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Article: Hawthorne's 'The Scarlet Letter.' (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
- Article from:
- The Explicator
- Article date:
- September 22, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1994 Heldref Publications. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In 1629, Charles I of England issued the Massachusetts Bay Company charter to several merchants and a group of Puritans guided by Reverend John White. Leaders of the company viewed it as a business venture, but most of the group, led by John Winthrop, designed to use the new community as a refuge for persecuted Puritans (Tindall 62). Winthrop, on his voyage to the new land aboard the Arbella, delivered his famous lay-sermon "A Model of Christian Charity," in which he declared:
we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to ...