from within would be an impossible task. Winthrop’s solution was to move to a new land where he and other Puritans would be free to worship God freely.
Winthrop moved to Massachusetts where the governor and board of directors of the Massachusetts Bay Company were not required to meet in London. The charter signed by the King of England overlooked this detail and Winthrop realized it meant an autonomous government could be established. A group of Puritan settlers was organized and Winthrop was chosen as their spiritual and physical leader. Puritans found four primary reasons for their relocation: “1) To carry the gospel to the New World, 2) To escape God’s judgement that was coming upon the corrupt churches of Europe, 3) To help ease the overpopulation problems in England, and 4) To obey the Great Commission and Genesis 1:28, which says, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it’” (Schafer 4).
Approximately 1000 settlers relocated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony but twenty percent of them died from the harsh conditions within the first year. Winthrop moved the Puritans to the Shawmut Peninsula community which would eventually become Boston. Winthrop opposed unlimited democracy. He argued that a colony could be better governed by a handful of elite, learned and pious leaders. Serving as deputy governor, he felt the religious doctrines of Anne Hutchinson were subversive to moral law and he presided over the proceeding that ended in the banishment of Hutchinson from the colony. Winthrop was instrumental in forming the New England Confederation, serving as its first President. Winthrop had a vision of America as a City on the Hill “The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with out God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and byword throughout the world; we shall open the mouths of enemie...