16. Puritans in England and America: Theologians and Preachers

CHAPTER 16

Puritans in England and America

Theologians and Preachers

Puritans. Love ‘em or hate ‘em. When the term is used as an adjective (“She’s so puritanical!”) it has negative connotations—though in this permissive age such a stigma can be refreshing. On matters of religion, Puritans truly were capable of being insufferable and priggish. They bemoaned and belabored the sinfulness of others, readily admitting their own faults and failures as well. Today many Christian leaders exhibit a façade of perfection. Not so the Puritans.

There was a time years ago when I took a page out of Puritan disciplines and kept a daily spiritual diary. I wanted to be hard on myself and my own sinfulness. Recently, I reviewed some of those entries:

February 14, 1981: “Well, here begins a week of a Puritan diary that I assigned for my American Church History class…. The study of the Puritans has been good for me. They were highly organized and wasted little time. I need that. Also, they seemed to accept their faith almost blindly, without philosophical doubts…. The Puritans were to a degree mystics, with their emphasis on meditation. I think this is more of what I need…. One of the strong points of the Puritans was their continual self-analysis which led to self improvement…. If I can do that this week (and the rest of my life), this diary will be a success.”

My plan to become a Puritan in a week was cut short by a severe case of strep throat. Nevertheless, I continued to keep a daily record of my sins, believing Puritan parameters ought to be mine. Like the Puritans I tend to be hard on myself—beating myself up even when it is unwarranted. Yet I have come to wonder if the continual striving to be more spiritual can at times be little more than self-absorption.

I eventually gave up on my Puritan diary, convinced I simply was not and never could be like they were. I smile today when I look back at this period in my life. Unlike some church leaders today who regard the Puritans as spiritual giants, I do not. Their positive attributes were offset by negative ones. We deceive ourselves when we idealize individuals or groups of individuals. Whether Moses or King David, Paul or Augustine, or Puritan divines, the heroes of the faith have feet of clay.

One cannot be a good historian of the outward, visible world without giving some thought to the hidden, private life of ordinary people; and on the other hand, one cannot be a good historian of this inner life without taking into account outward events.

VICTOR HUGO

One cannot be a good historian or even begin to understand the Puritans without giving some thought to the hidden, private lives of ordinary individuals. Nor can one understand them without taking into account outward events. They find honor in work and relish active involvement in the public square. Prosperity is not a dirty word. Community and family life operate like a well-oiled machine. But their private thoughts—particularly as revealed in diaries and letters—show them to be far more than outwardly pious practitioners of religion. They are introspective and believe that their hidden transgressions—known only to God—are as appalling as their public sins.

But Puritans are concerned not only for their own inner lives but also for the sins and private lives of their neighbors—thus their well-earned reputation as nosey busybodies, sniffing out sin. They would not have understood the current convention of looking the other way when the man next door entertains a lady in his apartment while his wife is in the hospital. They take others to task, while reviling their own “manifold sins.” Outward appearance is of utmost importance—as their rules and regulations indicate—but purity of the heart is never to be neglected. The Church of England, they insist, is pure neither outwardly nor inwardly; thus the label Puritans. Among the most notable Puritans are John Owen, Richard Baxter, John Bunyan, and Cotton Mather.

The era of English Puritanism is generally considered to be the century between 1560 and 1660. This was also the era of William Shakespeare (1564–1616) and the era of the Pilgrims’ Mayflower landing on Plymouth Rock (1620). In New England the Puritan period extends to the end of the sixteenth century and beyond, but it had seen its better days long before the death of its last great patriarch, Cotton Mather, in 1728.

As religious reformers, the Puritans are colorful characters. Like their spiritual sage John Calvin, they are consumed with theological matters, though never at the expense of practical piety and daily living. As with Calvin, there is much to commend but also much to censure. When in power, they banish and persecute and execute with the speed and ease of their own persecutors. Sin and guilt and self-righteousness are mixed with stories of scandal and intrigue. Selectmen’s minutes are filled with petty gossip about local “scolds” who smear each other’s reputations. But the gossip turns deadly when reports of witchcraft surface as in the case of Salem in the 1690s.

PARADE OF HISTORY

As church history winds its way into the seventeenth century, the most illustrious parade is the pilgrimage of Christian to the Celestial City, barely escaping the City of Destruction. Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress turns the Christian life into a pilgrimage. The era also features the parade of Puritans—in the wake of persecution—to the New World. Bedtime reading includes Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. But Puritans, known for their “puritanical” regulations, ban actual parades, which have been a part of popular culture since ancient times.

Puritans are community and family oriented, related by blood and by religious faith. Family activities are the business of the neighborhood as well as the business of the church. The purpose of the family, according to the Puritan divines, is first and foremost to glorify God. God established the family at creation, and the husband and wife are to carry out God’s purpose by, in the words of Isaac Ambrose, “erecting and establishing Christ’s glorious kingdom in their house.” The home, then, is the foundation for all other institutions, and without a well-ordered home, there is no well-ordered society. The family is “a school wherein the first principles and grounds of government and subjection are learned”—a “true image of the commonwealth.” Richard Baxter offers a slightly different slant: “A Christian family … is a church … a society of Christians combined for the better worshipping and serving God.”

The Puritan “focus on the family” sounds like a modern Christian concept. But the severity with which Puritans dealt with disciplinary matters would not be tolerated today. Teachers regularly disciplined scholars by beating them, and severe punishment was routine in the home. In Help for Distressed Parents, Cotton Mather counseled parents that “children were better whipt, than Damn’d,” though elsewhere he speaks against corporal punishment. A godly family, headed by the father, is one that prays and reads the Bible together and makes religion a natural part of everyday life, punishing sin and praising God.

In comparison to their religious predecessors, Puritans are not necessarily “puritanical” on matters of sex. The Roman Catholic perspective on sex had developed from the teachings of the church fathers, essentially viewing it as an act of the flesh that is sinful except for procreation. This view is challenged by Reformers and Puritans, who shift the focus from procreation to companionship. Sexual intercourse is to be part of the very family life that glorifies God. Indeed, they censure the Catholics, who, according to William Perkins, “hold that the secret coming together of man and wife cannot be without sin unless it be done for procreation of children,” insisting rather that sex is not only legitimate but is “meant to be exuberant.” Married couples are encouraged to engage in love-making “with good will and delight, willingly, readily, and cheerfully.”

But their very modern outlook ends on Saturday nights. When Captain Kemble “lewdly” kissed his wife “publicquely” on the “Lord’s Day noon,” he was humiliated by being locked in stocks. Sarah Chapman and John Lewis enjoyed a Sunday afternoon sitting under an apple tree until they were caught and arrested. Indeed, men are not even permitted to “salute” their wives on the Lord’s Day. Babies born on the Sabbath are widely rumored to have been conceived on that day of the week, but there is no punishment aside from raised eyebrows and whispers. Women who give birth out of wedlock are not so fortunate. The letter “A”—a badge of shame designating adultery—marks a fallen woman.

“Unnatural” sexual acts are the most severely punished. In 1646 William Paine of New Haven was executed for having “corrupted a great part of the youth … by masturbations.” Four years earlier, sixteen-year-old Thomas Granger of Plymouth confessed to buggery “with a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves and a turkey.” He was put to death, as were the animals. Such “unnatural & horrid” acts demand the ultimate punishment.

EVERYDAY LIFE

Games, Sport, and Leisure

Among Puritans there were mixed messages on the subject of pastimes, leisure, and enjoyment of life. God is the author of all things, thus even the enjoyment of sexual intimacy in the marriage bed is recognized, if not celebrated. But work—often the hard work of manual labor—is also encouraged and honored. In an era without modern conveniences, time that is not devoted to work is devoted to God, whether in church and community service or in prayer and private devotions. Highly literate, Puritans also spent leisure time reading devotional or theological literature. The romance fiction that Teresa of Avila enjoyed in her youth was forbidden.

But boys and men managed to steal an hour or two now and then for games and sports. Fishing and hunting, both for food and for pleasure, were common pastimes. Also popular were versions of soccer and cricket as well as foot racing, marksmanship, wrestling, and swimming. Table games included checkers, chess, and backgammon. Such activities were not permitted on the Sabbath, however. And Sabbath breaking came with the harshest penalty. A 1671 volume, Divine Examples of God’s Severe Judgment Upon Sabbath Breakers, includes an illustration of drowning boys—boys who had been playing kickball on the Sabbath near a body of water.

Girls were rarely involved in active outdoor sports. They worked on the farm and in the gardens, but leisure activities—whether playing with dolls or crocheting doilies—related to the domestic side of life. A girl could play on a swing suspended from a tree limb in the backyard but did not have the proper attire to join her brothers climbing in the branches above.

Although card playing in some circumstances was permitted (though not among women), any connection with gambling was a serious affront to God. Nevertheless, gambling of all varieties, including the lottery, found its way into Puritan communities. In fact, Cotton Mather railed against lotteries as “scandalous games,” as well as any activity with “popish origins,” such as certain kinds of card playing. Throwing dice and huzzle-cap (hurling pennies at a wall) were likewise considered improper entertainment for a good Christian man. Even shuffleboard and billiards were outside the realm of godly, gentlemanly behavior, typically resulting in a fine for those who were caught.

CARD-PLAYING IN CALVIN’S GENEVA

[Francois] Bonivard was widely known to be a passionate devotee of card-playing…. Bonivard’s card games, in fact, had led to his own appearance before the consistory…. Bonivard had been accused of organizing card parties to which ministers had been invited. He had defended himself before the consistory by pointing out that there was as yet no general law against card-playing, only a rule against card-playing by the clergy, and he certainly had never invited Calvin or any other clergymen to his card parties. He added that he needed to play cards. He had reached such a ripe and decrepit old age (actually about fifty) that he was no longer capable of the amusements of younger men. All that was left for him was card-playing, and he did not intend to give it up.

Raymond Mentzer, Sin and the Calvinists

Cockfighting and horse racing were common underground activities among sailors and hooligans, though absolutely forbidden among Puritans. So also was bearbaiting (setting vicious dogs onto a chained bear), a spectator sport enjoyed by Queen Elizabeth I. Her successors, particularly James I, argued that sports made young men fit for battle in the defense of the nation. He issued the Book of Sports (1618), instructing them to play ball games and other forms of competition on Sunday afternoons—perceived as a direct challenge by Puritans who insisted on Sabbath rest.

Oliver Cromwell was a great college athlete, according to a contemporary: “During his short residence [at Cambridge University] … he was more famous for his exercises in the fields than in [academics] … being one of the chief matchmakers and players of football, cudgels, or any other boysterous sport or game.” Though a Puritan, Cromwell was not nearly as rigid on the matter of sports as most Puritans were. But even the most puritanical church leaders enjoyed their own special leisure-time activities. In sixteenth-century Geneva, Calvin was known to be a bowler—on Sunday, no less. And both Increase and Cotton Mather spent leisure time in Lynne, Massachusetts, at a well-known mineral bath.

Like their earlier sixteenth-century religious predecessors, the Puritans in England are intricately tied to the state, whether governed by a king or queen or lord protector. Their progress and setbacks ebb and flow with the royal line of succession from James I to James II (1603 to 1688), with Charles I and II in between. And sandwiched between these four kings is Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, dubbed by some the Puritan Moses.

A member of Parliament, as was his father, Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) commands troops on the side of the Parliamentarians against the Royalists in the Civil Wars stretching a decade from 1642 to 1651. Determined to choose only “godly, honest men” as his soldiers, he is a harsh disciplinarian and an imposing military leader—perhaps best remembered for his 1649 assault on Drogheda in Ireland. Vastly outnumbering the opposition, his forces bombard the well-fortified town and slaughter both soldiers and civilians, including Catholic clerics. By his own testimony, “in the heat of the action” he “forbade” his soldiers “to spare any that were in arms in the town.” To his credit, he had sent a message to the royalist governor the day before, demanding surrender: “Sir, having brought the army of the Parliament of England before this place to reduce it to obedience, I thought fit to summon you to deliver the same into my hands to their use. If this be refused, you will have no cause to blame me.”

Following the massacre, Cromwell justified his actions as “the righteous judgment of God on these barbarous wretches, who have imbued their hands with so much innocent blood.” But the Irish who in 1641 had killed English and Scottish Protestants were not from Drogheda.

A few months before the Drogheda assault of 1649, the Commonwealth had been instituted, headed by the Long (or Rump) Parliament, and in 1653 the Protectorate was launched, under the dictatorship of Cromwell, lasting until 1659—all of which serves as a backdrop for Puritanism. Although he had no love for Catholics and the “popish” ways of the Church of England, Cromwell was a strong supporter of religious toleration and initially argued for the freedom of groups as diverse as Jews and Quakers as well as adherents of other so-called Civil War sects. He tolerated divergent beliefs but not behavior such as Quaker interruptions of Anglican worship services.

John Owen: Theologian, Military Chaplain, and University Dean

Considered by many to be the greatest preacher and theologian among the English Puritans, John Owen (1616–1683) is a hero to neo-Puritan Calvinists today, and his books continue to be widely read among that subculture. A man of moderation and religious toleration, he did not suppress Anglican forms when he had the opportunity to do so as others in high positions had done. He preached against persecuting people on religious grounds and wrote tracts, including “Indulgence and Toleration Considered,” making a case for broadmindedness within orthodoxy.

One of five children, Owen was born in a village near Oxford, the son of a Puritan minister of whom he wrote: “I was bred up from my infancy under the care of my father, who was a Nonconformist all his days, and a painful laborer in the vineyard of the Lord.” A workaholic from childhood, Owen was driven by a sense of responsibility to present what he perceived to be the true gospel. He entered Queen’s College, Oxford, at twelve and often studied so far into the night he had few hours left for sleep. Before he was twenty he had earned both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. In the midst of his theological study, however, his insecurities boiled to the surface, and he found himself doubting whether he was in fact a sincere Christian.

“I owe more to John Owen than to any other theologian, ancient or modern.”

J. I. Packer

Then, in his mid-twenties, Owen hears a sermon that changes his life. The text is Matthew 8:26: “Why are ye so fearful, O ye of little faith?” His conscience is pricked and he becomes a convinced Puritan. As such, he is no longer esteemed by clerics in the Church of England. Leaving Oxford before his divinity studies are completed, he accepts a call in 1643 to serve as a minister in the town of Fordham. That same year he publishes his first book, a treatise against the Arminian denial of predestination, arguing that this warmed-over Pelagianism denies the sovereignty of God. In 1646 he moves on to serve a congregation in Coggeshall, where he institutes congregational government.

His life now begins to move in a different direction. While serving his local congregation, he is invited to preach before the House of Commons at a critical time—one day after the execution of King Charles I. His reputation as a great Puritan preacher soars, though he remarks that he would gladly exchange his sermons for the plain preaching of John Bunyan (a dozen years his junior). A second invitation to preach before Parliament catches the attention of Oliver Cromwell. As an astute theologian, Owen is asked to offer theological support for Cromwell’s politics and to serve as chaplain for more than ten thousand psalm-singing soldiers assigned to duty in Ireland and Scotland. His assignment includes ministry during the bloodbath at Drogheda, causing him such anguish that he pleads with Parliament to stop the carnage. All the while he remains true to Cromwell.

John Owen

One promotion follows another until he is appointed dean and then vice chancellor of Christ Church College at Oxford University. In this capacity he serves as the campus spiritual leader, preaching long sermons, always with a Reformed slant. Students are required to take careful notes and then preach the sermon to others. Compulsory daily prayers with tutors are also part of the schedule. As dean, he is the chief disciplinarian, calling for an end to fist fights, rowdiness, and general unseemliness.

On one occasion two young Quaker women come to campus, preaching their message of the inner light of the Holy Spirit. When mocked by students, one of them, in good prophetic tradition, begins to disrobe, throwing her garments down and parading through campus proclaiming God’s judgment. Doused with water and mocked by students, the women depart, only to return the following Sunday to disrupt the morning service. Owen orders them whipped and forcibly removed from town.

In addition to preaching, teaching, and writing, he continues to be on call with Cromwell and frequently travels to London to handle government affairs. After six years, due to poor health, he resigns his university post. With no pretence of modesty, he sums up his accomplishments at a convocation service:

Behold your ship, the University, tossed by mountainous billows, is now safe and sound…. Professors’ salaries lost for many years have been maintained…. The treasury is tenfold increased…. Reformation of manners has been diligently studied despite the grumbling of profligate brawlers; [my] labours have been numberless; besides submitting to enormous expense, often when brought to the brink of death on your account, I have hated these limbs and this feeble body which was ready to desert my mind; the reproaches of the vulgar have been disregarded; the envy of others has been overcome: in these circumstances I wish you all prosperity and bid you farewell.

In the following years he fills a lesser role at Oxford until 1660, when Charles II ascends the throne and makes life miserable for Nonconformists. Even before this, he had lost favor with Cromwell when he took issue with Cromwell’s aspirations of becoming king. Not until Cromwell’s son Richard succeeded his father, however, were Puritan Congregationalists (with independent churches) removed from high government positions to make way for Presbyterians. With the Restoration of 1660, Owen is further demoted, though he continues to preach to students. His mentor and friend John Cotton had earlier requested that he come to New England, but he had declined. Several years later he is invited to serve as president of Harvard, but again he turns down the offer. Although he never makes the trans-Atlantic voyage, his keen interest in the English colonies never wavers. In fact, he writes a strong discourse against the intolerance and persecution perpetrated by the Congregationalists of New England.

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH ROYALTY

James I (1603–1625)

Reigning for more than two decades, he succeeded Elizabeth I, the “Virgin Queen,” who left no heirs. He was James VI of Scotland before he became the first to identify himself “King of Great Britain” (not merely England), whose unquestioned power was a “divine right,” though Parliament challenged him on many points. He is most remembered for sponsoring the translation of the “King James Bible.”

Charles I (1625–1649)

The reign of Charles I was two years longer than that of his father, James I, though it was cut short when he was beheaded by the Roundheads (those who did not wear wigs). Struggling with Parliament over religious issues and taxation, he dissolved that body four years after he ascended the throne. Married to a Catholic (daughter of Henry IV of France), he vented his religious anxieties on the Puritans, many of whom emigrated or were imprisoned during his reign. In 1642 the Civil War broke out between the Cavaliers (the king and nobility, mostly Anglicans and Catholics) on one side, and the Roundheads (Parliament and middle and lower classes, mostly Puritans and other Nonconformists) on the other side. Battles between the Cavaliers and the Roundheads were waged for nearly a decade. The Roundheads, under the leadership of General Oliver Cromwell, prevailed, and Charles was beheaded in 1649.

Oliver Cromwell (1648–1658)

Though paving the way for a republic, Cromwell’s dictatorial rule exceeded that of his royal predecessors. He slaughtered his political and military opponents and dispensed with the Magna Carta. The “Rump Parliament” propped him up until he dismissed its members in 1653, leaving no one in government to challenge him. On his death in 1658, a decade after he came to power, he was accorded a state funeral in Westminster Abbey. But with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, his body was dug up and beheaded, his head hoisted high on a pole in front of Westminster Hall.

Charles II (1660–1685)

The Restoration came when Charles II, the son of Charles I, ascended the throne, marking the return of the Stuart line. Charles supported religious freedom and enjoyed popularity with all classes. He is remembered by some as the “Merry Monarch.”

James II (1685–1688)

Unlike the previous Stuart monarchs, who had reigned for more than two decades, James II, the son of Charles II and a Catholic, was removed from the throne only three years into his reign. Anglicans and Catholics had together opposed Cromwell, but England was not prepared for a Catholic king (which also ruled out his Catholic son as a successor). His daughter Mary, however, was a Protestant. Parliament stepped in and offered the crown to Mary, who was married to William of Orange. This “Glorious Revolution” was a peaceful transition of power but surely not glorious for the Catholics. Yet it was a critical era in British history, an era during which Parliament gained the considerable power it still wields today.

In the mid 1660s, with the Restoration in full swing, Owen is accused of conducting illegal private church meetings in his home, but unlike many others he evades imprisonment. In poor health due to gallstones and asthma, he returns to minister in London in 1665 during the Black Death and remains to serve there in the aftermath of the Great Fire of 1666.

With the reinstitution of the Conventicle Acts in 1670, independent meetings of Dissenters (all those dissenting against the Church of England, also termed Nonconformists) are forbidden. He strongly protests the action, and in 1672 Charles II publishes his Declaration of Indulgence, which grants Puritans and other Dissenters greater freedom. Owen begins offering weekly lectures in an effort to bring together Congregationalists and Presbyterians. He actively courts both Charles II and James II and opens lines of communication between Nonconformists and the king. In fact, Charles II offers significant funds for relief of ministers and others who suffered under laws against Dissenters. Now, enjoying more political freedom, Owen is openly preaching in an independent congregation in London.

In his late twenties, Owen had married Mary Rooke, who gave birth to eleven children, all but one dying in infancy. After Mary’s death in 1675 he remarried, and he continued writing to his very last days. “I am going to Him whom my soul has loved, or rather who has loved me with an everlasting love—which is the whole ground of my consolation,” he wrote to a friend the day before he died. “I am leaving the ship of the church in a storm; but whilst the great Pilot is in it, the loss of a poor under-rower will be inconsiderable. Live, and pray, and hope, and wait patiently, and do not despond; the promise stands invincible, that He will never leave us, nor forsake us.” He left behind a great repository of writings, challenging Arminianism and setting forth his own slant on Calvin’s theology of original sin, free will, the atonement, and predestination. Many of these topics were included in his catechism (1667) and developed more fully in his massive volume on historical theology, Theologoumena Pantodapa (Biblical Theology).

Richard Baxter: Small-Town Preacher

As a small-town pastor and writer, Richard Baxter (1615–1691) is remembered as one of the leading Puritan preachers of the seventeenth century. Born in a village in the English countryside, his early education was primarily under the direction of poorly educated clerics. His break came when he was sent to a school directed by John Owen, whose teaching transformed his theological outlook. At age twenty-three he was ordained, and soon after he is called to serve as an Anglican minister in the village of Kiddermister. Here he crafts sermons that resonate with his congregation of poor loom workers. In fact, church attendance soars, and additional galleries are added as the numbers grow. Preaching “as a dying man to dying men,” he has no patience for lackluster sermons. “How few ministers preach with all their might!” he grumbles. “There is nothing more unsuitable to such a business than to be slight and dull. What! speak coldly for God and for men’s salvation! Let the people see that you are in earnest. Men will not cast away their dearest pleasures upon a drowsy request.” Nor did he neglect home visitation: “We should know every person that belongs to our charge, for how can we ‘take heed to the flock of God,’ if we do not know them?.”

“Oh what a prize: Baxter’s Reformed Pastor fell into my hands this morning.”

Francis Asbury, August 19, 1810

SPIRITUAL RENEWAL IN KIDDERMINSTER

To the praise of my gracious Master … the church at Kidderminster became so full on the Lord’s Day that we had to build galleries to contain all the people. Our weekday meetings also were always full. On the Lord’s Day all disorder became quite banished out of the town. As you passed along the streets on the Sabbath morning, you might hear a hundred households singing psalms at their family worship. In a word, when I came to Kidderminster, there was only about one family in a whole street that worshipped God and called upon His name. When I left, there were some streets where not a family did not do so. And though we had 600 communicants, there were not twelve in whose salvation I had not perfect confidence.

Richard Baxter, Autobiography

Believing that such visitation was too time-consuming and intrusive, he was initially reluctant to call on families. But after initiating the program he wrote, “I find the difficulties to be nothing to what I imagined, and I experience the benefits and comforts of the work to be such that I would not wish to have neglected it for all the riches in the world. I cannot say that one family hath refused.” In the following years he scheduled yearly visits to each of the some eight hundred homes in the parish. With his assistant, he offered catechism to dozens each week, using a standard question-answer format for continued use within the family. Approaching fifty, the bachelor preacher married a woman in her early twenties who heartily joined in the work. When she died nineteen years later, he wrote: “I never knew her equal.” She was “better at resolving a case of conscience than most Divines that ever I knew.”

Baxter was twice incarcerated for his Nonconformist beliefs, but he refused to be intimidated and remained active in political affairs. Also high on his agenda was ecumenical unity, a stand that placed him virtually alone among Puritans in his desire to join with all those who subscribed to the Apostles’ Creed. A prolific writer, he produced massive volumes, including his Christian Directory (1673) on Christian conduct, which ran some one million words. Most often quoted is his classic volume, The Reformed Pastor, but he was first and foremost an evangelist, as expressed in The Saint’s Everlasting Rest, A Call to the Unconverted. Two years before his death at seventy-six, William and Mary introduced the Toleration Act of 1689, protecting him and his fellow Nonconformists from persecution.

John Bunyan: A “Tinker” of Souls

John Bunyan (1628–1688) is best remembered as the author of the beloved Christian classic Pilgrim’s Progress. A Baptist minister, he would become one of England’s most celebrated prisoners. He was born in Bedfordshire, the son of a tinker who went from house to house repairing broken items. Bunyan later recalled living in abject poverty, his being the “meanest and most despised of all the families in the land.” With little formal schooling and “without God,” he was an unruly child. “I had but few equals … both for cursing, swearing, lying, and blaspheming the holy name of God.” Indeed, so “wicked” is the young Bunyan that he is afflicted with “fearful dreams” and “dreadful visions … of devils and wicked spirits,” tormented by “thoughts of the day of judgment” and “hell fire.”

Later, while serving three years in the parliamentary army, he senses God singling him out for protection, while other soldiers around him die in battle. On leaving the military, still a teenager, he takes up his father’s trade and becomes an impoverished tinker. When he marries Mary at twenty-one, he writes: “We came together as poor as poor might be, not having so much household-stuff as a dish or spoon betwixt us both”—except for two critical books belonging to Mary: The Plaine Man’s Path-way to Heaven and The Practice of Pietie. Convicted of his sinful life of worldliness—particularly dancing and sports—he begins attending church. But he is soon “fiercely assaulted with this temptation, to sell and part with Christ.” The words “Sell him, sell him, sell him, sell him” keep running through his mind—words, he is convinced, that are coming straight from the mouth of Satan.

Then one day he is startled when he overhears “three or four poor women sitting at a door in the room, and talking about the things of God.” He later sees this incident as a turning point in his life: “I thought they spoke as if joy did make them speak; they spoke with such pleasantness of Scripture language and with such appearance of grace in all they said, that they were to me as if they had found a new world.” In 1653, at the age of twenty-five, he is baptized and licensed to serve as a lay preacher.

But he is still assaulted by Satan, often through intellectual doubts:

The tempter would also much assault me with this, How can you tell but that the Turks had as good Scriptures to prove their Mahomet the Saviour, as we have to prove our Jesus is? And, could I think, that so many ten thousands, in so many countries and kingdoms, should be without the knowledge of the right way to heaven; if there were indeed a heaven, and that we only, who live in a corner of the earth, should alone be blessed therewith? Everyone doth think his own religion rightest, both Jews and Moors, and Pagans! and how if all our faith, and Christ, and Scriptures, should be but a think-so too?

But more than doubts, he is plagued with sinfulness—sinfulness deep within his soul: “I remember that one day, as I was travelling into the country and musing on the wickedness and blasphemy of my heart…. At another time, as I sat by the fire in my house, and musing on my wretchedness….” Fortunately for him, a local Nonconformist minister comes to his rescue: “At this time, also, I sat under the ministry of holy Mr. Gifford, whose doctrine, by God’s grace, was much for my stability.”

With Mary’s death six years into their marriage, Bunyan is left alone with four little children. Moving to Bedford, he remarries and begins his preaching ministry. His is a simple style of biblical storytelling, but he is soon drawing crowds, some coming from great distances to hear him. However, the timing corresponds with the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, following the death of Cromwell. After twenty years of freedom of worship, Nonconformist services are banned, and ministers are rounded up and arrested. Thus begins Bunyan’s dozen years of prison. His second wife, Elizabeth, only seventeen when they marry, is now alone with young children. Yet she becomes his strongest defender and advocate, going before judges and magistrates and pleading his cause. At the same time, he is distraught:

The parting with my wife and poor children hath oft been to me in [prison] as the pulling the flesh from my bones … especially my poor blind child [Mary], who lay nearer my heart than all I had besides; O the thoughts of the hardships I thought my blind one might go under, would break my heart to pieces. Poor child, thought I, what sorrow must thou have for thy portion in this world?

Mary dies before reaching her thirteenth birthday while he is still in prison. Her death inspires the grief-stricken father to begin writing The Resurrection from the Dead. Besides writing, he supports his family by making “many hundred gross of long tagg’d [shoe] laces,” but the earnings fall far short, forcing his family to depend on “the charity of good people.” He could have freed himself by promising not to preach, but he refuses. He tells local magistrates that he would rather remain in prison until “moss grows on his eyelids” than fail to do what God has commanded him to do. Unlike many seventeenth-century incarcerations, his time behind bars is not all misery. In fact, guarded by a friendly small-town jailor, he is permitted some nights at home, and visitors are welcome. Most astonishingly, on occasion he is allowed to preach to those gathered in “unlawful assemblies.” But the most precious freedom he enjoys is time for reading and writing.

John Bunyan in Bedford Jail, 1677

Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, his spiritual memoir of his early life and ministry, is a treasured piece of Puritan writing. With a simple straightforward style, he records events and relationships without overstated religious piety. He confesses temptations even during his Sunday sermon. “When I have been preaching, I have been violently assaulted with thoughts of blasphemy, and strongly tempted to speak the words with my mouth before the congregation.” Besides inner struggle, he confronts community gossip: “It began … to be rumoured … that I was a witch, a Jesuit, a highwayman, and the like.” But more devastating were rumors of sexual impropriety. “To all which, I shall only say, God knows that I am innocent,” insisting he was not “guilty of having carnally to do with any woman save my wife.”

Bunyan’s final years in jail are devoted primarily to writing Pilgrim’s Progress, the book for which he became famous. He is released, however, before the volume is finished. When Charles II issues the Declaration of Indulgence, freeing Nonconformists from their prison cells, Bunyan wastes no time in getting back into regular ministry. But he soon finds himself back in jail when Nonconformity is again made illegal. The six-month confinement affords more time for writing.

JOHN BUNYAN DISCOVERS MARTIN LUTHER

I did greatly long to see some ancient godly man’s experience, who had writ some hundreds of years before I was born…. Well, after many such longings in my mind, the God in whose hands are all our days and ways, did cast into my hand, one day, a book of Martin Luther; it was his comment[ary] on the Galatians—it also was so old that it was ready to fall piece from piece…. I found my condition, in his experience, so largely and profoundly handled, as if his book had been written out of my heart…. I do prefer this book of Martin Luther upon the Galatians, excepting the Holy Bible, before all the books that ever I have seen, as most fit for a wounded conscience.

John Bunyan, Grace Abounding

Pilgrim’s Progress, quickly regarded as a literary masterpiece, is an allegory that touches the emotions like few other books have, spanning every social class and religious identity. By the time of his death there are nearly a hundred thousand copies in print. Though the book is hardly a page-turner by today’s standards, the opening lines pull the reader into the story:

As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep: and, as I slept, I dreamed a dream. I dreamed, and behold, I saw a man clothed with rags, standing in a certain place, with his face from his own house, a book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back. I looked, and saw him open the book, and read therein; and, as he read, he wept, and trembled; and, not being able longer to contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry, saying, What shall I do?

While his fame is spreading, Bunyan continues to preach as an itinerant evangelist. Indeed, he travels so much that he is dubbed “Bishop Bunyan.” He also serves as chaplain to the mayor of London. All the while he continues writing, producing in 1680 what some have regarded the first English novel: The Life and Death of Mr. Badman. He also writes theologically oriented treatises, including Differences in Judgement about Water-Baptism no Bar to Communion. Here he argues that “the Church of Christ hath not warrant to keep out of the communion the Christian that is discovered to be a visible saint of the word, the Christian that walketh according to his own light with God.” Baptism, he insists, must not become an “idol.”

Amid his growing fame, Bunyan found time for pastoral care, often going beyond the call of duty. In the summer of 1688, he responded to a plea from a young man who was seeking reconciliation with his father. Though having been seriously ill from the “sweating sickness,” he nevertheless journeyed to London to serve as a mediator. He was able to bring about the hoped for resolution, but returning home in inclement weather he died at the home of a friend.

Cotton Mather: Powerhouse of American Puritanism

A fussy, fastidious, and often self-loathing Puritan divine, Cotton Mather (1663–1728) represents the third generation of Mathers to play a formative role in colonial New England. Far more than a cleric, he is not only a preacher and theologian but also a scientist, child psychologist, and historian. He is particularly remembered for his involvement in the Salem witch trials. Born in Boston, the son of Increase Mather and grandson of Richard Mather, he has irrefutable Puritan credentials. Richard, like many other Nonconformists, had lost his parish in the midst of English persecution. In 1635 he and his wife Catherine sailed to New England, where he served as a church planter in Dorchester. Here Increase was born and raised.

At twenty-three, Increase married Maria Cotton, daughter of well-known minister John Cotton, who had also fled persecution. Increase later became a Congregational minister at Old North Church in Boston, continuing until his death nearly sixty years later. For some fifteen years, he also served as the president of Harvard College and as the Bay Colony agent to England.

Cotton Mather, named for his maternal grandfather, is given the best schooling New England can offer. Sickly and afflicted with a speech impediment, he learns Latin and Greek as he is learning English. From his “pious, loving, and tender” mother, he learns the spiritual disciplines of prayer, fasting, and daily Bible reading. Twice a year she reads the whole Bible aloud to her nine children. He enrolls at Harvard at age twelve, graduates at sixteen, and three years later completes his master’s studies.

His decision to follow his father and grandfathers into the ministry is a difficult choice, considering his stutter, but the sense of calling persists. The first test comes when he is seventeen. His grandfather, the presiding minister, is as nervous as he is. But when he speaks without stammering, he is convinced it is a sign from God. Within months he is installed as assistant pastor at his father’s church, serving there for the remainder of his life. Having always played second fiddle to his father, he comes into his own amidst divisive circumstances while his father is in London. The occasion is a reported outbreak of witchcraft in his neighborhood. Four children from the same family suddenly exhibit “strange fits.” Martha, the most vocal, accuses her mother, who is tried and sentenced to death. So consumed is Mather with the phenomenon that he interviews the condemned woman in the jail before her execution and later brings Martha to live at his home for several months, during which time she is “cured.”

Cotton Mather

A few years later, in 1692, ominous reports of witchcraft in Salem Village reach Boston. Regarded as an expert on the subject, Mather is called upon for counsel. Once again children are the accusers and the targets are primarily older women—sometimes village “scolds.” The court accepts as fact spectral evidence, that is, testimonies of ghostly apparitions in human form and voice. Young girls give fanciful stories of being hounded by witches who demand that they do wicked things. Coerced to confess, some of the accused do so, only adding to the certainty that witches are plaguing Old Salem. By the time the ordeal ends, nineteen of the accused are convicted and hanged. The judge and jurors later acknowledge their rush to judgment and ask the public for forgiveness.

Cotton Mather, though not directly involved, is accused of fanning the flames. His account, The Wonders of the Invisible World, accepts testimonials of witchcraft at face value and sees witches as Satan’s agents in an effort to “overturn this poor plantation, the Puritan colony.” Although opposed to the death penalty and the use of spectral evidence, he is nevertheless blamed for his role as an expert witness and his part in increasing the hysteria.

For Mather, spiritual formation is everything. As a youth he had written prayers for his schoolmates and challenged them to cultivate lives of prayer. He fasted and prayed regularly and recorded progress and pitfalls in his diary. As an adult, he carries out a daily routine of self-examination, beginning the morning by asking himself, “What good may I do this day?” He contemplates a different topic each day. On Sunday, for example, his focus is the church; on Monday, his family. Every event in life, no matter how inconsequential, is ripe for a spiritual analogy. Washing reminds him of the washing of regeneration; rising from bed in the morning reminds him of the resurrection; feeding chickens reminds him of God’s provisions. His prayers follow his daily activities. If he meets a neighbor along the way, he prays for her. When he sees adolescents grouped together, his prayer is “Lord help these persons to remember their Creator in the days of their youth.” Guided by a signed covenant, he strictly regulates his life:

SATAN IN OLD SALEM

An Army of Devils is horribly broke in upon the place … and the Houses of the Good People here are fill’d with the doleful Shrieks of their Children and Servants, Tormented by Invisible Hands…. These our poor Afflicted Neighbours, quickly after they become Infected and Infested with these Daemons…. Yea, more than … Twenty have Confessed that they have Signed unto a Book, which the Devil show’d them, and Engaged in his Hellish Design of Bewitching, and Ruining our Land.

Cotton Mather, The Wonders of the Invisible World, 1692

A PURITAN WOMAN’S DOUBTS

Anne Bradstreet was Colonial New England’s most noted female poet. The daughter and wife of prominent Massachusetts Bay Colony governors, she was the mother of eight children. In a letter to her children she confesses her struggle with doubt and unbelief: “Many times hath Satan troubled me concerning the verity of the Scriptures, many times by Atheisme how I could know whether there was a God; I never saw any miracles to confirm me, and those which I read of how did I know but they were feigned. That there is a God my Reason would soon tell me by the wondrous workes that I see…. But how should I know he is such a God as I worship in Trinity, and such a Saviour as I rely upon?.”

I renounce all the vanities and cursed idols and evil courses of this world … and wherein I find myself to fall short, I will ever make it my grief and my shame; and for pardon, betake myself to the blood of the everlasting covenant. Now humbly imploring the grace of the Mediator to be sufficient for me, I do, as a further solemnity, subscribe my name, with both hand and heart, unto this instrument.

The Mather dynasty—including John Cotton—had long wielded power in colonial New England, but times are changing. Cotton Mather, in the shadow of his influential father, observes his father losing favor toward the end of his life. The “liberals” are on the ascendant, and Increase is asked to step down as president of Harvard.

Much to the chagrin of the Mathers, the Puritans are slackening their standards. A conversion experience, once a critical rite of passage, almost seems optional. The “Half-way Covenant,” promoted by Solomon Stoddard (grandfather of Jonathan Edwards), allows young adults to have their children baptized even though they themselves have made no profession of faith. Stoddard, an influential minister from western Massachusetts, sees revivals as the key to church growth. The accompanying enthusiasm is suspect to the more staid and traditional Mathers.

Yet Cotton Mather is in some respects ahead of his time. His curiosity about scientific discoveries and medicine is enormous. He incorporates the latest inventions and discoveries into his sermons, illustrating his message while educating the congregation. Widely heralded for his brilliance, he is awarded an honorary doctorate of divinity in 1710 by the University of Glasgow. Three years later he is honored with election to the Royal Society of London. He is particularly fascinated by psychology and child-rearing theory, an interest growing out of his experience as a father and a minister. His three wives gave birth to more than a dozen children, most of whom did not survive childhood. A loving and devoted father, he showered his children with affection.

In his early twenties he had begun contemplating marriage. A diary entry shows he had prayed to “seek for the guidance and blessing of God in what concerns the change of my condition in the world from single to married.” Abigail Phillips, the “Desire of His Eyes” and a “Lovely Consort,” becomes his first wife. Baby Abigail, their first child, “one of the loveliest infants that has ever been seen in the world,” dies less than two weeks after birth. Five other little ones die in infancy. The anguished pain of losing a child is only exceeded by the loss of Abigail after sixteen years of marriage.

Hardly has the bell tolled for Abigail when the widowed minister becomes the most eligible bachelor in town. He has a reputation for being a devoted husband, and marrying a minister means upward mobility in Puritan social circles. So it is that Prudence Prynne seeks to snare Mather in what could be termed a “fatal attraction.” Writing of her long-time affection for him, she declares her love for him two months after Abigail is buried and requests an interview. He is attracted to this young woman barely half his age, but he fears the devil is tempting him. “Her reputation has been under some Disadvantage,” he writes in his diary. “She has gott a bad Name among the Generality of the People.” But he cannot resist her. He welcomes her visits until neighborhood gossip gets back to him. Though smitten, he cannot risk his good reputation. “I sett myself to make unto the Lord Jesus Christ, a Sacrifice of a Person, who, for many charming Accomplishments, has not many equals in the English America,” he painfully writes. “I struck my Knife into the Heart of my Sacrifice by a Letter to her mother.”

“My ancestors were Puritans from England, They arrived here in 1648 in the hope of finding greater restrictions than were permissible under English law at the time.”

Garrison Keillor

But Prudence and her mother are not so easily dissuaded. “In my absence, the young Gentlewoman to whom I have been so unkind,” he writes, “comes to my Father, and brings her good Mother with her and charms the Neighbors into her Interests; and renews her Importunities that I would make her mine.” Apparently, she is telling others that he had made advances toward her and thus should marry her. Mather insists that she must put in writing that “I have never done any unworthy Thing.” But some weeks later, when Prudence learns that Mather is courting Elizabeth, a young widow, she is enraged. According to Mather, she threatens “that she will be a Thorn in my Side, and contrive all possible Wayes to vex me, affront me, disgrace me, in my Attempting a Return to the married state with another Gentlewoman.” Nevertheless, he marries Elizabeth in 1702, eight months after Abigail’s death.

Elizabeth gives birth to six more Mather children, though only two survive infancy. After she dies in 1713, the widower of fifty-one decides to remain single, praying for “purity in the widowhood.” Soon lamenting his single state, however, he marries a third wife, this time enamored with the much-younger Lydia George, widowed six months earlier. He is convinced that she is the love of his life, but she proves to be unstable, becoming violently hostile and leaving home for long periods of time.

As one of the most prodigious diarists of the era, Mather’s personal struggles are recorded for posterity. During his first marriage we find him reflecting on the “manifold filthiness of my heart and life, and the horrible aggravations of that filthiness.” When his uncle, the minister of Plymouth is driven from his pulpit for fornication in 1697, Mather is very fearful that God’s judgment might also light on him for similar sins. At fifty-seven, years after he had married for the third time, he is still lamenting his “former pollutions.”

After a brief illness Mather dies at sixty-five, having outlived his father by five years and having served in Old North Church for more than four decades. A brilliant scholar, he knew eight languages, including the very difficult Algonquin tongue. He left behind a mixed reputation as well as some four hundred published papers and books including works of science, history, biography, poetry, and fiction as well as theology, sermons, and devotional material. One of his most popular books, Essays to Do Good, offered pithy advice on proper behavior. Ben Franklin identified it as one of the formative books of his youth. The work for which he is most remembered, however, is Magnalia Christi Americana, a historical overview of New England.

During his lifetime, New England changed dramatically. He wanted to believe that God was continuing to do a great work in this new Israel, but the church no longer held a place of honor as it once had. Individualism was on the increase even as the younger generation ventured into the frontier. Obtaining property and earning a living trumped church-going and theological debates. Revivalism and rationalism were the twin enemies that threatened old-fashioned Puritan orthodoxy. The Mather dynasty had come and gone.

Eager to move beyond their Puritan past, many Americans, both religious and secular, scored their forebears in England and America for their priggishness and painstaking spirituality. But in recent generations, the reputation of Puritans has risen, The Puritan worldview with its focus on the family, the community, and hard work provided a stable foundation for later religious, social, and political developments

What if …

What if Oliver Cromwell had not died five years into his reign as Lord Protector? Might Puritan belief and culture have gained a strong foothold in Old England?

What if John Owen and Richard Baxter had backed down in the face of threats and persecution? What would the Christian church have lost without their Puritan writings and ministries?

What if John Bunyan had not been imprisoned? Would he have had time to write his autobiography and his classic Pilgrim’s Progressi How would their absence have affected later generations?

What if English kings had not persecuted Puritans? Would the immigration to the American colonies had not had a religious component? How would that have affected the progress of American history? What would modern America be like without the profound influence of the Mathers and other Puritan leaders?

Further Reading

Beeke, Joel R., and Randall J. Pederson. Meet the Puritans: With a Guide to Modern Reprints. Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2006.

Beougher, Timothy ?. Richard Baxter and Conversion: A Study of the Puritan Concept of Becoming A Christian. Dublin, Ireland: Mentor, 2008.

Bunyan, John. Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners: A Faithful Account of the Life and Death of John Bunyan. New York: Cosimo Classics, 2007.

Daniels, Bruce C. Puritans at Play: Leisure and Recreation in Colonial New England. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1996.

Lovelace, Richard F. The American Pietism of Cotton Mather: Origins of American Evangelicalism. Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 2007.

Mather, Cotton. On Witchcraft. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, 2009.

Middlekauff, Robert. The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596–1728. Berkeley: University of California, 1999.

Miller, Perry, and Thomas H. Johnson, eds. The Puritans: A Sourcebook of their Writings. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, 2001.

Norton, Mary Beth. In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692. New York: Vintage, 2003.

Packer, J. I. A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life. Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway. 1994.

Ryken, Leland. Worldly Saints: The Puritans as They Really Were. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990.

Silverman, Kenneth. The Life and Times of Cotton Mather. New York: Welcome Rain Publishers, 2001.

Thomson, Andrew. John Owen: Prince of the Puritans. Fearn, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2004.

Trueman, Carl R. John Owen: Reformed Catholic, Renaissance Man. Surrey, England: Ash-gate, 2007.

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