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John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts Bay, assumed that he could transfer the principles of nationhood found in ancient Israel to the Massachusetts Bay Company with no need for explanation. This led the Puritans to interpret Scripture in an ultimately pretentious way that gave their own state and society the exalted status of a New Israel. Old Testament law was directly, if not exclusively, incorporated into the legal systems of New England. The Massachusetts “Body of Liberties” of 1641 stated that “if any man after legal conviction shall have or worship any other god, but the lord god, he shall be put to death.” Death was also prescribed for witchcraft, blasphemy, murder, sodomy, homosexuality, adultery, and kidnapping. Old Testament texts were copied directly into the New England law books. The most notorious cases of major miscarriage of justice in New England were the Salem witchcraft executions. (See: The Search for Christian America, pp. 34-35.)
(4) p. 136 — Concerning the Indians, the Puritans viewed themselves as the enforcers of “law and order” due to their view of themselves as God’s “New World Zion,” a reconstructionist view of history, to say the least (see also p. 138, where the Indians are viewed as “Satan’s horde,” thus justifying their slaughter);
(5) p. 141 — The Puritans were not content to merely kill their perceived enemies; they saw fit to murder and savagely mutilate them — they literally “tore him [a captured Pequot] limb from limb. Captain Underhill ended the victim’s agony with a pistol shot. The body was then roasted and eaten by the Mohegans.”;