ABSTRACT
A New England celebrant of God's good will to the colonists could be expected, particularly during the Cromwellian Protectorate in England, to express it to the advantage of the religious principles and congregational organization New Englanders had espoused. Edward Johnson (1598-1672), an artisan who migrated to Boston in 1630 and was a founder and then prominent citizen of Woburn, Massachusetts, composed a history of his region expressing wonder at God's bounty, deep hostility to the old church order of bishops, and solidarity, from an implied position of colonial superiority, with the struggles of anti-Anglican and anti-Presbyterian forces in the old country. Equally revealing of the mental framework of his pious readership is the intricate network of biblical allusion through which Johnson composed his work.
