SOURCE: "Traditional Patterns of Puritan Autobiography: John Winthrop's 'Christian Experience'," in Spiritual Autobiography in Early America, Princeton University Press, 1968, pp. 100-10.

In the essay below, Shea explores Winthrop's "Christian Experience" as an account of his spiritual progress.

Any Puritan autobiography exhibits its author's awareness of the traditional stages through which a man passed as God brought him to grace. But some narratives serve as paradigms in their adherence to textbook descriptions of the order of grace. Edward Taylor's "Spiritual Relation" is one of these. Another, the "Christian Experience" of John Winthrop was written more than forty years before Taylor's "Relation," and yet there is little substantial difference between them. Taylor's diagram of his experience can be applied to Winthrop's relation with little difficulty. Taylor divides the whole process of conversion into two parts, conviction and repentance. As it relates to the understanding, conviction is more precisely termed illumination...