Yet the leader of the Pilgrims has passages of
grave sweetness and charm, and his sketch of his associate, Elder
Brewster, will bear comparison with the best English biographical
writing of that century. Winthrop is perhaps more varied in tone,
as he is in matter, but he writes throughout as a ruler of men
should write, with "decent plainness and manly freedom." His best
known pages, justly praised by Tyler and other historians of
American thought, contain his speech before the General Court in
1645 on the nature of true liberty. No paragraphs written in
America previous to the Revolution would have given more pleasure
to Abraham Lincoln, but it is to be feared that Lincoln never saw
Governor Winthrop's book, though his own ancestor, Samuel Lincoln
of Hingham, lived under Winthrop's jurisdiction.
The theory of government held by the dominant party of the first
two generations of New England pioneers has often been called a
"theocracy," that is to say, a government according to the Word
of God as expounded and enforced by the clergy.
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