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A Model of Christian Charity 49 Consider several of the picturesque ‘‘patterns’’ Winthrop suggests the Massachusetts Bay Colony would emulate were it aflame with agape. Christ himself, who ‘‘being knit with [his saints] in the bond of love, found such a native sensibleness of our infirmities and sorrows as he willingly yielded himself to the death to ease the infirmities of the rest of his body and so heal their sorrows’’ (‫ن‬ 29). Numerous figures from Christian history, who demonstrated ‘‘sweet Sympathy of affections . . . one towards another, [and were renowned for] their cheerfulness in serving and suffering together, [and for] how liberal they were . . . without grudging and helpful without reproaching and all from hence they had fervent love amongst them’’ (‫ن‬ 29). Eve, who upon recognition of her beloved (Adam), ‘‘desires nearness and familiarity with it. . . . She will not endure that it shall want any good which she can give it. . . . If she hear it groan she is with it presently. If she find it sad and disconsolate she sighs and mourns with it, she hath no joy, as to see her beloved merry and thriving, if she see it wronged, she cannot bear it without passion, she sets not bounds of her affections, nor hath any thought of reward’’ (‫ن‬ 31). Today—just as in Winthrop’s day—there are those who argue that the spirit of true Christian love requires utter self-abnegation, an absolute sacrificial forgetting of self for the good of others. Some of the passages just quoted seem to lean in that direction. But others stress that the famous agape commands of Matthew 22 involve loving three distinct parties : God, neighbor, and self (the instruction to love thy neighbor as thyself is echoed seven more times in the New Testament—often by Jesus himself). Winthrop sides with those who hold that while charity often involves a considerable denial of self, it does so without utterly extinguishing self-love and hoped-for personal reward.35 Winthrop goes so far as to say that ‘‘it is not possible that love should be bred or upheld without help of requital’’ (‫ن‬ 31). How the selfless love of charity squares with a continuing love of self he never explains, in part because he finds this complex theological debate beside the point: ‘‘such is not our cause,’’ he notes. This is because Winthrop is not just discussing agape in general, but agape broadly shared ‘‘among members of the same body,’’ be that the body of the Church (the union of ‘‘all true Christians,’’ ‫نن‬ 23–27), or a marriage (Adam and Eve), family (Ruth and Naomi), or friendship (Jonathan and David). And in such a condition, this ‘‘love and affection’’ are ‘‘always under reward,’’ reciprocated between members of the body 50 Winthrop and America’s Point of Departure in ‘‘in a most equal and sweet kind of commerce.’’ So sweet and so rewarding, Winthrop exclaims, that ‘‘to love and live beloved is the soul’s paradise, both here and in heaven.’’ Even those for whom the distinctly Christian/other-worldly foundation of this unity is a nonstarter can and often do acknowledge that what is produced is an alluring vision of community. All the parts of this body being thus united are made so contiguous in a special relation as they must needs partake of each other’s strength and infirmity, joy and sorrow, weal and woe. If one member suffers, all suffer with it, if one be in honor, all rejoice with it. . . . This sensibleness and sympathy of each other’s conditions will necessarily infuse into each part a native desire and endeavor to strengthen, defend, preserve and comfort each other (‫نن‬ 26–27). There are some distinct—perhaps finally crippling—challenges associated with Winthrop’s position. But at this point, it is manifestly clear that whatever is going on in this speech, it cannot be understood as a purely and coldly hierarchical defense of the ordinary ways of English civil life. The social vision—played out in early Massachusetts and especially in the life of John Winthrop himself—is in many respects inspiringly tender and humane. And though such compassion is checked by a pervasive sense of providential inequality and thus stops well short of a call for truly radical economic rearrangements, it utterly repudiates a selfish and inert stance with respect to the poor as well as a spiteful and antagonistic stance with respect to racial, religious, and political difference. Under the charitable bonds of affection that Winthrop urged on his fellow travelers...

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