Download Puritanism in New England

Puritanism in New England
American Literature I
9/20/2004
Cecilia H. C. Liu
Who are Puritans?
1. first began as a taunt or insult applied by traditional
Anglicans to those who criticized or wished to "purify"
the Church of England.
 2. refers to two distinct groups: "separating" Puritans,
such as the Plymouth colonists, who believed that the
Church of England was corrupt and that true Christians
must separate themselves from it; and non-separating
Puritans, such as the colonists who settled the
Massachusetts Bay Colony, who believed in reform but
not separation.

Massachusetts colonists
 Most Massachusetts colonists were
nonseparating Puritans who wished to reform
the established church, largely
Congregationalists who believed in forming
churches through voluntary compacts. The idea
of compacts or covenants was central to the
Puritans' conception of social, political, and
religious organizations.
First three major English settlements on east coast
 1. the Virginia colony at Jamestown (1607) -
mainly Church of England (no dissenters)
 2. Plymouth Colony (1620) - Separatist in name
 3. Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630) - Puritan
Puritan Beliefs
(I)
 The first was their belief in predestination.
Puritans believed that belief in Jesus and
participation in the sacraments could not alone
effect one’s salvation; one cannot choose
salvation, for that is the privilege of God alone.
All features of salvation are determined by
God’s sovereignty, including choosing those
who will be saved and those who will receive
God’s irresistible grace.
Puritan Beliefs
(II)
 The Puritans distinguished between "justification,"
or the gift of God's grace given to the elect, and
"sanctification," the holy behavior that supposedly
resulted when an individual had been saved;
according to The English Literatures of America,
"Sanctification is evidence of salvation, but does
not cause it" (434).
Jehlen, Myra, and Michael Warner, eds. The
English Literatures of America, 1500-1800. London: Routledge,
1997.
predestination

For many, the doctrine of predestination answered
these pressing inner needs. Its power to comfort and
reassure troubled souls arose from its wider message
that, beyond preordaining the eternal fates of men and
women, God had a plan for all of human history—that
every event in the lives of individuals and nations
somehow tended toward an ultimate triumph of good
over evil, order over disorder, Christ over Satan.

In other words, Calvin (and his many followers among
groups like the Puritans) saw human history as an
unfolding cosmic drama in which every person had a
predestined role to play. True, men and women had no
free will, but they had the assurance that their
existence—indeed, their every action—was
MEANINGFUL and that their strivings and sufferings in
the present would ultimately produce a future of perfect
peace and security—a kind of heaven on earth.
Covenant of Works
 The concept of a covenant or contract between
God and his elect pervaded Puritan theology and
social relationships. In religious terms, several
types of covenants were central to Puritan
thought.
 Type 1: The Covenant of Works held that God
promised Adam and his progeny eternal life if
they obeyed moral law. After Adam broke this
covenant, God made a new Covenant of Grace
with Abraham (Genesis 18-19).
Type 2: Covenant of Grace

This covenant requires an active faith, and, as such, it
softens the doctrine of predestination. Although God still
chooses the elect, the relationship becomes one of
contract in which punishment for sins is a judicially
proper response to disobedience. During the Great
Awakening, Jonathan Edwards later repudiated
Covenant Theology to get back to orthodox Calvinism.
Those bound by the covenant considered themselves to
be charged with a mission from God.
Type 3: Covenant of Redemption

The Covenant of Redemption was assumed to be
preexistent to the Covenant of Grace. It held that Christ,
who freely chose to sacrifice himself for fallen man,
bound God to accept him as man’s representative.
Having accepted this pact, God is then committed to
carrying out the Covenant of Grace. According to Perry
Miller, "God covenanted with Christ that if he would pay
the full price for the redemption of believers, they should
be discharged. Christ hath paid the price, God must be
unjust, or else he must set thee free from all iniquitie"
(New England Mind 406).
Miller , Perry. The New England Mind: From Colony to Province. 1953. Rpt.
Harvard: Harvard UP, 1998.
Churches

The concept of the covenant also provided a practical means
of organizing churches. Since the state did not control the
church, the Puritans reasoned, there must be an alternate
method of of establishing authority. According to Harry S.
Stout, "For God's Word to function freely, and for each
member to feel an integral part of the church's operations,
each congregation must be self-sufficient, containing within
itself all the offices and powers necessary for selfregulation. New England's official apologist, John Cotton,
termed this form of church government 'Congregational,'
meaning that all authority would be located within particular
congregations" (The New England Soul 17).

Stout, Harry S. The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial
New England. New York: Oxford UP, 1988.
The Great Awakening
 What historians call "the first Great Awakening"
can best be described as a revitalization of
religious piety that swept through the American
colonies between the 1730s and the 1770s.
 One of those who attacked this growing
rationality, and who was also one of the principle
figures in the Great Awakening was Jonathan
Edwards. Edwards has received a bad press for
his “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” In
that sermon he used the image of a spider
dangling by a web over a hot fire to describe the
human predicament.
The three most famed evangelical preachers of
the Great Awakening:

http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us/tserve/eighteen/ekeyinfo/grawaken.htm
Gilbert Tennent
Jonathan Edwards
George Whitefield
All these images are derived from National Humanities Center: 17th and
18th Centuries http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us/tserve/eighteen.htm
John Eliot, ca. date
(unknown artist). Eliot a
Puritan minister in 17th -c.
Massachusetts, was known
as the "Apostle of the
Indians.“
Image from www.nhc.rtp.nc.us/.../
ekeyinfo/puritanb.htm
Thomas Smith, Self-Portrait, ca. 1680.
Smith, a mariner, painter, and (sources
indicate) a Puritan, included this
inscription on the white sheet under the
skull:
Why why should I the World be minding
therein a World of Evils Finding.
Then Farwell World: Farwell thy Jarres
thy Joies thy Toies thy Wiles thy Warrs
Truth Sounds Retreat: I am not sorye.
The Eternall Drawes to him my heart
By Faith (which can thy Force Subvert)
To Crowne me (after Grace) with Glory.
Image from www.nhc.rtp.nc.us/.../
ekeyinfo/puritanb.htm
Puritan church with
pulpit, pews, and,
significantly, no altar.
Old Ship Meeting
House, Hingham,
Mass., built in 1681.
Image from
www.nhc.rtp.nc.us/.../
ekeyinfo/puritanb.htm
References

“Puritanism and Predestination”
http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us/tserve/eighteen/ekeyinfo/puritanb.htm
http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us/tserve/eighteen/ekeyinfo/grawaken.htm
“American Journeys” –A Map of Virginia
http://www.americanjourneys.org/aj-075/summary/index.asp
 Images from “National Humanities Center: 17th and 18th
Centuries” http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us/tserve/eighteen.htm

“Puritanism in New England”
http://guweb2.gonzaga.edu/faculty/campbell/enl310/purdef.htm
 “The Great Awakening”
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h620.html
http://www.wfu.edu/~matthetl/perspectives/four.html
