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Overview
In his early chapters, the author defines the psychological needs of the second- and third-generation Puritans, arguing that these needs arose from the generational conflict between the founders and their children and from the methods of child rearing and religious education employed in Puritan New England. In the later chapters, he reveals how the ministers responded to the crisis in their society by reshaping theology and constructing in their sermons a religious language that helped to fulfill the most urgent psychological needs of the people.
Originally published in 1975.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780691617893 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 03/08/2015 |
| Series: | Princeton Legacy Library , #1227 |
| Pages: | 254 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d) |
Read an Excerpt
Power and the Pulpit in Puritan New England
By Emory Elliott
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1975 Princeton University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-07206-7
CHAPTER 1
BUILDING THE PATRIARCHY
The first ideas of religion arose not from a contemplation of the works of nature, but from a concern with regard to the events of life, and from the incessant hopes and fears, which actuate the human mind.
David Hume, The Natural Origin of Religion
In Boston in 1707 the Reverend Samuel Willard was laid to rest. At the age of sixty-seven Willard was one of the oldest and most prominent ministers and citizens of New England, and the congregation assembled for his funeral might well have expected the Reverend Ebenezer Pemberton to echo the traditional formula for eulogizing passing ministers by portraying Willard as a father who had brought paternal guidance and church discipline to his flock. But the symbolic importance of Willard's ministry derived from his rejection of the traditional role of the minister as a father figure at a crucial period in New England's history when the people needed to think of the Church, of the minister, and of God in new ways. Thus Willard presented himself in the image of an equal — a son and member of the second-generation of Puritans — and Pemberton paid him the highest compliment by lauding him not as a father, but as a son: "In Natural Endowments, he appeared as the Elder Son mong many Brethren. ... He applied himself to Wounded Consciences with great Skill, Faithfulness, and Tenderness. ... And he knew how to be a Son of Thunder to the Secure and Hardened; and a Son of Consolationto the Contrite and Broken in Spirit."
When Willard began his ministry in the Old South Church in 1678, the second generation had begun to inherit the land and the society the first generation had tightly controlled for fifty years. In their childhood and youth the people of Willard's congregation had been severely repressed by their parents and accused of inadequacy by their elders; consequently, they needed a young minister who would give them assurance of their worth and confidence in their ability to lead New England during an age of revolutionary change. The people of the second and third generations did not need a minister who would act as yet another patriarch in his role as pastor. Willard filled his people's needs.
Pemberton underlined this changing attitude toward the generations when he said of Samuel's father, Major Simon Willard, that in spite of Simon's eminence as a founder of Concord, nothing "could be more Honorable than in being the FATHER of such a SON." Samuel Willard would be remembered in these terms in Boston for many years after his death. When the energetic young ministers, Thomas Prince and Joseph Sewall, edited and published his A Compleat Body of Divinity in 1726, then the largest book ever to be printed in the colonies, the image of Willard as the comforting son remained prominent in their Preface, where they praised him as the model minister. Moreover, they noted Willard's significant place in history in observing that "our Author chiefly flourished when we were but just emerging out of those Obscurities" which had marked the age of their fathers and grandfathers. Willard was the symbol of their victory over that past age.
The long period of struggle between the generations had begun in the 1650's when the first sons of the second generation began to reach maturity and to desire families and homes of their own. When they looked to their fathers for the land necessary for independent lives, however, they met with firm resistance. The first settlers had labored courageously for what they possessed and were not going to give it up easily, not even to their sons. What first appeared as an unwillingness to yield to demands for land was only the most apparent feature of a general repression of the younger generation that influenced every aspect of New England thought and culture for the rest of the century. The founders themselves were uncertain of exactly what role they expected their children to play in the errand into the new world. The fathers instructed their sons that great tasks lay before them, but at the same time they also demanded strict obedience in the home and repressed the young wills to the point of undermining any sense of self-confidence and individualism. Thus they left their children bewildered as well as insecure. The effects of their methods were aptly summarized by thirty-two-year old Eleazar Mather, when in 1671 he described the mood of confusion and uncertainty of the second generation: "[We are] like a company of Children in a Boat that is driven out to Sea, may be it may come to shore, but in greater danger to sink or drown than otherwise. ... What think you of a Vessel at Sea that springs a leak, and takes in water apace, and Mariners some dead, many sick, a few left to keep Pump going, Are they not in danger to sink and perish in the waters?" Even as Samuel Willard at thirty-one was preparing himself to assume the spiritual leadership of the Third Church, Eleazar was wondering: "What will become of poor Children when Heads of Families die? what will become of unskilful Passengers, when Pilot and able Steerman is taken away? What will become of this generation?"
It has become traditional for historians to dismiss the second and third generations of New Englanders in the same words that the first-generation ministers used in their sermons to reject them; the common epithet of the old preachers of the 1660's that the young people were a "corrupt and degenerate Rising generation" is echoed in modern studies. Perry Miller, for example, called the second generation "a newly arisen, American-born tribe of pragmaticals." Similarly, in his examination of the first three generations of the Winthrop dynasty, Richard S. Dunn finds a "gradual deterioration" in the family with each generation; he describes a decline from public interest to private interest and from religious conviction to indifference. The recent biographer of John Winthrop, Jr. confirms Dunn's view by finding the second-generation Winthrop restless, wayward, and irresponsible, and unable to take hold of anything permanently until his father's death in 1649, while Dunn goes on to condemn the Winthrop grandsons as "half-ludicrous, uncertain of their values, and always chiefly absorbed with fashion, status and the accumulation of real estate." The latter characteristic is hardly surprising in view of the first generation's tight control of the lands.
But the pattern repeated in the lives of these men demands careful and sympathetic consideration. Fitz-John Winthrop, son of John, Jr., was a troubled and unsettled youth who disappointed his family: he landed in jail for drunkenness, insulted his sister's fiancé, and seemed to shirk his responsibilities in New England religion and politics. Similarly, his younger brother Wait Still Winthrop left Harvard without a degree and skirted community responsibilities. Yet after the death of their father, the lives of these two brothers, like that of John Winthrop, Jr. before them, suddenly underwent a striking transformation as they began to fill key positions in the society in the closing decades of the century. In his middle years Fitz-John became a defender of the Connecticut charter that his father had established; Wait joined himself into full communion in Willard's church at the age of forty-five and was a champion of Massachusetts' liberty. This pattern in the lives of the second- and third-generation Winthrops, involving a lengthy period of irresponsibility and confusion followed by a sudden reversal, raises questions about the relationship between the generations and the availability of roles for sons to fill in the New England society before the deaths of their fathers. Of course, we cannot understand the sons of New England without knowing their fathers.
The Patriarchs
Most of the men who founded the many towns of New England established by 1650 came to New England in their twenties and thirties in the two decades following the founding of Massachusetts Bay in 1630. They were some of the toughest and most ambitious men of England's most aspiring generation. The fact that they were Puritans tells us much about their strength, for in the early seventeenth century Congregational Puritanism was a religion that posed a radical new life style. The ideas of St. Paul and the European reformers, as interpreted by the English theologians William Ames, William Perkins, and John Preston, were fresh, exciting, and particularly well suited for the social and psychological needs of the vigorous people who felt themselves on the vanguard of a new age.
The men who embraced the spirit of early Puritanism, the Pauline Renaissance, and who dared to venture into the wilderness to put their ideas of society into practice were independent and aggressive and felt that the traditional patterns of community life in England had grown too rigid for them. They sought an outlet for their creativity and energy and desired relief from an England that they felt was adhering to a corrupted European heritage. Their resistance to the Anglican compromise with the past tradition of the Roman Church was inspired by the message of Paul that declared them "new men" freed by Christ's sacrifice to create a new world; with St. Paul they believed: "That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive" (Eph 4:14). Determined to create their own world, where they could speak "the truth in love" and "grow up into Him in all things," they announced to parents and friends, as well as to the land-owning aristocracy and crown, that they must have the freedom to use their talents to the fullest: "This freedom have all Christians that they consider what is lawful and what is profitable ... and in no case be brought under the power of any thing, as Paul teacheth us. Whatsoever doth most edify, that must we choose, and avoid the contrary: and whatsoever is most expedient, that must be done, and so we must apply ourselves all unto all, that notwithstanding we hold our liberty. For if either Magistrate or other would take that from us we must not give place by yielding unto them, no, not for an hour, and this liberty is the free use of our callings and gifts, as we see most agreeing to the word of God, and expedient for his glory." John Cotton captured this independent spirit when he sent out his call in 1634 for more men to come to New England: "When a man's Calling and Person are free and not tied by Parents, or Magistrates, or other people that have an interest in him ... [God] opens a door there and sets him loose here, inclines his heart that way, and outlooks all difficulties. ... In such a case God tells them, he will appoint a place for them."
The Original Pauline Spirit
The religious spirit of the settlers when they arrived in New England was not the narrow exclusiveness into which it evolved under the pressure of massive emigration from England in the 1640's and 1650's. The vital force of early Puritanism was its confidence and openness to growth. Men who felt a sense of their own importance and who believed that they were somehow in a special position in world developments joined together with others who shared these convictions to form congregations. Each group then elected spiritual and political leaders and called upon a minister whose preaching and interpretation of Scripture they admired. In the early years of the colony the minister preached, instructed, and advised, but the laymen defined the laws of the congregation and imposed church discipline upon themselves. The concept of ministerial control was still so foreign to the men of Sudbury, Massachusetts, in 1652 that when a group of "Reverend Elders" came to investigate a land dispute involving the local pastor, the Reverend Edmund Brown, the town simply ignored the outsiders; their presence was not even recorded by the clerk in the Town Book. When the good English Puritan, Thomas Lechford, visited New England in the 1640's, he was shocked by the self-importance and power of the laymen, who, he observed, had established themselves as equals with the ministers on church matters.
These early Puritans were inclined to assume themselves and their community worthy of God's special favor and grace. Therefore, for them the word "discipline" meant self-discipline; it defined the personal toughness and self-control the settlers felt they needed for overcoming weaknesses not conducive to the formation of an exemplary society. Similarly, they conceived of self-examination as a practical method for improving the individual and the society, not as a way of fostering an undue sense of guilt and doom. Such a conception of corporate Christian experience served to strengthen in each church member the sense of individual identity that comes about through social relationships. These qualities of personal conviction and determination made the first settlers outstanding pioneers, but they would also make them resisting fathers.
In the beginning the churches of New England followed the pattern of open membership that had been established in the Puritan churches of England. New members were accepted into full membership with relative ease. As John Cotton assured his congregation: "God accepts at our hands a willing mind, and of child-like endeavors; if we come with child-like service, God will spare us." There were no rigorous tests for membership, for most believed, as Thomas Hooker was to continue to hold even after the mood had changed, that a man should not "search into 'the heart of another' which 'no man can know.'" Although there was to be no compromise with the dead things of the world, isolationism and absolute perfectionism were not the original goals of the early Christian or the early Puritan movement. The later effort to make the visible church on earth reflect the invisible church of the saved in heaven became part of the New England way only in the decades after settlement and emerged as a solution to problems that were not wholly religious in nature.
The system of personal and social ethics taught by the early Puritan theologians was also particularly suited to the aspiring men of the first generation. The writings of John Robinson were designed to instill in men a sense of self-importance by emphasizing that no matter how menial a man's work may seem to him or others it had great significance in the eyes of God as long as the laborer were a true Christian. In 1641 in his The Way of Life, John Cotton showed the intimate connection between one's practical calling and his spiritual calling. Cotton argued that every Christian's spiritual calling charges his earthly vocation with such dignity that God sees no real difference between a minister and a laborer. The Puritan ministers preached that as long as a person lived a good life, felt himself saved in Christ, and was not idle in his calling, he could expect a greater reward than many of the rich and powerful who were wicked.
This religion also strengthened a man's importance as a father, for election into God's covenant was a gift that could be passed on to others. The father was the spiritual as well as practical head of his household. By teaching his children the message of the Gospel as he learned it from the preacher and the Bible, the Puritan father could leave his offspring an inheritance more valuable than earthly wealth. Thus Cotton urged: "Every righteous Householder and Parent, to take more care to leave a good covenant to their children and servants than anything else. If they have but this portion left to them, they still do well, whether they grow and prosper in the things of the world or not, God hath made a Covenant with Parents and Householder."
Because Puritanism was a religion that encouraged men to take such pride in themselves and their work, it touched the hearts of those Englishmen who became the New England colonists: Puritanism was a religion that attracted men who possessed a competitive and aggressive nature, as Governor Bradford discovered when he tried a plan of communal farming: "The taking away of property and bringing in community into commonwealth ... was found to breed much confusion and discontent and to retard employment." But Bradford was quick to recognize the value of this spirit and to defend it: "Let none object this ... God in His wisdom saw another course fitter for them."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Power and the Pulpit in Puritan New England by Emory Elliott. Copyright © 1975 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents
- Frontmatter, pg. i
- PREFACE, pg. vii
- CONTENTS, pg. xi
- INTRODUCTION, pg. 1
- ONE. BUILDING THE PATRIARCHY, pg. 16
- TWO. SHAPING THE PURITAN UNCONSCIOUS, pg. 63
- THREE. STORMS OF GOD'S WRATH, pg. 88
- FOUR. CLOGGING MISTS AND OBSCURING CLOUDS, pg. 136
- FIVE. THE DAWNING OF THAT DAY, pg. 173
- EPILOGUE, pg. 201
- BIBLIOGRAPHY, pg. 205
- Index, pg. 235