LXXVI.
Some Christians do by their lusts and Corruptions as the Isralits did by the Canaanites, not destroy them, but put them under tribute, for that they could do (as they thought) with lesse hazard, and more profit; but what was the Issue? They became a snare unto them, prickes in their eyes, and thornes in their sides, and at last overcame them, and kept them under slavery; so it is most certain that those that are disobedient to the Commandment of God, and endeavour not to the utmost to drive out all their accursed inmates, but make a league with them, they shall at last fall into perpetuall bondage under them, unlesse the great deliverer, Christ Jesus come to their rescue.
LXXVII.
God hath by his providence so ordered, that no one country hath all Commoditys within itself, but what it wants, another shall supply, that so there may be a mutuall Commerce through the world. As it is with countrys so it is with men, there was never yet any one man that had all excellences, let his parts, naturall and acquired, spirituall and morall, be never so large, yet he stands in need of something which another man hath, (perhaps meaner than himself,) which shows us perfection is not below, as also, that God will have us beholden one to another.
CHAPTER XV.
THE PURITAN REIGN OF TERROR.
The ten years which followed the death of Governor Winthrop early in 1649, were years of steady outward prosperity, yet causes were at work, which gradually complicated the political situation and prepared the necessity for the explanation which the mother country at last peremptorily demanded, Simon Bradstreet being selected as one of the men most capable of suitable reply. So long as Winthrop lived, his even and sagacious course hindered many complications which every circumstance fostered. Even in the fierce dissensions over Anne Hutchinson and her theories, he had still been able to retain the personal friendship of those whom as a magistrate he had most severely judged. Wheelwright and Coddington, who had suffered many losses; Sir Harry Vane, who had returned to England sore and deeply indignant at the colonial action; Clark and Williams, bitter as they might be against Massachusetts principles, had only affection for the gracious and humane governor, who gave himself as freely as he gave his fortune, and whose theories, however impracticable they may at times have seemed, have all justified themselves in later years. Through the early privations and the attempts of some to escape the obligations laid upon them, by the mere fact of having come together to the unknown country, he set his face steadily against all division, and there is no more characteristic passage in his Journal than that in which he gives the reasons which should bind them to common and united action. Various disaffected and uneasy souls had wandered off to other points, and Winthrop gives the results, at first quietly and judicially, but rising at the close to a noble indignation.
"Others who went to other places, upon like grounds, succeeded no better. They fled for fear of want, and many of them fell into it, even to extremity, as if they had hastened into the misery which they feared and fled from, besides the depriving themselves of the ordinances and church fellowship, and those civil liberties which they enjoyed here; whereas, such as staid in their places kept their peace and ease, and enjoyed still the blessing of the ordinances, and never tasted of those troubles and miseries, which they heard to have befallen those who departed. Much disputation there was about liberty of removing for outward advantages, and all ways were sought for an open door to get out at; but it is to be feared many crept out at a broken wall. For such as come together into a wilderness, where are nothing but wild beasts and beast-like men, and there confederate together in civil and church estate, whereby they do, implicitly at least, bind themselves to support each other, and all of them that society, whether civil or sacred, whereof they are members, how they can break from this without free consent, is hard to find, so as may satisfy a tender or good conscience in time of trial. Ask thy conscience, if thou wouldst have plucked up thy stakes, and brought thy family 3000 miles, if thou hadst expected that all, or most, would have forsaken thee there. Ask again, what liberty thou hast towards others, which thou likest not to allow others towards thyself; for if one may go, another may, and so the greater part, and so church and commonwealth may be left destitute in a wilderness, exposed to misery and reproach, and all for thy ease and pleasure, whereas these all, being now thy brethren, as near to thee as the Israelites were to Moses, it were much safer for thee after his example, to choose rather to suffer affliction with thy brethren than to enlarge thy ease and pleasure by furthering the occasion of their ruin."
What he demanded of others he gave freely himself, and no long time was required to prove to all, that union was their only salvation.
He had lived to see the spirit of co-operation active in many ways. Churches were quietly doing their work with as little wrangling over small doctrinal differences as could be expected from an age in which wrangling was the chief symptom of vitality. Education had settled upon a basis it has always retained, that of "universal knowledge at the public cost"; the College was doing its work so effectually that students came from England itself to share in her privileges, and justice gave as impartial and even- handed results as conscientious magistrates knew how to furnish. The strenuous needs and sacrifices of the early days were over. A generation had arisen, knowing them only by hearsay, and for even the humblest, substantial prosperity was the rule. Johnson, in his "Wonder-Working Providence," wrote words that held no exaggeration in their description of the comfort which has, from that day to this, been the characteristic of New England homes. "The Lord hath been pleased to turn all the wigwams, huts, and hovels the English dwelt in at their first coming, into orderly, fair, and well-built houses, well furnished many of them, together with orchards, filled with goodly fruit-trees, and gardens with variety of flowers…. There are many hundreds of laboring men, who had not enough to bring them over, yet now, worth scores, and some, hundreds of pounds. The Lord whose promises are large to His Sion, hath blessed his people's provision, and satisfied her poor with bread, in a very little space. Everything in the country proved a staple commodity. And those who were formerly forced to fetch most of the bread they eat, and the beer they drink, a thousand leagues by sea, are, through the blessing of the Lord, so increased, that they have not only fed their elder sisters, Virginia, Barbadoes and many of the Summer Islands, that were preferred before her for fruitfulness, but also the grandmother of us all, even the fertile isle of Great Britain."