Puritanism

“ We need a new Puritanism, and it must not be a Puritanism principally of prohibitions, as was the old. It must be a Puritanism in which all the glories possible to heart and mind and soul are set forth in charm and beauty. ”

“ In Puritanism, on the other hand, we can respect that idea of dealing sincerely with oneself, which is at once the great force of Puritanism,—Puritanism's great superiority over all products, like ritualism, of our Catholicising [253] tendencies,—and also an idea rich in the latent seeds of intellectual promise. But we do this, without on that account hiding from ourselves that Puritanism has by Hebraising misapplied that idea, has as yet developed none or hardly one of those seeds, and that its triumph at its present stage of development would be baneful. ”

“ The inconceivable austerity and solemnity with which Puritanism invested this mortal life, the awful grandeur of the themes which it made household words, the sublimity of the issues which it hung upon the commonest acts of our earthly existence, created characters of more than Roman strength and greatness; and the good men and women of Puritan training excelled the saints of the Middle Ages, as a soul fully developed intellectually, educated to closest thought, and exercised in reasoning, is superior to a soul great merely through impulse and sentiment. ”

“ But now to evince the disinterestedness which culture, as I have said, teaches us. We have seen the narrowness generated in Puritanism by its hole-and-corner organisation, and we propose to cure it by bringing Puritanism more into contact with the main current of national life. ”

“ This foremost place which righteousness takes in the order of St. Paul's ideas makes a signal difference between him and Puritanism. Puritanism, as we have said, finds its starting-point either in the desire to flee from eternal wrath or in the desire to obtain eternal bliss. Puritanism has learned from revelation, as it says, a particular history of the first man's fall, of mankind being under a curse, of certain contracts having been passed concerning mankind in the Council of the Trinity, of the substance of those contracts, and of man's position under them. ”

“ In Culture and Anarchy he had charged Puritanism with imagining that in the Bible it had, as its own special possession, a unum necessarium, which made it independent of Sweetness and Light, and guided it aright without the aid of culture. "The dealings," he said, "of Puritanism with the writings of St. Paul afford a noteworthy illustration of this. Nowhere so much as in the writings of St. Paul, and in thatPg 213 apostle's greatest work, the Epistle to the Romans, has Puritanism found what seemed to furnish it with the one thing needful, and to give it canons of truth absolute and final." ”

“ Gradually Puritanism began to approach the world, and the world to approach Puritanism. The Restoration was to fall into evil odor, the Revolution was to come, and beneath the gradual progress of national sympathy, as well as under the incessant effort of public reflection, parties and doctrines were to rally around a free and moral Protestantism. ”

“ We have already, in the foregoing treatise, quoted from the complaints against the Church by the Committee of Divines appointed by the House of Lords in 1641, when Puritanism was strongly in the ascendent. Some in the Church teach, say the Puritan complainers, 'that good works are concauses with faith in the act of justification ”

“ Over the English race there passed, about two centuries ago, a deluge of Puritanism, which for a time almost drowned out its artistic tastes and propensities. The Puritan movement, in proportion to its success, was nearly as destructive to art in the West, as Mohammedanism had long before been in the East. In its intense and one-sided regard for morality, Puritanism not only relegated the love for beauty to an inferior place, but contemned and spat upon it, as something sinful and degrading. ”

“ Paul's writings we have shown; that there is very visible a tendency in the minds of religious people to outgrow it, is true, but where alone does this tendency manifest itself with any steadiness or power? In the Church. The inevitable movement of growth will in time extend itself to Puritanism also. Let it be remembered in that day that not only does the movement come to Puritanism from the Church, but it comes to Churchmen of our century from a seed of growth and development inherent in the Church, and which was manifest in the Church long ago! ”

“ The endless words which Puritanism has wasted upon sanctification, a magical filling with goodness and holiness, flow from a mere mistake in translating; ἁγιασμός means consecration, a setting apart to holy service. ”

“ Their brooding and raving can be forgiven, can in truth be loved and reverenced, for it is humanity on fire; hatred can be genial, madness can be homely. The Puritans fell, not because they were fanatics, but because they were rationalists.
When we consider these things, when we remember that Puritanism, which means in our day a moral and almost temperamental attitude, meant in that day a singularly arrogant logical attitude, we shall comprehend a little more the grain of good that lay in the vulgarity and triviality of the Restoration. ”

“ It is admitted on all hands that the ordinary Puritanism became too intolerant of all except spiritual interests; so that it could not, without infinite loss, have been accepted as the guide for all life. ”

“ The great concern of Puritanism is with the operation of those contracts on man's condition; its leading thought, if it is a Puritanism of a gloomy turn, is of awe and fear caused by the threatening aspect of man's condition under these contracts ”

“ A compact, immovable spiritual logic, a set of fixed standards, a rhetoric of the virtues, the identification of any element of growth and change with the power of evil, a dualistic morality, and the consequent negation of a spiritually free will, these are the characteristics of Puritanism, constituting at the same time, and with the same elements, a system of truth and a system of conduct. In both the meanings in which we have used the word religion at the beginning of this essay, Puritanism is a perfect, final religion. ”

“ Having, while members of that church, devised and sought a greater purity in its worship without success, they at length separated themselves from it, and formed a distinct worshiping community. For thus professing to follow the pure word of God, in opposition to traditions and human devices, they were in derision termed Puritans. In the progress of their religious views, and of the persecuting spirit of the government, they passed from mere puritanism, or efforts at greater purity in worship and in manners, to [Pg 62] non-conformity, and from non-conformity to dissent. ”

“ The Puritanism of the seventeenth century was the almost unrestricted expression of the Hebraistic temper, and from the conceptions of life that were then wrought out the middle classes in England have never wholly escaped. The Puritans looked out upon life with a narrow vision, recognized only a few of its varied interests, and provided for the needs of only a part{135} of man’s nature. ”

“ Puritanism, more than any other form of Protestantism, drew its very life from a hatred of all that is Catholic. The office and authority of bishops, the repetition of the Lord’s Prayer, the sign of the cross, the chant of the psalms, the observance of saints’ days, the use of musical instruments in church, and the vestments worn by the ministers of religion were all odious to the Puritans because they were associated with Catholic worship ”

“ But can anything more tend to make the Church what the Puritans reproach it with being,—a mere lump of sacerdotalism and ritualism,—than if the Puritans, who are free to come into it with their disregard of sacerdotalism and ritualism and so to leaven it, refuse to come in, and leave it wholly to the sacerdotalists and ritualists? What can be harder upon the laity of the national Church, what so inconsiderate of the national good and advantage, as to leave us at the mercy of one single element in the Church, and deny us just the elements fit to mix with this element and to improve it? ”

“ But Puritanism exists for the sake of these schemes; its organisations are inventions for enforcing them more purely and thoroughly. Questions of discipline and ceremonies have, originally at least, been always admitted to be in themselves secondary ”

“ The kingdom of the saints, objectionable as a tyranny, and finally identified in the popular mind with a hated hypocrisy, came to its inevitable end in the reaction of the Restoration. But when the first fury of this reaction had passed away, it was evident that Puritanism survived it: no longer a political power, but a moral influence which controlled the great body of the people, and gave to English habits and literature their distinctive tone of serious morality. ”

“ Nowhere has Puritanism done us more harm than in thus leading us to take all breadth, and colour, and diversity, and fine discrimination, out of our judgments of men, reducing them to thin, narrow, and superficial pronouncements upon the letter of their morality, or the precise conformity of their opinions to accepted standards of truth, religious or other. ”

“ REACTION AGAINST PURITANISM The period of the Restoration was characterized by a reaction against the austere scheme of life which the Puritans had imposed on society. Puritanism not only deprived the people of evil pleasures, such as bear- baiting, Cock-fighting, and tippling, but it also prohibited the Sunday dances and games, the village festivals, and the popular drama. ”

“ Puritanism is essentially a culture and not a civilization. The Puritan mind, in its quest for an original Christian experience, falls upon the Old Testament and the Ancient Law. The God of the tribes of Israel becomes its God, a God finding a complete expression in the law that rules his chosen people. ”

“ The latter years of Elizabeth's reign saw Puritanism within the church taking on a new activity, by turning from questions of ceremony and church government to questions of morals. The Puritans always stood for greater earnestness and for the abolition of abuses in the church, but as time passed on they brought into greater prominence the ascetic ideal of life ”

“ There was, however, always a revolt against Puritanism when Puritanism was severest and securest; this resulted in types of shiftlessness if not wickedness, which have not yet been duly studied, and which would make the fortune of some novelist who cared to do a fresh thing. ”

“ Herein probably lies a better explanation of American intolerance than in the indictment of Puritanism which furnishes such a favourite invective for our iconoclasts. Puritanism has become a literary catchword and by no means covers the case. For it must be remembered that we are dealing with offshoots of deteriorated religions which spring from a very wide range of individuals. ”

“ So long as the Puritans thought that the essence of Christianity was their doctrine of predestination or of justification, it was natural that they should stand out, at any cost, for this essence. That is why, when the 'Zeit-Geist' and the general movement of men's religious ideas is beginning to reveal that the Puritan gospel is not the essence of Christianity, we have been desirous to spread this revelation to the best of our power, and by all the aids of plain popular exposition to help it forward. ”

“ Puritanism keeps alive in the community a certain Christian habit of thought, a belief in the necessity of grace, and more or less of a Christian conscience. The greater part of the common people gathered into the sects in seasons of revivals, if our missionaries were present, could just as easily be gathered into the church, and be saved. ”

“ Business, demanding the whole of the faculties, and, whether pursued from duty or the love of gain, regarding as a loss of time whatever does not conduce directly to the end; Puritanism, which looking upon every feeling of human nature, except fear and reverence for God, as a snare, if not as partaking of sin, looked coldly, if not disapprovingly, on the cultivation of the sentiments. ”

“ Many mistakes may be pardoned in Puritanism in view of the earnestness with which it insists on the distinction between right and wrong. This is vital. In modern religion the path is flowery. The absence of difficulty is a sure sign that no good is being done. How far we are from the strait gate, from the way that is narrow which leadeth unto life, the way which is found only by p. 79few! The great doctrines of Puritanism are also much nearer to the facts of actual experience than we suppose. ”

“ Therefore, we find many Puritans who are essentially decent people and useful members of society, all the time slyly violating the taboos, such as the drink taboo, to which they subscribe in words. Certainly all societies and religions have their hypocrites, but as certainly the hypocrisy of Puritanism excels them all.
It may be objected that it is far-fetched to assign sixteenth century Protestantism (with its English development of Puritanism) as the cause of twentieth century industrial strife. ”

“ Religion itself, I need hardly say, supplies in abundance this grand language, which is really the severest criticism of such an incomplete perfection as alone we have yet reached through our religious organisations.
The impulse of the English race towards moral development and self- conquest has nowhere so powerfully manifested itself as in Puritanism; nowhere has Puritanism found so adequate an expression as in the religious organisation of the Independents. The modern Independents have a newspaper, the Nonconformist, written with great sincerity and ability. ”