10 Church and State
Savior, [from Matthew 7:12] Whatsoever ye would that men should do
to you.
This lawe of the Gospell propounds likewise a difference of seasons
and occasions. There is a time when a christian must sell all and give
to the poor, as they did in the Apostles times. There is a time allsoe
when christians (though they give not all yet) must give beyond their
abillity, as they of Macedonia [2 Cor. 8]. Likewise community of
perills calls for extraordinary liberality, and soe doth community in
some speciall service for the churche.
Lastly, when there is no other means whereby our christian brother
may be relieved in his distress, we must help him beyond our ability
rather than tempt God in putting him upon help by miraculous or
extraordinary meanes. This duty of mercy is exercised in the kinds,
Giueving, lending and forgiving [of a debt] . . .
1
The deffinition which the Scripture gives us of love is this. Love
is the bond of perfection, first it is a bond or ligament. 2ly it makes
the worke perfect. There is noe body but consists of partes and that
which knitts these partes together, giues the body its perfection,
because it makes eache parte soe contiguous to others as thereby
they doe mutually participate with each other, both in strengthe and
infirmity, in pleasure and paine. To instance in the most perfect of
all bodies; Christ and his Church make one body; the severall par-
tes of this body considered a parte before they were united, were
as disproportionate and as much disordering as soe many contrary
quallities or elements, but when Christ comes, and by his spirit and
love knitts all these partes to himselfe and each to other, it is become
the most perfect and best proportioned body in the world, Eph. 4.
16. Christ, by whome all the body being knitt together by every joint for
the furniture thereof, according to the effectuall power which is in the
measure of every perfection of partes, a glorious body without spott or
wrinkle; the ligaments hereof being Christ, or his love, for Christ
is love, 1 John 4. 8. Soe this definition is right. Love is the bond of
perfection.2
From hence we may frame these conclusions:
First of all, true Christians are of one body in Christ, 1 Cor. 12. 12. 13.
17. Ye are the body of Christ and members of their parte. All the partes
1
Debt forgiveness was a common prac-
tice in colonial America. This was in part
because of the tenuousness of agrarian
life, where farmers might not bring in crops
through no fault of their own. Puritan lead-
ers distinguished between the deserving
poor and the indolent with charity being
properly extended to the former.
2
Any political community must stipulate
and ritually strengthen its principle of unity.
For example, a sense of “patriotism” might
be a way of overcoming other differences.
For the Puritans, however, the only endur-
ing principle of unity was a common com-
mitment to faith in Christ as known in the
Christian scriptures. Winthrop draws an
analogy between the relationship of Christ
to the church—the church as the body of
Christ—and the Puritan community as an
ecclesial polity. Christian love alone can
hold a community together.
