SOURCE: Michaelsen, Scott. “John Winthrop's ‘Modell’ Covenant and the Company Way.” Early American Literature 27, no. 2 (1992): 85-100.

In the following essay, Michaelsen proposes that “A Modell of Christian Charity” served two purposes, suggesting that Winthrop's aim was not only to instill a sense of pride in the participants but also to create a contractual agreement that would benefit both sides of the venture.

I

As Andrew Delbanco has noted, first Massachusetts governor John Winthrop's departure sermon, “A Modell of Christian Charity” (1630), is “enshrined as a kind of Ur-text of American literature” (72).¹ In his reading, “A Modell” becomes a text more important for what it says about old England than new; Delbanco sees it as a series of Puritan renunciations of former practice rather than a forward-looking definition of an “errand into the wilderness,” as Perry Miller's famous interpretation had it. Even so, Winthrop's sermon still stands for Delbanco as...