SOME ASPECTS OF PURITANISM
The history of the New England group of colonies was, in the main,
shaped throughout the entire prerevolutionary period by the influence of
three factors. These were the geographical environment, the Puritan
movement in England, and the Mercantile Theory. The first of these has
already been discussed, and the last will be more particularly referred
to later. As the second was not only a continuing influence during the
period, but was the chief determinant in the small settlement of
Plymouth, and an element in the great migration to Massachusetts, it
must be considered before entering upon the story of those two colonies.
The first difficulty in dealing with the problem of Puritanism is to
define the term itself. The earliest appearance of the name seems to
have been about 1566, and in the following year a certain London
congregation was spoken of as “Puritans or Unspottyd Lambs of the Lord.”
The members of this congregation, which met secretly in Plumbers Hall,
called their sect “the pure or stainless religion”; and the derivation
of the name Puritan, for long a term of reproach, is sufficiently
obvious.[150] Its application, however, is less so. Part of the
confusion is due to the fact that, like “democratic” and many other such
words, it has been applied to an attitude toward life, to a broad
movement, and to a definite political party. Moreover, between the
meeting of those “Unspottyd Lambs” in Plumbers Hall in 1567, and the
overthrow of the Puritan Commonwealth of England in 1660, nearly a
century elapsed, during which the meaning of the word underwent the
changes which time always brings to words of its class, whereas it still
continues as a living term in our social and religious vocabulary.
Rigidly and briefly to define a word which has thus had a vague and
changing content throughout a dozen generations is impossible. To
attempt to confine its definition to only one of its former meanings is
unhistorical, however desirable it may be that an author should define
it as used by himself in his own writings. Not long ago it was
fashionable to decry, as showing total lack of scholarship, any attempt
to apply the name to the men who founded Plymouth, it being considered
as applying solely to those who founded Massachusetts. It may be true
that “the Separatists were not Puritans in the original sense of the
word”;[151] but the word did not retain its original sense, and although
Separatist and Nonconformist represent a real difference, the word
Puritan may well be used to cover both. The pendulum, indeed, seems now
to be swinging the other way, and several writers describe Puritanism
broadly as an “attitude of mind,” or as “idealism applied to the
solution of contemporary problems.”[152] As specific terms for the many
sects and minor currents in the great movement, which for a time
dominated the history of both the Englands, are by no means lacking, it
would seem desirable to retain the use of the word Puritanism in its
widest application, and it is so used in the present work.
Footnote 150:
C. Burrage, _The Early English Dissenters in the Light of Recent
Research, 1550-1641_ (Cambridge, 1912), vol. I, pp. 84, 93. Hinds, in
_The England of Elizabeth_, p. 19, traces “the first whisper of that
sound” to Calvin's letter of 1554.
Footnote 151:
Burrage, _English Dissenters_, vol. I, p. 34. _Cf._ E. Channing,
_History of the United States_ (New York, 1916), vol. I, p. 272 _n._
Footnote 152:
Channing, _History_, vol. I, pp. 271 _ff._; G. B. Tatham, _The
Puritans in Power_ (Cambridge, 1913), p. 2; and R. G. Usher, _The
Reconstruction of the English Church_ (New York, 1910), vol. I, pp.
244-46.
The idea of unity seems to possess a peculiar fascination for the
average human mind. Only a savage or a philosopher may be content with,
or rise to, the conception of a pluralistic universe. Moreover, the
desire to conform, and to force others to do so, is as typical of the
average man as of the average boy.
It is in but few persons, and in rare periods, that the spirit of
unrest, of dissatisfaction, of growth, manifests itself so strongly as
to overcome the innate tendency toward static conformity. The mediæval
period was essentially, for the most part, one of religious unity. For
long, the two great ideas of the Empire and the Church had dominated
men's minds. With the Renaissance and the Reformation, however, arose
again, not only nationalities, but individualities. With the growth of
the separate nations, developed simultaneously a new sense of individual
responsibility in the face of the universe. For the average man during
the Middle Ages, the moral, even more than the economic, life had been
corporate. Outward conformity to the dogmas and usages of the only
church which then represented Christ's Kingdom upon earth lulled his
thoughts, and soothed his conscience. The necessity of belonging to the
Church was not forced upon a man merely by fear of persecution or of the
public opinion of his own little world. His belief in such a relation,
and his ignoring the possibility of any other, had become as innate and
instinctive as his belief in the physical laws of the universe by which
he guided his daily life. It was not alone the historians of the period
who were “content to be deceived, to live in a twilight of fiction,” as
“the atmosphere of accredited mendacity thickened.”[153] The subtle
poison had flowed through the veins of the entire social organism.
Footnote 153:
Lord Acton, _Lectures on Modern History_ (London, 1907), p. 5.
As the idea of nationality grew and rooted itself in the mind of the
masses, it attracted to itself, by a sort of mental gravitation, the
institutions and thoughts of the peoples. Everywhere, the religious
reformation had been closely allied with secular politics, and the
reformed churches became national. As universal empire had gradually
given place to nations, so the universal church was in part broken into
state churches, but without any loosening of the bond which bound the
individual to them. The idea of _the_ church persisted, and the average
man considered separating himself from it almost as one would consider
separating one's self from the civil state of to-day. It was almost as
unthinkable and impossible to realize in practice. His life was so
interwoven with it, his civil rights, as well as his religious duties,
were so involved in his relations to it, that, even if he disagreed with
its dogma, disliked its policy, or strove within it to alter both, he
had no thought of leaving it. To do so would have been to constitute
himself a religious anarch. Not only were the mental inhibitions to the
development of such an idea greater than those operating in the case of
political anarchy to-day, but the pains and penalties attending the
action, both from law and from public opinion, were also greater.[154]
Footnote 154:
_Cf._ Usher, _Reconstruction_, vol. I, p. 273
One of the most dynamic ideas, however, which had come in with the
Reformation, was that of the responsibility of the individual to God,
both for his own life and for that of others. To those whose minds were
open to receive it, the thought came with a force which was almost
overwhelming. In the training of youth, it is well recognized that
responsibility must be thrown upon them gradually if their characters
are to grow normally, and not be warped or broken under sudden strain.
But here were men, in many cases incredibly ignorant of the Christian
story, to whom the very existence of such a book as the Bible had been
unknown, and whose faith and conduct had been regulated for them for
centuries. Suddenly they found themselves in possession of the original
sources in their own tongues, and were told that the eternal salvation
of their souls was no longer in the keeping of the institution upon
which they had always leaned with the unconscious confidence of a child
upon its parents. Inspired by a new sense of their importance as
individuals, and, in the majority of cases, by a self-confidence born of
ignorance, earnest men undertook to interpret the scriptures, and to
revise the existing ritual, dogma, and government of the Church. Extreme
individualism on all these points was the natural result. Sects, often
counting only single congregations in their numbers, arose everywhere.
Separatism was the logical end of these discontents and strivings; but
men are not logical in their actions, and separatism formed but a small
element in the Puritan movement. Where it did occur, the disintegrating
force did not usually stop there, but continued to plague, with petty
and ignoble quarrels, the little groups thus split off.
Not only were the Separatists logical, but their action required far
more courage than that of the mere Nonconforming Puritans. Not only did
the act itself call for a higher degree of intellectual daring, but the
penalties attached to it were greater. In many cases, Nonconformity, so
far from entailing loss or suffering, possessed a distinct money and
social value; but no highly paid cure or easy berth in the household of
a Puritan nobleman awaited the Separatist. Misguided as many of the
latter may have been, and disappointing as were many of the Separatist
movements, it would seem that, on the whole, the Separatists possessed
more sincerity and loyalty to their ideas than the Puritans who remained
within the Church. This the great majority of them did. The number of
Separatists, like the number of Puritans generally, has usually been
overstated in the past. The twenty thousand Brownists mentioned by
Raleigh in 1593 have dwindled, under the light of modern critical
research, to a mere five or six hundred at most.[155]
Footnote 155:
Burrage, _English Dissenters_, vol. I, p. 152.
When the ordinary man gets a new idea, it does not necessarily dislodge
the old ones that may be antagonistic to it, or even greatly modify
them.[156] The tendency to cling to the established church was as strong
in the minds of most Puritans as was their self-confidence in their own
beliefs and superior sanctity, and their desire to alter the Church to
suit them, whether in the earlier demands in the matter of vestments, or
the later in matters of polity and doctrine. Thus the survival of the
mediæval idea of the Church, coupled with the new one of individual
judgment and responsibility, led the conservative Puritans to adopt a
half-way policy as compared with the Churchmen and the Separatists.
Footnote 156:
“Unless we allow for the innate capacity of the human mind to
entertain contradictory beliefs at the same time, we shall in vain
attempt to understand the history of thought in general and of
religion in particular.” J. G. Frazer, _Adonis, Attis, Osiris_ [_The
Golden Bough_] (London, 1907), p. 5 _n._
Under Henry VIII there had been little change, save in the single fact
of the break with Rome, and the substitution of King for Pope as the
head of the Church. The ecclesiastical property had, indeed, been
largely confiscated and distributed among the laity so as to create a
powerful economic interest in the maintenance of the King's supremacy.
By the fact of that supremacy, religious questions had become political,
and important changes would necessarily in time have to be made in
church administration and discipline. Otherwise, however, there was
little alteration, and apparently but two out of the King's subjects
refused to conform to the new order.[157] Although further progress was
made under Edward, the reign of Mary restored the union with Rome, and
sent many exiles to Frankfort, Geneva, and other centres of the
Protestant movement on the continent.[158]
Footnote 157:
D. Neal, _The History of the Puritans_ (New York, 1843), vol. I, p.
34.
Footnote 158:
Hinds, _The England of Elizabeth_, pp. 6-68.
On the accession of Elizabeth, the refugees flocked back to London, keen
to work into the fabric of the English church the religious ideas which
they had imbibed and developed during their exile. The bulk of the
clergy, however, were not desirous of innovation, and seem hardly to
have been affected by the controversies raging at the time.[159] Of the
nine thousand four hundred serving the Church under the Pope in Mary's
reign, fewer than one hundred and eighty, or less than two per cent,
refused the Oath of Supremacy under Elizabeth.[160] Not only had the
parish priests thus accepted with indifference the various changes,[161]
but the laity in the country districts, especially in the north, had
scarcely been touched by the Reformation. When Elizabeth came to the
throne, the distracted country needed, above all else, peace and unity.
The fifth of her house to reign in the period of about seventy-five
years since the end of the long War of the Roses, she found a nation yet
suffering from the severe economic effects of that protracted crisis,
and a church rendered unstable in doctrine and almost impotent in
discipline by the four alternations between Roman and Protestant
allegiance which had occurred in less than a quarter of a century. The
question of her own legitimacy, bound up as it was with the question of
religious authority, and the extreme delicacy of international political
relations, especially with Spain, France, and Scotland, added
difficulties to the problem of church settlement.[162]
Footnote 159:
H. Gee, _The Elizabethan Clergy and the Settlement of Religion,
1558-1564_ (Oxford 1898), pp. 1 _ff._
Footnote 160:
J. Brown, _The Pilgrim Fathers of New England and their Puritan
Successors_ (London, 1906), p. 26; Gee, in _Elizabethan Clergy_, p.
247, estimates that not many more than 200 were deprived between Nov.
17, 1558, and Nov. 17, 1564, for refusal to acknowledge the
Elizabethan settlement. These were mainly Roman Catholics.
Footnote 161:
One is reminded of the satirical verses on Richard Lee of Hatfield, on
his conforming again in 1662:—
Three times already I have turned my coat,
Three times already I have changed my note,
I'll make it four, and four-and-twenty more,
And turn the compass round, ere I'll give o'er.
Cited by F. Bate, _The Declaration of Indulgence, 1672_ (London,
1908), p. 30.
Footnote 162:
_Cf._ F. W. Maitland's chapter on “The Anglican Settlement and the
Scottish Reformation,” in _Cambridge Modern History_ (New York, 1918),
vol. V, pp. 550-99.
An established church was a necessity from all three standpoints, of
religion, morals, and politics. Here and there, a few zealots might
organize their own congregations and support a preacher; but any sort of
congregational church government was out of the question for the
overwhelming mass of the people, who were ignorant and indifferent, but
still superstitiously devoted to the old Roman forms. The moral
sanctions of the time were, moreover, far more closely involved with
religion than they are to-day, and the church was far more essential as
a prop to a government none too strong. The situation called for the
opportunist policy which the Queen always favored in every difficulty.
Whatever may have been her own religious beliefs or lack of them, which
cannot now be known, she never cared for religious persecution, but she
cared everything for a strong and united England. Although conformity
was necessary to prevent the disintegration of the national life, the
standards to which she required men to conform were purposely left so
vague as to permit all but the most advanced of Protestant sectaries and
most irreconcilable of Romanists to become members of the Church of
England.
Opportunism may temporarily save a dangerous situation, but cannot be
pursued successfully as a permanent policy. The course of events led
extreme Catholics to feel that the Church had advanced so far that they
could not follow it, and the ultra-Puritans to consider that it had
stopped so short that they could not stay for it. To an opposition, all
things, theoretically, seem possible. The practical difficulties are for
those who have the responsibility of power. By the end of Elizabeth's
reign, the Catholics realized that the most they could hope for would be
toleration; and the real struggle for the control of the organization
lay between the Puritans and those who wished the Church to continue its
middle course. It must be pointed out, that this struggle of the Puritan
Nonconformists was in no sense for toleration. They had as little
thought of it as the Inquisition itself, nor did they exercise it when
in power, either in old or New England. In that regard, the Separatist
John Robinson, preaching to his little congregation in Leyden, was as
far ahead of the Puritan leaders in England, as Roger Williams was of
the leaders of Massachusetts.
As has already been seen, only two men failed to conform to the change
under Henry in 1534, and less than two per cent were forced from their
cures when Elizabeth introduced the Oath of Supremacy. In the great
deprivations under James and Archbishop Bancroft, following the adoption
of the Canons of 1604, the most careful sifting of all the records
indicates that less than three hundred Puritan clergy were deprived of
their livings.[163] On the other hand, when the Puritans came into
power, out of eighty-six hundred clergy of the Church, the livings of
approximately thirty-five hundred, or over forty per cent, were
sequestrated.[164] The Nonconformist struggle was not for toleration,
but for control. Indeed, the objection of the Puritans to the Court of
High Commission itself, to which they sometimes voluntarily carried
their own cases, and which had a certain popularity that has largely
been lost to sight, was not so much that it was an instrument of
oppression, as that at times it was turned against themselves.[165]
Footnote 163:
Usher, _Reconstruction_, vol. II, pp. 3-14.
Footnote 164:
Tatham, in _Puritans in Power_, pp. 91 _f._, gives from 3,000 to
3,500. In his monograph on _Dr. John Walker and the Sufferings of the
Clergy_ (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1911, p. 132), he states 3,500 as the
probable number.
Footnote 165:
R. G. Usher, _The Rise and Fall of the High Commission_ (Oxford,
1913), pp. 72, 105, 329.
One of the claims made for them is that they constituted a large
percentage of both the clergy and the laity, and embraced a great part
of the learned men of the church, and were therefore entitled to guide
the organization. This claim does not stand the test of rigid
criticism. As exhaustive a list as possible, giving every doubtful
name to the Puritans, shows not over three hundred Puritan clergy in
the church between 1600 and 1610, or about three per cent of the
establishment.[166] There are no figures available for the laity, but
computations based on various methods of estimating the numbers yield
totals equivalent to from two to six per cent of the population. These
figures may be too low, but it must be considered that the common
people, particularly in the country districts, were inert to a much
greater degree even than to-day, and their normal attitude toward the
clergy might well have been summed up in the dictum of the choir in
Hardy's “Under the Greenwood Tree,” that “there's virtue in a man's
not putting a parish to spiritual trouble.”
Footnote 166:
Usher, _Reconstruction_, vol. I, pp. 249-51.
On the other hand, again, as tending unduly to swell the estimated
number of Puritans, it must be remembered that the great landlords
possessed the gift of many livings, and if one of them, from any motive
whatever, turned Puritan, all of his livings could be bestowed upon
Puritan clergy, and the congregations would be nominally counted as
Puritan. For example, to cite by no means the most influential of a
group which included such men as the Earl of Warwick, we may note that
Sir Robert Jermyn controlled ten livings in one archdeaconry, while nine
other laymen controlled sixty-five more.[167] Thus these ten men—chosen
somewhat at random—owned seventy-five livings; and, upon their declaring
themselves Puritans, not only would seventy-five clergy have to become
Puritans, to be acceptable, but, if we place their congregations as low
as two hundred each, we would have fifteen thousand laity thus attending
Puritan churches as a result of the religious or other motives which had
moved ten landlords to number themselves with the Saints. This indicates
how impossible it is to calculate the number of Puritans who were such
by sincere conviction.
Footnote 167:
_Ibid._, p. 270.
As to the learning of the Puritan clergy, the latest researches also
fail to bear out the earlier controversial claims on their behalf. Of
the two hundred and eighty-one men whose names are known, one hundred
and seventy-six had no university degree, while of the remainder, only
thirty-one were higher than Masters of Arts.[168] There were, indeed,
Puritan divines eminent for learning, but the proportion of university
men among them was no higher than is known to have been the case among
the Conformists.
Footnote 168:
Usher, _Reconstruction_, vol. I, p. 251.
Hence the Puritans were but a small minority, both of the clergy and of
the laity. The instinct of fair play, which leads a man to side with the
under-dog, without stopping to consider whether the upper-dog may be not
only upper, but justified, induces us to lay great stress on the rights
of minorities, on the theory that a majority can take care of itself.
Minorities, however, are usually vocal, organized, and zealous, while
the majority is dumb, unwieldy, and but little inclined constantly to
resist the attacks of all the various minorities in the field. If there
is reason to condemn the Church in England for requiring the Puritan
minority to conform, then the Puritans themselves must be condemned just
as strictly for their oppression of the minorities in New England. There
cannot be two canons of judgment for the same act; and, in fact, as we
shall see later, the Puritans there in power were, if anything, the more
guilty of the two.
There is much truth, however, in the doctrine of the saving remnant;
and, in the low condition of morals in the early seventeenth century, it
may well be that the Puritan element was that remnant by which England
was saved, as well as New England founded. For morality had sunk to a
low ebb, and, even if the reality was not as black as it was painted by
Puritan writers, we know enough to realize that there was sore need of a
reforming zeal which should cleanse society of its rapidly accumulating
filth. That zeal was provided almost wholly by the Puritans. Not but
that there were plenty of moral and able men in the other party, who
were striving with the problems of the day as well as the Unspotted
Lambs and Saints—striving, perhaps, with better understanding and more
breadth of view. But that was not what the moral situation called for.
Luckily the more extreme of the Puritans were thoroughgoing fanatics;
for nothing less than a good dose of fanaticism seemed likely to purge
England of its social evils. But that is a different matter from
fanaticism erected into a permanent compulsory system, or from the
attempt to control an organization by three per cent of its membership;
and it must be admitted that there was much to be said on the side of
Archbishop Bancroft and the Church. Not only was the small number of the
Puritans known to him, and also their methods, which were by no means
above reproach, but their refusal to coöperate in an effort to reform
one of the worst abuses confirmed his belief that their real desire was
not for reform but to force their views on the other ninety-seven per
cent of the clergy and the nation, and to gain control of the
ecclesiastical machinery of the State Church.
He was thoroughly familiar with the facts that modern research has
brought to light in regard to the methods of securing signatures to the
various petitions presented to the King, and knew how much less they
represented than they purported to.[169] Very real abuses in the Church,
which were undoubtedly largely responsible for the low spiritual state
of the people at large, were those of pluralities, non-residence, and
lack of properly qualified preachers, although the number of clergy
holding more than one living has been exaggerated. To a very great
extent, the reason for the practice, as well as the cause of the great
number of inferior, and even immoral, men, who were to be found in the
Church, was economic. As we noted in an earlier chapter, the period had
been one of an unexampled rise in prices, and in both the cost and scale
of living. The tithes, which supported the clergymen, had originally
been paid in kind, but had gradually been commuted into money payments
at a time when prices were low, and the general manner of living far
inferior to that of the later Elizabethan period. In 1585, over one half
of all the clergy received salaries of less than £10 each;[170] of
these, approximately three thousand received less than £5, and one
thousand but £2 annually, or less.[171]
Footnote 169:
Usher, _Reconstruction_, vol. I, pp. 45, 291, 294, 412. On the
unreliability of Puritan petitions in other cases also, _cf._ Tatham,
_Puritans in Power_, pp. 59 _ff._
Footnote 170:
J. Strype, _Life and Acts of Archbishop Whitgift_ (Oxford, 1822), vol.
I, p. 371.
Footnote 171:
Usher, _Reconstruction_, vol. I, p. 219.
Pluralism and ignorant preachers were the only possible spiritual fruits
of such an economic system, though the use of pluralities was abused by
some of the higher clergy. Bills were introduced in the Parliament of
1604 for the increase of the incomes of the parish priests, thus
striking at the root of the trouble; but they were shelved by the
Puritan Commons, though the Puritans were loud in their denunciation of
these very evils.[172] By means of contributions, however, they
increased the pay of their own clergymen, so that a Puritan incumbent
might expect from two to three times what a Conformist might be paid in
a similar cure. At a time when over half of the clergy were receiving
less than £10, one Puritan of the Dedham Classis received £50, several
others from £30 to £70, a Mr. Dalby £40, another £50, yet another £73, a
Puritan assistant £33, and one Puritan congregation which offered over
£46 had difficulty in finding any reformer who was willing to accept so
small an amount.[173] Here at any rate, was a very tangible reward for
those who felt that they could remain in an institution which they
condemned, while they drew pay from both sides. Many a poor devil of a
sincerely conforming parish priest, struggling along on two or three
pounds a year, must have wondered whether it were not worldly-wise to
turn Puritan; and a Separatist had to console himself with a logical
position and a comfortable conscience.
Footnote 172:
_Ibid._, p. 352; It was said that three quarters of the House was
Puritan, but this is doubtful. S. R. Gardiner, _History_, vol. I, p.
178.
Footnote 173:
Usher, _Reconstruction_, vol. I, pp. 274 _f._
Advocates of the Puritans, in an effort to prove that their minds were
not absorbed by squabbles over petty details of vestments and symbols,
have explained at length the importance of such matters in that age; and
they are quite right. The Puritan attack, however, was not merely
against the surplice, or minister who did not preach, or immorality in
private life, as it certainly was not for liberty of conscience. It was
obvious to those in authority that what the reformers desired was a
change of the established church government into the Presbyterian form,
with themselves in control. Masson claims that between 1580 and 1590
there were not less than five hundred beneficed clergy who practically
maintained a Presbyterian organization within the body of the
Church.[174] Although these numbers may be somewhat too large, evidence
was continually cropping out which showed that the Puritans wished not
only to gain control of the Church, but to substitute the Presbyterian
discipline in its place.[175] Marsden, like many other writers, has
raised the questions whether the points at issue were really vital, and
whether more “Christian meekness and moderation” should not have been
shown “even to the obstinate.”[176] From the standpoint of the
administration of a great organization, upon which rested the
responsibility of maintaining what it believed to be essential both to
the Church and to the State, it must be admitted that these things did
seem vital, just as they seemed so to the small Puritan minority. If
they were not vital, then we must impugn either the good faith or the
intellectual ability of the entire mass of Puritans who fought for them
so bitterly; and if they were, then it must be conceded that they were
quite as much so for the majority in power as for the minority in
opposition.
Footnote 174:
D. Masson, _Life of Milton_ (London, 1875), vol. II, p. 532.
Footnote 175:
Usher, _Reconstruction_, vol. I, pp. 42 _ff._, 347 _ff._; J. B.
Marsden, _The History of the Early Puritans_ (London, 1853), pp. 78
_ff._
Footnote 176:
Marsden, _Early Puritans_, p. 168.
The ecclesiastical struggle between the Nonconforming Puritans and the
Church, then, was fundamentally administrative. It came down to the
question whether a powerful organization, which thoroughly believed in
itself and its own importance, as all powerful organizations and vested
interests come to do, should allow itself to be turned out of control by
a small minority, whose attitude it considered detrimental, not only to
itself, but to religion and the State. There could be only one answer.
Had it not been for the survival of the mediæval idea as to the
necessity of belonging to the Church, it is possible that those Puritans
who were actuated purely by spiritual motives would have followed the
more consistent Separatists, and merely have withdrawn from the body
with whose government and usage they were no longer in accord. In that
case, the way would have been cleared for the great moral influence
which the Puritans exerted, without the embittering results of the
struggle, and the reaction of 1660 against Puritanism as it showed
itself when in political power. On the other hand, political liberty
might have been the loser.
In theological dogma, the Puritans had, at least until the later period,
but little quarrel with the Church. Both were largely under the
influence of Calvinistic doctrine, although there was considerable
latitude of belief among individuals of both parties. The central pivot
of their creed was the absolutely unconditioned will of God.[177] The
system, which is strongly tinged with legal doctrine, acknowledges no
law but that of his untrammeled will. From this flow two consequences.
One is that there is no room for a non-moral sphere of activity, for
actions which, belonging merely to the domain of nature, are untinged by
moral obligation. The other is the doctrine of predestination, by some
considered the central point of the Calvinistic theology. “God not only
foresaw the fall of the first man, and the ruin of his posterity in
him,” wrote Calvin, “but also arranged all by the determination of his
own will.”[178] The decree involved both election and reprobation.
Except for this decree, all human beings, including those to whom the
gospel had never been preached, and the baby who died at his first
breath, were condemned to hell forever. God, however, chose certain
individuals as his elect to be saved, foreordained from all eternity by
“his gratuitous mercy, totally irrespective of human merit.” The rest He
condemned eternally, by “a just and irreprehensible but incomprehensible
judgment.”[179]
Footnote 177:
W. Walker, _John Calvin_ (New York, 1906), pp. 409-29; _cf._ also P.
Schaff, _Creeds of Christendom_ (New York, 1877), vol. I, pp. 451
_ff._
Footnote 178:
John Calvin, _Institutes of the Christian Religion_, translated by J.
Allen (Philadelphia, 1844), vol. II, p. 170.
Footnote 179:
Calvin, _Institutes_, vol. I, p. 149.
Although this decree, being eternal and immutable, could not be altered
by anything that the individual could do, as he was forever blessed or
damned irrespective of his character or conduct, yet, since the wills of
those chosen as the elect were in harmony with God's will, by careful
observation of one's own actions it might be possible to lift the veil
and discover whether one were, perhaps, of the elect or not. Hence all
those torturing self-examinations and searchings of heart, which fill so
much of the early Puritan letters and diaries. Such doctrine, though
apparently stripping God of every shred of what we consider moral
character, would be of profound influence upon that of those who truly
believed it; and the Puritan believed with extraordinary tenacity. His
imagination was wholly concentrated on questions of religion, and that
religion was a “narrow Hebraism” which “kept open its windows toward
Jerusalem, but closed every other avenue to the soul.”[180] His creed
must not be considered as merely a series of logical deductions from the
Bible, which appealed to him solely through the intellect. Heaven and
hell were as vividly visualized by him as external facts.[181] In the
early seventeenth century this doctrine was a living thing, the
word-pictures not having lost their reality by long familiarity and much
repetition.
Footnote 180:
J. F. Jameson, Introduction to _Johnson's Wonder-Working Providence_
(New York, 1910), p. 16.
Footnote 181:
_Cf._ S. N. Patten, _The Development of English Thought_ (New York,
1904), p. 121; and B. Wendell, _The Temper of the 17th Century in
English Literature_ (New York, 1904), p. 227.
If it be asked how people who believed that no efforts that they could
make would save them from everlasting damnation, if not of the elect,
could possibly face life with any cheerfulness, the answer is that the
Puritans considered themselves as elected. Now and then a poor wretch
did torture himself with the belief that he was damned, and occasional
qualms were experienced by the staunchest; but, on the whole, the
terrible doctrine seems to have lost its greatest sting for the
individual in the comfortable assurance that, although the bulk of his
neighbors were going to hell, he himself was one of the everlasting
Saints. Such belief naturally fostered, too, that smugness of
self-assurance that has always been characteristic of Puritan reformers
in all ages, and also a hard intolerance. Those who did not believe as
the Puritans believed were not of the elect, and so were condemned by
God to eternal torment. No act of intolerance shown toward them by the
Puritans could thus compare with the almost unthinkable intolerance
displayed toward them by the author of their being. To show toleration
or mercy toward such was, logically, to exalt humanity above the deity.
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.
In a trial before the High Commission, in 1567, of certain Puritans who
had hired a hall ostensibly for a wedding, and had then held an illegal
prayer meeting in it, one of them claimed that he should be tried only
by the word of God. “But,” said the dean, “who will you have to judge of
the word of God?”[184] The obvious answer, which every Puritan, from
then to now, has made, is that he alone is such an interpreter, not
merely for himself, but for the entire community. It was natural, with
the Puritans' idea of God, that they should take special delight in the
Old Testament. From it, almost exclusively, they drew their texts, and
it never failed to provide them with justification for their most
inhuman and bloodthirsty acts. Christ did, indeed, occupy a place in
their theology, but in spirit they may almost be considered as Jews and
not Christians. Their God was the God of the Old Testament, their laws
were the laws of the Old Testament, their guides to conduct were the
characters of the Old Testament. Their Sabbath was Jewish, not
Christian. In New England, in their religious persecutions and Indian
wars, the sayings of Christ never prevailed to stay their hands or to
save the blood of their victims.[185]
Footnote 184:
Usher, _High Commission_, p. 58.
Footnote 185:
This did not, however, imply any love for living Jews. _Cf._ D. deS.
Pool, “Hebrew Learning among the Puritans of New England prior to
1700,” in _American Jewish Historical Society Publications_, vol. XX,
p. 57.
From this attitude toward the Bible the doctrine developed, as Milton
wrote, that in that book God had once for all revealed all true
religion, “with strictest command to reject all other traditions or
additions whatsoever.”[186] It was upon this belief that the Puritan
took his stand in opposition to the Church. For him, truth had been
revealed once for all, in its entirety. Nothing could be added, nothing
could be taken away. To this deadening doctrine, the Church opposed the
idea of growth and development. Combine this theory of the absolute
finality of the truth, as revealed in books written centuries before,
with the Puritan habit of literal interpretation, and the verbal
application of sayings, torn from their context, to every occasion of
domestic and public life, and we have, not merely an engine of spiritual
and moral despotism, but one which was calculated to stultify all
liberty of thought. Once allow the body of men professing such doctrine
to dominate public opinion, or control the machinery of government, and
there would evidently be no limit to their deadly influence upon freedom
of intellect as well as of action. It is not a question of the personal
morality of its professors or of the nobility of their motives. Without
the vital idea of development, both would slowly harden into mere forms
and empty professions, while the human mind would lie shackled, debarred
from seeking new truth, or from making those experiments which alone
bring about healthy growth. The attempt was made, both in old England,
with its ancient civilization, and in the New, untrammeled, as far as is
ever possible, by any vestige of the past. It is one of the elements
that give unique interest to the history of New England as compared with
that of the other colonies on our coast. Had they all alike failed, no
interest would attach to the others, above that of scores of other
attempts to settle a wilderness. But in New England there was an effort,
under the most favorable conditions possible,—numbers, economic
resources, untrammeled freedom,—to found and govern a state solely by
the self-confessed elect of the community.
Footnote 186:
John Milton, _Of true Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration, etc._
(_Works_, London, 1806, vol. IV, p. 259.)
Puritanism was essentially a movement of protest, and so was largely
negative. In fact, to such a degree was it a matter of protest and
negation, that the Puritan became absolutely fascinated in his
contemplation of that first great protestor and protagonist of negation,
the devil himself. It has frequently been pointed out that, in the one
great poem which the movement has given us, the “Paradise Lost” of
Milton, the real hero is Satan, and that it is upon him that the poet's
interest centres. The Puritan's relations with the Deity were not merely
fatalistic, but were expressed in the legal form of a covenant in which
God and the individual were the contracting parties. Drama, or
melodrama, was supplied only by the devil, who, from that standpoint,
may almost be said to have been the saving grace of the Puritan
doctrine. Men become eloquent over what appeals to their interest; and
it is noteworthy that not only did the finest English Puritan poem
centre about the devil, but the finest American Puritan prose was to be
devoted to the horrors of hell, and that Jonathan Edwards was to find
the last touch to the felicity of Heaven in the saints' contemplation of
the tortures inflicted upon the damned by the Arch-fiend in the depths
below.
It was, as we have said, natural sympathy that attracted the Puritans to
the Old Testament, that long protest against paganism, with its “thou
shalt nots.” The positive side of the New Testament seems to have left
them singularly cold. Indeed, so little appeal did the words of even
Christ himself make, that, for once, they abandoned their literalism in
the quoting of texts, and doubted whether the use of the Lord's Prayer
should be permitted, as it savored too much of ritualism. The Puritans'
virtues were thus mainly negations. Their ideals were based almost
wholly upon mere avoidance of sin. They sought complete surrender of
will. Humanity, in their eyes, was so utterly an evil thing, that only
by an undeserved act of the grace of God was it possible that even a few
human beings could possibly do anything pleasing in his sight.
This is not an ideal which can permanently satisfy man's whole nature or
exert complete influence over him. It is a far cry back to the Greek
picture of the perfect life as the fullest development of the entire
man, body and soul. Whether that may not properly be a Christian ideal
also is not to be discussed here, but it is toward some such ideal of
self-expression that the ordinary man strives. His history is that of
the fuller and fuller development of his dual nature, in all its varied
aspects. Sometimes the emphasis is placed here, sometimes there, but it
is difficult to see what other subject can really be the central theme
of his earthly striving, and the history of it. Education, economic
struggles, law, government, liberty, “emancipation from superstition and
caste,” all must be traced through their long careers, but none are ends
in themselves. They are but the beginnings of opportunity, of no value
save in so far as they secure for man the most balanced development and
most perfect self-expression of which his nature is capable. To this
natural desire, the Puritan opposed the utter surrender of one's own
will to the divine will as expressed in minuteness of detail, applicable
to every need, even to the style of hats for a minister's wife, in the
old Semitic writings. At the time of the Puritan movement, there was
much rank growth in society. That growth needed a severe pruning, and
for that service the Puritan deserves all praise. But the pruning-knife,
after all, is only one of the garden implements, and a tree is pruned
that it may grow more abundantly.
This system of negation and protest might have done its needed work and
passed, had it not had the misfortune, from the moral and intellectual
sides, to come to dominate the power of government. At first Puritanism
claimed nothing that could really be termed a party. It may be compared
to the Labrador current, cold and invigorating, flowing through the
ocean of national life. As it proceeded, however, it met and united with
another great current, and the sweep and impetuosity of the two combined
carried with them the whole life of the nation, as neither could have
done alone. Much had been borne by the people during the reign of
Elizabeth, which it had become increasingly evident toward her end that
they would not submit to under any successor. The early years of the
Stuart dynasty indicated that a constitutional struggle, far
transcending the religious, was in preparation. It was by no means true
that all of those who were opposed to the King's views as to his
prerogative agreed with the Puritan views as to prelacy; but in the case
of many individuals, the two revolts were merged into one; and in any
case, the two movements, being both directed against the government,
would tend to unite, in order to make common cause against the same
enemy, though to attain their several ends. It is true that, in the long
run, the leading ideas of the Reformation led toward liberty and
equality, especially through the influence of that widely diffused
education which was a corollary of the new attitude toward the Bible. It
is a fallacy, however, to believe, because certain results have followed
certain causes, that, therefore, those results were striven for by the
men who endeavored to put those causes into motion, for the purpose,
perhaps, of securing results of quite another sort. The Puritan, at
least, was no more a believer in the political rights of an individual
as such, or in democracy, than in religious toleration, and the leaders
in Massachusetts denounced both with equal vehemence. Calvin himself,
who most fully represents the political philosophy of the movement, was
inconsistent and confused in his thought on the subject; and, as Gooch
has said, “modern democracy is the child of the Reformation, not of the
Reformers.”[187] The Reformation was much broader than the Puritan
groupings, and so was reform in the state; but the political leaders
realized the great force to be added to the struggle for civil liberty,
and welcomed the burning zeal of the religious malcontents. Thus arose
the Puritan party, strong alike in numbers and in purpose, and composed,
like all parties, of men infinitely varying in views and character.
Their united forces helped at once to create civil liberty under the law
and to establish a tyranny of public opinion.
Footnote 187:
G. P. Gooch, _The History of English Democratic Ideas in the 17th
Century_ (Cambridge, 1898), p. 8.
We have already seen some of the incentives that induced men to become
Puritans. As the movement grew, worldly motives, aside from the purely
religious or purely patriotic, would tend to influence an increasing
number. We have noted above how the financial sacrifice was frequently
made by the Churchman and not by the Puritan. Indeed, “many of wit and
parts,” wrote one of the most attractive of English Puritan women, “who
could not obtain the preferment their ambition gaped at, would declare
themselves of the puritan party,” while “others, that had neither
learning, nor friends, nor opportunities to arrive to any preferments,
would put on a form of godliness, finding devout people that way so
liberal to them, that they could not hope to enrich themselves so much
in any other way.”[188]
Footnote 188:
L. Hutchinson, _Memoirs of Col. Hutchinson_ (Everyman's Library,
1913), p. 65.
Moreover, there had for some time been growing up into prominence a new
class, which we now call the middle, and which had had no assigned
position under the feudal form of society. In the Stuart period, this
class was, for the first time, to impress its character deeply upon
national affairs. The activities by which, during the preceding two
centuries or more, its members had been gradually rising into their new
position had given a marked quality to their minds and characters.
Looked down upon by the noble, and disliked by the peasant, they
returned these feelings with interest. When the noble disdained their
birth and breeding, they in turn condemned the immorality of those above
them in both. Again the element of negation entered, and the Puritan
fostered an ideal which was the reverse of the lives of those who looked
down upon him. Puritanism became the “reasoned expression of the
middle-class state of mind,”[189] which it has always remained.
Footnote 189:
C. L. Becker, _Beginnings of the American People_ (New York, 1915),
pp. 81-85.
Among the leaders, however, as among the middle class and country
gentry, there was a group which had a very great influence, not only
upon the party in England, but upon colonization in America, and which
will concern us more directly. We must now turn to examine the
settlement of those two colonies in the New World which represented, in
the main, the earlier religious, and the later economic and political,
aspects of the English Puritan movement.