1

THE COLONIAL PERIOD

The story of American literature begins in the early 1600s, long before there were
any "Americans." The earliest writers were Englishmen describing the English
exploration and colonization of the New World. Thomas Hariot's Briefe and True
Report of the New-Found Land of Virginia (1588) was the first of many such works.
Back in England, people planning to move to Virginia or New England would read
the books as travel guides. But this was dangerous, because such books often
mixed facts with fantasy. One writer, William Wood, claimed that he had seen lions
in Massachusetts. It is probable that these 'true reports' had a second kind of
reader. People would read them as tales of adventure and excitement. Like modern
readers of science fiction, they could enjoy imaginary voyages. Captain John
Smith’s (1580 - 1631) reports of exploration and settlement - True Relation of
Virginia (1608) and Description of New England (1616) - may have satisfied both
kinds of readers. A real adventurer, Smith had fought the Turks in Hungary, where
he was wounded and taken prisoner. He was sold as a slave and escaped by killing
his master. In 1607, he helped found Jamestown, the first English colony in America.
His accounts are fascinating 'advertisments', which try to persuade the reader to
settle in the New World. The Puritans1 studied his Description of New England
carefully, and then decided to settle there in 1620. Smith often boasts about his own
adventures, as when he tells about his rescue by a beautiful Indian princess. His
heavily adorned Elizabethan style is not always easy to read, but he can tell a good
story:

In the month of April, 1614, with two ships from London, of a few merchants, I chanced to
arrive in New England, a part of America [...]; our plot was there to take whales and make
trials of a mine of gold and copper. If those failed, fish and furs was then our refuge, to
make ourselves savers howsoever. [...] Of dry fish we made about 40,000, of cor-fish about
7,000. While the sailors fished, myself with eight or nine others of them [...], ranging the
coast in a small boat, [from the Indians] we got for trifles near 1,000 beaver skins, 100
martens, and near as many otters [...]. With these furs, the train, and cor-fish I returned for
England in the bark, where within six months after our departure from the Downs we safe
arrived back.[...] Now because I have so oft asked such strange questions of the goodness
and greatness of those spacious tracts of land, how they can be thus long unknown or not
possessed by the Spaniards, and many such like demands, I entreat your pardons if I
chance to be too plain or tedious in relating my knowledge for plain men's satisfaction. I
have drawn a map from point to point, isle to isle, and harbor to harbor, with the soundings,

1
The Puritan movement was a broad trend toward a militant, biblically based Calvinistic Protestantism - with
emphasis upon the "purification" of church and society of the remnants of "corrupt" and "unscriptural" "papist"
ritual and dogma - which developed within the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Church of England.
Puritanism first emerged as an organized force in England among elements - Presbyterians, Independents, and
Baptists, for example - dissatisfied with the compromises inherent in the religious settlement carried out under
Queen Elizabeth in 1559. They sought a complete reformation both of religious and of secular life, and
advocated, in consequence, the attacks upon the Anglican establishment, the emphasis upon a disciplined,
godly life, and the energetic evangelical activities which characterised their movement. The Presbyterian wing
of the Puritan party was eventually defeated in Parliament, and after the suppression in 1583 of Nonconformist
ministers, a minority moved to separate from the church and sought refuge first in the Netherlands and later in
New England.

By the 1660s Puritanism was firmly established amongst the gentry and the emerging middle classes of
southern and eastern England, and during the Civil Wars the Puritan "Roundheads" fought for the parliamentary
cause and formed the backbone of Cromwell's forces during the Commonwealth period. After 1646, however,
the Puritan emphasis upon individualism and the individual conscience made it impossible for the movement to
form a national Presbyterian church, and by 1662, when the Anglican church was re-established, Puritanism
had become a loose confederation of various Dissenting sects. The growing pressure for religious toleration
within Britain itself was to a considerable degree a legacy of Puritanism, and its emphasis on self-discipline,
individualism, responsibility, work, and asceticism was also an important influence upon the values and
attitudes of the emerging middle classes.
 2

sands, rocks, and landmarks as I passed close aboard the shore in a little boat [...]. For
being sent more to get present commodities than [to get] knowledge by discoveries for any
future good, I had no power to search as I would;[...] What merchandise and commodities
for their labor they may find, this following discourse shall plainly demonstrate. [...] It is not a
work for everyone, to manage such an affair as makes a discovery and plants a colony. It
requires all the best parts of art, judgement, courage, honesty, constancy, diligence, and
industry to do but near well. Some are more proper for one thing than another, and therein
are [they] to be employed, and nothing breeds more confusion than misplacing and
misemploying men in their undertakings. Columbus, Cortes, Pizarro, De Soto, Magellan,
and the rest served more than an apprenticeship to learn how to begin their most
memorable attempts in the West Indies, which to the wonder of all ages successfully they
effected, when many hundreds of others far above them in the world's opinion, being
instructed but by relation, came to shame and confusion in actions of small moment, who
doubtless in other matters were both wise, discreet, generous, and courageous. [...] Of
mines of gold, and silver, copper, and probabilities of lead, crystal, and alum I could say
much if relations [published by others] were good assurances. It is true, indeed, I made
many trials, according to those instructions I had, which do persuade me I need not despair
but there are metals in the country; but I am no alchemist, nor will promise more than I
know, [...] The waters are most pure, proceeding from the entrails of rocky mountains. The
herbs and fruits are of many sorts and kinds: as alkermes, currants, or a fruit like currants,
mulberries, vines, raspberries, gooseberries, plums, walnuts, chestnuts, small nuts, &c,
pumpkins, gourds, strawberries, beans, peas, and maize, a kind or two of flax wherewith
they make nets, lines, and ropes both small and great, very strong for their quantities. Oak
is the chief wood, of which there is great difference in regard [to the state] of the soil where
it grows. [There are] fir, pine, walnut, birch, ash, elm, cypress, cedar, mulberry, plum tree,
hazel, sassafras, and many other sorts. Eagles, gripes, divers sorts of hawks, cranes,
geese, brants, cormorants, ducks, sheldrakes, teal, mews, gulls, turkeys, divedappers, and
many other sorts, whose names I know not. [...]
And lest any should think the toil might be insupportable, though these things may be
had by labor and diligence, I assure myself there are [those] who delight extremely in vain
pleasure, that take much more pains in England to enjoy it than I should do here [in New
England] to gain wealth sufficient; and yet I think they should not have half such sweet
content, for our pleasure here is still gains; in England [it is] charges and loss. Here nature
and liberty afford us that freely which in England we want, or it costs us dearly. [...] And
what sport does yield a more pleasing content and less hurt or charge than angling with a
hook and crossing the sweet air from isle to isle, over the silent streams of a calm sea,
wherein the most curious may find pleasure, profit, and content? [...]
My purpose is not to persuade children from their parents, men from their wives, or
servants from their masters, only such as with free consent may be spared. But that each
parish or village, in city or country, that will but apparel their fatherless children of thirteen or
fourteen years of age, or young married people that have small wealth to live on, here by
their labor [they] may live exceedingly well, provided always that first there be sufficient
power to command them, houses to receive them, means to defend them, and meet
provisions for them; for any place may be overlain, and it is most necessary to have a
fortress (ere this grow to practice) and sufficient masters (as carpenters, masons, fishers,
fowlers, gardeners, husbandmen, sawyers, smiths, spinners, tailors, weavers, and such
like) to take ten, twelve, or twenty, or as there is occasion, for apprentices. The masters by
this may quickly grow rich; these [apprentices] may learn [by] their trades themselves to do
the like, to a general and an incredible benefit for king and country, master and servant
(from A Description of New England, 1616).

The early colonists in New England inherited Renaissance humanism just as they
inherited the Reformation, and so held an interesting place for reason in their overall
beliefs. They thought that the reforms of Henry VIII (the break with Rome, the
church services held in English, etc.) were not radical enough. The hierarchy of
bishops and priests, the set form of worship, the processions and ornamentation
which the Church of England still allowed, were still too reminiscent of papist
practices. These critics came to be known as Puritans, that is to say, Protestants
who wished to 'purify' the Church of England. Their authority was the Bible,
particularly the New Testament. At first, the Puritans were merely against
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episcopacy, printed prayers, ritual and vestments, but a political faction arose,
which, in the course of a bloody Civil War, overthrew the monarchy and established
Parliament as the chief power in England. It must be added, however, that there had
developed dissension among the Puritans, which was responsible for the emigration
of some of them to America. This dissension concerned the organization of the
Church. The majority of the Puritans were Presbyterians, those who wished to
substitute for the episcopacy a national organization of representative courts,
composed of clerical and lay 'presbyters.' A minority, however, would have nothing
to do with state organization. They simply wished each church to be self-governing,
and each congregation to choose its own minister. These were the
Congregationalists, who would admit to their group only those who could make a
profession of faith and swear to a covenant. Some Congregationalists went a step
further and performed the treasonable act of separating themselves completely from
a Church which they did not think they would properly purify.

A group of such 'Separatists' became known as the Pilgrim Fathers. They formed a
community in Lincolnshire in the early 17th century. They believed that although the
break with Catholicism in 1535 had moved some way toward the Puritan belief in
religious authority grounded solely in Scripture, by substituting king for pope as the
head of the church England was only recapitulating an unnecessary, corrupt, and
even idolatrous order. They accepted Calvin's rule, that those who are to exercise
any public function in the church should be chosen by common voice. However
much this might emphasize the democratic qualities of the Pilgrims, as dissenters
they do suggest at some level the origins of democratic society, in its reliance upon
contending and even conflicting points of view, and in its tendency toward a more
fluid social structure. But theirs was a religious, not a political agenda; moral and
theological principles were involved, and from their perspective, there could be no
compromise. For them 2 Corinthians made it clear: "Come out from among them
and be ye separate, saith the Lord." To achieve and preserve a simplicity and 'purity'
that they felt had been lost amid the surviving features of Catholicism - the rituals
which continued through into the Anglican Church and were epitomized in its
statement, "'I believe in... the holy Catholick Church'." To establish themselves as
rightful interpreters of the Bible independent of an inherited social and cultural order,
they removed themselves from the Anglican Church in order to re-establish it as
they believed it truly should be. Ignored by Elizabeth I, but persecuted by James I,
they left for Holland in 1608, where there was a lot more religious tolerance.

Although enjoying freedom in Holland, they, as aliens, found difficulty in securing

employment, and within less than a decade they saw their children being
transformed into Hollanders. So they decided to move again. Having gone back to
England to obtain the backing of the Virginia Company, 102 Pilgrims set out for
America in 1620, in the Mayflower, intending to land in Virginia, but were blown
north to the tip of Cape Cod. They crossed the bay and founded Plymouth Colony,
now in Massachusetts. Before landing, they signed the Mayflower Compact, thereby
acknowledging royal rule, but actually establishing an independent republic.

The first few months were gruelling for them. Half of their 102 members perished:
"of the 17 male heads of families, ten died during the first infection"; of the 17 wives,
only three were left after three months. The following summer, however, conditions
improved, so William Bradford (1590-1657) would write of "all things in good
plenty." The sense of Providence had been heightened to an extreme pitch for them,
 4

for after such devastating sickness, everyday survival itself was probably seen as
cause for gratitude (Thanksgiving was established as an American national holiday
in 1863). When given a full and prosperous harvest (with the help and instruction of
Native Americans such as Squanto), the previous ordeal could be understood as a
trial by God, a test of faith, the heavenly reward prefigured by an earthly one.

Let us take a closer look at the reasons for the Pilgrims’ choice of self-exile.
Bradford notes the "discouragements" of the hard life they had in Holland, and the
hope of attracting others by finding "a better, and easier place of living"; the
"children" of the group being "drawne away by evill examples into extravagence and
dangerous courses"; the "great hope, for the propagating and advancing the gospell
of the kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of the world."

The second reason sounds most like the Pilgrims many Americans are familiar with:
the group that wants to be left alone and live in its own pure and righteous way.
Behind it seems to lie not only the fear of the breakdown of individual families, but
even a concern over the dissolution of the larger community. The concern seems to
be that their split with England was now only effecting their own dissolution into
Dutch culture. But it is also interesting to note the underlying traces of evangelism in
the last of the reasons. The idea of ‘conversion’ would often be depicted as an
image of conquest. The Indian would be shown as subdued before the word of the
"kingdom" even as the Pilgrims were landing, and the Pilgrim would be seen as an
agent of domination, a superior moral force commanding by its sheer presence.
Such a portrayal suggests an uneasy tension with the common (and seemingly
accurate) conception of the Pilgrims as a model of tolerance. Indeed, the first of their
reasons for sailing to America is fairly passive: they want to "draw" others by the
example of their prosperity, not necessarily go conquer and actively convert. Such
an idea reflects the one that would be expressed explicitly by the Puritan John
Winthrop, where the New World would become a beacon of religious light, a model
of spiritual promise, a "citty upon a hill." From their own point of view, they are
'agents' only insofar as they are agents of Providence, and as Bradford strives to
make clear throughout, the narrative of their actions is only an interpretation of the
works of God. Thus, in a remarkable instance when a "proud and very profane
yonge man" who "would curse and swear most bitterly" falls overboard from the
Mayflower and drowns, it is seen as "the just hand of God upon him." So too when a
member of their party is saved from drowning, or when the initial landing party finds
the corn and beans for seed, or with their safe arrival at Plymouth Bay in general, is
the "spetiall providence of God" evinced. Bradford seems to self-consciously
maintain this version of the Christian perspective as a historical one, never allowing
the reader or student of the Pilgrims to forget that their story is one with a trajectory -
coming from its beginnings - England, and moving through the beginnings of the
'New World'. This is an emphasis that will serve histories and memories alike,
especially in viewing the Revolution and the increased democratization of the United
States as some necessary fulfilment of the Pilgrim promise. The primary text for
later interpreters would be the Mayflower Compact, which Bradford gives:
In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwriten, by the loyall subjects of our
dread soveraigne Lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britaine, Franc, and Ireland
king, defender of the faith, etc.
Haveing undertaken, for the glorie of God, and advancemente of the Christian faith, and
honour of our king and countrie, a voyage to plant the first colonie in the Northerne parts of
Virginia, doe by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God, and one
another, covenant and combine our selves togeather into a civill body politick, for our better
 5

ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by vertue hereof to
enacte, constitute and frame shuch just and equall lawes, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and
offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meete and convenient for the generall good
of the Colonie, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witnes whereof we
have hereunder subscribed our names at Cap-Codd the .11. of November, in the year of the
raigne of our soveraigne lord, King James, of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth,
and of Scotland the fiftie-fourth. Anno Dom. 1620.

Bradford writes of the Compact that it developed partly in response to "the

discontented and mutinous speeches" of some of the "strangers" - colonists who
had travelled with them but who "were uncommitted to church fellowship" - and that
it asserted the Pilgrims' "owne libertie; for none had the power to command them,
the patente they had being for Virginia, and not for New England...."

The Compact thus arose out of a need to maintain social and civic coherence, to
ensure that the officials elected and the group as a whole would have some
legitimation against challenges to its "legal authority." Michael Kammen notes a
"tradition" in the early 19th century "in which the Compact was viewed as part of the
repudiation of English domination." Surely there are evident democratic tendencies
in the text, wherein a code established from the consent of the people becomes the
underpinning of a society of "just and equall lawes," where the officials and figures of
authority are all elected. But as "loyall subjects" to the "dread soveraigne Lord, King
James," their task is twofold: to maintain a degree of independence that would allow
them to live in accordance with their Separatist views, but also to keep the ties to
England strong enough so that those who did not share their religion nevertheless
would be bound by an order ultimately traceable to the Crown.

In 1691, Plymouth Colony was forced to merge with the more flourishing
Massachusetts Bay Colony, which was a largely Puritan foundation, established in
1630, when the first group came over in the Arbella. Their flotilla of 17 ships brought
more than 2,000 colonists, and within a decade about 16,000 additional settlers
came to America. Boston was their main site, but communities sprang up all along
the Massachusetts coast. The colony was founded by a chartered company, whose
directors migrated to Boston. So it was as much a commercial as a religious
venture. But soon the religious element gained control of the government: while the
majority of the colonists were not Puritans, the colony was rigidly controlled by the
Puritan clergy. Theocracy ruled, as only Puritan church members had the right to
vote, and the state was subordinate to the Congregational (i.e. Puritan) Church.

The Bay Colony Puritans followed, like the Separatists, the way of St. Augustine and
his disciple, Jean Calvin. The orthodox Puritan viewpoint was enunciated by John
Cotton (1585-1652), the first of many powerful Puritan clerics. The Way of Life
(London, 1641) follows the Five Points of Calvinism, as defined by the Synod of
Dort, in 1619, in opposition to the Five Articles of the Arminians:

• Total and innate depravity: natural man is evil, for 'in Adam's fall we sinned all'; no human
being has any capability whatsoever to achieve his own salvation.
• Predestined election: from the beginning of time God has determined that the 'elect' of His
choice shall be saved, and all others shall be damned to perdition; faith and good works
are equally powerless to save someone doomed by the deity to the flames of hell.
• Limited atonement: Christ's sacrifice upon the cross assures salvation solely to the 'elect.'
• Irresistible grace: the saving power of God is freely bestowed and can neither be earned
nor refused.
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• Perseverance of the Saints: the 'elect' will proceed undeviatingly to their full reward of
bliss.

The New Englanders were not strict Calvinists, and this list was modified by what
the Puritans called Covenant Theology, interpreted as follows: in the beginning, God
had made a contract with Adam by which the latter agreed on certain conditions and
in return was promised eternal life and happiness in paradise. This contract, called
‘The Covenant of Works’, Adam broke by not fulfilling his obligations and by eating
of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In doing so, Adam sowed the seed
of evil in all men: "In Adam's Fall - We sinnèd all" (New England Primer). This is
what the Calvinists meant by 'total and innate depravity.' Yet St. Paul says that from
all eternity God has made a plan (prothesis) to save a Church, so there was for the
Puritans one ray of light. In their interpretation, Christ made another contract – ‘The
Covenant of Grace’ - by which he agreed to sacrifice himself in return for God's
promise to save a few of the children of Adam. 2 In John's Gospel, for example,
Christ says that He has been sent to save a number of particular individuals whom
His Father has 'given' Him. These are His 'sheep'. It was specifically for them that
He prayed. While most people were doomed to eternal damnation, some might
benefit from God's irresistible grace, or, in Puritan terminology, would be 'elected' to
salvation. But no one could really be sure until the after-life whether he had been
elected or not, although, by certain tokens, some might hope that they were. All
people could do was have faith, study the Bible, and live righteously.

This doctrine was not so much one of prescription as it was of explanation: it

reasoned ‘why’ certain people were saved and others were not, it gave the
conditions against which one might measure up one's soul, and it ensured that God
would abide by "human conceptions of right and justice" - "not in all aspects, but in
the main." The religious agency for the individual Puritan was then located in intense
introspection, in the attempt to come to an awareness of one's own spiritual state.
As with the Pilgrims, the world, history, everything for the Puritan became a ‘text’ to
be interpreted. One could not expect all of God's actions to be limited by one's
‘ideas’ of reason and justice, but one at least had a general sense, John Cotton's
"essentiall wisdome," as guidance. And of course, one had the key, the basis of
spiritual understanding, the foundational text and all-encompassing code, the Bible.

How to explain the success of this harsh religion? Its appeal obviously lies in the fact
that it was an expression of that urge for clarity, firmness and honesty of thought
and action which had been growing since the later Middle Ages. The corrupt
practices of the Catholic Church, whether Roman or Anglican, the selling of
indulgences, the working together of Church and State in the most unscrupulous
manner, had disgusted good men everywhere, so that they longed for a new way
that would challenge their souls.3
2
"After the fall of man, God voluntarily condescended... to draw up a covenant or contract with His
creature in which He laid down the terms and conditions of salvation, and pledged Himself to abide by
them."
3
Religious life in the early Puritan colonies was fraught with dangers. From the first, the New
Englanders had to contend with the Devil, and one of the ways in which he manifested himself was in
rearing up rival sects among the colonists. Righteous conduct was threatened by Antinomians,
Arminians, Quakers, etc. The Antinomians held that the moral law as laid down in the Old
Testament was not necessarily binding on Christians. The individual, they said, was a law unto
himself. Anne Hutchinson was accused of Antinomianism when she maintained, in 1636, that God
could reveal himself directly to individuals, so that one could know whether one was 'elect' or not. For
this she was banished from the Bay Colony. The Arminians (Arminius, 1560-1609) believed that
 7

Apart from their intolerance, the Puritans were intelligent and educated people, who
believed in 'right reason'. They were Pauline Christians, that is, their faith admitted,
officially, of no doubts. Their imagination was dominated by the presence of evil, and
they responded to the pressure of their awareness of darkness and man's
powerlessness with the assertion of a dogmatic faith in man's triumph over
meaninglessness. With so much darkness around, they demanded that the light
should be guarded with rigorous devotion. With that purpose in mind, they
encouraged education and produced a considerable literature. But given the nature
of Puritanism, it was inevitable that this literature should have a moral purpose.
Whether they were justifying God's ways to man, or man's ways to God, the Puritans
kept their eye on the object, which was to instruct and improve, to deal with fact and
not fancy. Since the study of literature in our time has come to mean the study of
creative or imaginative literature, very little of what the Puritans wrote has any
intrinsic appeal today. The literature of 17th and 18th-century New England may be
divided into six main categories:

• Accounts of Exploration and Colonization: Captain Smith, A Description of New-

England, 1616; Francis Higginson, New Englands Plantation, 1630

• Histories, Narratives of Settlement: William Bradford, Of Plimmoth Plantation,

1630-47; the Journal of John Winthrop, Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony,
1630-49; Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana, 1702

• Diaries, First-Hand Descriptions of Events: Samuel Sewall's Diary (1674-1729);

The Narrative of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, 1682

• Sermons - the most important literary type in New England, as it expressed the heart
and soul of the Puritan way of life. The church was the Puritan's meeting-place and at
least once a week he gained spiritual refreshment from his pastors. The sermon was
addressed to the conscience, and since the Puritan loved to follow a theological
argument, ministers competed with one another to produce the most powerful
sermons. The common formula was the choice of various scriptural texts
accompanied by exposition, the whole being expounded in terms of Ramistic logic.
The plain style was more popular than the ornate.

• Books of Theological and Political Exposition and Argument: Cotton Mather,

Wonders of the Invisible World, 1693

• Poetry

man could achieve salvation through 'good works', a tenet which conflicted directly with the Calvinists'
belief in the sovereignty of God. The Quakers (John Fox, 1624-91) were, however, the worst treated.
Although the Friends ('Quakers' was a derogatory word - nickname given them by Justice Bennet at
Derby, because Fox bade him and others quake at the word of the Lord) followed the Bible as much
as the Puritans, they believed in 'Inner Light'. At their meetings, they sat silent unless one of their
number was moved by the Spirit, in which case he would share his thoughts with his fellows. Since
they abjured violence of any kind and acted up to their belief that all men were brothers, it might have
been expected that the Friends would have been treated by the colonists with the tolerance they
deserved. That was hardly the case, though (see Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown).
 8

Poetry. American poetry began with the Puritans. They valued poetry for its
usefulness. Probably they would not have understood the art for art's sake
doctrine, because, in their conception, the use of poetry was to help one to
live well - and die well. For this purpose even the simplest poetic memorial of
the humblest versifier might serve. The elegy was their favorite type of poetry,
for they had a strong sense of death as the supreme and final reality of life.

An elegy on the death of Elizabeth Tompson reduces the central motif of Puritan
poetry to its simplest terms in the opening lines:

Upon the Death of yt desireable young virgin, Elizabeth Tompson, Daughter of Joseph &
Mary Tompson of Bilerika, who Deceased in Boston out of the hous of Mr legg, 24 august,
1712, aged 22 years.

A lovely flowr Cropt in its prime

By Deaths Cold fatall hand;
A warning hear is left for all
Ready prepard to stand.

For none can tell who shall be next,

Yet all may it expect;
Then surely it Concerneth all,
Their time not to neglect.

The 16th century English sonnet tradition had cemented the connection between the
lyric and the erotic; 17th century meditative poetry added the religious element. In
New England, sexuality and religion had both a private and a public face, falling
under the jurisdiction of government and church. The erotic strain in the devotional
meditations of English poets (Herbert details his seduction by "love" in The Temple,
and Donne in the Holy Sonnets pleads with God to 'ravish' him4) is also to be found
in the poetry of the major Puritan poets: Anne Bradstreet, Michael Wigglesworth,
and Edward Taylor.

It has been argued that the Puritans were not prudish about the subject of sex,
although they were hostile toward extramarital and 'deviant' sex. They knew how to
celebrate the pleasure of 'wedded love'. Moreover, their theology and hermeneutics
encouraged them to figure their relation to God as a sexual one. The Calvinist
doctrine of election was understood as a sign of His love for His chosen saints [i.e.
pious Christians]. In a sense, God appeared more like a lover than a father. There
was a focus on the Song of Songs, interpreted as Christ's love for his church. The
Puritans regarded themselves as 'brides of Christ', spiritually committed to a divine
'husband'. Michael Wigglesworth, for example, writes in his diary: "will the Lord now
again return and embrace me in the arms of his dearest love? will he fall upon my
neck and kiss me?"

Grace, the center of Puritan religious experience, took on particularly erotic

connotations. To many Puritans, this exhilarating, even violent infusion of the divine
into the human, must have suggested sexual intercourse. Edward Taylor says: "The
Soule's the Wombe. Christ is the Spermodote/And Saving Grace the seed cast
therein." In these examples, there are implications of figurative homosexuality, for at

4
See Walter Hughes, "'Meat Out of the Eater': Panic and Desire in American Puritan Poetry," in
Engendering Men. The Question of Male Feminist Criticism, edited by Joseph A. Boone & Michael
Cadden, New York and London: Routledge, 1990, pp. 102-121.
 9

the heart of the movement was a desire for God, not a filial sense of obligation. Yet
a question arises: how did the Puritan men respond to a form of piety that placed
them in the anomalous position of receiving the attention of an insistent masculine
suitor? Thus, can we assume that for most of them this imperative of desire aroused
contrary feelings of fear, repulsion, even panic? This issue will be examined shortly,
in the context of Puritan male poetry.

Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) may be said to have been the first woman poet in the
English language. Submission to the way of God is the keynote of most of her
poems. The title of her first volume, published in London in 1650, without her
knowledge, was bombastically entitled: The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in
America: Or Severall Poems, Compiled with Great Variety of Wit and Learning, Full
of Delight. Here and there we find a memorable line or two, sometimes a readable
whole poem, but most of her lines are, according to Hyatt H. Waggoner, flat, built of
the clichés of classic and Biblical imagery. She saw no genuine conflict of values
between things temporal and things eternal, for all real values were eternal:

The world no longer let me Love,

My Hope and Treasure lyes Above.
(Upon the Burning of Our House)

Her best poems are to be found in Several Poems... Compiled ... By a

Gentlewoman in New England...Corrected by the Author (Boston, 1678). Beside
poems of meditation and self-debate, such as Contemplations and The Flesh and
the Spirit, this volume contains verses about her house, her husband and her
children, which make them all come alive for the modern reader. In her early poetry
she had tried her hand at various exercises such as The Four Elements, The Four
Humours in Man's Constitution, The Four Monarchies [Persian, Assyrian, Greek and
Roman], The Four Seasons, The Four Ages of Man. She is best, however, in her
later work, in poems on the occasion of some domestic incident or private emotion
(To My Dear and Loving Husband, Upon the Burning of Our House).

In Bradstreet’s poetry, all material objects fail as ultimate objects of desire, because
the desiring soul is so ravenous that it can consume them all without ever being
filled. We must search beyond sensual experience for the fulfillment of sensual
desire. In one of her prose meditations, she uses the maternal body as the
specifically erotic image, the only source that can quench her sensual thirst:

Some children are hardly weaned; although the teat be rubbed with wormwood or
mustard, they will either wipe it off, or else suck down sweet and bitter together. So it is
with some Christians: let God embitter all the sweets of this life, so that they might feed
upon more substantial food, yet they are so childishly sottish that they are still hugging
and sucking these empty breasts, that God is forced to hedge up their way with thorns
or lay affliction on their loins so that they might shake hands with the world, before it
bid them farewell.

The infant's appetite is not simply suppressed: it is transferred to 'more substantial

food'. Likewise, our desire for sensual experience is not to be denied, but redirected
toward an object that can fulfill it more completely than any physical object can: God
himself [cf. Freud's narrative of human development about our desire being
constantly displaced, relocated]. The infant in the oral stage identifies the breast as
the world, but must find new means of deriving satisfaction from the interaction of its
body with the world when this source is withdrawn. Bradstreet appends a final stage
 10

to Freud's narrative - a spiritual stage in which we turn to God, not the world, for
release - the subject of her greatest poems. God must be objectified, 'made
sensually perceptible', 'represented as a focus of desire'. Bradstreet's primary
strategy for objectifying God is to create parallels between her spiritual life and her
sensual and erotic experiences, as, for example, in A Letter to Her Husband, Absent
upon Public Employment:

My head, my heart, mine eyes, my life, nay, more,

My job, my magazine5 of earthly store,
If two be one, as surely thou and I,

where 'earthly' establishes two levels of significance: the temporal attachment to her
husband and the spiritual commitment to God that it mirrors (cf. 'Faith'). A Puritan
reader would instantly recognize that she is obliquely referring to God. Even her
references to her children, the products of her sexual union with her husband/sun,
supports a religious reading:

In this dead time, alas, what can I more

Than view those fruits which through thy heat I bore?'

In Contemplations, there is the trinity of sun, lover and God:

Thou as a bridegroom from thy chamber rushes,

And as a strong man, joys to run a race;
The morn doth usher thee with smiles and blushes;
The Earth reflects her glances in thy face.
Birds, insects, animals with vegative6,
Thy heat from death and dullness doth revive,
And in the darksome womb of fruitful nature dive.

Her sensual enjoyment of the sun's light leads her to the image of the sun arousing
and fertilizing the female earth as a male lover. Bradstreet does not believe
complete fulfillment to be possible in this life, but these transitional experiences lead
her through earthly pleasure to a knowledge of the divine.

When Thomas Dudley died in 1653, Anne Bradstreet was forty-one. With his death
she experienced a transition from the rigorous public codes of the old divines to a
more relaxed and private approach to faith. Although the compromises regarding
church membership intensified anxiety by creating further ambiguity about salvation,
at least the inner life was less subject to the scrutiny of the church elders. Perhaps
the growing liberalism of the church following her father's death permitted Bradstreet
greater freedom to express her deepest personal feelings in her work. During these
years, she wrote primarily about her domestic life and her spiritual experiences. Ann
Stanford observes that these later meditative poems are less ornate than her earlier
work; the tortured heroic couplets, elaborate conceits, and extended metaphors of
The Four Ages of Man, The Four Monarchies, are replaced by supple lines more
varied in length and more inventive in rhyme.

The second edition of The Tenth Muse, which was not published until 1678, six
years after her death, contains her corrections of the first edition of the volume, as
well as several lyric poems that are deeply personal. Although she again apologizes
5
Storehouse.
6
Plants.
 11

for the ill-formed offspring of the feeble brain, Bradstreet does publicly acknowledge
her work. Using the metaphor of mother and child in the preface, The Author to her
Book, Bradstreet tells her readers that her child, dressed in “homespun,” is
fatherless. On the surface it would appear that by describing her work as poor and
illegitimate she was continuing her strategy of self-deprecation; however, it is
important to note that the poems added to this volume no longer cite male writers as
authorities or imitate their work. No longer does she cast herself in the role of awed
apprentice; she now views her daily experience as a valid subject for her art.

Poetry writing enabled Bradstreet to endure the conflicts of her middle years when
her affections were not sufficiently weaned from her family to permit her to put the
demands of God first. Her craft also made it easier to accept the periods of isolation
during her husband's frequent and sometimes long absences while he was on
business for the church. Her poems to Simon Bradstreet, to whom she was married
at sixteen, make it clear that she loved him deeply, as illustrated by the well-known
lines from To My Dear and Loving Husband.

If ever two were one, then surely we.

If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me, ye women, if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole Mines of gold
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that Rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought7 but love from thee give recompense.
Thy love is such I can no way repay,
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love let’s so persevere,
That when we live no more, we may live ever.

The poem to her husband is a love poem of twelve lines which, in a Shakespearian
manner, considers the love from several points of view and then subsumes the
whole argument in a couplet. Their love is the best of all things of this world, more to
be prized than 'whole mines of gold' or 'all the riches that the East doth hold'. Her
love, she suggests, is such that only his love can equal it, and his love for her is so
great that she feels inadequate to 'recompense' it fully. She therefore asks the
heavens to reward him. The development of the poem is clear and logical. His love
is so great that she is obliged to turn to the only thing greater than her own love in
her search for something to equal his, and the concluding couplet simply expands
the idea. 'Then while we live, in love let’s so persevere, / That when we live no more,
we may live ever.' The union of the lovers in eternity is the outcome of their earthly
love. Earthly love, the best of this world, is thus an emblem of what awaits the
saved.

In this poem, this world and the next validate one another. Love is the way to
heaven, and the best image of heaven is a realm of eternal love. As the poem
expresses it, the transition from this world to the next involves not renunciation, not
a change even, but an expansion. The poem stands in contrast to such poems as
Sidney's “Leave me O Love,” in which one sort of love must be rejected before
another can be accepted. Bradstreet's poem presents a progressive acceptance,
which does not need rejection as a spur. Theology rests lightly on this poem, to be

7
Anything.
 12

sure. It seems less than orthodox in tone, yet it is not really Arminian. The hope of
heaven is only a hope. The poem is dominated by a calm sense that the best of this
life must indeed be the link between it and the next. In Puritan terms, their love is a
possible evidence of justification. In personal terms, heaven holds the only hope that
love will have no date.

In A Letter to Her Husband…, she asks, “How stayest thou there, whilst I at Ipswich
lye?” In still another, she laments: “Commend me to the man more lov'd than life,/
Shew him the sorrows of his widdowed wife;/My dumpish thoughts, my groans, my
brakish tears/My sobs, my longing hopes, my doubting fears,/And if he love, how
can he there abide?

Since Puritans believed that spousal devotion was proof of piety, Anne Bradstreet's
love for Simon was in harmony with God's plan for his creatures. But she must love
him in Christ and not selfishly or carnally; to allow her emotional or physical desire
for Simon to eclipse her greater commitment to God would be idolatry - a heresy
committed by the Familists, a sect that practiced free love in its zeal to be one in
Christ. According to John Calvin, conjugal union itself is appointed as a remedy for
our necessity, that we may not break into unrestrained licentiousness. Although
Bradstreet experienced conflict between her passion for Simon and her duty to care
for him selflessly, her love poems focus on her desire and longing rather than on
duty or deference. In addition, there is no indication that she considers her social or
domestic role subordinate to his:

Together at one Tree, oh let us brouze,

And like two turtles roost within one house,
And like the Mullets in one River glide,
Let's still remain but one, till death divide.
(Works, 398)

As governor, Simon Bradstreet's duties to his constituents were time-consuming,

and his wife could not in good conscience claim more of his energy - to make further
demands on him would mean that she was interfering with his calling by placing
herself between her husband and God. Puritan custom carefully limited Anne
Bradstreet's role as wife and mother by defining marriage as a partnership for
producing young Christians in which the male had final authority.

Although they accepted the necessity of marriage, Puritans worried that conjugal
love would tempt the married couple to lose sight of God. John Cotton warned
against such idolatrous unions: “[W]hen we exceedingly delight ourselves in
Husbands or Wives, or Children, [it] much benumbs and dims the light of the Spirit.”
Marriage, according to Cotton, should make husband and wife better fitted for God's
service, and bring them nearer to God. This temporal union should not eclipse
devotion to God: “Let this caution be minded, that they don't love inordinately,
because death will soon part them.” Similarly, it was important not to love one's
children excessively; in order to offset this peril, it was common to send adolescent
children to board with other families. Anne Bradstreet's late poems reveal that she
struggled with the conflict between her love for her husband and children and her
devotion to God; repeatedly, she reminds herself of her duty as wife and mother and
later grandmother to assist her family in the service of God. To love them for their
own sake would indicate a dangerous attachment to this world.
 13

Bradstreet's elegy to her grandchild, Elizabeth Bradstreet, who died in August 1665
at the age of a year and a half, expresses Bradstreet's effort to contain the opposing
forces of familial love and religious duty:

Farewel dear babe, my hearts too much content,

Farewel sweet babe, the pleasure of mine eye,
Farewel fair flower that for a space was lent,
Then ta'en away unto Eternity.
(Works, 404)

Although Bradstreet's sorrow threatens to overwhelm her, the second stanza

expresses resigned acceptance of Providence:

By nature Trees do rot when they are grown.

And Plumbs and Apples thoroughly ripe do fall,
And corn and grass are in their season mown,
And time brings down what is both strong and tall.
But plants new set to be eradicate,
And buds new blown, to have so short a date,
Is by his hand alone that guides nature and fate.
(Works, 404)

The intricate rhyme scheme ababccc of six pentameter lines and the triplet or
alexandrine that conclude each stanza reflect the effort to master her grief.
Rosemary Laughlin suggests that the slight irregularity in the meter creates a
“somewhat tortured hesitation,” indicating her reluctance to accept God's decree.
Similarly, Ann Stanford emphasizes that the implied criticism of God in the first
stanza is not entirely resolved by the pragmatic acceptance of his will in the second
stanza.

In another poem written four years later in 1669 in memory of another grandchild,
Anne Bradstreet reveals an even deeper grief that borders on despair:

With troubled heart, trembling hand I write,

The Heavens have chang'd to sorrow my delight.
How oft with disappointment have I met,
When I on fading thing my hopes have set?

I knew she was but as a withering flour,

That's her to day, perhaps gone in an hour;
Like as a bubble, or the brittle glass,
Or like a shadow turning as it was.
More fool than I to look on what was lent,
As if mine own, when thus impermanent.
(Works, 405-6)

Again, Bradstreet uses poetic form to help contain her loss, control her sadness,
and sustain her faith in spite of her bereavement. Her poems lamenting the deaths
of her grandchildren resemble Elizabethan elegies such as Ben Jonson's On My
First Son:

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy,

My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy;
Seven years th'wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, I could lose all father now. For why
 14

Will man lament the state he should envy?

To have so soon 'scaped world's and flesh's rage,
And, if no other misery, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry;
For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such
As what he loves may never like too much.

By attributing their agony to excessive attachment, both Bradstreet and Jonson

attempt to blunt the pain of their loss, but while Jonson chastises himself for the
emotional indulgence of loving his child too much, Bradstreet feels cheated by the
child's death.

Two additional elegies in the second edition of The Tenth Muse further demonstrate
Bradstreet's profound tension between her familial attachments and her religious
duty. Her elegies for her grandchild Simon and her daughter-in-law Mercy, both of
whom died in the autumn of 1669, again reflect Bradstreet's resolution to sustain her
faith in God's Providence in the face of bitter loss:

Chear up, (dear Son) thy fainting bleeding heart,

In him alone, that caused all this smart;
What though thy strokes full sad & grievous be,
He knows it is the best for thee and me.
(Works, 408)

In both poems, Anne Bradstreet's grief is controlled by her willed belief in a just and
merciful God in spite of her experience that appears to contradict her faith. Although
her resignation does not always eliminate her rage, she manages to subdue her
incredulity in the name of obedience.

One of Anne Bradstreet's most effective poems in the second edition, certainly her
most frequently anthologized, is Verses Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th,
1666. Like Contemplations, this poem's power is the result of the very poignant
tension between her worldly concerns, as represented by her household furnishings,
and her spiritual aspirations.

Here stood that Trunk, and there that chest;

There lay that store I counted best:
My pleasant things in ashes lye,
And them behold no more shall I.
Under thy roof no guest shall sitt,
Nor at thy Table eat a bitt.
(Works, 41)

The poem leaves the reader with the painful impression of a woman in her mid-
fifties, who having lost her domestic comforts is left to struggle with despair.
Although her loss is mitigated by the promise of the greater rewards of heaven, the
experience is deeply tragic: “Farewell my Pelf, farewell my Store./The world no
longer let me Love,/My hope and Treasure lyes Above.” But once again, the promise
of a permanent house in heaven soothes her grief.

Thou hast a house on high erect,

Fram'd by that mighty Architect,
With glory richly furnished,
Stands permanent tho: this bee fled.
 15

(Works, 41-42)

A poem written three years later on August 31, 1669, “Longing for Heaven,” reveals
a profound world-weariness; the clash between earth and heaven, temporal and
eternal concerns, is muted; instead, there is longing for release from physical frailty
and hope for immortality. Physical pain and old age have diminished her pleasure in
life, and Bradstreet longs for freedom from her deteriorating body:

A pilgrim I, on earth, perplext

wth sinns wth cares and sorrows vext
By age and paines brought to decay
Oh how I long to be at rest
and soare on high among the blest.
This body shall in silence sleep
Mine eyes no more shall ever weep
No fainting fits shall me assaile
nor grinding paines my body fraile
(Works, 43)

Josephine Piercy describes this poem as Bradstreet's farewell to the world. Anne
Bradstreet died on September 16, 1672; she was sixty years old. In the last months
of her life Bradstreet was very sick; her son Simon wrote in his diary that she was
wasted to skin; bone much troubled with rheum, and he noted that she had a badly
ulcerated arm. For much of her life, she tried to be the dutiful and loving wife of
Simon Bradstreet, the devoted mother of eight children, and the resolute child of
God. At the same time, her work reflects the tensions and conflicts of a person
struggling for artistic expression in a culture outraged by individual autonomy and
certain that the best poetry was written to praise God.

Although troubled by religious doubts throughout her life, Anne Bradstreet managed
to subdue her love for her family, her domestic pleasures, and her love of nature's
beauty. Her willed faith in the promise of heaven sustained her in times of spiritual
confusion, but ultimately it was the beauty of this life that enabled her to believe in
the next:

Many times hath Satan troubled me concerning the verity of 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 was a God my
Reason would soon tell me by the wondrous workes that I see, the vast frame of the Heaven
and the Earth, the order of all things, night and day, Summer and Winter, Spring and Autumne,
the dayly providing for this great household upon the Earth, the preserving and directing of All
to its proper end. The consideration of these things would with amazement certainly resolve me
that there is an Eternall Being. (Works, 8)

Although divine teleology supersedes Bradstreet's gynecocratic vision, it is her

reverent identification with “the great household upon the Earth” that causes her to
seek a designer. Her reluctance to believe that earthly life has its own agency and
inner rhythm is consonant with her own experience of being subject to male control.
Drawing a parallel between her own dependence on her husband and father for
guidance and protection and earth's need for a divine father for the preserving and
directing of All to its proper end, Anne Bradstreet finally managed to believe in God.
However, just as in bolder moments she hoped that her work could stand on its own
so she sometimes surmised that earth exists for its own sake. Ultimately,
Bradstreet's need for assurance triumphed over her desire for autonomy, but her
faith was based on a profound desire to remain connected to life, whether in this
 16

world or the next. Repeatedly, she observes that if it were not for death and decay,
earth would be heaven. Two hundred years later, Emily Dickinson decided that
“heaven was superfluous” and found paradise on earth instead of looking for earth in
heaven as Anne Bradstreet had done.

Far more widely read than Anne Bradstreet in his own day was Michael
Wigglesworth, whose poem, The Day of Doom (1662), was the 17th-century
equivalent of a best-seller. It was a statement of Calvinist theology in popular form
and ballad metre, beginning:

Still was the night, serene and bright,

when all men sleeping lay;
Calm was the season, and carnal reason
thought so 'twould last for aye.
'Soul take thine ease, let sorrow cease,
much good thou hast in store.'
This was their song, their cups among,
the evening before.

Wigglesworth rhymed his dogmas because they were easier to remember that way.
His theology, which denies the world, is rather repulsive. Even the children of the
Elect - not to mention the vast majority of mankind who cannot claim to be among
the Elect - if they should chance to die before being baptized, must go to eternal
torment. It is a theology monstrous in its perversion of a gospel of love into a set of
beliefs expressive of sadistic hatred. Life as examined in his poem in the light of
death and judgment is revealed to be a pointless test - pointless because the final
marks were recorded before the text was taken, since God chose the Elect who
would pass the test before time began. God becomes a cruel, Oriental despot,
choosing 'whom He will', and Jesus becomes either a passive tool in his Father's
absurd plan of salvation or a dreadful judge. The fact that The Day of Doom ran into
more than ten editions before the middle of the 18th century reveals how much the
Puritans had to remind themselves of the principles by which they were living their
lives.

Unlike Bradstreet, male Puritans could not use their experiences of love, marriage
and sexuality as a model for the construction of their religious experience. Their
lives could not legitimately include erotic attachments to other men. But the idea of
drawing on their own experience to gain sensual knowledge of God, as Bradstreet
does, would have excited a variety of complex feelings: anxiety, repulsion, fear,
fascination. The poetry of Wigglesworth and Taylor often suggests such a response
- what is called 'homophobia' or 'homosexual panic'.

Wigglesworth kept a diary. This spiritual record, so private that parts of it were
written in code, describes in scandalous detail the religious and sexual predicament
that secretly inspired his public poetry. His constant complaint is his inability to
desire God, his 'want of love to God and delight in God', which results in a
'deadness of heart'. Accompanying this failure of desire is an uncontrollable overflow
of lust, which, in his case, seems to be directed toward his youthful male pupils at
Harvard, where he served as a tutor:

Such filthy lust flow[s] from my fond affection to my pupils whiles in their presence, that I
confess myself an object of God's loathing'. 'I find my spirit so exceeding carried away with
love to my pupils that I cant tell how to take up my rest in God.
 17

He is particularly prone to sexual desire when he concentrates most intently on

religious obligations:

Nay I feel my heart apt secretly to give way to my vain thoughts in holy duties and glued as
it were to my sensuality or love to the creature.

He calls these eruptions of sexuality into devotion 'satanical injections'. Here is a

reference to the sacrament:

I see a need of whole christ and do desire him, help my want of desires: open thou my
mouth wide and then fill it with thy son. I need him.

At another point, he decides to "erect a pillar to the prayse of his grace," the sketch
of this pillar being "strangely phallic." The language and imagery lead him from the
sacred to the profane, from desire to panic at that which he desires: “do I retain a
Sodom within the temple of the holy-ghost'?”

There seem to be two distinct conceptions of sin in Puritan thought: 'privative' and
'positive'. A 'positive' definition of sin means that it exists as an active principle or
presence within the individual; in the 'privative' definition sin is the absence or
deprivation of some element essential to salvation or belief. These differing
constructions are indicated by a writer's choice of imagery. Positive sin is
represented as some form of corruption or contamination, either disease or filth;
privative sin is emptiness, coldness, dryness. The latter imagery pervades the poem
where Bradstreet parallels her husband's absence and God's, an absence that
leaves her 'chilled', 'numbed', 'dead', passively awaiting the return of the 'heat' she
once felt. This imagery appears in Wigglesworth's diary as well, when he is
lamenting his inability to desire God. But he also uses the imagery of positive sin
when describing his physical desires. The semen that 'escapes' him in his sleep is
termed 'pollution' or 'filthiness'; his predisposition to nocturnal emission is his
'disease' or 'distemper'. This movement from the privative to the positive
corresponds to the vicious cycle of desire and panic, as his efforts to arouse desire
for God lead to a sense of sexual guilt and contamination:

… some night pollution escaped me, notwithstanding my earnest prayer to the contrary which
brought to mind my old sins now too much forgotten.

It is difficult to tell whether Wigglesworth is writing about sins that are literally erotic
or only figuratively so, because his terminology of positive sin is almost entirely
sexualized: he constantly accuses himself of 'sensuality', 'carnality', 'licentiousness',
'lust', 'wantonness', 'whoarish affections'. Even the sin that most often afflicts him -
pride - is imbued with sexual connotations: one of its archaic meanings is 'a state of
sexual arousal or heat', and the language surrounding it usually evokes tumescence
(it is a 'rising' spirit with which is 'puffed up').

Taking his figurative role as a bride of Christ, Wigglesworth believes that any
moment not focused entirely on God is a moment of sexual sin, of 'spiritual adultery'
with 'other lovers' besides his 'husband'. Since all positive sin involves desire, it is
always in some sense sexual. And since all positive sin involves a perversion of
desire from its heavenly object (God) to an inappropriately earthly one, it is always in
some sense sodomy.
 18

The Calvinist doctrine of total depravity encouraged Puritans to see their sins, no
matter how trivial, as connecting them to the most abominable acts and the most
debauched criminals. Sodomy was, in the Puritans' Levitical legal code, punishable
by death. For Wigglesworth sodomy is the epitome of sin. Such pleasures do not
bear 'fruits'. Our tendency to such 'sensuality' is the result of pride, an overvaluing of
the self. When Wigglesworth associates pride, luxury and Sodom, he is thinking of
Ezekiel, 16:4-50 (Sodom includes 'pride', 'fullness of bread', 'abomination') or Luke,
17:28-29. The picture of Sodom is one of a community completely caught up in
worldly pursuits, arrogantly indifferent to the wrath of God, a world on the eve of
destruction (The Day of Doom, 1662). His own inability to love God and tendency to
love men strike him as epidemic in New England.

Foreshadowing Freud's theory of homosexuality, Wigglesworth attributes the

'perverseness' of his homoerotic lusts to a failed relationship with his father. He
laments in the diary that because he cannot feel 'natural affection' for his father, he
turns to his pupils with 'unnatural' love; they are, in turn, 'unloving' in their response
to him, 'gone after pleasure' among themselves. Echoing the fear of Hebrew
prophets and English Puritans before the Civil War, Wigglesworth worries that the
American Israel is becoming an American Sodom, ripe for 'heavy punishment'.

As a young man Wigglesworth had trouble deciding whether to become a physician

or a minister. He became a ministry, but retained his fascination with the workings of
the body in his religious life [cf. Roger Chillingworth].

In the diary he intimates that his 'grevious disease' was gonorrhea. He probably had
in mind the gonorrhea of classical medical texts, which was not a sexually
transmitted disease, but a chronic, uncontrollable discharge of semen. Michel
Foucault points out that the excess that characterizes this kind of gonorrhea was
thought to lead to dullness, frigidity, sterility, and paralysis. In the classical prognosis
we recognize, as Wigglesworth probably did, the contrast between the positive and
privative constructions of sin: excess, filth, disease on the one hand and deadness,
coldness and impotence on the other.

Just as Wigglesworth saw his sins reflected in the people of New England, he saw
the disease afflicting the landscape:

Our fruitful seasons have been turned

Of late to barrenness,
Sometimes through great & parching drought,
Sometimes through rain's excess...

Divine punishment fits the crime:

This O New England hast thou got

By riot, & excess:
This hast thou brought upon thy self
By pride & wantonness.

Sodomy was seen as a sin of excess, the most extreme manifestation of misdirected
desire for the world, and the destruction of Sodom by a rain of fire was seen as a
fitting punishment for the Sodomites' uncontrolled lust. The images of the aftermath
- a pillar of salt, apples that turned to ashes, and the Dead sea - were all signs of the
'barrenness' associated with such 'excess'. The other biblical example of divine
 19

genocide, Noah's flood, was also, according to historian Alan Bray, thought by some
Renaissance writers to be poetic justice for an antidiluvian outbreak of sodomy.

Wigglesworth includes both fiery and fluid forms of excess in his description of God's
judgment on New England and opposes them with the opposite extremes of
dryness, coldness, and sterility. The intense desire of the original Puritan immigrants
for God led them to found a colony for him, but this desire has overflowed into lust
for worldly success and pleasure. While Wigglesworth could not entirely purge 'the
Sodom within', he could finally accept the anxiety and suffering surrounding it as
part of the process of salvation.

The best of Colonial poets was Edward Taylor (1642-1729). When he died, he left
a 400 page manuscript collection of poems, with instructions that 'his heirs should
never publish it'. The reason might be that the baroque splendor of his poems and
their references to Christ in terms of erotic love are more reminiscent of the Catholic
poets than would be proper for a New England Puritan. Taylor's poems were
unknown until 1937, when Thomas H. Johnson discovered them among the
manuscripts held by Yale University Library. They were published in 1939 (a
complete edition in 1960), and this remains the most important American literary
discovery of the 20th century. Finding Taylor was finding the greatest devotional
poet in American literature before T. S. Eliot.

For over half a century, Taylor was the Congregational pastor at Westfield,
Massachusetts. His fellow people had no idea he was writing poems during all this
period. Taylor obviously realized the unorthodoxy of his verse. The Puritans in their
zealous pursuit of the Word of God bitterly condemned the sensuous and aesthetic
qualities that he appreciated. The main feature of his poetry, linking him to the
English Metaphysicals, is the employment of startling imagery, derived from the
new science or from everyday experience. He uses all the stylistic devices of the
Metaphysicals: elaborate conceits, paradoxical juxtapositions of images and words,
light treatment of grave religious truths, puns. His central question, 'Oh, what a thing
is man! Lord, who am I?' has been asked over and over by the chief American
poets.

Preparatory Meditations was his designation for his major work, 217 poems in
iambic pentameter stanza, rhyming ababcc. The poems are remarkably uniform in
structure. The opening part establishes a symbol or metaphor, the central part
develops the opening idea or image, and the conclusion is a prayer for divine aid or
a humble statement of the poet's submission to the divine will. He intended these as
meditations before he would administer the Eucharist. His topics are the favorite
Puritan ideas: the original sin, divine omnipotence, the predestined elect, Christian
atonement, but his most persistent theme is the ecstasy of the mystical union of
Christ and the true believer.

Some of the best Puritan poetry is in the form of elegies, many of them written by
amateurs. The impulse is to memorialize the dead and to search for the meaning of
life by examining completed lives. Quite often the search took the form of anagrams
and acrostics based on the subject's names. For instance, 'Elizabeth Thompson'
contains the significant anagram 'o i am blest on top'; or 'i am gon to all bliss' to be
found in Abigaill Thompson. The reason for anagrams is that, since everything that
 20

happened was thought to be foreordained and the work of God, either directly, or
indirectly through the agency of the Devil, whom God permitted to operate,
everything must be in some way a sign to be interpreted, a revelation of the Divine
Will. Nothing happened by chance and nothing was without meaning.

The elegies make somewhat more interesting reading than most Puritan verse
because they concern specific individuals. But the general feature of the first century
of New England verse is that it tells us almost nothing about the concrete, existential
experience of people, places or things.

One would think, for example, that a poem written in 1638 to celebrate the poet's
first sight of the new land would give us at least some idea of what such an
experience must have been like. But Thomas Tillam's Upon the first sight of New-
England begins like this:

hayle holy-land wherein our holy lord

hath planted his most true and holy word,
haule happy people who have dispossest
your selves of friends, and meanes, to find some rest
for your poore wearied soules, opprest of late
for Jesus-sake, with Envye, spight, and hate,
to yow that blessed promise truly's given
of sure reward, which you'l receve in heaven

and goes on in similar vein for 14 more lines. What we get from reading it is not any
sight of the new land, or any insight into what the experience of sighting it must have
been like, except that it produces a sense of thankfulness; what we get is only
religious abstractions.

Puritan poetry finds this world so radically imperfect as not to be worth saving or
grieving for - or memorializing. Anne Bradstreet thought it was a sin that she should
grieve at the loss of her house. Her 'real' house was elsewhere. The Puritan poet
placed very little value on 'the world's body.'

The Puritan Heritage. The New England literary scene until 1750 or so presents an
uninviting picture. No plays, no novels and only a handful of good poems. The
centering of imagination on God and the Bible led to the diligent study of life and the
Bible for types. This encouraged the wide-spread use of allegory and a primitive
form of symbolism, for the Puritans saw the hand of God everywhere. Things were
not always as they seemed to be. A snake discovered in a church was not just a
snake but the Devil. The Puritans, however, also paid great attention to the things of
this world. They were realistic, working out the most practical way of doing a job.
From this combination, the 'associated sensibility' of the Puritan there emerged the
split personality of the 19th century New Englander.

Although the Puritan way died out by the middle of the 18th century, the intolerant
attitude to society which had inspired the colonists still remained. The heart of the
New Englander remained the same: troubled, idealistic, soul-searching, lonely. It is
small wonder that the writers of the 19th century in America often cracked under the
strain and gave way to blind despair: despair of God, despair of their society,
despair of themselves. From Bradford to Edwards, from Thoreau to Emily Dickinson
and Robert Frost, there is a grimness about New England writing which has no
precedent in any other literature.
 21

Martin S. Day (A Handbook of American Literature, 1975) sums up the Puritan

legacy: rigid morality, material success, self-reliance, democratic liberty, learning, a
messianic complex, and conscience stirrings.

The Puritan insistence upon conscientious work produced wealth, which was
regarded as divine favor. The world has properly extended the term 'Yankee' from
New Englanders to all Americans, who pursue riches with the tenacity of the early
Puritans.

Self-reliance was a deep-seated New England attribute, instilled by a religion that

threw the burden upon the individual. Yankee independence became as legendary
as Yankee shrewdness.

The town meeting of New England remains perhaps the most democratic institution
of the American nation. With Bible reading a necessity of each Puritan, education
became the driving force it still remains in America. Americans often started schools
in the West before the post-office arrived.

A messianic complex spilled over from religion into politics and social reform. Even
in politics the Americans display a crusading spirit of religious urgency. As to his
conscience, even when he revels in pleasure, the American has a sneaking
suspicion that he is sinning. In reading Henry Miller the American finds his Puritan
conscience always looking over his shoulder.

Almost from the beginning there were important differences between the Southern
and the New England colonies. In the South, enormous farms or plantations used
the labor of black slaves to grow tobacco. The rich and powerful plantation owners
were slow to develop a literature of their own. They preferred books imported from
England. But in New England, the Puritan settlers had come to the New World in
order to form a society based on strict Christian beliefs. Like the Puritans in England,
who were fighting against the English king, they believed that society should be
based on the laws of God. Therefore, they had a stronger sense of unity and of a
'shared purpose'. This was one of the reasons why culture and literature developed
much faster than in the South. Harvard, the first college in the colonies, was founded
near Boston in 1636 in order to train new Puritan ministers.

The South. The first enduring English colony in America was founded at
Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. Most of the initial settlers were adventurers. Their
idleness and cupidity brought them to the verge of disaster, but they were rescued
by Captain John Smith. In 1624, Virginia became a royal colony. The Church of
England was the established church in Virginia. Relatively few noble British families
migrated to the New World. Thus, the so-called 'aristocracy' of the South, the society
of the planters, developed from middle-class origins ('self-made aristocrats') through
the amassing of property and the cultivation of manners and tastes of those whom
they had envied in England. They welcomed Negro slavery, first introduced in 1619.
Of course, every American colony in the 17th and 18th centuries contained Negro
slaves, but the central and northern areas had little need for them, since there the
basic economic structure consisted of family-tilled farms or family-operated small
businesses. While the larger part of the Northerners emigrated for religious reasons,
 22

the majority of the Southerners emigrated in order to make their fortunes in a new
land.

Another difference lay in the social organization: in the South the center of social life
was the plantation, while in the North it was the township. The Southerners
maintained good communications with England, and often sent their children back
there to be educated. They imported the latest English fashions in architecture or
dress. The general temper was Augustan, while the architecture was Roman.

Southern writing was mainly descriptive (histories), unlike the didactic tone prevalent
in the North. In fact not only literature but any sort of printed matter was almost
unknown in the American South of the 17th century. Autocratic governors like
William Berkeley of Virginia, in office from 1641 to 1677, deliberately sought to keep
the colonists in ignorance by discouraging education and printing. The first operating
printing press in the South appeared in Maryland in 1726.

Of poetry the South produced very little until the 19th century. Mention should be
made, however, of a curious document, The Sot-Weed Factor, or the Voyage to
Maryland (1708), a satire written by Ebenezer Cook, which was followed up in 1730
by Sot-Weed Redivivus, or the Planter's Looking Glass. Cook, an early model of the
European traveler, suffers three months on the ocean to find himself among

...a numerous crew,

In shirts and drawers of Scotch-cloth blue
With neither stockings, hat nor shoe.
These sot-weed planters crowd the shore,
In hue as tawny as a Moor...

Finally he receives some words of wisdom from a 'peasant' who advises him to
accommodate himself to the new conditions if he wishes to stay in the new land.

The Middle Atlantic Colonies comprised New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania
and Delaware, and had been settled by largely non-English-speaking colonists,
mainly the Dutch in New York (Niew Amsterdam) and New Jersey, the Germans in
Pennsylvania, and the Swedes in Delaware.

Pennsylvania was originally a Quaker settlement. William Penn was allowed to start
a 'holy experiment' there. In 1740, the Quakers founded a college in Philadelphia,
which became the University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia was also the unofficial
capital of the colonies, surpassing New York and Boston in the importance of its
trade.

The main body of literature in the Middle Colonies was, like in the South, descriptive.
And like in the South the gentlemen in the Atlantic colonies concentrated upon good
living to the neglect of belles lettres [Washington Irving would depict them satirically
in his Knickerbocker History].

ADDENDA

The most obvious difference between the Pilgrims and the Puritans is that the Puritans had
no intention of breaking with the Anglican church. The Puritans were nonconformists as
 23

were the Pilgrims, both of which refusing to accept an authority beyond that of the revealed
word. But where with the Pilgrims this had translated into something closer to an egalitarian
mode, the "Puritans considered religion a very complex, subtle, and highly intellectual
affair," and its leaders thus were highly trained scholars, whose education tended to
translate into positions that were often authoritarian. There was a built-in hierarchism in this
sense, but one which mostly reflected the age: "Very few Englishmen had yet broached the
notion that a lackey was as good as a lord, or that any Tom, Dick, or Harry... could
understand the Sermon on the Mount as well as a Master of Arts from Oxford, Cambridge,
or Harvard." Of course, while the Puritan emphasis on scholarship did foster such class
distinction, it nevertheless encouraged education among the whole of its group, and in fact
demanded a level of learning and understanding in terms of salvation. Thomas Hooker
stated in “The Application of Redemption,”

Its with an ignorant sinner in the midst of all means as with a sick man remaining in the
Apothecaries shop, ful of choycest Medicines in the darkest night: ... because he cannot see
what he takes, and how to use them, he may kill himself or encrease his distempers, but never
cure any disease.

Knowledge of Scripture and divinity, for the Puritans, was essential. This was an
uncompromising attitude that characterized the Puritans' entry into New England, according
to Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson, whose thematic anthology, The Puritans (1932,
1963), became a key text of revisionist historicism, standing as an influential corrective
against the extreme anti-Puritanism of the early twentieth century. Following Samuel Eliot
Morison, they noted that the emphasis on education saw the establishment, survival, and
flourishing of Harvard College – which survived only because the entire community was
willing to support it, so that even the poor yeoman farmers "contributed their pecks of
wheat" for the continued promise of a "literate ministry." Again, to their credit, Puritan
leaders did not bolster the knowledge of its ministry simply to perpetuate the level of power
of the ruling elite. A continuing goal was to further education among the laity, and so
ensure that not only were the right and righteous ideas and understandings being held and
expressed, but that the expressions were in fact ‘messages’ received by a comprehending
audience. An Act passed in Massachusetts in 1647 required "that every town of one
hundred families or more should provide free common and grammar school instruction."
Indeed, the first "Free Grammar School" was established in Boston in 1635, only five years
after the Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded. For all the accusations of superstition
and narrow-mindedness, the Puritans could at least be said to have provided their own
antidote in their system of schools. As John Cotton wrote in Christ the Fountaine of Life,
"zeale is but a wilde-fire without knowledge."

The Puritans who, in the 1560s, first began to be (contemptuously) referred to as such,
were ardent reformers, seeking to bring the Church to a state of ‘purity’ that would match
Christianity as it had been in the time of Christ. This reform was to involve, depending upon
which Puritan one asked, varying degrees of stripping away practices seen as residual
"popery" - vestments, ceremony, and the like. But many of the ideas later associated strictly
with the Puritans were not held only by them. The Calvinist doctrine of predestination, with
which Puritanism agreed, was held by the Pilgrims as well: both believed that the human
state was one of sin and depravity; that after the Fall all but an elect group were irrevocably
bound for hell; that, because God's knowledge and power was not limited by space or time,
this group had always been elect. In other words, there was nothing one could do about the
condition of one's soul but try to act as one would expect a heaven-bound soul to act.

The Salem Witch Trials. It was because the Puritan mode of interpretation - with its
readings of providence and secondary causes - could reach such extremes that the Salem
witch-trials broke out. Of course, as Thomas H. Johnson writes, the belief in witches was
generally questioned by no one - Puritan or otherwise - "and even as late as the close of
the seventeenth century hardly a scientist of repute in England but accepted certain
 24

phenomena as due to witchcraft." But the Puritan cosmology held a relentless imaginative
power, especially demonstrated in narratives in which Providence was shown to be at work
through nature and among human beings. The laity read and took in such readings or
demonstrations of Providence, and the ministry felt compelled by a sense of official
responsibility to offer their interpretations and explain the work of God in the world. Johnson
notes the "lurid details" of Cotton Mather's Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts
and Possessions (1689), which helped generate an unbalanced fascination with witchcraft.
This would prove both fire and tinder for Salem Village, so that "by September, twenty
people and two dogs had been executed as witches" and hundreds more were either in jail
or were accused. Yet to envision the Puritan community at this point simply as a mob of
hysterical zealots is to lose sight of those prominent figures who stood against the
proceedings. Granted that they did not speak out too loudly at the height of the fervor, but
then to do so would be to risk exposure to a confusion of plague-like properties, where the
testimony of an alleged victim alone was enough to condemn a person. But it was the
injustice of this very condition against which men such as Thomas Brattle and Increase
Mather wrote. Brattle's A Full and Candid Account of the Delusion called Witchcraft (1692)
argued that the evidence was no true evidence at all, because the ‘forms’ of the accused
were taken to ‘be’ the accused, and the accusers, in declaring that they were informed by
the devil as to who afflicted them, were only offering the devil's testimony. His was an
argument which seemed wholly reasonable to many, but it led Brattle to the fear "that ages
will not wear off that reproach and those stains which these things will leave behind them
upon our land." Mather wrote in 1693, in Cases of Conscience concerning Evil Spirits, that
"it were better that Ten Suspected Witches should escape, than that one Innocent Person
be Condemned."

Samuel Sewall’s journal complicates the idea of the 'Puritan' on another level because
while Brattle and (Increase) Mather may have offered challenges to any conception of the
homogeneity of Puritan belief, Sewall reminds one of the variability within an ‘individual’. It
introduces an axis of time by which the measure of the 'Puritan mind' must be adjusted. On
Christmas Day, 1696, one reads the terse opening, "We bury our little daughter." And three
weeks later is a transcript of the notice Sewall had posted publicly. It relates that "Samuel
Sewall, sensible of the reiterated strokes of God upon himself and family... Desires to take
the Blame and Shame of [the Salem proceedings], Asking pardon of Men.…" This is once
again an interpretation of the "reiterated strokes of God" which has brought the sense of
shame to his consciousness, and it suggests that, at least for Puritans such as Sewall,
these readings of nature and events are not merely those of convenience or self-
justification. There is at least the indication here that if some Puritans stood ready to see
the guilt in others, some of those same people at least made their judgments in good faith
and with honesty, giving credence to their understanding of the ways of God, even when
they themselves were the object of judgment. Sewall's example suggests a kind of Puritan
whose Puritanism not only carries him to almost inhuman extremes, but also relentlessly
brings him back, full circle, to humility.

The revealed word, antinomianism, individualism. What also must be emphasized is the
absolute ground of religious understanding that the Biblical text represented for the
Puritans. The Bible was the Lord's revealed word, and only through it does He directly
communicate to human beings. While the natural world may be studied and interpreted in
order to gain a sense of His will, He ‘is not’ the world itself, and does not instill Himself
directly into human beings by means of visitations or revelations or divine inspirations of
any sort. The antinomian crisis involving Anne Hutchinson focused on this issue. John
Winthrop records it in his journal:

[October 21, 1636] One Mrs. Hutchinson, a member of the church of Boston, a woman
of ready wit and bold spirit, brought over with her two dangerous errors: 1. That the
person of the Holy Ghost dwells in a justified person. 2. That no sanctification can help
to evidence to us our justification....
 25

What the Puritans faced in Hutchinson, or in the Quaker idea of "inner light" which allowed
every person direct access to God, was an outbreak of "dangerous" individualism, one
which threatened the foundation of their social order. It was not simply a matter of letting
Hutchinson spread her ideas freely - not when those ideas could carry the Puritan
conception of grace to such an extreme that it translated into an overall abandonment of
any structured church, which is to say, the basis of a Puritan society. Miller states how the
followers of Hutchinson became caught up in a "fanatical anti-intellectualism" fed by the
original Puritan "contention that regenerate men were illuminated with divine truth," which
was in turn taken to indicate the irrelevance of scholarship and study of the Bible. Both
possibilities were potentially destructive to the Massachusetts Bay colony, and both only
carried out Puritan ideas further than they were meant to go; the individualistic tendency
that was embedded in the Pilgrim community exists as well with the Puritans. In reference
to Tocqueville's use of the term in volume II of Democracy in America, Ellwood Johnson
goes so far as to say, "The anti-traditionalism and de-ritualization of society that he named
‘Individualisme’ had their sources in Puritan culture. This Puritan individualism had survived
especially in the habit of judging others by their characters of mind and will, rather than
rank, sex, or race.…" Of course, as Johnson notes, Tocqueville's experience in America
was limited both in time and geographic location. But Hutchinson and her followers ‘were’
banished, after all, and while Puritanism did substitute the more simplified approach of
Ramean logic to replace the overly recondite and complicated mediaeval scholasticism,
and while it fostered a more personal mode of religion with its emphasis on individual faith
and access to Scripture instead of the structured ritualism and mediation of the Catholic
church, it nevertheless took for granted a society and state which relied upon what was
only a translated form of class division, and which depended upon a hierarchy where the
word of God would not become dispersed (and so, altered) into a kind of religious precursor
to democracy. The Puritans had themselves suffered repeatedly under a society which had
seemed to evince the potentially ominous side of the relation of church and state. The king
was the leader of the church, and the state decided how the church was to function, and in
1629 when Charles I dissolved Parliament, the people found that they no longer had any
political representation, any means to act legislatively. Their secular agency had then
become a measure of their religious agency; the removal to Massachusetts in turn was a
way to gain a political voice, to create a state that would develop according to their own
beliefs and fashion itself harmoniously with the church.

It was not an effort to establish a society wherein one might unreservedly express what one
wished to express and still hope to have a say in communal affairs. If religion was to come
to bear on the governance of the society, to what good would a more egalitarian,
democratic form come? The integrity of the community as religious entity (Winthrop's "citty
on a hill"), which had been the purpose of their coming to America, could only be, at best,
weakened and dispersed, and at worst, be challenged to such a degree and in so many
ways that there would be no agreement, no action or political effectiveness. Their religion
itself would seem to be faced with a prospect of which kind does not easily (if at all) admit -
a prefiguration of what is now called 'gridlock.' Despite what some later commentators
would say, Puritanism and Democracy were not co-productive ideas, no matter how much
one might have anticipated, and even allowed the eventuality of, the other.

One who stated the problems which would ultimately unravel Puritanism as a dominant
political force was Roger Williams. For one thing, Williams's critique of the institutions
being developed in Massachusetts directly illuminates the difficulty indicated above - that of
perpetuating a religion which both held the seed of an increasingly liberating individualism
and at the same time maintained the need of a limited meritocracy. The primary point of
contention for Williams began in 1631 when he declared that the church in New England
was, in its failure to fully separate from the English church, inadequate, and tainted. He
removed to Plymouth, where he remained for a year. But even there "Williams wore out his
 26

welcome." Part of the reason lay in another of Williams's critique of New England as it was
developing, that the lands granted to the colonists had been unjustly given by the crown,
because they had not been first purchased from the Indians. For his efforts, Williams was
banished. His primary response to this was one of his more threatening ideas, "that the civil
magistrates had no power to punish persons for their religious opinions." This was not
necessarily an over-arching argument for full toleration, but rather implied a statement
specific to Christian salvation, that "no power on earth was entitled to prevent any individual
from seeking Christ in his own way." For the Puritan ministry, this was far enough, because
it targeted the strongest tie between it and civil government, and thus implied a potential
disconnection between the two. As John Cotton wrote, the question of "mens goods or
lands, lives or liberties, tributes, customes, worldly honors and inheritances" was already
the jurisdiction of "the civill state," but the establishment of laws which fostered Christian
principles and punished threats to them - that was only part of the continued and increasing
realization of divine will on earth.

That dissenters such as Hutchinson and Williams were banished, suggests what has often
been described as a major factor in the evolution not only of the Puritan theocracy, but of
supposed national identity in general - the ‘frontier’. Both Crevecoeur and Tocqueville
portray the pioneer type, the individual who, being away from the influence of religion and
mannered, social customs, becomes increasingly rough, and even near-barbaric. This
same figure is also seen as a necessary precursor to more and more 'civilized' waves of
society. Another view of the frontier effect comes with the increasing democratization of the
United States, where populist movements occur such as the Jacksonian Revolution,
suggesting a kind of evolutionary mode through which the American socio-political 'self' is
more and more fully realized.

At this point one must step back with a bit of caution, and once again take note of an
important provision underlying the terminology. That is, in using the term "puritan" above
and assigning to it a set of characteristics, one must qualify the grounds of (non)definition.
Darrett Rutman takes issue with an approach to history that employs only the selected
writings of a selected few, in determining some "notion of Puritan quintessence" - one
which is supposed to represent ‘all’ of Puritan New England, ministry and laity alike. As he
puts it, this "view of New England Puritanism... rests upon two major implicit assumptions...
that there is such a thing as 'Puritanism'... and that the acme of Puritan ideals is to be
found in New England during the years 1630-1650." His argument is correlative to one
which Sacvan Bercovitch takes up in The American Jeremiad, where he points out that
historians, in assuming this so-called decline, are simply following the lead of "Cotton
Mather and other New England Jeremiahs." Taking statements such as Mather's,
historians, instead of seeing it as part of a tradition of "political sermon" (to use Bercovitch's
phrase) that could be evinced all the way from the sailing of the “Arbella,” have instead
interpreted them as even more historically specific, reactions against an increasing lack of
coherence between religious and secular authority, and declarations of a failing mission.
Rutman indicates the "pragmatic value" of seeing the jeremiad this way, in that it helps
isolate a model of Puritanism, and narrows the historian's task to one of describing the
thought of a specific twenty-year period. Rutman's basic argument rests on the recognition
that, to gain a clearer picture, one must study not only published sermons and theological
treatises, but also more wide-ranging anthropologic data - records of social, political, and
economic relations within and among individuals and communities. A study in this vein of
Massachusetts reveals underlying instabilities that challenge assumptions of a dominant
Puritan 'theocracy'. Puritan ideology held within it the basis of its own loss of control.
Therefore one must be careful not to assume an essence of identity to be described before
attempting to describe simply what one finds, for such an assumption may lead to
dangerous equivocations between the ideology of Puritanism and the history of New
England (and extrapolating from that, much of the United States as a whole).
 27

For Bercovitch, who reads those key texts of the 'Great Migration' - John Winthrop's "A
Model of Christian Charity" and John Cotton's "God's Promise to His Plantations" - as
important transitions into distinctly ‘American’ forms of the jeremiad, this entails an "effort to
fuse the sacred and profane," to historicize transcendent values and goals into what he
calls a "ritual of errand." Defined then not so much by pre-existing social distinctions but
rather by a continual and purposefully-held sense of mission to which the modern idea of
'progress' is intrinsic and out of which the notion of "civil religion" develops, Puritanism, as
an ideological mode suggests America as a modern region from the very beginnings of its
colonization. Less so with historians than popularizers of a Puritan mythos, the evocation of
a "golden age" existing less as past fact than future promise, comes to dominate the sense
of 'Puritan tradition'. This is at the heart of 'explaining' America, with all its promise as a
New World, with its idea of Manifest Destiny, with the kind of self-idealization of National
Purpose that Henry Nash Smith describes in Virgin Land.

The Puritan Tradition and American Memory. The American Sense of part of the
iconography and symbology by which a sense of the American past is constructed, the
entry of the Puritans into 17th century New England has been interpreted as a shaping
force of what has been described as that peculiar and essential figure: the "American"
itself. But this shared self seems to blur under scrutiny; the past out of which it is made is
just as elusive, just as dependent upon the plasticity of its popular conception. It is easier
to do what has often been done with the waves of emigrants that fixed the European
presence in New England in 1620 and 1630, to jumble two groups into either a stern but
strong figure of religious freedom and peaceful coexistence, or a stark, superstitious, grim-
faced symbol of oppression and fatalism. On one side, we have the Pilgrims and Plymouth
Rock, the blunderbuss and the turkey - a good-natured and benign collage of historical
images that help fill the nation's collective past with reassuring facts, help establish one's
sense of tradition by allowing it key moments of adherence. But then the commonly-held
'dark side,' the Massachusetts Bay Colony Puritans: witch-hunts, elitism, intolerance,
narrow-minded zealotry; a paradigm used to understand and explain perceived moments of
its recurrence within our society, such as in both the 1850's and the 1950's, the fervor of
morally-crusading Abolitionism, and the fever of Communist-purging McCarthyism. There
to help explain just what “America” means, the art adorning the Rotunda of the United
States Capitol still does not evoke, of the two, the culture whose influence had the greater
effect and which indeed swallowed the other not long after either of their establishment.
Instead, one finds in painting, the embarkation of the Pilgrims, and in both a fresco and
frieze, the landing of the Pilgrims. In each image one finds the correlative to the conception
most readily available to Americans, the one fixed in a National holiday, Thanksgiving. But
again, that the Pilgrims seem to be offered as representative of our 'Forefathers,' does not
necessarily mean that the Puritans are forgotten; paradoxically, in name at least, the
opposite may be true. The first group is more often than not conflated with the second. If
the symbolism of the Pilgrims occupy the foreground of popular memory, it does so in a
relatively fixed, institutional sense - its memorialization through a National holiday. The idea
of Puritanism has nevertheless served as a kind of frame for the Pilgrims, allowing a title
and a context which, when taken notice of, may be safely understood as something not
essential, and so, not a danger, to the ‘meaning’ of the tradition seen. But it is then
Puritanism whose meaning has proved the more dynamic, the more vital to the discourse of
public memory. It is Puritanism which has been seen as both good and bad, and has
served as a site of contention for differing ideological uses and perspectives. It is the
Puritans’ strong strain of ideology which is the distinguishing feature in popular memory.
The Pilgrims, because of their lack of these traits, have had a plasticity of meaning, have
provided a useful malleability to the fashioning of 'American' tradition. The Puritans have
provided a more consistent interpretive challenge, simply because there is so much more
to interpret. Documents do not necessarily 'prove' a whole lot; rather they must be
compared in relation to others, judged within a spectrum of ‘representativeness’, gauged as
an expression of intent.
 28

The American Sense of ‘Puritan’ Tradition. Tradition as a Cultural Tool. Of the earliest
remembrances of the Pilgrims in the latter part of the 18th century - in the years directly
preceding the Revolution - the establishment of the "Old Colony Club" and with it, the
celebration of "Forefathers' Day," provide a clear example of how, from the beginnings of
an official nation, nationalistic tendencies used the past as current self-justification. The Old
Colony Club itself began in Plymouth as a social club with the rather elitist-seeming
purpose of eschewing "'the many disadvantages and inconveniences that arise from
intermixing with the company at the taverns in this town.' They first met on December 22nd,
1769, celebrating with a kind of Thanksgiving-style picnic meal, and concluding with a list of
toasts that, although they began with "'our brave and pious ancestors,'" still curbed any
overly-nationalistic urges by wishing for "'a speedy and lasting union between Great Britain
and her colonies'." At its onset, then, this invocation of the past and the self-conscious
development of tradition in memorializing that past, seems to have been not so much an
exhortative call to realize future glory and a more complete ‘Americanness’, as it did a
conservative establishment of men satisfied with their present positions, and happy that
they could claim a cultural priority in being descendents of the Mayflower pilgrims.

But as the years went one by one toward the ultimate split with Britain, the idea of
Forefathers' Day began to be politically charged. In 1773, townspeople to whom the
celebration was not originally open (those who could not trace ancestry back to the
Mayflower), began to contend for the right to inherit it ideologically, to call for its use as
protest against British rule. The Old Colony Club refused to relinquish its cultural control of
the situation and the near-sacred site of Plymouth Rock, and so refused to allow its own
hereditary-based tradition to be dispersed, its social position to be de-legitimated by being
made so open. The following year, with the crisis nearing in Plymouth as throughout the
colonies, they had lost the authority, and the Pilgrims were made fair ideological game. The
Plymouth Sons of Liberty, to render available the patriotic associations connected with the
rock, undertook its removal to the town square, with the intention to place over it a liberty
pole, as an excitement to vigorous efforts in the approaching revolutionary struggle, and to
quicken the zeal of such persons as hesitated to join the standard of independence." Thus,
the task was to appropriate the past of religious Separatism, and, in employing it both as a
real, physical ‘fact’ seen in the relic of Plymouth Rock, and as an undeniable component of
social and cultural and so, ‘American’ identity, to use it as analogical proof of the justice of
political separation. The symbol of the original mission (the seeking after a more righteous
society in the New World) then becomes one for the new, and in so doing, suggests a kind
of transcendent unity between the two. Plymouth Rock increasingly became both site and
situation - the physical, geographic link to one national myth of origins, and the compressed
meaning of what, expanding out from it, the rest of the nation was to become. It was a
regional shrine that became a tangible site of national destiny, as it helped justify the
project of ‘nationhood’. That the rock split when this was attempted only further emphasized
to them the moral rightness of their plan, as though nature itself both predicted and
approved of an impending split with Britain.

The Plymouth Pilgrims were not the only component of New England heritage to serve the
cause of revolution. Pre-revolutionary orators and essayists played a crucial role in
"mobiliz[ing] the country." In simultaneously prophesying a future ideal and warning against
the damning consequences of failure, they proposed a "social ideal" of "independence" and
of a "republic"; they challenged patriots to resist England as "the modern Babylon," and to
guard against "European fashions and royal agents." The words of Samuel Adams
emphasize this sense of American ‘mission’ that the act of the Plymouth patriots suggests,
with its union of near-religious end with political means. In regard to liberty, "every part of
[God's] providential proceedings justifies the thought... God does the work, but not without
his instruments, and they who are employed are denominated his servants... We may affect
humility in refusing to be made the servants of Divine vengeance, but the good servant will
 29

execute the will of the master." The sense of historicized religion that the Puritans represent
along with the Pilgrims allows the proponents of independence to place themselves in a
moral and spiritual trajectory which to them ‘must’ follow the course of increasing liberty.

What appears in Plymouth as an act of willful appropriation of a cultural symbol, and as the
violent disturbance of hereditary tradition, then is seen to emerge only through a higher will,
an authority that transcends the authority against which the revolutionaries stand. This is
simply to translate authority from political to religious terms, to place it where its meaning
lies in the ability of those who would interpret it through the reason of human beings and in
the workings of the world and history; it is to situate the basis of worldly power beyond the
more predetermined modes of hereditarianism and aristocracy. The idea of 'Forefathers'
then expands beyond its more literal sense to anticipate the use of "Pilgrim Fathers" that
becomes common in the Forefathers' Day celebrations of the 1790s: it takes its place in a
larger "lesson in national genealogy," where "what the fathers began, the sons were bound
to complete." Having helped transport a socio-political impulse to the level of nationalistic
moral necessity, the 'Pilgrim Fathers' became the sires no longer to just their blood-related
ancestors, but to the product of what was retrospectively seen as their liberty-driven errand
- the nation itself.

Pointing out that "in a new society some satisfactory explanation (or even myth) of origins
can be a vital ingredient in the formation of national identity," Michael Kammen notes that
"the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers (the presence of mothers was taken for granted) became
a powerful legend." As has been indicated above, Forefathers' Day had become an annual
celebration before the Revolution, and afterwards it developed even more cultural power,
providing opportunities for speakers such as John Quincy Adams in 1802 to compose a
hymn and provide readings of the Mayflower Compact which presented it as "part of the
repudiation of English domination and as the inauguration of indigenous American
government." During the 1830's and '40s, spokesman for the Whig Party" would praise "the
Mayflower Compact as a milestone in the growth of social order and cohesion.”

This interest in the Compact as key ‘document’ of civic expression, then suggests what
John Agresto describes as the American use and idea of "constitutionalism": the notion of a
law "superior" to the specific, changeable, mundane local laws; the realization that "Liberty"
required "written limits... on the exercise of all political power"; the formulation of these
concepts into an overarching Constitution, which would express what its framers conceived
of as the basic "principles" of the nation, and which would project these principles into the
future, establish them as a kind of moral foundation upon which, regardless of everyday
legal details, every citizen would be able to rely. For Agresto, the Mayflower Compact
represented to Colonial Americans and citizens of the new republic, prefiguration of the
idea of "social contract," which is "the impetus behind all political organization" and whose
pre-establishment of the limits of government becomes the primary guarantee of civil rights.
On the face of it, this reflects what Charles Wentworth Upham declared in 1846, that
Plymouth Rock was "'the point from which the ever-advancing and ever-expanding wave of
Anglo-Saxon liberty and light began to flow over America'." It suggests the Mayflower
Compact as a document of consciously-established civil rights, a text produced not only for
social order, but as a forward-looking projection of the political themes that would only
flourish a hundred and fifty years later; this, even as it suggested those themes as
somehow racially inherited from Britain. Upham might not have read Madison's argument in
The Federalist that England's constitution was only "a law established by the government,
and alterable by the government," and that Parliament's easy ability to "introduce
septennial in place of triennial elections" - among other ominous acts - caused "a very
natural alarm in the votaries of free government, of which frequency of elections is the
cornerstone." As Agresto remarks, "the idea of a 'British Constitution' was an American
invention of the first magnitude." American 'constitutionalism', it seems, was never too far
from the Revolutionary appeal to higher authority, or from its willingness to construe the
 30

authority out of constructed historical 'tradition'. And whether the lines led to God or to
English 'precedent', it seems they often passed through Plymouth.

The Moral Force of the New Republic. Jan C. Dawson argues that the rising use of
Puritanism as an ideology 'explaining' the tradition, background and basis of the Republic,
developed into National terms largely in response to the French Revolution. A general
comparison between the United States and France had developed in the early 19th
century, and U.S. historians and political theorists sought to refute a dominant assertion by
the French - "that republicanism was only compatible with infidelity." Infidelity and "political
liberalization" indeed were terms that could become tantamount to threats for many
American political thinkers, who saw the "horrors of the French Revolution" as an indication
that the American social and cultural tradition had projected the United States toward the
most fully-realized model of civilization and moral 'progress.' One may well imagine that for
many Americans of the new Republic, France suggested a near mirror image, but one
devoid of a truly moral or religious purpose, into which the United States must always guard
against "backsliding." So too, in this light, the above readings of the Mayflower Compact
which emphasize the ideas of order and social cohesion, become all the more
understandable. But the specific conjoining of republicanism and Christianity in terms of a
"fundamental characteristic of faith" followed a use of Puritanism which originated at a more
regional level with Daniel Webster's 1820 Plymouth Oration, and which became a national
issue with the publication of George Bancroft's highly popular History of the United States
(1834).

Bancroft was a romantic historian whose sense of an American tradition was filtered
through the experience that had become the defining perspective of American identity: the
Revolution. The stories of patriots and soldiers as told by popular writers such as Parson
Weems made what had been the object of the struggle - the set of basic political principles
- the definitive ‘American’ traits to be read historically. This was as well the period in which
'civil religion' began to flourish in the form of July 4th celebrations, while the document
around which they centered, took on the role of "sacred relic." Bancroft, seeing the
Puritans through the patriots and liberty through Providence, could then reach the
conclusion that "the issue of Puritanism was popular sovereignty." Bancroft's move was that
mentioned above, to locate in historical terms "the faith that linked republicanism and
Christianity." In so doing, he offered his account of the principles which "bound the
seventeenth to the nineteenth century: the equation of social and political stability with the
fulfillment of universal law; the participation of the common man is that fulfillment; and the
unity of Humanity as an expression of God's love." Bancroft elevates the 'common man' -
the ideal and ‘sine qua non’ of democracy, and an especially powerful trope of the
Romantic perspective and in understanding the Jacksonian era - and places him in relation
to Puritanism as a standard of well-intentioned self-improvement, for which, Bancroft
suggested, the Puritans stood. Democracy itself then becomes bound with Puritanism in a
kind of organic moral whole. While the individual then remains prey to the fallibilities and
inconsistencies that have plagued the human race throughout history, the fact of the
‘progress’ of the whole race itself is undeniable. As Bancroft develops the argument in "The
Office of the People in Art, Government, and Religion," he transforms the almost
mechanistic and calculative perspective one encounters in “Federalist” #10, where Madison
proposes republic over "pure democracy," and large over small republic, as a means of
"curing the mischiefs of faction.

In Bancroft, popular government is seen as charged with the "moral force" of Puritanism, so
that "Truth... emerges from the contradictions of personal opinions...." and the conclusion is
reached, that "the decrees of the universal conscience are the nearest approach to the
presence of God in the soul of man." In this way, with a democracy seen to have been born
out of the Puritan tradition, the tradition is in turn made a national presence, and the nation
takes on for some the aspect of a "consensus of consciences." The inherent circularity in
 31

this conception of course makes almost unquestionable a sense of national purpose and
overall progress; its ideological utility becomes apparent when one recalls that it came into
popular use in the time of the first railroads, of Westward expansion, the Mexican War, the
displacement of Native American lands - of Manifest Destiny. Not that these ends should
be attributed to Bancroft or necessarily to most other proponents of a morally-charged
Christian Republic, or of sense of National unity in general; but when "the general voice of
mankind" is seen to proclaim "pure reason itself," then for a minority voice to emerge, to
maintain enough dialectical weight to contribute its share of the "Truth," the chances seem
all too slim.

Daniel Webster and the Plymouth Oration. The speech given in 1820 by Daniel Webster
as part of the Plymouth bicentennial, provides an interesting lens for many of the issues
raised thus far. Webster, as an influential senator and an eloquent and powerful rhetorician,
helped fix his reputation as a statesman by speeches such as the one given at Plymouth.
Leo Marx has, in The Machine in the Garden, examined Webster as a important proponent
of industrial and technological progress (specifically in terms of the railroad, flourishing from
the 1830s on). And insofar as Webster stands as an articulate speaker of ‘progress’ as both
the destiny and inheritance of the nation, and as the essence of national identity, he may
even be said to employ the American jeremiad that Bercovitch traces from and through the
Puritans. This speech in particular suggests the sense of "peculiar mission" for America and
Americans, their being "chosen not only for heaven but as instruments of a sacred historical
design," and always (should they fail) being under the "threat of divine retribution." Toward
the end of his oration, Webster declares,

We are bound to maintain public liberty, and, by example of our own systems, to
convince the world that order and law, religion and morality, the rights of conscience,
the rights of persons, the rights of property, may all be preserved and secured, in the
most perfect manner, by a government purely elective. If we fail in this, our disaster
will be signal... (Webster, 112).

The main points of this national mission are those which have already been touched upon,
and which, as has been noted above, found their re-expression in the History of Bancroft.
So also in his "example" does one find a reflection of the "city upon a hill" that Puritans
such as John Winthrop proposed as the religious and social goal of the Great Migration.

But how do the Pilgrims - for it ‘is’ the Pilgrims about which he nominally speaks - lead to
this? For one thing, he declares of the pilgrims that, by way of their general equality "in
respect to property" and their "parceling out and division of lands" once they had arrived in
the New World, they "fixed the future frame and form of their government." Interestingly,
Webster here takes the religious and moral qualities aggregated to the general
understanding of the Pilgrims and blends them into an account of socio-cultural continuity
that is not only historical and institutional, but also geographic. He states at the beginning
of the speech, that there is a sanctity in the site of the commemoration, that Plymouth Rock
now contained "a sort of ‘genius of the place’, which inspires and awes us." In this
statement there seems to be a Romantic sense of the sublime, an appreciation and
recognition of transcendent, even infinite power. Webster reads Plymouth as an analogue
to Marathon, a site of world-altering consequence which accordingly becomes a symbol of
historical ‘possibility’. Because it is so condensed, so tangible in its contained physical
space, it is seen as a startling example of an emergence of God in the world - the birth of a
righteous nation. He imagines the words of the Pilgrims in terms that paradoxically suggest
an almost retrospective prophecy: "'if God prosper us, we shall here begin a work which
shall last for ages'"; he envisions his own present moment as past ‘potentiality’, in "'temples
of the true God...fields and gardens... the canvas of a prosperous commerce...a hundred
cities.'" This reaching of Webster into the past to project his own present perspective
through potentiality - that is, through the infinitude that ‘potential’ suggests - imbues his
 32

vision with the dizzying quality of an endlessly self-reflecting reflection, a way of looking into
the past to see the future that may well be considered the historical sublime.

Antebellum and Civil War Puritanism. Toward the end of Webster's speech, he
transforms his call of moral and social progress into a specific exhortation: "I deem it my
duty, on this occasion, to suggest that the land is not wholly free from the contamination of
a traffic, at which every feeling of humanity must forever revolt,--I mean the African slave
trade." Having converted the blended ideal of 'Pilgrim' into the informing tradition of the
now-moral republic, Webster is then able to employ that tradition as the basis of social
action, and in so doing stands as a precursor to the primary role of the Puritan tradition in
the years before the Civil War - abolitionism. The big difference is, of course, that Webster
invokes a sense of humanity and order, because what he calls for is something already
condemned by law. For the abolitionists, it involved taking the Edwardsian "neo-Calvinist
doctrine that 'sinning is acting'" - that is, the de-emphasis of original sin as "the source of
immoral conduct" and a greater concentration on the guilt accrued by specific actions - and
converting it into a moral imperative whose message was "'sinning is not acting'." As
George Cheever declared in "The Curse of God Against Political Atheism" (1849), to
passively suffer a law which is wrong and unjust is to commit a "crime, in the name of a
law," and is to give sanction to "the daring assertion that human law is higher than the
Divine."

In one sense, it is a re-emergence of the Revolutionary invocation of the Puritan mission,

where radical transformation on a political and social level becomes justified as a fuller
realization of a Godly order. But the difference comes in that the abolitionist project was a
negative one--it sought to correct an existing evil in doing away with it, rather than
transform it into an ideal of liberty whose worldly repercussions most of its proponents
would benefit from and experience first-hand. And more, in seeking to act within the
existing social order, Puritanism was reduced to a political program, and was equated by its
opponents to "the legislation of righteousness." It came to be used and seen less as a
system of religious faith and ethics, than an "ideological rationale" of social control.

The main point was that here Puritanism was contended, not only by the South, but by
Catholics and others who were wary of overtly Protestant ideology. From the latter group,
there rose a good deal of bitterness and resentment, usually expressed as a condemnation
of the "'fanaticism'" of the Puritan tradition. This fanaticism, it was argued in yet another
conflation of the Pilgrims and Puritans, had given "'the "mayflower," and other ships their
living freights'." From Northern critics, then, the charge usually boiled into an accusation
that Puritanical zealotry had split the Union. The Southern response was to contend the
Puritan tradition on its own terms, and offer a counter-tradition that could be read in similar
historical-transcendent terms. Thus, in the period before and during the Civil War, North
and South could often be read as dualism of 'Puritan' and 'Cavalier'. A central part of the
argument was to do as Samuel Adams had done with the colonies in regard to Britain, and
now claim that the South stood as an instrument of God for "chastening the North" - this
involved the claim that the North had strayed too far from the religious orthodoxy which the
South saw itself as exemplifying, and that the North was therefore corrupt. A justification for
slavery, Cavalier apologists held, could be read in the Bible itself. This came in direct
conflict with Puritanism's over-emphasis on individual interpretation of the Bible, which was
seen to have led to a kind of cult of the self, where private judgment was conflated with
moral law, and held as a standard for the rest of society, giving way to a form of religious
despotism. What was more, from an historical-racial standpoint, the South offered the
English Civil war as analogue, so that just as the Norman king had reclaimed the throne
after England's Saxon Puritan Interregnum, so too would the Southern Cavaliers prove
superior over the current descendants of the Puritans. In this view, "the
Puritans...descended from the Saxons, whom the Cavaliers, descended from the Normans,
had tried to convert to Christian orthodoxy since medieval times."
 33

These identifications were useful for each side, employing, in a sense, tradition against
tradition even as one half of the nation fought against the other. The battle is relatively
familiar one, in that it was fought to see whose side God was on. But the outcome of the
war did not necessarily prove the outcome of the ideological struggle; the sense of a
Providential and still progressive moral order rising out of the conflagration would have
been doubtful, at best. The idea of Puritan promise and Revolutionary
fulfillment/furtherance was now out of joint, and the past language of moral purpose,
symbolized by both Pilgrim and Puritan, was increasingly more difficult to translate into
present terms. Of course, at the least the Pilgrims always had humility as one of their key
features, and as though clinging to this, to the appreciation not of a glorious new social
order but of the sheer fact of survival, the U.S. instituted Thanksgiving as a national holiday
in 1863.

Science and Skepticism. As has been noted by commentators at least since Henry
Adams, the increasing influence that science - especially as embodied in Darwinism - held
for Western society in the latter half of the 19th century, meant that "'a new religion of
history'" (in Adams's phrase) would come about with consequences not only for historical
consciousness, but for enduring perceptions of Puritanism," and for the practice of filiopiety.
For the idea of Puritans and Pilgrims both, which had served to sustain an active rationale
for a moral Republic, this especially meant that "tradition often tended to become a
surrogate for faith or revealed religion." In some respects, their use had been tending
toward this since the Revolution. But as history itself became more professionalized as a
discipline, and developed a methodology of "scientific history," the element of faith, which
had played such a central role for Bancroft, was shed for a self-consciously rigorous
examination that used as its theme ‘objectivity’. As Evolution could explain the presence of
life itself in terms that suggested an historical biology, so then does the study of past
events take on the cast of something like a biological history, and the faith that had been
placed in explanations of Providential design now comes to rest in what seems an absolute
and reliable code. This was Adams meant by "a new religion."

The displacement of faith that the 'scientific history' wrought is apparent in the work of New
Englander Charles Francis Adams, Jr. and his brother Brooks, who stood against "filio-
pietism" as a mode of historical interpretation, which "assumed that Puritanism was a single
seed containing all the possibilities for growth that American development later realized."
Instead of attempting to somehow account for how the early settlements in Massachusetts
had inexorably blossomed into the liberal democracy that the United States would become,
both (but especially Brooks Adams) saw their present time as evolving out of a ‘reaction’
against Puritan "theocracy." The Adams arguments were influential, but anti-filiopietism was
not at first the popular view; in response to Brooks Adams's The Emancipation of
Massachusetts: The Dream and the Reality, "most of the reviews were not merely critical
but hostile," but beyond it, there was "unleashed a debate that persisted for decades."

As far as popular memory was concerned at the time, for which Thanksgiving was
becoming increasingly important as a ‘national’ holiday, the ideas of Puritan and Pilgrim
were increasingly blended, and commonly in a sense that reflected the Adams's criticism.
The Forefathers' Day celebration in 1887 was said to have served traditional New England
fare, while the servers wore "'Puritan costumes.'" Or, in dedicating an 1885 Pilgrim statue
by John Quincy Adams Ward, George William Curtis felt it necessary to warn, "'we must not
think of Puritanism as mere acrid defiance and sanctimonious sectarianism'." But still, when
the Pilgrims were distinguished from the Puritans, they generally were seen in contrast to
the latter group, so that praise at the dedication of the Pilgrim Monument at Plymouth
comes negatively, a praise of the Puritannical things the Pilgrims were ‘not’: "'They brought
no titles or ranks, priestly hierarchy, no ecclesiastical ranks and orders, no complicated
system of fees'." The Pilgrims were still the projection screen they had been when Webster
 34

animated them with the ‘good’ Puritan things, and they could still be saved by their
unincriminating blankness when the good things were no longer seen. They were still there
in Plymouth Rock, and by now had been instituted in the Capitol, and their presence could
still contain the image of national origins, provided one looked closely enough--and yet not
too closely.

Through the 20th Century. The old animosity between North and South that had begun
before the Civil War, and which had festered during Reconstruction, has been again a lively
debate. Lyon G. Tyler, president of William and Mary, was an especially strong opponent of
what he felt was Northern exceptionalism, and took issue with the conception of "firstness"
that somehow gave the 1620 landing of the Pilgrims primacy over the 1607 establishment
of Jamestown, in Virginia. In 1931, Tyler found in a collection of papers pertaining to early
Virginia located at the New York Public Library a document indicating that the first
Thanksgiving observance had occurred in 1619 at Berkeley Hundred, a plantation near the
falls of the James River. But while this might have helped along the increasingly national
(and decreasingly regional) quality of the holiday, making it more and more a general
moment of taking stock and less a time to commemorate the 'Pilgrim Fathers,' Tyler would
never displace them entirely - or even all that seriously. For the Puritans, things continued
along the trend about which Dawson writes, and which is discernible from the very title of
his book, The Unusable Past, marking what Dawson sees as the ultimate abandonment of
the Puritans as a useful ideological tool after about 1930. His title is a reference to Van
Wyck Brooks (and his idea of a "usable past"), whose The Wine of the Puritans (1908)
helped continue the new seemingly 'anti-Puritan' tradition of Brooks and Charles Francis
Adams, and inaugurate an especially rough trend of "Puritan-bashing" in the 1920s. H. L.
Mencken's A Book of Prefaces (1917) likewise furthered the cause, seeing Puritanism as
"all that's unattractive about American culture, compounded over time by evangelism,
moralism from political demagogues, and relentless money-grubbing." The Massachusetts
Bay Tercentenary, compared with that of the Plymouth landing, was a relatively
unenthusiastic affair. And while it is true that historians such as Samuel Eliot Morison and
Perry Miller would begin to counter seriously and ably many of the charges against Puritan
gloominess, intolerance, 'theocracy,' still it is true that the Puritans have become less
accessible and indeed less "usable" to popular memory. During times of Prohibition, the
Puritans thus became the demons of temperance, inflicting others with their own unjust
morality--despite what Increase Mather had written, that

Drink is in it self a good creature of God, and to be received with thankfulness, but the abuse of
drink is from Satan; the wine is from God, but the Drunkard is from the Devil.

So too, when the 'Red Scare' of the 1950s took hold of the United States, Arthur Miller
would translate Puritanism into a metaphor for McCarthyism in The Crucible, and the
Puritans would be seen as actors in one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human
history. It is now mostly the historians for whom the Puritans are meaningful as anything but
the darker, excessive side of America. The Puritans, who had served as such a powerful
(and more detailed than the Pilgrims) explanation of the United States as a moral Republic,
were in large part discarded along with that ideal, and its attendant faith in Providential
order. For the purpose of remembering early New England as an important source of
American tradition and American identity, the Pilgrims now seem to suffice.

Cotton Mather

Cotton Mather was the most famous minister in New England at the close of the 17th century.
Toward the middle of the 1600s, the Puritan revival in America began to wane. The social order of
Puritan society had begun to degenerate very early in its history because of the lack of a much
needed evangelical awakening.
 35

The second generation of Puritans were often unable to claim that they had had the same experience
with God as their parents. When the high standard of the law which was embraced by their parents
was imposed in turn on their children, it only served to inflame their passions. The result was
occurrences in the late 1600s such as the witchcraft hysteria, severe punishments for non-violent
crimes such as the stocks, public floggings, hangings, etc.

"By the time Mather undertook his history, Magnalia Christi Americana, the original Puritan
community had vanished, leaving behind heirs to its land and fortunes but not to its spirituality....
Everything that Mather wrote can be seen as a call to defend the old order of church authority against
the encroachment of an increasingly secular world. As an apologist for the 'old New England way'
there is no doubt that Mather left himself open to attack, and by the end of the 17th century he had
become a scapegoat for the worst in Puritan culture." (The Norton Anthology of American Literature,
W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1979. p.4,118.)

Satisfaction in God

Our continual apprehension of God, may produce our continual satisfaction in God, under all His
dispensations. Whatever enjoyments are by God conferred upon us, where lies the relish, where the
sweetness of them? Truly, we may come to relish our enjoyments, only so far as we have something
of God in them. It was required in Psal. xxxvii. 4, "Delight thyself in the Lord." Yea, and what if we
should have no delight but the Lord? Let us ponder with ourselves over our enjoyments: "In these
enjoyments I see God, and by these enjoyments, I serve God!"

And now, let all our delight in, and all our value and fondness for our enjoyments, be only, or mainly,
upon such a divine score as this. As far as any of our enjoyments lead us unto God, so far let us
relish it, affect it, embrace it, and rejoyce in it: "O taste, and feed upon God in all;" and ask for
nothing, no, not for life itself, any further than as it may help us, in our seeing and our serving of our
God.

And then, whatever afflictions do lay fetters upon us, let us not only remember that we are concerned
with God therein, but let our concernment with God procure a very profound submission in our souls.
Be able to say with him in Psal. xxxix. 9, "I open not my mouth, because thou didst it." In all our
afflictions, let us remark the justice of that God, before whom, "why should a living man complain for
the punishment of his sin?" The wisdom of that God, "whose judgments are right:" the goodness of
that God, who "punishes us less than our iniquities do deserve." Let us behave ourselves, as having
to do with none but God in our afflictions: And let our afflictions make us more conformable unto God:
which conformity being effected, let us then say, "'Tis good for me that I have been afflicted."

Sirs, what were this, but a pitch of holiness, almost angelical! Oh! Mount up, as with the wings of
eagles, of angels: be not a sorry, puny, mechanick sort of Christians any longer; but reach forth unto
these things that are thus before you.

The Duties of Parents To Their Children

I know him, That he will command his Children And his Household after him, And they shall keep the
way of the Lord. (Gen. 18:19)

At the Great God, who at the Beginning said, Let Us make man after our Image, hath made man a
Sociable creature, so it is evident, That Families are the Nurseries of all Societies; and the First
combinations of mankind. Well-ordered Families naturally produce a Good Order in other Societies.
When Families are under an ill Discipline, all other Societies being therefore ill Disciplined, will feel
that Error in the First Concoction.
To Serve the Families of our Neighborhood, will be a Service to all our Interests. Every serious
Christian is concerned, That he may be Serviceable in the World; And many a serious Christian is
concerned, because he sees himself to be furnished with no more Opportunities to be Serviceable.
But art thou not a Member of some Family? If that Family may by thy means, O Christian, become a
Well-regulated Family, in that point thou wilt become Serviceable; I had almost said,
Incomprehensibly Serviceable.
They that have the Government of some Family, do make up no Little part of this Great Assembly.
And, Sirs, are there any of you, that would forfeit that Honorable Title, of all the Faithful, The Children
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of Abraham? Give your Attention, ye Children of Abraham, while I set before you, the Example of
your Father for your imitation.
Our Glorious Lord-Messiah, is here going to Communicate unto Abraham some of His Heavenly
Counsels. And we have a Text before us, that assigns a Reason for that gracious Communication.
The Reason is, the care which this Good man, would thereupon take to bring up his Family in the
Fear of God.
In this Text there are some Remarkable Things; and things that some Wise men have often
remarked. There was an Excellent man, sometimes a Preacher of the Lord Jesus Christ, in this very
place; whose custom it was, not only to Read a portion of the Scripture before his Prayers with his
Family, but also to Infer and Apply brief Notes out of what he Read. He professed, That he found
none of all his weary Studies in Divinity, so profitable to him, as this one Exercise, for the Rare and
Rich Thoughts, which he therein found himself supplied withal, And he Declared, "that he looked on it
as an accomplishment of this very word; Shall I hide from Abraham, the thing which I do? I know him,
that he will command his Children, and his Household.
Moreover, You may here Observe a most comfortable Connection, between, He will, and They Shall.
Say's the Lord, He will Command his Children, and They shall keep the way of the Lord. It seems, If
every one that is Owner of a Family, would faithfully Command, and manage those that belong unto
him, through the Blessing of God, they would generally Keep His Way, and His Law.
I find a famous Writer in the Church, therefore thus expressing himself; "If Parents did their Duties as
they ought, the Word Publically Preached would not be the ordinary means of Regeneration in the
Church, but only without the Church, among Infidels: God would so pour out His Grace upon the
Children of His people, and Hear Prayers for them, and bless Endeavours for their Holy Education,
that we should see the Promises made Good unto our Seed."
We will now Dismiss these Reflections; and Repair to that Grand Case, which hence offers itself
unto us.
The Case
What May Be Done by Pious Parents, to Promote the Piety and Salvation of Their Children?
The Case Inquires, What may be done? You will take it for granted, that the Answer to it will tell you,
What Should be done? For you will readily grant, that in such an Important Case as this, All that May
be done, Should be done!
In the Case We Inquire after what is to be done, by Pious Parents. Other Parents will take no due
Notice, of the Injunctions that God has Laid upon them concerning their Children.
Parents, If you don't first become yourselves Pious, you will do nothing to purpose to make your
Children so.
Except you do yourselves walk in the Way of the Lord, you will be very careless about bringing your
Children to such a Walk.
It is not a Cain, or a Cham, or any Enemy of God; that will do anything to make his Children become
the Children of God. The Psalmist in Psal. 34:1,4,11, could first say I will bless the Lord and I sought
the Lord, and then he says, Come ye Children, and I will teach you the Fear of the Lord.
O Parents, In the Name of God, Look after your own miserable Souls; How should those wretched
people do anything for the Souls of their Children, that never did anything for their own?
In the Case, we Inquire, after what is to be done by Parents for their Children. But let it be
Remembered, That our Servants [others in our home] are in some sort likewise our Children. Our
whole Household, as well as the Children that are our Offspring, are to be taught the Way of the Lord.
An Abraham will have his Trained Servants. We read concerning a certain Person of Quality, in 2 Ki.
5:13. His servants came near and spake unto him, and said, My Father.
Let not those of my Hearers, that are without such Invaluable Blessings of God, as Children, count
themselves unconcerned in our Discourse, if they have any Servants under them. A considerable part
of what is to be done for our Children, I pray, Masters, think, as we go along; Think, without our
particular inculcation, whether nothing. This may be done for your Servants: and, God make Eliezers
of them for you!

Attend Now To The Counsils of God

I. Parents, Consider the Condition of your Children; and the loud cry of their Condition unto you, to
Endeavour their Salvation! What an Army of powerful Thoughts, do at once now show themselves, to
beseige your Hearts, and subdue them unto a just care for the Salvation of your Children!
Know you not, that your Children have precious and Immortal Souls within them? They are not all
Flesh. You that are the Parents of their Flesh, must know, That your Children have Spirits also,
whereof you are told, in Heb. 12:9. God is the Father of them; and in Eccles. 12:7. God is the Giver of
them.
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The Souls of your Children, must survive their Bodies, and are transcendently Better and Higher &
Nobler Things than their Bodies. Are you sollicitous that their Bodies may be Fed? You should be
more sollicitous that their Souls may not be Starved, or go without the Bread of Life.
Are you sollicitious that their Bodies may be Cloath'd: you should be more sollicitious that their Souls
may not be Naked, or go without the Garments of Righteousness.
Are you Loath to have their Bodies Labouring under Infimities, or Deformaties? You should be much
more Loath to have their Souls pining away in their Iniquities.
Man, Are thy Children, but the Children of Swine? If thou art Regardless of their Souls, truly thou dost
call them so!
One of the Ancients, namely Cyprian, has a pungent comparison for this matter; Pray, Consider; (said
that Great man) He that minds his Childs Body more than his Soul, is like, one, that if his Child and
his Dog were like to be drowned, should be sollicitous to save his Dog, but let the Child perish in the
water.
How deaf art thou, that thou dost not hear a loud cry from the Souls of thy Children in thine Ears, Oh,
my Father, my Mother, look after me!
But more than so; Don't you know, That your Children, are the Children of Death, and the Children of
Hell, and the Children of Wrath, by Nature: And that from you, this Nature is derived and conveyed
unto them!
You must know, Parents, that your Children are by your means Born under the dreadful Wrath of
God: And if they are not New-Born before they die, it had been Good for them, that they never had
been Born at all.
The law of equity was in Exodus 21:19 If one man wound another, he shalt cause him to be throughly
healed. Your Children are born with deadly wounds of Sin upon their Souls; and they may Thank you
for those wounds: Unjust men, will you now do nothing for their Healing?
Man, thy Children are dying of an horrid poison, in their Bowels; and it was thou that poison'd them.
What! Wilt thou do nothing for the succour [help]! Thy Children are thrown into a Devouring Fire; and
it is from thee that the Fiery Vengeance of God has taken Hold of them. What! Wilt thou do nothing to
Help them out!
There is a Corrupt Nature in thy children, which is a Fountain of all Wickedness and Confusion. The
very Pagans were not insensible of this Corrupt Nature; they styled it our Congenite [congenital] Sin,
and our Domestick Evil, and cried out, with Tully, "Simul ac Editi sumus in Lucem, ac suscepti, in
omni continue pravitate versamur.
The Jews have been yet more Sensible of this Corrupt Nature; they have Stil'd it, our Evil Frame and
the poison of the old Serpent; and This they understand by The Enemy, so often mentioned in the
Scripture; And, The Heart of Stone and, the Wicked that watches the Righteous.
Will not you that are Christians, then show your Christianity, by Sensibly doing what you can, that
your Children may have a Better Nature infused into them?
What shall I Say? I may say, The Time would fail me to mention a thousanth part of what might be
said. But, in short: Is it not a sad Thing to be the Father of a fool?
Alas, man, till thy Children become Regenerate, thou art the Father of a Fool; Thy Children are but
the Wild Asses Colt! I add; would it not Break thy Heart, if thy Children, were in Slavery to Turks, or
Moors, or Indians?
Devils are worse than Indians, and Infidels: till thy Children are brought home to God, they are the
slaves of Devils.
In a word; Can thy Heart Endure, that thy Children, should be Banished from the Lord Jesus Christ,
and Languishing under the Torments of Sin among Devils, in outer Darkness throughout Eternal
Ages?
Don't call thyself a Parent; Thou art an Ostrich [they care not for their offspring]. Call not these, the
Children of thy Bowels; thou hast no Bowels! I will not say, that Zipporah call'd her Husband, A
Bloody Husband. But all the Angels in Heaven call thee, A Bloody Father, and A Bloody Mother; and
are astonished at the Adamantine Hardness of that Bloody Heart of thine; and those Heartstrings that
are Sinewes of Iron!
II. Improve the Baptism of your children, as an obligation, and an encouragement unto you, parents,
to endeavour the salvation of your Baptised little ones.
Of your children, you may say, with Jacob, in Gen. 33:5 These are the children that God hath
graciously given to me. Now, will not you heartily give back those children to God again: their Baptism
is to be the sign and seal of your doing so.
You generally bring your infant children unto the Baptism of the Lord: I suppose, it is because you are
satisfied, that the children of believers were in the Covenant with God, in the days of the Old
Testament; and, that the children of believers then had a right unto the initial seal of the Covenant,
and, that in the days of the New Testament they have not lost this priviledge.
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Well, but when you bring your children to the Sacred Baptism, what is it for? Oh, let it not be done, as
an empty formality; as if the Baptism of your children were for nothing, but only a formal and a
pompous putting of a name upon them.
No, but let the serious language of your souls, in this action, be that of Hannah, in I Sam 1:28: I have
given this child unto the Lord, as long as he lives, he shall be given unto the Lord.
I find in the private writings of an holy man, who died in this place, not much above a year ago; That
the day before one of his children was to be Baptised, he spent the time in giving up himself and his
child unto the Lord, and in taking hold of the Covenant for both of them, and in praying that he might
on the morrow, be able in much faith and love and Covenant obedience, to do it, at the Baptism of the
Lord. Oh, which he writes it is not easy, though common, to offer a child unto God in Baptism.
Sirs, when you have done this for your Children, you have a singular advantage to plead for the
fulfillment of that word upon them in Is. 44:3 I will pour my Spirit upon thy Soul, and my blessing upon
thy offspring. You may go before the Lord, and plead, Lord, Was not the Baptismal water poured by
thy command upon my children! Oh, do thou now pour upon them the heavenly grace, which that
Baptismal water signified.
And now, no sooner let those Children become able to understand it, than you shall make them
understand what the design of their Baptism was. Parents, I am to tell you, that if you let your
Children grow up, without ever telling them, that, and, why, they were Baptised into the Name of the
Lord, you are fearfully guilty of taking the name of the Lord in vain.
It was the manner of an excellent minister, upon the Baptising of a child, solemnly to deliver the child
into the hands of the Parents, with such words as those, here, take this child now, and bring it up for
the Lord Jesus Christ, I charge you.
God from Heaven speaks the like words to you, O Parents, upon all your Baptised Children. And that
you may bring up your Children for the Lord Jesus Christ, you must as soon as you can, let them
know, that in Baptism, they were dedicated unto Him.
Show them that when they were Baptised, they were listed among the servants and soldiers of the
Lord Jesus Christ, and that if they live in rebellion against Him, Woe unto them!
Show them, from Matthew 28:19 &20. That since they are Baptised into the Name of the Father, and
the Son, and the Holy Spirit, they must observe all things, whatsoever the Lord Jesus Christ, has
commanded them.
Show them from Romans 6:4, that since they are Baptised, they are Buried with Christ in baptism,
and must live no longer in sin, but be Dead unto all the Vanities of the World.
Show them from Galatians 3:27, that since they are Baptised, they have put on Christ, and must
follow His Example, and be as He was in the World.
Show them from I Peter 3:21, that being Baptised, they must now make the Answer of a good
conscience, to all the proposals of the New-Covenant: and God propounding to them, shall my Christ
be thine, and wilt thou be His? They must conscientiously answer, Lord, with all my heart!
Put this very solemnly unto your children; My child, shall God the Father, be thy Father? Shall God
the Son, be thy Saviour! Shall God the Spirit, be thy Sanctifier; and are thou willing to be the servant
of that one God, who is, Father, Son, and Spirit?
Leave them not, until their little hearts are conquered unto that for which they have been Baptised. It
has been the judgment of some Judicious men; that If infant baptism were more improved, it would be
less disputed. Oh, that it were thus Improved.
III. Instruct your children in the great matters of Salvation; Oh, Parents, do not let them die without
instruction.
There is indeed, an Instruction in Civil Matters which we owe unto our Children. It is very pleasing to
our Lord Jesus Christ, that our Children be well formed with, and well informed in the rules of Civility,
and not be left a Clownish, and Sottish, and Ill Bred sort of Creatures. An Unmannerly Brood is a
Dishonour to Religion.
And, there are many points of a Good Education that we should bestow upon our Children; they
should Read, and Write, and Cyphar [arithmetic], and be put unto some Agreeable Callings; and not
only our Sons, but our Daughters also should be taught such things, as will afterwards make them
useful in their places. There is a little Foundation of Religion laid in such an Education. But besides,
and beyond all this, there is an Instruction in Divine Matters, which our Children are to be made
partakers of.
Parents, Instruct your Children, in the Articles of Religion; and acquaint them with God, and Christ,
and the Mysteries of the Gospel, and the Doctrines and Methods of the Great Salvation.
It was Required, in Psalm 78:5 He commanded our Fathers, to make known to their Children, that the
Generation to come might know, who should arise and declare them to their children, that they might
set their Hope in God, and keep His commandments.
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It was required in Eph. 6:4 Fathers, bring up your children in the Nurture and Admonitions of the Lord.
Would you have your Children to be Wise and Good? I know not why you should expect it, unless you
take abundance of pains, by your Instruction to make them so.
There was a Wise and Good son, who gave that account how he became what he was; in Prov 4:3,4.
I was my Fathers son, and he taught me. O Begin betimes, to Tell your Children who is their Maker,
and who is their Saviour, and what they are Themselves, and what is like to become of them; and by
no means let them want [lack] that Advantage in 2 Tim 3:15 From a child thou hast known the Holy
Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto Salvation.
Cause them to look often into their Bibles, and here and there Single out some special Sentences
from those Oracles of Heaven for them to get into their Memories. And for the better management of
their Instruction there are especially two Handles, to be laid hold upon; the one is, a Proper
Catechism, the other is the Public Ministry.
Be sure that they learn their Catachism very perfectly; but then content not yourselves with hearing
them say by Rote the Answers in their Catachism; Question them very distincly over again about
every clause in the Answer and bring all to it so plain before them, that by their saying only, Yes, or
No, you may perceive that the sense of the Truth is entered into their souls.
And then, what they hear in the Evangelical Ministry, do you Apply it unto them after their coming
Home; Confer with them familiarly about the Things that have been handled in the [proper and true]
Ministry of the Word: go over one Thing after another, with them, till you see they have got clear
Ideas of it; Then put it unto them, Are not you now to Avoid such a thing; or perform such a thing! And
must not you now make such and such a prayer unto God? Bid them then, go do accordingly.
Hence also, 'twere very desireable, that you should watch all opportunities, to be instilling your
Instructions into the souls of your little Folks. They are narrow-mouthed Vessles, and things must be
drop after drop instilled into them. It was required in Deut. 6:6,7 The words which I command thee,
Thou shalt teach them Diligently unto thy Children, and shalt Talk of them, when thou sittest in thine
House, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou sittest down and when thou riseth up.
How often in a week, are we Diverting ourselves, with our Children in our Houses? There thy stand
before us; There is nothing to hinder our saying some very profitable thing for them to think upon;
well, can you let fall Nothing upon them, that it will be worth their while, for them to think upon?
What, Nothing of God, and Christ, and of another World, and of their own Souls, and of the Sins that
may Endanger them, and of the Ways which they may take to be Happy? Doubtless, you may say
something.
And who can tell? It may be after you are gone to behold the Face of the Lord Jesus Christ in Glory,
these your Children will Remember Hundreds of profitable Instructions, that you have given them; and
Live upon them when you that gave them, are Dead.
With Two Strokes I will clench this advice. The one is that in Proverbs 22:6 Train up a Child in the
way he should go, and when he is old, he will not Depart from it. The other is that in Prov 17:25. A
Foolish Son is a grief to his Father, and a bitterness to her that bare him.
IV. Parents, with a Sweet Authority over your Children, Rebuke them for, and Refrain them from,
everything that may prove prejudicial unto their Salvation.
Sirs, You can do little for the Welfare of your Children, if once you have lost your Authority over them.
Would you bring your Children to the Fear of God? Your character then must be that in I Tim 3:4 One
that ruleth well his own House, having his Children in subjection, with all gravity.
Don't by your Lightness and Weakness and Folly, suffer them to Trample upon you; but keep up so
much Authority, that your Word may be a Law unto them. Nevertheless,
Let not your Authority be strained with such Harshness and Fierceness, as may discourage your
Children. To treat our Children like Slaves, and with such Rigour, that they shall always Tremble and
Abhor to come into our presence, This will be very unlike to our Heavenly Father.
Our Authority should be so Tempered with Kindness, and Meekness, and Loving Tenderness, that
our Children may Fear us with Delight, and see that we Love them, with as much Delight.
Now, Let our Authority, effectually keep in our Children, from all their unruly Exorbitancies and
Extravagancies. If we let our Young Folks grow Head-Strong, and if we grow Afraid of compelling
them to the Wholesome Orders of our Families, we have even given them up to Ruin. God brought
that Son to an Untimely and a Terrible End, of whom its reported in I Kings 1:6 His Father had not
Displeased him at any time, in saying, Why hast thou done so?
I beseech you, Parents, Interpose your Authority to stop and check the Carrier of your Children, when
they will be running into the paths of the Destroyer.
Gratify them with Rewards of Well doing, when they Do well; but let them not be gratified with every
Ungodly Vanity, that their Vain Minds may be set upon.
Wherefore keep a strict Inspection upon their Conversations; Examine, How they spend their Time;
Examine, What Company they keep? Examine, Whether they take no Bad Courses.
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Be not such Foolish Enemies to yourselves, and your Children as to count them your Enemies, that
shall friendily advise you of their Miscarriages. That wretched Folly, is a very Frequent One!
When you Find out their Miscarriages, effectually Rebuke them, and Restrain them. Incurr not the
Indignation of Heaven, once Incurred by a Fond Father, in I Sam 3:13; I will Judge his House forever,
for the Iniquity which he knoweth; because his Sons made themselves vile, and he Restrained them
not.
Ah, Thou Indulgent Parent; if you canst not Cross thy Children, when they are disposed unto that
which is for the Dishonour of God, God will make thy Children to become Crosses unto thee.
Sirs, When your Children do amiss, call them Aside; set before them the Precepts of God which they
have broken, and the Threatenings of God, which they provoked. Demand of them, to profess their
sorrow for their fault, and Resolve that they will be no more so Faulty.
Yes, there may be occasion for you, to consider that Word of God in Proverbs 13:24 He that spareth
his Rod, hateth his son, but he that loveth him, chasteneth him betimes; and that Word in Proverbs
19:18 Chasten thy son while there is Hope, and let not thy soul spare for his Crying; and that word, in
Proverbs 23:13,14. Withold not Correction from the Child; for if thou beatest him with the Rod, he
shall not Die; Thou shalt beat him with the Rod, and shalt deliver his Soul from Hell.
But if it must be so, Remember this Counsel; Never give a Blow in a passion. Stay till your passion is
over; and let the Offenders plainly see, that you deal thus with them, out of a pure Obedience unto
God, and for their true Repentance.
One of the ancients, has this Ingenious gloss In the tabernacle, Aarons Rod, and the Pot of Manna,
were together; so (says he) when the Rod is used, the sweetness and goodness of the Manna must
accompany it: and Mercy be joined with Severity. Let me leave that premonition with you, in Proverbs
29:15 A child left unto himself, bringeth his Mother to shame.
V. Lay your Charges upon your Children; Parents, Charge them to Work about their own Salvation.
The Charges of Parents have a great Efficacy upon many Children; To Charge them vehemently, is
to Charm them wonderfully.
Command your Children, and it may be they will Obey. Let Gods commands be your commands, and
it may be your Children will obey them.
Lay upon your Children, the Charges of God, as David once upon his, in I Chron 28:9 My Son, know
thou the God of thy Father, and serve Him with a perfect heart, and with a willing mind; if thou seek
Him, He will be found of thee, but if thou forsake Him, He will cast thee off forever.
Now, Sirs, You will do well, to single out some singular Charges of God, and calling your Children one
by one before you, Lay those Charges upon them, in the Name of the God that made them, and
obtain from them, if you can, a promise that they will observe those Charges, with the Help of that
God. I will set before you, three or four of those Charges.
Let one of your Charges upon your Children, be that in I John 3:23 This is His commandment, that we
should believe on the Name of His Son Jesus Christ.
Charge them to carry their poor, guilty, ignorant and polluted and Enslaved souls unto the Lord Jesus
Christ, that He may Save them from their Sins, and Save them from the Wrath to come.
Charge them, to mind how the Lord Jesus Christ Executes the Office of a Prophet, and a Priest, and
a King, and Cry to Him, that He would Save them in the Execution of all those Blessed Offices.
Let another of your Charges be that in Hag 1:5,7 Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, Consider Your Ways.
Charge them to set apart a few minutes now and then, for Consideration; and in those minutes,
Charge them to Consider, what they have been doing, and what they should have been doing, ever
since they came into the World, and if they should immediately go out of the World, what will become
of them throughout Eternal Ages.
I have read of a Dying Parent, who laid this Charge upon his wild Son, That he would allow one
quarter of an Hour every Day to Consider on something or other, any Thing, as his Fancy led him.
The Young men having for some while done so, at last began to consider, why his Dying Parent
should lay such a Charge upon him. This brought on so many Devout Thoughts, that before long, in
the Conversion of the Young man, the Desire of the Dying Parent was accomplished.
Oh! If you could Engage your Children to Think Upon Their Ways, there would be Hopes of their
Turning to God.
But, Let a Third of your Charges, be that in Matthew 6:6 Enter into thy closet, and when thou hast
shut thy door, pray to thy Father that sees in secret.
Charge them to retire for Secret Prayer, every Day that comes over their Heads, Talk with them, till
you see, that they can tell, what they should Pray for: and then, often Charge them to Pray every day;
yea, sometimes Ask them, Do you Remember the charge I Laid upon you?
Ah, Parent, thy children will do well, while it can be said, Behold, They Pray. And thy House filled with
thy Childrens Prayers, would be better accommodated , than if it were filled, with all the Riches of the
Indies.
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Let a Fourth of your Charges be That, in Proverbs 9:6, Forsake the Foolish and Live.
Charge them to avoid the snares of Evil Company; Terrify them with Warnings of those Deadly
Snares.
Often Repeat this Charge unto them, That if there be any Vicious Company, they shun them, as they
would the Plague or the Devil.
Often say, My son, if Sinners entice thee, consent thou not."
Often say, My child, walk with the Wise, and thou shalt be wise, but a Companion of Fools shall be
destroyed.
Oh, Do Not let the Beasts of prey, carry away thy Children alive.
Shall I add; it is here intimated, That an Abraham, is to Command his Children, very particularly,
about, The Way of the Lord. The Way of the Lord, is the Way of his Right, Pure, Instituted Worship.
Well, then, Command your Children, that they do not Forsake the Holy Institutions of the Lord Jesus
Christ, and Embrace a Vain Worship, consisting of things that He never Instituted.
There are some clauses in the Second Commandment, which intimate, That if Parents would see the
Mercies of God upon their Children, they must Charge them, to Worship God, only in those Ways of
Worship that God hath appointed.
Thus keep Charging of your Children, while you Live. And if you are capable so to Do, Do it once
more with all possible Solemnity, when you come to Die. The words of a Dying Parent, will probably
be Living Words, and Lively Ones.
When our Excellent Mitchel was a Dying, he let fall such a Speech as This, unto a Young Gentleman,
that Lodged in his House, My Friend, as a Dying man, I now charge you, that you don't meet me out
of Christ in the Day of Christ. This one Speech, brought into Christ, the soul of that Young
Gentleman! Truly, if your Dying Lips, may utter such Dying Words unto your Children, who can tell,
but they may then be brought into Christ, if they were never so before!
But, lest you should have no opportunity to Speak in a Dying Hour, why should you not Write such
things, as you would have them to Think upon, when you shall be Dead and Gone? An unknown deal
of Good, may your Children reap, from the Admonitions, that a Dying Parent may Leave unto them.
VI. Parents, be Exemplary:
Your Example may do much towards the Salvation of your Children, your Works will more Work upon
your Children, than your Words; your Patterns will do more than your Precepts; your Copies than your
Counsels.
What was then said unto Pastors, may very fitly be said unto Parents, in Titus 2:2, In all Things show
thyself a pattern of good works; and in Timothy 4:12 Be thou an Example in Word, in Conversation, in
Charity, in Spirit, in Faith, in Purity.
It will be impossible for you to infuse any Good into your Children, if you appear void of that Good
yourselves. If the Old Crab go backward, it is to no purpose, for the Young One to be directed to go
forward: Sirs, Young Ones, will Crawl after the Old Ones.
Would you have your Children, well principled with the Fear and Faith of God? Mind that passage, in
Acts 10:2, Cornelius was a devout man, and one that Feared God, with all his House.
Mind that passage in Acts 18:8 Crispus Believed on the Lord, with all his House. It seems, the whole
House, is like to do, as the Parents do. It is as Austin [Augustine] expresses it, the ususal cry,
Nolumus esse meliores quam patres, We will be no Better than our Parents, If the Parents will make
their Cakes to the Queen of Heaven, the Children will kindle their Fires for them.
Justin Martyr somewhere Inquires why the Prophet Elisha imprecated the Revenges of Heaven upon
the Children that mocked him, when they hardly understood what they did? and he answers, The
Children Learned their wicked Language from their Parents, and now God punished both of them
together.
Parents, let your Children see nothing by you, but what shall be commendable and imitable. Be able
to say unto your Children, My child, follow me, as you have seen me follow Christ.
Let them from your Seriousness, and your Prayerfulness, and your Watchfulness, and your
Sanctification of the Lord's Day, be taught, how they should walk and please God. You "Bid" them
well; "Show" them How!
VII. Prayer, Prayer, must be the Crown of all:
Parents, is it your Hearts Desire? Let it be also your Prayer, for your Children, that they may be
Saved.
Prayer for the Salvation of any Sinners, availith much. How much may it avail for the Salvation of our
Sinful Children? Much availed that Prayer of David in I Chron. 29:19, Lord, Give unto my Son a
perfect Heart, to keep thy Commandments.
Parents, Make such a prayer for your Children, Lord, Give unto my Child, a New Heart, and a Clean
Heart, and a Soft Heart; and an Heart after thy own Heart.
 42

We have been told, that Children once were brought unto our Lord Jesus Christ, for Him to Put His
hands upon them; and He Put His hands upon them, and blessed them. Oh! Thrice, and Four Times
Blessed Children! Well, Parent, Bring your Children unto the Lord Jesus Christ; it may be, He will put
His Blessing, and Healing, and Saving Hands upon them: Then, they are Blessed, and shall be
Blessed for evermore! If Abraham cry to God, O that my son Ishmael may live in thy sight! God will
say to Abraham, concerning Ishmael, I have heard thee!
Pray for the Salvation of thy Children, and carry the Names of every one of them, every day before
the Lord, with Prayers, the Cries whereof shall pierce the very Heavens. Holy Job did so! Job 1:5 He
offered according to the number of all his Children; Thus did Job continually.
Address Heaven with daily Prayers, That God would make thy Children the Temples of His Spirit, the
Vessels of His Glory; and the Care of His Holy Angels.
Address the Lord Jesus Christ, with Prayers, like them of old, That all the Maladies upon the Souls of
thy Children may be cured and that the Evil One may have no possession of them.
Yea, when thou do cast thine Eyes upon the Little Folks, often in a day dart up an Ejaculatory Prayer
to Heaven for them; Lord, let this child be thy servant for ever.
If your Prayers are not presently answered, be not Disheartened: Remember the Word of the Lord, in
Luke 18:1, That men ought always to pray, and not to faint.
Redouble your Importunity, until thou speed for thy child, as the poor Woman of Canaan did.
Join Fasting to thy Prayer; it may be, the evil in the soul of your child, will not go out, without such a
Remedy. David sets himself to Fasting, as well as Prayer, for the Life of his Child. Oh, Do as much
for the Soul of thy Child!
Wrestle with the Lord. Receive no Denial. Earnestly protest, Lord, I will not let thee go, except thou
Bless this poor Child of mine, and make it thy own! Do this, until, if it may be, thy Heart is Raised by a
Touch of Heaven, to a particular Faith; that God has blessed this child, and it shall be Blessed and
Saved Forever.
But is this all that is to be done? There is more. Parents, Pray with your Children, as well as for them.
Family prayer must be maintained by all those Parents, that would not have their Children miss of
Salvation, and that would not have the Damnation of their Children horribly fall upon themselves.
Man, thy Family is a Pagan Family, if it be a Prayerless Family: And the Children going down to the
place of Dragons from this thy Family, will pour out their Execrations upon thee, in the Bottom of Hell,
until the very Heavens be no more.
But, besides your Family Prayers, Oh, parents, why should you not now and then, take one capable
Child after another, alone before the Lord? Carry the Child with you, into your Secret Chambers;
make the Child kneel down by you, while you present it unto the Lord, and Implore His Blessing upon
it.
Let the Child, hear the Groans, and See the Tears, and be a witness of the Agonies, wherewith you
are Travailing for the Salvation of it. The Children will never Forget what you do; it will have a
marvelous Force upon them.
Thus, Oh, Parents, You have been told, what you have to do, for the Salvation of your Children; and
certainly, their Salvation is worth all of this!
Your Zeal about the Salvation of your Children, will be a symptom of your own Sincerity. A total want
of Zeal, will be a Spot upon you, that is not a Spot of the Children of God.
God will Reward the Zeal. It is very probable, That the Children thus cared for, will be the Saved of
the Lord. Your Glad Hearts will one day see it, if they are so: it will augment your Heaven, through all
eternity, to have These in Heaven with you.
And let it be Remembered, That the Fathers, are not the only Parents obliged thus to pursue the
Salvation of their Children: You that are Mothers, have not a little to do for the Souls of your Children,
and you have Opportunity to do more than a Little.
Bathsheba the Mother of Solomon, and Eunice the Mother of Timothy, did greately Contribute unto
the Salvation of their famous and worthy Sons.
God has Commanded Children, Forsake not the Law of thy Mother. Then, a Mother must give the
Law of God unto them.
It is said of the Virtuous Woman, She looks well to the ways of her Household; Then a Virtuous
Mother looks well to the Ways of her Children.
Your Children may say, In sin did my Mother Conceive me. Oh, Then let Mothers do what they can,
to Save their Children out of Sin!
And especially, Mothers, do you Travail for your Children over again, with your Earnest Prayers for
their Salvation, until it may be said unto you, as it was unto Monica the Mother of Austin, concerning
him; Tis impossible, that thy Child should perish, after thou hast Employed so many Prayers and
Tears for the Salvation of it."
Now God give a Good Success to these Poor Endeavours!
 43

Anne Bradstreet

A Dialogue Between Old England and New (1630)

Old South Leaflets, vol. 7 (pp.169-176) (Boston: Directors of the Old South)

A DIALOGUE BETWEEN OLD ENGLAND AND NEW

CONCERNING THEIR PRESENT TROUBLES, ANNO 1642.

NEW ENGLAND.
[p.169]

Alas, dear mother, fairest queen and best,

With honor, wealth, and peace happy and blest,
What ails thee hang thy head, and cross thine arms,
And sit in the dust to sigh these sad alarms?
What deluge of new woes thus overwhelms
The glories of thy ever famous realm?
What means this wailing tone, this mournful guise?
Ah, tell thy daughter, she may sympathize.

OLD ENGLAND.

Art ignorant indeed of these my woes,

Or must my forced tongue these griefs disclose,
And must myself dissect my tattered state,
Which amazed Christendom stands wondering at?
And thou a child, a limb, and dost not feel
My fainting, weakened body now to reel?
This physic purging potion I have taken
Will bnng consumption or an ague-quaking
Unless some cordial thou fetch from high,
[p.170] Which present help may ease my malady.
If I decease, dost think thou shalt survive?
Or by my wasting state dost think to thrive?
Then weigh our case if it be not justly sad.
Let me lament alone, while thou art glad.

NEW ENGLAND.

And thus, alas, your state you much deplore

In general terms, but will not say wherefore.
What medicine shall I seek to cure this woe
If the wound so dangerous I may not know.
But you, perhaps, would have me guess it out.
What, hath some Hengist like that Saxon stout
By fraud or force usurped thy flowering crown,
Or by tempestuous wars thy fields trod down?
Or hath Canutus, that brave valiant Dane,
The regal peaceful sceptre from thee ta'en?
Or is it a Norman whose victorious hand
With English blood bedews thy conquered land?
Or is it intestine wars that thus offend?
Do Maud and Stephen for the crown contend?
Do barons rise and side against their king,
And call in foreign aid to help the thing?
Must Edward be deposed? Or is it the hour
That second Richard must be clapped in the tower?
Or is it the fatal jar, again begun,
That from the red-white pricking roses sprung?
 44

Must Richmond's aid the nobles now implore

To come and break the tushes of the boar?
If none of these, dear mother, what's your woe?
Pray, do you fear Spain's bragging Armado?
Doth your ally, fair France, conspire your wreck,
Or do the Scots play false behind your back?
Doth Holland quit you ill for all your love?
Whence is the storm, from earth or heaven above?
Is it drought, is it famine, or is it pestilence?
Dost feel the smart, or fear the consequence?
Your humble child en treats you show your grief.
Though arms nor purse she hath for your relief,---
Such is her poverty,---yet shall be found
A suppliant for your help, as she is bound.

[p.171]

OLD ENGLAND.

I must confess some of those sores you name

My beauteous body at this present maim;
But foreign foe nor feigned friend I fear,
For they have work enough, thou knowest, elsewhere.
Nor is it Alcie's son or Henry's daughter
Whose proud contentions cause this slaughter;
Nor nobles siding to make John no king,
French Louis unjustly to the crown to bring;
No Edward, Richard, to lose rule and life,
Nor no Lancastrians to renew old strife;
No Duke of York nor Earl of March to soil
Their hands in kindred's blood whom they did foil.
No crafty tyrant now usurps the seat
Who nephews slew that so he might be great.
No need of Tudor roses to unite;
None knows which is the red or which the white.
Spain's braving fleet a second time is sunk.
France knows how oft my fury she hath drunk
By Edward Third and Henry Fifth of fame;
Her lilies in my arms avouch the same.
My sister Scotland hurts me now no more,
Though she hath been injurious heretofore.
What Holland is I am in some suspense,
But trust not much unto his excellence.
For wants, sure some I feel, but more I fear;
And for the pestilence, who knows how near?

Famine and plague, two sisters of the sword, Destruction to a land doth soon afford. They're for my
punishment ordained on high, Unless our tears prevent it speedily. But yet I answer not what you
demand To show the grievance of my troubled land. Before I tell the effect I'll show the cause, Which
is my sins---the breach of sacred laws: Idolatry, supplanter of a nation, With foolish superstitious
adoration, Are liked and countenanced by men of might; The gospel trodden down and hath no right;
Church offices were sold and bought for gain, That Pope had hope to find Rome here again; [p.172]
For oaths and blasphemies did ever ear From Beelzebub himself such language hear? What scorning
of the saints of the most high! What injuries did daily on them lie! What false reports, what nicknames
did they take, Not for their own, but for their Master's sake! And thou, poor soul, wert jeered among
the rest; Thy flying for the truth was made a jest. For Sabbath-breaking and for drunkenness Did ever
land profaneness more express? From crying blood yet cleansed am not I, Martyrs and others dying
causelessly. How many princely heads on blocks laid down For naught but title to a fading crown!
'Mongst all the cruelties by great ones done, O Edward's youths, and Clarence' hapless son, O Jane,
why didst thou die in flowering prime?--- Because of royal stem, that was hy crime. For bribery,
adultery, and lies Where is the nation I can't paralyze? With usury, extortion, and oppression, These
 45

be the hydras of my stout transgression; These be the bitter fountains, heads, and roots Whence
flowed the source, the sprigs, the boughs, and fruits. Of more than thou canst hear or I relate, That
with high hand I still did perpetrate. For these were threatened the woful day. I mocked the preachers,
put it far away; The sermons yet upon record do stand That cried destruction to my wicked land. I
then believed not, now I feel and see The plague of stubborn incredulity. Some lost their livings, some
in prison pent, Some, fined, from house and friends to exile went. Their silent tongues to heaven did
vengeance cry, Who saw their wrongs, and hath judged righteously, And will repay it sevenfold in my
lap. This is forerunner of my afterclap. Nor took I warning by my neighbors' falls: I saw sad Germany's
dismantled walls, I saw her people famished, nobles slain, Her fruitful land a barren heath remain;
[p.173] I saw, unmoved, her armies foiled and fled, Wives forced, babes tossed, her houses calcined.
I saw strong Rochelle yielded to her foe, Thousands of starved Christians there also. I saw poor
Ireland bleeding out her last, Such cruelties as all reports have passed; Mine heart obdurate stood not
yet aghast. Now sip I of that cup, and just it may be The bottom dregs reserved are for me. NEW
ENGLAND. To all you've said, sad mother, I assent. Your fearful sins great cause there is to lament.
My guilty hands in part hold up with you, A sharer in your punishment's my due. But all you say
amounts to this effect, Not what you feel, but what you do expect. Pray, in plain terms, what is your
present grief? Then let's join heads and hearts for your relief. OLD ENGLAND. Well, to the matter,
then. There's grown of late 'Twixt king and peers a question of state: Which is the chief---the law, or
else the king? One said, it's he; the other, no such thing. 'Tis said my better part in Parliament To
ease my groaning land showed their intent, To crush the proud, and right to each man deal, To help
the church, and stay the commonweal. So many obstacles came in their way As puts me to a stand
what I should say. Old customs new prerogatives stood on; Had they not held law fast, all had been
gone, Which by their prudence stood them in such stead They took high Strafford lower by the head,
And to their Laud be it spoke they held in the tower All England's metropolitan that hour. This done,
an act they would have passed fain No prelate should his bishopric retain; Here tugged they hard
indeed, for all men saw This must be done by gospel, not by law. [p.174] Next the militia they urged
sore; This was denied, I need not say wherefore. The king, displeased, at York himself absents. They
humbly beg his return, show their intents; The writing, printing, posting to and fro, Show all was done;
I'll therefore let it go. But now I come to speak of my disaster. Contention grown 'twixt subjects and
their master, They worded it so long they fell to blows, That thousands lay on heaps. Here bleed my
woes. I that no wars so many years have known Am now destroyed and slaughtered by my own. But
could the field alone this strife decide, One battle, two, or three I might abide. But these may be
beginnings of more woe--- Who knows but this may be my overthrow! Oh, pity me in this sad
perturbation, My plundered towns, my houses' devastation, My weeping virgins, and my young men
slain, My wealthy trading fallen, my dearth of grain. The seed-times come, but ploughman hath no
hope Because he knows not who shall in his crop. The poor they want their pay, their children bread,
Their woful mothers' tears unpitied. If any pity in thy heart remain, Or any child-like love thou dost
retain, For my relief do what there lies in thee, And recompense that good I've done to thee. NEW
ENGLAND. Dear mother, cease complaints, and wipe your eyes, Shake off your dust, cheer up, and
now arise. You are my mother nurse, and I, your flesh, Your sunken bowels gladly would refresh.
Your griefs I pity, but soon hope to see Out of your troubles much good fruit to be; To see those latter
days of hoped-for good, Though now beclouded all with tears and blood. After dark popery the day
did clear; But now the sun in his brightness shall appear. Blest be the nobles of thy noble land [p.175]
With ventured lives for truth's defence that stand. Blest be thy Commons, who for common good And
thy infringed laws have boldly stood. Blest be thy counties, who did aid thee still With hearts and
states to testify their will. Blest be thy preachers, who do cheer thee on; Oh, cry the sword of God and
Gideon! And shall I not on them wish Meroz' curse That help thee not with prayers, with alms, and
purse? And for myself let miseries abound If mindless of thy state I e'er be found. These are the days
the church's foes to crush, To root out popeling's head, tail, branch, and rush. Let's bring Baal's
vestments forth to make a fire, Their mitres, surplices, and all their attire, Copes, rochets, croziers,
and such empty trash, And let their names consume, but let the flash Light Christendom, and all the
world to see We hate Rome's whore, with all her trumpery. Go on, brave Essex, with a loyal heart,
Not false to king, nor to the better part; But those that hurt his people and his crown, As duty binds
expel and tread them down. And ye brave nobles, chase away all fear, And to this hopeful cause
closely adhere. O mother, can you weep and have such peers? When they are gone, then drown
yourself in tears, If now you weep so much, that then no more The briny ocean will o'erflow your
shore. These, these are they, I trust, with Charles our king, Out of all mists such glorious days shall
bring That dazzled eyes, beholding, much shall wonder At that thy settled peace, thy wealth, and
splendor; Thy church and weal established in such manner That all shall joy that thou displayedst thy
banner; And discipline erected so, I trust, That nursing kings shall come and lick thy dust. Then
justice shall in all thy courts take place Without respect of person or of case; Then bribes shall cease,
 46

and suits shall not stick long, Patience and purse of clients oft to wrong; Then high commissions shall
fall to decay, [p.176] And pursuivants and catch poles want their pay. So shall thy happy nation ever
flourish, When truth and righteousness they thus shall nourish. When thus in peace, thine armies
brave send out To sack proud Rome, and all her vassals rout; There let thy name, thy fame, and
glory shine, As did thine ancestors' in Palestine, And let her spoils full pay with interest be Of what
unjustly once she polled from thee. Of all the woes thou canst let her be sped, And on her pour the
vengeance threatened. Bring forth the beast that ruled the world with his beck, And tear his flesh, and
set your feet on his neck, And make his filthy den so desolate To the astonishment of all that knew
his state. This done, with brandished swords to Turkey go,--- For then what is it but English blades
dare do?--- And lay her waste,---for so's the sacred doom,--- And do to Gog as thou hast done to
Rome. O Abraham's seed, lift up your heads on high, For sure the day of your redemption's nigh. The
scales shall fall from your long blinded eyes, And him you shall adore who now despise. Then fulness
of the nations in shall flow, And Jew and Gentile to one worship go; Then follow days of happiness
and rest. Whose lot doth fall to live therein is blest. No Canaanite shall then be found in the land, And
holiness on horses' bells shall stand. If this make way thereto, then sigh no more, But if at all thou
didst not see it before. Farewell, dear mother; rightest cause prevail, And in a while you'll tell another
tale.

VERSES UPON THE BURNING OF OUR HOUSE, JULY 18TH, 1666

Here follows some verses upon the burning

of our house, July. 18th. 1666. Copyed out of
a loose Paper.

1 In silent night when rest I took,

2 For sorrow near I did not look,
3 I waken'd was with thund'ring noise
4 And piteous shrieks of dreadful voice.
5 That fearful sound of "fire" and "fire,"
6 Let no man know is my Desire.
7 I starting up, the light did spy,
8 And to my God my heart did cry
9 To straighten me in my Distress
10 And not to leave me succourless.
11 Then coming out, behold a space
12 The flame consume my dwelling place.
13 And when I could no longer look,
14 I blest his grace that gave and took,
15 That laid my goods now in the dust.
16 Yea, so it was, and so 'twas just.
17 It was his own; it was not mine.
18 Far be it that I should repine,
19 He might of all justly bereft
20 But yet sufficient for us left.
21 When by the Ruins oft I past
22 My sorrowing eyes aside did cast
23 And here and there the places spy
24 Where oft I sate and long did lie.
25 Here stood that Trunk, and there that chest,
26 There lay that store I counted best,
27 My pleasant things in ashes lie
28 And them behold no more shall I.
29 Under the roof no guest shall sit,
30 Nor at thy Table eat a bit.
31 No pleasant talk shall 'ere be told
32 Nor things recounted done of old.
33 No Candle 'ere shall shine in Thee,
34 Nor bridegroom's voice ere heard shall bee.
35 In silence ever shalt thou lie.
36 Adieu, Adieu, All's Vanity.
37 Then straight I 'gin my heart to chide:
 47

38 And did thy wealth on earth abide,

39 Didst fix thy hope on mouldring dust,
40 The arm of flesh didst make thy trust?
41 Raise up thy thoughts above the sky
42 That dunghill mists away may fly.
43 Thou hast a house on high erect
44 Fram'd by that mighty Architect,
45 With glory richly furnished
46 Stands permanent, though this be fled.
47 It's purchased and paid for too
48 By him who hath enough to do.
49 A price so vast as is unknown,
50 Yet by his gift is made thine own.
51 There's wealth enough; I need no more.
52 Farewell, my pelf; farewell, my store.
53 The world no longer let me love;
54 My hope and Treasure lies above.

Composition Date: Unknown.

52. pelf: wealth.

PROLOGUE

1 To sing of Wars, of Captains, and of Kings,

2 Of Cities founded, Common-wealths begun,
3 For my mean Pen are too superior things;
4 Or how they all, or each their dates have run,
5 Let Poets and Historians set these forth.
6 My obscure lines shall not so dim their worth.

7 But when my wond'ring eyes and envious heart

8 Great Bartas' sugar'd lines do but read o'er,
9 Fool, I do grudge the Muses did not part
10 'Twixt him and me that over-fluent store.
11 A Bartas can do what a Bartas will
12 But simple I according to my skill.

13 From School-boy's tongue no Rhet'ric we expect,

14 Nor yet a sweet Consort from broken strings,
15 Nor perfect beauty where's a main defect.
16 My foolish, broken, blemished Muse so sings,
17 And this to mend, alas, no Art is able,
18 'Cause Nature made it so irreparable.

19 Nor can I, like that fluent sweet-tongued Greek

20 Who lisp'd at first, in future times speak plain.
21 By Art he gladly found what he did seek,
22 A full requital of his striving pain.
23 Art can do much, but this maxim's most sure:
24 A weak or wounded brain admits no cure.

25 I am obnoxious to each carping tongue

26 Who says my hand a needle better fits.
27 A Poet's Pen all scorn I should thus wrong,
28 For such despite they cast on female wits.
29 If what I do prove well, it won't advance,
30 They'll say it's stol'n, or else it was by chance.

31 But sure the antique Greeks were far more mild,

32 Else of our Sex, why feigned they those nine
33 And poesy made Calliope's own child?
 48

34 So 'mongst the rest they placed the Arts divine,

35 But this weak knot they will full soon untie.
36 The Greeks did nought but play the fools and lie.

37 Let Greeks be Greeks, and Women what they are.

38 Men have precedency and still excel;
39 It is but vain unjustly to wage war.
40 Men can do best, and Women know it well.
41 Preeminence in all and each is yours;
42 Yet grant some small acknowledgement of ours.

43 And oh ye high flown quills that soar the skies,

44 And ever with your prey still catch your praise,
45 If e'er you deign these lowly lines your eyes,
46 Give thyme or Parsley wreath, I ask no Bays.
47 This mean and unrefined ore of mine
48 Will make your glist'ring gold but more to shine.

Composition Date: ca. 1643-47 (White 254).