The Puritan Experience

Owen C. Watkins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000225679
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Critique littéraire historique

Originally published in 1972 and based on extensive research and use of source materials including manuscripts, this book examines Puritan spiritual autobiographies written before 1725 and sets them in the context of the literary tradition out of which they grew. As well as Bunyan, Baxter and Fox, this book also discusses important works which have received less attention, notably the Confessions of Richard Norwood, the Bermudan settler. The book identifies 3 strands in the tradition: the work of the 'orthodox' Puritans; the prophets of the Commonwealth, and the confessions and journals of the early Quakers. The social, religious and literary factors which contributed to their development are discussed and it is shown how the self-analysis popularized by the Puritan preachers and writers contributed to the development of the novel. The book will be of particular value to those interested in 17 th Century literature or religion.

Chapter 1

Personal Religion

Puritan autobiographies were the product of a Puritan conviction that the highest art a man could practise was the art of living, that the only masterpiece worthy of the name was to be achieved in the most complex and difficult of all forms of creative endeavour: a human life.

This is one reason why, in the voluminous writings of seventeenth-century Puritans, there is not much that we should call literature, if by literature we mean that which gives the receptive reader a unique experience which he values for its own sake. When they produced literature in this sense they did so in the same way as the British were said to have acquired the Empire – in a fit of absent-mindedness. For they valued literature not for its own sake, but just in so far as it promoted right attitudes and right conduct. Their creative energy was mostly taken up with interpreting the concepts and values they considered crucial to human destiny, and so their chief publications were sermons, treatises, and handbooks – doctrinal, devotional, practical, and controversial. But they also believed, with many ancient authorities, that ‘examples are more powerful than precepts’,¹ and thus the esteem given to expository works was shared by history and biography, especially the latter. So Richard Baxter recommended the reading of such books because

the true History of exemplary Lives, is a pleasant and profitable recreation to young persons; and may secretly work them to a liking of Godliness and value of good men, which is the beginning of saving Grace: O how much better work is it, than Cards, Dice, Revels, Stage-Plays, Romances or idle Chat.²

Spiritual autobiographies, with few exceptions, were not written because the writers thought their lives were ‘exemplary’ ones in this sense, but because, as Thomas Goodwin pointed out, ‘That God pardon’d such a Man in such a Condition, is often brought home unto another Man in the same Condition.’³ They hoped through the record of their own experience to offer experimental proof of some of the eternal truths of Christianity. God was consistent in his dealings with men throughout history, but since He called everyone individually, each saw some aspect of His glory that was hidden from others. Working within an agreed framework of doctrine it was therefore possible to have as many variations as there were believers, and so the conditions were present for the emergence of an accepted literary form. By a spiritual autobiography I mean a narrative dealing primarily with the writer’s religious experience, covering the whole of his life or a substantial part of it, and written sufficiently long after the events for a coherent view to have been possible. However, a few writings which do not entirely conform to this definition will be discussed because they add to our understanding of works of this kind.

It was a genre that became popular with Puritan readers in the second half of the seventeenth century, and was the outcome of conditions that were distinctively English, notably the contribution made to reformed theology by the English Puritan divines in their doctrine of divine grace. They took up the work of the continental reformers on justification (what God had done for sinners at Calvary) and completed it with detailed studies of sanctification (what God did within the soul and body of the believer). Their achievements in this field were recognized by the Protestant churches of Europe, who highly valued the works of ‘the affectionate practical English writers’.⁴ For well over a hundred years Puritan pastors from Greenham to Baxter laboured incessantly through preaching, writing, and counselling to help people of all ages and conditions to find the way of salvation and work out the application of the gospel to every part of their lives. One of the results was that men and women with no special literary skill developed an ability to analyse and communicate their religious experience; the Puritan culture provided a body of theory, a technique, and a language with which to do so – and there were many dedicated pupils.

From what I have said so far it will be clear that I shall normally be using the word ‘Puritan’ to denote that aspect of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century religious life in Britain which was centred on pastoral and personal issues rather than political or ecclesiastical ones. We shall be concerned less with ‘turbulent and factious spirits . . . adverse to the government of the church’⁵ than with ‘doctrinal Puritans’. In the early days these were Calvinist divines within the Church of England, many of whom were in some respects non-conformist, and their common bond was an urgent pastoral concern which came to be shared by the growing numbers of separatist preachers. After about 1640 the heirs of these men were, in fact, found mainly in the separatist churches, and most of the spiritual autobiographies were written by Presbyterians, Independents, or Baptists. These men I shall sometimes refer to as ‘orthodox Puritans’, when it is necessary to distinguish them from the individualist prophets and the Quakers, who were also part of the whole Puritan movement, though representing distinct developments from the main tradition.

Before turning to the autobiographies themselves, I shall survey briefly the most important factors within Puritanism that fostered their development: notably the range and purpose of Puritan preaching, the teaching on conversion and the Christian life which it embodied, and the kind of personal response which it demanded. These matters have been the subjects of many thorough studies in Britain and America during the past thirty years or so, and I am unlikely to throw any new light on them in this introduction, which is intended to supply the minimum context needed for the discussion which follows.⁶ Readers who are already familiar with the field may prefer to turn directly to chapter two which, while it also consists of introductory matter, deals directly with autobiographical records.

Faith and knowledge

The severity of Calvin’s theology, said C. S. Lewis, ‘sprang from his refusal to allow the Roman distinction between the life of “religion” and the life of the world. . . . Calvin demanded that every man should be made to live the folly Christian life. In academic jargon, he lowered the honours standard and abolished the pass degree.’⁷ The analogy is an apt one for the English Puritans, because in working out the implications of their Calvinism they committed themselves to a massive exercise in popular education. Faced though they mostly were with ‘an ignorant, rude and revelling People’, they did not hesitate to require as full an understanding as possible of the whole Christian religion. The first ‘direction to a sound conversion’ that Baxter urged upon the inquirer was: ‘labour after a right understanding of the true nature of Christianity, and the meaning of the gospel.’⁸ Since faith was a response to the acts of God, it had to be based on accurate knowledge of what these acts were. So even a bare appeal to repentance would involve more than a few central themes like guilt, atonement, and forgiveness. The message had to be understood in the full context of Christian doctrine: in effect, some grasp of everything mentioned in the Apostles’ Creed, with particular attention also to the decree of election, justification by faith, and the work of the Holy Spirit in conversion and sanctification.

This was an immense demand to make, and there were many who pleaded their ignorance and incapacity. Baxter’s reply to such objections summarized the raison d’être of a hundred years of Puritan evangelical concern:

(i) Every man that has a reasonable soul should know God that made him; and know the end for which he should live; and know the way to his eternal happiness, as well as the learned; have you not souls to save or lose as well as the learned have? (2) God hath made plain His will to you in His word; He hath given you teachers and many other helps; so that you have no excuse if you are ignorant; you must know how to be christians if you are no scholars. You may hit the way to heaven in English, though you have no skill in Hebrew or Greek; but in the darkness of ignorance you can never hit it. (3)... If you think, therefore, that you may be excused from knowledge, you may as well think that you may be excused from love and from all obedience; for there can be none of this without knowledge.... you account seven years little enough to learn your trade, and will not bestow one day in seven in diligent learning the matters of your salvation.⁹

Of course, though knowledge was the essential foundation for every part of the Christian life, it was not enough in itself. Repentance, faith, perseverance, and growth in grace all involved a full emotional commitment and the practice of good works. William Perkins defined theology as ‘the science of living blessedly for ever’¹⁰ and Puritan teaching in general emphasized the necessity of a total response. ‘For the Puritans,’ says Dr J. I. Packer, ‘true Christianity consisted in...