Re:; John Winthrop

For the other point concerning liberty, I observe a great mistake in the country about that.  There is a twofold liberty, natural (I mean as our nature is now corrupt) and civil or federal. The first is common to man with beasts and other creatures.  By this, man, as he stands in relation to man simply, hath liberty to do what he lists; it is a liberty to evil as well as to good.  This liberty is incompatible and inconsistent with authority an cannot endure the least restraint of the most just authority,  The exercise and maintaining of this liberty makes men grow ;more evil and in time to be worse than brute beasts: omnes sumus licentia deteriores.  This is that great enemy of truth and peace, that wild beast, which all of the ordinances of God are bent against, to restrain and subdue it.  The other kind of liberty I call civil or federal; it may also be termed moral, in reference to the covenants between God and man, in the moral law, and the politic covenants and constitutions amongst men themselves.  This liberty is the proper end object of authority and cannot subsist without it; and it is a liberty to that only which is good, just and honest. This liberty you are to stand for, with the hazard (not only of your goods, but) of your lives, if need be.Whatsoever crosseth this is not authority but a distemper thereof. This liberty is maintained and exercised in a way of subjection to authority; it is of the same kind of liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free. 

I choose this paragraph because of his explanation of the liberty, one natural and  the other federal or civil.  At first read, I couldn't believe that he was relating natural liberty with beastly behavior, and that the other liberty was a Godly one, the only one.  The natural liberty was evil, corrupt, savage, unruly and beastly.  Natural liberty was primitive and barbaric.  Now on the other side was civil or Federal liberty which in his words was Godly, full of morals and religious matters. Making people enemy of the truth which was his truth.  But as a read more about puritans I understood his meaning was a religious group and feed up with what he saw in England. I don't thing these were bad people but a little fanatic but not stupid, very intelligent group of individual especially Mr. Winthrop.  The only set back for them were the practice of witchcraft.

I don't relate this to America's culture because we try to practice separation of church and state (secularism). But for other countries like Afghanistan it is the religion that rules the country.