the image of the city on a hill was literally a joke. Says the Winthrop stand-in, “We’re not the kind of people who are easily discouraged by a few snow flurries, a couple of head colds, the fifty-percent mortality rate.” No, he says, they’re “strong-willed people who never give up.”
J ohn Winthrop’s first journal entry in January 1631 notes that “a house at Dorchester was burnt down.” The next entry, in February, states that a Mr. Freeman’s house in Watertown burned down but “being in the daytime, his goods were saved.” It speaks of the grind of ongoing misery that Winthrop sees a daytime blaze as a sign that things are looking up. Of course he was unaware that he would spend the next few years trying to put out fires of a different sort.
Enter Roger Williams. On February 5, 1631, Winthrop’s journal notes the arrival of the ship Lyon. “She brought Mr. Williams, (a godly minister), with his wife.”
Williams was probably twenty-seven years old. A London-raised, Cambridge-educated theologian, he had most recently worked in Essex as a private chaplain to the family of one of Oliver Cromwell’s cousins.
When Williams next appears in Winthrop’s journal, two months later, the governor is all riled up. He says that the Boston court (which he runs) wrote a letter to John Endecott, asking him to explain why the Salem church just offered to hire Williams as its teacher.
The bigger Puritan churches employ two equally important clergymen, a pastor and a teacher. Influenced by John Calvin’s notion of a fourfold division of church offices (ordained pastor and teacher, lay elders and deacons), the Cambridge Platform of 1648, a sort of manifesto about church organization written by a committee of New England divines, described the difference between the job descriptions: “ The pastor’s special work is to attend to exhortation, and therein to administer a word of wisdom; the teacher is to attend to doctrine and therein to administer a word of knowledge.” The two work side by side, the teacher delivering brainy lectures about Scripture, the pastor giving earthier, encouraging talks about living a devout daily life. (For instance, Cotton Mather described Samuel Newman, the pastor at Dorchester and Weymouth, as “a very lively preacher, and a very preaching liver.”) If the pastor is the church’s heart, the teacher is its brain. John Cotton, the future teacher at Boston, sounds like a fervent researcher when he describes his own “love to the truth, which is to be searched after more than hidden treasure.” It makes sense that Williams would be offered the job of teacher—he cares more about searching for the truth than making friends, his ideas outnumbering his social skills.
Both teacher and pastor are elected positions. The members of each congregation choose their own clergy. There is no difference between Puritan clergymen and Anglican priests in terms of authority and the respect and obedience worshippers are supposed to have for that authority. A Puritan teacher or pastor, like a priest, is supposed to guide the worshippers in spiritual life and study. The difference between Puritan clergy and Anglican priests is how they are chosen—a priest from the top down (the top being the Archbishop of Canterbury) and a teacher from the bottom up (that being the congregation). Each congregation in New England is to be its own autonomous authority.
When Winthrop and the other Boston settlers formed their church the previous August, they had chosen John Wilson as their teacher. Wilson, however, was sailing back to England on the Lyon ’s return trip to retrieve his wife. This is a setback for the Boston church. Winthrop admires Wilson, calling him “a very sincere, holy man.” Winthrop writes approvingly in his journal that Wilson confessed that before coming to Massachusetts, he dreamed “that he saw a church arise out of the earth, which grew up and became a marvelous goodly
J ohn Winthrop’s first journal entry in January 1631 notes that “a house at Dorchester was burnt down.” The next entry, in February, states that a Mr. Freeman’s house in Watertown burned down but “being in the daytime, his goods were saved.” It speaks of the grind of ongoing misery that Winthrop sees a daytime blaze as a sign that things are looking up. Of course he was unaware that he would spend the next few years trying to put out fires of a different sort.
Enter Roger Williams. On February 5, 1631, Winthrop’s journal notes the arrival of the ship Lyon. “She brought Mr. Williams, (a godly minister), with his wife.”
Williams was probably twenty-seven years old. A London-raised, Cambridge-educated theologian, he had most recently worked in Essex as a private chaplain to the family of one of Oliver Cromwell’s cousins.
When Williams next appears in Winthrop’s journal, two months later, the governor is all riled up. He says that the Boston court (which he runs) wrote a letter to John Endecott, asking him to explain why the Salem church just offered to hire Williams as its teacher.
The bigger Puritan churches employ two equally important clergymen, a pastor and a teacher. Influenced by John Calvin’s notion of a fourfold division of church offices (ordained pastor and teacher, lay elders and deacons), the Cambridge Platform of 1648, a sort of manifesto about church organization written by a committee of New England divines, described the difference between the job descriptions: “ The pastor’s special work is to attend to exhortation, and therein to administer a word of wisdom; the teacher is to attend to doctrine and therein to administer a word of knowledge.” The two work side by side, the teacher delivering brainy lectures about Scripture, the pastor giving earthier, encouraging talks about living a devout daily life. (For instance, Cotton Mather described Samuel Newman, the pastor at Dorchester and Weymouth, as “a very lively preacher, and a very preaching liver.”) If the pastor is the church’s heart, the teacher is its brain. John Cotton, the future teacher at Boston, sounds like a fervent researcher when he describes his own “love to the truth, which is to be searched after more than hidden treasure.” It makes sense that Williams would be offered the job of teacher—he cares more about searching for the truth than making friends, his ideas outnumbering his social skills.
Both teacher and pastor are elected positions. The members of each congregation choose their own clergy. There is no difference between Puritan clergymen and Anglican priests in terms of authority and the respect and obedience worshippers are supposed to have for that authority. A Puritan teacher or pastor, like a priest, is supposed to guide the worshippers in spiritual life and study. The difference between Puritan clergy and Anglican priests is how they are chosen—a priest from the top down (the top being the Archbishop of Canterbury) and a teacher from the bottom up (that being the congregation). Each congregation in New England is to be its own autonomous authority.
When Winthrop and the other Boston settlers formed their church the previous August, they had chosen John Wilson as their teacher. Wilson, however, was sailing back to England on the Lyon ’s return trip to retrieve his wife. This is a setback for the Boston church. Winthrop admires Wilson, calling him “a very sincere, holy man.” Winthrop writes approvingly in his journal that Wilson confessed that before coming to Massachusetts, he dreamed “that he saw a church arise out of the earth, which grew up and became a marvelous goodly
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