No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Assessing the New England Mind
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Extract
A number of factors have combined to obscure the Puritan mind from contemporary view. Until about a century ago, Puritan history both in England and America was written mostly from anti-Puritan, post-Restoration sources. Thomas Carlyle's Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell marked a turning point in this practice, and the works of Samuel Rawson Gardiner and of Sir Charles Firth gave seventeenth century English Puritanism a narrowly interpreted, but fairer, hearing. The New England Puritan, however, received little real benefit. The political historian and the economic determinist despised theology and, accordingly, lacked the chief instrument whereby to probe the Puritan mind. Moreover, the American historian, steeped in nineteenth century liberalist notions and mightily affected by the English Whig tradition in history writing, usually made the historical error of reading into the New England mind ideas which are the results of nineteenth and twentieth century experience. Accordingly, they read backward into colonial history merely to emphasize the Puritans as forerunners of religious toleration, democracy, and capitalism (all of which, in the contemporary sense, the Puritan would have abhorred from1 the bottom of his soul!). These writers refused to believe any people could be as religious as the Puritans pretended and they concluded either that Puritans were all hypocrites or that a hypocritical Puritan clergy tyrannized a defenseless people until the latter, in righteous desperation, overthrew the bigoted priests and let in the pure air of eighteenth century rationalism.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © American Society of Church History 1941
References
1 How many Thanksgiving sermons and school exercises still multiply that error!
2 Andrews, C. M., “Historic Doubts,” in Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, XXVIII (Boston, 1934), 280–94Google Scholar. Hereinafter cited as C. S. M. Publications.
3 Two Elizabethan Puritan Diaries (Chicago, 1933)Google Scholar; Tudor Puritanism (Chicago, 1939).Google Scholar
4 Puritanism ana Liberty (London, 1938).Google Scholar
5 Tracts on Liberty in the Puritan Revolution 1638–1647 (in Records of Civilization, XVIII, 3 vols., New York, 1934)Google Scholar; The Rise of Puritanism (New York, 1938).Google Scholar
6 Orthodoxy in Massachusetts 1630–1650 (Cambridge, Mass., 1933)Google Scholar; Miller, Perry and Johnson, Thomas H., The Puritans (New York, 1938)Google Scholar; Miller, Perry, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (New York, 1939).Google Scholar
7 Builders of the Bay Colony (Boston, 1930)Google Scholar; The Founding of Harvard College (Cambridge, Mass., 1935)Google Scholar; Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century (2 parts, Cambridge, Mass., 1936)Google Scholar; The Puritan Pronaos: Studies in the Intellectual Life of New England in the Seventeenth Century (New York, 1936).Google Scholar
8 Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts [continuation of the work of John Langdon Sibley under this title, 3 vols., Cambridge, Mass., 1873–85], IV (Cambridge, 1933)Google Scholar, V (Boston, 1937); and several articles, especially: “Secondary Education in the Puritan Colonies,” in The New England Quarterly, VII (12, 1934), 646–61Google Scholar; “A Plea for Puritanism,” in The American Historical Review, XL (04, 1935) 460–67Google Scholar; and “The New England Clergy of the ‘Glacial Age.’” in C. S. M. Publications, XXXII (Boston, 1938), 24–54.Google Scholar
9 London, 1934.
10 See especially, Miller, Perry, “Thomas Hooker and the Democracy of Early Connecticut,” in The New England Quarterly, IV (1931), 663–712CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “The Half-Way Covenant,” ibid., VI (1933), 676–715; “The Puritan Theory of the Sacraments in Seventeenth Century New England,” in The Catholic Historical Review, XXII (1937), 409–25Google Scholar; “The Marrow of Puritan Divinity,” in C. S. M. Publications, XXXII (Boston, 1938), 247–300Google Scholar. Hornberger, Theodore, “The Date, The Source, and The Significance of Cotton Mather's Interest in Science,” in American Literature, VI (1935), 413–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Samuel Lee (1625–1691), A Clerical Channel for the Flow of New Ideas to Seventeenth Century New England,” in Osiris, I (1936), 341–55Google Scholar; “Puritanism and Science,” in The New England Quarterly, X (1937), 503–15Google Scholar. This list is by no means exhaustive; it is merely suggestive of some of the articles most pertinent to the new understanding of Puritanism.
11 Woodhouse, , Puritanism ana Liberty, Introduction, 36.Google Scholar
12 See, for example, Ames, William, The Marrow of Sacred Divinity (London, 1642), 169–70Google Scholar; Davenport, John's “Profession of Faith,” in Calder, Isabel MacBeath (ed.), Letters of John Davenport, Puritan Divine (New Haven, 1937), 68Google Scholar. Such sources can be multiplied many times.
13 Neal, Daniel, The History of the Puritans (Choules ed., 2 vols., New York, 1871), I, 269–70.Google Scholar
14 Woodhouse, , Puritanism and Liberty, Intro., 45–46Google Scholar. The degree of receptivity varied, of course, from Puritan to* Puritan and from time to time. Accordingly, it might in. the future be convenient to group New Englanders in a manner similar to Professor Woodhouse (ibid., Intro., 14ff.) as Rightists, Right Center, Center, Left Center, and Leftists. I believe each generation would display minds of each category and it seems pretty clear that, taking 1630 as a base, the New England mind progressed towards the left as time passed. The categories offer another advantage. They make possible a more integral unity, on a sliding scale, among leaders of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. For example, John Wilson and John Davenport were probably Rightists; Hooker and Cotton, Right Center; Shepard and R. Mather, Center; Hugh Peter and Sir Henry Vane, Jr., Left Center; and Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, Leftists. I consider these characterizations as purely tentative.
15 Miller, , “The Marrow,” in C. S. M. Publications, XXXII, 300Google Scholar; Morison, , Puritan Pronaos, 156.Google Scholar
16 Especially discussed in “The Marrow,” in C. S. M. Publications, XXXII, 247–300Google Scholar; The New England Mind, 365–97 and Appendix B.Google Scholar
17 Beveridge, Henry (translator), Institutes of the Christian Religion (Works of John Calvin, 52 vols., Edinburgh, 1843–1855), LI, Book iii, Chapters 1–3.Google Scholar
18 Institutes, LI, Book iii, 534.Google Scholar
19 Quoted in Miller, , “The Marrow,” C. S. M. Publications, XXXII, 261.Google Scholar
20 Quoted in ibid., 264.
21 “That which is said to be right reason, if absolute rectitude be looked after, is not elsewhere to be sought for then where it is, that is, in the Scriptures: neither doth it differ from the will of God revealed for the direction of our life.” Ames, , The Marrow of Sacred Divinity, 226.Google Scholar
22 Quoted in Miller, , “The Marrow,” in C. S. M. Publications. XXXII, 285.Google Scholar
23 Ibid., 285–86.
24 Ibid., 283–84.
25 See the excellent example quoted by Professor Morison from Sewall, Samuel's Diary (1691)Google Scholar: “‘I pray'd this noon that God would give me a pardon of my Sins under the Broad Seal of Heaven.’ I have done my part, at least, ‘I hope I doe thirst after Christ’; now, God do yours!” Puritan Pronaos, 156.Google Scholar
26 Eliot, John, A Late and Further Manifestation, of the Progress of the Gospel Amongst the Indians in New England … (London, 1655)Google Scholar, in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 3d Ser., IV, 278Google Scholar. For an earlier, similar example, see Eliot, , The Day-Breaking (London, 1647)Google Scholar, in ibid., 10.
27 Institutes, L, Book i, ch. xiv, 221.Google Scholar
28 Miller, , The New England Mind, 183.Google Scholar
29 Institutes, L, Book ii, ch. v. 394.Google Scholar
30 Institutes, L, Book ii, ch. ii, 314–19Google Scholar; cf. Miller, , The New England Mind, 183.Google Scholar
31 Quoted in Miller, , The New England Mind, 205.Google Scholar
32 Old South Leaflets, No. 55 (Boston, Mass.), 14.
33 Ames, , Marrow of Sacred Divinity, 226.Google Scholar
34 Miller, , The New England Mind, 187.Google Scholar
35 See Knappen, , Tudor Puritanism, 475Google Scholar; Morison, , The Founding of Harvard College, passim; Sanara College in the Seventeenth Century, especially Part II, Appendix BGoogle Scholar; Miller, , The New England Mind, 156Google Scholar and passim.
36 Quoted in Miller, , The New England Mind, 160.Google Scholar
37 Ibid., 72.
38 Ames, , Marrow of Sacred Divinity, 177.Google Scholar
39 William Preston had stated it: “Faith addeth to the eye of reason, and raiseth it higher; … As one that hath dimme eyes, he can see better with the help of Spectacles: even so doth the eye of reason, by a supernaturall faith infused. So that all things which we beleeve, have a credibilitie and entitle in them, and they are the objects of the understanding; but we cannot find them out, without some supernaturall help.” Cf. Miller, , The New England Mind, 201.Google Scholar
40 As Professor Woodhouse has said of the Puritans, “… no one was ever more insistent on hearing a reason for the faith that was in you.” Puritanism and Liberty, Intro., 41.
41 Both Willard and Davenport are quoted from Miller, The New England Mind, 185.Google Scholar
42 The Marrow of Sacred Divinity, 2.Google Scholar
43 Quoted from Preston, William in Miller, , The New England Mind, 186.Google Scholar
44 Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century, Part I, 200Google Scholar, passim; Part II, passim; Puritan Pronaos, 45–53.Google Scholar
45 See, for example, William Ames' statement that, since the Scriptures were written in Hebrew and Greek, “some knowledge at least of these tongues [is] necessary to the exact understanding of the Scriptures: …” Marrow of Sacred Divinity, 171.Google Scholar
46 “They were, in fact, reacting against the spirit of the Renaissance rather than continuing it.” Cf. Perrin, Porter G., “Possible Sources of Technologia at Early Harvard,” in The New England Quarterly, VII (12, 1934), 718–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
47 Quoted in Miller, , The New England Mind, 198.Google Scholar
48 Cotton, John, A Brief Exposition upon Ecclesiasites (London, 1654), 22Google Scholar; see also Hornberger, Theodore, “Puritanism and Science: The Relationship Revealed in the Writings of John Cotton,” The New England Quarterly, X (09, 1937), 503–15Google Scholar. William Ames had made much the same point. Cf. Miller, , The New England Mind, 162.Google Scholar
49 The entire Compendium is published in C. S. M. Publications, XXXIII, (Boston, 1940)Google Scholar. The quotation is from page 4.
50 Morison, , Puritan Pronaos, 239.Google Scholar
51 Davenport, to Winthrop, John Jr., New Haven, 03 1, 1658/1659Google Scholar, in Calder, (ed.), Letters of John Davenport, 134.Google Scholar
52 Shepard, to Winthrop, John Jr., Charlestown, 03 8, 1668/1689Google Scholar, in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 3d. Ser., 70.
53 Shipton, C. K., “The New England Clergy of the ‘Glacial Age.’” in C. S. M. Publications, XXXII, 24–54.Google Scholar
54 Morison, , Puritan Pronaos, 248.Google Scholar
55 Quoted in Miller, , The New England Mind, 107.Google Scholar
56 Some useful materials in these directions are in Foster, Herbert D., “International Calvinism, through Locke and the Revolution of 1688,” in The American Historical Review, XXXII (04, 1927), 475–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar