lecture 2: The Colonial Period: The Legacy of Puritanism / 1
Critical reading
Sacvan Bercovitch: “The Puritan Vision of the New World.” CLHUS 33-44.
Everett Emerson: “History and Chronicle.” CLHUS 47-55.
Broader historical / religious context
1534: Henry VIII declared the autonomy of the Church of England
1553: “Bloody” Mary; made attempts to re-Catholicize; reign of terror
1554: Elizabeth I reestablishes the Church of England as official state church
1642: the English Civil War; 1649 the execution of Charles Stuart (Charles I)
Key events in Puritan New England
The Plymouth colony (Separatists: “Pilgrims”; William Bradford)
1620: the Mayflower: Cape Cod (arriving from Holland, where they had been living since 1609)
the Separatists’ charter for “the Plymouth Company”; the Mayflower to Virginia; Cape Cod; Plymouth
new charter: “The Mayflower Compact” > loyalty to the king; established their own government by majority rule
2nd governor (after John Carver): William Bradford from 1621 to 1657
1643: joined the New England Federation
The Massachusetts Bay Colony (congregationalists, “Puritans”; J. Endicott, J. Winthrop)
1630: the start of the Great Migration, with the first settlers arriving on board of the Arbella
John Winthrop’s secular sermon preached on the Arbella: “A Model of Christian Charity”
1637 the Pequot War (over the Connecticut Valley)
1675-76 King Philip’s War
1692 the Salem witch trials
“Puritan”: first a derogatory term cast upon radical Protestants by Anglicans and Catholics
difference between the Pilgrims and the Puritans:
Pilgrims: also called Separatists, argued for separation from the Church of England
Puritans: reformers, not secessionists
Puritans and Anglicans (Church of England): shared convictions
belief in God and an ordered universe
the great chain of being
the Gospels as God’s word; interpreted by the ministry
the rejection of the Latin mass
Specifically Puritan views on clerical organization
Anglicans: church hierarchy, with the monarch as its head
Puritans: congregations, elected ministers, churches led by magistrates
later: adopted the presbyterian structure, with elected magistrates at the head; a supreme court
(the hierarchical power of the elected leaders; roots of the American political system)
the influence of John Calvin
some of his basic tenets became essential:
1. total depravity (corruption of humanity resulting from Original Sin);
2. unconditional election (the predestined salvation or damnation of each individual);
3. limited Atonement (only those predestined for heaven will be granted salvation);
4. irresistible grace (necessary for conversion, but which can be neither earned or refused);
5. perseverance of the saints (the enduring justification of the converted)
Doctrinal guidance
the doctrine of preparationism (yearning for grace; attention to sermons; moral and virtuous action)
Doctrinal controversies and heresies
Arminianism (excess of preparationism: works can earn God’s grace)
Antinomianism (excess of conversionism; belief in free grace, without the mediation of the clergy);
e.g. the case of Anne Hutchinson:
Here is a great stir about graces and looking into hearts, but give me Christ; I seek not for graces, but for
Christ; I seek not for promises, but for Christ; I seek not for sanctification, but for Christ; tell me not of
meditation and duties, but tell me of Christ.
e.g. the Roger Williams vs. John Cotton debate (differences of opinion on relations with Native Americans, on
linking church and state, public and private spheres)
“literature”: history, captivity narrative, poetry, sermons, diaries, letters, trial transcripts, tracts
- cultivated (classic literature, English Renaissance), but suspicious of products of the imagination
- in England: Puritans closed the theatres when they came to power
- the importance of rhetoric; language: for religious purpose
- examination of communal progress: diary / journal, autobiography, biography, history
A) “Providential” History (the utopian dreams of the 1630s, ‘40s; the failures: 1680s, ‘90s) and the genres:
History and sacred geography; providential rhetoric; millennialism
Cotton Mather: “Geography must now find work for Christiano-graphy in . . . the HISTORY OF A NEW
ENGLISH ISRAEL . . . to anticipate the state of the New Jerusalem.”
a) the (medieval) theological practice of typology: the interpretation of the Old Testament in relation to the New
(Old Testament foreshadowing events of the New Testament: Old Testament type > New Testament antitype)
e.g. Moses foreshadows Jesus; the (near) sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham foreshadows the Crucifixion of Christ)
b) typological view of history (specific to New England theology and interpretation of history)
the promise of Canaan (Old Testament type) > the promise of the New Jerusalem (New Testament antitype)
> New England as the New Canaan, the Promised Land (second antitype: New England history)
e.g.:
William Bradford: Of Plymouth Plantation (written btw. 1630-1647; published in 1856)
- typological view: implied comparison of New England events with the Scriptures
- 1st book: God leads his people out of a corrupt land into a new one, shields them against trials and hardships
until they prosper and multiply
- 2nd book: enforces the biblical pattern: deaths of 1st-generation patriarchs, the spread of sin, the weakening of
the church (comparison with ancient Hebrews)
John Winthrop: The History of New England from 1630 to 1649 (pb. 1825-26, an earlier form: in 1790)
- from the journal begun on board of the Arbella
1629 agreement with the English government to establish Massachusetts Bay Company
1630 the Arbella, founded Boston
- theocracy; encouraged thousands to join them: the “Great Migration” of the 1630s
- people of wealth with servants and African slaves; agriculture, fishing, fur trade
1635 the foundation of Harvard College
Cotton Mather: Magnalia Christi Americana; Or, Ecclesiastical History of New England, from its first
planning in the year 1620, onto the Year of our Lord,1698 (written btw. 1694-98, pb. in 1702)
- typological view: compares current events directly with Old and new Testament types; discovering parallels:
how the scriptures were being fulfilled daily
Sermon: e.g. John Winthrop: “A Model of Christian Charity” - secular sermon, 1630 (on board of the Arbella)
[God] hath taken us to be his after a most strict and peculiar marriage, which will make him the more jealous
of our love and obedience . . . The God of Israel . . . has set this people that we shall be as a city on a hill. The
eyes of all people are upon us.
Diary: e.g. Cotton Mather: Diary of Cotton Mather for the Years 1681-1708 (pb. 1911-12)
The Diary of Cotton Mather, D.D., F.R.S. for the Year 1712 (pb. 1971)
- formulaic: the progression of the saint through an expected course to salvation
- purpose: to present a holy model of the progress to sainthood
- model: John Bunyan’s A Pilgrim's Progress (1678, 1684): life of the saint follows the course of piety of a
figural Christian
Autobiography: e.g. Thomas Shepard: The Autobiography of Thomas Shepard (late 1640s, pb. in 1832)
- his own preparation for grace; the conversion process
- continues having “renewed conversions”
- sainthood: viewed as a process rather than a static experience
Biography: e.g. Increase Mather: The Life and Death of that Reverend Man of God, Mr. Richard Mather, 1670
Cotton Mather: Parentator, 1764, on the life of Increase Mather
The three generations of Mathers: 1. Richard Mather (married Mary, daughter of John Cotton), 2. Increase
Mather, 3. Cotton Mather