To the Puritan, the reign of law was merely the reign of God's will, but it was universal. No act was indifferent, either in the universe or in the individual. John Winthrop's consideration of the special providence of God, in permitting the discovery of a spider in some porridge before it was eaten, was not merely Puritanical.[182] It was scriptural, and it was to the Scriptures that every Puritan turned to ascertain the will of God upon every detail of daily life. This obviously opened the way to the most far-reaching tyranny to which men could be called upon to submit, should those fanatically holding the view be in possession of the civil power to enforce it. The tyranny of political despotism had left untouched the whole vast field of private conduct, save in so far as the acts of individuals might minister directly to the despot's pleasure, wealth, or power. The conformity forced upon individuals by established churches had left to the individual his whole freedom outside of the limited relations to the establishment and its doctrines. But the Puritan left no such free spaces in life. Nothing was so small as to be indifferent. The cut of clothes, the names he bore, the most ordinary social usages, could all be regulated in accordance with the will of God. For him, that will was expressed once for all, and only, in the Bible, and of that Bible the Puritan believed that he alone had the key, and was the valid interpreter for the rest of mankind. The more extreme of the sects, indeed, occasionally remind one of those hill tribes of the northern Himalayas, who consider themselves so holy that no one is allowed to touch their persons, while they alone are allowed to approach the symbol of their god.[183] Footnote 182: R. C. Winthrop, _Life and Letters of John Winthrop_ (Boston, 1869), vol. I, p. 69. Footnote 183: Frazer, _Adonis_, etc., p. 137.