The English Puritans

Paper Summary:

This paper looks at the English Puritans who objected to the sinfulness of life in England and the degeneration of the Church of England and began to emigrate to America at the start of the seventeenth century. It examines how the success of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and other settlements was due in large part to the fact that the Puritan settlers agreed on principles that supported a life of hard work dedicated to the service of God. It examines how the settlers fared over the years with their common beliefs, carefully ordered civil society and devotion to hard work as simple farmers and also how their beliefs caused rifts such as the case of Anne Hutchinson who was accused of promoting the heresy of Antinomianism.

From the Paper:

"Like most Protestant sects the puritans were fond of finding justifications for their courses of action in Scriptural precedent or command. Thus they sought Biblical support for the general notion of worldly prudence in the management of one's affairs. And they did not have to look far to find quite precisely qualified support. In the Book of Proverbs, for instance, the faithful are admonished that "a good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor rather than silver and gold" (quoted in Perry 300). These words do not, of course, preclude the pursuit of the latter half of each of these equations, but merely orders the faithful to maintain a sense of proportion regarding what is truly important. Other citations from the Bible offer even more unqualified support for business pursuits when they directly "affirm and proclaim the fact that diligence, self-control, and foresight conduce to power and riches" (Perry 300). Even more importantly, however, the notion of worldly prudence was assuredly theologically sound because it conformed completely to "that subordination of immediate to ulterior goods which is the central motif of the gospel" (Perry 300)."

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