The City on a Hill John Winthrop founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630, where he was the colony's first governor, a position he held for twenty years. In April 1630, aboard the ship Arbella, he led a large party from England to the New World to found a purely Christian colony. “They hope to establish communities of pure Christians who would collectively swear a covenant with God that they would work toward His ends, knowing that in return He would watch over them.” John Winthrop was born in Edwardstone, Suffolk, England, on January 22, 1588, and died in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 26, 1649. He was the only son of Adam Winthrop and his wife, Anne Brown. Winthrop briefly attended Trinity College, Cambridge, studied law at Gray's Inn, and in the 1620s became a barrister at the Court of Wards in London. John Winthrop was a man who believed that Christianity was above all churches. Winthrop had decided to leave England to found a devout community in the new world. Like most Puritans, Winthrop was extremely religious and fervently adhered to the Puritan belief that the Anglican Church needed to be cleansed of Catholic ritual. Winthrop was convinced that God would punish the English Puritans for their heresy against God. As leader of the party headed to the New World, he believed in creating a society based on a moral code rooted in the Bible. Winthrop and the other Puritans hoped to establish a pure church in the new world that would offer a model for the churches in England, thus purifying the Anglican Church from within. “They sought homogeneity, not diversity, and believed that the good of the community was more important than protecting the rights of its individual members.” Over… half of the paper… unity for the benefit of all, The The sermon “A Model of Christian Charity,” delivered by John Winthrop, is an example of the deeply religious Puritans who settled in Boston. They felt they had a convent with God to live a righteous life, a life that put God's commandments and community first. Puritans were very concerned with proper behavior, both their own and others. Boston's colonists were pious Puritans who regularly reevaluated the state of their souls. By living this righteous life, Puritans believed that the Massachusetts Bay Colony was the "city on the hill" and that they would be the light of the world. John Winthrop declared in the closing statement of his sermon how deeply the Puritans walked with God. Let us therefore choose life, that we and our seed may live, obeying his voice and clinging to him, for hee is our life, and our prosperity.