1. Puritanism: The problem of definition
Puritanism: The problem of definition The Puritans have probably been more admired, at least by Reformed believers, than any other body of English Christians. Equally, they have also been more vilified than any other body of English Christians! Yet who were they?
The question finds no easy answer. Some answers that might spring to mind must be rejected. For example, we cannot define Puritanism by its adherence to Reformed theology. The definition would be far too broad. It would make all Calvinists into Puritans. But French, Swiss, German, and Dutch Calvinists were not Puritans. Even if we restrict ourselves to England, there were many English Calvinists who did not identify with the contemporary movement nicknamed "Puritan"—most notably Archbishop
Whitgift, the "hammer of the Puritans", whose theology was impeccably Calvinistic, and Richard Hooker, perhaps the Anglican establishment's most creative theologian, whose understanding of salvation was quintessentially
Reformed. Finally, there were people who did identify themselves in some sense with the Puritan movement, endorsing much of its agenda, who were not Calvinists in theology: one thinks of those two mighty 17th century
Johns—John Goodwin and John Milton—who were Arminians. Milton in particular is routinely described as "the Puritan poet", "the poet of Puritanism", and so forth.
A theological definition focusing on Calvinism, then, will not work. It falsifies history.1 Others focus on a certain kind of spirituality as the heart of Puritanism. Yet it is difficult, again, to pin down what this distinctive spirituality was. If (as often) it is understood as taking the Bible and preaching seriously, insisting on authentic experience of God, and striving after holiness, then the present writer would humbly suggest that these have been hallmarks of most forms of vital Christianity throughout the Christian centuries. By this definition, Basil of Caesarea, Augustine, Simeon the New
Theologian, Bernard of Clairvaux, and the Catholic Jansenists were all Puritans. Once again, the word has become so broad as to lose its cashvalue.
Could we combine the two definitions, and say that a Puritan was someone who both held to Reformed theology, and embraced an
experiential God-centred spirituality? No: it would still be too wide. There were plenty of genuinely pious Calvinists who did not identify with the label "Puritan". Richard Hooker again comes to mind. There were many others—John Jewel, John Davenant, Daniel Featley, Archbishop Ussher,
Samuel Ward, Joseph Hall.2
We might be on better ground if we say that Puritanism had a distinctive view of worship. Most students know that conflicts in the English Church from 1559 to 1662 often revolved around worship, and that Puritans believed in the "regulative principle"—that nothing must be done in worship unless authorized by Scripture. Even so, this was a more broadly
Reformed ideal, and the history of those times, in England, Scotland, and Continental Europe, shows that the regulative principle itself was capable of widely varying interpretations. The first English Puritans in the 1560s were shocked to find that their European Reformed heroes, like Heinrich
Bullinger and Peter Martyr Vermigli, did not share their interpretation of the regulative principle when it came to clerical vestments (see below). It seems, then, that Puritans might have embraced, not simply the Reformed regulative principle, but a particular understanding of how it applied. There were, however, differences among Puritans themselves about its application. Did it allow or disallow liturgies, or hymns, or the Lord's
Prayer, or the Apostles' Creed, or funeral sermons, or a special sermon on Christmas day? Puritans did not speak with a single voice on these issues.3
One interesting theological conviction that many historians think was almost exclusively Puritan was Sabbatarianism—a belief that the Christian
Sunday was essentially identical with the Old Testament Sabbath, and should be rigorously kept as a day of rest-for-worship, neither work nor recreation being allowed. This, however, was rather late in developing; the publication in 1595 of the treatise The Doctrine of the Sabbath by Nicholas
Bownde (d. 1613), Puritan rector of Norton in Suffolk, is commonly held to be decisive for Puritan Sabbatarianism. Even here we must be careful, because some anti-Puritans like Lancelot Andrewes (see section 4.4) were
Sabbatarian, and by the second half of the 17th century, Sabbatarianism was the common conviction of virtually all English Protestants, whether
"Puritan" in any sense or not. In the earlier part of the 17th century, however, it does seem to have been a likely badge of Puritan sympathies.
Rather than create definitions of our own (possibly framed to include all our heroes and exclude our villains!), perhaps we should try a different tack,
and use the word "Puritan" as it was used in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Who did the people of that time think the Puritans were? Even here we are faced with a problem. At a more educated level, the Anglican establishment used the word "Puritan" to describe those Anglicans who wanted to reform the Church of England still further, e.g. by abolishing certain ceremonies or introducing Presbyterian church government. Other words were also used to label such people—"Precisian" (someone who was too precise) was by far the most common alternative. On this showing, Puritans were by definition
Anglicans: they were the party within Anglicanism who sought to reform their Church further than had been achieved at the Elizabethan settlement of 1559. Thomas Fuller (1608–61), the professional writer and historian of the 17th century, a moderate royalist during the English Civil War, gives us the above definition of Puritan. He adds that within the camp of these would-be reformers of Anglicanism there were two types: "some mild and moderate, contented only to enjoy their own conscience; others fierce and fiery, to the disturbance of church and state".
To set "Puritan" against "Anglican", therefore, as some modern interpreters do, makes a nonsense of how the people of that era understood matters. It acquires some kind of sense only after 1662, when Anglicanism no longer tolerated any clergy who did not overtly renounce all Puritan aspirations (see Chapter 4, section 1.2). Even the term "Anglicanism" is dubious; it was a 19th century invention. There was probably a mindset to which the term "Anglicanism" could be applied earlier, but once more that mindset only really emerged in the context of what happened in 1662.
Nevertheless, bowing to general usage, I shall use the term to describe the national English Church as established by law, except in the confusion of the Civil War and Cromwellian period.
But now we have to consider how the word "Puritan" (or "Precisian") was used at a more popular, grass-roots level. Here the term was applied simply to anyone who took his or her Christianity seriously and tried to live a godly life. It meant nothing more than a "Holy Joe", a "member of the God squad", a "Bible basher", and other such abusive labels today. The illustrious Richard Baxter in the 17th century testified that his own father was insulted as a "Puritan" in this way, although Baxter Senior had no quarrel with the Church of England, but simply sought to live an authentic
Christian life. In Baxter's words, anyone was abusively termed "Puritan" if only they "used to talk of God, and heaven, and scripture, and holiness".
When we arrive at the English Civil War, definitions almost entirely break down. In the language of the day, the various religious factions that emerged on the parliamentarian side of the conflict stopped being called
Puritans (so Richard Baxter tells us), and began gaining more specific labels—Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists ("Anabaptists" or "Dippers" in contemporary parlance), Quakers, Seekers, Fifth Monarchists. The language of a later time, however, has projected the monolithic label
"Puritan" back on many of these factions. It would seem odd to us today, for example, if we did not call John Owen a Puritan, although he was an Independent in the jargon of the day. Just before the Civil War broke out, a writer (either Henry Parker or John Ley) in his A Discourse Concerning
Puritans, published in 1641, distinguished between "church policy Puritans", "religious Puritans", "state Puritans", and "moral Puritans".
Plainly by then the word had ceased to carry any single or obvious meaning.
Our examination thus far seems to have left the name "Puritan" almost as nebulous as ever. Since this volume, however, can hardly avoid using the term completely, some decision must be made. My decision is as follows.
When I speak of Puritans before the English Civil War, I will be referring to those Anglicans who sought a further reformation of the Church of England. Here I accept the more exact and educated use of the word Puritan within the Anglican establishment of the time, rather than the street-slang that called any spiritually-minded person a Puritan.
What about during the Civil War and Cromwellian era? We could perhaps preserve a measure of continuity with earlier and modern usage of the term if we agreed on the following: we could call Puritan those who were willing to work within an established national Church under a parliamentary or Cromwellian regime, embracing its ideal of a more selfconsciously advanced Protestantism than had characterized the previous monarchical-Episcopal regime. Such a definition would embrace both
Presbyterians and many Independents (even a few Baptists!). It is admittedly a somewhat arbitrary definition, but the historian is struggling here to communicate with the overwhelming assumptions of modern-day believers, who have learned to see a species called "the Puritans" where the people of that day did not necessarily see them.
After the Restoration of the monarchy, and the ejection of Puritans from the national Church in 1662, things are easier. I shall follow contemporary
17th century usage and refer to non-Anglican Protestants as Nonconformists or Dissenters, whatever their brand of theology, spirituality, or church government.
Those who gave up on the established Church, and left her altogether, prior to the post-1660 Restoration regime, I will call Separatists. They could also occasionally be called Puritan in the language of the day; but Separatist was the far more widespread term, and this is the one I will utilize. Of course, they may well have been Puritans before they became Separatists.
But we should keep in mind that some Separatists were actually Arminians in their theology. We need to be prepared for the spectacle of an Anglican
Calvinist persecuting a Separatist Arminian. That may play havoc with our preconceptions, but history often does.