First thoughts/impressions
Introduction/disclaimer:
It is very difficult to pin down the Puritans. They are not a monolithic
movement. They are diverse and have diverse motivations. It is hard to find
people who agree about when they started and when they finished and what they
believed exactly. I have done my best to paint an accurate picture of them –
but you could probably talk about them for an age. Probably the best way to get
to know the Puritans is just to read a book written by one of them – I will
talk more about that later.
Puritans in popular
culture
Nathanial Hawthorn – depicts
Puritanism as characterized by cruelty and intolerance. His writing is fuelled
by his complicated relationship with his own family.
William Hathorne, the
author's great-great-great-grandfather, was a Puritan and the first of the
family to emigrate from England. He settled in Dorchester, Massachusetts,
before moving to Salem. There he became an important member of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony and held many political positions, including
magistrate and judge, becoming infamous for his harsh sentencing. William's son
and the author's great-great-grandfather John Hathorne was one of the judges
who oversaw the Salem witch trials. (a series of hearings and prosecutions of
people accused of witchcraft. More than two hundred people were accused. Thirty
were found guilty, nineteen of whom were executed by hanging (fourteen women
and five men).)
The Scarlet Letter – a
woman (Hester) commits adultery – has a child with an unknown man. She is
imprisoned and must wear a Scarlet A for the remainder of her life. Lots of his
work shows hypocritical or cruel church clergy, a legalistic focus and general
rule of terror by the church. This idea of the Puritans has permeated through
our culture – many must read The Scarlet Letter in schools, where there is
little dispute that Puritans were pretty much the worst.
A more modern example
can be seen in the Wolfwalkers, recent Irish animated movie by Cartoon Saloon
in Kilkenny. It shows a very Puritan looking & sounding ‘Lord Protector’
who is determined to destroy all wolves in the area, at whatever cost, with the
strong conviction that he is doing the will of God, and bears God’s
authoritative stamp of approval on all his acts of destruction.
Even the kindest pop
culture ideas of the Puritans represent them as a bit stuffy at best. They are
holy, pious, pray a lot and don’t really do much else.
A quote I found while
researching from H. L. Mencken : “ Puritanism is the haunting fear that
someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
2)
Who
were the Puritans?
So, who were the
Puritans, really?
As I have mentioned,
they can be a little difficult to pin down, particularly as the Puritans did not
typically use this term to describe themselves.
J. I. Packer defines
Puritanism as the movement in 16th and 17th century
England which sought further reformation and renewal in the Church of England
than the current government (Elizabethan) allowed. The word ‘Puritan’ was a
term of contemptuous abuse used between 1564 and 1642. It implied peevishness, a
desire to censor, conceit, hypocrisy and religious discontent. It applied to five different groups of people:
1) clergy who were concerned by some Prayer Book ceremonies and phrasing
(Church of England practices)
2) advocates of the Presbyterian reform programme by Thomas Cartwright
3) clergy and laity who practiced serious Calvinist piety
4) ‘rigid Calvinists’ who applauded the Synod of Dort and were called
doctrinal Puritans by other
Anglicans who did not
(Synod of Dort, assembly of the Reformed Church of the Netherlands that
met at Dort (in full Dordrecht) from Nov. 13, 1618, to May 9, 1619. The synod
tried to settle disputes concerning Arminianism (belief that humanity has the
will to choose God). The doctrines affirmed were that predestination is not
conditional on belief; that Christ did not die for all; the total depravity of
man; the irresistible grace of God; and the impossibility of falling from
grace.)
5) MPs, (politicians) JPs (justices of the peace), and other gentry who
showed respect for the things of God, the laws of England and the rights of
subjects.
Puritans called
themselves: "the godly", "saints", "professors",
or "God's children" (not Puritans)
The basic issue
Puritans had with the Church (of England) was that the reformation hadn’t gone
far enough. They wanted to “purify” the Church of England of remnants of the
Roman Catholic “popery” that the Puritans claimed had been retained. By doing
so, they hoped to realise a New Testament based true and authentic church. They
wanted to reshape Anglican worship, introduce effective church discipline, establish
righteousness in the political, domestic and socio-economic fields and to
convert all English men to a vigorous evangelical faith.
But what was the
problem with the Anglican church?
Ten years after the conclusion
of the English Reformation the church was in a bad way. (The conclusion was
called the Elizabethan Settlement, the name for the religious and political
arrangements made for England during the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603)) The
church lacked money & men.
Ignorance of mid 16th
century clergy:
Bishop Hooper’s
enquiry into his dioceses in 1551:
1)
How many
commandments are there?
2)
Where are
they to be found?
3)
Repeat
them.
4)
What are
the articles of the Christian faith?
5)
Prove them
from Scripture?
6)
Repeat the
Lord’s Prayer.
7)
How do you
know it is the Lord’s?
8)
Where is
it to be found?
311 examined. Only 50
could answer these questions, 19 of them did poorly. Ten did not know the
Lord’s prayer and 8 didn’t answer a single question.
The way the Puritans
saw it, England professed a Reformed Protestant Religion and came obediently to
church on Sundays (it was illegal not to) but England was not yet converted.
Campaigners wanted to
remove 4 ceremonies from the prayer book:
-
Clergymans
surplice (priest’s tunic/white dress)
-
Wedding
ring
-
Tracing
the cross on the forehead in baptism
-
Kneeling
at holy communion
Why?
-
Endorsed
medieval superstitions that clergy are mediating priests: Puritan preachers
preferred black academic attire
-
Reinforced
that Marriage is a sacrament (not true a la puritan)
-
Reinforced
that Baptism is magic
-
Asserted
that Transubstantiation is true
Many Puritans also felt
that what England needed was pastoral care, someone to teach the flock and evangelise
with compassion.
Now, some Puritans
felt the best way to serve God was to leave England altogether; these became the
US Puritans.
These Puritans left
for New England, particularly from 1629 to 1640, supporting the founding of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony and other settlements among the northern colonies. The
large-scale Puritan immigration to New England stopped by 1641, with around
21,000 having moved across the Atlantic. Although many returned to England
shortly after arriving on the continent, these immigrants produced more than 16
million descendants.
The New England
Puritans created their new society according to the framework of the church.
Only the elect could vote and rule. When this raised problems for
second-generation residents, they adopted the Half-Way Covenant, which
permitted baptized, moral, and orthodox persons to share the privileges of
church membership. This sort of thinking led to the kinds of problems which sparked
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s contempt.
3)
What
did they believe?
According to those more
sympathetic to the Puritans than Nathaniel Hawthorn, Puritanism was at heart a
spiritual movement that was passionately concerned with God and godliness.
Some say it began in
England with Willian Tyndale the Bible translator, Luther’s contemporary, a
generation before the term ‘Puritan’ was coined and continued until the end of
the 17th century, some decades after the term had gone out of use.
It was a movement for
church reform, but also pastoral renewal and revival, evangelism and spiritual
revival.
Since we have not
covered Tyndale so far, I will go through a brief overview as he is an
important figure and helpful to understanding the Puritan way of thinking.
William Tyndale: born
c. 1490–94, near Gloucestershire, England
Tyndale was educated
at the University of Oxford and became an instructor at the University of
Cambridge. He was a gifted linguist and became fluent over the years in French,
Greek, Hebrew, German, Italian, Latin, and Spanish, in addition to English.
He is reported to have
had an argument with a "learned but blasphemous clergyman", who
allegedly asserted: "We had better be without God's laws than the
Pope's.", to which Tyndale responded: "I defy the Pope, and all his
laws; and if God spares my life, ere many years, I will cause the boy that
driveth the plow to know more of the Scriptures than thou dost!
In 1521 Tyndale became
convinced that the Bible alone should determine the practices and doctrines of
the church and that every believer should be able to read the Bible in his own
language.
He left for London in
1523 to seek permission to translate the Bible into English: no luck.
He went to Germany in
1524, receiving financial support from wealthy London merchants. His New
Testament translation was completed in July 1525 and printed at Cologne and
then, when Catholic authorities suppressed it, at Worms. The first copies
reached England in 1526. Tyndale then began work on an Old Testament
translation but was captured in Antwerp before it was completed.
He was held prisoner
in Belgium, tried on a charge of heresy in 1536 and was found guilty and
condemned to be strangled to death and then burned at the stake.
About 3,000 copies of
his NT were in circulation at the time of his death. Some copies were smuggled
into England and sold there, but owning a copy of Tyndale’s New Testament still
attracted the death penalty. Most copies were therefore destroyed by the
authorities, who regarded the distribution of the New Testament in English as a
danger to the established Church. Today, only three copies of this 1526 edition
of Tyndale’s New Testament are known to survive.
His later edition of
the NT was designed to make it easier to conceal for transport from Germany to
England and for people to carry around with them. For the first time, large
numbers of ordinary people were given access to the New Testament in simple
everyday language.
When Tyndale
translated the Bible, he was keen to use a language that everyone in society
could understand and thus he constructed very vivid sentences using active
language. The impact of his translation has been lasting, and some of the
phrases Tyndale coined are still in use today in our everyday language, such as
‘the powers that be’, ‘eat, drink and be merry’, ‘the spirit is willing’ or
‘fight the good fight’. Most people, however, don’t realise that these phrases
come from Tyndale.
Without the
introduction of printing with moveable type (the printing press) in the Western
world by Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz in the 1450s, Tyndale’s work would not
have spread so quickly.
Once the floodgates
had been opened and people had become used to hearing the Word of God in
English, the authorities realised that there was no going back and began to
publish authorised editions.
As the first
vernacular English text of any part of the Bible to be published, Tyndale’s
version became the basis for most subsequent English translations, including
the King James Version of 1611.
How is this
relevant to the Puritans?
Tyndale is sometimes
called ‘the first Puritan’ because he was the first person to disobey the
British crown for the advancement of English Protestantism.
It is probably more
accurate to call him an ancestor of the Puritans, though – and a man who helped
to shape the thought of the Puritans as someone who believed every man should
be able to read and understand the Bible for himself.
In his 1530 prologue
to Genesis he wrote:
“The Scripture is a
light, and sheweth us the true way, both what to do and what to hope for; and a
defence from all error, and a comfort in adversity that we despair not, and
feareth us in prosperity that we sin not.”
The Puritans too were
very concerned that the every day man should know God, and be taught well. They
believed firmly in the importance of scripture over Church tradition.
Theologically, the
Puritans followed Calvin: preaching human depravity, divine sovereignty and predestination.
Calvinism provided the lens through which most Puritans read the Bible and
understood the Lord’s will.
However, Puritanism is
not completely monolithic theologically – it is better to take one Puritan and
a time.
Some argue that it is
better to understand Puritanism as a moral force rather than a theological one:
such as regular church attendance, sexual propriety, rejection of gambling and
profanity. But again, hold this lightly.
The moral and
religious earnestness that was characteristic of Puritans was combined with the
doctrine of predestination inherited from Calvinism to produce a “covenant theology,”
a sense of themselves as the elect chosen by God to live godly lives both as
individuals and as a community. (This is the ‘elect’ who were given voting
rights in the US colonies.)
I think, however, the
best way to understand the spirit of the Puritans is to take a closer look at
one.
Richard Sibbes (or
Sibbs) (1577–1635)
was an Anglican
theologian and is known as a representative of what has been called
"main-line" Puritanism because he remained in the Church of England
and worshiped according to the Book of Common Prayer.
-
SCHOLAR: Many
of the Puritans prized education and were themselves highly educated. They also
educated their children to a higher level than their peers. (particularly the
Puritans who moved to America) They wanted their children to be able to read
the Bible themselves, and interpret it themselves.
-
The
Puritans in the Colonies almost immediately after arriving in 1630, set up
schools for their sons. They also set up what were called dame schools for
their daughters, and in other cases taught their daughters at home how to read.
As a result, Puritans were one of the most literate societies in the world.
-
The
Puritans also set up Harvard University only six years after arriving in the
United States.
Sibbes attended St
John's College, Cambridge from 1595. He was lecturer at Holy Trinity Church,
Cambridge. He was then preacher at
Gray's Inn, London, from 1617, returning to Cambridge as Master of Catherine
Hall in 1626, without giving up the London position.
-
PREACHER: As
part of the reform Puritans wanted to see, they wanted better preaching –
preaching the gospel. In place of Anglican rituals, the Puritans emphasized
preaching that drew on images from scripture and from everyday experience. (a
reaction against the lack of knowledge displayed by our aforementioned clergy)
In 1626, the support
group known as the Feoffees for Impropriations was set up, and Sibbes was a
founding member. Through this group, he worked with others to fund and provide
platforms for preachers. This allowed Puritan nominees to take over ministerial
and lecturing positions. (basically – providing funding to Puritan preachers
and speakers). Sibbes was one of four ministers, the other members being chosen
as four lawyers and four laymen.
Feoffees: a trustee
invested with a freehold estate to hold in possession for a purpose, typically
a charitable one.
-
WRITER: Puritans
wrote. Lots. Most of their writings are sermons expounding Scripture by the
characteristic Puritan method of ‘doctrine, reason and use’. They are called
‘affectionate’ and ‘practical’ because they intended not just to inform, but to
make men feel the force of truth and show them how to respond to it. They are
known as ‘physicians of the soul’. They worked diligently to ensure that their
ministry would be fruitful.
Sibbes was the author
of several devotional works – The Saint's Cordial (1629), The Bruised Reed and
Smoking Flax (1631, exegesis of Isaiah 42:3), The Soules Conflict (1635). He is
known as the sweet dropper because he has a gift for dropping little pearls of
wisdom into his works.
The Bruised Reed is
his most famous. It is an exploration of Isaiah 42:3 – “A bruised reed he will
not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.” – a prophesy about
Jesus.
In Sibbes book, we are
the bruised reeds and smoldering wicks, and Christ will neither break us nor
snuff us out, but instead he will breathe grace into us. This beautiful image
is elaborated on over the course of the book. Here are some excepts for a
flavour:
“There is more mercy
in Christ than sin in us.”
“Physicians, though
they put their patients to much pain, will not destroy their nature, but will
raise it up by degrees. Surgeons will pierce and cut but not mutilate. A mother
who has a sick and self-willed child will not cast it away for this reason. And
shall there be more mercy in the stream than there is in the spring? Shall we
think there is more mercy in ourselves than in God, who plants the feeling of
mercy in us?”
“Here see the opposite
disposition between the holy nature of Christ, and the impure nature of man.
Man for a little smoke will quench the light; Christ ever we see cherisheth
even the least beginnings. How bare he with the many imperfections of his poor
disciples. If he did sharply check them, it was in love, and that they might
shine the brighter. Can we have a better pattern to follow than this of him by
whom we hope to be saved?”
Throughout his
book, Sibbes shows us a very strong and powerful view of grace. And I think that is the best way to think of
the Puritans. His writing is humble, yet speaks with authority. He is preaching
Christ, showing us how great Christ’s love is and how deep his grace. Man for a
little smoke will quench the light, but Christ cherishes us no matter how tiny
our faith.
4)
So why
did they get a bad rep?
Unfortunately, when
Puritans got involved in politics, their grace did not extend to everyone.
By the late 1630s,
Puritans were in alliance with the growing commercial world, with the
parliamentary opposition to the royal prerogative, and with the Scottish
Presbyterians with whom they had much in common.
Consequently, they
became a major political force in England and came to power as a result of the
First English Civil War (1642–1646).
From 1649 to 1660,
Puritans in the Commonwealth of England were allied to the state power held by
the military regime, headed by Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell until his death
in 1658. (remember him from Wolfwalkers?)
Oliver Cromwell was often
described as an ‘advocate for religious liberty’ unless of course you were a
Catholic. This was because there was no longer a legal requirement to attend
the parish church on Sundays (for both Protestants and Catholics). In 1653, responsibility
for recording births, marriages and deaths was transferred from the church to a
civil registrar. As we have spoken about in previous weeks, combining state
records with church records caused difficulties for those who did not believe
in baptism at birth, for example. Cromwell’s religious liberty allowed greater
freedom for several groups of Christians.
However, if any of you
went to school in Ireland you will be well schooled in Cromwell’s less
celebrated side. He legacy is summed up by James Joyce in his question: “What
about sanctimonious Cromwell and his ironsides that put the women and children
of Drogheda to the sword with the Bible text "God is love" pasted
round the mouth of his cannon?”, referring to a massacre of civilians ordered
by Cromwell in Ireland, after which Cromwell wrote: “I am persuaded that this
is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches.”
His legacy has lived
on in Ireland for many years since his death.
Banning Christmas
On a less sombre note:
A fun fact about the
Puritans is that they did indeed Ban Christmas.
Anything that wasn’t
explicitly in the Bible was out. Holy days, Christmas included were associated
with paganism and idolatry – drunkenness, revelry and fulfilling carnal
desires. So they banned it in England under Puritan rule, and enforced it using
the army.
It did not go quite to
plan, as you can imagine! People rioted and there was general chaos. But they
did try!
Christmas celebrations
were also illegal in New England (US) during parts of the 17th century, and
were culturally taboo or rare in former Puritan colonies from foundation until
the mid-18th century.
Conclusion
In reality, the
Puritans had blind spots when it came to religious and civil liberty. John
Bunyan, for example, went to jail for refusing to recognise the king’s
authority in religious matters, yet prayed earnestly for a king who would use
political might for the Puritan’s goals. Liberty was FOR the Puritan, and not
for others who had theological differences.
When it comes to
summing up the Puritans, it is difficult because on one hand, when we think of
the Puritans, we think about the wrongful treatment of those who are different
or suspect: such as the RCs in Ireland, or victims of the witch trials in Salem.
On the other hand, though, we have a host of dedicated, faithful ministers and
preachers who worked hard to bring the gospel to their neighbours and families.
Overall, I think, the
Puritans are a helpful resource for us as Christians. Their writings contain a
great deal of wisdom and are well seasoned with grace. Here is a list of
writers that you may find interesting: it is better to read about the Puritans
views directly.
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