradox, how can free
will and fatedness exist
at the same time for individual
human beings, and what kind
of coded conduct can
come out of this.
I mean, if you're elect and you
don't have to do anything good,
why should you do anything good?
Why don't you just get drunk
all day, secure the notion
that you're going to be
elect in the time comes,
when the time comes,
you'll be converted
and you'll get your one
way to the big, to heaven.
Why wouldn't you want to act
that way if you were a Puritan?
Sure.
>> Maybe because the type
of
person that God would choose
to be elected wouldn't have
the desire to be that way.
>> There you go.
If he says, the kind of
person that God would choose
to be among the elect wouldn't
have the desire to do that.
That's right.
You would sort of be calibrating
what you wanted to do
versus what you've been told
the elect person actually does,
so if you find yourself
tending toward sinfulness
and drunkenness, you would say
oh boy that's not a good sign
is it.
I'd better mend my ways maybe
the signs will be changing
at that point.
Or maybe my desires to
mend my ways is a sign
that I'm among the elect.
People sometimes ask, well
if you think that heaven is
so great and things are
really tough here on Earth,
why don't you just
kill yourself and get
up to heaven that much faster?
Well what's the problem
with that?
Yeah you'll be committing
a mortal sin
and therefore obviously
you weren't among the elect
to begin with.
The thing you have to
understand about these people,
that I will try to
get across today,
is that they are fundamentalists
and they really believe
this stuff.
They believe all of this.
They want to believe.
It's not even a matter of
wanting, they believe it.
The Puritans among the pilgrims,
and they want it to work.
So it's a problem for them
when they come across paradoxes
and contradictions and they try
to figure out ways to work for,
the idea that always is that
humans are fallible compared
to God, but it doesn't
lead them to a kind
of cosmopolitan understanding
of fallibility.
In other words, they have
faith about certain things.
That faith is predicated on the
idea that they are fallible.
That only God is infallible,
but there's no questioning
the faith itself.
So, the people wouldn't want
to make false confessions
of conversion.
They want real conversions
to happen.
They want to be among the elect,
and really most of them believe
that they will be
among the elect.
But, we'll see next time
that there are problems
that occur in this.
Again, I'm setting all this up.
I want to refer you back
to again where the endpoint
of the course is going
to be with Moby Dick.
That one of the things
that Melville sees
in Hawthorne's writing is
a continuing engagement
with these Puritanic ideas.
He calls it a touch
of Puritanic gloom.
And when we read Hawthorne,
you'll remember maybe.
How many of you said you
read The Scarlet Letter
in high school?
Okay. How many of you read
The Custom House along
with short story that's
called The Scarlet Letter?
Do you even know what
I'm talking about?
The Scarlet Letter in italics is
a book that contains two things.
One of them is a sketch
called The Custom House,
a long sketch called The Custom
House, which is introductory
to a long tale which in
quotation marks is called
Scarlet Letter which intended
to be only the first of a number
of tales that were to be
included in this volume,
but it got so long that it
became the volume itself.
So there's the novel The
Scarlet Letter has two parts.
In the first part,
which I'm actually,
going to read more closely
than you're probably used to.
In fact in certain ways
more important to me
than the long short
story itself.
Hawthorne has his
moment of thinking back
about what his ancestors are
thinking about him as a writer.
He thinks about the
beetle browed Puritans
who are looking over him.
Like his descendants are, what
is he a writer of stories?
Why he might as well
be a fiddler.
Writing doesn't rate, and
that's part of the dilemma
for the writer like
Hawthorne and Melville.
Is there a sense in which
there's something frivolous
about writing.
There's a larger sense in
which the culture, as we talked
about in the first day, the
culture is inclined to believe
that certain kinds of writing
are better than others,
and imaginative writing, what
we now consider the literary,
is not among those.
So there's a kind of
weird guilt that Hawthorne
and Melville are
working thorough,
but they're also trying to
change the status of writing,
to make arguments on
behalf of both the important
and the worth, the moral worth,
of the kind of writing
that they want to do.
Certain it is, Melville
writes, that this great power
of blackness in Hawthorne
derives its force
from its appeals to
that Calvinistic sense
of innate depravity
and original sin.
And now I think we're
getting a sense of what
that means, where it comes from.
How it's embedded in a
larger cultural logic.
From whose visitations,
in some shape or other,
no deeply thinking mind
is always and wholly free.
And remember I pointed
out all the kind
of weird hedging
that's on in there.
But one of the things you
might say is, that in terms
of that model of dominant,
residual, and emergent
in the moment that we're
looking at, in the 17th century.
When a new culture is brought
to the shores of the New World,
it quickly becomes
the dominant culture.
Puritan New England
dominates what is around it,
and ultimately dominates
the line
of American literary history
that Hawthorne becomes part of.
So what we see here, you might
say, is the continuing residue
of Puritanism in a time
when Puritanism should have
been pretty much left behind
in the wake of enlightenment.
Still, there's something.
Puritans were on to something.
And now in the modern
19th century,
we don't call it original sin,
but we can't get
away from it either.
Something, some shape or
other, has to be there
in that place occupying
original sin.
Keeping us honest, making
us sure of an understanding
that we are limited beings.
We no man can weigh this world
without throwing in something
like original sin to
strike the uneven balance,
so we're working our
way towards that.
So let's talk about
Bradford now.
What I'm hoping to show you
in some sense is how
Bradford's text is example
of that typological way
of looking at the world.
And last time, we were
talking about that excerpt
from a pamphlet that's
called Mourt's Relation
that was prepared
in 1620 or so just
after the Plymouth
Puritans had settled.
It was thought to be
co-written by Bradford
and someone named
Edward Winslow,
and is named Mourt's Relation
after a guy named George Mourton
who brought it back to England
saw it through the press.
Winslow would later
publish his own pamphlet
that was called Good
News from New England
that was four years
later in 1624.
And so, it's a tract that
takes the form of a history,
but as I suggested last time,
it may perhaps be presenting
an overly optimistic reading
of the circumstances that
they're encountering.
But it's really not
too much different
than the promotional tracts
that are famously written
by Captain John Smith trying
to encourage immigration
from England and Europe
into the New World.
If you compare Mourt's
Relation to Smith's writing,
many scholars believe
that Mourt's Relation
provides a more matter of fact,
slightly more trustworthy
account
of things than Smith's does.
One thing to know
about Bradford was
that he was a great linguist.
He became interested enough to
learn Hebrew in his old age.
He knew Greek and Latin, but
he wasn't at all interested
in native languages and
cultures as we will soon see.
So that's one of the paradoxes
you might say about Bradford.
And I think when you read the
history of Plymouth plantation,
one of the things you
see is where this idea
of virgin land starts
to come from.
You get the sense that the
wilderness is pretty much
deserted except for
a bunch of savages.
That really all the people
that there are in the New World
who matter are simply the small
group of Puritans, and of course
that is a consequence of the way
in which he's written
the thing up.
So, his thought has often
been described as writing
in something we might call
the Puritan plain style.
It seems to be just
matter of fact.
And that's supposed to be one
of the hallmarks of Puritanism.
As you'll see next week when
we'll get to Puritan poetry,
the Puritans actually
rewrite the book of Psalms.
They retranslate them in trying
to get away from the kind
of poetical translation they've
brought with them from England.
To try to get to
something that's closer.
They go back to the Old
Testament passage that suggests
that God tells the Israelites
to create and alter for him
and it should not be of
hune or graven stone.
They don't want anything carved.
Richard Mather writes the
preface to this new translation
and says, because God's alter
needs not our polishings.
It's enough by itself.
So we don't want
figurative language.
We just want a plain style, but
of course, one of the things
to say about that is that it's
not exactly true or rather,
their language is
very figurative.
The thing is that just it
depends on a whole symbolic
and figurative system that
we're calling typology.
So it's not a language that's
full of rhetorical flourishes
and metaphors, but it
depends on a sign system,
a system of symbols which means
that really it's anything
other than simply plain.
Alright, let's take a look at
the passage in Mourt's Relation.
Again, and I wanted you to
keep track of the dates,
and while you're at it you
should probably turn back now
to the other thing I asked you
to look at which is on page 114
of Plymouth plantation.
And that's the corresponding
passage,
so what we basically see is
that Mourt's Relation turns
out to be a kind of
draft for the history.
Their retelling the same events.
One of the co-authors of Mourt's
Relation is the person who's
writing this history of Plymouth
plantation, and at the time
that he's writing this, he is,
the time that he's recounting,
Bradford is the governor
of Plymouth plantation
and he's thinking back
and retelling the
story that's told here.
So again, let's just
take a look at it again.
Wednesday the 6th of September,
the winds coming east northeast,
a fine small gale, we
loosed from Plymouth.
The appearance of much
comforted us especially seeing
so goodly a land and wooded
to the brink of the sea.
It caused us to rejoice
together and praise God
that had given us once
again to see land.
And thus we made our
course south south west,
purposing to go to a river
ten leagues to the south
of the Cape, but at night
the wind being contrary,
we put round again for the bay
of Cape Cod; and upon the 11th
of November we came to
an anchor in the bay,
which is a good harbor
and pleasant bay.
Right and we see
all the stuff here.
It's got all these
different kinds of trees,
which are individually named.
It's a big harbor
where you can bring
in a thousand sail of ships.
You have wood and water.
The greatest store of
foul that we ever saw.
And he goes on.
As soon as we could,
we set ashore 15
or 16 men well armed fetch wood.
We had none.
They also go to explore.
He repeats again
he excellent it is.
Like the downs in
Holland but much better.
The crust of the earth a
spit's depth black earth wooded
with oaks, pines,
sassafras, juniper, blah blah.
At night our people returned,
but found not any person,
nor habitation, and laded
their boat with juniper,
which smelled very
sweet and strong and of
which we burnt the most part
of the time we lay there.
So it's a place where they
see it looks like a kind
of virgin land at
least at the start.
It's got all these
natural resources.
It's wonderful.
Its part, in other words
Mourt's Relation takes part
in that discourse of wonder that
we were talking about last time.
But they didn't see
anybody unlike Columbus,
they don't find people
innumerable,
and it takes them a while
to meet up with the natives.
For a long time, if you
read into Mourt's Relation,
one of the things that you
see is they find little kind
of remnants of things
that people would've left,
but they don't meet
people themselves.
Now, let's take a look
in the Norton here,
chapter 9 of their voyage
and how they passed the sea
and of their safe
arrival at Cape Cod.
So we see the date is the same.
It's September 6th, these
troubles being blown over
and now being all-compact
in one ship.
They put to sea again with a
prosperous wind, which continued
to first days together which
was encouragement under them,
yet according to the usual
manner, many were afflicted
with seasickness, and I may
not omit here a special work
of God's providence.
So, immediately you're
getting this idea
that there's something
providential,
good fate, that God has seen.
There was a proud and very
profane man, one of the seamen
of a lusty able body, which
made him the more haughty.
He would always be
condemning the poor people
in their sickness and
cursing them daily
with grievous execrations.
And did not let to tell them
that he hoped to cast off half
of them overboard before they
had come to the journey's end
and to make merry
with what they had.
And he would by gently
reproved, he would curse
and swear most bitterly,
but it pleased God before
they came half sea's
over to smite this young
man with a grievous disease
from which he died in
a desperate manner.
And so was himself the first
that was thrown overboard.
We call that what cosmic
irony or something like that.
And you can see in that,
that's God's providence,
but we can see a little bit
of vindictiveness in it.
And that's something that we're
going to be thinking about.
What's the interplay of the
charity that they're supposed
to be pursuing, and some of the
other impulses that come along
with having in your mind
that you are a chosen people.
Let's take a look at
the middle of 115 here,
and let's take a
look at what we find.
Being thus arrived in a good
harbor and brought safe to land,
this is the first
full paragraph on 115,
they fell upon their knees
and blessed the God of heaven
who had brought them over
the vast and furious ocean
and delivered them from all
perils and miseries thereof.
Again to set their feet on
the firm and stable earth,
their proper element,
and no marvel
if they were thus joyful seeing
why Seneca was so affected
with sailing a few miles on
the coast of his own Italy
as he affirmed that he
had rather remain 20 years
on his way by land than
pass by sea to any place
in the short times so tedious
and dreadful was
the same onto him.
So this isn't typology.
This isn't citing the Bible,
but it does have something
in common with that.
Again, it's that same kind of
comparison that you see here.
It's like the downs in
Holland but much better.
This is like the experience
of Seneca but much worse,
and that's the kind
of comparison
that characterized the
history of Plymouth plantation.
There's a sense in which what
Bradford does is look back
to the past as a way of showing
how much worse the current
chosen people have it.
You think it was bad
for them in the Bible?
So much worse for us.
Seneca he was a wise revered
Stoic philosopher, he complained
about just a little bit of
seasickness so much around,
just sailing around that
Italy that never wanted
to get in a boat again.
But look what we did.
We sailed all the way
across the Atlantic.
So much the worse for us.
And then, there's kind of a
moment that Bradford takes here.
Right here after that.
And it's a signal moment.
A moment that in fact
asked you to highlight it.
And he's pausing rhetorically
and he asks us to pause,
and it's worth looking at.
But here I cannot stay but make
a pause and stay half amazed
at this poor people's
present condition.
And so I think will
the reader too
when he well considers the same.
One of the things you
can see is there's a kind
of awareness of a
readership here.
And that's kind of in part
because Bradford is writing this
in 1630 when Winthrop's group
of Puritans is about to arrive,
as we'll see that group
of Puritans doesn't have
exactly the same understanding
of Calvinism that this
group of Puritans does.
There's no guarantee at this
moment that the Puritan mission
or the Puritan civilization here
in Plymouth is going to survive.
So Bradford is both describing
and writing a work
that's clearly of advocacy
with a future reader in mind.
Some people would say
that future reader is
his own people's progeny.
Thinking about ways in
which they are going
to be justifying what they've
done to future generations
and using that justification
as a way
of inspiring those
future generations
to continue that project on.
So he's aware of a reader,
and here he actually
addresses the reader.
I think you're going
to be amazed reader.
If you pause, as I'm
doing, to take stock
and think about the situation.
Being thus passed
the vast ocean,
and a sea of troubles
before in their preparation
as may be remembered by
that which went before,
they had now no friends to
welcome them or inns to refresh
or entertain their
weather beaten bodies.
No houses or much less towns to
repair to, to seek for sucker.
And one of the things
to say right here is
that this is taking place in the
aftermath of the third chapter,
which talks about the
Holland experience,
and some of those chapters
that talk about it after that.
I gave you a tiny
little excerpt from that.
It's on the black board site.
If you haven't taken a look
at it, take a look at it.
It's a couple paragraphs long,
but one of the things it does is
it makes a sense of comparisons
within Holland where there are
towns extensively for sucker.
But one of things you find
is that Holland is just
as treacherous in many ways.
It's a hospitable place,
it seems civilized,
it is no good for the Puritans.
People are against them.
They are being persecuted
even there.
So you might say that's
rationing up the stakes again,
even the towns that were helping
them weren't such great towns.
Here don't even have that.
It is recorded in scripture
as a mercy to the apostle
and his shipwrecked companies
that the barbarians showed
them no small kindness
and refreshing them.
And you'll see here
that this comes
in the Acts of the Apostles.
That book of the New Testament
that's written by Luke
which talks about the immediate
missionary work that goes
on in the aftermath of
Christ's crucifixion.
So, the apostles go out as
these current saints are doing
and they go out and meet a
bunch of barbarians and try
to convert them, but guess
what those barbarians gave
them refreshments.
These barbarians when
they met them as,
oh we haven't met
the barbarians.
He's talking on and
saying, look,
our situation is really terrible
and then there's
these barbarians.
Oh, you haven't met
the barbarians yet.
Well, you will see that, now ask
yourself why does he break the
chronology right there?
It's not there in
Mourt's Relation.
It took them a while
to find these people.
They would see signs,
but they don't find them
for quite a while.
What's the point of it?
One of the things you can see is
again, it's a rhetorical moment.
He's stopping and taking stock.
He's addressing the reader,
and how he's going
to break chronology.
He's going to foreshadow
their future meetings
with the Indians, and he's going
to foreshadow them in such a way
that you already know how
to interpret those
Indians when you see them.
What are they?
They're barbarians, and
they're worse barbarians
than Biblical barbarians because
the Biblical barbarians gave the
apostles sucker.
And these savage barbarians,
when they met with them
as after will appear, were
ready to fill their sides full
of arrows than otherwise.
So again, you can see
that one of the things
that Bradford is doing is subtly
manipulating the history too
here and it doesn't
stop at that.
If you go back to this, you'll
see what the land looked like.
It seems like a pretty good
place full of natural resources.
It's better than Holland.
Like it but much better.
The earth is a spit's deep,
excellent black earth.
You can plant stuff here.
Ah well, but for the season, he
tells us here in the history,
it was winter and they
didn't know the winters
of that country know them to be
sharp and violent and subject
to cruel and fierce storms.
Dangerous to travel to
known places much more
to search an unknown coast.
And again look at this
constant comparative logic.
Bad enough if you have a map
or you know where you're going
but look what we had to do.
We had no idea where
we were going.
And besides, what could
they see but a hideous
and desolate wilderness full
of wild beasts and wild men.
Again, on the date that
he's talking about,
he didn't know anything
about the wild men.
They hadn't really seen beasts,
and he wasn't interested
before with beasts.
He was interested in
all this good stuff.
What's happened?
What multitudes there might
be of them he knew not,
but it's here we're going to
get another moment of typology.
We're going to get
a Biblical story.
He'll be compared to
the current situation.
The current situation will
be not only the fulfillment
of that story, but
it'll be a lot worse.
Neither could they as it were
go up to the top of Pisgah view
of this wilderness a more goodly
country to feed their hopes,
and the footnote tells
you that's the mountain
where Moses could see
the promised land.
So he had some sense that the
promises were to be fulfilled.
These guys only had faith.
For which so ever way
they turned their eyes,
telling a parenthetical
save upward to heavens,
that's the only sucker
you're going to get.
Right up there, can't
look down here.
The Earth, forget it.
Only God. Which so ever
way they turned their eyes,
save upward to the heavens,
they could have little solace
or content in respect
of any outward objects.
For summer being done,
all things stand upon them
with a weather beaten face and
the whole country full of woods
and thickets represented
a wild and savage hue.
If they looked behind them,
there was the mighty ocean,
which they had passed.
And now as a main bar and
gulf which separates them
from the civil parts
of the world.
If it be said that they
had a ship to succor them
which is true, but what heard
they daily from the master
and company but that with speed
they should look out a place
with their shallop where they
would be at some near distance
for the season was such as
he would not stir from then
until a safe harbor
was discovered
by them where they would be.
And he might go without danger.
And that victuals consumed
a place but he must
and would keep the fishing
for themselves in return.
So, don't look for
a ship to help you.
Got to find your own stuff.
We're definitely
leaving ourselves enough
to make the ocean voyage back.
We're not staying here.
You guys are staying on
your own really soon,
the captain is telling them.
Yea, it was muttered by some
that if they got not a place
in time, they would turn them
and their goods ashore
and leave them.
Let it also be considered
what weak hopes of supply
and succor they left
behind them, that might bear
up their minds in this sad
condition and trials they were
under and they could
not but be very small.
And again going back to
the conditions at Holland.
It is true, indeed,
the affections and love
of their brethren in Holland was
cordial and entire towards them,
but they had little power
to help them or themselves;
and how the case stood
between them and the merchants
at their coming away hath
already been declared.
What could now sustain them but
the spirit of God and His grace?
May not and ought
not the children
of these fathers rightly say.
In other words, you who
are reading this book.
Our fathers were Englishmen,
which came over this great
ocean, and were ready to perish
in this wilderness, but
they cried unto the Lord,
and He heard their voice and
looked on their adversity.
Let them therefore praise
the Lord, because He is good
and his mercies endure forever.
And then he ends
this with this idea
that the wonderful works of God.
So you can see the
logic of this.
This is very Puritan logic
in its typological
thinking in action.
This new-ish kind of typology.
It's what you do as you look
back to the Bible for precedent
and then you think
of your own situation
in terms of that precedent.
It gives you some hope,
but you also understanding,
and you might say, well
gee what is he doing.
He's saying, it's so much worse
for us than it was for them,
but again with the
logic of the Puritans,
you would see that's
the cause in a funny way
for even more hope because God
afflicts those worst whom he
loves best.
He gave the Israelites
a hard time.
He's giving us a worse time.
He really took care
of the Israelites.
He's really going
to take care of us.
Why, because we're living
in New Testament time.
Not only that, we're
living in the fulfillment
of New Testament time
hence the final emphasis
on God's grace, God's mercy.
So that's Puritan logic for you.
It's the same logic that goes
from the covenant of works
to the covenant of grace.
Covenant of works, big fall,
then risen up to grace
end up in a higher place.
So that's the logic.
It's worse for us but
better for us in the end.
Just a couple of
other things then.
This is an example of
the way in which one
of the things that's
going on is a kind
of heightened level
of abstraction.
If you go back here, you'll
see that he's quite interested
in certain details
of the coastline.
By the time you get to Plymouth
plantation, he doesn't care
about those details anymore.
It's all a hideous and
howling wilderness.
It's almost like everything
that's actually there has got
to be erased so that the
Puritans can rewrite themselves
onto the landscape.
So here's just a little moment,
but again it gives
you this sense of it.
This is from Mourt's Relation.
It's about a battle when
they meet the Indians.
One of our company, being
abroad, came running in
and cried, they are
men, Indians, Indians,
and with all their arrows
came flying amongst us.
Our men ran out with all
speed to recover their arms,
as by the good providence
of God they did.
In the meantime,
Captain Miles Standish,
having a snaphance ready, made
a shot, and after him another.
After they two had shot,
other two of us were ready,
but he wished us not to
shoot till we could take aim.
Okay so it's a battle
is going on.
And then we find all of this.
We heard three of their pieces
go off, and the rest called
for a firebrand to
light their matches.
One took a log out of the
fire on his shoulder and went
and carried it unto them,
which was thought did not a
little discourage our enemies.
The cry of our enemies
was dreadful,
especially when our men ran
out to recover their arms.
Their note was after
this manner.
Woach woach ha ha hach woach.
Our men were no sooner
come to their arms,
but the enemy was
ready to assault them.
Let's look at the corresponding
passage of Plymouth plantation.
This is on page 119.
So from the cry of our
enemies was dreadful.
Here we get this.
This is about 12
lines down from 119.
Men, Indians, Indians, and with
all their arrows came flying
amongst us.
Okay so we got that.
Their men ran with all
speed to recover their arms,
as by the good providence
of God they did.
In the meantime, of those
that were there ready,
two muskets were discharged at
them, and two more stood ready
in the entrance of
their rendezvous.
I don't think Standish gets
a shout out in this one.
He's here, but we're
too busy for that.
We got to make it
more abstract here.
The cry of the Indians
was dreadful,
especially when they
saw their men run
out of the rendezvous toward the
shallop to recover their arms.
The Indians wheeling
about upon them.
But some running out with
coats of mail on, and cutlasses
in their hands, they
soon got their arms
and let fly amongst them and
quickly stopped their violence.
Now look at the slight
difference
in that passage alone.
The cry of the Indians
was dreadful.
No sense that they had language,
instead they are
simply crying out.
They're kind of wheeling
about creating what seems
to be a kind of chaos.
And I told you Bradford
was a linguist,
but he wasn't interested
in the native languages,
and rhetorically he becomes
less interested when he comes
to write the history
of Plymouth plantation.
So, that little phrase
there is excised,
and all the Indians do is
get to have a kind of crying.
No sense that they were able to
speak or communicate in any way.
What's at stake here is
creation of the Indians
as a set of barbarians.
And more than that
we might argue,
a set of Biblical
type barbarians.
Worse than the Biblical
type barbarians,
and you know what happens
to barbarians in the Bible.
You can get rid of them.
God takes care of them for you
or he licenses you
to take care of them.
And that's exactly what happens.
Ultimately, the Pequot tribe
is wiped out by these Puritans.
And even their minister
John Robison who's back
in Holland writes
to them and says,
you know you might have
converted a few before you
killed them all.
Or you might have used that
kind of time honored method
of killing their leaders
and not everybody.
And they basically write back
and say, you had to be there.
[ Laughter ]
>> Right? If you'd been
there,
you would've realized those
were not options, just massacre.
So they're not, they don't see
themselves as missionaries.
They're done with that.
What they see themselves as,
that's in some sense different
from the Spanish in South
America who do have a sense
of mission as well as a sense
of murder, theft, and repine,
but there's no missionary
impulse really among the
Puritans where it's
really kind of submerged.
You see that here.
They just simply are caught up
in their own Biblical drama.
And they write the history of
the New World as a continuation
of the history of
the people of Israel
and the Christians thereafter.
So these are the things I want
you to see about Bradford.
How he uses this set
of rhetorical devices,
they have to do with typology.
They have to do with
a heightening
of the abstraction
of the New World.
The transformation of the
world of Mourt's Relation,
which is a world
of wonder still,
into a world of no
wonder at all.
A world of only savagery,
barbarism, a wilderness
that is howling and
inhospitable.
In some sense you might say,
they erased what's there,
sketched it all over in black
so that their own light can
shine out more brightly.
That's the rhetorical
thing that he's doing here,
and it's very much in
keeping with the kind.
It's almost like a more
hardhearted version
of what we see Winthrop
trying to do.
There's a sense in what
Bradford, in what comes
across in Bradford in these
particular passages is the
darkness of the New World.
Whereas Winthrop in
some sense in a model
of Christian charity is trying
to concentrate on the light.
And the image that he comes
up with at the end is an image
that has everything
to do with this idea
of creating light
in the New World.
So let's take a look now
at Plymouth plantation,
but there are a few things I
want to tell you about Winthrop
and his Puritans as well.
I think you'll get a sense of
this in that Berkavitch article
which is called the Puritan
vision of the New World.
It's worth saying a few
things more about it.
The Purtaisn who came with
Winthrop were more kind
of middle of the road Puritans.
They weren't quite as
doctrinaire as the Puritans
who were part of the pilgrims.
And remember the thing
about Plymouth is
that they actually
tried an experiment
in communal property holding.
When they started out, the
land was held in common
and everybody was kind
of shareholders in this,
but property was
going to be held.
They thought it was a way
of knitting people
together more effectively.
That is a kind of
radical version
that these joint stock
companies that they belonged
to might be organized
and Winthrop's Puritans
don't do that.
They are much more interested
in as what we might think
of as individual, the problems
and rights of the individual,
and that's one of the things
that Winthrop himself has
to combat as he's trying
to give this sermon.
So there's some things
to know demographically
about these people.
Winthrop starts what's
called the great migration.
It starts in 1630
and this migration
to the New World
takes about ten years.
And over that ten-year period,
you have quite a
few coming across.
I think the number is
something like ten thousand,
no twenty thousand
follow Winthrop's group.
And there have been demographic
studies of what the people are
like in this great migration.
It's interesting
to think about it.
10% of the people
were poor servants.
I'll give you these figures
in the post lecture notes,
which I'll get up today.
10% of them were
unskilled laborers
and therefore lower class.
The combination of aristocrats,
children of aristocrats
like second and third
sons of aristocrats,
and complete underclass
riff raff,
together they make up only 1%.
So that's 21% accounted for.
The rest of them, 79%,
the bulk of these people,
were what were referred
to as middling sorts.
You might think of
them as middle class.
They were artisans, tradesmen,
shopkeepers, independent
farmers.
Not everyone who came with
Bradford was a Puritan,
but even those people who were
Puritans, weren't only rebels
against a state of
religious persecution.
They were also seeking a
kind of economic opportunity
in the New World as well.
There was a study recently
of the Puritans called
profits in the wilderness.
It was a pun because most people
think if you say that title,
you would assume they
meant Biblical prophets,
but its profits with an 'f.'
It's about economics.
And one of the things
they say is, the Puritans
who came were interested
in both things.
They were interested in
getting ahead spiritually,
or not being persecuted, and
they were also interested
in getting themselves to have
a better economic future.
So, they belonged to what was
called joint stock companies.
That means they were
shareholders in this enterprise.
They had to raise money also.
It's not cheap to send boats
across the Atlantic
with supplies.
So the idea was they created
these joint stock companies.
They were shareholders
back in England.
They were shareholders
amongst the company themselves.
They would come.
They would farm.
They would do everything
else in the New World.
They would send back
stuff to England
and profits would be made, and
these profits would be shared.
So that's a sense in
which they were part
of an economic enterprise.
It's how they fund their
way across the Atlantic.
And I think that's important to
remember as a kind of context
for everything that
we're thinking about.
Certainly, it's the context
of Winthrop's sermon.
It's not just a sermon
that's supposed
to promote certain Biblical
ideals, he's speaking
to a very particular audience
that has a demographic make-up,
and he's aware of both their
concerns, and their tendencies.
Now one thing to say
about sermons generally.
The Puritan sermon will
generally take this form.
It will start out
with a Biblical text,
often very short Biblical text,
and then you'll get a section
that's called the explication.
You'll get a quick gloss
on this Biblical text.
A quick interpretation
of this Biblical text,
and then you will get a longer
section that's called the
doctrine in which a larger
doctrine behind the text
and its explication
is laid out for you.
And then you will get what's
called propositions and reasons.
Sometimes it takes the form of
questions and answer session
in which different facets of the
doctrine are explored, questions
and answers might be raised
and then gotten rid of,
and then finally you will
get a section that's called
application in which you're made
to understand why it is you've
heard this particular sermon.
Why the message has been given
to you and that is the form
of the typical sermon
as it would be preacher
by a member of the clergy.
Now, it may well be that the
most famous sermon that comes
out of Puritan America,
which we read for today,
is in fact atypical
because it's not a church.
It's not preached by a
clergyman, it's in fact
by a member of the laity.
And it's therefore
called the lay sermon.
And one of the things we would
say is that prominent people
like John Winthrop
were permitted
to give sermons on
certain events.
And so Winthrop takes,
who becomes the governor
of Massachusetts Bay colony,
takes advantages of this
and gives this sermon.
And, I want to say a little
bit more about the way
in which this sermon works,
because it isn't the
same as other sermons.
Let's take a look
at it therefore.
It takes place in your
book it's page 147.
It's called the model
of Christian charity,
and it starts off in this way.
God almighty in His most
holy and wise providence,
hath so disposed of the
condition of mankind,
as in all times some must be
rich, some poor, some high
and eminent in power
and dignity,
others mean and in subjection.
Now, what immediately
do you notice
about that as a starting point?
You can flip the
page if you want.
Where, how does this
structure that's given to you
in the Norton anthology
map on this structure
that I just told you about.
What part is that
that I just read?
Yes?
>> It takes the place
of a Biblical text.
>> That's right.
It takes the place
of a Biblical text.
There's no Biblical text here.
I mean there is a Biblical text.
It comes out of Saint Paul.
It's a very famous one actually.
It's where he talks about
giving up childish things,
and it's about charity in the
original King James translation.
Now call it Paul's Hymn to Love.
I'll give you an excerpt
from it in the notes
that you can see it, but
in the original King James
it's charity.
So that's the text.
He doesn't cite the text.
He could've, he's done
something different.
He's given you in lieu
of a Biblical text,
he gives you a model.
Now it's being called a
model of Christian charity.
His audience probably would've
thought, well if we're going
to be talking about charity,
we're going to be
clearly going to Paul.
That's the place that you'd go.
Fine, so why begin this way.
God almighty in His most
holy and wise providence,
hath so disposed of the
condition of mankind,
as in all times some must be
rich, some poor, some high
and eminent in power
and dignity,
others mean and in subjection.
Now if you take a moment to look
at the piece that I assigned
to you from this book, which is
this brand new literary history
of America.
It's kind of like one
of Entertainment Weekly's
top books of the year.
It's gotten a lot of place
for an academic book,
but in a way it's interesting
because each of these essays
that are in here, and I've given
you a few to read in the course
of the term, are about
2,500 pages long,
which is a pretty short
length for an academic essay.
In fact, in a panel discussion,
I've kind of joked the first
kind of academic reader,
this book makes good bathroom
reading if that's what you do.
You can pretty much polish
off 2,500 words very quickly.
And they're meant to
be sort of invitations
to think about a text again.
So this piece that I
asked you to look at,
the city on a hill subtitle is
John Winthrop explains the bonds
of community.
It's written by one of his
descendants, Elizabeth Winthrop,
and if you look at it, in some
sense it's making an argument
on behalf of Winthrop.
Winthrop, the Puritans, the
sermon have gotten a bad rep.
Their meanings have
been misrepresented.
By the end of the hour,
you'll see one prime person
who's done some misrepresenting
of the meanings of this
sermon, and she really wants
to bring back this idea
of, the radical idea,
of a community that's
formed in the bonds of love.
I would say to you actually
that's still pretty much a
radical idea just
presented that way.
Emerson would later say that a
state that's based on the power
of love hasn't been tried yet.
And if you look at our current
state, around the United States,
and we don't love each
other very much do we.
So, maybe if we did
it would be better.
Of course, there's a
lot of other things
that that interpretation
of the sermon
and the Puritan is
sweeping aside.
I want to give you
one example of that.
So, when she talks
about this on page 29.
She says, she's speaking,
I think it's good
and gives you a vivid
sense of the sermon
and where it was preached.
She says, we don't know
really, where it was,
but I think most
scholars tend to think
that this sermon was
preached when they're
on the verge of reaching land.
So preached on the boat,
which is called the Arbela,
and he's about to, he's telling
them we're about to get there
so we need to talk and this
is what I'm going to say.
He says, speaking directly
to the diverse members
of the expedition.
Winthrop began his
sermon by attempting
to explain why God
made all men different.
And from these reasons,
he argued stemmed
important implications
for their new community.
True enough.
The first reason according to
Winthrop was to hold conformity
with the rest of his
works, being delighted
to show forth the glory of
his wisdom in the variety
and difference of the creatures.
Okay then.
Diversity then is inherently
superior to uniformity
as a reflection of
all of God's parts.
The second reason for
diversity, Winthrop continued,
was so that God quote
might have more occasion
to manifest the work
of his spirit.
First upon the wicked and
moderating and restraining them
so that the rich and mighty
should not eat up the poor,
nor the poor and despised rise
up against their superiors
and shake off their yoke.
Let's stop there and see
if there's a kind of trick
in the argument that
she's making there.
And since we're being
self-conscious this term,
we want to keep it,
we want to see works
of advocacy and persuasion.
What's the trick
that, there's one word
that she's using here that's
in some sense the argument
she presents turns on it,
but there's something
slightly dodgy about it.
Anybody? I'll read it again.
The second reason for
diversity, Winthrop continued,
was so that God might
have more occasion
to manifest the work
of his spirit.
First upon the wicked and
moderating and restraining them
so that the rich and mighty
should not eat up the poor,
nor the poor and despised rise
up against their superiors
and shake off their yoke.
Yeah?
>> Manifest.
>> He's what?
>> Manifest.
>> What's manifest?
>> [inaudible]
>> So why would manifest
be the trick word?
Have more occasion to manifest
the work of his spirit.
>> Thinks he's doing
the work of God.
>> Okay, to me that
doesn't
seem entirely contradictory.
I mean, part of what
Winthrop does want people
to do is he wants to show
how our work should manifest
God's providence.
So this idea of manifesting
is sort of making clear,
so that doesn't make it quite
as problematic as other things.
Yeah?
>> Yoke.
>> Yoke. Yoke's a good
word.
>> What's the definition
of
the word in that passage?
>> Of yoke?
>> Yeah.
>> It's what oxen have.
You throw it off.
In this case, the poor have it.
And we don't want
them to throw it off.
>> I just got the sense
of yoke as an egg.
>> It's not yoke with
an lk, yoke with a ke.
>> Ah, okay.
>> Anybody else?
>> If he's talking about
God
being manifest through his work
on Earth then he's not
making sense [inaudible] it's
like a common humanity
as opposed to slavery
>> Okay, now we're
starting
to get at something.
We have this idea of stressing
the common humanity instead of,
it's not quite slavery
but it's poor.
Some people are definitely
going to be mean
and that doesn't mean nasty.
That means low and
in subjection.
So you're not exactly
enslaved, but you're not free.
So there is a sense
of oppression.
Yeah?
>> It just seems kind of
strange
that the rich would
not oppress the poor,
yet the poor still have a yoke,
which would kind of be like,
>> It's a comfy yoke, you
can put a little velvet
on it or pad it.
It's not so bad.
[ Laughter ]
>> But then they should
not throw off that yoke
>> Well you need the yoke.
Somebody's got to work.
Who's going to plow the fields?
With Winthrop has
done you might say,
he has a sermon that's called
a model of Christian charity,
and he begins it with
a defense of hierarchy.
Some were born rich,
and some were born poor,
some were born mean
and in subjection,
some were born to rule.
And that is not accidental, in
fact, that's part of God's plan.
Okay the trick from my
perspective is the way that she,
Elizabeth Winthrop, describes
what John Winthrop does.
John Winthrop talks a little
bit about difference here.
Differences among
people, and he's thinking
about differences
in degree and rank.
She uses a word that
we all love these days
if we're good multiculturalists.
What is that word but diversity.
She says this is
about diversity.
Diversity is inherently superior
to uniformity as a reflection
of all of God's parts, and it
helps her to make the argument
that there's something good
and worth reconsidering
in Winthrop's sermon,
because we all love diversity.
Diversity's great.
Look at us all around here.
Look at your professor,
he's brown,
isn't that great diversity.
[ Laughter ]
But he doesn't mean
that kind of diversity.
For him that might've
even been a radical idea,
but the difference here is
not about cultural diversity.
It's about economic difference.
It's about social inequality.
I'm sounding like
Walter Ben Michaels now.
There's a famous argument that
Walter Ben Michaels makes.
At least one of you heard
him make it ad nauseam the
other day.
In which he says,
look we all feel
that we're good progressive
lefties
if we support multiculturalism
but that does nothing
to address social inequality
and the real social injustice.
If we're more diverse
that just means
that proportionally there
are more African Americans
and Asian Americans in
the top tier of society
than there used to be, so great.
20% African Americans would
mean 20% among the rich,
20% among the middle, and
20% among the abject poor,
but you still have
the abject poor.
You just feel better
about them now.
And what she's doing is in some
sense getting away from the fact
that the primary
kind of diversity
that he is defending
is economic inequality.
He's defending hierarchy.
He's defending the organization
of human culture
in rich and poor.
Again, in the context
of a communal experiment
that they knew to have
happened in Plymouth
where there wasn't the same
kind of economic diversity
or inequality because people
were engaged in the kind
of communal property
experiment, which didn't work.
Why would you begin a sermon
like this, which is supposed
to be about charity,
with a defense
of hierarchy and inequality.
A Biblical, a divine defense,
why would you do that.
Any thoughts?
Yeah.
>> [inaudible] why should
I
give charity to someone else,
we're all on the same page, as
opposed to a hierarchal system.
If you accept the fact
that you're upper class,
or someone else is upper
class, you embrace it
and realize some
people are lower class.
And that opens up the
possibility of charity.
Charity to someone, the one
in need, one less fortunate.
So when hierarchy is supported.
It's not a bad thing, you
shouldn't be afraid of it,
you should embrace it
and then doing that,
you should welcome in charity.
>> I think that's right.
I think that's part of
what he's trying to get at.
He says in some sense,
charity is good and it's a good
that we need to promote.
It's a form of divine love, and
it is more clearly necessary
because of the fact
of inequality.
It means that the, it
also, the rich realize
that they have an
obligation to be charitable
because they're rich,
because there are poor people
who depend on them.
There is a system of obligations
in which the rich's
obligation to the poor is clear.
The poor also have a
system of obligation.
They understand that
the owe something.
They owe labor, they
need to work hard,
so one of the things
you might say is
that inequality creates a kind
of hierarchy that has a place
of binding people
together in a way
that they wouldn't be bound
together if they were all equal
and didn't owe anybody anything.
So what he's defending
you might say is hierarchy
because it's a system
of obligation.
Yes?
>> I was just going
to say that it seems
like the second point he
makes is a rhetorical move
to placate his audience.
Yes, I am creating this
radical idea of caring,
but the status quo is something
>> Well it wouldn't be
such
a radical idea in that sense.
It would've been
familiar to them
from Paul's Hymn to Charity.
They would understand
that charity is an
expression of divine love.
One of the things
he wants to talk
about theologically
is how this works.
Theologically you shouldn't try
to do anything about hierarchy
or be upset about it
because God ordained it.
It's the way God
created the world.
There are hierarchies
of animals.
There's a lot of
diversity in nature.
Human kind should necessarily
mirror that and also it creates
as we see this system
of obligation.
He actually what he is doing
is taking a familiar even
by now metaphor from political
science or political philosophy,
which would be the body
politic, and rethinking
of it in Christian terms.
In which the body politic of
the Puritans is knit together,
and he uses exactly
this language,
through the ligaments
of Christ's love.
It's a body that's literally
going to be knit together.
What knits it together,
Christ through love.
What promotes Christly love?
Inequality.
That's the theological,
the official version
of the narrative.
The unofficial version of
the narrative or the one
that goes hand in hand below,
is that it's a better way
for this society to actually
do which is to generate profits
if everybody is not
upwardly mobile looking
to change their class
position, looking to much
out for themselves,
and not looking
for the common good enough.
So one of the things you might
say is that Winthrop is trying
to do is harness the energies
of what we might call a kind
of incipient individualism.
He wants to keep those energies
because that will create
an economic dynamism.
The people these days
talk about the need
to have a vibrant economy or
making the belief on behalf
of getting government out of
the way and letting individual
and individual businesses
do their own thing.
The kind of laissez
faire Capitalist model
that Adam Smith will later on go
to write the great
philosophical statement about.
Winthrop is in some
sense wanting
to maintain those energies,
but he wants them
strictly reigned in.
So one of the things
that's at stake
in this sermon is a particular
notion that he's trying
to create about the relationship
between individual
and community.
And in his case, it's got
to be community first
individual second.
The individual has to
subordinate himself or herself
for the good of the community.
The individual energies that
we're going to pay attention
to those but they always
have to be recognized
as part of this larger body.
We are knit together in
a system of obligation,
and that works theologically
but it also has practical
consequences.
We don't want people
to be worrying
about making too much money
or being upwardly mobile.
We want to preserve
things as they are.
It's a message of conservatism,
and you might say, to keep.
Immediately they start, it's not
a fresh start in other words.
You don't come to the New
World if you were a servant
in the old world; you get to
be a lord here and vice versa.
You bring in your baggage
with you, and we're just going
to set it up here
and make it all work.
We're not trying to radicalize
here in the New World is part
of the message that
he's sending across.
If you look at the beginning
of the sermon on page 148,
he talks about two rules.
He says two rules about
the fourth paragraph.
Two rules, this is after
he's talked a little bit
about the system of obligation.
Justice and mercy.
These are always
distinguished in their act
and in their object,
yet may they both concur
in the same subject
in each respect.
Sometimes there may be an
occasion of showing mercy
to a rich man in some
sudden danger or distress,
and also doing of mere
justice to a poor man in regard
of some particular
contract, etc. What's that?
And then there's a second one.
A double law by which
we are regulated
in our conversation
towards another.
In both the former respects,
the law of nature
and the law of grace.
So, two things.
Justice and mercy, nature and
grace, they're mapped onto what.
Old Testament and
New Testament, right.
Justice, eye for an eyetooth
for tooth, Old Testament.
Mercy, turn the other cheek.
Love thy brother thy
neighbor as thy self.
Christ in revising the
Old Testament keeps the
top commandment.
I am Lord thy God there shall
have no other God before me,
but changes several
crucial things particularly
about the relationship
between justice and mercy.
Puritans don't believe in,
there's no such thing as justice
when you're talking about
your relation to God.
You don't deserve anything.
You get everything you get
because God is merciful.
Therefore, mercy is a
higher value than justice.
Justice somehow goes along
with the state of nature.
Mercy goes along with the state
of grace and the New Testament
and the Puritan mission.
Anything you can do
therefore to produce mercy,
the need to be merciful,
is good.
It's Christly.
It's Godly.
So that's one of the
things I want you
to see that he's setting up.
He's setting up sort of
these interlinked things.
He's mapping them on to the way
in which the Puritans
typically think
about the Old Testament,
the New Testament.
He's mapping them onto the ways
that people think about ant-type
and anti-type, and he's creating
these interlinked ideas.
Individual and community, we're
going to put community first.
Another one would be materialism
and idealism, and we might think
of those in a double sense.
The low sense of
materialism is greed.
You're greedy, you're
materialistic.
The low sense of being
idealistic is you want
to do good works.
That's part of it I suppose.
But really, there's a way in
which this is also an attitude
that we might call
philosophical materialism
and philosophical idealism.
It's philosophically idealist.
That means, it believes that the
real truths in the world are not
in the world at all and cannot
be discerned from the world,
but are only to be found above.
And we'll go on and
talk more about this
as the term continues, but for
now let's just say philosophical
materialism takes
a look at the world
and tries to reason from it.
Tries to find evidence in
the world of various things
and uses the world
as its evidence
for making larger statements
about the nature of the world,
the nature of the
mind, whatever.
You might say, for those of you
who know any philosophy,
it's Aristotle.
Looking around and
seeing how things work.
How do we do the
poetics, how do we figure
out how to do a good play?
We see a shitload of plays
and then we write about it.
Socrates would have a wholly
other way of going about it.
He would believe there were
certain first principles
and we would try to
discern what those should be
by logic and intuition.
In the Christian context,
we would say the real
world is undependable.
Why? Well, what do we
know about the real world
or this world, the
earthly world.
I shouldn't use that term real.
It's all depraved.
As a result of the fall,
the Earth is depraved.
You couldn't possibly
derive truth from it.
You need to look out there.
Bradford, we couldn't see you in
getting those sucker from here
or straight or down,
got to look up.
Same thing for Winthrop.
So therefore what
you're saying is,
he wants to harness the
energies of the individual
to promote the communal good.
He wants, in some sense, to
start to think about materialism
in both of its senses, but
ultimately use any of those
as a vehicle for certain kinds
of philosophical idealism.
So finally, we get at the end
to the application of this,
and I think it's
worth looking at.
The first part, which is longer,
is full of references
to the New Testament.
The second part,
the application,
this starts on page 156.
Suddenly starts to get a
little bit more preoccupied
by the Old Testament.
So up until this point it's been
very Pauline in its approach.
It's about love to others.
Saint Paul the apostle goes
out and preaches a doctrine
in which both the Jews and
the Gentiles can be converted
and saved.
Those who were circumcised and
uncircumcised can find salvation
so long as they come to the
word of the lord Jesus Christ.
Paul is also famous for
emphasizing Christ's sacrifice
on the cross, but he does
that because he sees it
as the ultimate act of love.
It's not a form of discipline
that he's interested in.
He's interested in Christ
was willing to suffer
that because he loved
us so much.
That's the measure of it.
He suffered so much, we
can't even understand it.
It's boundless and that's
why it can wipe out the debts
of everybody else who
would come to see Christ.
The Puritans should believe
in a doctrine therefore
in which the Jews and the
Gentiles, the circumcised
and the uncircumcised,
they and the Indians,
everybody can be saved.
Doesn't quite happen that way
and part of the reason for that,
I think you start to see here,
they get fixated on the idea
of themselves as
the chosen people.
So in the last part
of Winthrop's sermon there
are many more references
to the Old Testament.
Take a look here, 157,
he's talking commission.
He uses a language that
seems somewhat Old Testament.
He uses the language of covenant
and somewhat 17th century
or more modern commission
and contract.
Those two were put
together here.
So he's talking about Saul
being given a commission.
He indented with him upon
certain articles, okay.
Middle of 157.
Famous passage.
Thus stands the cause
between God and us.
We are entered into covenant
with Him for this work.
We have taken out a commission.
So the Biblical language,
17th century language.
We've taken out a commission,
the Lord hath given us leave
to draw our own articles.
We have professed to enterprise
these actions upon these
and those ends.
We have hereupon besought
Him of favor and blessing.
Now if the Lord shall please to
hear us, and bring us in peace
to the place we desire.
If he gets us to the New World,
he is ratifying this contract.
He ratified this covenant
and sealed our commission,
and will expect a
strict performance
of the articles contained in it;
but if we neglect the
observation of these articles
which are the ends
we have propounded,
and prosecute our
carnal intentions.
That doesn't only mean sexual.
It even has a bodily,
material, earthly intentions.
Seeking great things for
ourselves and our posterity,
the Lord will surely break
out in wrath against us.
Be revenged of such a people,
and make us know the price
of the breach of
such a covenant.
Now the only way to avoid
this shipwreck, and to provide
for our posterity, is to
follow the counsel of Micah.
Again, going back to
the Old Testament.
To do justly, to love mercy,
to walk humbly with our God.
For this end, and here
we get all the language
coming together.
This idea of knitting
together and you can look
at the way the rhetoric
quickens up.
He starts to omit the subject
of these senses as he goes on.
For this end, we
must be knit together
in this work as one man.
We must entertain each other
in brotherly affection.
We must be willing to abridge
ourselves of our superfluities,
for the supply of
others' necessities.
We must uphold a
familiar commerce together
in all meekness, gentleness,
patience and liberality.
We must delight in each other;
make others' conditions our own;
rejoice together,
mourn together,
labor and suffer together,
always having before our eyes
and community in the work.
Our community as
members of the same body.
If we do this, if we buy
into this kind of idea
of the ligaments
of Christly love,
something really good
is going to happen.
And that is this.
We will become the glory
of the Christian world.
That's the idea of
shedding light.
When He shall make us a praise
and glory that men shall say
of succeeding plantations,
the Lord make it
like that of New England.
For we must consider, now he
goes to a moment on the Sermon
of the Mount, we must
consider that we shall be
as a city upon a hill.
The eyes of all people
are upon us.
So that if we shall deal
falsely with our God
in this work we have
undertaken, and so cause Him
to withdraw His present
help from us,
we shall be made a story and
a by-word through the world.
Right, the stakes are higher,
we are setting ourselves
as this beacon for everyone
looking, and if we screw it up,
we will be that much worse off.
We will be perjured.
We will be a laughing stock.
Worse than that, we will make
Christianity a laughing stock.
We will as he puts it, open the
mouths of enemies to speak evil
of the many ways of God and
all professors for God's sake.
So that's what's at stake here.
It's again that same logic.
It is harder for us because more
is at stake, but in the end,
we become this idea of the
shining city on the hill.
And that's why this sermon
is thought in some sense
to be a kind of blueprint
for the community
that they are trying to create.
He's trying to get them to
see how they need to behave
in their social, their
religious, their economic lives
in order to make themselves
keep their covenant
and avoid being perjured.
So one of the things you would
say here is that the first part
of the sermon draws heavily on
Matthew and the Pauline sections
of the New Testament
that are all about love.
Paul is a great missionary and
these are missionary texts,
but in the end, we get the city
on the hill image from Matthew
but heavily contextualized
by the language
of the chosen people
from the Old Testament,
and it's that interplay
that makes Winthrop
and the Puritans reign in
the possibilities of love.
Love yes but for us.
We are not turning
the other cheek.
Now, one other interesting
thing to say about the city
on the hill is that
it became very famous
in the late part of
the 20th century.
It was revived as an image,
and it was revived by this man.
Does anybody know who he is?
[ Laughter ]
Good I'm glad to hear it.
The great communicator, the
guy who was the populist.
It's morning in America again.
In 1980, everybody
was just really,
America was humiliated abroad.
There was a terrible economy.
Does this sound familiar?
Reagan comes in and he
says this, this is in 1977
after they've lost the White
House, the preservation
and the enhancement of
the values that strengthen
and protect individual freedom
family life, communities,
and neighborhoods
and the liberty
of our beloved nation should be
at the heart of any legislator
or political program presented
to the American people.
This is how the Republicans
will revitalize themselves.
Liberty can be measured by how
much freedom Americans have
to make their own decisions,
even their own mistakes.
The Republican party, he said,
must be the party
of the individual.
So he's not like Winthrop
putting the group first.
It must not cater to the group,
that's Democratic
party politics.
No greater challenge faces our
society today than insuring
that each one of us can maintain
his dignity and his identity
in an increasingly complex
centralized society.
Then with God's help, we shall
indeed be as a city upon a hill
with the eyes of
all people upon us.
So here's the symbol.
He takes it from Winthrop,
although for most of his career,
he doesn't actually
credit Winthrop,
but he uses it and
it's powerful.
People are like, yes
the city on the hill,
and what does it mean
the city on the hill?
It's a city of free enterprise.
Can't sell out the individual
to cater to the group.
And there's a certain logic that
he has in which, you might say,
if you pursue individual goods,
you ultimately have this
kind of ripple effect.
When you start to care
about the family's good,
the neighborhood's good, the
church's good, the community,
the state, the national society.
It all kind of builds on
the idea of the individual.
I don't have time to show you
the speech that he would give,
maybe I'll do it next time.
It's worth looking at.
In his final speech,
1980 farewell address,
people are watching this
all over the country,
people are weeping that this
great president is leaving the
public stage.
He says this, what Winthrop
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.
So far from taking up
Winthrop's sort of subordination
of the individual, Winthrop
is turned into a cowboy,
a rugged individualist, a
freedom man, a frontiersmen,
by Reagan, and I want
you to bear this in mind.
It's what happens to symbols
as they circulate in a culture.
Once you let it out, you can't
control its meanings anymore.
Alright we'll take it
up from there next time.
