A Model Of Christianity

I find John Winthrop’s work to be a master piece because of the way he weaved Biblical images. The use of imagery is very thought provoking and idealistic. As I was reading his literary work, I thought, “John Winthrop is like a good salesman.” He convinces people by using strong and provocative Biblical arguments and his argument meet the needs of the people and of the time. He is a lawyer and uses law to create an orderly and cohesive society. He appeals to love as the foundational Christian rule for law.

Winthrop is creating a perfect marriage amongst the people. He needed to do so in order for the community to survive in harmony. He uses a model that is familiar to the people. Winthrop used the first Christina communities as an example. He sets a number of rules and refers to these rules as “articles of our convent with Him.” He is remembering the exodus of the Israelites. It is appropriate and symbolic for the situation of the new settles.

Winthrop is persuasive when says that community is a body knitted all together and when one member of the body suffers, the whole body feels the pain. He uses Jonathan and David as an example of spiritual unity. “Jonathan, a valiant man endowed with the spirit of Christ, so soon as he discovers the same spirit in David, had presently his heart knit to him by this lineament of love, so that it is said he loved him as his own soul.” He also refers to Adam and Eve as a symbol of the unity in flesh and bone and goes on to say how the mouth receives the nourishment for all other body parts and how all the parts of the body receive a due proportion. Winthrop appeals to peoples feels using very seductive Biblical imagery. He does not do it to brain wash them. He does it as a means of unity, order, survival, and the creation of a new society in a new land.

Winthrop’s sermon is idealistic and was preached in 1629, but is not outmoded. The same type of sermon is being preached today in many Sunday sermons, and his idealistic community model is practice in some religious communities. His sermon is very eloquent in style and contemporary in the Christian world. He knitted it so well that he made a master piece out it. I do not know what make Winthrop’s sermon Puritan other than the fact that Winthrop is Puritan because the kind of sermon he delivered is contemporary and likely to be heard in different Christian