Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface and acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations and references
- Introduction
- 1 Moderate (religious) liberty in the theology of John Calvin: The original Genevan experiment
- 2 The duties of conscience and the free exercise of Christian liberty: Theodore Beza and the rise of Calvinist rights and resistance theory
- 3 Natural rights, popular sovereignty, and covenant politics: Johannes Althusius and the Dutch Revolt and Republic
- 4 Prophets, priests, and kings of liberty: John Milton and the rights and liberties of Englishmen
- 5 How to govern a city on a hill: Covenant liberty in Puritan New England
- 6 Concluding reflections: The biography and biology of liberty in early modern Calvinism
- Bibliography
- Index to biblical sources
- Index
5 - How to govern a city on a hill: Covenant liberty in Puritan New England
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2015
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface and acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations and references
- Introduction
- 1 Moderate (religious) liberty in the theology of John Calvin: The original Genevan experiment
- 2 The duties of conscience and the free exercise of Christian liberty: Theodore Beza and the rise of Calvinist rights and resistance theory
- 3 Natural rights, popular sovereignty, and covenant politics: Johannes Althusius and the Dutch Revolt and Republic
- 4 Prophets, priests, and kings of liberty: John Milton and the rights and liberties of Englishmen
- 5 How to govern a city on a hill: Covenant liberty in Puritan New England
- 6 Concluding reflections: The biography and biology of liberty in early modern Calvinism
- Bibliography
- Index to biblical sources
- Index
Summary
[M]en shall say of succeeding plantations: the Lord make it like that of New England: for we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.
John Winthrop (1630)In his 1765 Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law, John Adams, the great Massachusetts lawyer and eventual American President, defended the “sensible” New England Puritans against those “many modern gentlemen” of his day who dismissed them as bigoted, narrow, “enthusiastical, superstitious and republican.” Such “ridicule” and “ribaldry” of the Puritans are “grossly injurious and false,” Adams retorted. Far from being narrow bigots, the Puritans were for Adams “illustrious patriots,” since, in his view, they were the first “to establish a government of the church more consistent with the scriptures, and a government of the state more agreeable to the dignity of human nature than any other seen in Europe: and to transmit such a government down to their posterity.”
What impressed Adams most was that the New England Puritans had created a comprehensive system of ordered liberty and orderly pluralism within church, state, and society. While the Puritans drew from a range of Calvinist teachings, the centerpiece of their system was the idea of covenant, which they cast in both theological and sociological terms. For the Puritans, the idea of covenant described not only the relationships between persons and God, but also the multiple relationships among persons in church, state, and society.
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- Information
- The Reformation of RightsLaw, Religion and Human Rights in Early Modern Calvinism, pp. 277 - 320Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008