nature of that preoccupation was vividly expressed by the famous phrase that he has contributed to the lexicon of American political and social rhetoric--the "city upon a hill" (p. 24).
While that expression referred to the Puritan community as a whole, it also reflected the expectations of the Puritan as an individual--that he would be a shining beacon to the rest of humanity. The desire to set such an example lies, perhaps, at the root of the paradox of Puritan belief, which is that since the Puritans believed in predestination, they did not believe that any human action they undertook could actually ensure, or even make more likely, their salvation. By setting an example, they could only hope to demonstrate to the world (and perhaps to themselves) that they were in fact among the saved.
As Governor of Massachusetts, John Winthrop demonstrated a markedly antidemocratic approach to the task of government, displayed most strikingly (and to us, most unattractively) in his treatment of Anne Hutchinson, whose ultimate violent death at the hands of Indians must be laid at least indirectly at Winthrop--and which, indeed, he himself proclaimed to be the sign of God's hand at work (pp. 43-48). In his own view, his duty and right was to uphold and enforce Godly standards of conduct and governance, as he believed God had revealed them to him, by force and compulsion if need be.
In John Winthrop we may find the spiritual ancestor of Prohibition, and in contemporary times of the war on drugs and antipornography crusades. In fairness to his system of values, however, we may also find in them the roots of the antislavery crusade, the ideology of which was developed largely by people whose religious values established them as the direct descendants of the New England Puritans of Winthrop's day.
New England and the world had both changed by the first half of the next century, when Benjamin Franklin as well as Abigail Adams came of...