Well now, yesterday we looked at the history
of the word Puritan and in the course
of doing so we got a kind of
preliminary view of the course of Puritan history
over a hundred years.
We saw that the word was first applied
to themselves by a small separatist group Then
it was used as a nickname to damn
those who wanted reformation in the realm of
the church's rituals and also in the realm
of its discipline.
Then it came to be applied to those
who stood for reformed doctrine as opposed to
Arminianism.
Then it came to be applied to those
who supported the parliament against the king in
the civil war in England.
And it passed into the English vocabulary from
the time of the restoration in 1662 up
to the present day passed into the English
vocabulary as a term of abuse for a
person who is regarded in general terms as
a cultural philistine and a killjoy.
Although at the same time, as we also
saw, because of the pastoral and evangelistic achievements
of some of the men who stood at
the heart of the world to which this
name was given various men appeared from time
to time who insisted that it was an
honourable name and that it was no disgrace
to be called a Puritan and that indeed
it was the happiest consummation that a man
could wish for.
Baxter, accused of being a Puritan, being a
copper-bottomed Puritan as we might say, simply
commented, alas, I am not so good and
happy.
Picking up from there, I want us to
try and draw the threads together and formulate
our answer to the question who then were
the people called Puritans?
And it will take us a number of
sentences to answer this question because the word
as we've seen had a pretty broad spread.
I would make the following three points.
First, the word was applied to both ministers
and laymen of varied ecclesiastical positions.
What they had in common was that they
all wanted some change in either the ritual
or, or sometimes the ritual and, the government
and constitution of the Church of England.
Some of them indeed wanted its abolition in
the form in which they knew it.
But they didn't all agree by any means
as to the precise changes that they wanted
to see.
We may indeed draw a little map.
Let me draw you a map to show
you just what a complex set of groups
there were.
There were a set of palaeons, and these
were two characters.
Some of them were conformists, some of them
were non-conformists.
Conformists, non-conformists.
Conformists were chaps who actually submitted to the
ritual usages of the prayer book however little
they may have liked them.
Non-conformists were the chaps who declined to
wear the purpose or to use the sign
of the cross in destitution or some other
of the ceremonies which the prayer book made
obligatory.
Then in addition to that, there were presbyterians.
There were the Carchite type of people.
There were the Presbyterians who in the days
of the Commonwealth after the Civil War ended
sought to impose on England a religious settlement
according to the pattern of the Western confessional
documents.
All the non-conformist Episcopalians, all the Presbyterians
were of course ejected in 1662.
There were just a few Puritan Episcopalians who
conformed in 1662 in the days of the
Reformation and so kept their livings in the
Episcopal Church.
But the non-conformist Episcopalians and the Presbyterians
all had to become dissenters.
Then there were independents.
These words, as you see, all apply to
different positions taken regarding church governance.
The independents were of different kind.
They all believed in congregational independence.
But some of them were non-separating.
That is, they believed in the appropriateness of
the parochial system of the Church of England
and all they wanted was to be able
to organise parochial churches on an independent basis.
Some of them were separating.
They believed that any form of a national
church was improper and therefore that each individual
congregation should be organised in separation from it.
And of the separating independents, some were paedo
-baptists and those are what we would nowadays
call Orthodox Congregationalists and some were Baptists and
they are the progenitors of the Baptists of
the 20th century.
So, there
are the many different sorts of ecclesiastical views
then held by the different people called Puritans.
The second thing that I want to say
about the word is that it was applied
to both ministers and laymen of various political
persuasions because though the majority of the people
called Puritans were on the parliamentary side of
the Civil War, not all of them were
by any means.
Some of them were Royalists.
John Deary, whom I quoted yesterday as the
author of The Character of an Old English
Puritan of Protestants or Conformists was on the
Royalist side and Richard Baxter, though he was
against the King, was against Cromwell and the
whole independent body of opinion in English politics
from 1645 on and his position politically was
distinctly uncomfortable until the Restoration in 1662 when
of course his ecclesiastical position became so much
more uncomfortable as the whole political question fell
into the background.
So again, you don't find the differentia, the
distinguishing character of a Puritan in one political
position rather than another any more than you
find it in one position on church government
and church order rather than another.
And that leads on to the third thing
I want to say, which is this that
the word was applied to ministers and laymen
who shared a common concern about biblical purity
in church life, in personal life and in
civil government and social life and this is
the differentia the distinguishing feature which all Puritans
had in common rather than any other.
So if you want to define a Puritan
you should say that he was first and
foremost a man concerned about biblical purity in
every branch of life individual and social and
secondly he was a person who thought because
this certainly was true of all of them
who thought that more needed to be done
in the way of reformation in order to
secure that kind of purity in the life
of the church as it existed in Britain
in his day.
That's the best general definition that we can
reach.
But don't let's minimize the complexity of this
movement on both the ecclesiastical and the political
front.
Here we tangle head on with a long
-standing misconception of what was the positive integrating,
controlling principle of the Puritan outlook.
Up till about thirty years ago it was
commonplace to say that what controlled the Puritan
outlook was the old heresy of Manichaeism that
is the doctrine of certain things things of
the world, pleasures of the senses in general
conformity to the ways of ordinary human life
was in itself sinful was in itself wrong.
This is a long-standing misconception if he
sprang as far as one can see from
the knowledge that the Puritan regarded himself as
indeed he did as being a pilgrim en
route from earth to heaven and regarding this
world as a wilderness through which he must
pass to heaven from the knowledge further that
the Puritan did as a matter of history
object to music and ritual and generally anything
that appealed to the senses in the worship
of God and from the knowledge thirdly that
the Puritan did in fact object to the
theatres of their day and a great deal
of the revelry that was common practice in
their period and from these facts the inference
was drawn that basically the Puritan's thought was
this this whole area of the life of
the senses this whole area of material things
was irrevocably tainted that it was irredeemable that
it was in itself sinful that the only
thing for the Christian pilgrim to do was
to have nothing to do with it so
far as this was possible and so you
get jives like that of Lord Macaulay in
his history of England in the 17th century
quote, it's the fame of the Craxus the
Puritan hated bear baiting not because it gave
pain to the bear but because it gave
pleasure to the spectator and you've got the
following little poem I can't tell you its
author but it's often quoted I believe it
may have been written by Alexander Pope anyway,
here it is The Puritan through life's sweet
garden Goes and sucks the thorns And throws
away the rose He thinks to please By
this peculiar whim The God who framed and
fashioned it for him Well now, that's an
expression of the point of view which sees
Puritanism as essentially a kind of flopping over
of manicheism into the minds of earnest English
Christians but this I suggest to you is
a complete mistake and the truth about the
positive, constraining, compelling principle of Puritanism as indeed
I said to you last time is that
it is precisely a passion for holiness a
passion to see holiness unto the Lord in
personal life in social life in every department
of human life in other words, it's a
comprehensive religious, ecclesiastical, cultural ideology in fact a
thoroughly reformed one what Kaiser thought to elaborate
in the 19th century the Puritans were already
trying to work out in the 70s and
if one can only inject the Puritan theology
into Terry Miller's book, The New England Mind
a book from which the theology has been
sedulously strained out then one sees that at
once and this was the understood right at
the outset this positively is what the Puritans
were after they were concerned that everything should
conform to God's will as revealed in the
word of scripture they were Calvinists they were
reformed in their theology and they in their
day thought to work out a very positive
doctrine an all-embracing doctrine not merely of
reformed churchmanship but of reformed culture also and
that was their great over-mastering positive thrust
so, and here we get to our next
heading if we now ask the question not
just who were the Puritans but what was
Puritanism we can answer it like this this
is only just a skeleton answer a lot
of the headings given here will be filled
in as we go along but here's a
bird's-eye view of Puritanism right at the
outset of our study what was it?
it was a God-centered worldview based on
belief in God's absolute sovereignty based on belief
that Holy Scripture was the full revelation of
his mind for men and among its characteristic
ideals were the following and here we subdivide
one for the individual Christian a thoroughgoing evangelical
religion based on the recognition of total depravity
and the receiving of the grace of Christ
based if you like on regeneration and conversion
to Christ expressing itself in a life marked
by self-sufficiency and self-examination because of
the deceitfulness of one's own heart but marked
also by joy and assurance of faith which
joy and assurance it was believed would grow
stronger if a man was simulant in self
-sufficiency and measuring and testing his life by
Scripture assurance grows through testing so the Puritans
believed and their view of the Christian life
was emphatically not that it was one of
anxious gloom but that it was one of
joy because it was a life of tested
assurance the Puritan as a pilgrim en route
to heaven knew where he was going knew
that God had received him knew that he
was safe in the covenant and thereby was
made strong to fight the good fight of
faith against sin and his forces that array
themselves against God made strong therefore to fulfill
his calling as a good, may I say
a good Calvinistic Christian soldier he must use
all the means of grace he would be
very presumptuous if he didn't he must recognize
his own weakness and his need of the
means of grace the primary means of grace
is the preaching of the word and he
must be a good churchman meeting together with
the people of God in the place where
the word is preached listening to sermons with
care taking note of them memorizing what they
said making notes if need be turning the
truths taught in sermons into prayer this is
the primary means of grace said the Puritan
they made much of sermons again he must
sanctify the sermons this too is one of
the means of grace he must sanctify it
for the purpose of worship and he must
sanctify it too for the purpose of godliness
in the family the Puritan must be a
good family man it is indeed to the
Puritans that we owe our heritage in the
realm of Christian thought about in the realm
of thought about and teaching about the Christian
home the Puritans we may say invented the
Christian home the Puritans gave much teaching as
to how the Christian home and family should
be sanctified particularly on the Lord's day when
the family would go to worship and then
when they came home father priest in the
little church which the family constituted who they
regularly used to say and father must make
sure that the family had learned what had
been taught in the sermons father must catechize
the family father must lead the family in
devotion father must see that the family profited
from the exercises of the Lord's day this
individual Christian must be a man who lives
in the light of the account that he
must one day give to God he must
therefore daily be seeking to stir himself up
and praying for grace to stir himself up
to effort, diligence, activity in the service of
his God you find in the Puritans the
characteristic Calvinistic activism which is something quite different
from Arminian activism Arminian activism says work as
hard as you can because God is depending
on you Calvinistic activism says work out your
own salvation with fear and trembling because God
is working in you to cause you to
will and to do of his own good
pleasure you see how different those two sorts
of activism are if I may throw this
out don't oppose Arminian activism by Calvinistic passivity
and inactivity activism is right, but it must
be the right sort of activism in the
Puritans you see what I conceive to be
the right sort of activism they would not
allow themselves or anyone else to sit at
ease in Zion time must be redeemed, they
said you must do all the good you
can for the glory of the Lord if
you look around you'll see that there's far
more good waiting to be done than you'll
have time to do well get at it
and do as much as you can that
was part of the Puritan philosophy of life
the final aspect of the Puritan view of
the life of the individual Christian he must
recognize, said the Puritans the significance of time
and circumstances this was a corollary of their
strong doctrine of divine sovereignty all times and
all circumstances they said mean something and you're
intended to consider what they mean and what
is the best way, says the Puritan phrase,
to improve them that is to make the
most of them for the glory of God
if you're meeting with opposition, adversity illness, discouragement,
loneliness, frustration in external things well that means
something, said the Puritans just as that kind
of experience meant something for Job and was
sent him by God so that he could
improve it make something of it by walking
faithfully with his God then, despite all these
discouragements so it means something for you, something
similar in text of the Puritans you too
must learn to walk with God in darkness
and glorify him in the days of darkness
as you wait on him confidently looking for
the light to dawn again and similarly, if
God prospers your way if things are going
well for you if God in his mercy
multiplies material possessions if God in his mercy
gives you positions of influence and responsibility well
that also means something, said the Puritans God
has given you this for a purpose beware
lest you become complacent and puffed up rejoicing
in your success but ask yourself what it
is that the Lord means you to do
with the opportunities and the privileges that have
come your way all circumstances mean something and
one element in our Christian thinking and our
Christian praying should be the attempt to discern
the meaning of particular situations and, like the
Men of Ithaca, to know what Israel ought
to do and to know what you yourself
ought to do at particular times and seasons
well, here are some of the leading motifs
in the Puritan exposition of the individual Christian
life and we can say that the first
thing that Puritanism was was an ideology of
this kind for the individual believer but we
can move on now to a second subject
what was Puritanism?
well, it was a worldview that involved, secondly
in the realm of church government and worship
a strictification of the principle that nothing should
be done or allowed that hasn't got scriptural
sanction now that formula is not so easy
to apply as it looks and as this
variety of different types of Puritan churchmanship will
show you the Puritans weren't always able to
agree among themselves as to what in fact
the scriptures prescribed and what in fact the
scriptures forbade in church life but at least
they were insistent that nothing must be done
in the life of the people of God
that hasn't got sanction from the word of
God in particular, things which are consensually indifferent
in the life of the church so they
said, and this applies to all of them
ought not to be imposed but rather ought
to be left to be used or not
used at the discretion of the individual conscience
this they said was an aspect of Christian
liberty that you were left free to make
up your own mind as to what you'll
do in the realm of things indifferent this,
in all the Puritans, is how it ought
to be I must hasten to say that
they then differed among themselves as to what
should be done in a church situation where
in fact, and in the Church of England
things indifferent, like the use of the surface
the sign of the cross in baptism and
the rest of them were in fact imposed
and some of them said that in this
situation it was lawful to conform on the
ground of necessity on the ground that is,
that your ministry was needed in the church
that you would not have opportunity to serve
God in the ministry if you didn't conform
and that in fact the evil, though really
evil, was tolerable and the majority of Puritans
said no, the evil is not tolerable the
argument from necessity is not cogent we cannot
conform, we must be non-conformists for this
we have to leave the church over this
where we must abide it in order to
keep our consciences pure both these points of
view were argued in print and were held
by one or another of the people called
Puritans then another element in the Puritan ideal
the church government of worship, which they all
held was that effective discipline in the congregation
was part of the scriptural pattern of church
life and that a church that didn't have
it was a defective church again, they didn't
all think, indeed very few of them thought
that the absence of adequate parish discipline or
so they judged it to be the absence
of adequate parish discipline in the Church of
England was a valid reason for separation that
it itself a few did, most didn't but
they all insisted that there ought to be
effective discipline in the local congregation most of
them thought that the Anglican provision for discipline
which based it on the diocese I'll be
going back over all these things but I'm
not giving you a detailed account of the
situations now so don't ask me questions about
them it will come up in detail later
on but as I say, Anglican discipline was
based in general on the diocese and the
bishop and the diocese and courts and that
most of the few of them thought wasn't
adequate the unit of discipline ought to be
the local congregation but they didn't all agree
amongst themselves as to how in fact congregational
discipline was to be exercised and some were
independent and some were presbyterian but they all
of them insisted that there must be discipline
and they all of them were in general
strong churchmen with a very strong concern for
the shape of things in the outward life
of the church of Christ they were not,
in other words, pietists this is the point
that I want to underline at this stage
a pietist is a person who is tremendously
concerned about personal godliness but is unconcerned allows
himself to be unconcerned about the outward face
of the church and the community some people
who only know Puritanism through the Pilgrim's Progress
which deals, of course, entirely with the pilgrimage
of the individual Christians have come to the
conclusion that Puritanism was essentially a pietistic movement
or that there was a kind of alternatively,
that there was a kind of dichotomy between
the Puritan concern for individual godliness the concerns
of which Pilgrim's Progress bears witness and the
Puritan concern for the holy community which was
manifested in all the ecclesiastical debates that Puritanism
threw up but the truth is there was
no dichotomy here at all the Puritans were
not changing gear when they moved from the
one concern to the other both of them
were integral aspects of the Puritan belief that
God requires holiness in every department of life
in the world that he's made personal life,
church life, social life the whole concern was
one and it was, as I say, differentiated
in all these particular spheres but you couldn't
be more wrong than to call a Puritan
a pietist and imply that there were certain
areas of church life and perhaps life in
society in general too in which he hadn't
any interest everything must be holiness under the
Lord this is the over-mastering unity of
the Puritan worldview well, we've looked at Puritanism
as a worldview with its particular ideology for
the individual Christian and its particular, its distinctive
basic principles in the realm of church government
and worship a third subject for a minister
the Puritans had, again their own characteristic ideal
that a Christian minister must be able learned
godly able to preach and able to do
the work of a pastor to individual troubled
souls in Puritanism you find in its highest
form the traditional high ideal for the ministry
it always marked the reformed churches ever since
Calvin came but the particular emphasis that you
find in the Puritan ideal for the ministry
that you haven't always found in all the
reformed churches everywhere is this insistence that the
minister in addition to knowing his theology and
being thoroughly learned in the teaching of the
scripture must be able to preach it effectively
powerfully with the Puritan word and must be
a good casuist must be, as we would
say, a good personal worker must, that is,
be able to apply truth effectively to the
spiritual needs of the individual the Puritan ministers
first became distinctive by their power as preachers
and their skill as casuists and let me
put off by that word casuists this is
not the Roman sort of casuistry but the
Protestant sort more about that later and, as
I say, the Puritans were insistent that all
ministers must be powerful preachers must seek to
be powerful preachers and skillful casuists and what
that meant we'll see at a later stage
and then, fourthly, the Puritan worldview had a
specific application to the realm of politics and
civil law and society life and here the
distinctive Puritan position though in fact it's only
just an application of the characteristic reformed position
was thus that all laws in a state
must be just by scriptural standards of equity
and they must be such as forward and
don't hinder true religion again, judged by the
scriptural standard of what true religion is and
civil rulers must regard themselves as God's ministers
and deputies as in Romans 13 and they
must seek so to fulfill their work to
give a true service of God a true
ministry unto the Lord in such a way
that godliness is advanced and encouraged and wickedness
and vice public evil is punished and suppressed
this of course raised this formula in its
application in the 17th century raised the question
of toleration the real issue was here should
the state the real issue was this I
should say should the state the Christian state
penalize and punish and prohibit unorthodox belief publicly
held is this the way in which the
state glorifies God when it's unorthodox belief publicly
held not creating any civil disorder but simply
there processed, proclaimed should it be inhibited by
the state or should it not at the
beginning of the 17th century nearly every English
Puritan thought that it should and of course
this is what they thought in Calvin's Geneva
and this is why Cerritos was burned but
by the end of the 17th century through
the testimony of Cromwell and the Independents and
the Baptists all of whom were for toleration
it had generally been come to be accepted
as a matter of right that is a
part of God's revealed will a true understanding
of his mind for civil society that consciences
should be allowed liberty and man should be
given by the civil governor a right to
be wrong provided that his wrong beliefs didn't
bring with them civil disorder liberty of conscience,
so the argument ran provided the situation in
which the spirit of God was free to
lead men into truth provided that situation in
a way that compulsory a civil compulsion of
orthodoxy didn't do so I say Cromwell and
the Independents and the Baptists of course belong
to the Independents the Independents families, the Baptists
they were the first to see this and
be convinced of it the Presbyterians, I'm sorry
to say were the last to be convinced
of it but by the time that civil
toleration came in 1688 with the revolution and
the end of the Stuart monarchy and the
coming of William and Mary to the English
throne with that went an act of toleration
which gave the non-conformists the non-English
and dissenters liberty which they hadn't had before
by the time that came Presbyterians as well
as Independents who'd been dissenters all these years
were quite convinced that it was the right
thing to happen toleration had made its way
but there was great argument in the middle
of the 17th century at the time of
the Civil War and under the Commonwealth as
to whether toleration of Christian beliefs or offensively
Christian beliefs which in the judgement of the
majority of the majority were in fact unorthodox
ought to be allowed well, as I say,
gradually toleration made its way and as you
can see it's a real problem if the
state is going to glorify God and further
his truth then the likeness of toleration is
by no means more obvious than the thing
that's got to be argued out and in
the 17th century it was and with a
struggle they came through to toleration as did
the other reformed churches as indeed the Dutch
reformed churches had done before the English ones
did and if you want to see the
arguments then I'd urge you to read the
chapter on politics in Abraham Keiser's lectures on
Calvinism where the argument for toleration is very
succinctly and effectively presented in reformed terms and
fifthly what was Puritanism in the realm of
culture?
well, the Puritan worldview applied to the realm
of culture in the following ways ways which
as you'll see are the very reverse of
Philistine ways which in fact are not anti
-cultural but cultural in a very positive manner
all man's powers are to be devoted to
the service of God including his cultural powers
so says the Puritans 300 years before Keiser
equally all the good things of creation are
given to be used and enjoyed not enjoyed
in the wrong manner but enjoyed in the
right manner for the praise of God and
our culture must reflect a recognition of this
fact so the Puritans developed a culture which
in fact had great breadth and richness it
had to be sure a moral cause and
it was in direct conflict with the degenerates
that is the immoral elements in the culture
of the secular culture of 17th century England
and there were plenty of degenerate and immoral
elements in 17th century culture which had to
be challenged and fought but for instance and
in the realm of education the Puritans and
themselves were university men carried on the great
Renaissance tradition of founding grammar schools in many
cases teaching in grammar schools in the parishes
teaching their parishioners to read writing books for
them founding schools, I mentioned that founding academies
too after 1662, academies to do work at
university level and when English Puritans emigrated to
America the first thing they did was to
found schools at Harvard University the Puritans were
for education, not against it they should be
appreciated right at the outset and B, in
the realm of the arts the Puritans were
pro and not con Puritanism has sometimes been
accused of cultural barrenness well it certainly may
be that later degenerate forms of the 17th
century Puritan tradition did become culturally barren but
in the Puritan period itself it certainly wasn't
so take the realm of music the Puritans
to be sure opposed choirs in church and
they destroyed organs in church did this mean
that they were against music?
no, it simply meant that they thought that
in churches the singing ought to be congregational
singing and they were simply concerned to make
way for congregational singing and that was the
whole of their motive in fact they encouraged
music for recreational purposes most of them played
an instrument vocal music flourished under the Commonwealth
they sang mad riggles as assiduously in the
days of Cromwell as they had done in
the days of Elizabeth the first English opera
was produced under the Commonwealth The Siege of
Rhodes by Sir William Denton produced in 1657
was known as a personal honour to Cromwell
himself as patron of the performance and talking
of Cromwell you may be interested to know
that at the marriage of his daughter Frances
there was a string band of 48 which
kept the dancing going until 5 o'clock
in the morning I don't know whether you
associate that kind of thing with the Puritans,
but that's a little episode from Cromwell's domestic
life what about the poetry?
well, if you just think of three poets
Edmund Spencer, John Milton, Andrew Marvel honesty compels
one to acknowledge that they were Puritans so
far as their known sympathies and their known
friendships and their known interests were concerned they
all of them were firmly rooted in the
Puritan tradition take drama to be sure the
Puritans opposed the contemporary theatre largely because the
performances habitually took place on Sunday, the Lord's
Day partly also because so many of the
plays were bawdy and the theatres in fact
were centres of light but were they opposed
to acting, dramatic performances or principles?
a few of them were, but not all
of them by any means Milton's coma is
a mask for acting Cromwell in fact acted
in a pastoral by Andrew Marvel at the
wedding of another of his daughters, Mary and
this goes for New England also again, take
dancing to be sure the Puritans opposed what
they called lascivious mixed dancing and you can
work out from their very description why and
many of us find it necessary to oppose
lascivious mixed dancing at the present time that
doesn't mean that they were opposed to all
dancing dancing of all sorts did you know
for instance that at the ordination of Jonathan
Edwards' father they had a dance at two
years they spread to New England and all
these texts were dredged up in a most
interesting if in some ways pernickety book by
Percy Scholes I notice you've got it in
your library, Percy Scholes S-P-H-O
-L-E-S he was a musicologist and
his book is called The Puritans and Music
he got so fed up with hearing these
repeated these repeated assurances that the Puritans were
all against music when he'd come across one
or two facts which seemed to throw doubt
on it but he did a thorough investigation
and wrote a complete book about it and
it's full of interesting facts of the kind
that I've said before you including this, it
was from him that I got this fact
about dancing at the ordination of Jonathan Edwards'
father and Scholes, with a rather nice little
aside imagines a person who is convinced of
the essential gloom of the Puritan ethos commenting,
oh these gloomy Puritans they actually had ordinations
of their dancing so
there you are there's a preliminary sketch with
bird's eye view tones of some of the
leading themes in Puritan culture what was Puritanism?
well it was an ideology like that we
should be developing some of these headings and
some of these themes and saying more about
what needs to go under some of these
headings as the course goes on so that
I think is enough for this afternoon that
gives you your preliminary orientation and we can
get down to details a little more tomorrow
any questions?
we've got five minutes and there was no
time for questions yesterday I should have said
perhaps yesterday and I think I may have
failed to say to this class that I
don't in the least object to being interrupted
when I'm lecturing if I've said something that
you haven't understood it's far better to ask
a question at the time than simply lose
track of what's going on for the next
half hour or so so if I do
say anything about which you immediately want to
ask a question or which you haven't understood
and want me to stop and explain put
your hand up and ask straight away that's
by the way any questions now about yesterday's
lecture or today's or these last five minutes?
will you be concentrating on the history of
children's development or the teaching of children's development?
I shall sketch out the former and put
the microscope on the latter a more detailed
treatment will be of particular themes and emphases
in terms of the history I suppose will
occupy it's hard to say seven or eight
lectures perhaps perhaps not so much and then
the theology and the explorations of the different
aspects of Puritan culture will be taken away
the course is English Puritanism rather than the
history of the English Puritanism in commenting on
the political aspect of Puritanism you said that
most of them were on the side of
Parliament but some were Royalists the Parliament side
was it primarily composed of Puritans or were
there some more co-church people also on
this side?
No, hardly there were a number of different
groups of people on the Parliamentary side but
I think it's true to say that whereas
the Royalists were all the Royalists were all
churchmen sorry, I'll be on my way round
whereas it's true to say that all those
who were Royalists were churchmen no, I'm sorry,
I am saying it backwards reverse and back
to where we were while it's true to
say that there weren't any churchmen on the
Parliamentary side that is the Parliament which you
probably know took down the Church of England
in the form in which it had been
known since the Elizabethan Reformation the use of
a prayer book was declared illegal and Archbishop
Lord, like King Charles I was in due
course executed Lord was executed for treason and
the Church of England in its century old
form was banished from the face of the
earth the parochial organisation I may say remained
what they tried to do was to reorganise
it in presbyteries but that really never got
off the ground outside London and one or
two other urban centres and when Cromwell became
protector what he devised was a sort of
non-uniformitarian establishment where each congregation was in
fact an independent congregation and the minister of
this church could just do as they thought
fit they weren't in synodical relation to any
of the other parishes of the country and
just different things were being done in the
realm of church order in different parishes all
the people who fought for the Parliament were,
one may say, content to have this happening
but some of the Puritans who wanted to
see the church reformed did believe in what
in some circles was called the Divine Life
of King they believed that is in the
Elizabethan doctrine of the godly prince which was
based on the Old Testament idea that kings
were by God appointed, God gave Israel its
king and he was there to be a
minister of God to them and since he
had given since God had given them the
king it was in principle wrong for them
to take up arms against the king and
that doctrine of the Divine Life of King
came back in 1662 and was written into
the Act of Uniformity an undertaking not to
take up arms against the king as part
of the Act of Uniformity in 1662 well,
I'm sorry, I'm rambling a bit but that
answers your question