THE GUISE OF EVERY

GRACELESS HEART:
HUMAN AUTONOMY IN
PURITAN THOUGHT AND
EXPERIENCE
by
Terrill Irwin Elniff

Ross House Books

Vallecito, California
1981
 Copyright © 1981
Ross House Books

To Polly,
who has been with me from the beginning —
from the summer we courted in Hunter Library
to the summer I graduated:
lover, wife, mother of my children, mentor, friend.
And my favorite Puritan:
. a woman of singular virtue, prudence,
modesty, and piety, and specially beloved
and honored of all. . . . ”

“ I will say nothing of my love to thee,

and of my longing desires towards thee,
thou knowest my heart.”

John Winthrop to his wife.

From Boston, November 29, 1630.
 CONTENTS
HAPTER PAGE
1. Introduction.......................................................................1
2. Historiographical Background......................................... 5
3. The Puritan D ilem m a.....................................................21
4. The Concept of Autonomy in Puritan Theology 33
5. The Lack of Human Autonomy in
Puritan Theology......................................................... 45
6. Dilemma and Human Autonomy in
Puritan Practice — I ....................................................57
7. Dilemma and Human Autonomy in
Puritan Practice — II ..................................................73
8. Dilemma and Human Autonomy in
Puritan Practice — I I I ..................................................89
9. The Application of N on-A utonom y............................. 97
10. Declension ..................................................................... 105
11. Summary and Conclusion: Human Autonomy
and the Puritan D ilem m a.......................................... 115
Bibliography...........................................................................121
 The Christian cannot be satisfied as long as any human activity is either
opposed to Christianity or out of all connection with Christianity. Chris­
tianity must pervade not merely all nations, but also all of human thought.
The Christian, therefore, cannot be indifferent to any branch of earnest
endeavor. It must all be brought into some relation to the gospel. It must be
studied either in order to be demonstrated as false, or else in order to be
made useful in advancing the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom must be
advanced not merely extensively, but also intensively. The Church must
seek to conquer not merely every man for Christ, but also the whole of man.
— J. Gresham Machen

One desire has been the ruling passion of my life. One high motive has
acted like a spur upon my mind and soul. And sooner than that I should
seek escape from the sacred necessity that is laid upon me, let the breath of
life fail me. It is this: that in spite of all worldly opposition, God’s holy
ordinances shall be established again in the home, in the school and in the
State for the good of the people; to carve as it were into the conscience of
the nation the ordinances of the Lord, to which Bible and Creation bear
witness, until the nation pays homage again to God.
— Abraham Kuyper

Grant me thy gracious assistance, O my God, that in this my undertaking

I may be kept from every false way: but that sincerely aiming at thy glory in
my undertaking, I may find my labours made acceptable and profitable
unto thy churches and serviceable unto the interests of thy gospel; so let my
God think upon me for good; and spare me according to the greatness of
thy mercy in the blessed Jesus.
— Cotton Mather

We will begin, and we will build, and the God of Heaven, whose servants
we are, will enable us to accomplish our aim.
— Nehemiah 2:20.
 1
Introduction
Modern historians, in their study of the Puritan mind and world view,
have made much of what they call the “ Puritan dilemma,” that apparent
contradiction between ideals and reality, theory and practice, abstinence
and excess, flexibility and structure, uniformity and variety, between “ lov­
ing the world, but with weaned affections.” Puritanism, writes Edmund
Morgan in his work The Puritan Dilemma, did great things for England and
America, “ but only by creating in the men and women it affected a tension
which was at best painful and at worst unbearable.” 1
Puritanism required that a man devote his life to seeking salvation,
but told him he was helpless to do anything but evil. Puritanism re­
quired that he rest his whole hope in Christ but taught him that Christ
would utterly reject him unless before he was born God had foreor­
dained his salvation. Puritanism required that man refrain from sin
but told him he would sin anyhow. Puritanism required that he reform
the world in the image of God’s holy kingdom but taught him that the
evil of the world was incurable and inevitable. Puritanism required
that he work to the best of his ability at whatever task was set before
him and partake of the good things that God had filled the world with,
but told him he must enjoy his work and his pleasures only, as it were,
absentmindedly, with his attention fixed on G od.2
This is a theme that runs through most of the modern treatment of the
Puritan. Perry Miller, in his Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, 1630-1650 and
The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century, sees the history of
Massachusetts Bay as a series of crises brought on by intellectual dilemmas,
each of which was resolved by the application of Ramus’s logic or Ames’s
covenant theology. Edmund Morgan traces the life of John Winthrop in
much the same terms.
Yet these fundamental dilemmas present a problem to the student of
Puritanism. Looking back at the Puritan, the modern historian can see the
contradictions and dilemmas, but the Puritans who preached the doctrines
and formulated the policies and practices seemed blithely unaware of, or at
least unconcerned about, them. Not that the contradictions did not cause
them problems. They did, for the history of the first sixty years of the
Massachusetts Bay colony contains a variety of efforts and adjustments

'Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma; The Story o f John Winthrop (Boston: Little,
Brown, 1958), p. 7.
2Ibid., pp. 7f.
2—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

designed to deal with these problems. Yet the Puritan leaders did not seem
to understand that the problems were caused by the inherent contradictions
of the Puritan world and life view. At least in an age and climate that gave
careful attention to every problem of life however minute, we find little in
the Puritans’ writings to indicate that they were aware of the fundamental
dilemma which Morgan describes. Why? Did the Puritan have some other
view of the problems that we have not yet understood so that when they ap­
peared he was able to fit them into his mental framework rather than being
disillusioned by them? What understanding of reality did the Puritan have
that enabled him to cope realistically with the problems of life without
either denying his theological perspective or separating from the world into
isolation and asceticism? Further, why did these problems arise in the first
place, and if he was able to cope with them so well, why did the Holy Com­
monwealth ultimately fail?
It is my purpose in this work to re-examine the Puritan’s own understand­
ing of reality and its implications for his social and institutional thought. It
will be my thesis that the dilemmas faced by the Puritans can be traced, not
to a contradictory position inherent in the Puritan theology and world view,
but rather to the adoption of a position that was in contradiction to their
Calvinistic philosophy. We shall see that in these particular positions the
Puritan in some way asserted the autonomy of human thought, reason,
ability, or institutions in place of the revealed authority he claimed to have
in the Bible. The dilemmas resulted from that assertion of human
autonomy. In the light of this principle, we shall see many things that have
been difficult to understand about the Puritan world view and practice fall
into place in a satisfactory way. Also many of the questions that historians
have persistently raised about Puritanism are clarified or sharpened in the
light of this principle, if not answered or eliminated as insignificant.
It is not being critical of the Puritans to observe that they did not achieve
perfectly their “ due form of government both civil and ecclesiastical.” It is
enough that they worked their forms out substantially. The substantial suc­
cesses became the Holy Commonwealth at its best; the imperfections in it
are what have come down to us as the Puritan dilemmas. These dilemmas
were the weak points that ultimately caused the failure of the Holy Com­
monwealth. It is my purpose to show that these dilemmas can be traced
back in each instance to an assertion of human autonomy and to show the
problems that resulted from those assertions in the various areas of Puritan
life.
It should be noted that I have taken the liberty of modernizing the text in
its spelling and capitalization whenever I have quoted the Puritans directly
unless doing so would alter the meaning of the passage. My justification for
doing this is based on Alden Vaughan’s comment that
. . . modern readers are entitled to a modern format — not a bowdler­
ized or expurgated text, but a readable one that preserves the flavor
 INTRODUCTION—3

and sense of the original without the barriers to understanding im­

posed by erratic orthography and inconsistent punctuation. Today’s
reader wants, I believe, an insight into the Puritan experience rather
than an exercise in typographical gymnastics. . . . The goal of Puritan
writing was didactic — to get the message across as widely and as pro­
foundly as possible.3

‘Alden T. Vaughan (ed.), The Puritan Tradition in America, 1620-1730 (Columbia, South
Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1972), pp. xxvi f.
 2
Historiographical Background
The purpose of the Puritans in coming to America, said John Winthrop,
was to “ seek out a place to live and associate under a due form of govern­
ment both civil and ecclesiastical.” 1 The end they had in mind, he con­
tinued, was
. . . to improve our lives to do more service to the Lord and to com­
fort and increase the body of Christ of which we are members, so that
ourselves and our posterity may be better preserved from the common
corruptions of this evil world in order to serve the Lord and work out
our salvation under the power and purity of His holy ordinances.2
As a statement of purpose, W inthrop’s statement is clear enough, as were
the efforts of the Puritans to create a due form of civil and ecclesiastical
government. But as they went about their efforts in Massachusetts, the
Puritans had to face several different problems, crises, dilemmas, and com­
promises in order to implement their plans. And in the nearly 350 years
since the arrival of the Puritans in Massachusetts Bay, historians of the
period have been at pains to explain on one hand the Puritans and their view
of the world, and on the other, the problems and successes or failures which
they experienced.
The efforts began with the Puritans themselves, whose writings either
magnified or criticized the New England orthodoxies. John W inthrop’s
Journal (or The History o f New England), Edward Johnson’s Wonder
Working Providence o f Zion ’s Saviour in New England, and William Brad­
ford’s O f Plymouth Plantation were all written by first-generation Puritans
about contemporary events, but from a point of view that was generally
adulatory. The dominant theme, writes Alden T. Vaughan,
. . . was not critical but . . . excessively complimentary . . . . From
Bradford’s humble narrative, Cotton Mather’s pretentious but reveal­
ing Magnolia, and John W inthrop’s candid Journal — half history,
half diary — flowed material enough for any filiopietistic historian to
tell the Puritan story as the fathers themselves would have wanted it.J

'John Winthrop, “ A Model of Christian Charity,” 1493-1754: a New World, Vol. I of The
Annals o f America, ed. Mortimer J. Adler (18 vols.; Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica,
1968), p. 114.
2Ibid.
3Alden T. Vaughan (ed.), The Puritan Tradition in America, 1620-1730 (Columbia, South
Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1972), p. xvi.
 6—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

New England’s critics were equally prolific. Dissenters from the or­
thodoxy of New England wrote and published their criticisms of New
England as well as their versions of what happened when the Puritans im­
plemented their Holy Commonwealth. Such works as Roger Williams’
Bloody Tenet o f Persecution, Thomas M orton’s New English Canaan,
Samuel Gorton’s Simplicities Defense A g a in st. . . That Seven-headed
Church Government in New England, George Bishop’s New England
Judged, and John Child’s New England’s Jonas Cast Up not only found
willing readers in their day, but also became the basic sources for later
historians to use in evaluating and criticizing the Puritans’ efforts to
establish due forms in church and state.
Following upon these first-generation (contemporary) accounts came the
first of the historians of the Massachusetts Bay experience. The early
historians were also “ excessively complimentary” and filiopietistic, telling
the story, as Vaughan put it, as the fathers themselves would have wanted it
told. What that way was has been examined by Harry M. Ward in his study
of five colonial historians, William Hubbard, Cotton Mather, Thomas
Prince, Thomas Hutchinson, and Jeremy Belknap, each of whom repre­
sented a succeeding generation from 1670 to 1790.4 He found that they all
agreed that a primary motive of the Puritans had been to secure purity of
worship, but they had found it hard, once in America, to maintain the
discipline and devotion which their faith demanded, especially in the second
generation, which wearied of the cause. Thus, says Ward, Puritan
historians even in their own time were concerned about the declension of
religious life.5 He goes on to point out how the early historians of New
England handled some of the Puritans’ major problems in implementing
the Holy Commonwealth. He notes that the earlier historians were more
concerned by the issue of religious purity while the later historians were
more interested in the desire for religious liberty. Yet Ward observes that
although the later historians (Hutchinson and Belknap)
. . . did not discount as a motivation the quest for purity, the atten­
tiveness of the Massachusetts state to doctrinal purity was justified, in
part, because of a real danger of infiltration of corrupting influences
from the Church of England.6
O f the problem of freedom of conscience and toleration, Ward notes that
all the later historians stressed the point that freedom of conscience grew

4Harry M. Ward, “ The Search for American Identity: Early Historians of New England,”
Perspectives on Early American History: Essays in Honor o f Richard B. Morris, ed. Alden T.
Vaughan and George Athan Billias (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), pp. 40-62.
5Ibid., p. 47.
6Ibid.
 HISTORIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND—7

with the passing of time. But they all believed that “ religious freedom had
to be balanced with the interests of legitimate authority.” 7
In considering those “ men of stature whose names should be etched in
the cornerstone of American liberty,” Ward notes that Puritan historians
“ invariably followed one rule: they indiscriminately honored all those in
authority in church and state.” * But dissenters were seen as “ trouble­
makers.” Of Roger Williams, the historians reflected mixed opinions. The
early historians (Hubbard and Mather) admired his determination but
regarded him as an “ irresponsible radical” in religion and politics who was
“ unstable of m ind,” while Hutchinson and Belknap found Williams to be a
“ true worker” for religious liberty and freedom of conscience.9
On the subject of the source and form of New England’s institutions and
society, the historians of early New England considered the Americans to be
the freest of all men since they had the liberties of freeborn Englishmen and
yet had full liberty in creating their government and institutions. The
American experiment was unique in that the governments of whatever level
were created by civil compact. Mather and Prince, notes Ward, saw this
tendency to form a civil compact as an outworking of the congregational
way which was practiced in the New England churches, while Hutchinson
concluded that they were simply offshoots of English liberty.10 But all the
historians agreed that the founders left “ an important legacy” : “ the idea
that men make governments and that authority derives from the body of
freemen.” 11
They also agreed that the viability of New England’s institutions depend­
ed on the character of its people and their leaders. The members of the com­
munity were expected to work together for the common good and to exer­
cise magnanimity, courage, confidence, patience, and benevolence.12 The
leaders were to be men of ability and experience and were to rule not for
power, but for the common good.11
The story as the Puritan fathers themselves would have wanted it told,
then, reconciled most of the problems and compromises between theory and
practice in favor of the position taken by the orthodox leadership of
Massachusetts.
But while the seventeenth and eighteenth-century historians had only
begun the “ apotheosis” of the Puritan fathers, says Vaughan, “ it took the
early nineteenth, with its search for national heroes and a national past, to
complete the apotheosis. . . . ” Vaughan quotes George Bancroft as a

1Ibid., p. 48.
iIbid., p. 54.
9Ibid.
"ibid., p. 56.
"Ibid.
"Ibid.
"Ibid., p. 57
8—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

typical example: “ Puritanism was a life-giving spirit; activity, thrift, in­

telligence, followed in its train; and, as for courage, a coward and a Puritan
never went together.” 14
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, however, the pendulum began
to swing back. In 1887 Brooks Adams attacked the “ Puritan myth” in his
Emancipation o f Massachusetts. He, and others who shared his views, con­
tended that Puritanism fostered political and religious intolerance and that
only with the overthrow of the theocratic rule and the development of
secular thought did emancipation come to Massachusetts.
In 1892 Charles Francis Adams described Puritanism in Massachusetts as
an ice age, with progress coming in spite of the Puritans rather than because
of them:
Massachusetts had its ice age, . . . sterile, forbidding, unproduc­
tive, its history dotted only with boulders and stunted growth. . . . It
is barely possible that New England, contrary to all principle and pre­
cedent, may have profited by the harshness and bigotry which for a
time suppressed all freedom of thought in Massachusetts; but it is far
more likely that the slow results afterwards there achieved came not­
withstanding that drawback, rather than in consequence of the disci­
pline it afforded.15
And by 1921 when James Truslow Adams applied the economic and
historical philosophies of Charles Beard to the Puritan period, the pro­
gressive, materialist, and economic determinist views were thoroughly
established.16 From the progressive view, the early history of New England
was tragic, summarizes Vaughan:
Conforming to neither the religious nor the political orthodoxy of
the mother country, the New England colonies imposed a self-
centered, quasi-independent, intolerant regime on all who entered
their corner of the New World — a corner to which they had no such
rights of absolute rule.17
In contrast to Oliver Cromwell in England, who slew his enemies but grant­
ed “ some leeway in matters of conscience and behavior,” this interpreta­
tion continues, the New England church and state demanded and enforced
conformity to Puritan precepts. Those who challenged the “ political and
ecclesiastical oligarchies . . . paid a high price for the effrontery.” But in
the end, “ the combined power of the suppressed majority revolted quietly
from below, while an antagonized crown, applying imperial pressure from

1V aughan, The Puritan Tradition, p. xvii.

"Ibid.
1Edm und S. Morgan (ed.), The Founding o f Massachusetts: Historians and the Sources
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1964), p.45.
1Vaughan, The Puritan Tradition, p. xv.
 HISTORIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND—9

across the sea, brought the downfall of the Puritan stronghold in New
England.” " By the end of the seventeenth century New England had been
turned from a Puritan community, the Holy Commonwealth, into ‘‘Yankee
land” as the franchise had been broadened and the Congregational
establishment ended. This interpretation was that o f the progressive
historians and culminated in H. L. Mencken’s famous dictum that
‘‘Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be
happy.” 19
But in the late 1920’s a reaction began to set in against the economic
determinism and “ present-mindedness” of the progressives.20 It began with
the publication in 1925 of Kenneth Murdock’s biography, Increase Mather:
The Foremost American Puritan, followed in 1930 by Samuel Eliot
Morison’s Builders o f the Bay Colony, and by Perry Miller’s Orthodoxy in
Massachusetts, 1630-1650 in 1933.
Morison set the new tone in his introduction:
Even by enlarging the scope of biography beyond the conventional
lines of piety and politics, it is not easy to describe these people truth­
fully, yet with meaning to moderns. For the men of learning and
women of gentle nurture who led a few thousand plain folk to plant a
new England on ungrateful soil were moved by purposes utterly
foreign to the present America. Their object was not to establish pros­
perity or prohibition, liberty or democracy, or indeed anything of cur­
rently recognized value. Their ideals were comprehended vaguely in
the term puritanism, which nowadays has acquired various secondary
and degenerate meanings. These ideals, real and imaginary, of early
Massachusetts, were attacked by historians of Massachusetts long
before “ debunking” became an accepted biographical mode; for it is
always easier to condemn an alien way o f life than to understand it.
My attitude toward seventeenth-century puritanism has passed
through scorn and boredom to a warm interest and respect. The ways
of the puritans are not my ways, and their faith is not my faith; never­
theless they appear to me a courageous, humane, brave, and signifi­
cant people.21
While these new revisionist historians painted a more favorable picture of
the Puritans, they avoided addressing themselves directly to the old argu­
ment over the relative benefit of the Puritan experiment. They concentrated
instead on understanding Puritanism and its theology, sociology, and
philosophy with all their themes and variations. As a result they drew a pic­
ture of the Holy Commonwealth that was at once more flattering and more

"Ibid.
"ibid., p. xviii.
20Ibid.
2'Samuel Eliot Morison, Builders o f the Bay Colony (2nd. ed.; Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1958), p. vf.
10—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

honestly critical. The revisionist historians agreed that the Puritan way,
while restrictive, proved flexible, varied, and even somewhat tolerant in
practice.22 The Puritans gave to New England an intellectual theology which
in turn, was applied by them to their political, economic, social, and
cultural institutions.
The revisionist historians were intellectual in their emphasis. Puritanism,
by this emphasis, was best understood intellectually, and all the problems
the Puritans faced in implementing the Holy Commonwealth were best ex­
plained as the fruit of conflicting ideas rather than economic, social, or en­
vironmental factors. Perry Miller in the foreword to his Orthodoxy in
Massachusetts, 1630-1650, addressed the matter directly:
Upon the verge of publication I am fully conscious that in the work
to be offered I have treated in a somewhat cavalier fashion certain of
the most cherished conventions of current historiography. I have at­
tempted to tell of a great folk movement with an utter disregard of the
economic and social factors. I lay myself open to the charge of being
so very naive as to believe that the way men think has some influence
upon their actions, of not remembering that these ways of thinking
have been officially decided by modern psychologists to be generally
just so many rationalizations constructed by the subconscious to
disguise the pursuit of more tangible ends.23
Miller went on to say that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
“ certain men of decisive importance took religion seriously” and that “ they
often followed spiritual dictates in comparative disregard of ulterior con­
siderations” and that “ those who led the Great Migration to Massachusetts
and who founded that colony were predominantly men of this stamp.” 24
Morison, likewise, at the end of his famous appendix to the Builders o f the
Bay Colony in which he addressed himself to the social and economic deter­
minism of James Truslow Adams, wrote:
My own opinion, one arrived at by considerable reading of what the
Puritans wrote, is that religion, not economics nor politics, was the
center and focus of the Puritan dissatisfaction with England, and the
Puritan migration to New England. When you find a Puritan writing
about the fine material prospects of the new world, he is usually trying
to counteract the arguments that liberty of conscience is not worth the
loss of friends, comforts and civilizations.25
Morison, Miller, and those who followed them in the period 1930-1960,
wrought a historiographical revolution. The precise nature and content of
their revolution will be discussed below; it is sufficient at this point to note

22Vaughan, The Puritan Tradition, p.xx.

23Perry Miller, Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, 1630-1650 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1959), p. xi.
2AIbid.
25Morison, Builders, p. 386.
 HISTORIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND—11

that in explaining the problems and dilemmas faced by the Puritans in im­
plementing the Holy Commonwealth, the revisionists neither ignored the
problems nor reconciled them in favor of either the orthodox leadership or
the dissenters. By their intellectual analysis of ideas and their development,
they laid a base for analyzing the Puritan’s problems and dilemmas and for
understanding the social and political institutions that developed from
them. Miller in three major works set the framework for all future analysis
of Puritanism. They were his Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, 1630-1650
(1933), in which he traced the roots of Puritan thought back to theological
developments in England and showed their application in Massachusetts;
The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (1939), which discussed
the Puritan view of life and the world in the context of medieval and refor-
mational philosophy; and The New England Mind: From Colony to Prov­
ince (1953), in which the history of Massachusetts from 1650 to 1730 is
viewed against the backdrop of Puritan theology and philosophy and its
modification in the new world.
More recent historians, since about 1960, have begun to challenge the
conclusions of Morison, Miller, and their successors, accusing Miller, in
Vaughan’s words, “ of seeing too much intellectual system in the Puritan
mind, of ascribing to it too much theological uniqueness, and of treating
New England Puritanism as a static phenomenon.” 26
And while most of the revisionism is aimed at Miller — the most im­
posing target — by implication at least much of it undercuts the work
of Miller’s contemporaries. Yet on these and other matters there is lit­
tle consensus . . . ; historians are not infrequently at loggerheads over
such fundamental questions as the distinctions between Anglican and
Puritan outlooks.27
The post-Milleran period has been described as a “ dissensus” and as a
“ disintegration.” Michael McGiffert, observing that Miller’s work is com­
ing under increasng criticism, comments that “ one sign of disintegration is
the enthusiasm with which students of Puritanism and New England declare
themselves to be ‘pluralists* and announce that the early culture of the
region was highly ‘pluralistic.’ ” 21
But, says Vaughan, it would be misleading
. . . to view the current historiographical trend as essentially an attack
on an earlier school, merely another turn of the wheel. For at bottom
the new scholars are less concerned with challenging the wisdom of
their elders . . . than in asking questions ignored or only tangentially
answered by the historians of the 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s . . . In seeking

26Vaughan, The Puritan Tradition, p. xxi.

27Ibid., xxii.
2*Michael McGiffert, “ American Puritan Studies in the 1960’s,” William and Mary
Quarterly, 3rd Series, XXVII (1970), 40.
12—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

to answer these questions and others, the new scholars almost in­
variably stress the diversity, change, and complexity within
seventeenth-century New England. And increasingly students of
American Puritanism employ concepts and methods borrowed from
other disciplines, especially sociology and psychology. The very ter­
minology stressed in recent works hints at new ways of looking at an
old subject: “ irony,” “ paradigm,” “ tension,” “ paradox.” 29
The new scholars tend to be more institution-centerd than idea-centered.
They are concerned with the social and isntitutional history of ealry New
England without reference to the intellectual and pietistic aspect of
Puritanism set forth by Miller and his successors. After corresponding in
1968 with 46 scholars concerning the present state of Puritan studies,
McGiffert wrote that
It being noted, for example, that the “ mind” Miller wrote about
was the mind of the articulate, educated few, the question reasonably
follows whether the notions of this “ speaking aristocracy” were
faithfully reflected in the sentiments of the “ silent democracy” either
in the church or among the far more silent crowd of the
unregenerate . . . This question connects with several others in the
historical sociology of New England. Bumstead writes, “ . . . a whole
host of questions remain unanswered: did the writers of the time prac­
tice what they preach? What was the common man thinking (and do­
ing)? What relationship exists between socio-economic factors and
ideas? Below the ideational level, what did New England really look
like and how did it operate?” 30
On the other hand, Edmund S. Morgan, one of the historians who has
tried to explore the relationship between “ socio-economic factors” and
“ ideas,” between thought and experience, also wrote to McGiffert that
“ great danger . . . lurks in the possibility, perhaps the likelihood, that in­
stitutional historians will try to operate outside the context of ideas” and
that “ it will set the study of New England Puritanism backward if students
of institutions try to magnify their subject matter to the point where it ex­
cludes the intellectual framework in which New England institutions must
be properly viewed.” 31 John Higham, also writing to McGiffert, expressed
his belief that the parting of social and intellectual history would produce a
“ healthy tension between two different but equally revealing types of
historical patterns: the arrangement of people into a functioning society.” 32
McGiffert himself comments that “ eventually that tension may be resolved
in a new synthesis in which the inner and outer worlds of New England,
each world more fully and exactly known, will be put together again.” 33

29Vaughan, The Puritan Tradition, pp. xxii-xxiv.

30McGiffert, “ American Puritan Studies,” p. 59.
3lIbid., p. 60.
32Ibid., p. 60.
33Ibid.
 HISTORIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND—13

Thus Morgan, himself summarizing the present state of Puritan studies,

has observed that “ the reconsideration of institutions in the light of
ideas . . . will surely suggest new insights to every scholar endowed with im­
agination” and that this reconsideration of institutions will in turn prompt
reconsideration of the ideas behind the institutions:
Doubtless we should continually reassess the relationship between
ideas and institutions. Certainly there is a need to study the institu­
tions themselves and not simply extrapolate their history from the
ideas that accompanied them. But if we dismiss ideas as a mere projec­
tion of institutions, in early New England at least, we will be reduced
to antiquarianism, if not eccentricity.34
Like the intellectual historians, the institutional historians do not speak
directly to the problems and compromises of the Massachusetts Bay experi­
ment as either good or bad, blessing or benefit. They also were only in­
terested in coming to an understanding of what Puritanism was and what it
did and how and why it developed the way it did. They were not interested
either in attacking the Puritans or in defending them, merely in describing
and understanding them. That is why the focus of the debate has changed
from criticism or defense of the Puritans (as in the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries) to the debate concerning ideas or institutions as the
basis for understanding Puritanism.
The modern debate over Puritanism led McGiffert to conclude that “ at
present Puritan and New England historiography is remarkable more for
vitality than for coherence.” 35 But Vaughan concluded that the problem
may be inherent more in Puritanism than in historiography. Puritanism, he
wrote,
. . . is difficult to pin down: it encompasses divergent, even contradic­
tory, qualities and personalities; it changes over time; it has subtle and
far-reaching ramifications. Perhaps its very illusiveness helps to ac­
count for the vitality and longevity of the Puritan tradition in
America.36
This “ illusiveness” and complexity is what makes the historian’s work
difficult. The web of connections between ideas and institutions is so in­
tricate that every new fact discovered may have ramifications of great
significance which lead in turn to reassesment of other ideas, facts, institu­
tions, and events. This means that the student of Puritan history must main­
tain a full awareness of the larger context of his study and must seek out the

34Edmund S. Morgan, “ The Historians of Early New England,” The Reinterpretation o f

Early American History: Essays in Honor o f John Edwin Pomfret, ed. Ray Allen Billington
(San Marino, California: The Huntington Library, 1966), pp. 59, 60.
33McGiffert, “ American Puritan Studies,” p. 59.
3Vaughan, The Puritan Tradition, p. xxiv.
14—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

connections of his topic with everything else that was going on at the same
time. The study of the Puritans is vital and energetic because every new fact
can have great impact on the interpretation of the Puritans since every part
of Puritan life was so intricately interwoven.37
The interwovenness of Puritan life and thought also presents other prob­
lems of interpretation, definition, and methodology. In an essay designed to
identify these problems, David B. Hall identifies three of them: (1) the pro­
blem of determining how Puritanism was “ socially functional” ; (2) the pro­
blem of marking off the “ historical and intellectual boundaries” of the
Puritan movement, periodizing and inventorying both its distinctive and
shared religious ideas, and (3) the problem of constructing a definition of
Puritanism that will include the range of “ Puritan types,” especially ac­
counting for the dynamic, expansive, “ restless,” nature of Puritanism.”
The problems of defining Puritanism and of marking off its historical
and intellectual boundaries are not only closely connected, but also founda­
tional for any consideration of how Puritanism was socially functional. The
basic question, “ How does one define Puritanism?” is one to which the
answers given have become increasingly complex as studies of the Puritans
have multiplied.39
Of modern historians, Perry Miller’s definition of Puritanism was prob­
ably the least complicated: “ Puritanism may perhaps best be described as
that point of view, that philosophy of life, that code of values, which was
carried to New England by the first settlers in the early seventeenth
century.” 40 Miller continued to say that Puritanism was “ not only a
religious creed, it was a philosophy and a metaphysic; it was an organiza­
tion of m an’s whole life, emotional and intellectual, to a degree which has
not been sustained by any denomination stemming from it.” 41 Miller’s
reconstruction of Puritanism in The New England M ind developed and
detailed that creed, philosophy, and metaphysic in what he called the recon­
ciliation of piety and intellect, but more recent scholarship has not been
satisfied with either Miller’s definition or his treatment of it, it being too
much centered in the intellectual structure of Puritanism, rather than in the
spiritual. Even in his spiritual life, according to Miller, the Puritan intellect
remained in control:
But if the religion of the Puritan was intense, it was not foolhardy.
He was ecstatic, but not insane. He employed self-analysis, medita-

37Morgan, “ The Historians of Early New England,” p. 59.

s,David B. Hall, “ Understanding the Puritans,” The State o f American History, ed.
Herbert J. Bass (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1970), pp. 330-349.
"Ibid., p. 330.
40Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson (eds.), The Puritans (2 vols.; rev. ed.; New York:
Harper and Row, 1963), I, 1.
*'Ibid., p. 4.
 HISTORIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND—15

tion, and incessant soul-searching to drive out sin from one

stronghold after another; in every siege he had to be not only valiant,
but self-controlled, patient, wary, and crafty. . . . The exhilaration o f
faith is known to the heart o f the believer, but. . . . those inward sup­
ports are rem ote from public view. Appearances, therefore, are
deceiving, and the saint must keep his wits about him; he must remain
calm in the midst o f ardor, he must burn with fervor, but always be
detached and analytical, to make sure that his agitation is genuinely of
the spirit, not o f mere hum an cupidity, and to guard against suf­
focating the flame with false assurances and outw ard c o n fo rm ity /2
Alan Simpson sought to correct M iller’s narrow conception of
Puritanism when he asked, “ How does one define Puritanism ?” and
answered that Puritanism was the whole movement that began in the six­
teenth century to exhort men to prepare for a miracle o f grace and ended by
asserting the presence of the Holy Spirit in every individual.43 It therefore
included every group in England from the Presbyterians at one extreme to
the Quakers on the other. They all shared a dissatisfaction with the Church
of England, and that dissatisfaction springs from the basic religious ex­
perience o f conversion called the “ new birth ” :
However Puritans differ, they all have something in common. . .
They separate the world of nature from the world o f grace. They insist
that the natural man cannot grow in grace; he has to be reborn. They
explain the rebirth as a vivid personal experience in which the individ­
ual soul encounters the wrath and redemptive love o f God. It is an ex­
perience for which the church may prepare a man, and after which it
may claim to guide him, but which in its essential nature is beyond the
church’s control.44
The new birth results in a new approach to life. The P uritan’s life is a
search for regeneration, which is achieved in conversion, and then for sanc­
tification — a character which is appropriate to the regenerate. That charac­
ter is marked by a sense of responsibility to God and to his law and ex­
presses itself in self-examination and self-denial and self-discipline. This
combination of motivation and discipline constitutes the basic drive of
Puritanism. The same combination caused Milton to observe that Cromwell
could conquer the world because he had first conquered himself.45 Simpson
calls it “ holy violence under compression.” 46
The institutional historians criticize both Miller and Simpson. Miller’s
assumption that Puritanism was a philosophy and metaphysic as well as a

“Ibid., pp. 283f.

43Alan Simpson, Puritanism in Old and New England (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1955), p. 1.
“Ibid., p. 5.
“Ibid., p. 6. See also note 9, p. 116.
“Ibid.
16—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

religious creed tended to minimize the “ restlessness” within Puritanism,

says Hall. But the more inclusive definition put forth by Simpson and his
emphasis on “ experience” and “ thrust” are also weak, though valuable:
. . . though they permit the Quakers to reenter the fold as authentic
Puritans, their meaning seems inherently subjective, and they may act
to exclude the array of distinction that Miller so successfully identified
as woven into the texture of Puritanism.47
Other of the institutional historians argue that the intellectual historians
have concentrated only on the public writings of the “ articulate few” as the
“ true mirror” of the New England mind and therefore have created their
own stereotype of Puritanism, a stereotype which has little to do with New
England.48 What are we to describe as Puritan? asks Darrett Rutman,
. . . the ideals of the articulate few which, relative to society and
authority, were neither unique nor pervasive, or the actuality of the
man in the street — more accurately, the man in the village
lane — which does not fit the ideals? The very fact that such a ques­
tion can be asked would seem to imply that the description of New
England in terms of Puritanism, or of Puritanism in terms of New
England, is erroneous.49
What is needed, then, is a definition of Puritanism that will enable us to
account for the Puritan types without limiting our study to the articulate
few or to the inarticulate many and at the same time enable us to identify
the range of Puritan types and experiences from the intellectual to the en­
thusiast and from the systematic theology of Calvin to the dynamism of the
new birth.
As for the historical and intellectual limits of Puritanism, the problem is
to locate Puritanism on the time scale between the Reformation and the
Enlightenment, between the theology of Calvin and the coming of pietism,
which largely gave up the effort to maintain the unity of philosophy and
religion.
In between, of course, the intellectual limits of Puritanism are tied up
with the definition of Puritanism. We have seen how the expansion of the
definition of Puritanism led to an expansion of the intellectual limits by in­
cluding the Quakers and other left-wing groups in the definition. If the
essence of Puritanism is the new birth, then all groups which share the new
birth are Puritans. Other historians have not been as inclusive as Simpson
and Hall. Perry Miller noted that taking Puritan culture as a whole, about

47Hall, ‘‘Understanding the Puritans,” p. 332.

4,Darrett B. Rutman, “ The Mirror of Puritan Authority,” Law and Authority in Colonial
America: Selected Essays ed. George Athan Billias (Barre, Massachusetts: Barre Publishers,
1965), p. 149.
"Ibid., p. 164.
 HISTORIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND—17

ninety percent of that culture was not Puritan, but simply English: the in­
tellectual life, scientific knowledge and concepts, morals and manners,
customs and prejudices were common to all Englishmen. The other ten per­
cent “ . . . made all the difference between the Puritan and his fellow
Englishman, made for him so much difference that he pulled up stakes . . .
and migrated to a wilderness rather than submit them to apparent
defeat.” 30 What knit that ten percent together was a certain set of ideas, or
presuppositions: they saw a separation between nature and grace, they saw
both God and man as active forces in the world, and they shared a common
eschatology.31 Yet among those who were of Puritan stripe in England, the
denominational categories are not too useful, tending to obstruct and fix
and therefore obscure the more or less flexible relationship which the
Puritan groups had with the Reformed tradition during the period. All
Puritan groups of whatever stripe held several beliefs in common,
regardless of denomination: the “ revitalization of the layman’s role in the
church, the ‘purification’ of church membership, the emphasis on the
autonomy of the local congregation, and the separation of church and
state.” 52 In short, while the Puritans had a rather limited, but specific, in­
ventory of ideas that separated them from other Englishmen, yet the groups
that were formed within Puritanism itself were not so rigidly defined as the
denominational categories imply. There was flexibility and development
within the groups that made up the movement.33
Historically, Puritanism began as a movement for reform within the
Church of England in the latter half of the sixteenth century, following the
Elizabethan settlement of 1559. The reformers considered themselves
members of the Church of England and not as founders of a new church or
denomination. It is common to associate Puritanism with certain social
class movements and aspirations as well as political developments of the six­
teenth and seventeenth centuries. But it is important to realize that the
Puritans never started out to be dissenters and revolutionaries. Puritanism
may have had a revolutionary social effect, but, as Alan Simpson has
observed,
Puritanism never offered itself as anything but a doctrine of salva­
tion, and it addressed itself neither directly nor indirectly to social
classes, but to man as man . . . [I]ts attractions as a commitment were
such that it made converts in all classes — among aristocrats, country
gentry, businessm en, intellectuals, freeholders, and small
tradesmen.54

50Miller and Johnson, The Puritans, I, 7.

51Hall, “ Understanding the Puritans,” p. 340.
"Ibid., p. 339.
"Ibid.
“ Simpson, Puritanism in Old and New England, p. 11.
18—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

Genuine Puritans were never a majority in England, but they found their
influence growing as they spoke to the issues of the time and as England
headed toward a political crisis in the struggle between the Parliament and
the Crown. The constitutional opposition to the Stuart monarchy was not a
Puritan movement as such, but in it the Puritan found his “ best hope” of
achieving a reform in the Church of England.55 It is this connection with the
Church of England that can be used to define and limit Puritanism
historically, says Hall.
From that time [1559] until the accession of William III, most Puri­
tans thought of themselves as members of the Church, not as founders
of new churches. It was only when the religious settlement under
William denied the legitimacy of this claim that the connections be­
tween English Puritans and the Church were finally severed. On this
side of the Atlantic, the new charter of 1691 and the events associated
with it mark a similar end to the affiliation.56
Finally, the problem of determining how Puritanism was socially func­
tional is one of determining how Puritanism was related to the culture and
social structure of its time, and how it affected that culture and society. Hall
writes that
Puritanism had social sources and social consequences; were histor­
ians to define precisely which groups supported (and dissented from)
the Puritan program, as well as the movement’s consequences for the
broader culture, they would move closer to an understanding of its
nature.57
There seems to be little debate among the historians as to the purpose or
intentions of the Puritans. According to A.S.P. Woodhouse, the active
presence of the ideal of the “ holy community” is the only satisfactory basis
for a working definition of Puritanism in its social and political aspects:
“ Puritanism means a determined and varied effort to erect the holy com­
munity and to meet, with different degrees of compromise and adjustment,
the problem of its conflict with the world.” 58 That holy community in New
England was an experiment in Christian living which sought to reconstruct
the church and every other institution and facet of life in the light of that
world view inherent in their Calvinistic theology. That theology demanded
that they look anew at the form and nature of government, the community,
the family, and to have reformed attitudes toward work and leisure. In most
cases, writes Vaughan,

''Ibid., p. 31.
“ Hall, “ Understanding the Puritans,” p. 339.
"Ibid., pp. 330f.
“ A.S.P. Woodhouse (ed.), Puritanism and Liberty: Being the Army Debates (1647-9) from
the Clarke Manuscripts with Supplementary Documents (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1965), p. 37.
 HISTORIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND—19

Puritanism did not cause its adherents to hold views radically differ­
ent from their countrymen’s but rather to see things in a subtly differ­
ent light, sometimes dissimilar in kind . . . , sometimes in
intensity . . But put all the subtle differences together and the man
stands out as a Puritan . . . For the Puritan was not quite like other
people. Probing endlessly the implications of Christian doctrine to
himself and to his society, he tried to force both to act accordingly.59
Of course, Vaughan concludes, “ both self and society often resisted,
which accounts not only for the psychic tensions so characteristic of the
Puritan mind, but also for the turbulent quality of society whenever
Puritans gained the upper hand.” 60
But it is one thing to have such a vision of a holy community or com­
monwealth; it was another one to put it into effect. Only when the founders
came to grips with the problems of embodying the vision in institutions,
writes Simpson, did the “ specialty” of the New England way emerge with
its attendant implications: (1) that no diversity of opinion in fundamentals
would be permitted, (2) that a “ due form” of civil and ecclesiastical govern­
ment would be set up, and (3) that the clergy would have to be men well-
instructed and yet with “ saving knowledge.” 61 All these implications were
necessary if the holy community were to be established and to remain.
Yet, argues Rutman, “ . . . modern historians have drawn a picture of a
highly cohesive and ordered social structure in which authority was om­
nipresent — the authority of the father in the family, of the minister in the
church, of the magistrate in town and commonwealth.” 62 But the record
shows that all was not so unified or cohesive in the holy commonwealth, nor
was the ideal ever a reality in New England. It is this point that Rutman uses
to call for a modification of Puritan ideas in light of Puritan institutions
and their development.63
Thus Puritanism, as it functioned socially, developed the institutions
which became the New England Way and also gave rise to the “ psychic ten­
sions” and “ turbulent quality” of life which led the historians to remark on
the existence of a Puritan dilemma. Whether it affected the society in the
way described by the intellectual historians, who studied the public writings,
or in the way described by the institutional historians, who read the voting
records, land deeds, and population charts, is an open question. On it rests
much of the argument concerning the declension of New England. Was
New England orthodox and authoritarian in the first generation, suffering a

"Vaughan, The Puritan Tradition, p. xiii.

t0Ibid.
“ Simpson, Puritanism in Old and New England, pp. 26-29.
“ Rutman, “ The Mirror of Puritan Authority,” p. 150.
"Ibid., p. 163.
20—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

declension in later generations, as Cotton Mather and Perry Miller have it,
or was it heterogeneous from the very beginning? If Rutman’s argument
stands, based on the records reflecting the “ man in the village lane,” then
“ . . . the concept of a Puritan golden age, followed by decline,
disappears.” The declension was, in large part, “ nothing more than the in­
sistence by the generality upon a relationship between the individual and
society rather different from that held to by the leaders.” 64 Rutman con­
cludes:
The historian must, of course, address himself to the problem of
New England’s intellectuals. Isolated from reality as they were, they
clung for almost half a century to ideals which grew more outdated
with the passing of each day, and then gradually and subtly accom­
modated their ideas to the realities of the situation facing them. But
their accommodations and the forces in society that caused them to
make changes represent a much more important aspect of history than
the mere description of “ Puritanism.” And the historian must
dispense with the easy generalization that such leaders “ shaped” New
England’s culture regardless of what “ the rank and file may have
wanted.” He must seek instead to understand the rank and file, their
motivations, aspirations, and achievements. For in the last analysis
which is more vital, an ideological “ Puritanism” divorced from reali­
ty which has received so much attention over the years, or the reality
which has received so little attention but which was in essence laying
down the basis for two-and-a-half centuries of American history
ahead?65
These, then, are some of the problems that face anyone who sets out to
study the Puritans. We have noted the problems and some of the major
answers that have been given. These are the problems that must be address­
ed and the answers that must be considered. An adequate definition of
Puritanism, concludes Hall, must take them all into consideration. It
. . . must seek to unite the experiential dimension with the formal
structure of the Puritan intellect. It must locate the movement within a
particular time period, and with reference to the Reformed tradition
and Pietism. It must identify the bond between the social sources of
the movement and its history, between its rhetoric and its social conse­
quences.66
In the face of these problems, it is the concept of the Puritan dilemma,
more than anything else, that serves as a device around which to organize
and frame such a definition. Let us now consider that device.

“Ibid., p. 164.
“Ibid.
“ Hall, “ Understanding the Puritans,” p. 332.
 3
The Puritan Dilemma
When Rutman claimed that the accommodation of the New England in­
tellectuals to the reality of the situations facing them and the forces in soci­
ety that caused them to make changes represented a much more important
aspect of history than the mere description of Puritanism, he may have had
in mind the history of what is commonly called the “ Puritan dilemma.”
The concept of a fundamental conflict at the heart of Puritanism which ex­
plains several of the problems faced by the Puritans in implementing their
holy commonwealth is a common one among modern historians of
whatever school or persuasion. Perry Miller argued in The New England
Mind: The Seventeenth Century that the tension in the Puritan’s theory of
reason was the key to all the other dilemmas. The Puritans, he said, believed
that they could safely apply human reason to Scripture according to the
rules of “ dialectic” because the “ Word of God and not the creatures” was
the source of their theology: “ . . . in the Puritan mind confidence in the
certainty of God’s Word was matched by an equal confidence in the in­
fallibility of logic.” 1After going on to discuss the roots o f this Puritan trust
in reason and logic, Miller concludes that
the latent conflict in their theory of reason engendered conflicts in
other realms as well, in their theory o f human psychology and in eccle­
siastical practice, and was perhaps the one glaring weakness in their
otherwise perfect system, the single but fatal inconsistency in an other­
wise monumental consistency.2
The fruit of that one fatal flaw in that monumental consistency was what
the Puritan experience was all about and what Miller traced in The New
England Mind: The Seventeenth Century. Edmund Morgan has best
described Miller’s work:
In immense detail and with no quarter given to the simple-minded,
Miller discussed the patristic and scholastic origins of Puritan ideas,
the Puritan’s cosmology, logic, psychology, and rhetoric, their ideas
about the nature of man and God, and the concepts of human
relationship that underlay their political, social, and ecclesiastical in­
stitutions. At every point he suggested the implications, paradoxes,
and tensions, and the way conflicting or diverging ideas were held
together in a system that constituted “ one of the major expressions of

'Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1954), p. 190.
1Ibid., p. 191
 22—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

the Western intellect . . . an organized synthesis of concepts which

are fundamental to our culture.3
In the second volume of The New England Mind, sub-titled From Colony
to Province, Miller showed how the inner tensions of Puritanism increased
as it responded to the various challenges that came to the holy com­
monwealth until paradoxes turned into irreconcilable conflicts and sapped
the strength and confidence of New England.4
Miller’s study was both genetic and definitive, setting the terms of the
discussion for all further consideration. In 1958, Edmund S. Morgan
published a biography of John Winthrop in which he discussed Winthrop’s
life from the standpoint of The Puritan Dilemma, a tension, he said, which
was “ at best painful and at worst unbearable.” 5 The Puritan dilemma was
defined as the problem of “ how to apply a rigorous ethic to the existential
situation without endangering the structure of the community.” 6
David B. Hall used the dilemma concept in his call for a new definition of
Puritanism. He saw the Puritan as caught in the dilemma caused by the
“ dynamic relationship” between this world and the next. The Puritan knew
himself to be “ a mid-point between these worlds, and his striving for self-
discipline, his endless self-scrutiny, was directed toward the end of winning
freedom from this world and entrance to the kingdom . . . ” 7 Another
dilemma facing the Puritans, according to Hall, was the one between schism
and reform. They were resentful of the corruption in the church, yet also
believed that schism and separation was a sin. This dilemma was responsible
for much of the Puritanism’s restlessness and for its fragmentation into
miscellaneous sects.8
A.S.P. Woodhouse saw the Puritan dilemma as one of liberty versus
reform. He notes that the Puritan concern for liberty is not a “ constant
feature” of the Puritan mind since it runs counter to the “ universal trait”
of Puritanism: “ . . . the passionate zeal for positive reform, with the will,
if necessary, to dragoon men into righteousness — or the semblance of
righteousness.” 9

3Edmund S. Morgan, “ The Historians of Early New England,” The Reinterpretation o f

Early American History: Essays in honor o f John Edwin Pomfret, ed. Ray Allen Billington
(San Marino, California: The Huntington Library, 1966), p. 53.
*Ibid.
’Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma; The Story o f John Winthrop (Boston: Little,
Brown, 1958), p.7.
^ m il Oberholzer, Jr., Review of Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma; The Story o f
John Winthrop in the Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XLV (June 1958), 119.
7David B. Hall, “ Understanding the Puritans,” The State o f American History, ed. Herbert
J. Bass (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1970), p. 340.
8Ibid.
9A.S.P. Woodhouse (ed.), Puritanism and Liberty: Being the Army Debates (1647-9) from
the Clarke Manuscripts with Supplementary Documents (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1965), p. 53.
 THE PURITAN DILEMMA—23

. . . The motives are equally authentic: the passionate concern for

liberty and the passionate zeal for reform in the interests of righteous­
ness. Capable of co-operation up to a certain point, they finally re­
main, somewhere near the heart of Puritanism, in a state of potential
and unresolved conflict.10
Finally, Richard Reinitz, in his Tensions in American Puritanism, saw
that the lasting effects of Puritanism both in England and America were
products of its “ inner tensions” :
A religious movement based on a profound insight into the human
condition, Puritanism was able to draw on new sources of energy and
to apply them to a wide range of secular activities. The religious
enthusiasm it tapped has been basic to many movements, but
Puritanism was uniquely able to maintain that enthusiasm and to in­
stitutionalize it. Rooted in a heightened sense of the individual’s con­
frontation with God, Puritanism was nonetheless deeply concerned
with the idea and the actuality of community. Ostensibly aimed at the
past, at the reassertion of ancient values, ironically it contributed
greatly to the breakdown of established social patterns.11
It is obvious from the preceding brief survey that there are several dif­
ferent aspects to the concept of the Puritan dilemma, some more serious
than others. Several words have been used to describe this dilemma, among
them “ dilemma,” “ paradox,” “ tension,” “ balance,” and “ irony.”
Regardless of which of these terms is used, it is possible that any of three
different things can be intended. There is, first, a paradoxical, or ironical,
sense in which the alternatives mentioned are paradoxical, but not necessar­
ily contradictory to each other. The historian who remarked that the
Puritans came to America to do good and ended up doing well has called
our attention to an ironic fact about the Puritan experience, but not to a
necessary contradiction.
There are many examples that could be cited to illustrate this aspect of the
Puritan dilemma. What has been called the Puritan work ethic is an exam­
ple of the unintended consequences of the Puritan doctrine of the
“ calling,” wherein each man was seen as being called by God to a particular
occupation or profession. Reinitz has observed that
The overt function of the doctrine of the calling was to support the
hierarchical conception of society, but the actual consequences of the
energetic pursuit of a calling could be quite different. . . . The
Puritans as Puritans had no desire to further the development of
capitalism, yet the energies released by the sanctification of work con­
tributed greatly to the increased productivity of modern economic life.
Puritan merchants in dutifully pursuing their calling contributed to

l0lbid.
1’Richard Reinitz (ed.), Tensions in American Puritanism (New York: John Wiley, 1970),
p.9.
24—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

the growth of a market-regulated economy and modern economic in­

dividualism.12
That the Puritans reaped consequences they did not intend was also
shown by Samuel Eliot Morison in his consideration of The Intellectual Life
o f Colonial New England, first published in 1936. Morison pointed out that
in contrast to the other English colonies of the time, the faith of the Puritan
stimulated him to a high degree of intellectual activity. Within ten years of
its founding, Massachusetts Bay had a college, a school system, a printing
press, and a native literature made up of sermons, poetry, and history. In
Puritanism, writes Morison,
. . . New England had a great emotional stimulus to certain forms of
intellectual life. . . . The intellectual alternatives . . . were not Puri­
tanism or humanism, but Puritanism or overwhelming materialism.
. . . Again we have a paradox. Puritanism in New England preserved
far more of the humanist tradition than did non-puritanism in the oth­
er English colonies.13
Another example of unintended consequences was given by Perry Miller
in his essay “ Errand into the Wilderness,” in which he observed that the
Puritans went forth as on an errand as agents of universal reformation, the
chosen nation representing the world, but when the rest of the world moved
off in another direction, the nature of their errand changed and they were
left to do their own business for themselves. They began as a movement on
behalf of mankind and ended as a chosen elite at odds with the rest of the
world.14
Finally, the Puritan demand that men live actively in the world had conse­
quences that the Puritans did not intend. The Puritan idea of a static and
organic society was displaced by the Puritan demand that men take an ac­
tive part in reforming the society. When men were allowed an active part in
political activity, the results were quite different from the static order they
were seeking.15
A second aspect of the concept of the Puritan dilemma can be seen in the
use of the words “ tension” and “ dilemma” to refer to the matter of keep­
ing a balance between two opposed, but equally necessary, focal points,
such as law and liberty, form and freedom, unity and diversity, or piety and
intellect. These were the kind of dilemmas with which John Winthrop strug­
gled, according to Morgan:

nIbid., p. 13.
1Samuel Eliot Morison, The Intellectual Life o f Colonial New England (New York: New
York University Press, 1956), pp. 15-17.
14Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness (New York: Harper and Row, 1956), pp. 1-15.
15Reinitz, Tensions, p. 12.
 THE PURITAN DILEMMA—25

. . . Winthrop gradually reduced the extent of his oscillation between

abstinence and excess. It took time, time to cool the blood, time to
grow in the spiritual strength that alone could hold him to a steady
course of godliness in a world of temptations. But in the end, before
he was forty, he was successful in containing the tension.16
Puritanism abounded in such tensions of balance, and the Puritan thinkers
struggled to maintain the balances, contain the tensions, and to re-explain,
re-reconcile, and reinforce them continually. They did this, as we shall see,
by their doctrine of the covenant and their view of society as made up of a
multiplicity of covenants which interacted with and counter-balanced one
another.
One of the major examples of this kind of tension was, in fact, inherent in
the whole struggle of Puritanism against the Church of England. While the
Puritans were still in England, the tension between uniformity and Puritan
reform had been obvious. “ The medieval principle of uniformity could not
be reconciled with the inveterate tendency of the Reformation to produce
constant variety,” writes Miller, “ unless one party could secure an absolute
control over every corner of the realm; and England was too complex a
society to give such an opportunity to any one faction.” 17 Miller records
that the Puritans regarded their position not as a matter of their own judg­
ment, but as a repetition of the “ highest judgment ever recorded,”
“ . . . and why the King would not listen to it was more than they ever could
comprehend.” 1*
The reasoning behind their emigration, therefore, was clear: “ In order
that they might continue to behold in magistrates the ordinance of God,
they had to escape from those who refused to live up to the part and to
choose for themselves some that would.” 19 In short, they had to gain that
absolute control over every corner of the realm so that they could both
maintain authority and allow the development of a variety limited to the
bounds of Scripture.
The balance of divine sovereignty and human responsibility is another ex­
ample. The Puritanism which came to America was a balance of objectivity
and subjectivity, of head and heart, of faith and action. The Puritans
believed that everything was dependent upon and determined by God, yet
they lived lives full of activity, planning, and direction. They held that
God’s revelation was objective yet applied it subjectively to their personal
experience. Perry Miller saw the doctrine of the covenant of grace as a
means of enabling the Puritan to contain the relationship between the vision

1M organ, The Puritan Dilemma, p p .Ilf.

17Perry Miller, Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, 1630-1650 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1959), p. 52.
"Ibid., p. 51.
"Ibid., p. lOln.
26—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

of a sovereign God and the human intellect. The spectacle of the Puritan
theologians,
. . . struggling in the coils of their doctrine, desperately striving on the
one hand to maintain the subordination of humanity to God without
unduly abasing human values, and on the other hand to vaunt the
powers of the human intellect without losing the sense of divine trans­
cendence, vividly recreates what might be called the central problem
of the seventeenth century as it was confronted by the Puritan mind.20
A final paradox that had to be continually reconciled was the one be­
tween reason and grace in the approach to the Scriptures. Puritanism taught
that reason without grace was helpless, but that the Scriptures were to be
applied to the regenerate life in accord with reason and learning. Harvard
College had been founded in order that Massachusetts might have a learned
clergy. Could reason be used to ensure the truth and orthodoxy of the
discipline? The whole history of Puritanism, writes Simpson,
. . . is a commentary on its failure to satisfy the cravings which its
preaching aroused. It was forever producing rebellions against its own
teachers: rebellions within the learned camp and rebellions from out­
side that camp against the assertion that learned reason had anything
to teach the illuminated spirit.21
A third aspect of the concept of the Puritan dilemma comes in the use of
the words “ tension” or “ dilemma” to mean those dilemmas that involved
manifest contradictions either in thought or in action. These tensions in­
volved inherent contradictions rather than apparent paradoxes or problems
of maintaining balance. As a result of these inherent contradictions, the
Puritans were forced to make compromises that ultimately led them to
frustration and declension. Probably the major example of such a dilemma
and the compromise that was forced on the Puritan theory by the existential
situation in New England society was that involved in the Halfway Cove­
nant, which will be discussed at a later point in this study. But there were
others as well. Of them, Simpson has observed that the Puritans
. . . had dreamed of themselves as a united army forming the van­
guard of history, but the army splinters into columns, battalions, and
platoons, while history seems to be marching on. They had thought
that conversion could become an institution, but they find themselves
with church members where they had hoped for saints. They had de­
vised one of the most formidable disciplines ever seen for keeping sin
within bounds, but there seemed to be as much of it inside the cove­
nant as outside. They had demanded an impossible tension from the

20MiIler, Errand, p. 74.

2‘Alan Simpson, Puritanism in Old and New England (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1955), pp. 27f.
 THE PURITAN DILEMMA—27

elect and an impossible submission from the mass. Everywhere the

taut springs relax, the mass rebels and compromises eat away at a
distinction on which the whole system was based.22
That distinction and those compromises involved the New England Way
in church and state, which suffered from several dilemmas. The consequent
compromises, which were made to resolve them, make up a good part of the
significant history of the Puritan dilemma, as we shall see.
The first two aspects of the Puritan dilemma, however, are interesting but
of no great significance in a study of human autonomy in Puritan thought
and experience. It should be noted that the tensions of balance are not
specifically Puritan problems, but rather human problems, and that where
the Puritans addressed themselves to these problems of balance, they did so
with substantial success, balancing form and freedom, piety and intellect,
law and liberty.
But what we are primarily interested in in a discussion of human
autonomy in Puritan thought and experience are those places where Puritan
thought led to positions that were manifestly contradictory or out of
balance: those that involved inherent contradictions, not just problems of
maintaining balance. Of these, there were three in the areas of church
membership, church establishment, and church government. We will con­
sider them in a later part of this study.
John Cotton did not believe in an inherent Puritan dilemma. In 1636, as
word filtered back to England about New England’s new “ Way” of doing
things in church and state, Lord Say and Seal, a Puritan nobleman who was
considering emigration to New England, wrote to John Cotton, one of
Massachusetts’ leading apologists for the “ Way” of restricting the fran­
chise to the restricted church membership of “ visible saints.” How can you
justify such a policy, Say apparently asked. Will this not make the church
the main influence in human affairs, drawing all things “ under the deter­
mination of the church (as Cotton summarized it)?” What happens when
the magistrates and the church differ? Will this not ultimately throw the
commonwealth into distractions and “ popular confusions?”
Cotton’s reply to Say’s letter set forth, in summary fashion, all the essen­
tials of the Puritan view of political structure and philosophy: the division
of power between church and state, the limitation of the franchise to church
members, the necessity of theocracy in both church and state, and his
classical putdown of “ democracy” : “ If the people be governors, who shall
be governed?” 23

22Ibid., p. 32.
23John Cotton, “ Copy of a Letter from Mr. Cotton to Lord Say and Seal in the Year 1636,”
The Puritans, eds. Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson (2 vols.; rev. ed.; New York: Harper
and Row, 1936), I, 209-212.
28—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

And having said all that, Cotton turned his attention to the charge that
the New England W ay would lead to distractions and popular confusion,
answering that
. . . these three things do not undermine, but do mutually and strong­
ly maintain one another (even those three which we principally aim at)
authority in magistrates, liberty in people, purity in the church. Puri­
ty, preserved in the church, will preserve well-ordered liberty in the
people, and both o f them together establish well-balanced authority in
the magistrates. God is the author o f all these three, and neither is
himself the God o f confusion, nor are his ways the ways o f confusion,
but o f peace.24
In this passage Cotton not only names the three principal aims of the holy
commonwealth, but also argues their relative importance and inter­
connectedness. They were all o f a piece; they stood or fell together. There
could be no well-ordered liberty in the people or well-balanced authority in
the magistrate apart from the purity o f the church. C otton’s concept is a
key to the Puritan worldview, namely, the dependence in Puritan thought
on what Herman Dooeyweerd has called the “ religious ro o t” o f all human
thought.25 Cornelius Van Til, a contemporary orthodox theologian, has ex­
pressed the problem as one of an “ ultimate personal point o f reference” :
In the last analysis, every theology or philosophy is personalistic.
Everything “ impersonal” must be brought into relationship with an
ultimate personal point o f reference. Orthodoxy takes the self-
contained ontological trinity to be this point o f reference. The only
alternative is to make man himself the final point o f reference.26
Thus the significance o f what Cotton was saying is that if well-ordered
liberty and well-balanced authority depend on the nature of one’s spiritual
condition and theological viewpoint, then it becomes very important to
know what an individual believes and what his society as a whole accepts as
“ public belief” (the expression of truths publicly taken for granted). This
means that whenever there is a change of content or appropriation in the
system of belief, we ought to expect certain changes in such tangible areas as
the spheres of liberty in the people and authority in the magistrate. Con­
versely, whenever we see a change taking place in these areas we ought to be

2*ibid., p. 212.
“ Hermann Dooyeweerd, In the Twilight o f Western Thought: Studies in the Pretended
Autonomy o f Philosophical Thought (Nutley, N .J.: The Craig Press. 1968); see also Hermann
Dooyeweerd, The Necessary Presuppositions o f Philosophy, trans. David H. Freeman and
William S. Young, Vol. I of A New Critique o f Theoretical Thought (4 vols.; Nutley, N.J.:
The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1969), p. 4.
26Cornelius Van Til, introduction to Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, The Inspiration and
Authority o f the Bible, ed. Samuel G. Craig (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed
Publishing Co., 1948), p. 18, cited by Rousas John Rushdoony, The One and the Many:
Studies in the Philosophy o f Order and Ultimacy (Nutley, N .J.: The Craig Press, 1971), p. 354.
 THE PURITAN DILEMMA—29

able to trace it back to a change in the belief-system. Consequently, the key

to social and political welfare in a society is the content of the “ religious
root,” that is, the seat of faith and belief, which content is the meaning of
“ purity in the church.”
But Cotton seemed to be saying even more than that: “ G od,” he said, “ is
the author of all these three. . . . ” With this statement, Cotton asserted the
“ non-autonomy” of human thought and temporal reality (though neither
he, nor any of the other Puritans, ever called it that), the concept that no
part of the creation, including man or any part of man, can claim
autonomy, or self-sufficiency, in any way. That is, in Van Til’s words,
man’s “ ultimate personal point of reference” is not in human thought or
any part of the temporal reality. Cotton did just what Van Til says that or­
thodoxy does: he made the self-contained ontological trinity, i.e., God, to
be the source and ultimate personal frame of reference.
And more: Cotton further asserted that God is not the author of confu­
sion and His ways are not the ways of confusion, but of peace. Cotton
probably would have been surprised, therefore, to hear the modern
historian discuss the “ Puritan dilemma” since there seems to be a fun­
damental difference between Cotton’s assertion that God’s ways are the
ways of peace and not of confusion and Morgan’s assertion that Puritanism
created a dilemma which was “ at best painful and at worst unbearable.” 27
The Puritans themselves did not seem to suffer from the dilemmas that
have been attributed to them. It is true that they strove to maintain balance
and to reconcile tensions and that their disappointment in the course of
declension was keen, but even then, there is a certain guilelessness and
honesty that shows a certain central unity of being that argues a lack of that
psychic tension or mental conflict attributed to them by the device of the
Puritan dilemma.
The Puritan prided himself on being able to see things “ as they be” with
the aid of divine grace. Thus he was not misled by appearances except by
sin. John Cotton taught that men should labor in their callings but should
not expect too much from them: labor, but labor in faith because this world
will soon pass, being only the world of appearances. Reality and per­
manence belong to eternity, not to temporality. Once a man grasped that,
says Perry Miller, he “ would be able to live amid disappointments without
being disappointed, amid deceptions without being deceived, amid tempta­
tions without yielding to them, amid cruelties without becoming cruel.” 21
It should be noted as well that as the first generation leaders looked back
at their achievements in Massachusetts Bay, they did not seem in any way to

27Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma, p. 7.

2lPerry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson (eds.), The Puritans (2 vols.; rev. ed.; New York:
Harper and Row, 1963), I, 288.
30—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

regret the way things had developed there. Perry Miller records that what
they considered the “ major issues” were not guided by “ domestic con­
siderations” but by their sense of New England’s part in the overall strategy
of Protestantism and the Holy War. Miller lists the following major issues,
all of which are vital to a consideration of the Puritan dilemma: (1) the sup­
pression of Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomians, (2) the banishment of
Roger Williams, (3) tricky diplomacy with the King, Parliament, the
Presbyterians, and Oliver Cromwell, (4) the remonstrance of Dr. Child, and
(5) the formulation of the Cambridge Platform .29 And when Richard
Mather preached his farewell sermon in 1657, he exhorted New England to
keep its four unique features: (1) the balance of economic life with spiritual
life, (2) the preservation of the New England Way, both civil and
ecclesiastical . . . with its peculiarities of restricted membership and in­
tolerance, (3) the transmission of the basic conversion experience of the
founders, and (4) the perpetuation of the church order through a succession
of converted children.30
That New England did not keep these things is not the point. What is
significant is that Mather was unapologetic even in 1657 about defending
them and maintaining their benefit for the Bay Colony.
A final instance of the fundamental sense of unity (rather than dilemma)
felt by the Puritans comes in their reactions to the contemporary charge that
they were, and that their way of life produced, “ hypocrites.” Larzer Ziff
records that the Puritans recognized this, but did not comprehend it. One of
them complained, writes Ziff, quoting, “ The most ordinary badge of
Puritans is the more religious and conscionable conversation, than that
which is seen in other mens: and why this should make them odious or
suspected of hypocrisy amongst honest and charitable men I could never yet
learn.” 31 In a similar vein, John Cotton replied to Richard Saltonstall’s
charge that forcing men to attend church produced hypocrites because they
“ conform their outward man for fear of punishment,” that, “ if it did so,
yet better to be hypocrites than profane persons. Hypocrites give God part
of his due, the outward man, but the profane person giveth God neither
outward nor inward m an.” 32 Such bold expressions of confidence do not
come from men who are halting between two opinions or fundamentally
double-minded and unstable, or in whom there is a tension that is “ at best
painful and at worst unbearable.”

29Perry Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1967), p. 6.
10Ibid., p. 14.
3'John Ley, quoted in Larzer Ziff, Puritanism in America: New Culture in a New World
(New York: Viking Press, 1973), p. 25.
32John Cotton, “ Letter to Richard Saltonstall,” The Puritan Tradition in America
1620-1730, ed. Alden T. Vaughan (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1972),
p. 203.
 THE PURITAN DILEMMA—31

That the Puritans did not seem to suffer from an inherent Puritan dilem­
ma should not mislead us, however, into thinking that somehow the prob­
lems did not exist. The problems did exist, and a list of them (as above)
would make up a summary of all the important events in the history of
Massachusetts Bay. The point that needs to be made clear is that while the
problems existed and plagued the Puritans as they tried to implement the
Holy Commonwealth, yet no Puritan ever held or admitted that the prob­
lems were the result of inherent contradictions within the Puritan
philosophy. In this light it is not hard to see why the Puritan always seemed
to think that his problems were caused by his critics’ misunderstandings or
his opponents’ departures from truth, but never by his own inconsistencies.
Every criticism was heard and considered and inevitably turned back upon
the critic. (Cotton and Winthrop were especially good at applying this tac­
tic.) In the following discussion we shall be looking at some of the major
problems encountered by the Puritans, seeking to find out what concepts
and institutions they intended to implement in the holy commonwealth and
how they understood the conflicts they faced. It is the thesis of this work
that these problems were caused in each instance by an assertion in some
way of human autonomy in either concept or practice. It is the Puritan
understanding of the concepts of authority, sin, sovereignty, and law that
does the most to define the concept of autonomy and to illustrate its
presence in Puritan thought and practice. After we have described these
Puritan doctrines and shown their application in the holy commonwealth,
we will survey the dilemmas and human autonomy in Puritan practice. We
will afterward consider the impact and implications of this thesis on the
problems of Puritan historiography outlined above.
 4
The Concept of Autonomy
in Puritan Theology
The concept of human autonomy is not mentioned as such in the writings
of the Puritans. It is not defined in Puritan theology. Nor is it mentioned by
any of the historians of Puritanism that the author has read. It is rather a
concept implied by several other doctrines and more or less taken for
granted, as a tacit premise. Autonomy was for the Puritan a negative con­
cept, closely tied to the doctrine of sin, as we shall see in what follows. The
positive side of that concept we shall call “ non-autonomy,” meaning that
for the Puritan no part of the creation, nor man or any part of man, could
claim an autonomy, or self-sufficiency, apart from God in any way. The
concept of non-autonomy can be seen in every area of Puritan life and
thought, but the idea was spelled out most clearly in his concepts of author­
ity and sin. In the first, he bowed his will and conscience to an ultimate
source of authority outside himself; in the second, he defined what it meant
to turn away from that authority toward autonomy.
It was the Puritan’s view of authority that did most to make him a
“ Puritan.” Puritanism, whatever else it might have been or whatever other
effects it may have had in the social and political life of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, was more a matter of theology than anything else.
Puritanism was a theological interpretation of life: not only a religious
creed, but a philosophy, metaphysic, and re-organization of the whole of
life — material, emotional, and intellectual — from the standpoint of the
Scriptures. What brought the Puritans into clash with the civil and ec­
clesiastical settlement of England was its radical insistence on judging civil
and ecclesiastical issues on the sole basis of the Bible, which they took to be
the Word of G od.1 Miller has pointed out, however, that there was a “ vast
substratum” of agreement which actually existed between the Puritans and
their Anglican opponents and that much of what is today mistaken for
Puritanism was actually the standard intellectual climate (the truths taken
for granted) of that day:
The vast substratum of agreement which actually underlay the dis­
agreement between Puritans and Anglicans is explained by the fact
that they were both the heirs of the Middle Ages. They still believed

‘Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson (eds.), The Puritans (2 vols.; rev. ed; New York:
Harper and Row, 1963), 1, 4-10 passim.
34—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

that all knowledge was one, that life was unified, that science,
economics, political theory, aesthetic standards, rhetoric and art, all
were organized in a hierarchical scale of values that tended upward to
the end-all and be-all of creation, the glory of God.2
The rest, Miller says, the “ relatively small number” of disputed ideas,
“ made all the difference between the Puritan and his fellow-Englishmen,”
so much that he was willing to leave England and migrate to the wilderness
“ rather than submit them to apparent defeat.” 3 This should indicate for us
how seriously the Puritan took the matter of Biblical truth and “ discipline
out of the word.” “ It is to the movement for ‘discipline out of the W ord,’ ”
writes Miller, “ that we must look for the source of that energy which, after
beating itself in vain for sixty years against the state church, inundated the
shores of another continent.” 4
To understand how this came about, it is necessary to go back to the
history of the Reformation in England. During the 1530’s King Henry VIII
had repudiated the Roman Catholic Church for personal reasons and
established the Church of England. When his ten-year-old son Edward in­
herited the throne in 1547, a group of English reformers gained an impor­
tant influence in his court and were able to take some first steps toward
reforming the Church in Protestant directions. But when Mary came to the
throne in 1553 she returned the Church to the Roman fold, and the English
reformers were executed or exiled. Then in 1558 the Virgin Queen Elizabeth
came to the throne. The exiles returned and began again to agitate for
reform in the Church of England. In 1559 what was called the Elizabethan
Settlement was enacted containing two major acts, the Act of Supremacy
which made Elizabeth the supreme governor of the Church of England, and
the Act of Uniformity which authorized a “ slightly moderated version” of
the prayer book which had been developed in Edward’s day.5 In 1563 the
doctrinal standard of the Thirty-Nine Articles and the set forms of worship
and common prayer were adopted.
It was during this period of time that what is called Puritanism began to
develop. The term itself was originally used as a kind of slur, implying that
those who believed, as the Puritans did, in purifying the Church were
Donatists, or perfectionists, an ancient heresy which Augustine had fought
against in the fifth century. But, slur or not, the reformers picked up the
term and used it in their campaign to complete all the implications of the
Reformation and of Protestant doctrine in church and state. The American
Puritans left England in the culmination of a long dispute between those

2Ibid., p. 10
Hbid., I, 7
4Perry Miller, Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, 1630-1650 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1959), p. 23.
5Sidney Ahlstrom, A Religious History o f the American People (New Haven: Yale Univers­
ity Press, 1972), p. 89.
 THE CONCEPT OF AUTONOMY IN PURITAN THEOLOGY—35

who favored this Elizabethan settlement of 1559 and those who opposed it.
Thus the Puritan found himself confronted, writes Simpson, “ by that
Anglican piety which had developed side by side and in conflict with his
own, within the framework of the Establishment erected by Queen Eliza­
beth” . The complexion of that settlement was “ thoroughly frustrating” to
the Puritan.6 Simpson’s summary of the Puritan’s doctrinal problems with
the settlement is instructive:
He believed in the total depravity of nature; he was told that men
were not so fallen as he thought they were. He believed that the
natural man had to be virtually reborn; he was told that he could grow
in grace. He believed that the sermon was the only means of bringing
saving knowledge and that the preacher should speak as a dying man
to dying men. He was told that there were many means of salvation,
that sermons by dying men to dying men were often prolix, irrational,
socially disturbing, and that what they had to say that was worth say­
ing had usually been better said in some set form that could be read
aloud. He demanded freedom for the saints to exercise their gifts of
prayer and prophecy, only to be told that the needs of the community
were better met by the forms of common prayer. He felt instinctively
that the church was where Christ dwelt in the hearts of the regenerate.
He was warned that such feelings threatened the prudent distinction
between the invisible church of the saved and the visible church of the
realm. He insisted that the church of the realm should be judged by
Scripture, confident that Scripture upheld him, and prepared to assert
that nothing which was not expressly commanded in Scripture ought
to be tolerated in the church. He was told that God had left much to
the discretion of human reason; that this reason was exercised by
public authority, which in England was the same for both church and
state; and that whatever authority enjoined, in its large area of discre­
tion, ought to be loyally obeyed.7
The Thirty-Nine Articles also caused another problem for the Puritan
dissenter in England in that in requiring submission to these Articles and the
set forms of worship which embodied them, the Church of England was
violating the Puritan’s liberty of conscience, which conscience, the Puritan
claimed, was to be subject only to the authority of God. Thus, the dif­
ference between the Anglican and the Puritan was not only or not so much a
theological struggle as it was a difference in what Clifford Shipton called
“ the locus of authority.” 8

sAlan Simpson, Puritanism in Old and New England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1955), pp. 8f.
1Ibid.,p. 9.
8Clifford K. Shipton, “ The Locus of Authority in Colonial Massachusetts,” Law and
Authority in Colonial America: Selected Essays ed. George Athan Billias (Barre,
Massachusetts: Barre Publishers, 1965), p. 147.
36—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

And to the Puritan the locus of authority was in the Bible, the Word of
God. As Puritans in England began to seek for “ discipline out of the
W ord,” they began to work for a purification of the Church of England
and for a completion of the Reformation in England. They organized, “ us­
ing every available means for the infiltration of English life and conversion
of authority to their point of view” — in the Universities, the Inns of Court,
the commercial companies, municipalities, and even Parliament.9
They also began to search the Scriptures for the very forms and models
they should use in reforming England, especially the church and its relation
to the state, as well as the government of the church itself. Throughout the
controversies with the leaders of the establishment, on one hand, and the
separatists on the other, the Puritan non-conformists continued to insist
upon two things, each of which contained an apparent paradox: (1) church
and state must be separated from each other in their functions but the
magistrate must continue to be the “ ordinance of G od,” maintaining a civil
orthodoxy in doctrine and behavior; and (2) the churches must be indepen­
dent congregations of like-minded believers and yet in the aggregate were to
constitute a national and uniform church. These principles they claimed to
derive from their study of the Bible.
It was in the Word they looked for the solution to these dilemmas, and it
was to Massachusetts they went to work them out in the real world. They
went with the goal of reconciling the “ spiritual and political discord . . .
reform the magistrate, and the church, and enforce complete obedience to
it.” 10 The occasion of their going was the dissolution of the Parliament in
1629. With that, their hopes for reforming the Church in England were
dashed. Bishop William Laud was given the responsibility of enforcing
uniformity in the church, and the Puritans were faced with the sad alter­
native of choosing between their religious beliefs and their political loyalty,
between their belief in the King’s supremacy and their obedience to God, or
as they put it, between surrendering their heads to the block and obedience
to their consciences under the discipline of the W ord."
Yet, writes Miller,
. . . precisely at the moment when this dismal solution seemed to be
the only one which would ever come out of England, a new enterprise
was born, a way conceived of resolving the conflicting allegiances that
had not yet been thought of, and they promised, with a greater degree
of hardship, a greater possibility of success.12

9Simpson, Puritanism in Old and New England, p. 10

10Miller, Orthodoxy, p. 100.
"Ibid., p. 52
"Ibid.
 THE CONCEPT OF AUTONOMY IN PURITAN THEOLOGY—37

And not only was a door of liberty thrown open to those who were able to
walk through it, but “ through a remarkable concatenation of events,” the
door had been opened “ by the unwitting hand, ironically enough, of no less
a person than King Charles himself.” 13
And so it was that Winthrop could tell his audience on board the A rbella
in 1630 that
. . . for the work we have in hand, it is by a mutual consent through a
special overruling providence, and a more than ordinary approbation
of the churches of Christ to seek out a place of cohabitation and con-
sortship under a due form of government both civil and
ecclesiastical.14
It is clear that the Puritan believed that the Bible was the Word of God
and that the Word of God was true — that is, true in the sense that its op­
posite was not true. Miller writes,
That Protestantism appealed to the authority of the Bible against
the authority of the Pope is a platitude of history. That the Calvinists
were vehement asserters of its finality is also common knowledge.
What is frequently forgotten is that without a Bible, this piety would
have confronted chaos. It could not have found guidance in reason,
because divine reason is above and beyond the human; not in the
church, because God is not committed to preserving the orthodoxy or
purity of any institution; not in immediate inspiration, because inward
promptings are as apt to come from the Devil as from God; not from
experimental science, because providence is arbitrary and unpre­
dictable; not from philosophy, because philosophy arises from the
senses, which are deceptive, or from innate ideas, which are cor­
rupted, or from definitions of the attributes, which are mental crea­
tions. Unless the formless transcendence consents, at some moment in
time, to assume the form of man and to speak “ after an humane man­
ner,” men will have nothing to go upon.15
Thus it was that in Jesus Christ the transcendent God took on the “ form
of man” and in the Bible He spoke “ after an humane manner.” Scripture,
said Calvin, obtains “ full authority among believers only when men regard
[it] as having sprung from heaven, as if there the living words of God were
heard.” 16 And Walter Travers, whom Miller called the official spokesman
for the Puritan party in England, wrote in 1617 that “ . . . Christ hath left
us so perfect a rule and discipline . . . which is common and general to all

l3Ibid., p. 101.
“ John Winthrop, “ A Model of Christian Charity,” The Puritans, ed. Perry Miller and
Thomas H. Johnson (2 vols; rev. ed.; New York: Harper and Row, 1963) I, 197.
15Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, Massachu­
setts: Harvard University Press, 1954), pp. 19f.
“ John Calvin, Institutes o f the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeil (2 vols.;
Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), I, 74.
38—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

the church, and perpetual for all times, and so necessary, that without it this
whole society, and company, and Christian commonwealth cannot well be
kept under their prince and king Jesus Christ.” 17
The authority of Scripture in the Puritan view was also transcendent and
not immanent. It was given by the condescension of the “ formless tran­
scendence” and was not subject in any way to human modification.
William Ames argued in his Medulla that Scripture was “ not a partial, but a
perfect rule of Faith and manners,” and that human traditions had no part
in the church.18 And the Cambridge Platform stated that “ . . . it is not left
in the power of men, officers, churches, or any state in the world, to add,
diminish, or alter anything in the least measure therein.” 19 Miller records
that Cotton said that it was not within the church’s power to perform any
act “ of their own head, but to receive all as from the hand of Christ, and to
dispense all according to the will of Christ revealed in his W ord.” 20 Even
the form of church government was not determined by human considera­
tions, wrote Richard Mather, but “ by rules from the Word of Christ, whose
will, (and not the will either of the major, or minor, part of men) is the only
rule and law for churches.” 21 And in the legal code of 1648 the
Massachusetts Bay colony provided that “ no human power [is] Lord over
the Faith and Consciences of men, and therefore may not constrain them to
believe or profess against their consciences.” 22 New Haven passed a similar
provision in 1656. The implication is that the only power which could bind
men’s consciences was the transcendent power of the Word of God. This
meant in practice a certain human freedom of conscience but necessarily
premised on a non-autonomous submission to transcendent authority. Or,
as William Ames had put it, in defining conscience as “ a man’s judgment of
himself, according to the judgment of God in him.” 23 But unless that judg­
ment of God is found in the Bible, the conscience will remain natural and
unenlightened.
Even as he asserted that the Bible was true and its authority transcendent,
however, the Puritan always made a distinction between the absolute truth
of the Word of God and his apprehension of it. The truth of the Word of
God did not come from man, but had been revealed from God through holy
men who spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. This concept had
two consequent implications: first, whatever the Bible said was absolutely

17quoted in Miller, Orthodoxy, p. 23.

18quoted in Miller, Orthodoxy, p. 159.
19“ The Cambridge Platform ,” I, 3, The Puritan Tradition in America 1620-1730, ed. Alden
T. Vaughan (Columbia, S.C. : University of South Carolina Press, 1972), p.99.
20Miller, Orthodoxy, p. 169.
21Ibid.
22Shipton, “ The Locus of Authority,” p. 142.
23William Ames, quoted in Larzer Ziff, Puritanism in America: New Culture in a New
World (New York: Viking Press, 1973), p. 14.
 THE CONCEPT OF AUTONOMY IN PURITAN THEOLOGY—39

true and not conditioned by time and place, conditions or circumstances. It

might not tell him everything there was to know or everything he wanted to
know, but whatever it did tell him was absolutely true. One of the main con­
flicts with the Anglicans in England centered around this point. In the effort
to harmonize reason and the Scripture, the Anglican was content to reduce
the content and meaning of Scripture wherever it seemed to defy reason; the
Puritan, in contrast, extended Scripture to the whole of life and existence
and then tried to prove that the content and meaning of Scripture was essen­
tially reasonable. This point is so important, said Miller, that only with it in
mind can we properly understand Puritan theology.24
Not only that, but the Puritans also assumed that the meaning of Scrip­
ture was self-evident. There was no need of light or help from other sources,
and varying interpretations were not optional. “ The infallible rule of inter­
pretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself,” proclaimed the Westminster
Confession, “ and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full
sense of any Scripture (which is not manifold, but one), it must be searched
and known by other places that speak more clearly.” 25
God has not revealed Himself exhaustively in the Scriptures, however,
noted Miller:
He has not therein uttered the naked truth about Himself, He has
not revealed His essence; His secret will remains secret still, as we wit­
ness daily in the capricious orderings of providence. The Bible con­
tains His revealed will, tells men what is expected, but does not explain
why, for even if it were explained men could never understand their
relation to the whole drama of creation.26
Miller goes on to point out that this distinction between the revealed and
the unrevealed was one of the “ fissures” in the “ impregnable wall of
systematic theology” which left the Puritan open to intellectual develop­
ment.27
The second implication of the Puritan’s distinction between absolute
truth and finite apprehension was the distinction between the fact of truth
and the appropriation of truth. The Bible, therefore, was to be studied by
men and progressively appropriated. The Bible is a complete and unalter­
able revelation, but comprehension and interpretation could be increased by
free discussion, which in turn would minister to discovery and agreement in
the truth. The Massachusetts Code of 1648 begins by stating that

24MilIer and Johnson, The Puritans, I, 57.

25The Westminster Confession of Faith, “ I, 9,The Westminster Confession o f Faith fo r
Study Groups, ed. G. I. Williamson (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing
Co., 1964), p. 18.
“ Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century,p. 20
11Ibid., p. 21.
40—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

so soon as God had set up political government among his people,

Israel, he gave them a body of laws for judgment both in civil and
criminal causes. These were brief and fundamental principles, yet
withal so full and comprehensive as out of them clear deductions were
to be drawn to all particular cases in future times.21
This drawing of “ clear deductions” from the basic laws of Scripture il­
lustrates the place of both intellectual development and progressive ap­
prehension of truth in approach to the Scriptures.
But there is no apprehension of truth apart from the Bible. The Puritans
agreed that God converses with men only through the Bible; there is no new
revelation given in any way to man. Shipton records that the Puritans
“ thought of themselves as in a current sweeping toward a better knowledge
of God, a knowledge to be reached by learning and study, not by unpredict­
able personal revelations.” 29 Consequently, one of the results of sin is that a
man will never come to a knowledge of reality, to things “ as they be,”
because in sin man turns from God and His truth.30
In these three ways, then, the Puritans took a non-autonomous view of
authority: the truth and authority of the Bible was transcendent, not imma­
nent; true, but not exhaustive; and objectively there, but only more or less
appropriated. According to the Puritan,
we must not be wise ‘above what is written’; if we inquire further in to
the mystery of the Godhead than what is revealed, we will attain not
knowledge but blindness. The visible church is not founded upon the
secret intention, “ but only his revealed will signified in the
Scriptures.” 31
This may have been the source of Puritanism’s secret strength. We have
previously cited Miller’s comment that the Puritan’s insight of the will of
God by divine grace fortified him against disappointments, deceptions,
temptations, and cruelties. Similarly, A.S.P. Woodhouse, noting the
Puritans’ sources of authority, observed that
the sense of special insight into, and cooperation with, the purposes of
God, is a distinguishing mark of the Puritan, and it sets him at a dis­
tance from other men. It is both a strength and a weakness. At its
worst it issues in self-righteousness. . . . But it nerved the arm and
brought an access of courage, which on any other premise would have
been reckless.32
28“ The Book of the Laws and Liberties Concerning the Inhabitants of the Massachusetts,”
The Puritan Tradition in America 1620-1730, ed. Alden T. Vaughan (Columbia, S.C.: Univer­
sity of South Carolina Press, 1972), p. 163.
29Shipton, “ The Locus of Authority,” p. 144.
30Miller and Johnson, The Puritans, I, 288
3■Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century, p. 21.
32A.S.P. Woodhouse (ed.), Puritanism and Liberty: Being the Army Debates (1647-9) from
the Clarke Manuscripts with Supplementary Documents (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1965), p. 42.
 THE CONCEPT OF AUTONOMY IN PURITAN THEOLOGY—41

It follows, then, that if the source of authority is a transcendent truth in

the Word of God and the strength of the Puritan comes in his non-
autonomous submission to it, the nature of sin must in some way be related
to the issue of transcendence and non-autonomy, that is, the turning away
from that transcendence and non-autonomy.
The Puritan’s concept of sin may be summarized briefly by recounting
the main points from Thomas Hooker’s sermon, “ A True Sight of Sin,”
which Perry Miller described as an “ exhaustive analysis.” 33 Hooker begins
by pointing out that if we would gain a true sight of sin, we must see sin “ 1.
clearly, 2. convictingly, what it is in itself, and what it is to us, not in the ap­
pearance and paint of it, but in the power of it. . . .” 34
We must do this, he says, because “ it is one thing to say sin is thus and
thus, another thing to see it to be such; we must look wisely and steadily
upon our distempers, look sin in the face, and discern it to the full; the want
whereof is the cause of mistaking our estates, and not redressing of our
hearts and ways. . . .” 35 Sin, in other words, is a fact, not a theory; ex­
perience, not an idea just to be discussed; and reality, not imagination. As
there is a difference between the traveler who has actually visited the ex­
tremities of the earth and him who has merely read about them, so there is a
difference between him who has understood the true nature of sin in himself
and him who has merely heard the doctrine preached:
The one sees the History of sin, the other the nature of it; the one
knows the relation of sin as it is mapped out, and recorded; the other
the poison, as by experience he both found and proved it. It’s one
thing to see a disease in the book or in a man’s body, another thing to
find and feel it in a man’s self. There is the report of it, here the
malignity and venom of it.36
What, then, is the malignity and venom of sin? Hooker examines the
nature of sin in its ‘‘naked hue” in two particulars: as it respects God and as
it concerns man. The first has to do with what makes sin sin (the “ vileness
of the nature of sin” ) and the second with what the result of sin is.
The vileness of the nature of sin, according to Hooker, lies precisely in
the issues of human autonomy. Sin would dispossess God of His absolute
supremacy: “ Now herein lies the unconceivable heinousness of the hellish
nature of sin, it would justle the Almighty out of the throne of His glorious
sovereignty, and indeed be above H im .” M an’s will was the chiefest of all
God’s workmanship and was made to attend upon God — to choose Him.
God did

33Thomas Hooker, “ A true Sight of Sin,” The Puritans, ed., Perry Miller and Thomas H.
Johnson (2 vols; ed.; New York: Harper and Row, 1963), I, 292-301.
uIbid., p. 293.
3SIbid.
)6Ibid.
42—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

. . . in an especial way intend to meet with man, and to communicate

Himself to man in His righteous law, as the rule of His Holy and
righteous will, by which the will of Adam should have been ruled and
guided to Him, and made happy in Him; and all creatures should have
served God in man, and been happy by or through him, serving of
God being happy in Him; but when the will went from under the
government of His rule, by sin, it would be above God, and be happy
without Him. . . .” 37
The non-autonomous Puritan, in other words, would be ruled by God’s
law in submission to God’s Word and find his happiness on God’s terms;
the autonomous man would be above God and his happiness on his own
terms. But how does autonomous man do this?
Now by sin we justle the law out of its place, and the Lord out of
His glorious sovereignty, pluck the crown from his head, and the
scepter out of his hand, and we say and profess by our practice, there
is not authority and power there to govern, nor wisdom to guide, nor
good to content me, but I will be swayed by mine own will and led by
mine own deluded reason and satisfied with my own lusts. This is the
guise of every graceless heart in the commission of sin. . . .J*
Hooker concludes with a passage that describes the dilemma of those who
choose the way of autonomy and reject the laws of God:
It’s a grievous thing to the loose person he cannot have his pleasures
but he must have his guilt and gall with them; It’s grievous to the
worldling that he cannot lay hold on the world by unjust means, but
conscience lays hold upon him as breaking the law. Thou that knowest
and keepest thy pride and stubbornness and thy distempers, know as­
suredly thou dost justle God out of the throne of his glorious sover­
eignty and thou dost profess, not God’s will, but thine own (which is
above his) shall rule thee, thy carnal reason and the folly of thy mind,
is above the wisdom of the Lord and that shall guide thee; to please
thine own stubborn crooked perverse spirit, is a greater good than to
please God and enjoy happiness, for this more contents thee.39
It is a wonder, Hooker added, that “ the great and terrible God doth not
pash [sic] such a poor insolent worm to powder and send thee packing to the
pit every moment.” 40
The essence of sin, then, as it respects God, is that man tries to replace
God with himself, or, better, to be like God, knowing good and evil and liv­
ing by his own standards and laws, and not by God’s laws. Calvin wrote
that the prohibition given to Adam was given so that Adam might prove his

Ibid., p. 294.
3iIbid.
39Ibid., p. 295.
40Ibid.
 THE CONCEPT OF AUTONOMY IN PURITAN THEOLOGY—43

willing submission to God’s command. Adam was to be contented with his

lot and not “ arrogantly to aspire beyond it.” Adam, however, turned aside
to the lies of Satan, despised the truth, and revolted against the authority of
God. Assuredly, said Calvin, “ when the Word of God is despised, all
reverence for Him is gone . . . Hence infidelity was at the root of the
revolt.” From infidelity followed ambition and pride and ingratitude.
Adam, by “ seeking more than was granted him,” exhibited contempt for
God’s great liberality. “ It was surely monstrous impiety that a son of earth
should deem it little to have been made in the likeness, unless he were also
made the equal of G od.” In fine, concludes Calvin,
infidelity opened the door to ambition, and ambition was the parent
of rebellion, man casting off the fear of God, and giving free vent to
his lust. . . . Man, therefore, when carried away by the blasphemies
of Satan, did his very utmost to annihilate the whole glory of God.41
In another passage Calvin notes that man “ . . . cannot arrogate to himself
one particle beyond his due, without losing himself in vain confidence, and,
by transferring divine honour to himself, becoming guilty of the greatest
impiety.” 42 The essence of sin, then, is autonomy. And autonomy is “ the
guise of every graceless heart.”
Hooker next turned his attention to the second particular, sin as it con­
cerns man. Sin, he said, affects man in four ways:
(1) It makes a separation between God and man and thereby deprives
man of a “ universal good” which does not include all the evil in the world.
The only universal known to sinful man is a universal that contains all the
good and all the evil and therefore cannot be truly good: “ . . . sin takes
away my God, and with him all good goes. . . . A natural man [i.e. man
without God] hath no God in any thing, and therefore hath no good.” 43
(2) It brings an incapability and an impossibility to receive grace from
God when man remains impenitent. The man who continues obstinately in
his sin is like one who spills the medicine that would cure him or the meat
that would nourish him, and thus he must die. “ It’s thy life, thy labor, the
desire of thy heart, and thy daily practice to depart away from the God of
all grace and peace, and turn the tomb-stone of everlasting destruction upon
thine own soul.” 44
(3) It is the cause which brings all evil of punishment into the world, for
without sin the troubles of this world would not be evil: “ The sting of a
trouble, the poison and malignity of a punishment and affliction, the evil of

41John Calvin, Institutes o f the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (2 vols.; Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1966) I, 212.
"Ibid., 231.
43Thomas Hooker, “ A True Sight of Sin,” p. 297.
"Ibid., p. 298.
44—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

the evil of any judgment, it is sin that brings it, or attends it. . . . So Paul
. . . plays with death itself, sports with the grave. ‘Oh, Death, where is thy
sting? Oh, Grave, where is thy victory? the sting of death is sin.’ ” 43
Hooker concludes by reasoning that if sin brings all evils and makes them
evil to us, then it is worse than all the evils themselves.
(4) It makes even all the good and glorious things of life evil to us. “ ‘To
the pure all things are pure,’ he said, quoting the Bible, ‘but to the unbeliev­
ing there is nothing pure, but their very consciences are defiled.’ It is a
desperate malignity in the temper of the stomach, that should turn our meat
and diet into diseases, the best cordials and preservatives into poisons, so
that what in reason is appointed to nourish a man should kill him.” 46
Such are the effects of sin on man. Hooker concluded his sermon by con­
sidering the holiness of God in contrast to the evil of sin: “ But that which I
will mainly press is, sin is only opposite to God, and cross as much as can be
to that infinite goodness and holiness which is in His blessed majesty; it’s
not the miseries or distresses that men undergo, that the Lord distastes them
for, or estrangeth Himself from them . . . but He is not able to bear the
presence of sin.” 47 Therefore, said Hooker, “ . . . it’s certain it’s better to
suffer all plagues without any one sin, than to commit the least sin, and to
be freed from all plagues . . . Thou dost not think so now, but thou wilt
find it so one day.” 48

ASlbid.
“Ibid., p. 299.
47Ibid.
“ Ibid., p. 301.
 5
The Lack of Human Autonomy
In Puritan Institutions

The concept of autonomy which is implied in the doctrines of authority

and sin is the key to the Puritan dilemma. We may study its effects in two
ways — in the lack of human autonomy in Puritan institutions and in the
presence of human autonomy in the development of Puritan thought and
experience. We take up the lack of human autonomy in Puritan institutions
in this chapter, the presence of human autonomy in the next.
The Puritans, coming to form a “ due form of government both civil and
ecclesiastical,” designed forms in which power was divided, both authority
and liberty were limited, and sovereignty and universals were transcendental
only. These three aspects influenced the specific features of Puritan institu­
tions in the holy commonwealth. We will look at each in turn, surveying at
the same time the development of the institutions of church and state in
Massachusetts.
The non-autonomy of man meant the absoluteness and sovereignty of
God. It followed that there was not only to be no sovereign power on earth,
but that whatever power did exist should be so divided and diffused that no
one man or group of men could gain or claim absolute or sovereign power.
Sovereignty had been “ shunted off to heaven” by Calvin, wrote J. Figgis,
and therefore the foundation for individual liberty had been laid.1 The
result on earth was that power and authority were both divided and limited.
The concept of divided power thus gave rise to the concept of the covenant
law basis of society. Drawing on the heritage of feudalism with its variety of
laws touching each area or order of life, the Puritans developed the concept
of the sphere law, each sphere of life being based on a particular covenant
or compact that lay at its base. Each sphere of life was independent of the
others in that one did not rule the other, but the spheres were also inter­
dependent in that each was seen as only a single part of reality. Each sphere
had its own laws and principles, powers and restraints on power. And each
checked and balanced each of the other spheres. The Puritan state was or­
dained by God, wrote William Perkins, the Puritan theologian:

'j. Figgis, cited by Edward S. Corwin, The "Higher Law” Background o f American Con­
stitutional Law (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1955), p. 62n.
46—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

God in his Word hath ordained the society of man with man, partly
in the commonwealth, partly in the church, and partly in the family;
and it is not the will of God that man should live and converse alone
by himself.2
Each of these spheres of life is based on a compact, wrote Thomas
Hooker:
From mutual acts of consenting and engaging each of other, there is
an impression of engagement results, as a relative bond, betwixt the
contractors and confederators, wherein the . . . specific nature of the
covenant lieth, in all the former instances especially that of corpora­
tions. So that however it is true, the rule binds such to the duties of
their places and relations, yet it is certain, it requires that they should
first freely engage themselves in such covenants, and then be careful to
fulfill such duties.3
In the Puritan theory, then, men first personally appropriated by faith
the covenant of grace which had been made with Abraham. That made
them regenerate men. Regenerate men then drew together to form churches
and states, promising all due submission to the law and to the authorities set
over them. Thus, “ when men have entered these covenants, first with God,
then with each other in the church and again in the state, they have thrice
committed themselves to the rule of law and the control of authority,”
notes Miller.4 Thus Massachusetts was a covenanted society. John Daven­
port described the system of covenants as “ National, Conjugal, Social.” 5
And Cotton wrote that
it is evident by the light of nature that all civil relations are founded in
covenant . . . there is no other way whereby a people . . . can be
united or combined together into one visible husband and wife in the
family, magistrates and subjects in the commonwealth, fellow-citizens
in the same cities.6
The spheres thus developed — church, state, family, school, calling
(vocation), ministry, magistracy, etc. — were to be co-ordinate but uncon­
founded; independent but interdependent. Thus John Cotton wrote to Lord
Say and Seal that

W illiam Perkins, “ A Treatise of the Vocations, or Callings of Men, With the Sorts and
Kinds of Them and the Right Use Thereof,” The Puritan Tradition in America 1620-1730, ed.
Alden T. Vaughan (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1972), p. 135.
Thom as Hooker, “ A Survey of the Sum of Church Discipline,” The Puritans, ed., Perry
Miller and Thomas H. Johnson (2 vols.; rev. ed.; New York: Harper and Row, 1963), I,
188.
4Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson (eds.), The Puritans (2 vols.; rev. ed.; New York:
Harper and Row, 1963), I, 190.
5Cited in Rousas John Rushdoony, This Independent Republic: Studies in the Nature and
Meaning o f American History (Nutley, N .J.: The Craig Press, 1964), p. 42.
6John Cotton, quoted in Andrew C. McLaughlin, Foundations o f American Constitutional­
ism (New York: Fawcett, 1961), p. 69.
 THE LACK OF HUMAN AUTONOMY IN PURITAN INSTITUTIONS—47

it is very suitable to God’s all sufficient wisdom, and to the fulness

and perfection of Holy Scriptures . . . to prescribe perfect rules for
the right ordering . . . of a man’s family, yea, of the commonwealth
too . . . God’s institutions . . . may be close and compact, and coor­
dinate one to another, and yet not confounded.7
Each sphere had a check or potential check on the other spheres, either
through the law, the negative, or even the right to leave the colony. In 1634
when the citizens of Newtown petitioned the General Court for permission
to move to Connecticut, there was a difference of opinion between the
deputies and magistrates of Massachusetts Bay, most of the deputies favor­
ing the move and most of the magistrates opposing it. Furthermore, the
magistrates maintained that they had the power of veto on the action. When
John Cotton was invited to preach at a day of humiliation “ to seek the
Lord,” he spoke from Haggai 2:4 and, recorded Winthrop in his journal,
. . . laid down the nature or strength . . . of the magistracy, ministry,
and people, viz., — the strength of the magistracy to be their au­
thority; of the people, their liberty; and of the ministry, their purity;
and showed how all of these had a negative voice, etc., and yet the
ultimate resolution . . . ought to be in the whole body of the
people . . . 8
Winthrop went on to relate that
. . . although all were not satisfied about the negative voice to be left
to the magistrates, yet no man moved aught about it, and the
congregation of Newtown came and accepted of such enlargement as
had formerly been offered them by Boston and Watertown, and so the
fear of their removal to Connecticut was removed.9
Two years later, in 1636, Hooker and his congregation removed to Con­
necticut in spite of the magistrates, and in 1641, the Massachusetts Body of
Liberties guaranteed that
every man of or within this jursidiction shall have free liberty, not­
withstanding any civil power, to remove both himself and his family at
their pleasure out of the same, provided there be no legal impediment
to the contrary.10

7John Cotton, “ Copy of a Letter from Mr. Cotton to Lord Say and Seal in the Year 1636,”
The Puritans, ed., Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson (2 vols.; rev. ed.; New York: Harper
and Row, 1963), I, 209.
8John Winthrop, Winthrop’s Journal: History o f New England 1630-1649, ed. James Ken­
dall Hosmer (2 vols.; New York: Barnes and Noble, 1959), 1,134.
9Ibid.
^ “ Massachusetts Body of Liberties,” 1493-1754: Discovering a New World, Vol. I of The
Annals o f America, ed. Mortimer J. Adler (18 vols.; Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica,
1968), p. 165.
48—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

In his letter to Lord Say and Seal, Cotton went on to say that the govern­
ment of church as set forth in Scriptures was compatible with any form of
civil government (because of the separation and non-confounding of the
respective powers of the spheres), but that if a commonwealth should have
the liberty to form its own frame of civil government, the Scriptures were
also adequate for that: “ I conceive that the Scripture hath given full direc­
tion for the right ordering of the same, and that, in such sort as may best
maintain the vigor of the church.” 11
Thus the Puritan, coming to form a church government, developed Con­
gregationalism, a form which so divided authority and power in the church
that there was no center of authority anywhere. In the congregational form
of government there was no final authority externally or even internally ex­
cept the sovereignty of God working by the Holy Spirit through the hearts
and minds of the collective individuals who made up the congregation.
Thus, too, consociations and synods could not impose their decisions on the
individual church or coerce them in any way. The Cambridge Platform of
1648 provided that
although churches be distinct, and therefore may not be confounded
one with another, and equal, and therefore have not dominion one
over another . . ., yet all the churches ought to preserve church com­
munion one with another, because they are all united unto Christ, not
only as a mystical, but as a political head, whence is derived a
communion suitable thereunto.” 12
Although there was to be communion among the churches and union in
Christ, yet the directions and determinations of synods were without coer­
cive force. Their decisions would be received with submission and reverence
if consonant with the Word of God and by the fact that they reflected the
agreement of several bodies, which made then an “ ordinance of God ap­
pointed thereunto in His word.” 13 But there was no organizational way that
such determinations could be enforced or conformity coerced. Power was
divided in the church and indeed in the whole society, and united only in the
Triune God who was transcendental and sovereign.
The corollary to the idea of divided power is the idea of limited authority.
John Cotton was one of the most vocal of the Puritans in articulating the
idea of limitation on power, “ that all power that is on earth be limited.” 14
He had led the movement to limit the power of the magistrates, which
movement led to the adoption of the Massachusetts Body of Liberties in
1641. Indeed his own work “ Moses His Judicials” was an early attempt to
codify the laws and practices of Massachusetts by an application of Old

n John Cotton, “ Letter to Lord Say and Seal,” p. 207.

12“ The Cambridge Platform ,” IV, 1, The Puritan Tradition in America 1620-1730, ed.
Alden T. Vaughan (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1972), p. 111.
"Ibid., XVI, 5, p. 113.
14John Cotton, “ Letter to Lord Say and Seal,” p. 213.
 THE LACK OF HUMAN AUTONOMY IN PURITAN INSTITUTIONS—49

Testament law. Man, Cotton held, is a creature of God and a fallen one at
that, and thus man is subject to limitations, including limited power and
liberty. But sinful men would attempt to destroy the limits. In his series of
sermons on the Thirteenth chapter of the Revelation, Cotton warned:
Let all the world learn to give mortal men no greater power than
they are content they shall use, for use it they will . . . This is one of
the strains of nature, it affects boundless liberty, and to run to the ut­
most extent: Whatever power he hath received, he hath a corrupt
nature that will improve it in one thing or another . . . It is therefore
most wholesome for magistrates and officers in church and com­
monwealth, never to affect more liberty and authority than will do
them good, and the people good; for whatever transcendent power is
given, will certainly over-run those that give it, and those that receive
it.15
The converse of man’s exceeding the limits of his power is to be deprived
of part of his rightful power, an error of equal import, said Cotton:
It is therefore fit for every man to be studious of the bounds which
the Lord hath set: and for the people, in whom fundamentally all
power lies, to give as much power as God in His word gives to men.
And it is meet that magistrates in the Commonwealth, and officers in
the churches should desire to know the utmost bounds of their own
power, and it’s safe for both: All intrenchment upon the bounds
which God hath not given, they are not enlargements, but burdens and
snares; they will certainly lead the spirit of a man out of his way
sooner or later.16
If the boundaries are properly drawn, Cotton continued, giving neither
too much power nor too little, the boundaries need not be imposing: if they
are but banks of sand, they will contain the sea as long as they be in the right
place. On the other hand, “ If you pinch the sea of its liberty, though it be
walls of stone or brass, it will beat them down.” 17
Cotton applied this concept not only to the bounds of the church and the
state, but also to marriage and family relations as well:
So let there be due bounds set, and I may apply it to families; it is
good for the wife to acknowledge all power and authority to the hus­
band, and for the husband to acknowledge honour to the wife, but
still give them that which God hath given them, and no more nor less:
Give them the full latitude that God hath given, else you will find you
dig pits, and lay snares, and cumber their spirits, if you give them less:
there is never peace where full liberty is not given, nor never stable
peace where more than full liberty is granted . . . 18

lsfbid., 212f.
l6Ibid.
nIbid.
x*Ibid., p. 214.
50—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

The same principle applied to children and servants and “ any others you are
to deal with” : . . Give them the liberty and authority you would have
them use, and beyond that stretch not the tether, it will not tend to their
good or yours.”
Cotton concluded his sermon and told his hearers to go home with this
meditation: “ That certainly here is this distemper in our natures, that we
cannot tell how to use liberty, but we shall very readily corrupt ourselves:
Oh the bottomless depth of sandy earth! of a corrupt spirit, that breaks over
all bounds, and loves inordinate vastness; that is it we ought to be careful
o f.” 19 Loving “ inordinate vastness” is a good description of what it means
to assert human autonomy.
This concept of limited spheres of authority and power and the need to
find a precise boundary of power for each sphere may serve as a key to an
understanding of the Puritans’ efforts to develop a due form of government
in the Bay colony. As the colony changed itself from a trading company in­
to an elected magistracy and a representative government, there were
several conflicts and disputes over rights, powers, interpretations of laws,
and the application of justice. Some of these disputes were over the
“ bounds” of the respective spheres of authority (both of the extent and the
degree of power); others were caused by various violations of the boun­
daries that were set. A brief recounting of what is called the “ deputy
dispute” should illustrate both points.
The charter for the Massachusetts Bay Company, issued by the King in
1629, had granted to the company and its officials authority
. . . to make, ordain, and establish all manner of wholesome and
reasonable orders, laws, statutes, and ordinances, directions, and in­
structions, not contrary to the laws of this our realm of England, as
well for settling of the forms and ceremonies of government and
magistracy fit and necessary for the said plantation and the inhabi­
tants there, and for naming and stiling all sorts of officers, both supe-
ior and inferior, which they shall find needful for that government
and plantation, and the distinguishing and setting forth of the several
duties, powers, and limits of every such office and place.20
The charter did not say where the company was to meet nor did it place
any particular restrictions on the company’s officers, except that whatever
laws they should make should not be contrary to those of England. The
charter did set the form of government of the company, however. The body
of shareholders in the company were called “ freemen.” These freemen were
to meet four times a year to make laws for the company and the colony and
to elect, for one-year terms, the management officials — a governor, a
deputy governor, and eighteen assistants — who were to run the company

19Ibid.
20Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma: The Story o f John Winthrop (Boston: Little,
Brown, 1958), p. 84.
 THE LACK OF HUMAN AUTONOMY IN PURITAN INSTITUTIONS—51

and the colony between meetings of the general court of freemen. The
management officials (the executive council of governors and assistants)
were to meet once a month to take care of necessary business. It is impor­
tant to note that in the first years of the colony the freemen and the
assistants (as the executive council was called) were virtually identical since
freemen had to be shareholders and there had to be twenty men on the ex­
ecutive council. The rest of the shareholders were still in England. So the
shareholders in America met, elected themselves assistants, and then ruled
the colony. Edmund Morgan records that “ all but one of the members who
are known to have migrated the first year were assistants.” 21 But it did not
remain that way for long. After all, Winthrop and his company came with
the intention of setting up a “ due form of government both civil and ec­
clesiastical” to the end of improving their lives and to bring into “ familiar
and constant practice” that “ which most in their churches maintain as a
truth in profession only.” 22
The first step in setting up a due form of civil government was, therefore,
to expand the base of the government. The first meeting of the assistants
was held on August 23, 1630, but only some rather routine business involv­
ed in organizing the colony was transacted. The assistants also met on
September 7 and 28 to transact routine business. Then on October 19, the
General Court meeting was held. At that meeting it was decided to have the
freemen choose the assistants, who in turn would elect the governor and
deputy governor, and together they and the assistants would make and en­
force all laws for the colony. The significance of this was the “ expansion”
of the “ freeman” from a shareholder in the company to a citizen of the
commonwealth, and, accordingly, at the next meeting of the General Court
116 men were admitted as freemen. Likewise the assistants had become the
legislative body, a privilege taken away from the freemen when the position
was opened to the general populace. The freemen had the privilege of elec­
ting the leaders, but not to make the law. It was also decided to restrict the
privilege of freemanship in the future to those who were the members of
some church within the colony — a move which at once (1) restricted
political activity to those who were under the discipline of the church moral­
ly and spiritually and (2) invited all church members to participate in the
political activity of the commonwealth.
The second step came in 1632 when the General Court ordered that two
men be chosen from each town to sit as a body and confer with the governor
and assistants on matters of taxation. It was also decided at that meeting to
have the freemen rather than the assistants elect the governor and deputy
governor. These moves were in response to criticisms of the people that they

2iIbid., p. 86.
22John Winthrop, “ A Model of Christian Charity,” The Puritans, eds., Perry Miller and
Thomas H. Johnson (2 vols.; rev. ed.; New York: Harper and Row, 1963), I, 198.
52—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

were not being adequately represented in the government since the represen­
tation of the assistants elected by the freemen was neither direct nor locally
oriented.
A third step came in 1634 when the representatives of the freemen (the
two appointed from each town) demanded to see the charter and discovered
that the original charter had granted the freemen legislative power. The
cause of the dispute went back for several years to a kind of running debate
between John Winthrop and Thomas Dudley over what we might call
“ substantive justice.” Winthrop believed that in its early years a plantation
should be ruled with leniency and liberality. Justice should be done, but
governors should be more informal and discretionary, concentrating on the
substantial issues, rather than formal and inflexible, as Dudley insisted.
Also, it was obvious that the form of government in the colony had changed
over the years, so when Dudley asked for the source of Winthrop’s authori­
ty, Winthrop faced a dilemma. If he answered that his authority (and the
frame of government then erected) stemmed from the agreement of the peo­
ple that had been made in 1630 (when the freemanship had been expanded
but legislative power taken away), Massachusetts would be in trouble from
England for violating the charter and setting up an independent state. On
the other hand, if he claimed the charter, he would have to face up to the
fact that freemanship included legislative power. It did not matter that
Massachusetts had reinterpreted freemanship. He could not sustain the
argument as long as he ignored the 1630 agreement of the people. Winthrop
chose to stand for the charter in his 1631 debate with Dudley and now in
1634 the freemen’s representatives wanted to see the charter to check his
power and to check their own privileges against it. And they were inclined to
claim their privileges because they feared W inthrop’s concept of discre­
tionary power, not because he misused it, but because it could be misused,
as their experience in England had shown.
Winthrop explained the situation to the freemen’s representatives and of­
fered to make them into an advisory body to the assistants, to revise laws,
but not to make new ones.23 But the freemen wanted more: a full body of
legislation drawn up by themselves as a protection against a discretionary
government which might become arbitrary.24 The result was a change in the
frame of government in which the freemen would elect deputies to represent
them in a legislative body to serve along with the governor and the
assistants, who also served as judges in the government. The next step was
to give the magistrates a veto over the deputies as a check and balance to
democratical tendencies. Thus it was that the search for the proper bounds
of authority developed, and continued, for it was not yet finished. The
Body of Liberties was not completed until 1641, and there were other con­
flicts and violations, as we shall see, but the proper bounds of power,
23Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma, p. 112.
24Ibid., p. 113.
 THE LACK OF HUMAN AUTONOMY IN PURITAN INSTITUTIONS—53

neither more nor less, were being discovered, and the wall of sand between
them being laid down, giving to the people, in the words of Nathaniel
Ward, who drew up the Body of Liberties, “ their proper and lawful liber­
ties.” 25
One of the major disputes over the problem of power and the limits of
authority in the colony came in 1645 and brings us to the third aspect or im­
plication of the principle of non-autonomy, which we shall call non-
neutrality or non-universality. (Non-universality is not the best word to
describe the concept and yet better than any of the others that come to
mind.) Non-universality is the idea that nothing except God is to be inter­
preted in terms of itself. Everything on earth, in the view of non-autonomy,
is always interpreted in terms of something else. There is no neutral stan­
dard behind God, as it were, whereby we may judge both God and the crea­
tion. Instead we see the creation either in terms of God’s standard or in
terms of some other standard. Thus in Puritan thought there was a great
debate over the nature of good: is a thing good because willed by God or
does God will something because it is good? Perry Miller records Samuel
Willard’s intimation that by the end of the century congregations were
growing weary of the endless dispute. Willard, he says, “ endeavored to
silence the debate by awarding judgment to both contentions at once. Since
all the attributes are one, he said, ‘then God both wills the things because
they are good . . . and also they are good because he wills them; his active
will put the actual goodness into them .’ ” 26 Miller calls this a disposition to
“ compromise” indicating a retreat away from the position of the earlier
Puritans, who “ unhesitatingly founded the goodness upon the fact of their
having been willed.” 27 According to William Perkins, the authoritative
Puritan theologian, “ a thing is not first of all reasonable and just, and then
afterward willed by God: but it is first of all willed by God, and thereupon
becomes reasonable and ju st.” 28 John Preston related the concept to the
issue of man’s non-autonomy and non-universality:
In our judging of the ways of God, we should take heed of framing
a model of our own, as to think because such a thing is just, therefore
the Lord wills it; the reason of this conceit is, because we think that
God must go by our rule; we forget this, that everything is just because
he wills it; it is not that God wills it, because it is good or
just . . . What God wills is just, because He is the rule itself. . . .29
To deny this is to make man and man’s rule autonomous and universal
rather than non-autonomous and non-universal. There is no universal rule

2iIbid., p. 170.
26Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, Mass­
achusetts: Harvard University Press, 1954), p. 18.
21Ibid.
2,Ibid.
29Ibid.
54—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

that man can place behind God; He is the rule and the universal, ruling ac­
cording to His character and perfection, and therefore all on earth must be
judged on His terms and by His standard.
The significance of this doctrine as it relates to the Puritan view of non­
autonomy may be seen in John W inthrop’s “ little speech” on liberty at the
close of the Hingham affair in 1645. The trouble began when a disputed
election in the town of Hingham came up before the magistrates for settle­
ment. Winthrop, then deputy governor but acting as a magistrate and
judge, ordered the faction led by the Reverend Peter Hobart to appear at
court, and when they refused, committed them for contempt. The Hobart
faction then petitioned the deputies for a consideration of Winthrop’s
charges against them and of their charge that the magistrates had acted
without authority in imprisoning them. The deputies, not knowing how to
handle the case, asked advice of the magistrates, who agreed to hear the
case if the petitioners would make a specific charge against a specific of­
ficer. The petitioners named Winthrop and charged him “ for illegal im­
prisoning of some of them and forcing the first with others to give bond
with sureties to appear and answer at the next quarter court.” 30
The details of the case and decision are not our concern here. Winthrop
was acquitted of the charges against him. After the case was settled and the
sentences read, Winthrop asked permission to address the court. His “ little
speech,” as he called it, is, according to Perry Miller, the “ classic expres­
sion of Puritan political theory.” It is also the clearest example of the
Puritan rejection of human autonomy.
Winthrop began by saying that he was satisfied with the decision of the
court and glad that the “ troublesome business” was done, but yet humbled
before God because to be charged at court (even though acquitted) is a mat­
ter of humiliation before God, “ who hath seen so much amiss in my dispen­
sations as calls me to be humble.” 31
He continued with a dissertation on the authority of the magistrates and
the liberty of the people, the “ great questions that have troubled the coun­
try.” Of authority, he said, “ It is yourselves who have called us to this of­
fice, and being called by you, we have our authority from God, in way of an
ordinance, such as hath the image of God eminently stamped upon it, the
contempt and violation whereof both have been vindicated with examples
of divine vengeance.” The authority of the magistrate is from God even
though it is the people who decide who the authorities shall be. Therefore
the contempt or violation of that authority is a very serious matter both for
the rulers and for the ruled. The ruled are to remember always that the
magistrates are “ men subject to like passions as you are” and therefore,
“ when you see infirmities in us, you should reflect upon your own, and that

30Perry Miller, Orthodoxy in Masachusetts, 1630-1650 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1959), p. 289.
3‘Winthrop, Journal, II, 237.
 THE LACK OF HUMAN AUTONOMY IN PURITAN INSTITUTIONS—55

would make you bear the more with us, and not be severe censurers of the
failings of your magistrates, when you have continual experience of the like
infirmities in yourselves and others.” The rulers are responsible to be
faithful and not to break the covenant with the people. As long as the
magistrate is faithful and of a good, not an evil, will, the people are to bear
with him even in his error.
On the matter of liberty, Winthrop observed “ a great mistake in the
country” on the nature of liberty. There are, he said, two kinds of liberty,
natural and civil or federal. Natural liberty is an autonomous kind of liber­
ty: it is liberty in man’s terms and on man’s terms, liberty relative to man:
“ By this, man, as he stands in relation to man simply, hath liberty to do
what he lists; it is a liberty to evil as well as to good.” The other kind of
liberty is civil, or federal, or moral, liberty: liberty in and on God’s terms,
relative to God and to His appointed authorities, “ a liberty to that only
which is good, just, and honest.” The first liberty is incompatible and in­
consistent with authority; the second is the proper end and object of
authority, and is “ maintained and exercised in a way of subjection to
authority.” 32
Rousas J. Rushdoony’s explanation of the Puritan view is pertinent:
The Puritan conception of law and liberty differed markedly from
the modern view. Since Christ is both life and liberty, the beginning o f
liberty is the discipline o f Christ. His Word, Scripture, is the means to
freedom in every area of life, in that liberty is under law, and is not, as
in the modern view, liberty fro m law. The freedom from law bestowed
by Christ is not antinomian; it is freedom from damnation by the law
into power to live by a new nature in the law as liberty. The Christian
view requires discipline and discipleship; the second requires freedom
from discipline and restraints. The Puritans recognized that true disci­
pline is self-discipline, and is therefore an inner rather than an outer
compulsion. The outer compulsion should do no more than establish
conditions for the development of inner compulsion.33
Rushdoony goes on to note that in the Puritan view law and power were
transcendental. The separation of law and power in the sphere of govern­
ment was made in order to prevent an “ immanent collection” of trans­
cendental attributes.34 Such an “ immanent collection” of transcendental
attributes is the essence of human autonomy usurping the powers that
belong to God alone.
The Puritan concept of authority and liberty, then, as described by Win­
throp, was non-autonomous. The Puritans were not interested in liberty or
power as such, but only in liberty and power for such; that is, liberty and

12Ibid., p. 239.
33Rousas John Rushdoony, This Independent Republic: Studies in the Nature and Meaning
o f American History (Nutley, N .J.; The Craig Press, 1964), pp. lOOf.
3*Ibid., p. 101.
56—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

authority were limited concepts to be used in certain limited ways and for
certain limited purposes, but never ends in themselves. Winthrop makes this
clear when he told the deputies that man must choose between these two
views of liberty and authority. They will either see the issue in man’s terms
or in God’s terms and that will make all the difference in public life:
Even so, brethren, it will be between you and your magistrates. If
you stand for your natural corrupt liberties, and will do what is good
in your own eyes, you will not endure the least weight of authority,
but will murmur, and oppose, and be always striving to shake off that
yoke; but if you will be satisfied to enjoy such civil and lawful liber­
ties, such as Christ allows you, then you will quietly and cheerfully
submit unto that authority which is set over you, in all the administra­
tions of it, for your good.35
If the answer to the problem of authority in the colony was not an
autonomous and arbitrary power in the magistrate (as the deputies had
argued against Winthrop), neither was the answer in an autonomous view
of liberty (as Winthrop cautioned the deputies). Autonomy belonged only
to the sovereign and transcendent God. The freedom of all on earth could
be preserved by preserving the non-autonomous status of human institu­
tions. Thus the Puritans divided and limited the spheres of authority on
earth and balanced them one against the other. The aspect of non­
universality was necessary to keep men thinking in those terms. Let man
gain a human or temporal or immanent universe, and the limited and divid­
ed spheres would soon be united under it, as autonomous liberty struggles
to cast off “ the least restraint of the most just authority.”

35Winthrop, Journal, II, 239.

 6
Dilemma and Human Autonomy in
Puritan Practice — I

If it is true that the application of the principle of non-autonomy played

such a large part in the shaping of Puritan institutions, it is also true that
there were a few features of Puritan society which denied the principle of
non-autonomy, and it is these areas of violations that have led historians to
remark the existence of a Puritan dilemma. It was at these points that the
Puritans departed from their views of non-autonomy and asserted in some
way the autonomy of human thought or temporal reality, reaping as a con­
sequence the various dilemmas we have mentioned above. The toll taken by
these dilemmas was great and in many cases vital in the long-run efforts to
establish a holy commonwealth.
Following Cotton’s thought on the bounds of power, we can observe two
kinds of violations: those tending toward an autonomy in human thought
or temporal reality, that is, violations in which there is an attempt to fix an
immanent and final authority, and those tending toward disorder, that is, in
which there was a lack of due order or arrangement.
The dilemmas described above may be discussed under three major
heads, each of which can be summed up in a question which indicates the
nature of the dilemma. An examination of these three dilemmas will enable
us to review the major problems that confronted the Puritans in
Massachusetts Bay in the first generation (1630-1662). An examination of
their effects will enable us to understand the compromises that were
necessary and the declension that came as a result of either the dilemmas or
of the compromises that were worked out. The three major problems were
in the areas of
(1) Church membership — If membership in a particular church is to be
restricted to visible saints, how can it be determined who is a visible saint?
And how can there be a comprehensive, national church?
(2) Church establishment — If there is to be a religious uniformity in the
state by establishment, how can church and state be kept separate? And if
orthodoxy of doctrine is to be imposed, how can liberty of conscience exist?
(3) Church government — If independent congregations are the essence
of church government, how can uniformity among the congregations be
maintained?
58—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

It will be helpful first, however, to lay the ground for some important
distinctions. Several of the dilemmas to be discussed involve matters of
church government, civil government, and of the relationship between the
church and the state, matters which were closely intertwined in the Puritan
period. It is necessary, therefore, in order to separate some of the overlap­
ping areas, to distinguish between the matter of the forms of church govern­
ment and the matter of the establishment of a state church. Also it will help
us to understand the positions taken by the various Puritan groups on these
particular issues. To do this we need to go back to the situation in England
which gave rise to the Puritan emigration. In England in the hundred years
between 1560 and 1660 there were four major groups involved in the strug­
gle between church and state — the Anglicans, the Presbyterians, the Con-
gregationalists (non-separating), and the Separatists. (There were splinter
groups further to the left of the Separatists. Their position on these issues
was similar to that of the Separatists.) There were also four main issues that
separated them, phrased here as questions to focus on the conflicts:
(1) Supremacy — Who is the Head of the church?
(2) Church government — How should the church be ruled?
(3) Uniformity — What kind of church should the state have?
(4) Membership — Who should be a member of the church?
The various positions of the groups may be charted as follows:
Church
Group Supremacy Government Uniformity Membership
Anglicans King as Bishops and Establish­ Comprehen­
supreme Hierarchy ment sive
Presby­ King under Synods and Established Comprehen­
terians Law Councils sive by
profession
Congrega­ Christ Congrega­ National Restricted by
tionalists tions and Church profession,
Consoci­ discipline (visibility)
ations
Separatists Christ Congrega­ Independent Restricted by
tions alone Church in a profession
neutral and discipline
State
On the issue of supremacy or the ultimate authority in the
church, the Anglican position was that of the Elizabethan settlement: the
king is supreme in both church and state. The Puritan position (whether
Presbyterian, Congregationalist, or Separatist, all of whom were considered
Puritans in England) was that the king’s supremacy was not absolute (or
autonomous). The Presbyterians saw the king under law, the non­
separating and separating Congregationalists saw even less connection with
 DILEMMA AND HUMAN AUTONOMY IN PURITAN PRACTICE - 1—59

the church than that. Christ alone was to rule in the congregational church
and that directly by the Holy Spirit, as we have seen. The difference bet­
ween the Presbyterians and the Independents (Congregationalists) on this
point will come to the fore in the period of the English civil wars and
Cromwell’s Protectorate in the late 1640’s and 1650’s.
In the matter of church government, the Anglicans favored a hierarchical
form of government ranging from the local parish to the king, all deriving
their authority from the king in a bureaucratic chain of command in which
the Bishops would rule over groups of local churches. The Presbyterians
wanted a system of representative councils ranging from the local church to
the general assembly of the entire national church, preserving both the
independence of the local church and an involvement in a system of wider
courts of appeal. The Congregationalists stood only for the existence and
autonomy of the local congregation; their church would begin and end with
the local congregations, as would that of the Separatists. The difference be­
tween the Congregationalist and the Separatist on this issue came in the
New England Congregationalists’ willingness to engage in what they called
“ consociations” or non-coercive synods. Recognizing the need occasionally
for a wider court of appeal or fellowship, the Congregational churches
would come together for that purpose, but it was always on a voluntary and
non-coercive basis.
In the matter of uniformity or of the state church, both the Anglicans and
the Presbyterians were agreed on an established church, that is, one sup­
ported by the state and ruled by the state. They simply differed on the
organization of that church. The Congregationalists wanted a “ national”
church as opposed to an “ established” church, that is, the congregational
church would be the only uniform, tolerated, church within the national
boundaries and would be supported by the state, but it would not be ruled
by the state. The difference between the Presbyterians and the Congrega­
tional groups on this issue spelled the ultimate difference between those
Puritans who ruled and fell with Cromwell in the 1650’s (the Independents)
and those who joined the Anglicans in restoring Charles II in 1660 only to
be expelled from the Church in 1662. The Separatists wanted a complete
separation of church and state — an independent church in a religiously
neutral state.
The fruit of the Reformation was the recognition that the church and the
state were eventually to be separated. The significance o f the Puritan move­
ment was that it came at the precise moment that this separation was being
worked out. It was the particular fate of the non-separating Congrega­
tionalists that they stood for the separation of church and state institu­
tionally or functionally, while opposing the separation of church and state
spiritually. It is not hard for us to see the consistency of the Anglican idea
that the church and the state are joined under a supreme king. Neither is it
difficult for us to see Roger Williams’s idea that the state is a temporal
60—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

kingdom and the church is a spiritual kingdom, and the two should be
separated. But the Puritan (non-separating Congregationalist) idea is op­
posed to both of these. It is that the church and the state are to be separated
functionally and institutionally but to be joined spiritually under Jesus
Christ who is supreme Lord and King. Puritan thought often seems to be
confusing the two spheres, but it was attempting to keep hold of the state as
a spiritual entity, recognizing that the magistracy is a religious work even if
the magistrate himself is not religious. In this view the movement toward a
neutral state is thus a move with significant religious overtones. We will
consider the differences between the Congregationalists and the
Presbyterians on this issue below.
On the matter of membership, the Anglican church was to be comprehen­
sive, embracing all the people of the nation.1The Presbyterian idea, follow­
ing the idea of the established church, was that the Presbyterian church
would be comprehensive, embracing all the nation, but communing
membership in the church would require a specific profession of faith and
submission to the discipline of the church. The Congregational and
Separatist churches shared a view of church membership as restricted to
only those who professed faith in Jesus Christ and submitted to the
discipline of the church. The New England Congregationalists added a new
wrinkle when they added the idea of visibility to the profession and
discipline, as we shall see below.
It is obvious that these positions and issues overlap in places, yet from
them we may plot the problems that came when the Puritans sought
autonomy in the areas of church membership, church-state relations, and
church government.
The dilemma involved in the area of church membership was that of try­
ing to identify in the visible church (the particular church in a particular
place at a particular time) those individuals who were truly members of the
invisible church (the elect known only to God). Puritans of all kinds had
believed in a limitation of some kind on membership within the visible
church (even the Presbyterians required a specific profession of faith in
order to be a communing member of a visible church), but up until the
mid-1630’s both in England and America, the limitation was thought of as
being a profession of faith in Jesus Christ and a submission to the moral
and spiritual discipline of the church. Faith was what made the invisible
church, but it was profession that made the visible church. The making of a
profession did not make faith, however; the true invisible church is known
only to God.
Although the New England Congregationalists were often accused of be­
ing Separatists or of borrowing their forms of church polity from the

'Edmund S. Morgan, Visible Saints: The History o f a Puritan Idea (New York: New York
University Press, 1963), pp. 24-25.
 DILEMMA AND HUMAN AUTONOMY IN PURITAN PRACTICE - 1—61

Separatists, John Cotton was adamant in his denial of the charge, though
he admitted that the Separatists may have come to the same conclusions
from different premises. Of the problem of membership in the visible
church, Cotton wrote that
the particular visible church of a congregation to be the first subject of
the power of the keys, we received by the light of the word from Mr.
Parker, Mr. Baynes, and Dr. Ames: from whom also . . . we received
light out of the word, for the matter of the visible church to be visible
saints; and for the form of it, to be a mutual covenant, whether an ex­
plicit or implicit profession of faith, and subjection to the Gospel of
Christ in the society of the church, or presbytery thereof.2
The matter of the visible church was to be the visible saint, and the par­
ticular congregation was to be made up of visible saints joined together in
mutual covenant. In Congregational theory the church was to be formed
out of saints who were voluntarily joined in the covenant, not born into it or
forced or persuaded to join. Even though the church was supported by taxes
and attendance at church was required, yet actual membership in the church
covenant was voluntary and given only to those who indicated an express
desire to join.
Congregational theory had no answer for the unregenerate of the society.
They were expected to live quietly in the community, pay taxes for the sup­
port of the church, and attend meetings. Beyond that the commonwealth
made no apology for the situation nor any attempt to provide for them.
There could be no church without a covenant, and no covenant without a
profession of faith. And if there were only a few church members in the
community, said one, “ That is the fault of people, not of the rule, nor of
the way; if the saints be thin sown, who can help it?” 3 In 1648 the Cam­
bridge Platform would express the same concept:
We conceive the receiving of them into our churches would rather
loose and corrupt our churches, than gain and heal them. A little
leaven laid in a lump of dough, will sooner leaven the whole lump,
than the whole lump will sweeten it. We therefore find it safer, to
square rough and unhewn stones, before they be laid into the building,
rather than to hammer and hew them, when they lie unevenly in the
building.4
In short, the personal covenant of grace was basic to life in the
covenanted holy commonwealth, both in the church covenant and in the

2John Cotton, “ The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared,” John Cotton on the
Churches o f New England, ed. Larzer Ziff (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University
Press, 1968), p. 189.
3Quoted in Perry Miller, Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, 1630-1650 (Boston: Beacon Press,
1959), p. 209.
4Williston Walker, The Creeds and Platforms o f Congregationalism, p. 200, cited by Perry
Miller, Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, 1630-1650 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1959), p. 210.
62—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

civil covenant. It was by the personal covenant of grace that the individual
was saved and made a covenant-keeper rather than a covenant-breaker, and
therefore there could be no participation in the covenant of church or state
without evidence that the individual man had a part in the personal cove­
nant of grace. It followed that the visible church was to consist only of those
“ visible saints” who had “ owned the covenant,” i.e., had acknowledged
and submitted to the covenant, along with their children.
But since in New England, certain privileges attached to church member­
ship (such as voting and office-holding), it was always possible that
unregenerate men might try to imitate faith and the profession in order to
gain the privilege attached to church membership. To prevent this, the New
England churches specified that church membership should belong only to
those who could make a “ knowledgeable” profession of faith and could
demonstrate a consistently holy life. This was the test of visibility.5
The attraction of Congregationalism had been from the beginning its
promise of making a closer identity between the visible and invisible
churches. But in New England, in the 1630’s, the churches began to demand
not only the profession of faith and submission to discipline, but also
proofs of “ visibility” — a recounting of one’s personal experience of salva­
tion before the church, after which he could be questioned and then ac­
cepted or rejected by a vote of the congregation. This development was best
described by Cotton Mather:
. . . the first Churches of New England began only with a Profession
of Assent and Consent unto the Confession of Faith and the Covenant
of Communion. Afterwards, they that sought for the Communion,
were but privately examined about a work of grace in their souls, by
the Elders, and then publicly propounded unto the congregation, only
that so, if there were any scandal in the lives, it might be objected and
considered. But in the year 1634, one of the brethren having leave to
hear the examinations of the Elders, magnified so much the advantage
of being present at such an exercise, that many others desired and
obtained the like leave to be present at it; until, at length, to gratify
this useful curiosity, the whole church always expected the liberty of
being thus particularly acquainted with the religious dispositions of
those with whom they were afterwards to sit at the Table of the Lord;
and that Church which began this way was quickly imitated by most
of the rest . . .” 6
The procedure followed in joining a church was outlined by Thomas
Lechford in his Plain Dealing; or News fro m New England, in which he
noted that “ . . . sometimes there is a space of divers months between a par­

5Sidney Ahlstrom, A Religious History o f the American People (New Haven: Yale Univer­
sity Press, 1972), p. 145.
6Cotton Mather, Magnolia Christi Americana (London 1702), Book V, p. 43, cited in Ed­
mund S. Morgan, Visible Saints: The History o f a Puritan Idea (New York: New York Univer­
sity Press, 1963), p. 94.
 DILEMMA AND HUMAN AUTONOMY IN PURITAN PRACTICE - 1—63

ty’s first propounding and receiving; and some are so bashful, as that they
choose rather to go without the communion, than undergo such public con­
fessions and trials, but that is held their fault.7 Lechford comments
marginally that
whether Popish auricular confession, and these public confessions be
not extremes, and whether some private pastoral or presbyterial colla­
tion, left at liberty, upon cause, and in case of trouble of conscience,
as in the Church of England is approved, be not better than these ex­
tremes, I leave to the wise and learned to judge.'
The assertion of autonomy involved in this has been pointed out by Alan
Simpson, who observed that “ . . . this New England church is going to be
built out of the conversion experience, and it is assumed that a subjective
experience can be detected by objective tests.” 9 Seen in full perspective,
writes Sidney Ahlstrom, “ this was a radical demand.”
For the first time in Christendom, a state church with vigorous con­
ceptions of enforced uniformity in belief and practice was requiring an
internal, experiential test of church membership. Many future pro­
blems of the New England churches stemmed from this decision.10
The consequences came almost at once. At one extreme stood men like
Roger Williams who, always seeking a purer church, carried the test to the
extreme of making it the only requirement for membership. And at another
extreme stood Anne Hutchinson who insisted that the Holy Spirit could
reveal to men with absolute certainty whether a man was truly saved or not.
No test of visibility would be necesary where the Holy Spirit speaks directly.
(We shall consider below in more detail the specific problems raised by
Williams and Hutchinson.) At an opposite extreme, of course, was either
some kind of return to a non-autonomous position or some kind of adjust­
ment to reality to which the Puritans were eventually forced. The return to a
non-autonomous position came in the form of a return to profession and
discipline, as expressed by Thomas Shepherd:
The meaning is not as if we allowed none to be of the church, but
real saints, and such as give demonstrative evidence of being members
of the invisible church; for we profess . . . that it is not real, but visi­
ble faith, not the inward being, but the outward profession of
faith . . . that constitutes a visible church.11
And when John Cotton came to defend the New England Way in 1648, he
wrote that in the trial of new members, “ . . .w e do not exact eminent
7Thomas Lechford, Plain Dealing: or News from New England, ed. J. Hammond Trumbell
(New York: Garrett Press, 1970), p. 21.
'Ibid.
9Alan Simpson, Puritanism in Old and New England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1955), p. 25.
10Ahlstrom, A Religious History, p. 146.
“ Quoted in Miller, Orthodoxy, p. 198.
 64—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

measure, either of knowledge, or holiness, . . . for we had rather ninety-

nine hypocrites should perish through presumption, than one humble soul
belonging to Christ should sink under discouragement and despair.” 12 And
the Cambridge Platform of that same year specified that members ought to
be “ examined and tried first” in such a way as to satisfy “ rational charity”
that they are sincere, but “ the weakest measure of faith is to be accepted in
those that desire to be admitted into the church . . . , if sincere. . . . Severi­
ty of examination is to be avoided.” 13
It was in the making of this return to the non-autonomy of the profession
and discipline that Perry Miller saw one of the Puritan’s contradictions.
“ The clergy of New England did not lack courage when called upon to
reconcile many facts with their preconceived ideas,” he wrote,
. . . but none of them quite had the effrontery to plead for this situa­
tion purely upon the basis of any correspondence to spiritual realities.
They who formerly scorned the social and ethical arguments of the
Anglican Church were reduced to defending Congregationalism on
those very grounds; the erstwhile rebels against formalism came final­
ly to rest upon a formality. The important thing, they were bound to
admit, was the profession; they knew it was desirable for examiners to
test the sincerity of a profession, but the externality of the act was
after all its essential aspect.14
Miller is mistaken. It is true that the rebels against formalism came to rest
upon a formality and that the externality of the act was its essential aspect,
but the contradiction was caused by the assertion of autonomy in the test of
visibility, not in the return to profession. When the Puritans returned to
profession of faith and submission to discipline as the criterion of church
membership, they were resolving the dilemma of autonomy, not creating a
contradiction in their theory and practice. Thomas Hooker spoke to the
point in his Survey o f Church Discipline (iii, 6) when he laid down the rule
that “ if a person live not in the commission of any known sin, nor in the
neglect of any known duty, and can give a reason of his hope toward G od,”
he is to be accepted into the fellowship of the church. “ This rule being
received and agreed upon,” he said,
. . . it would marvelously facilitate the work of admission, without
any trouble, and prevent such curious inquisitions and niceties, which
the pride and wantonness of men’s spirits hath brought into the
Church, to disturb the peace thereof, and to prejudice the progress of
God’s ordinances.15
12John Cotton, “ The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared,” cited in Lechford, Plain
Dealing, ed. J. Hammond Trumball, p. 21, n. 12.
13“ The Cambridge Platform ,” XII, 3, The Puritan Tradition in America 1620-1730, ed.
Alden T. Vaughan (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1972), p. 107.
14Perry Miller, Orthodoxy, p. 198.
13Thomas Hooker, Survey o f Church Discipline, iii, 6, cited in Lechford, Plain Dealing, ed.
J. Hammond Trumball, p. 22, n. 12.
 DILEMMA AND HUMAN AUTONOMY IN PURITAN PRACTICE - 1—65

But even though there was a return to non-autonomy in the formalization

of the tests of visibility, the congregational goal of identifying the visible
and invisible churches remained. A profession of faith was required, an ex­
amination as to Christian maturity was made, and church discipline was ex­
ercised. There was a two-fold limitation on church membership, writes
Rushdoony;
. . . church and state were fearful of immature Christians being given
full membership, and individuals were hesitant about assuming
mature responsibility, regarded by them as awesome, without much
soul-searching. At times men had to be urged to assume respon­
sibilities for which religious and civil authorities deemed them ready.16
Some historians have seen this reluctance to join the church as an
evidence of declension, others as a sign of sensitive consciences or over­
scrupulousness among the elect who did not feel that they could live up to
the requirements of membership in the church covenant. Whatever the
reasons, it is a fact that in the second generation of Puritan Massachusetts
there were a sizable number of people who had not owned the covenant and
joined the church. It is known that many were unregenerate. It is also
known that many of them were regenerate and attended services regularly
but chose for one reason or another not to own the covenant. Even though
the tests of visibility had been formalized and severity of examination was
avoided, yet the church covenant and church discipline was not to be taken
lightly, and some chose not to take it at all. It was the fact of this
“ unregenerate” and “ unchurched” second generation coupled with the
Puritans’ doctrine of infant baptism that revealed again the dilemma caused
by the assertion of autonomy involved in trying to identify the invisible
church. But this time the dilemma was not resolved by a return to a non-
autonomous position, such as only requiring the profession of faith and
submission to the discipline of the church.
The practice of the Puritan church was to baptize the infant children of
believers. It was always understood that the baptism of infants could not by
itself make the recipient of baptism a recipient of saving grace. Instead,
when the baptized children reached their maturity, it was expected that they
would experience conversion, make their profession, and own the covenant
as a visible saint, and be admitted to the second sacrament of the church,
the Lord’s Supper or Communion. Yet among the children of the first
generation such an experience either was lacking or they were not able to
fulfill the requirements for church membership sufficiently even though
they were otherwise moral and reputable people. As the colony grew, the
problem became more and more obvious and urgent, and as it did, the
pressures mounted for some sort of solution.

16Rousas John Rushdoony, This Independent Republic: Studies in the Nature and Meaning
o f American History (Nutley, N .J.: The Craig Press, 1964), p. 43.
66—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

The solution was proposed in 1662 by the Synod assembled at Boston,

which had been called by the General Court specifically to consider “ Who
are the subjects of Baptism?” The Synod answered that “ confederate visi­
ble members” of the particular churches and their children were proper sub­
jects of baptism. Also, said the Synod, the infant-seed of confederate visible
members are under the “ watch, discipline, and government” of the church
but are not to be admitted to full communion until they fulfill “ further
qualifications” set by the Word of God (i.e., examination, profession of
faith, and submission to discipline; in short, visible sainthood). Church
members who had been admitted in infancy but had never become con­
federate visible members could also have their children baptized, as long as
the parents understood the doctrine of faith and assented to it, were not
scandalous in life, and owned the covenant before the church, submitting
themselves and their children to the Lord and to the government of the
church. In short, a distinction was drawn between the purity of full
membership and the halfway status of the unconverted second generation
who had been baptized in the church and now wished to have their children
(the third generation) baptized.17
It is common to blame the need for the Halfway Covenant, as it was call­
ed, on the doctrine of infant baptism. It was rather a problem caused by the
concept of visible sainthood, as Edmund Morgan has observed: “ The
halfway covenant, while wholly insufficient as a recognition of the church’s
relationship to the world, was probably the most satisfactory way of recon­
ciling the Puritan’s conflicting commitments to infant baptism and to a
church composed exclusively of saints.” 1' It should be noted that the con­
cept of visible sainthood involves an assertion of autonomy on the part of
the church; the doctrine of infant baptism does not, but rather the opposite,
symbolizing, as it did to the Puritan, both his and the child’s dependence on
God for grace and salvation.
It is also common to see the Halfway Covenant as a downward step
toward declension and a compromise with worldliness by the Puritans. It
was in fact neither. That it did not result in declension has been noted by
Alden Vaughan who records that “ as late as 1675 less than half of the con­
gregations in Massachusetts subscribed to the new doctrine, and even in the
last quarter of the century when most churches at last gave formal assent to
the half-way solution, few New Englanders took advantage of its provi­
sions.” 19 And that it was not a compromise with worldliness was noted by

17“ The Answer of the Elders and Other Messengers of the Churches, Assembled at Boston
in the Year 1662 to the Questions Propounded to Them by Order of the Honored General
Court,” The Puritan Tradition in America 1620-1730, ed. Alden T. Vaughan (Columbia, S.C.:
University of South Carolina Press, 1972), pp. 116-120.
1'Edmund S. Morgan, Visible Saints: The History o f a Puritan Idea (New York: New York
University Press, 1963), p. 133.
19Alden T. Vaughan (ed.), The Puritan Tradition in America 1620-1730 (Columbia, S.C.:
University of South Carolina Press, 1972), p. 116.
 DILEMMA AND HUMAN AUTONOMY IN PURITAN PRACTICE - 1—67

Perry Miller who saw that in the restriction of halfway members from com­
munion and from voting, the “ principle of exclusion” was not violated. If
the Halfway Covenant had not existed, churches would have been tempted
to admit unconverted members to full membership without testing and thus
in time the church would have come to be governed by these unconverted or
unqualified members.20
Miller does remark that with the Halfway Covenant, however, the basis
of the church covenant was changed from a personal and internal one to a
formal and external one, and notes that, with that, the Congregational
church had come full circle — from criticizing the formality of the Church
of England to accepting the formality of the Halfway Covenant!21 Again
Miller misses the point of it: the Halfway Covenant was an adjustment
made to cope with the problems raised by the test of visible sainthood. It
was not an abandonment of visible sainthood, nor was it an acceptance of
formality. And, it is important to note, it was also justified by the Synod on
the basis of non-autonomy. The Synod explained that
the denial of baptism to the children in question hath a dangerous
tendency to irreligion and apostasy because it denies them, and so the
children of the church successively, to have any part in the Lord,
which is the way to make them cease from fearing the Lord. . . . The
owning of the children of those that successively continue in covenant
to be a part of the church is so far from being destructive to the purity
and prosperity o f the church . . . that this imputation belongs to the
contrary tenet. To seek to be more pure than the rule will ever end in
impurity in the issue.22
“ To seek to be more pure than the rule” is a good way to sum up the doc­
trine of visible sainthood, and the Halfway Covenant was thus a readjust­
ment to reality and non-autonomy in face of the problems it caused in the
Massachusetts churches.
The Synod went on to say that
God hath so framed His covenant, and consequently the constitution
of His church thereby, as to design a continuation and propagation of
His kingdom therein, from one generation to another. Hence the
covenant runs to us and to our seed after us in their generations. To
keep in the line and under the influence and efficacy of this covenant
of God is the true way to the church’s glory. To cut it off and disavow
it cuts off the posterity of Zion and hinders it from being (as in the
most glorious times it shall be) an eternal excellency, and the joy of
many generations. . . .23

20Perry Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 97f.
21Miller, Orthodoxy, p. 195.
22“ The Answer of the Elders . . . Assembled at Boston in the Year 1662 . . . ,” p. 120.
13Ibid.
 68—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

Thus by means of the Halfway Covenant, Massachusetts could retain

what was good about visible sainthood (the church in the control of the visi­
ble, or mature, saints) and yet have a national and comprehensive church
which would include under its “ watch, discipline, and government”
everyone in the colony who desired association with the church, regardless
of whether they met the test of visible sainthood. And the kingdom of God
and His covenant could be continued and propagated from one generation
to another.
The doctrine o f visible sainthood was also responsible in part for the
problem the Puritans had with Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomians. But
while the case opened on a controversy over visible sainthood, it was soon
revealed that deeper, more serious problems were involved. The immediate
cause of the Hutchinson case was a dispute over the theology of salvation,
specifically whether sanctification was any evidence of justification. This
was an im portant argument because it had political overtones. If member­
ship in the church was based on one’s visibility as a saint (evident sanctifica­
tion), and the franchise is limited to church members, then the means of
determining both what and who is a visible saint becomes a matter of
political as well as theological interest. It is too easy, argues Herbert
Schneider, to appraise this case (and that of Roger Williams as well) from
the standpoint of later issues, such as toleration and liberty o f conscience.
. . . Looking back, it is obvious to us, that from the point of view of
later developments, this aspect o f the case is most significant; but
from the point o f view o f the problems of the founding of New
England, they represent rather a struggle between fanatical religion
and moral religion, between socially effective churches, between visi­
ble and invisible Christianity.24
Thus the issues at the time o f the Hutchinson affair were both theological
and social. Z iff observes that
. . . during 1636 tempers ran higher and higher, and the oral clashes
that followed sermons were becoming slanderous. In view of the un­
deniable Christianity o f the Hutchinson group, the heat generated and
sense o f danger acutely felt by those who opposed them indicated that
the doctrinal battle was touching the deepest assumptions of the cul­
ture. Since, however, the growing outrage sprang from the unarticu­
lated structure o f the society’s sense o f reality rather than from a mere
disagreement on theological interpretations, it was intensified by the
m ajority’s frustration in being unable to find a correlative in the dis­
puted opinions for their intense feeling o f being threatened.25

24Herbert Wallace Schneider, The Puritan M ind (Ann Arbor: University o f Michigan Press,
1964), p. 64.
25Larzer Ziff, Puritanism in America: New Culture in a New World (New York: Viking
Press, 1973), p. 65.
 DILEMMA AND HUMAN AUTONOMY IN PURITAN PRACTICE - 1—69

According to the Hutchinsonians, visible sainthood was a “ covenant of

works,” which meant that practical sanctification could not be used as a
standard by which to judge whether a given candidate for church member­
ship was actually a member of the invisible church. Anne Hutchinson’s
position was that it is the actual possession of the covenant of grace that
made one a member of the invisible church and that this possession was
evidenced by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit within the believer, not in his
outward profession and evident works.
In between these two positions stood John Cotton. Anne Hutchinson
professed to follow Cotton in her doctrine, but Cotton professed to be in
orthodox agreement with the rest of the ministers of Massachusetts Bay,
whom Mrs. Hutchinson described as being under the covenant of works,
rather than grace. It is Cotton’s position that we must follow in order to
think clearly about the antinomian issue and visible sainthood. It is true that
Cotton opposed the tendency of ministers and elders to hold an “ in­
strumental view” of faith, i.e., that faith is a cause of salvation rather than
a term for the state of salvation. The Antinomian crisis, writes James Jones,
revolved around Cotton’s view of three issues: (1) whether salvation was in­
stant or reached through stages of preparation, (2) whether sanctification or
good works were any evidence of being truly saved, and (3) whether faith is
an active or passive state.26 Cotton rejected the concept of preparation, see­
ing a great gulf fixed between faith and unfaith. Cotton’s concern, writes
Jones,
. . . was to safeguard the primacy of God’s action and the centrality
of Christ. He was afraid that if there were anything antecedent to
conversion, it would encourage men to look to themselves to see if
they were on the right track rather than waiting for God to work in
them the overwhelming miracle of the new birth. The new creation
was creation out of nothing not only because it was instantaneous but
also because there was nothing in man, no stages of preparation,
nothing he could do or say, that would influence this event. It was
wholly of God and not of man. The true Christian looked only toward
the divine and not to any preparatory steps or stages.27
Cotton was also concerned that people might come to rely on their atten­
dance at church or even membership in it for their salvation. While the
people should enjoy the purity of the church in New England, they should
not trust in it, nor stand upon it, nor think that they are blessed because of
it. To do so would be to trust in the letter rather than the spirit, and the let­
ter is “ loss, and dross, and dung.” 28

26James W. Jones, The Shattered Synthesis: New England Puritanism before the Great
Awakening (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), p. 6.
11Ibid.
28Ziff, Puritanism in America, p. 61.
70—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

It was this emphasis in Cotton that Anne Hutchinson found so attractive.

Nothing that man could do was any help in achieving salvation and
therefore nothing that man did was any evidence of salvation or lack of it. It
was the position of the Elders, however, that a tree was to be judged by its
fruit, and that faith was to be judged by works. Consequently most of the
New England churches judged visible sainthood and the covenant of grace
by the outward profession of faith and a life lived in conformity to it.29
As the issues were clarified in debate, however, Cotton eventually
disassociated himself from the Antinomian position of Mrs. Hutchinson
and her brother, John Wheelwright. At the Synod of 1637, called to study
and consider the questions that had been raised, Cotton and the other
ministers came to agreement on the issues:
. . .that in the testimony of the Holy Spirit, which is the evidence of
our good estate before God, the qualifications of inherent graces and
the fruits thereof, proving the sincerity of our faith must ever be co­
existent, concurrent, co-apparent, or else the conceived testimony of
the Spirit is either a delusion or doubtful.30
Both Anne Hutchinson and John Wheelwright were undaunted. Their
position was that those who were truly saved were possessed by the Holy
Spirit which dwelt in them even to the point of making a “ personal union”
between the Holy Spirit and the believer so that “ a believer must be more
than a person.” 31 The saved therefore were to be governed by grace and not
by laws — either moral laws or the laws of men. And since such deliverance
from the law would be dangerous in hypocrites, a rigorous examination into
the elect must be made. Sanctification, or godly behavior, was not suffi­
cient; the search must be internal: of the actual possession of grace rather
than the appearance of grace. Thus, writes Larzer Ziff,
. . . Psychology took precedence over ethics as the science of the
salvation experience. If one objected that a tree is known by its fruits,
the obvious answer was that the tree does not know itself by its fruits
but by its roots. Not the outer form but the inner flux marked the
saint. His every energy should be bent to insuring access to that flux
and opposing the imposition of forms and formulas that arrested it.32
Massachusetts considered these ideas so dangerous that they had the An-
tinomians disarmed, and then tried Hutchinson and Wheelwright for sedi­
tion when they continued to “ nourish contentions.” First Wheelwright was
disenfranchised and was banished, and soon thereafter Mrs. Hutchinson

29Rushdoony, This Independent Republic, p. 103.

30Cotton Mather, Magnolia Christi Americana (London, 1702), Book VII, Ch. Ill, Sec. 5,
cited in Herbert W. Schneider, The Puritan Mind (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1964), p. 66, n. 26.
3'John Winthrop, Winthrop’s Journal: History o f New England 1630-1649, ed. James
Kendall Hosmer (2 vols.; New York: Barnes and Noble, 1959), I, pp. 198, 201.
“ Ziff, Puritanism in America, p. 60.
 DILEMMA AND HUMAN AUTONOMY IN PURITAN PRACTICE - 1—71

was also. Winthrop recorded that the Court “ . . . charged her with divers
matters . . . , which were clearly proved against her, though she sought to
shift it o ff.”
And, after many speeches to and fro, at last she was so full as she
could not contain, but vented her revelations; amongst which this was
one, that she had it revealed to her, that she should come into New
England, and should here be persecuted, and that God would ruin us
and our posterity, and the whole state, for the same.33
And so the court proceeded, concluded Winthrop, and banished her for
asserting that she had had an “ immediate revelation” from the Holy Spirit,
apart from the Word of God — a manifest heresy in Puritan theology.
In concluding his study of the Antinomian problem, Larzer Ziff asked
the most relevant question concerning the affair: “ What was there in the
Puritan community that was so deeply offended by Anne Hutchinson’s
group that her opponents moved swiftly and massively to suppress
them . . . ?” 34 Ziff goes on to quote W inthrop’s comment that in claiming
an immediate revelation, Anne Hutchinson
. . . hath manifested that her opinion and practice have been the cause
of all our disturbances, and that she walked by such a rule as cannot
stand with the peace of any state; for such bottomless revelations, as
either came without any word, or without the sense of the word (which
was framed to human capacity) if they be allowed in one thing, must
be admitted as a rule in all things; for they being above reason and
Scripture, they are not subject to control.35
The position of the Hutchinsonians was that the individual was more im­
portant than the state, that the individual enlightened conscience was more
important than the social norms and behavior code of Massachusetts’ visi­
ble saints. “ Like transcendental thinkers who were to follow her in New
England,” writes Ziff, “ she saw no conflict between the freedom of the
enlightened individual and the well-being of the community, but, like them
also, she insisted on the priority of conscience.” 36
Ziff is correct. The Antinomian spirit sees the individual as more impor­
tant than society and the individual conscience as autonomous. But there
were other assertions of autonomy as well. In her claim of immediate
revelation and her claim to be in bodily communion with the Holy Spirit,
Mrs. Hutchinson was clearly heretic. The heresy was not in her claim to be
moved by the Holy Spirit, but rather in her claim to be moved to an im­
mediate revelation. And in her call for a subjective, internal test of salvation
rather than the outward visible test, she was making herself (or the church)

33Winthrop, Journal, I, p. 240.

34Ziff, Puritanism in America, p. 66.
33Ibid.
36Ibid.
72—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

the judge of the grace of God within the believer, a knowledge impossible to
men, being rather a part of God’s omniscience.
But Mrs. Hutchinson was apparently not convinced. Winthrop wrote that
after her excommunication, God apparently gave her up “ . . . t o that hard­
ness of heart, as she is not affected with any remorse, but glories in it, and
fears not the vengeance of God, which she lies under, as if God did work
contrary to his own word, and loosed from heaven, while his Church had
bound upon earth.” 37 If Winthrop is correct, Mrs. Hutchinson simply con­
tinued to assert her autonomy.

37Winthrop, Journal, I, 255.

 7
Dilemma and Human Autonomy in
Puritan Practice — II
The dilemma involved in the area of church-state relations and establish­
ment was that of trying to maintain a franchise restricted to church
members and a religious uniformity within the colony and yet to keep the
church and the state separate and unconfused. The Puritans also desired the
magistrate to maintain an orthodoxy of faith and practice within the colony
yet professed to believe in the liberty of the individual conscience. In
Puritan theory, church and state were to be cooperating but unconfounded
spheres within the society. The churches were responsible for man in his
spiritual relationship to God, and the state was responsible for man in his
social relationships with other men. The Antinomian crisis had challenged
this arrangement by insisting that he who had a satisfactory spiritual rela­
tionship to God through the first table of the law (containing man’s rela­
tionship to God) was thereby delivered by the Spirit from any obligation to
the second table (man’s relationship to man). This did not necessarily mean
that he would violate them but that they would be fulfilled in spirit rather
than in letter. The colony in its reaction to this sundering of the law reunited
it by maintaining that both the church and the state were equally responsible
for both tables of the law. For the Puritan there could be no segregation of
spiritual life and social life. The two were all of a piece; life was inescapably
religious.
When he came therefore to consider the relationship between Christianity
and civil government and began to work out the separation of church and
state, he considered that the state should not have governing power in the
churches and that the church should not rule in civil matters as a church.
Thus Cotton wrote to Lord Say and Seal that
. . . it is very suitable to God’s all-sufficient wisdom, and to the
fulness and perfection of Holy Scriptures . . . to prescribe perfect
rules . . . for the right ordering . . . of the commonwealth . . . and
. . . avoid both the church’s usurpation upon civil jurisdictions, in
order toward things spiritual, and the commonwealth’s invasion upon
ecclesiastical administration, in order to civil peace, and conformity to
the civil state. God’s institution (such as the government of church
and of commonwealth be) may be close and compact, and co-ordinate
one to another, yet not confounded.1

'John Cotton, “ Copy of a Letter from Mr. Cotton to Lord Say and Seal in the Year
1636,” The Puritans,eds., Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson (2 vols.; rev. ed.; New
York: Harper and Row, 1963), I, 209-212.
74—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

Cotton went on to say that while God had so framed the church as to be
compatible with any form of human government, yet given a choice, the
commonwealth should be framed similar to the church, i.e., a theocracy
which is ruled by the Word of God and “ referreth the sovereignty to
himself.” 2
It was the separation of church and state that distinguished the Puritan
from the Anglicans in England, but most Puritans wanted to separate
church and state only to reunite them as a partnership. In other words,
writes Alan Simpson, they want
. . . to break the indissoluble unity of church and state in Anglican
England so as to get the church on its scriptural basis . . . but once on
that basis, they expect the state to uphold it . . . . Separation of
church and state, in such a context, meant simply a division of func­
tions between two partners with a tendency to reduce the state to a
junior partner where the clergy claimed a superior insight into the
Divine Will.3
Rutman, on the other hand, notes that
. . . the historians have noted all too often those laws passed by civil
authorities to further the views of the church and those cases where
the ministry advised the magistrates on civil matters. But they have
paid far too little attention to the arduous efforts made to define the
respective spheres of church and state.4
One such effort at definition was that made by John Davenport, who
wrote that the two different orders
. . . be not set in opposition as contraries that one should destroy the
other, but as co-ordinate states, in the same place, reaching forth help
mutually to each other, for the welfare of both according to God, so
that both officers and members of churches be subject in respect of
the outward man, to the civil power, of those who bear rule in the civil
state according to God and teach others to do so; and that the civil
magistrates and officers in regard of the inward man subject
themselves spiritually to the power of Christ in church ordinances and
by their civil power preserve the same in outward peace and purity.5
John Cotton, who saw church and state as equally the “ viceregents of
God” and partners in the cause of truth,6 wrote in 1640 that both church
2Ibid., p. 210.
3Alan Simpson, Puritanism in Old and New England (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1955), p. 26.
4Darrett B. Rutman, “ The Mirror of Puritan Authority,” Law and Authority in Col­
onial America: Selected Essays, ed. George Athan Billias (Barre, Masssachusetts:
Barre Publishers, 1965), p. 161.
5John Davenport, A Discourse About Civil Government (Cambridge, 1663), pp. 8-9,
quoted in C. Gregg Singer, A Theological Interpretation o f American History (Nutley,
N .J.: The Craig Press, 1969), pp. 15f.
6Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson (eds.), The Puritans (2 vols.; rev. ed.; New
York: Harper and Row, 1963), I, 187.
 DILEMMA AND HUMAN AUTONOMY IN PURITAN PRACTICE - 11—75

and state in Massachusetts were involved in “ the establishment of pure

religion, in doctrine, worship, and government, according to the Word of
God; as also the reformation of all corruption in any of these.” 7 And,
accordingly, Urian Oakes described the Massachusetts arrangement as “ a
little model of the glorious kingdom of Christ on earth. Christ reigns among
us in the commonwealth as well as in the church and hath his glorious
interest involved and wrapt up in the good of both societies respectively.” 8
Though church and state shared the same ends and served the same pur­
pose, they did not have the same function. Functionally, the church and the
state were carefully distinguished and kept strictly separated. John Cotton
wrote that “ the government of the Church is as the Kingdom of Christ is,
not of this world, but spiritual and heavenly . . . . The power of the keys is
far distant from the power of the sword.” 9
This strict separation of function led Clifford Shipton to conclude that
“ in spite of the integration of civil and religious life in the seventeenth cen­
tury, the government of Massachusetts never was a theocracy in any normal
sense of the term .” 10 In fact, writes Aaron Seidman, if we regard the colony
as a state controlled or even influenced mainly by the clergy, it is necessary
to ignore the facts:
In the documents of the colony and in the writings of its leading
men, separation was constantly implied and expressed. At no time do
we find church and state operating as one unit . . . . the essential
boundaries of the two organizations were kept well defined . . . . “
These definitions and boundaries were set forth in the Body of Liberties
of 1641 and later in the Cambridge Platform and the Massachusetts Code of
1648. The Body of Liberties stated that the “ Civil authority hath power and
liberty to see the peace, ordinance, and rules of Christ observed in every
church according to his word, so it be done in a civil and not in an
ecclesiastical way.” Law 95, section 8 stated that “ all churches have liberty
to deal with any of their members in a church way that are in the hand of
justice. So it be not to retard or hinder the course thereof.” 12 Thus the
church was to deal in a church way and the civil government in a civil way.
In the case of a conflict, the General Court would interpret and decide.
Likewise the interference of each with the other was prohibited by laws 59

7Quoted in Rutman, “ The Mirror of Puritan Authority,” p. 162.

8Quoted in Sidney Ahlstrom, A Religious History o f the American People (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), p. 148.
9Quoted in Rutman, “ The Mirror of Puritan Authority,” p. 161.
10CIifford K. Shipton, “ The Locus of Authority in Colonial Massachusetts,” Law
and Authority in Colonial America: Selected Essays ed. George Athan Billias (Barre,
Massachusetts: Barre Publishers, 1965), p. 137.
11Aaron B. Seidman, “ Church and State Reconsidered,” Puritanism in Seventeenth-
Century Massachusetts, ed. David D. Hall (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968), p.
84.
12“ The Body of Liberties,” cited in Aaron B. Seidman, “ Church and State,” p. 77.
76—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

and 60: “ Civil authority hath power and liberty to deal with any church
member in a way of civil justice, notwithstanding any church relation,
office or interest.” “ No church censure shall degrade or depose any man
from any civil dignity, office, or authority he shall have in the
commonwealth. ” 13
Since church and state had different functions but the same end, the rela­
tionship between church and state became a question of the specific power
of the state in matters of religion. In Massachusetts the magistrate was given
both compulsive and restrictive powers. Compulsive power was power to
compel certain religious practices such as attendance at church or the pay­
ment of the tithe, which was collected like taxes for the support of the
church.14 It is an “ ungodly imagination,” said Cotton, that would limit the
magistrate to caring for the bodies and goods of the people but not for their
souls.15
The restrictive power of the magistrate was that of preserving the state
from erosion by outlawing certain beliefs, practices, or even people from
the colony. In either its compulsive or restrictive function, however, the
state was still only concerned with external action. It could not compel
belief or deal with private opinion. It could act only to compel outward
action or to curb the open expression of heretical ideas. Its object was to
preserve externally the spiritual good of the people, that “ a right opinion
and worship of God should be openly professed within the territories and
jurisdiction of a state,” as Thomas Cobbet of Ipswich put it. The
magistrate should “ inquire and judge profession and religions, which is
true, and ought to be maintained, which is false and ought to be rejected.”
The magistrate, he said,
. . . is a political minister of God, in his civil way, and by his civil
means, of the subjects spiritual good; so he is to improve his authori­
ty, that the liberty, purity, and peace of God’s own instituted worship,
and ways, wherein their spiritual good, externally, doth much lie, be
maintained and defended against all infesting, infringing, impugning
or impairing principles.16
It is important to note, however, that in exercising his compulsive or
restrictive function, the magistrate was not autonomous and could not be
arbitrary. W inthrop argues in 1644 that
. . . arbitrary government is, where a people have men set over them,

"ibid., pp. 77f; Cf. “ The Book of the Laws and Liberties Concerning the In­
habitants of the M assachusetts,” Ecclesiasticals, 15, The Puritan Tradition in
America 1620-1730 ed. Alden T. Vaughan (Columbia, S.C.: University of South
Carolina Press, 1972), p. 171.
14Shipton, “ The Locus of Authority,” pp. 137f.
15Irwin H. Polishook (ed.), Roger Williams, John Cotton and Religious Freedom: A Con­
troversy in New and Old England (Englewood Cliff, N .J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967), p. 74.
“ Quoted in Miller, Orthodoxy, p.260.
 DILEMMA AND HUMAN AUTONOMY IN PURITAN PRACTICE - 11—77

without their choice, or allowance: who have power to govern them,

and judge their causes without a rule.
But where the people could choose their officers and “ require the rule by
which they shall be governed and judged,” there could be no arbitrary
government.17
It was the basic contention of all Puritanism, of course, that the Word of
God was the fundamental law, binding both subject and magistrate.
Thomas Hooker could thus argue that “ . . . the Magistrate hath a coactive
power to compel the church to execute the ordinances of Christ, according
to the order and rules of Christ . . . and in case she swerves from her rule,
by a strong hand to constrain her to keep it.” 18 But the same law also bound
the magistrate and put a limit on his actions.
Such was the orthodox Puritan theory of church and state. Put into prac­
tice, writes Perry Miller, two difficulties soon became apparent: (1) not all
people were regenerate and willing to view church and state from this
biblical point of view, and (2) as religious fervor waned as the years (and
generations) passed, it was more and more difficult to maintain the fiction
of a holy commonwealth made up of and ruled by a covenant people who
were committed to the law of G od.19 Massachusetts tried to meet these dif­
ficulties by the restriction of the franchise to those who were accounted
“ visible saints.” In New England there was no established church (in the
sense of a church ruled and governed by the state) even though the churches
received financial support from the state. The limitation of the franchise to
church members was not seen as an establishment of the church, but only as
a necessary adjunct to the Congregationalist desire for a national church. It
was necessary to restrict the franchise to church members since, as John
Davenport put it, they are bound “ unto all faithfulness in all things to God
and man. . . . ” and “ the like assurance cannot be had in any other way, if
this course be neglected.” 20 Thomas Shepherd preached on the subject in
1638 before the General Court:
Maintain the privilege to death. Whomsoever you shall choose let
him be one from among yourselves; a member of some church; he that
is shut out of the fellowship of churches will be an enemy unto the

17John Winthrop, “ Arbitrary Government Described: And the Government of the

Massachusetts Vindicated from that Aspersion,” Life and Letters o f John Winthrop,
ed. Robert C. Winthrop (2 vols.; Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1864-1867 [Reprinted
New York: Da Capo Press, 1971]), II, 440.
18Thomas Hooker, A Survey o f the Summe o f Church Discipline, 1648, pt. II, p. 80,
cited in Miller, Orthodoxy, pp. 259f.
19Miller and Johnson, The Puritans, I, 191 f.
20John Davenport, A Discourse About Civil Government, pp. 12, 22, cited in Miller,
Orthodoxy, p. 245.
78—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

strictness of churches; and ruin church you ruin state; and Christ
also.21
Cotton denied that such restriction of the franchise to church members
subverted the state to the church since magistrates do not govern “ . . . by
directions from the church, but by civil laws . . . in all which, the church
(as the church) hath nothing to do: only, it prepareth fit instruments both to
rule, and to choose rulers.” 22 Yet when membership in the church was
limited to visible saints and that by means of an internal and experiential
test, church and state, having been separated in Puritan theory, became
confused again. Rushdoony, commenting that the Puritans in
Massachusetts were in varying degrees of rebellion against establishment
and civil supremacy, writes that
the establishment, when it came to Massachusetts, was a product of
a mutual compromise designed to perpetuate the holy commonwealth
rather than return to the English pattern. The theological issues are
not our . . . concern except in that, as the requirements for the
mature fulfillment of the personal covenant moved from the Reform­
ed doctrine of piety to Arminian moralism and experientialism, the
people found themselves less able to share in the more private
demands and tests of faith. Antinomianism had been the first
manifestation of this demand for a private as against public test.23
The compromise, he says, appeared in two ways: “ The church was
established to create a form ally Christian state and thereby retain the holy
commonwealth goal. The church in turn established the world by means of
the half-way covenant to ensure form ally the co-existence of the church in
the Christian commonwealth.” 24
Thus, again, the Puritan reaped the fruit of the autonomous doctrine of
the visible saint, this time in the realm of establishment.
In England establishment caused an even greater conflict. There the
Presbyterians stood for an established church while the Congregationalists
opposed it. The idea of establishment is, of course, the demand for a
supreme temporal ruler of the church. To the English Congregationalist the
establishment of the church conflicted with his view of church government
and of restricted membership. If the church were established, his synods
would become coercive and his church membership comprehensive. Then in
1640 during the civil wars and the resulting spirit of anarchy, a new factor
entered the picture: there was a multiplying of religious sects in England.

2'Thomas Shepherd, New England Historical and Genealogical Register, XXIV,

366, cited in Miller, Orthodoxy, p. 245.
“ Miller, Orthodoxy, p. 244.
“ Rousas John Rushdoony, This Independent Republic: Studies in the Nature and Meaning
o f American History (Nutley, N .J.: The Craig Press, 1964), p. 97.
24Ibid.
 DILEMMA AND HUMAN AUTONOMY IN PURITAN PRACTICE - 11—79

Cromwell, unable to decide between the conflicting theories of the various

sects and needing the support of all, began to advocate religious toleration.
As he let the hundred flowers bloom in England, the New England Con-
gregationalists looked on in horror and joined the English Presbyterians in
condemning Cromwell. In England Presbyterians joined with Anglicans to
restore Charles II to the throne in 1660, shortly after which the Anglicans
turned on the Presbyterians and expelled them from the Church of
England. The Presbyterians had no ground to stand upon other than justice
and charity. In the Westminster Confession of 1648 they had asserted that
the civil magistrate had authority
. . . to take order, that unity and peace be preserved in the church,
that the truth of God be kept pure and entire, that all blasphemies and
heresies be suppressed, all corruptions and abuses in worship and
discipline be prevented or reformed, and all the ordinances of God du­
ly settled, administered, and observed. For the better effecting
whereof, he hath power to call synods, to be present at them, and to
provide that whatsoever is transacted in them be according to the
mind of God.25
This section of the Confession was in conflict with a later part (Chapter
XXX, 1) which asserted that “ The Lord Jesus, as king and head of his
church, hath therein appointed a government in the hand of church of­
ficers, distinct from the civil magistrates.” A modern commentator on the
Confession has written of this conflict in the Confession and of this period
of history that
. . . it is not to be forgotten that subsequent to the Westminster
Assembly, the Scottish Covenanters were called upon to suffer unto
death from civil oppression. To these rugged Presbyterians, who more
than others, resolutely adhered to the testimony of the Confession, we
owe much, for it was to assert the absolute spiritual independence of
the Church of Jesus Christ from civil authority that they gave their all.
Those who loved the testimony of the Confession best, suffered most
for the principle which was — after all — compromised in the original
formulation of these sections.26
The compromise, of course, was to allow a temporal ruler over the
church in the form of the civil magistrate. The Scottish Covenanters in the
1640’s and the English Presbyterians in the 1660’s had no defense
theologically against the civil magistrate and his actions regarding the
affairs of the church since they had compromised it away in the formulation

25“ The Westminster Confession of Faith,” XXXIII, 3 The Westminster Confession o f Faith
fo r Study Classes, ed. G.I. Williamson (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing
Co., 1964), p. 244.
16Ibid., p. 246.
80—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

of their own confession of faith. The result of that compromise was

autonomy, dilemma, and ultimately for them, death.
Another problem associated with the Puritan doctrine of church and state
had to do with the maintenance of orthodoxy in the holy commonwealth. If
orthodoxy of doctrine is to be maintained, should it be done by the church
or the state? Also, how can liberty of conscience and non-toleration of dis­
sent exist at the same time? Again, we shall see that the principle of
autonomy provides a key to a proper understanding of the Puritans’ posi­
tion on toleration and liberty of conscience.
In 1650 Sir Richard Saltonstall wrote from England to John Cotton and
John Wilson concerning the “ sad things” that “ are reported daily of your
tyranny and persecutions in New England, as that you fine, whip, and
imprison men for their consciences.” It is reported, said Saltonstall, that
you compel men to attend your assemblies, and then punish them for their
“ public affronts” when they show their dislike of it. This practice forces
them to sin by going against their consciences, and makes them hypocrites.
We pray for you, he continued, “ that the Lord would give you meek and
humble spirits, not to strive so much for uniformity as to keep the unity of
the spirit in the bond of peace.” Saltonstall added that when he had once
written then-Governor Thomas Dudley concerning whether Anabaptists,
Seekers, and Antinomians might be allowed to settle in New England,
Dudley had replied rather curtly that “ God forbid our love for the truth
should be grown so cold that we should tolerate errors.” But, added
Saltonstall, “ I hope you do not assume to yourselves infallibility of judg­
ment when the most learned of the Apostles confesseth he knew in part and
saw but darkly as through a glass.” 27
Cotton’s reply to Saltonstall is a short but complete treatise on the
Puritans’ ideas on toleration and liberty of conscience. As usual, he turns
the problem back on those who have been complaining and have been
listening to complaints in England:
The cry of the sins of Sodom was great and loud and reached up to
heaven, yet the righteous God (giving us an example what to do in the
like case), He would first go down to see whether their crime were
altogether according to the cry before He would proceed to judg­
ment . . . , and when He did find the truth of the cry, He did not
wrap up all alike promiscuously in the judgment, but spared such as
He found innocent.2*
Cotton then addresses himself to the specific cases at hand, adding a few
facts that might mitigate Saltonstall’s reservations about New England’s

27John Cotton, “ Letter to Richard Saltonstall,” The Puritan Tradition in America

1620-1730, ed. Alden T. Vaughan (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press,
1972), pp. 200f.
2tIbid., p. 202.
 DILEMMA AND HUMAN AUTONOMY IN PURITAN PRACTICE - 11—81

handling of the cases. Then Cotton turns his attention to a more general
justification of New England’s way: to Saltonstall’s charge that to compel
men to attend church is to force them to sin, Cotton replies that
. . . if the worship be lawful in itself, the magistrate compelling him to
come to it compelleth him not to sin, but the sin is in his will that needs
to be compelled to a Christian duty. . . . Bodily presence in a stewes,
forced to behold the lewdness of whoredoms there committed, is no
whoredom at all. No more is it spiritual whoredom to be compelled by
force to go to Mass.29
If it be objected that it makes men hypocrites, so be it. Yet better a
hypocrite than a profane person.
And if the English Congregationalists hoped that New England would
have so much “ light and love” as to avoid practicing those courses which
they went into the wilderness to prevent as well as to have been an example
to God’s people in England (as Saltonstall had put it), Cotton exhorts him
to consider that
. . . if our native country were more zealous against horrid blas­
phemies and heresies than we be, we believe the Lord would look at it
as a better improvement of all the great salvations he hath wrought for
them than to set open a wide door to all abominations in religion.30
Cotton then denounces the situation that is being tolerated in England:
“ Do you think the Lord hath crowned the state with so many victories that
they should suffer so many miscreants to pluck the crown of sovereignty
from Christ’s head?” He details the various heresies that are being pro­
moted in England and concludes:
. . . And thus Christ by easing England of the yoke of a kingdom shall
forfeit His own kingdom among the people of England. Now God for­
bid . . . that the people and state of England should so ill requite the
Lord Jesus. You know not if you think we came into this wilderness to
practice these courses here which we fled in England. We believe there
is a vast difference between men’s inventions and God’s institutions.
We fled from men’s inventions, to which we else should have been
compelled; we compel none to men’s inventions.31
And finally to the charge that Anabaptists, Antinomians, and Seekers
were not tolerated in Massachusetts, Cotton answered,
Nevertheless, I tell you the truth, we have tolerated in our church
some Anabaptists, some Antinomians, and some Seekers, and do so
still at this day . . . . [Those that] carry their dissent . . . privately
and inoffensively . . . , are borne withal in much meekness. We are

29Ibid., p. 203.
30Ibid.
31Ibid., p. 204.
82—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

far from arrogating infallibility of judgement to ourselves or affecting

uniformity; uniformity God never required, infallibility he never
granted us. We content ourselves with unity in the foundation of
religion and of church order. Super-structures we suffer to vary; we
have here Presbyterian churches as well as Congregational, and have
learned (through grace) to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of
peace. Only we are loath to be blown up and down (like chaff) by
every wind of new notions.32
When Oliver Cromwell came to support toleration in the army in the late
1640’s in England, he did it for a practical reason: “ Shall that [opinion]
render him incapable to serve the public? . . . Sir, the State in choosing
men to serve it takes no notice of their opinions. Take heed of being
sharp . . . against those to whom you can object little but that they square
not with you in every opinion concerning matters of religion.” 33 There was,
however, a spiritual reason for toleration as well, and it was expressed in
1647 by the Army itself in its “ Agreement of the People” : “ . . . matters of
religion and the ways of God’s worship are not at all entrusted to us by any
human power, because therein we cannot remit or exceed a tittle of what
our consciences dictate to be the mind of God without willful sin.” 34
New England was horrified, but in its efforts to seize and keep power,
Cromwell’s government did not have time to force such toleration on New
England. Cromwell’s New England brethren, writes Miller, “ thoroughly
sympathized with his efforts, but . . . they looked upon his policy of tolera­
tion as the sole stain upon the otherwise flawless record of the pre-eminent
warrior saint of the age.” 35 And they were determined that such a policy
would not be followed in New England.
The problem of toleration and liberty of conscience had first come up in
New England in 1635 with the case of Roger Williams, who had been
banished for his separatist opinions, and then again in 1637 in the case of
Anne Hutchinson. In 1644 a literary duel between John Cotton and Roger
Williams did much to define the issues, but not to resolve them. At stake
were actually two issues: one had to do with the function of church and
state in maintaining theological orthodoxy and came to focus on the ques­
tion of whether the state should enforce the first table of the law and punish
heresy. The other issue had to do with the question of the liberty of con­
science: whether diversity of religious opinion ought to be tolerated in any
kind of society. These two issues overlapped in many places in New
England, but it will be necessary to sort them out if we are to see clearly the
significance of the New England position.

32Ibid.
33Quoted in Miller, Orthodoxy, p. 272.
i4Ibid., p. 273.
35Miller and Johnson, The Puritans, I, 15f.
 DILEMMA AND HUMAN AUTONOMY IN PURITAN PRACTICE - 11—83

We have already noted that the New England Puritans maintained a

separation of function between church and state, but not a separation of
goals or ends. It followed, therefore, that open heresy within the colony was
as much a matter for state concern as for church concern. But even here the
boundaries between church and state were carefully drawn. Whenever a
heretic was to be tried, the church tried him for heresy while the state tried
him for sedition or civil disturbance. If he was found guilty, the church
could only expel him from the fellowship of the church. It was then up to
the state to try the heretic for his crime. But the point to note is that heresy
was viewed as a crime because it was seen as subversive to the social order.
The Cambridge Platform of 1648 provided that
idolatry, blasphemy, heresy . . . , venting corrupt and pernicious
opinions that destroy the foundation . . . , open contempt of the
word preached . . . , profanation of the Lord’s Day . . . , disturbing
the peaceable administration and exercise of the worship and holy
things of God, and the like . . . are to be restrained and punished by
civil authority.
And
if any church, one or more, shall grow schismatical, rendering itself
from the communion of other churches, or shall walk incorrigibly and
obstinately in any corrupt way of their own, contrary to the rule of the
word, in such case the magistrate . . . is to put forth his coercive
power as the matter shall require.36
The point was reiterated by the Massachusetts Code also passed in 1648:
Forasmuch as the peace and prosperity of churches and members
thereof, as well as civil rights and liberties are carefully to be main­
tained, it is ordered by this Court and decreed: that the civil authority
here established hath power and liberty to see the peace, ordinances,
and rules of Christ be observed in every church according to His word.
As also to deal with any church member in a way of civil justice not­
withstanding any church relation, office, or interest, so it be done in a
civil and not in an ecclesiastical way.37
The line of separation between the church and the state in a particular
case was not always clear, however, and sometimes the magistrates and
elders found it necessary to take specific thought concerning the boun­
daries. Winthrop records that during the Antinomian crisis it was necessary
to call the ministers to give advice “ about the authority of the court in
things concerning the churches,” and that they “ did all agree” on two
points: (1) that no member of the General Court ought to be called in ques­

36“ The Cambridge Platform ,” XVII, 8, 9, The Puritan Tradition, p. 114.

37“ The Book of the Law and Liberties Concerning the Inhabitants of the
Massachusetts,” Ecclesiasticals, 15, The Puritan Tradition, p. 171.
84—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

tion publicly for court actions or discussions without permission of the

Court since state secrets may be involved that “ may not be fit to acquaint
the church with” and (2) that in cases of obvious and dangerous heresies the
court need not wait for the churches to act, but in more doubtful cases the
church should act first.3®
As John Cotton reviewed the events of 1637, he saw the handling of the
Antinomian crisis as an ideal application of the Puritan theory and the fruit
of the Congregational way:
Whatever assistance the civil government gave to the purging and
healing of these evils, it was the fruit of Independent church govern­
ment. For whether the neighbor churches suspected our church of
Boston might be partial, and indulgent to these erroneous persons; or
whether they saw, we wanted sufficient witnesses upon which we
might proceed against them in a church way, they took a right course
(according to the principles of the Independent government) to gather
into a synod with the consent of the civil magistrates: and in the synod
to agitate, convince and condemn the errors, and the offensive car­
riages then stirring. Whereat the magistrates being present, they saw
just cause to proceed against the chief of those whom they conceived
to have bred any civil disturbance: and the churches saw cause to pro­
ceed against their members, whom they found to be broachers or
maintainers of such heresies.39
The state, however, could deal only with the “ outward man” and that
only, as Cotton put it, “ when either his mental errors or heart’s lust break
out into open expression and view, and become scandalous and
spreading.” 40 Miller comments that it was possible for the magistrates to
limit themselves to outward behavior because by their rules anyone who
persisted in an opinion after “ one or two admonitions thereby condemned
himself.”
Heresy, in other words, was understood to be as concrete a crime as
murder, and though the guilty one refused to recognize his offenses as
such, society nevertheless had a right to judge him. Just as in the
Church the clergy themselves determined when an obstinate heretic
deserved excommunication, so, when the magistrates dealt with him,
they too could legitimately decide at what point they should cease per­
suading and deliver a just sentence.41
Miller misses the point here by ignoring the distinction that he originally
made between heresy and the expression of heresy. Heresy is not as concrete

38John Winthrop, Winthrop’s Journal: History o f New England 1630-1649, ed. James Ken­
dall Hosmer (2 vols.; New York: Barnes and Noble, 1959), I, 210.
“ John Cotton, “ The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared,” John Cotton on the Chur­
ches o f New England, ed. Larzer Ziff (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press,
1968), p. 282.
40Quoted in Miller, Orthodoxy, p. 258.
4'Miller, Orthodoxy, p. 258.
 DILEMMA AND HUMAN AUTONOMY IN PURITAN PRACTICE - 11—85

a crime as murder, but the expression of heresy is. And it was that persisting
expression of heresy that was seen as the sign of an autonomous spirit, a
conscience not subject to authority or control, and therefore dangerous to
the civil order. In the cases of both Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams,
this was precisely the point that led to their trial and banishment. When
Williams refused to back down from his erroneous and dangerous opinions,
says Winthrop,
. . . time was given to him and the church of Salem to consider these
things till the next general court, and then either to give satisfaction to
the court, or else to expect the sentence; it being professedly declared
by the ministers, (at the request of the court to give their advice,) that
he who should obstinately maintain such opinions, (whereby a church
might run into heresy, apostasy, or tyranny, and yet the civil
magistrate could not intermeddle,) were to be removed, and that the
other church ought to request the magistrates to do so.42
The idea that both the church and the state had a role to play in the
maintenance of orthodoxy was not questioned by the Puritans. There could
be and were disagreements about the application of the concept and about
the specific boundaries of responsibility and function, but the idea was
beyond question. Consequently, a change in the attitude of the state regard­
ing heresy and orthodoxy was tantamount to a change in the religious
philosophy of New England. This point was made by Nathaniel Ward in his
Simple Cobbler o f Aggawam in 1647. I dare aver, said Ward,
. . . that God doth nowhere in his word, tolerate Christian states to
give toleration to such adversaries of his truth, if they have power in
their hands to suppress them. . . . That state that will give liberty of
conscience in matters of religion, must give liberty of conscience and
conversation in their moral laws, or else the fiddle will be out of tune,
and some of the strings crack.43
Toleration, then, marked a change in religion. The state could not be
neutral toward God or toward truth. “ Not to tolerate things merely indif­
ferent to weak consciences, argues a conscience too strong,” wrote Ward;
uniformity on these will only cause disunity. But to tolerate more than these
indifferent things is “ not to deal indifferently with G od.” In fact, “ he that
doth it, takes his Scepter out of his hand, and bids him stand by.44 At the
base of the argument over toleration and liberty of conscience was an
autonomous attitude toward God and truth.
The Puritans who settled at Boston intended no such autonomy, and
therefore no toleration of error or untruth. Religious liberty was not their

42Winthrop, Journal, I, 154.

43Nathaniel Ward, The Simple Cobbler o f Aggawam in America, ed. P.M. Zall (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1969), 6, 10.
**Ibid.
86—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

objective. When Samuel Willard read in 1681 the claim of a group of

Anabaptists that the founders of New England had established a haven for
persecuted consciences, he commented that “ . . . they are mistaken in the
design of our first planters, whose business was not toleration; but were
professed enemies of it, and could leave the world professing they died no
libertines. Their business was to settle, and . . . secure religion to posterity,
according to that way which they believed was of G od.” 45
There is nothing so idle, said Perry Miller, “ as to praise the Puritans for
being in any sense conscious or deliberate pioneers of religious liberty —
unless, indeed, it is still more idle to berate them because in America they
persecuted dissenters from their beliefs. . . . To allow no dissent from the
truth was exactly the reason they had come to America.” 44 The Puritans
made no apology for their stand and seem to have understood what the
issues really were. Their position, in other words, was not one taken in
ignorance or in an undeveloped humanity, which would be scrapped when
once they had become enlightened. Their position depended instead on the
content of the issue and not on the mere use of coercion, and their whole
case rises and falls on that particular point. If the New England Way were
not Christ’s way, said Weld, then coercion would be wrong.47 Their
intolerance and coercion was right because it was God’s truth that was at
stake. The Simple Cobbler wrote that
if the whole creature should conspire to do the Creator a mischief,
or offer him an insolency, it would be in nothing more, than in erec­
ting untruths against his truth, or by sophisticating his truths with
human medleys: the removing of some one iota in Scripture, may
draw out all the life, and traverse all the truth of the whole Bible: but
to authorize an untruth, by a toleration of state, is to build a sconce
against the walls of heaven, to batter God out of his chair; to tell a
practical lie, is a great sin, but yet transient; but to set up a theoretical
untruth, is to warrant every lie that lies from its root to the top of
every branch it hath, which are not a few.48
What is involved here is a particular understanding of what liberty of
conscience is. For the Puritan liberty of conscience was not liberty to believe
whatever one chose to believe, but rather liberty to believe the truth as
found in the Word of God. Such a liberty was a gift of God given to sinful
men by the grace of God. The Westminster Confession of 1648 stated in its
chapter “ Of Christian Liberty, and Liberty of Conscience” that

45Quoted in Miller and Johnson, The Puritans, I, 185.

46Ibid.
47Miller, Orthodoxy, p. 168.
“ Ward, The Simple Cobbler, p. 8.
 DILEMMA AND HUMAN AUTONOMY IN PURITAN PRACTICE - 11—87

God alone is lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the
doctrines and commandments of men which are in any thing contrary
to his word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship. So that to
believe such doctrines, or to obey such commandments out of cons­
cience, is to betray true liberty of conscience: and the requiring of an
implicit faith, and an absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy liber­
ty of conscience, and reason also.49
True liberty of conscience was to believe the truth; to believe anything
else was to betray true liberty of conscience. Likewise to require an implicit
faith or obedience was to destroy liberty of conscience. Herein is the dif­
ference between the Puritan concept of liberty of conscience and the con­
cept of toleration. New England did not require any kind of an inward faith
or belief since that would have violated the principle of the liberty of con­
science, but New England did refuse to tolerate other forms of belief or
unbelief, heresies and blasphemies, especially whenever they became known
through outward actions or proselytizing. The Westminster Confession
continued in the next section that
they who, upon pretence of Christian liberty, do practice any sin, or
cherish any lust, do thereby destroy the end of Christian liberty; which
is, that being delivered out of the hands of our enemies, we might serve
the Lord without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him, all the
days of our life.50
Thus liberty of conscience was the liberty to obey the law of God, not to
do whatever one pleased, or to ignore the law of God. This is an important
distinction in the Puritan’s justification of his policy on toleration. The
Simple Cobbler wrote:
I take liberty of conscience to be nothing but a freedom from sin and
error. Conscience is free insofar as it is free from error. And liberty of
error nothing but a prison for conscience. Then small will be the kind­
ness of a state to build such prisons for their subjects.51
But what if one should desire the freedom to do something other than
that allowed by the Word of God, i.e., a “ liberty of error” ? The Cobbler’s
answer was direct: “ The Scripture saith, there is nothing makes free but
truth, and truth saith, there is no truth but one. . . .” 52 True liberty,
in other words, is found in obedience to the Word of God, and anything else
is less than liberty and not indifferent to God. In fact, said Ward, this truth
is the greatest freedom: “ If the States of the world would make it their

49“ The Westminster Confession of Faith,” XX, 2, p. 149.

s0Ibid., XX, 3, p. 149.
5‘Ward, The Simple Cobbler, pp. Ilf.
31Ibid., p. 12.
88—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

[utmost] care to preserve this one truth in its purity and authority it would
ease you of all other political cares.” To desire any other law or liberty
reflects an autonomous spirit. “ I am sure Satan makes it his great if not
only task, to adulterate truth; falsehood is his sole scepter, whereby he first
ruffled, and ever since ruined the world.” 53
It is important, however, to note that even though the state was to pro­
ceed against heresies and other abominations, the state was not thereby to
become arbitrary or tyrannous. Simpson observes that the unregenerate and
the peaceful heretics “ will be protected in such civil rights as God intended
them to have, exposed to the sermons which will save a few of them, and
prevented from dishonoring the community by scandalous conduct.” 54
God’s law, in other words, also limits the government, divides the author­
ity, and checks and balances the impulses of sinful men and magistrates.
The state is not autonomous in its proceeding against heresy. Thus even in­
toleration on God’s standards and law can be just, fair, and righteous. Even
the Simple Cobbler claimed to be a “ crabbat,” or stout club, against
arbitrary government.55

53Ibid.
54Simpson, Puritanism in Old and New England, p. 40.
55Ward, The Simple Cobbler, p. 16.
 8
Dilemma and Human Autonomy in
Puritan Practice — III
The third dilemma faced by the Puritans came in the area of church
government, specifically concerning congregational government. If
independent congregations are the essence of church government, how can
uniformity among the congregations be maintained? This particular
dilemma, however, created a tendency toward disorder rather than toward a
temporal autonomy centered in one person or institution. Reinitz points out
that the problem was that of individualism rather than uniformity: “ If the
ultimate appeal on earth was to the individual conscience, how could a
uniformity of reformation be imposed? If every congregation was to be self-
governing, what was to prevent the development of different visions of the
truth?” 1
The Puritan efforts to make the visible and invisible churches as nearly
identical as possible led, as we have seen, to the concept of a convenanted
church made up of “ visible saints.” And the basis of “ visible sainthood”
was either the individual’s possession or profession of an experience of sav­
ing grace. We have also seen that while the Puritans expected that such a
covenanted church could serve as a national church (that is, the official
church), they rejected the idea of a church coextensive with society.2 On the
other hand, they rejected the individualism of that separatism which saw the
church as merely an independent group of autonomous individuals joined
together in a voluntary association but entirely separate from any other
covenanted group. It was this effort to maintain both the individualism and
the corporatism o f the church that made up the essence of the New England
Way, or what Perry Miller described as “ non-separating Congrega­
tionalism.”
There was both an internal and an external aspect to the problem. It was
as necessary to achieve uniformity among the believers within the individual
church as it was to achieve uniformity among the several churches. And the
problem of governing and controlling the individual consciences in the local
churches was not unlike that of governing the church at large in the con­
gregational system. Thus the Puritans developed two ways of taking up the
slack caused by the lack of due centralization in the congregational way.

'Richard Reinitz (ed.), Tensions in American Puritanism (New York: John Wiley, 1970), p.
11.
2Alan Simpson, Puritanism in Old and New England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1955), p. 15.
90—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

Within the church the power of the elders, as opposed to that of the con­
gregation, grew, and between the churches the synod, or consociation,
became more significant as a checking device.
The government of the church, according to the New England Way, was
a creation of the church members. “ The saints constitute the matter of
Christ’s church,” said Thomas Hooker, but “ the form is only by mutual
covenant.” 3 That form was described in the Cambridge Platform (IV,3):
This form is the visible covenant, agreement, or consent whereby
they give up themselves unto the Lord, to the observing of the ordi­
nances of Christ together in the same society, which is usually called
the Church covenant; for we see not how otherwise members can have
church-power for one over another mutually.4
Thus the Congregational Church consisted “ of a company of saints by call­
ing, united into one body by an holy covenant, for the public worship of
God and the mutual edification of one another in the fellowship of the Lord
Jesus.” 5
Within the church, once the members had covenanted together to form it,
they were expected to elect elders to rule the church. Although officers were
not “ absolutely necessary” to the simple existence of a church, they were
seen as necessary to the “ Calling” and “ well-being” of the church, and
“ therefore the Lord Jesus Christ . . . hath appointed ordained officers,
which He would not have done if they had not been useful and needful to
the church . . .
These elders enforced the discipline of the church and directed the church
trials whenever discipline had to be exercised. They interpreted the laws of
the church, pre-interviewed candidates for membership, and advised the
congregation whenever it was to take action. We “ bring as few matters as
possible, into the assembly,” said Thomas Weld, “ rather labouring to take
all things up in private, and then make as short work in public (when they
must needs come there), as may be.” 7 The same thought was included in the
Cambridge Platform. In Chapter VII on the duties of elders and deacons,
one of the duties of elders is “ to prepare matters in private that in public
they may be carried [to] an end with less trouble and more speedy
dispatch.” 8

3Herbert Wallace Schneider, The Puritan Mind (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1964), p. 19.
*Ibid., p. 19, n. 6.
5“ The Cambridge Platform, ” II, 6, The Puritan Tradition in America 1620-1730, ed. Alden
T. Vaughan (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1972), p. 99.
6Ibid., VI, 2, pp. lOOf.
7Quoted in Perry Miller, Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, 1630-1650 (Boston: Beacon Press,
1959), p. 183.
8“ The Cambridge Platform, ” VII, 2, p. 102.
 DILEMMA AND HUMAN AUTONOMY IN PURITAN PRACTICE - III—91

Miller’s summary of the New England Way is instructive:

Thus when the internal government of a Congregational church was
perfected in New England, the ostensible result was a peculiar system
of balanced, interlocking, and yet independent authorities . . . . The
elders administered and the congregations rendered judgments, each
according to a set of rules devised for those particular functions . . . .
This theory of dual authorities cooperating voluntarily in the advance­
ment of Christ’s kingdom was a triumph of ingenuity. It preserved the
genuine Christian virtues that Puritanism opposed to the formalism of
the Establishment, and projected a church system which followed the
instructions of Christ, admitting members only upon profession of
their faith and allowing them as Christians to exercise the privileges of
the elect. At the same time, the theory provided a check upon human
tendencies to go astray, a sure-fire method for maintaining law and
order.9
But Miller continues, when the theory was put into practice, it turned out
that the elders still held the crucial power because they were the interpreters
of the Word in a church that was disciplined out of the Word. “ Individual
members were no match for those who devoted their days and nights to
exegesis.” 10 The answer, of course, is that not enough slack had been taken
up to tighten the basic disorder of the congregational polity. A wall of brass
or stone put in the wrong place, Cotton had said, is never as effective as a
wall of sand in the proper one.
In the matter of external government, the need for consociations of the
ministers began almost at once. In congregational theory the Bible, properly
interpreted, was the standard for all matters of faith and practice and set
forth the one way of church polity and practice. But, as Reinitz has noted,
when the churches were actually set up in New England, it soon became
apparent “ that uniformity could not be achieved through the careful
reading of the Scriptures” and thus “ the independence of the congregations
was compromised in order to ensure it.” 11
Reinitz also notes that when the same problem arose in England, it was
handled by moderating uniformity and accepting toleration. Since tolera­
tion was not an option that the New England divines wanted to consider, it
was necessary to find another means of ensuring uniformity. What they
compromised to ensure uniformity was the independence of the congrega­
tion, a compromise which moved them away from the autonomy of the
local congregation and back to a non-autonomous system of checks and
balances between the individual congregation and the consociation of the
several churches.

9Perry Miller, Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, 1630-1650 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1959), p. 183.
l0Ibid., p. 182.
“ Reinitz, Tensions, p. 11.
 92—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

We have already seen that the Congregationalists and the Separatists

opposed any kind of synod or consociation with coercive power. Though
the Congregationalists did see the need occasionally for a voluntary meeting
of the churches as a court of wider appeal, the Presbyterian alternative of a
system of courts of higher appeal in the church was not open to the Con­
gregationalists, not because they did not see the value of it, but because the
accompanying idea of an established and comprehensive church made the
synods coercive. Coercive synods, declared John Davenport, had been “ the
cause of many mischiefs in the church, for thereby the writings and decrees
of men are made infallible and equal with the Word of God, which is
intolerable.” 12 John Cotton opposed both the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of
“ cathedral churches” and “ classical assemblies,” saying that “ the keys of
the government of His church are given to each particular congregational
church respectively” and they united only by “ voluntary consociation.” 13
Here Cotton reflected the thought of his mentors, William Ames and
Robert Parker, the English theologians who did most to develop the
theology of Puritanism. Parker had written in 1616 that “ the visible church
instituted by Christ and his apostles to which the keys are given, is not a
Diocesan or Provincial or national assembly but a particular
congregation.” 14 In short, the particular congregations were autonomous.15
Each church was to have “ a pastor, a teacher, ruling elders, deacons,
perhaps widows, and no other officers,” writes Morgan, and “ no church or
minister should be subordinate to another but all should be joined in
brotherly communion in some kind of association.” 16
In order to keep the churches all facing the same direction, the ministers
of New England did meet periodically in the “ voluntary consociations” to
discuss matters of current concern. These congregational consociations
were an aid to uniformity. English Congregationalism had permitted synods
as long as they were deliberative rather than ruling and persuasive rather
than coercive. When Roger Williams objected to New England’s consocia­
tions in 1633, fearing it “ might grow in time to a presbytery or
superintendency, to the prejudice of the churches’ liberties,” he was assured
by the other ministers that it would never happen, that “ no church or per­
son can have power over another church” and “ neither did they in their
meetings exercise any such jurisdiction . . . .” 17

12Quoted in Miller, Orthodoxy, p. 115.

13John Cotton, “ The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared, ” John Cotton on the
Churches o f New England, ed. Larzer Ziff (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University
Press, 1968), p. 198.
14Quoted in Schneider, The Puritan Mind, p. 18.
l5Simpson, Puritanism in Old and New England, p. 25.
l6Edmund S. Morgan, Visible Saints: The History o f a Puritan Idea (New York: New York
University Press, 1963), pp. Ilf.
17John Winthrop, Winthrop’s Journal: History o f New England 1630-1649, ed. James Ken­
dall Hosmer (2 vols.; New York: Barnes and Noble, 1959), I, 112f.
 DILEMMA AND HUMAN AUTONOMY IN PURITAN PRACTICE - III—93

But over the years the consociation device was used more frequently and
for a growing list of problems, including the resolution of internal problems
within individual churches as well as matters of general and mutual con­
cern. Within a decade, says Miller, “ it had become the established custom
of the colony to require the presence of the neighboring ministers at the
covenanting of new organizations, at the election of all officers, or at the
deposition of erring ones, and to refer to outsiders for the arbitration of all
parish quarrels.” 11 The first such synod was held to deal with the Antino-
mian question in 1637. Another was held in 1643. In 1645 Thomas Hooker
was asked to write a “ Sum of Church Discipline” which became the basis
for the Cambridge Synod which met from 1646 to 1648 and produced the
Cambridge Platform. There was another assembly held in 1657, and in
1662, and again in 1667, 1679, and 1680. In short, writes Schneider, “ the
synod became a frequent and necessary institution.” 19 Cotton would later
attribute the success of the New England Way to the use of consociation:
Mutual conference between Godly, ingenuous, and self-denying-
Christians is a notable means sanctified of God for the instruction and
edification one of another, till we all come to be of one mind in the
Lord.20
The Cambridge Platform reflected and formally recognized this growing
use of synods in 1648. The General Court had called for a synod to be held
to establish the right form and government of the churches since “ some dif­
ferences of opinion and practice of one church from another do already
appear amongst us, and others (if not timely prevented) are like speedily to
ensue . . . .” 21 The deputies objected to the call for a synod, fearing for the
independence of the individual churches in spite of the court’s directive that
they should rule not by power “ but only [by way] of counsel from the word
of G od.” 22
This distinction was an important one in the Congregational theory. The
consociation could not impose its will, but it could clear up the truth and
withdraw fellowship from dissenting and obstinate congregations. The
Cambridge Platform described the powers of the synod:
. . . to debate and determine controversies of faith and cases of con­
science . . . ; to clear from the word holy directions for the holy wor­
ship of God and good government of the church; to bear witness
against maladministration and corruption for the reformation
thereof; [but] not to exercise church censures in way of discipline, nor
any other act of church authority or jurisdiction.23

18MilIer, Orthodoxy, pp. 189-190.

19Schneider, The Puritan Mind, p. 67.
20Quoted in Miller, Orthodoxy, p. 193.
21Ibid., p. 298.
31Ibid., p. 300.
23“ The Cambridge Platform, ” XVI, 4, p. 113.
94—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

To the degree that the deliberations and decisions of a synod were “ con­
sonant to the Word of God,” they were
. . . to be received with reverence and submission, not only for their
agreement therewith . . . (which is the principal ground thereof, and
without which they bind not at all), but also secondarily, for the
power, whereby they are made, as being an ordinance of God ap­
pointed thereunto in His word. . . ,24
Miller asserts that this was “ about as far in the direction of centralization
as Congregationalism could go without abandoning its basic premises.” 25
And that was as close to the Presbyterian system as they could get without
embracing the coercion of Presbyterianism’s established church. When
Presbyterianism finally gave up the idea of establishing itself, the Congrega­
tional opposition to its polity declined, and in the case of Connecticut,
disappeared altogether. When the Connecticut colony adopted its Saybrook
Platform in 1708, it instituted a “ semi-presbyterian structure which provid­
ed for county consociations to enforce discipline and doctrine in the
churches, ministerial associations to regularize ordinations and other mat­
ters, and a General Association of Ministers to oversee the commonwealth’s
church affairs.” 26 This stand, says Ahlstrom, led to “ ever closer ties” be­
tween the Connecticut churches and the Presbyterian churches of the mid­
dle colonies.27 Thus in the matter of synods and consociations the Puritans’
dilemma caused by autonomous individuals and a lack of due order was
resolved as the churches developed the proper bounds of their power and
the system of checks and balances between them.
Schneider, in reviewing the development of the synod and its increasing
use in the history of the congregational church, concluded that the synod
became a “ frequent and necessary” institution and that that fact was
evidence “ that control was becoming increasingly difficult.”
Each synod was a symptom of differences, and each left its
disaffected minority. Authority became more centralized, government
more autocratic, and Hooker’s vision of the democracy of the little
kingdoms of Christ, wherein they shall teach no more every man his
neighbor, faded into a dream. The theocracy became a government by
the influential clergy, and the Holy Commonwealth degenerated into
an ecclesiastical autocracy.28
What Schneider is describing is not so much an overdevelopment of cen­
tralized authority as it is a development of centralization out of a situation

24Ibid., XVI, 5, p. 113.

25Miller, Orthodoxy, p. 194.
26Sidney Ahlstrom, A Religious History o f the American People (New Haven: Yale Univer­
sity Press, 1972), p. 163.
11Ibid.
28Schneider, The Puritan Mind, p. 67.
 DILEMMA AND HUMAN AUTONOMY IN PURITAN PRACTICE - III—95

that was basically anarchistic in the beginning. By asserting the autonomy

of the particular congregation, the Congregational Way lacked due cen­
tralization; it had a less-than-autonomous central government. The growth
and development of the synod as well as the increasing power of the elders
within the particular churches can thus be seen as correcting movements,
away from anarchy and back toward the balance of non-autonomy.
 9
The Application of Non-Autonomy
When John Winthrop lectured the General Court on the nature of liberty,
he likened the Christian’s submission to authority to a wife’s submission to
her husband:
The woman’s own choice makes such a man her husband; yet being
so chosen, he is her lord, and she is to be subject to him, yet in a way
of liberty, not of bondage; and a true wife accounts her subjection her
honor and freedom, and would not think her condition safe and free,
but in her subjection to her husband’s authority. Such is the liberty of
the church under the authority of Christ, her king and husband; his
yoke is so easy and sweet to her as a bride’s ornaments; and if through
frowardness or wantonness, etc., she shake it off, at any time, she is at
no rest in her spirit, until she take it up again; and whether her Lord
smiles upon her, and embraceth her in his arms, or whether he frowns,
or rebukes, or smites her, she apprehends the sweetness of his love in
all, and is refreshed, supported, and instructed by every such
dispensation of his authority over her. On the other side, ye know who
they are that complain of this yoke and say, let us break their bands,
etc., we will not have this man rule over us. Even so, brethren, it will
be between you and your magistrates. . . .'
It would be easy to write Winthrop off as a seventeenth-century male
chauvinist, but that would miss his point. Winthrop was not speaking of
women’s rights (or lack of them) or even of the church as the bride of
Christ. His issue was autonomy, as evidenced by his last sentence: “ Even
so . . . , it will be between you and your magistrates.’’ Winthrop con­
tinued:
. . . If you stand for your natural corrupt liberties, and will do what is
good in your own eyes, you will not endure the least weight of authori­
ty, but will murmur, and oppose, and be always striving to shake off
that yoke, but if you will be satisfied to enjoy such civil and lawful
liberties, such as Christ allows you, then will you quietly and cheerful­
ly submit unto that authority which is set over you, in all the adminis­
trations of it, for your good.2
Winthrop, as early as 1639, had noticed a spirit of autonomous liberty in
some, but also noted that the “ wisdom and care of the elders’’ prevailed

‘John Winthrop, Winthrop’s Journal: History o f New England 1630-1649, ed. James Ken­
dall Hosmer (2 vols.; New York: Barnes and Noble, 1959), 239.
2Ibid.
98—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

against it and that the people were generally of such understanding and
moderation that they could be easily guided by rule from Scripture and
sound reason.3 But by 1645 he found it necessary to give a public warning
against such a spirit.
Yet all things considered, New England was fairly peaceful as civil states
go. Timothy Breen has noted that
. . . when peace is considered normal and natural, social history
becomes the search for the causes of conflict rather than the causes of
cohesion; and the achievement of a genuinely cohesive society is ig­
nored in an exclusive concentration on whatever flaws in the surface
calm have subsequently widened into contemporary chasms.4
Such a concentration, says Breen, has led historians of Puritanism to ignore
the P uritan’s “ most startling” accomplishment: “ fifty years of relative
social peace.” 5 This accomplishment, however, was not unknown to the
Puritans of the time, nor were they without their opinions of its cause. In
1648 Thomas Shepherd could write that “ though we be a people of many
weaknesses and wants, yet we acknowledge our God to have been to us a
God of many mercies, in respect of that sweet peace which he hath taken
away from so many nations, yet continuing the same to us . . .” 6 And a
1645 appeal for funds and support for H arvard College listed the blessings
o f God upon the colony, and concluded:
Above all our other blessings, in planting His own name and pre­
cious ordinances am ong us (we speak it humbly and in His fear), our
endeavor is to have all His own institutions, and no more than His
own, and all those in their native simplicity, without having any
hum an dressings; having a liberty to enjoy all th at G od commands,
and yet urged to nothing m ore than H e com m ands. Now, whereso­
ever, He records His nam e, thither H e will come and bless . . .7
There were three particular features o f the M assachusetts Bay colony
which go a long way tow ard explaining the relative social peace o f New
England, writes Breen: (1) the widespread existence o f an accepted
ideology, (2) responsive social and political institutions, and (3) a high level
o f general prosperity in the colony during the seventeenth century.8 The

3Ibid., I, 326f.
4Timothy H. Breen and Stephen Foster, “ The Puritans’ Greatest Achievement: A Study of
Social Cohesion in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts,” The Journal o f American History,
LI, 1 (June 1973), 5.
5Ibid.
6Thomas Shepherd, “ A Defense of the Answer made unto the Nine Questions or positions
sent from New England against the reply thereto by Mr. John Ball,” The Puritans, eds. Perry
Miller and Thomas H. Johnson (2 vols.; rev. ed.; New York: Harper and Row, 1963), 1 ,122.
7“ New England’s First Fruits,” 1493-1754: Discovering a New World, Vol. 1 of The Annals
o f America, ed. Mortimer J. Adler (18 vols.; Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1968), p.
179.
*Breen, “ The Puritans’ Greatest Achievement,” p. 9.
 THE APPLICATION OF NON-AUTONOMY—99

author of “ New England’s First Fruits” did not class them in those three
heads, but he spoke to the same points.
The accepted and widespread ideology of Massachusetts was, of course,
orthodox Puritanism in its non-autonomous form. From the beginning
Massachusetts had been conceived as an experiment in Christian living; a
model of Christian charity, said Winthrop, “ under the power and purity of
His holy ordinances.” 9 The leaders, whom the people followed, proposed
to develop the implications of Christian philosophy in church and state,
family and school, ethics and conduct. The fact that they were starting fresh
and were in substantial agreement made their situation much easier. It was
not necessary to tear down or modify an old society in order to construct
their new model. When they left England, they had left most of their op­
ponents behind them, and those who came to the New World were in basic
agreement over most of the essentials concerning the need of due form in
church and state and the source of ultimate authority in the society. Bernard
Bailyn has estimated that “ . . . most of the 20,000 Englishmen who
migrated to America in the 1630’s sought to recreate the village and farm
life they had known.” 10
They accepted and probably welcomed the medieval social teaching
of orthodox Puritanism if only for its inspiring support of the idea of
the close-knit community that existed for the good of all its members
and in which each man was his brother’s keeper.11
Yet Breen also notes that Congregationalism itself was a source of stabil­
ity. While it was “ flexible enough to accommodate moderate differences,
the orthodox faith still served as a useful test for detecting and expelling ex­
tremists, thereby precluding any prolonged clash over religious fundamen­
tals.” 12 True religion, explained Nathaniel Ward, is a testing fire which
doth congregate homogeneity and segregate heterogeneity.13 And thus
Puritanism in Massachusetts congregated those of like faith and shunted the
rest off to Rhode Island. The author of “ New England’s First Fruits”
pointed out that
in subduing those erroneous opinions carried over from hence by
some of the passengers, which for a time infested our church’s peace,
but (through the goodness of God) by conference preaching, a general
assembly of learned men, magistrates’ timely care, and, lastly, by

9John Winthrop, “ A Model of Christian Charity,” 1493-1754: Discovering a New World,

Vol. I of The Annals o f America, ed. Mortimer J. Adler (18 vols.; Chicago: Encyclopaedia
Britannica, 1968), p. 114..
10Bernard Bailyn, “ The Merchants and the Protestant Ethic,” Puritanism in Seventeenth-
Century Massachusetts ed. David D. Hall (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968), p.
88 .
11Ibid.
12Breen, “ The Puritans” Greatest Achievement,” p. 10.
13Quoted in Breen, “ The Puritans’ Greatest Achievement,” p. 10.
100—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

God’s own hand from heaven, in most remarkable strokes upon some
of the chief fomenters of them, the matter came to such a happy con­
clusion that most of the seduced came humbly and confessed their er­
rors in our public assemblies and abide to this day constant in the
truth. These (that remained obstinate), finding no fit market there to
vent their ware, departed from us to an island far off, some of whom
also since that time have repented and returned to us and are received
again into our bosoms. And from that time, not any unsound, un­
savory, and giddy fancy have dared to lift up his head or abide the
light among us.14
Thus Congregational Puritanism as the accepted ideology of
Massachusetts Bay established and stabilized the colony, creating a church
and community capable of both maintaining order and of disciplining its
wayward membership. A due form of ecclesiastical government had indeed
been established.
Likewise, the Bay Colony achieved a due form of civil government and
leadership which was responsibe to the needs of the society. When Win­
throp, aboard the Arbella, had described the operating premises of the col­
ony to be formed, he had called it “ a model of Christian charity” and
pointed out that the whole basis of that society would be love and brotherly
concern for one another:
For this end, we must be knit together in this work as one man; we
must hold each other in brotherly affection; we must be willing to rid
ourselves of our excesses to supply others’ necessities; we must uphold
a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience,
and liberality. We must delight in each other, make others’ conditions
our own and rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer
together, always having before our eyes our commission and common
work, our community as members of the same body.13
For the Puritan the life and interests of society were equally as important
as the life and interests of the individual. Society was an organism — Win­
throp spoke of it as a body — and a harmony of individualism and society
was to be sought and found. The covenant idea, as we have seen, enabled
the Puritan society to reconcile the interests of the one and the many by
enabling each sphere or component of society to seek its own good yet to
contribute to and be subordinated to the whole at the same time. There was
a multiplication of covenant activity, each covenant having a voluntaristic
basis. Each covenant or sphere was limited, and no sphere had final power.
Each compact was based on the voluntary consent of its participants since it
was believed that meaningful obedience could not grow out of coercion.16

14“ New England’s First Fruits,” p. 178.

“ Winthrop, “ A Model of Christian Charity,” p. 115.
“ Breen, “ The Puritans’ Greatest Achievement,” p. 12.
 TH E A PPLIC A TIO N OF NON-AUTONOM Y— 101

This voluntary consent gave rise both to social responsibility and to social
harm ony with the colony as a whole. Clifford Shipton has oberved that
. . . what went on in these years has been quite generally misunder­
stood by historians, particularly by those who have not realized
that . . . religious and civil life were an integrated whole. . . . The
P uritan’s preoccupation with m oral values made him keenly aware
that he should keep an eye out for the fallen sparrow, and should
temper the law to the shorn lamb, or to the debtor. This is why
Massachusetts passed the first statute forbidding cruelty to animals,
and, for their day, the most liberal laws for the protection o f debtors.
With the concern for the physical well-being o f the individual went a
certain am ount o f respect for his opinions.17
Thus, within the bounds o f their covenanted communities and churches,
the Puritans exercised “ relatively b ro ad ” powers both in church and civil
affairs. And the governments were so constituted in each as to make them
responsive to the people. Likewise, notes Breen, the judicial system o f the
Bay Colony contributed to tranquility. “ As soon as the Puritans arrived in
America, their leaders established clear procedures for handling legal
disputes. . . . As long as the commonwealth provided an equitable means
for hearing grievances, the citizens had little reason for disrupting the col­
ony’s internal harm ony.” 18
The author of the “ First Fruits” observed all this when he noted the
“ good hand o f G od” evidenced
. . . in giving o f such magistrates as are all o f them godly men and
members o f our churches, who countenance those that be good and
punish evildoers, that a vile person does not lift up his head; nor need
to hang it down, that (to G od’s praise be it spoken) one may live there
from year to year and not see a drunkard, hear an oath, or meet a beg­
gar. Now where sin is punished, and judgment executed, God is wont
to bless that place and protect it.19
Finally, the general prosperity of the Massachusetts Bay colony was a fac­
tor that engendered social peace and order in its first generation. There were
no m ajor wars, epidemics, famine, or social discontent or violence, but
there was a great growth in commerce, trade, agriculture, and population.
There was abundance of land and economic opportunity for all.
Part of that prosperity was due to the economic and social conditions of
the day, of course. Any colony should have done as well. But part was due
also to the ideology o f Puritanism and the work ethic that stemmed from it.
Larzer Ziff writes that the Puritans provided

17Clifford K. Shipton, “ The Locus o f Authority in Colonial Massachusetts,” Law and

Authority in Colonial America: Selected Essays, ed. George Athan Billias (Barre, Massachu­
setts: Barre Publishers, 1965), p. 136.
18Breen, “ The Puritans’ Greatest Achievement,” p. 15.
19“ New England’s First Fruits,” p. 179.
102—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

. . . an ideal base for colonization in their fidelity to contract obliga­

tions; their conviction of the sanctity of hard work; their experience in
the pragmatic organization of a self-governing community within the
larger community; and their consciousness of the independence from
human traditions in favor of their atemporal relationship to a true
church and true society that was timeless. These characteristics would
gain them financial backing and would provide them with a
psychological stability under the strain of isolation from the habitual
conveniences of the English community.20
Simpson, in discussing the Puritan’s contributions to politics, lists this
same ethic as one of the major contributions of Puritanism: “ . . . it is no
bad thing to have habits of honesty, sobriety, responsibility, and hard work
impressed on a community.” 21
The prosperity of New England was known to the people of the time, and
the fact was duly noted by the author of the “ First Fruits,” who saw the
hand of God “ in giving us such peace and freedom from enemies, when
almost all the world is on a fire that (excepting that short trouble with Pe-
quots) we never heard of any sound of war to this day,” and
in settling and bringing civil matters to such a maturity in a short time
among us, having planted fifty towns and villages, built thirty or forty
churches, and more ministers’ houses, a castle, a college, prisons,
forts . . . and all these upon our own charges, no public hand
reaching out any help; having comfortable houses, gardens, orchards,
grounds fenced, cornfields, etc., and such a form and face of a
commonwealth appearing in all the plantation, that strangers from
other parts, seeing how much is done in so few years, have wondered
at God’s blessing on our endeavors.22
In these ways, then, the Puritan philosophy was successfully implemented
in Massachusetts Bay. The ideology of Puritanism with its emphasis on
limited and divided power, its spirit of non-autonomy, and its insistence on
the application of God’s law as an absolute and sovereign authority outside
of man was instituted in a form of government and social order which was
based on the consent embodied in the covenant, limited by the law, and ac­
tive both in preserving the social fabric and the individual liberty of its
citizens. At the same time the Puritan ideology developed an ethic that
enabled its adherents to live realistically and prosperously in the holy com­
monwealth that had been created. In recounting the blessings of God upon
New England, Thomas Shepherd listed these same items, the

20Larzer Ziff, Puritanism in America: New Culture in a New World (New York: Viking
Press, 1973), pp. 35f.
2‘Alan Simpson, Puritanism in Old and New England (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1955), p. 113.
22“ New England’s First Fruits,” p. 178.
 THE APPLICATION OF NON-AUTONOMY—103

. . . liberty we have in God’s house, the blessed ministry of the Word,

the sweet unity and communion of God’s churches and ministers, in­
crease and multiplication of churches, Christian government in the
Commonwealth, and many other mercies we enjoy, but especially the
gracious presence of Christ to many of our souls in all these.23
Shepherd thought that these facts would speak for themselves and con­
vince any honest observer:
. . . if it were well known and considered, or if we were able to express
and recount the singular workings of divine providence, for the bring­
ing on of this work, to what it is come into, it would stop the mouths
of all that have not an heart to accuse and blaspheme the goodness of
God in his glorious works: whatever many may say or think, we
believe after-times will admire and adore the Lord herein, when all his
holy ends and the ways he hath used to bring them about shall
appear.24
It remains to show that the concept of non-autonomy was determinative.
And that point was also observed by the author of the “ First Fruits.” It has
been our endeavor, he wrote, “ to have all [God’s] own institutions, and no
more than His own, and all those in their native simplicity, without having
any human dressings; having a liberty to enjoy all that God commands, and
yet urged to nothing more than He commands.” 25 To have anything more
than God commanded was human autonomy; to have anything less than He
commanded was disorder and lawlessness. The essence of non-autonomy
was to have all that God commanded and no more. To the extent that New
England accomplished that, to that extent she prospered. The problems she
had and the dilemmas she faced, as we have seen, can be traced to having or
attempting to have either more or less than God’s own institutions. What
the historians have called the “ declension” was simply the result of turning
away from those institutions in one way or another to human autonomy.

23“ Thomas Shepherd, A Defense of the Answer . . . ,” pp. 122f.

24Ibid., p. 121.
25“ New England’s First Fruits,” p. 179.
 10
Declension
It is a matter of debate among historians whether a declension did in fact
occur during the period following 1650 or 1660 (the first generation). And,
if it did occur, there is further debate as to the nature of the declension and
its elements. In his essay entitled “ Errand into the Wilderness,” Perry
Miller made a distinction between an “ errand” as, in the first sense, a short
journey on which an inferior is sent by a superior, and, in the second sense,
as the actual business which is done on an errand — “ the purpose itself.”
Miller sees the Puritan attempt at a Holy Commonwealth as a transposition
from the first sense to the second, i.e., the Puritans first thought of
themselves as setting out to fashion a due form of government and to
become a city set on a hill as an example for the whole world. But after they
had created it, they found that the rest of the world was not paying any par­
ticular attention to them, and so they became an errand in the second sense:
an attempt at least to make a due form in America in and for itself and not
for England and Europe. Miller sees this as the significance of the impas­
sioned pleas of the Mathers and other of the second generation divines who
lamented the way that Massachusetts had turned in the 1660’s. They were
lamenting the failure of the errand in the first sense and were seeking for
their own identification, and in so doing, were moving toward the errand in
the second sense, even though they were not fully conscious of the change
they were undergoing.1
Darrett Rutman, on the other hand, has shown that the people of that
period did not necessarily share the idealism of the leaders; consequently, he
says, we must revise our ideas about a Puritan decline. What was happening
instead was that the view of life and society held by the leaders was grad­
ually being modified to accommodate that view of life and the world held
by the man in the street: “ . . . what are we to describe as ‘Puritan,’ asks
Rutman,
. . . the ideals of the articulate few . . . or the actuality of the . . .
man in the village lane? The very fact that such a question can be ask­
ed would seem to imply that the description of New England in terms
of Puritanism, or of Puritanism in terms of New England, is er­
roneous. Certainly the concept of a Puritan golden age, followed by a
decline, disappears. M ather’s degeneration is, in large part, nothing
more than the insistence by the generality upon a relationship between

1Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness (New York: Harper and Row, 1956), pp. 1-15.
106—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

the individual and society rather different from that held to by the
leaders. . . .2
In contrast to both Rutman and Miller is the position taken by Stephen
Foster in his study of the Puritan social ethic in New England’s first cen­
tury. Said Foster,
It has become a historiographical commonplace that New England
society changed drastically between its foundation and the early eight­
eenth century, and in a setting of rapid social evolution towards
modernity an archaic, partly static social ethic is undeniably inap­
propriate. But this very quality of the ethic, which is documented,
should in itself cast some doubt on the commonplace about social
change, which is not. Not even the law codes, the registers of social
values most sensitive to the needs of a society in rapid transition, show
much alteration until well into the eighteenth century.
The formal literature yields still less comfort: New England authors
were not particularly unobservant and yet somehow they seem to have
overlooked entirely the alleged transformation of their society, unless
one counts the ritualized lamentations about declension, which would
fit as well in 1360 as in 1660. . . .3

It follows that generalizations about declension are at best dangerous and

misleading. The historians have not even agreed on what constitutes declen­
sion. For Perry Miller, declension was that decline in religious fervor and
the loss of the concept of “ errand.” For Darrett Rutman declension was
nothing more than a shift in the relative influence of certain groups in the
society. Herbert Schneider saw the declension in a declining sense of sin.
The Mathers and other contemporary observers tended to see it as the loss
of influence of church and clergy. And Foster denies that there was any
development or change in any one coherent direction.
Yet it is obvious that there were changes in the social and spiritual life of
New England. Some of the changes, writes Alden Vaughan, are hard to
document, since they were more shifts in “ mood” than in action: “ The ero­
sion was gradual, almost imperceptible, but few historians doubt that it
took place or that it contributed significantly to the transformation of the
Puritan into a Yankee.” 4

2Darrett B. Rutman, “ The Mirror of Puritan Authority,” Law and Authority in Colonial
America: Selected Essays, ed. George Athan Billias (Barre, Massachusetts: Barre Publishers,
1965), pp. 163f.
3Stephen Foster, Their Solitary Way: The Puritan Social Ethic in the First Century o f Settle­
ment in New England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), pp. xiii f.
4Alden T. Vaughan (ed.), The Puritan Tradition in America, 1620-1730 (Columbia, S.C.:
University of South Carolina Press, 1972), p. 298.
 DECLENSION—107

What is needed, then, is a standard whereby to judge the shifts and

changes that occurred in the holy commonwealth over the years: one that
will enable us to distinguish between the changes that were merely changes
and those which represented declension. The concept of human autonomy
as we have developed it in this paper may serve us as such a standard. This is
not to say that the definitions and standards applied by the historians listed
above (and others) have been incorrect. But it is to say that the concept of
human autonomy lends a clearer focus to the discussion both of the declen­
sion and the development of the holy commonwealth. In terms of human
autonomy, declension may be defined as any change that involved a greater
assertion of human autonomy and thus resulted in a growing disharmony
and disorder within the colony. In terms of non-autonomy, the develop­
ment of the colony may be seen as the fruit of Puritanism’s “ due form of
government.” For instance, there was in the development of the colony an
evolution of Congregationalism toward a more presbyterian form of govern­
ment, as we have seen. Increase Mather had led the way with a call for a
synod meeting to consider such measures as appeared necessary to prevent
schisms, heresies, and other problems. In 1691 he attempted a union with
the Presbyterians; in 1670 Solomon Stoddard proposed a national church
along presbyterian lines; in 1705 a system of standing councils and associa­
tions was formed; and in 1708 the Connecticut church adopted the
presbyterian-style Saybrook Platform. In light of the discussion above con­
cerning the basic disorder and lack of due centralization (the autonomy) of
the congregational theory of church government, these later developments
would seem to be changes for the better, i.e., toward due order, rather than
toward declension. But note that when the same presbyterian-style plan was
proposed for Massachusetts in 1710, the congregationalists opposed it by
arguing the traditional congregational arguments for separate churches, but
this time with a new slant, which showed the inroads made by autonomous
thinking. John Wise led the argument and based his arguments on the ideas
of natural law, reason, and rights and liberties, whereas the traditional
arguments had been based on the scriptural pattern of the early churches.
“ The former Congregationalism,” writes Schneider, “ was an integral part
of the holy commonwealth; John Wise’s Congregationalism was the first
formulation of secular republicanism.” 5
Here we have a complete reversal of puritan philosophy. The state is
not justified because it makes a contribution to the kingdom of God;
the churches of God are justified because they tend to “ cultivate
humanity and promote the happiness of all and the good of every man
in all his rights.” [Wise] Nothing could be a more eloquent tribute to

5Herbert Wallace Schneider, The Puritan Mind (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1964), p.96.
108—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

the new spirit of New England: the churches are to be modeled on the
principles of civil society, not vice versa. It is not the concept of
democracy which is significant here, for that had been present from
the beginning of New England; it is the secularization, the dethrone­
ment of God, the unholiness of the commonwealth that marks the
revolution.6

Wise, it should be noted, was only formalizing what had been in effect
since 1691 when the Massachusetts State charter had cut the formal ties
between the church and the state by providing for a property qualification
for voting rather than a religious one. After that, the Congregational
church was only formally established, supported and ruled by the state and
definitely subordinate to it, but no longer in a position to exercise spiritual
influence and control of the state.
There are two areas of Puritan life and thought in which we can observe a
general decline, then — in the unity of Puritan thought and in the piety of
Puritan life. The Puritan concept of unity, as we have seen, involved a com­
monwealth of separate spheres of covenant activity — close, compact, coor­
dinate, but not confounded; independent but inter-dependent. Perry Miller
observed that the concept of unity was not alone the possession of the
Puritans, however. Both Puritans and Anglicans
. . . still believed that all knowledge was one, that life was unified,
that science, economics, political theory, aesthetic standards, rhetoric
and art, all were organized in a hierarchical scale of values that tended
upward to the end-all and be-all of creation, the glory of
God. . . .[They] struggled to maintain a complete harmony of reason
and faith, science and religion, earthly dominion and the government
of God. . . . [B]oth were endeavoring to uphold a symmetrical union
of heart and head without impairment of either.7
But though this was their goal, they were not so successful in maintaining
it. Intellectually, they maintained it till the end of the century, but, as Miller
puts it, “ By the beginning or middle of the next century their
successors . . . found themselves no longer capable of sustaining this
unity. . . In more tangible form, the decline of unity came in the clash
between the individual and the society and between the state and the church.
While authority was divided between certain limited and separate spheres,
there was conflict between them and the separation of the spheres grew
wider. “ Society was not something to which the people of the Bay com­
monwealth invariably subordinated their own interests,” writes Rutman.

6Ibid., p. 97.
7Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson (eds.), The Puritans (2 vols.; rev. ed.; New York:
Harper and Row, 1963), I, 10-11.
8Ibid.
 DECLENSION—109

. . . Indeed, the abstract concept of ‘society’ seems to have held little

meaning for a generality intent upon individual pursuits. Nor was
authority a pervasive thing, obliging the individual through the fami­
ly, church, and state to sublimate his personal aspirations to the com­
munity as a whole.9
As the spheres separated more widely, the division between church and
state was more pronounced: the church was seen as ruling in spiritual mat­
ters while the state ruled in temporal and secular matters. The elements of
authority were seen as separate and divided rather than as cooperating and
unified. The individual looked to the church on moral, spiritual, and
theological matters, but to the secular state for protection, welfare, pros­
perity, and justice — the “ keys to personal aggrandizement.” 10 In tracing
this development through the writings of the Puritans, we should be aware,
warns Rutman, that there “ is a subtle difference between a Winthrop or
Cotton for whom the goal of society was the pleasing of God; a Samuel
Williard to whom a happy, contented people was most pleasing to God; and
a John Wise to whom ‘the Happiness of the People, is the end of [the
State’s] being; or main business to be attended and done.’ ” MThe transfor­
mation from the “ pleasing of God” to the “ happiness of the people” as the
end of the state is certainly an example of the developing autonomous
outlook, but the more significant development is the acceptance of the divi­
sion of the commonwealth, the acceptance of the idea that the interests of
church and state were mutually exclusive, divided and distinct, and that the
more important concerns of the people were bound up with the state rather
than the church. It was not until 1830 that the Congregational Church was
disestablished institutionally, but the spiritual separation had taken place a
hundred years earlier.
The decline of Puritan piety came about in a similar way, by an accep­
tance of what had become a commonplace in New England. As Rutman
noted above, the view of society held by the leaders was not always the same
as that held by the man in the village lane, and the leaders finally found it
necessary to modify in that direction.
It is an error to believe that the leaders rationalized or accommodated the
decline in religious faith, writes Robert Middlekauf: “ a more prevalent
preaching upheld the old creed. . . . [But] this preaching represented a
largely clerical culture increasingly at variance with the chief dispositions of
society in New England.” 12

9Rutman, “ The Mirror of Puritan Authority,” p .160.

l0Ibid., p. 163.
11Ibid.
“ Robert Middlekauff, The Mathers: Three Generations o f Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 9.
110—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

The impact of such preaching was described graphically by Herbert

Schneider, who pictured a Puritan sitting in the Old South Church of
Boston in about the year 1724, listening to the Reverend Mr. Samuel
Willard, Vice-President of Harvard College, preaching on the first question
of the Shorter Catechism, touching on the emptiness of life without God.
Schneider continues:
Unless you are exceptionally irresponsive, the boundless imagination
and occasional eloquence of the preacher has touched you. Your soul
expands until it can grasp the whole creation and scarcely feel it. The
world looks empty, void and waste, full of horrible disappointments
and broken cisterns. You turn therefore, for your own best good and
enjoyment to the glory of God and in him you dwell at home. But now
church is over and you are plunged into the heart of Boston, the
metropolis of New England, growing, enterprising, exciting and ab­
sorbing. It is not empty, void, or waste. God himself must find his
own best good and enjoyment in dwelling at home in Boston!13
Some such “ intellectual sommersault,” says Schneider, was performed
each week by the Puritan layman. “ On Sunday the Puritan as
wholeheartedly lost himself in God as on Monday he devoted himself to
business.” 14 Thus the Puritan leaders and intellectuals, though they con­
tinued to hold to the ideals and creeds of Puritanism, were increasingly out
of touch with the reality of the man in the pew. The theological struggles
revealed that New England was no longer in unity and harmony as far as
theology went, and the “ internal decay of the saints” forced them to choose
at last “ between remaining loyal to the Holy Commonwealth . . . and
remaining loyal to New England, though it refused to be holy.” 15
By the eighteenth century the holy commonwealth was no longer a
peaceful, harmonious colony, but was, rather, shaken with internal
disorders. During the 1680’s the Dominion of New England was established
as the “ antagonized crown” began to apply imperial pressure on the New
England colony.16 The forms of government and social order which had
formerly worked to minimize grievances and conflict were undermined. The
common ideology, the accepted order of society, the natural authority of
the chosen leaders, and the decline of prosperity as a result of the war and
the new navigation laws all worked together to change Massachusetts from
a relatively peaceful to a relatively turbulent society.
The colony declined in terms of its covenanted community, the
social fabric being rent for personal advantage, in terms of its govern­

l3Schneider, The Puritan Mind, p. 101.

14Ibid.
"Ibid., p.73.
16Vaughan, The Puritan Tradition, p. xv.
 DECLENSION—111

ment with a significant popular base which would elect the governor
and assistants as well as the deputies, and in terms of its economic
prosperity as the lack of specie and the growth of paper currency
bankrupted the economy.17
Even more significant was the deterioration of Puritan piety, a deteriora­
tion which was “ entirely compatible with the most preserving virtues,”
writes Simpson. But it means
. . . contracted sensibility; gestures replacing feelings; tastes subduing
zeal; pride elbowing out humility, intellect playing a game; divided
souls acting a part their ancestors have forced on them. . . . Equally
far is the distance between the Puritan who knew the difference be­
tween spiritual and financial success and his descendant who
sometimes confused them. The old Puritans had a grim description
for this compromise with the covenant: they called it “ the forms of
godliness without the power.” 18
Such is the fruit of human autonomy. William Bradford’s lament in his
old age may serve for Massachusetts Bay as well as for the Plymouth
colony:
O that these ancient members had not died or been
dissipated . . . or else that this holy care and constant faithfulness had
still lived, and remained with these that survived, and were in times
afterward added unto them. But (alas) that subtle serpent hath slyly
wound in himself under fair pretence of necessity and the like to un­
twist these sacred bonds and ties, and as it were insensibly, by degrees,
to dissolve or in a great measure to weaken, the same. I have been hap­
py, in my first times, to see, and with much comfort to enjoy, the
blessed fruits o f this sweet communion, but it is now a part of my
misery in old age, to find and feel the decay and want thereof . . . ,
and with grief and sorrow of heart, to lament and bewail the same.19
But even at that, declension came slow and hard to New England because
of the non-autonomous institutional forms that had been developed.
Stephen Foster notes that the
. . . quintessential Puritanism of New England reveals above all that
tensions and contradictions were an inherent part of the Puritan
outlook, not mere products of its strained co-existence with tradi­
tional social forms. American Puritanism managed to combine the
traditional and the radical, the voluntary and the authoritarian, as
well as a host of other diametrically opposed impulses, into one
organic whole that apparently thrived on its own internal conflicts.
. . . Contradictions within Puritanism produced tensions and schism

17Breen, “ The Puritans’ Greatest Achievement,” p. 20.

“ Alan Simpson, Puritanism in Old and New England (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1955), p. 36.
“ Quoted in Simpson, Puritanism in Old and New England, p. 33f.
112—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

but they also enabled it to embrace the most diverse kinds of in­
dividuals . . . and to adapt to the most abrupt shifts in the fortunes of
its adherents. In this it bears a marked resemblance to another and
more modern idealogy [sic] whose internal tensions have also been
productive of both fission and durability. . . .20
It was the concept of checks and balances between spheres of divided,
limited, and non-sovereign authority that enabled the holy commonwealth
to embody such tensions, balance them, and turn them to productive
energy. Thus they built not so much an institutionally balanced society as a
self-correcting and self-stabilizing society. As excesses or imbalances built
up in one area, the pressures for a reaction in the other direction also built
up. Just as the Puritan dilemmas had given rise to corrective adjustments,
so many other distinctive features of Puritan society were abandoned or
modified as the years passed. Open communion replaced the closed com­
munion of the Congregational church and its visible saints. The Brattle
Street church professed to vary “ in some circumstances” from the other
churches of New England, but only in these and no others, among them,
membership by profession only and baptism to any person requesting it.
And there was an attempt in 1710 to establish a presbyterian form of church
government. Likewise, Gary North, in his study of “ Puritan economic ex­
periments,” observed that Puritanism with its emphasis on frugality,
responsibility, wise and rational use of resources, and optimism, should
have resulted in individual and aggregate economic growth, yet the Puritan
theologians of the second generation tried to limit such growth with sump­
tuary legislation both civil and ecclesiastical. He notes, however, that such
laws went unenforced, and fashions continued to degenerate until in 1680
the civil magistrates “ abandoned the attempt to maintain medieval concepts
of social status in an increasingly modern culture.” 21 But, concludes North,
. . . cultural and economic Puritanism, . . . still operated, but on a
private level. Individual saints saved, planned, built for the future.
The Holy Commonwealth . . . was more mature. It had freed men
from many of the shackles that had bound them for a thousand
years. . . . What was socially inoperative in Puritanism had been
largely scrapped by a later generation of Puritans.22
Some of these changes, though they may have been called declension at
the time, did not involve any assertion of human autonomy nor result in
disorder or disharmony, and therefore cannot be classed as part of the
declension. There were simply changes, some more successful than others,

20Foster, Their Solitary Way, xvi f.

21Gary North, Puritan Economic Experiments ([n.p.]: Remnant Press, 1974), p. 38.
22Ibid., p. 39.
 DECLENSION—113

and they also generated their own reactions and corrections, as happened,
for instance, when the evangelists of the Great Awakening reacted against
the changes instituted by Solomon Stoddard (open communion) and the
Brattle Street Church.
Thomas Prince reflected both the declension of autonomy and the self-
correcting power of the non-autonomous society when he put the people of
New England “ in mind of the Righteous Acts of the Lord to them and their
fathers” in 1730, the hundredth anniversary of the founding of New
England. First he spoke of the declension in terms of the loss of piety and
reality in spiritual life:
But O! Alas! Our great and dangerous declensions! To what an
awful measure are they gone already, how transcendently guilty do
they make us, how threatening do they grow. . . .
Though ’tis true we still maintain in general the same religious prin­
ciples and profession with our pious fathers, yet how greatly is the
spirit of piety declined among us, how sadly is religion turning more
and more into a mere form of godliness, as the apostle speaks, without
the power, and how dreadfully is the love of the world prevailing more
and more upon this professing people! And this notwithstanding all
the zealous testimonies which have from time to time for above this
threescore years been borne against these growing evils.23
But then he used that declension to encourage a corrective reaction
among his people:
Now then let the affecting view of all these things, both present, past,
and future, excite us all in our several places to do our utmost that we
may not share in the dreadful guilt of this declension, nor have our
part in drawing on the lamentable consesquences of it. But let us lay it
to heart and mourn before the Lord, first our own apostasies and sins
and then the apostasies and sins prevailing among this people. Let us
cry earnestly for the spirit of grace to be poured forth on us and them,
that the hearts of the children may be returned to the God of their
fathers and may continue steadfast in His sacred covenant. And being
revived ourselves, let us labor to revive religion in our several families,
and then rise up for God in this evil day, bear our open witness also
against the public degeneracy, and do what in us lies for the revival of
the power of piety among all about us.24
Not long after, the Great Awakening broke out. For the Puritan, it
seems, not even declension could be autonomous! Vaughan comments that

23Thomas Prince, “ The People of New England Put in Mind of the Righteous Acts of the
Lord to Them and Their Fathers, and Reasoned With Concerning Them,” The Puritan Tradi­
tion in America 1620-1730 ed. Alden T. Vaughan (Columbia, S.C.: University of South
Carolina Press, 1972), p. 347.
2*Ibid., p. 348.
114—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

Prince’s sermon may be read as an obituary as well as a celebration, for the

age of Puritan hegemony was dead and not even the Great Awakening
could revive it although . . New England, even all America, would long
bear the impact of the Puritan tradition.” 25 It was that Puritan tradition,
however, that was most important about the Puritan hegemony, especially
its non-autonomous institutions with its system of checks and balances.
They, and the doctrines on which they were based, were God’s own institu­
tions. To the extent the Puritans maintained them, they succeeded in
establishing their due form of government. To the extent they turned away
from them, the holy commonwealth declined. The existence of what is call­
ed the “ Puritan tradition” should tell us that they succeeded more than they
failed.

25Vaughan, The Puritan Tradition, p. 338.

 11
Summary and Conclusion:
Human Autonomy and
the Puritan Dilemma
Beloved, there is now set before us life, and good, death and evil, in
that we are commanded this day to love the Lord our God and to love
one another, to walk in His ways and to keep His commandments and
His ordinances and His laws, and the articles of our covenant with
Him, that we may live and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God
may bless us in the land whither we go to possess it. But if our hearts
shall turn away so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced and wor­
ship other gods, our pleasures and profits, and serve them, it is pro­
pounded unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good land
whither we pass over this vast sea to possess it. Therefore let us choose
life, that we, and our seed, may live by obeying His voice, and cleav­
ing to Him, for He is our life, and our prosperity.1
When John Winthrop spoke these words to the passengers on board the
Arbella, he was concluding a sermon in which he had set forth some of the
operating premises and goals of the holy commonwealth the Puritans hoped
to create in America. He had called his sermon “ a model of Christian chari­
ty,” arguing that for the end they had in mind
. . . we must be knit together in this work as one man; we must enter­
tain each other in brotherly affection; we must be willing to abridge
ourselves of our superfluities for the supply of other’s necessities; we
must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness,
patience, and liberality; we must delight in each other; make other’s
conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suf­
fer together always having before our eyes our commission and com­
munity in the work, our community as members of the same body, so
shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.2
If we do this, said Winthrop, then the Lord will command a blessing
upon us and will make us ‘‘a praise and glory,” so that men shall say of
plantations to come ‘‘the Lord make it like that of New England.” 3
On the other hand, he continued, if we deal falsely with our God in this
work, we shall be made ‘‘a story and a byword.” ‘‘We shall open the

‘John Winthrop, “ A Model of Christian Charity,” 1493-1754: Discovering a New World,

Vol. I of The Annals o f America, ed. Mortimer J. Adler (18 vols.; Chicago: Encyclopaedia
Britannica, 1968), p. 115.
2Ibid.
3Ibid.
116—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God and all professors for
God’s sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy ser­
vants . . . and be consumed out of the good land. . . .” 4
The history of the study of the Puritans has never quite resolved that par­
ticular dilemma. Were the Puritans “ a praise and glory” or “ a story and a
byword” ? Does the Holy Commonwealth merit our imitation or our
shame? How are we to understand and interpret the Puritan experience? In
the course of the present study we have surveyed the problems and dilem­
mas the Puritans faced as they attempted to formulate a due form of
government within the model of Christian charity. We have also reviewed
many of the answers and explanations given in the past by the major
historians of Puritanism. Let us now address directly some of the questions
that have been raised and the issues that must be faced and show that the
concept of human autonomy was determinative in the way the Puritan saw
himself and his problems.
The Puritan dilemma was not a product of the Puritans’ conflict with
reality. It was rather an inherent part of his worldview. The Puritan saw life
as a complexity, not as a simple uniformity of the one or of the many, but as
a complexity of both, a cosmic net of unity and diversity at the same time —
a corporate whole made up of significant and individual parts. The Puritan
saw the creation as created in the image of the Creator, and the Creator was
the Triune God. Therefore the creation reflects the same principle in reality;
in social intercourse the reality of unity and diversity must be maintained.
Failure to understand this complexity in the Puritan worldview has given
rise to a situation in the study of Puritanism wherein one part of the com­
plexity is used as a definition and then the other part is used to show the
dilemma or the declension. A typical example is that of Stephen Foster who
wrote that
Puritan doctrine itself tended to contradict its own social ideal.
Advocates of political hierarchy would do well to base their franchise
on something other than church membership; governors who rule by
God’s ordinance should not make their offices dependent on popular
elections; ministers who preach that every man should remain in his
calling should not call upon every man to increase his estate; above all,
anyone who maintains traditional concepts of social relationships
should not found them on voluntary contracts. The drama of Puritan
society in New England lies in the extent to which the force of ideo­
logical commitment alone could maintain a system of political and
social subordination for which the traditional material and institu­
tional bases were lacking and which was undermined by many tenden­
cies within the very ideology which supported it.3

*lbid.
3Stephen Foster, Their Solitary Way: The Puritan Social Ethic in the First Century o f Settle­
ment in New England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), p. 7.
 HUMAN AUTONOMY AND THE PURITAN DILEMMA—117

The Puritan worldview would maintain that these dilemmas are not in­
herently contradictory, but rather that each horn of the dilemma is simply
there as a limited aspect of reality and ultimately resolved only in the
sovereignty of God. The Puritan could experience the unity of the various
aspects of reality, but he could not without sin unite them visibly on earth or
reduce them to less than their created complexity. Such a reduction was the
essence of autonomy.
To preserve the complexity of the creation, therefore, the Puritan used
the doctrine of the covenant and the spheres of covenant activity to divide,
limit, and balance the complexities of reality. The result was a society that
was full of tension, contradictions, and internal conflicts, none of which
could dominate and none of which was final or universal. For the Puritan,
the sovereignty and absolute authority of God was a real, tangible, feature
of life.
In a similar way the dilemmas of balance were resolved in the Puritan
worldview. The idea of balance is always related to a reference point.
Without a stable reference point, the concept of balance simply degenerates
to a contentless power struggle. But not for the Puritan. They had a stable
reference point; they found it in the Triune God who was sovereign in the
affairs of men and who had revealed his law in the Bible. Thus in the Bible
God spoke in a meaningful way to the problems of life. This stable and
meaningful reference point is also a key to the Puritan worldview. The
dilemmas of balance were resolved not merely in the act of balancing one
concept against the other, but in defining from Scripture the specific con­
tent of the concepts to be balanced. W inthrop’s treatment of liberty and
authority in his “ little speech” is the best example of this kind of resolution.
It was these aspects of the Puritan worldview that enabled them to cope
realistically with the problems they faced in implementing their holy com­
monwealth and to avoid being disillusioned by them. But if they were able
to cope so well, why did the problems arise in the first place and why did the
holy commonwealth ultimately fail? The answer lies precisely in the concept
of sin as human autonomy. The Puritan was ever aware that man, even
regenerate man, was still a fallen and limited creature and therefore at best
able only to implement and obey the law of God substantially and never
perfectly. There were problems in the holy commonwealth at those points
where Puritan theory sought autonomy, such as in trying to identify the
visible and invisible churches as in the concept of “ visible sainthood,” or
where they abandoned non-autonomy by allowing a confusion of the
spheres of church and state, or in allowing a lack of due order in church
government. These problems and their fruits continued to haunt New
England in various forms throughout the rest of the seventeenth century.
The ultimate failure of the holy commonwealth came with the decline of the
concepts of unity and piety, as the Puritans lost both the sense of the
covenanted spheres united in the Truine God and the reality of the spiritual
118—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

view of life. The concept of human autonomy was expressed in the

secularization of the state and in the “ intellectual sommersaults” the
Puritan made as he moved back and forth between his secular and spiritual
interests.
But even at that, the Puritan built better than he knew, for in the com­
plexity of his institutions he had incorporated so many counterbalancing in­
terests and tensions that none could gain ultimate power. Thus the society
became a self-correcting and self-stabilizing society. Thus declension came
slowly, and what was best about Puritanism was preserved and passed into
the life of the nation.
Finally, what is the significance of the concept of human autonomy for
the study of Puritanism and Puritan historiography? How does this concept
relate to the problem of understanding Puritanism from the viewpoint of
the Puritan intellectual or the man in the village lane? How does it relate to
the problems of dealing with Puritanism, especially the relation between
ideas and institutions, the historical and intellectual limits of Puritanism,
the definition of Puritanism and the range of Puritan types? How does this
thesis modify or change the concept of the Puritan dilemma as a device for
understanding Puritanism?
As to the problem of understanding Puritanism from the viewpoint of the
Puritan intellectual or of the man in the village lane, the concept of human
autonomy enables us to understand both. It was the Puritan intellectual
who understood best the doctrines of authority and sin and who applied
them more or less consistently in his thinking, writing, and preaching. It
should not surprise us, however, to find that the man in the village lane was
not theologically reflective, and therefore that he was more inclined to act
and react in ways that reflected human autonomy. But the tensions between
the two groups could be contained as long as neither asserted its ultimate
power and autonomy. The Puritans did not compel belief, but they did
restrict certain concepts and practices which they believed were contrary to
the law of God. Within those bounds, both the intellectual leaders and the
men in the village lane, the regenerate and the unregenerate, the orthodox
and the heretic could live together, agreeing to disagree as it were. When
once the rules changed so that the restrictions of the Word of God and the
Congregational Way were no longer given favorable status, the “ quiet
revolution of the suppressed majority” 6 occurred, and biblical non­
autonomy gave way to human autonomy and a struggle for power and in­
fluence between the various groups and factions.
The relation between ideas and institutions is a similar problem. In the
light of the principle of non-autonomy, we may assert that there is no in­
stitution that does not embody an idea, that is not an idea in action. We

6Alden T. Vaughan (ed.), The Puritan Tradition in America, 1620-1730 (Columbia, S.C.:
University of South Carolina Press, 1972), p. xv.
 HUMAN AUTONOMY AND THE PURITAN DILEMMA—119

may also assert that all ideas are embodied in institutions or potential in­
stitutions. Ideas and institutions are inseparable, and both are equally
ultimate. Thus the Puritan’s theology was instituted in his due forms, and
his due forms in turn both reflected his theology and his modifications of it
over time. The problem should not be reduced to a matter of correlating
theory and practice, doctrine and action. Foster has observed that
. . . men may not always act according to the rules, and yet the exist­
ence of accepted rules can influence their style of action even when
they ignore virtue and apparently quite regularly practice vice. . . .
Intimations of mortality come more often to ordinary men, who
usually take some comfort in knowing that they have followed their
particular set of eternal verities part of the time and have not really en­
joyed themselves the rest. . . . Either way the rules remain even to
those who value deeds above thoughts, for we cannot really explain
what was done without some reference to what was thought.7
The concept of human autonomy is also helpful in the problem of defin­
ing and limiting the concept of Puritanism both historically and intellectu­
ally. The Puritan was one who asserted the authority and sovereignty of
God and the non-autonomy of man — and sought to enthrone that distinc­
tion in every facet and institution of life and society in a practical way. The
Quakers were not Puritans because they held to the autonomous conscience
and inner light as a foundational principle. The Anglicans were not Puritans
because they held to a supreme king as the authority in the church. The
Antinomians were not Puritans — or ceased to be Puritans — when they
asserted an autonomous spirit ruling in their hearts. The Separatists were
not Puritans because they held to the autonomous individual and an
autonomous local church.
This is not to say that none of these groups were part of the Puritan
movement which agitated the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They
were both in it and out of it. But it seems clear that the Puritans themselves
understood who, or which groups, were truly Puritans and which were
merely dissenters from the English establishment, and they either separated
themselves from, or the other groups from themselves, as the need arose.
Simpson’s inclusive definition of Puritanism as the whole movement from
the Presbyterians on one extreme to the Quakers on the other may be
helpful in defining a Christian, or an evangelical protestant, but it certainly
is not seeing seventeenth-century men as they saw themselves.
But the primary significance of the concept of human autonomy and non­
autonomy is in the way it modifies the concept of the Puritan dilemma as a
device for understanding Puritanism by supplying a clearer focus on the
Puritan dilemma. On one hand it gives a standard whereby to distinguish
between those Puritan dilemmas that were irreconcilable and those that

7Foster, Their Solitary Way, pp. xvii f.

120—THE GUISE OF EVERY GRACELESS HEART

were merely matters of balance or of unintended consequences, giving the

student of Puritanism a better basis for understanding why the Puritan
dilemmas were significant and what made them so. On the other hand, in its
non-autonomous form it enables us to understand why the Puritans
developed the particular institutions they did and why there was such social
stability even in the face of the dilemmas and problems. Where the Puritan
dilemmas did not involve autonomous and irreconcilable contradictions,
they could be incorporated into the very social structure of the colony. The
holy commonwealth was just that: a union of limited, separate powers,
united under the Triune God to His glory. The concepts of autonomy and
non-autonomy simply focuses for us in a practical way what the Puritan
meant when he said he wanted a “ due form of government both civil and
ecclesiastical . . . under the power and purity of His holy ordinances.”
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
A. Primary Sources
Adler, Mortimer J. (ed.). 1493-1754: Discovering a New World. Vol. I in
The Annals o f America. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1968.
Calvin, John. Institutes o f the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill.
2 vols. Philadelphia: Westminister Press, 1960.
_________ Institutes o f the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge. 2
vols. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1966.
Hall, David D. (ed.) Puritanism in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts.
New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968.
Jameson, J. Franklin (ed.). Johnson's W onder-Working Providence, 1628-
1651. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1959.
Lechford, Thomas. Plain Dealing: or News fro m New England, ed. J.
Hammond Trumbull. New York: Garrett Press, 1970.
Miller, Perry, and Thomas H. Johnson. The Puritans. 2 vols. Rev. ed. New
York: Harper and Row, 1963.
Morgan, Edmund S. The Founding o f Massachusetts: Historians and the
Sources. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1964.
Polishook, Irwin H. (ed.). Roger Williams, John Cotton and Religious
Freedom: A Controversy in New and Old England. Englewood Cliffs,
N .J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967.
Vaughan, Alden T. (ed.) The Puritan Tradition in America 1620-1730.
Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1972.
Ward, Nathaniel. The Simple Cobbler o f Aggawam in America, ed. P. M.
Zall. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1969.
Williamson, G. I. (ed.). The Westminster Confession o f Faith fo r Study
Classes. Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1964.
Winthrop, John. W inthrop’s Journal: H istory o f New England 1630-1649,
Ed. James Kendall Hosmer. 2 vols. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1959.
Winthrop, Robert C. L ife and Letters o f John Winthrop. 2 vols. Boston:
Ticknor and Fields, 1864-1867 [Reprinted; New York: Da Capo Press,
1971].
Woodhouse, A. S. P. (ed.). Puritanism and Liberty: Being the A rm y
Debates (1647-9) fro m the Clarke M anuscripts with Supplementary
Documents. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965.
Ziff, Larzer (ed.). John Cotton on the Churches o f New England. Cam­
bridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press, 1968.

B. Secondary Sources
Ahlstrom, Sidney. A Religious H istory o f the American People. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1972.
Bass, Herbert J. (ed.). The State o f American H istory. Chicago: Quad­
rangle Books, 1970.
Billias, George Athan (ed.). Law and A uthority in Colonial America:
Selected Essays. Barre, Massachusetts: Barre Publishers, 1965.
Billington, Ray Allen (ed.). The Reinterpretation o f Early American
History: Essays in honor o f John Edwin Pomfret. San Marino, Cali­
fornia: The Huntington Library, 1966.
Breen, Timothy H ., and Stephen Foster. “ The Puritan’s Greatest Achieve­
ment: A Study of Social Cohesion in Seventeenth-Century Massachu­
setts.” The Journal o f American History, LI, 1 (June 1973), 5-22.
Corwin, Edward S. The “Higher L aw ” Background o f American Con­
stitutional Law. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1955.
Dooyeweerd, Herman. In the Twilight o f Western Thought: Studies in the
Pretended A utonom y o f Philosophical Thought. Nutley, N.J.: The Craig
Press, 1968.
------------ A New Critique o f Theoretical Thought, trans. David H. Free­
man and William S. Young. 4 [vols. n.p.]: Presbyterian and Reformed
Publishing Co., 1969.
Foster, Stephen. Their Solitary Way: The Puritan Social Ethic in the First
Century o f Settlement in New England. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1971.
Greene, Theodore P. (ed.). Roger Williams and the Massachusetts Magis­
trates. Boston: D.C. Heath, 1964.
Jones, James W. The Shattered Synthesis: New England Puritanism before
the Great Awakening. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973.
McGiffert, Michael. “ American Puritan Studies in the 1960’s.” William
and M ary Quarterly, 3rd Series, XXVII (January 1970), 36-67.
McLaughlin, Andrew C. Foundations o f American Constitutionalism.
New York: Fawcett, 1961.
Middlekauff, Robert. The Mathers: Three Generations o f Puritan Intel­
lectuals, 1596-1728. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.
Miller, Perry. Errand Into the Wilderness. New York: Harper and Row,
1956.
________ The New England M ind: From Colony to Province. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1967.
________ The New England M ind: The Seventeenth Century. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1954.
________ O rthodoxy in Massachusetts 1630-1650. Boston: Beacon Press,
1959.
Morgan, Edmund S. The Puritan Dilemma: The Story o f John Winthrop.
Boston: Little, Brown, 1958.
________ Visible Saints: The H istory o f a Puritan Idea. New York: New
York University Press, 1963.
Morison, Samuel Eliot. Builders o f the Bay Colony. Cambridge, Massachu­
setts: Houghton Mifflin, 1958.
________ The Intellectual L ife o f Colonial New England. New York: New
York University Press, 1956.
Notestein, Wallace. The English People on the Eve o f Colonization, 1603-
 1630. New York: Harper and Row, 1962.
North, Gary. Puritan Economic Experiments, [n.p.]: Remnant Press, 1974.
Oberholzer, Jr., Emil. “ The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winth­
rop (review).” M ississippi Valley Historical Review XLV (June 1958)
119-120.
Pope, Robert G. The Half- Way Covenant: Church Membership in Puritan
New England. Princeton, N .J.: Princeton University Press, 1969.
Reinitz, Richard (ed.). Tensions in American Puritanism. New York: John
Wiley, 1970.
Rushdoony, Rousas John. The One and the Many: Studies in the Philoso­
phy o f Order and Ultimacy. [n.p.]: Craig Press, 1971.
________. This Independent Republic: Studies in the Nature and Meaning
o f American History. Nutley, N .J.: The Craig Press, 1964.
Schneider, Herbert Wallace. The Puritan M ind. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1964.
Simpson, Alan. Puritanism in Old and New England. Chicago: Univer­
sity of Chicago Press, 1955.
Singer, C. Gregg. A Theological Interpretation o f American History.
Nutley, N .J.: The Craig Press, 1969.
Vaughan, Alden T., and George Athan Billias (eds.). Perspectives on Early
American History: Essays in H onor o f Richard B. Morris. New York:
Harper and Row, 1973.
Waller, George M. (ed.). Puritanism in Early America. 2nd ed. Lexington,
Massachusetts: D.C. Heath, 1973.
Ziff, Larzer, The Career o f John Cotton: Puritanism and the American
Experience. Princeton, N .J.: Princeton University Press, 1962.
_________ Puritanism in America: New Culture in a New World. New
York: Viking Press, 1973.
 Acknowledgements
Appreciation is expressed to those who assisted me in the preparation of
this work: Miss Nell Harden, who proofread the manuscript and advised me
on the fine points of English grammar and manuscript form; Mrs. Pat
Midkiff, who typed the manuscript; and Dr. John Bell of Western Carolina
University, who oversaw the work from the beginning. They are not, of
course, responsible for its weaknesses but were certainly contributors to its
strengths.