Who Were the Puritans?

H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) described Puritanism as “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” “Puritanical” has come to mean prudish, judgmental, anti-intellectual, regarding pleasure as sin. Many believe the Puritans came to America on the Mayflower; lived dreary, guilt-ridden lives; executed innocent people as witches; hated fun; hated sex; and worshiped a harsh and distant God, who roasted sinners over the fires of hell.

Were Puritans “puritanical?” Our misunderstanding is based on common myths and literature we read in school. Who were the Puritans?

The English Reformation steered a course between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, without satisfying either. Puritans were those in the 16th and 17th centuries, who remained within the English Church, wanting to purify her of non-Biblical practices.

The Pilgrims came on the Mayflower, not the Puritans. These were Separatists, who left the Church of England to start independent congregations. They settled at Plymouth in 1620.

The more numerous Puritans remained in England and Scotland rather than emigrate. A fraction of them came to New England after the Pilgrims. They founded Massachusetts Bay Colony, which later absorbed Plymouth.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in 1850, is the dreary story of the self-righteous judgement of a forsaken woman, and the secret guilt of her adulterous, minister lover, during the Puritan era.

Puritans were not dreary, self righteous, religious prigs, obsessed with other’s sins. A self righteous Puritan is a contradiction in terms. They were humbly aware of their own sins and looked with mercy on the weaknesses of others.

We read of the 1692 Salem Witch Trials in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (1953). Miller was writing in response to the McCarthy hearings in the US Senate, where people were intimidated by unfounded accusations. Miller tells us more about post WWII America than the Puritans.

Witchcraft was a crime in 1692 New England, as it was in England and France. Anglicans and Roman Catholics tried witches in Europe. We only remember Salem.

The Salem witch trials were conducted by civil judges appointed by an inexperienced Governor, William Phips. William Stoughton, the presiding judge, allowed the admission of “spectral evidence.” Excitable witnesses testified they saw the faces of their persecutors while being tormented. If the accused was sleeping or having tea with neighbors at the time, this was not considered a defense. This phantom evidence convicted many innocent people and some were executed.

Puritan minister, Increase Mather, vigorously objected to the use of “spectral evidence” and helped bring an end to the trials. This was a shameful episode in American jurisprudence. Though they were not the perpetrators, like those falsely accused, the Puritans take a “bum rap,” as intolerant, blood thirsty fanatics.

G. K. Chesterton, an Englishman, who opposed the American adoption of Prohibition in 1920, blamed Puritanism’s “righteous indignation about the wrong thing.” Puritans are credited for any repressive or neurotic tendencies in American life.

Contrary to Chesterton, Puritans were a joyful people, who enjoyed feasting and believed God gave “...wine that makes glad the heart of man...” (Psalm 104:15). They called drunkenness a sin and warned of its dangers. However, Puritans allowed liberty in what the Bible permitted. They did not add human tradition to God’s Word.

The church of the Middle Ages considered human sexuality bad and celibacy commendable. The Victorian church was prudish and embarrassed by the mention of sex. Puritans encouraged neither celibacy nor prudishness. They taught God created man as male and female, intending a man and woman’s sexuality for mutual enjoyment and to produce children. Mankind’s fall added an additional need; protection from sexual temptation. Puritans valued human sexuality, protected within Biblical marriage. Puritan courts are recorded ordering husbands not to neglect their wife’s sexual needs; demonstrating Puritans regarded neither sex as evil nor women as powerless accessories of their husbands.

The English Prayer Book gave the purposes of marriage as: the procreation of children, a remedy against sin, and for mutual society, help and comfort. The Puritan order was: for companionship, the procreation of children and protection from temptation. Companionship, including the enjoyment of mutual sexual pleasure, was first on the list.

Jonathan Edwards, later President of what became Princeton University, preached Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God in 1741. This is offered as an example of Puritans rejoicing in people suffering in the fires of hell. The focus of the sermon is on the precarious predicament of fallen man, his hardness of heart and desperate need. It is a plea for repentance, not a celebration of hell’s fire.

Let Puritans speak for themselves. These were a humble people, knowing their own sins, the graciousness of a merciful God, communicating truth with practical application, allowing liberty where men create burdens, rejecting traditions not found in the Bible. Evaluate Puritans for what they were and said. You may appreciate, you may hate them. They are misunderstood and misrepresented, but not “puritanical.”

© Copyright 2008 by J. Glenn Ferrell

Restraining Evil?

The purpose of civil government is to restrain evil.

Prior to the Flood, man’s violence toward men and rebellion against God was not punished by man. The first murderer, Cane, was allowed by God to live, with a curse placed on any who might slay him (Gen. 4:15). Without human restraint, evil grew in the earth (Gen. 5:5) until God’s judgment upon all the living came in the Flood, sparing only Noah and his family.

After the Flood, God ordained and authorized capital punishment for the shedding of human blood (Gen. 9:6). Civil government was born, as a restraint on the evil of men. If not for conscience sake, for fear of the avenging sword, men might forebear to take another’s life.

At Babel, nations were divided, limiting their corporate rebellion and presumption against heaven (Gen. 11:6-8). In their tension with one another, one nation was limited in their ambitions and aggressions by another.

Thus, the civil magistrate was a gift of God’s common grace, restraining evil even for those in rebellion against him, not permitting men and nations to do the evil they might against other men, nations and God.

All authority, including civil authority, comes from God and is limited by his warrant. Such is true even of unbelieving, pagan or apostate rulers. In the exercise of their legitimate power to restrain evil, they act with authority from God. When they misuse or exceed the limits of this authority, they come under his judgment, though their sin may be a secondary instrument of his wrath upon others.

Ungodly rulers will inevitably live as rebels against God and his Messiah, seeking to exceed the limits imposed and to rule according to their own judgment of good and evil. (Ps. 2:2-3) In this, they continue the rebellion of our first parents, following the lie of the serpent, seeking to “be as gods” (Gen. 3:5). God warns all such rebellious rulers to “be wise” and “be instructed,” not just as individuals, but in their capacity as “judges of the earth.” Note, this was directed to “kings of the earth in general, and not to the kings of Israel or Judah. “Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.” (Ps. 2:11-12) All rulers have an obligation to recognize and submit to the rule of God in his anointed, Jesus Christ.

John Calvin, in the preface to his Institutes of the Christian Religion, instructed King Francis I of France regarding the legitimate authority and obligation of a ruler:

“The characteristic of a true sovereign is, to acknowledge that, in the administration of his kingdom, he is a minister of God. He who does not make his reign subservient to the divine glory, acts the part not of a king, but a robber. He, moreover, deceives himself who anticipates long prosperity to any kingdom which is not ruled by the scepter of God, that is, by his divine word. For the heavenly oracle is infallible which has declared, that ‘where there is no vision the people perish’” (Prov. 29:18).

God through the apostle Peter said civil magistrates “are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well.” (1 Pet. 2:14) In the United States of America, we recognize the obligation of the civil magistrate to protect life, liberty and property. Assaults on these are evil and must be restrained or punished.

Evil is not limited to sins against man’s authority, life, family, property, or reputation, or safety. Protection of all these is indeed warranted by the last six of the Ten Commandments, sometimes called the Second Table of the Law. However, there is a First Table, the first four commandments, saying assaults against God’s truth, dignity, name and day are also evil.

Where is the exemption for post Calvary civil magistrates to limit their punishment and restraint of evil to those against man?

Obviously, the US Constitution prohibits religious tests, the establishment of a particular federal religion (now extended by the Fourteenth Amendment and court decisions to state and local governments), and guarantees the free exercise of all faiths. The majority of American Presbyterians said something of the same in 1789 by amending the twenty-third chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith, paragraph 3, to say, “it is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the church of our common Lord, without giving the preference to any denomination of Christians above the rest, in such a manner that all ecclesiastical persons whatever shall enjoy the full, free, and unquestioned liberty of discharging every part of their sacred functions, without violence or danger.” While this may seem like a scriptural principle to us who have been taught the “separation of church and state,” it was not the civil theology of the Reformation.

Consider, John Calvin, commenting on Exodus 32:29 said, "Let us also learn that nothing is less consistent than to punish heavily the crimes whereby mortals are injured, whilst we connive at the impious errors or sacrilegious modes of worship whereby the majesty of God is violated."

Where is the civil magistrate exempted from his duty to punish public violations of the First Table of God’s Law?

© Copyright 2008 by J. Glenn Ferrell