Winthrops Speech to the General Court poses an age old question involving the conflict

between two kinds of liberties which often appear to be opposites. There is a twofold liberty, natural (I
mean as our nature is now corrupt) and civil or federal. (P.2) Natural liberty implies that man hath
liberty to do what he lists: it is liberty to evil well as to good. Federal liberty is the object of
authority. (P.2) It is something provided to the public by the church in return for their submission to
theocratic rule. Winthrop is implying that the type of liberty ensured by the church is not that of the
body, but that of the soul: if an individual follows church authority, he will go to heaven. He uses biblical
authority in order to convince his listeners that only the second type of liberty should be allowed in
Puritan society. Winthrop connects the first idea liberty to the state of man following the original sin of
Adam and Eve and then equates the authority of the Puritan civil government to the authority of Christ.
He says that the corruption of the natural state of man makes men grow more evil (P.2), building onto
their original sin. He constantly repeats the metaphor of the beast, saying that selfish action turns
men into animals. He elaborates on the metaphor later on, comparing man to a beast of burden by
repeatedly using the word yoke. This is interesting because he implies that man is still a beast even
when he follows the authority of the magistrates. Winthrop says if you stand for your natural corrupt
liberties you will not endure the least weight of authority but will be always striving to shake off that
yoke; but if you will be satisfied to enjoy such civil and lawful liberties, such as Christ allows you, then
will you quietly and cheerfully submit unto that authority which is set over you. Not only does this
statement tell listeners that resistance to authority leads only to futility and pain in the same way that
resistance to Christ leads only to Hell, it also connects to the concept of The Protestant Work Ethic
(Weber).By connecting his ideas on liberty to underlying Puritan ideas on the philosophy of work by
using the metaphor of the yoke, Winthrop says that submission to the duties of work will actually lead
to freedom. Although this may disturb some people of the modern world as they are reminded of the
words Arbeit Macht Frei that are still written outside of the empty shell that was once the death camp
at Auschwitz, the idea of a path to heaven through work was extremely effective in an early American
colony. It would help maintain order while at the same time leading to high levels of production. The
Puritan attitude towards freedom is one that ended up encompassing the whole of their society. It was
dependent on the ultimate liberty: to achieve holiness and to enter heaven through hard work and
submission to the authority of the church which, by proxy, was the authority of Christ and God.