The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell Read Free Book Online Page A

neighbors? Not so much. In fact, one of his ongoing difficulties as governor of the colony is going to be that his charges find him far too lenient. For instance, when one of his fellow Massachusetts Bay magistrates accuses Winthrop of dillydallying on punishment by letting some men who had been banished continue to hang around Boston, Winthrop points out that the men had been banished, not sentenced to be executed. And since they had been banished in the dead of winter, Winthrop let them stay until a thaw so that their eviction from Massachusetts wouldn’t cause them to freeze to death on their way out of town. I can hear the threatening voice-over in his opponent’s attack ad come the next election. John Winthrop: soft on crime.
    This leads us to something undeniably remarkable: “A Model of Christian Charity” was not written by a writer or a minister but rather by a governor. It isn’t just a sermon, it is an act of leadership. And even if no one heard it, or no one was listening, it is, at the very least, a glimpse at what the chief executive officer of the Massachusetts Bay Colony believed he and this grumpy few before him were supposed to shoot for come dry land. Two words, he says: “justice and mercy.”
    For “a community of perils,” writes Winthrop, “calls for extraordinary liberality.” One cannot help but feel for this man. Here he is, pleading with Puritans to be flexible. In promoting what he calls “enlargement toward others,” Winthrop has clearly thought through the possible pitfalls awaiting them on shore. He is worried about basic survival. He should be. He knows that half the Plymouth colonists perished in the first year. Thus he is reminding them of Christ’s excruciating mandate to share. If thine enemy hunger, feed him.
    Winthrop tells them that even if they have next to nothing, their faith commands them to give away everything. “If your brother be in want and you can help him . . . if you love God, you must help him.”
    When John Cotton’s grandson, Cotton Mather, wrote his Ecclesiastical History of New England in 1702, he told a story about Winthrop that I would like to believe is true. In the middle of winter, Boston was low on fuel and a man came to the governor complaining that a “needy person” was stealing from his woodpile. Winthrop mustered the appropriate outrage and requested that the thief come see him, presumably for punishment. According to Mather, Winthrop tells the man,
    “Friend, it is a severe winter, and I doubt you are but meanly provided for wood; wherefore I would have you supply yourself at my woodpile till this cold season be over.” And [Winthrop] then merrily asked his friends whether he had not effectually cured this man of stealing his wood.
    If Mather’s story is to be trusted, perhaps Winthrop was winking at Giles Tilleman. Tilleman is the “Cutler of Brussels” Winthrop mentions in “Christian Charity,” along with other “forefathers in times of persecution” he would have heard of while reading John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, a popular compendium of the lives of Protestants who had been burned to death by Catholics for their beliefs. According to Foxe, when Tilleman saw the large pile of kindling that was to be used to burn him alive, he asked his executioner if most of the wood “might be given to the poor, saying, ‘A small quantity will suffice to consume me.’ ”
    In “Christian Charity,” Winthrop asserts, “ There is a time also when Christians . . . must give beyond their ability.”
    Winthrop asserts, “ There is a time when a Christian must sell all and give to the poor, as they did in the Apostles’ times.” (It is so curious that this sermon, in my lifetime, would become so identified with the Communist-hating, Communist-baiting Ronald Reagan, considering Winthrop just proclaimed that a follower of Christ must be willing to renounce property. Utter Commie talk.)
    After the Old Testament Israelites, the colonists’