Comparative Questions

COMPARATIVE QUESTIONS

Document Links

Document 4-1: The Arbella Sermon

Document 4-2: Observations of New England Indians

Document 4-3: Wampanoag Grievances at the Outset of King Philip's War

Document 4-4: A Provincial Government Enacts Legislation

Document 4-5: Words of the Bewitched

  1. How did the ideals of the Arbella sermon differ, if at all, from those expressed by the laws of Pennsylvania? To what extent did the ideals of the Arbella sermon influence the grievances expressed by the Wampanoags and the testimony against Bridget Bishop?
  2. How did the forms of order and disorder that Williams observed among Indians compare with the Wampanoags' grievances? How did they compare with the ideals in the Arbella sermon and the laws of Pennsylvania?
  3. What was the significance of religious tolerance (or intolerance) in the events described by these documents? To what extent do the documents offer evidence of important beliefs, attitudes, and behavior that were not specifically religious?
  4. Judging from the documents in this chapter, to what extent did settlers succeed in creating a new England in the northern colonies during the seventeenth century? Do these documents illustrate successes, failures, or both? How and why? Were the successes or failures the result of Puritanism or in spite of it?