Reformed Orthodoxy In North America

By Joel R. Beeke

I write the Wonders of the Christian Religion, flying from the depravations of Europe, to the American Strand; and, assisted by the Holy Author of that Religion, I do with all conscience of Truth, required therein by Him, who is the Truth itself, report the wonderful displays of His infinite Power, Wisdom, Goodness, and Faithfulness, wherewith His Divine Providence hath irradiated an Indian Wilderness. [1]

So wrote Cotton Mather (1663-1728) in the introduction to The Great Works of Christ in America (1702). Cotton Mather wrote as the grandson of Richard Mather (1596-1669) and John Cotton (1584-1652), both of whom were founding ministers of New England. [2] In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a host of immigrants trusting in Divine Providence came to the “American Strand,” among whom were many considering themselves Reformed. John Bratt writes, “As a consequence of this extensive immigration and internal growth it is estimated that of the total population of three million in this country in 1776, two-thirds of them were at least nominally Calvinistic.” [3] North American theology before the Revolutionary War was dominated by Reformed perspectives and debates about the veracity, reasonableness, meaning, and application of Reformed doctrines. [4]

America was born during the flourishing of Reformed Orthodoxy. Protestant Europeans began to immigrate to the New World in the first half of the seventeenth century. Reformed Orthodoxy flowed from the Old World to the New in six major streams: the English Puritan Reformed coming to New England, the Scot-Irish Presbyterians to the Middle and Southern colonies, the English Anglicans to Virginia and later other colonies, the Huguenot French Reformed to New France and various British colonies, the German Reformed to the Middle colonies, and the Dutch Reformed to New Netherlands (New York). [5] This article will survey these streams, giving special attention to significant leaders (together with selected bibliographies of them), and conclude with a brief consideration of the Great Awakening which bridges Reformed Orthodoxy and modern Evangelicalism.

Puritan New England

The Puritans of New England occupy a singular place in the North American self-consciousness, but often through popular caricatures of fanatical men in black on a mission to stamp out all pleasure in life. In reality Puritanism was a vibrant expression of English Reformed Orthodoxy seeking to glorify God and enjoy Him in every area of practical life. [6]

The story of New England began when about a hundred people arrived at Plymouth on the Mayflower in 1620, as recorded by Governor William Bradford (1589-1657). Plymouth grew slowly to about 300 in 1630, and remained less than a thousand in 1650. [7] They were Separatists, Englishmen seeking to start a new church pure of the corruptions of the Church of England. By contrast, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded in 1630 upon non-separating principles, expressed in 1648 in the Cambridge Platform. They sought to plant a purified Congregational form of the Church of England in American soil. They hoped that the daughter would reform the mother across the Atlantic. As Governor John Winthop (1588-1649) said in his sermon, “A Model of Christian Charity,” aboard the ship Arbella in 1630, their love and justice practiced in their various social stations would be as “a city on a hill” for all to observe. [8] Massachusetts outnumbered its Pilgrim predecessors threefold from its start and swelled by 20,000 in ten years, absorbing Plymouth by the end of the seventeenth century. Together with the other New England colonies, it produced a theological literature which dwarfed that of any other North America Reformed movement in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Since the 1930s an immense amount of scholarly attention has been given to the New England Puritans. Of the 940 American, British, Canadian, and German doctoral dissertations on the American Puritans written from 1882-1981, nearly 90% are from 1931-1981, and more than half in the last fifteen years of that period. [9] The interest continues today. This revival of Puritan studies arose in part from the writings of Perry Miller. [10] Puritan studies today range from psychology to folk religion to poetry to family life to politics. [11] But the center of Puritan studies is theology, following their own God-centered, doctrinally-defined approach to life.

Puritan theology in New England was biblical and Reformed. It recognized only one source and inerrant authority for teaching: the Holy Scriptures. The Puritans interpreted and applied the Bible by comparing one place in Scripture with another and by the use of Ramist logic. Petrus Ramus (1515-1572) was a French Protestant philosopher who aimed to make logic more simple and practical than the Aristotelian methods of the medieval scholastics. [12] Puritan preachers and writers consciously functioned as heirs of a great tradition of biblical reflection, rooted in the church of all ages and especially the Reformed tradition. They drew from the theological wells of Continentals such as John Calvin, Henry Bullinger, and Theodore Beza, and British divines such as William Perkins and especially William Ames (1576-1633), a theologian who never came to the New World but whose writings profoundly influenced New England ministers for generations. [13]

The grand theme of Puritan Reformed theology was the covenant of grace wherein the triune God gives Himself to unworthy sinners whom He chose. [14] The Father appointed their redemption, the Son purchased it, and the Spirit applies it. All the blessings of this covenant are in Christ alone, for Christ gave Himself to redeem God’s elect from God’s wrath against their sins. His self-sacrifice was infinite in value yet effective only for the elect because He died as their surety in the covenant. [15] Christ alone could perform the offices needed to bring His sinful people back to God. Christ is the Prophet for their ignorance, the Priest for their guilt, and King for their powerlessness. [16] The Puritans held together doctrines which other Christians have sometimes seen as polar opposites or even contradictions: unconditional election and the gospel covenant, conviction of sin and joyful assurance, justification by faith alone and the necessity of keeping the law, being heavenly minded and doing much earthly good.

Puritanism distinguished itself from broader English Protestantism by founding church worship upon Scripture alone and no human invention. [17] The New England Puritans also applied this principle to church government. Their interpretation of Scripture led them to reject Episcopacy and embrace Congregationalism, though sometimes with a Presbyterian flavor. Puritanism in one respect was a quest to purify the church of unbiblical forms. More broadly it was a quest to reform all of life by the Word of God. Yet in seeking purity they did not expect perfection on earth. The Puritans were a pilgrim people. This is so not merely in immigrating to America. The Puritans saw all of life as a challenging journey to heaven under the shepherding hand of God.

To expound, defend, and apply the heavenly themes of Scripture the Puritans demanded a learned and godly ministry. They highly valued education, authorizing the founding of their first college (Harvard) in 1636, only six years after landing in the wilderness and fifty-seven years before the first college in Virginia. [18] From Harvard and later Yale arose a well-educated clergy in the Reformed scholastic tradition of late sixteenth and early seventeenth century Oxford and Cambridge. While Puritan pastor-theologians wrote many theological and devotional treatises, their primary means of discourse was the sermon. In fact, many Puritan treatises were sermon series edited for publication. Pious New Englanders listened to three sermons a week, seven thousand in a lifetime, each an hour or more in length. The Puritan sermon was not an exercise in entertainment or art for its own sake, but a closely argued Bible teaching aimed at personal application. Timothy Edwards (1669-1758), father of Jonathan Edwards, could have over fifty numbered headings in a sermon, each giving a distinct point of biblical interpretation, doctrine, or application. [19] The sermon was the sword of the Spirit by which God warred with Satan over the souls of men. It was the sowing of the seed of eternal life seeking the hearts of God’s elect. New England was never a theocracy. Church leaders did not hold political office. But the Puritan pastor exercised tremendous power by his office as a preacher of the Word of the Lord, combined with the New England consciousness of being a society in covenant with the Lord. New England was shaped by the preaching of Puritan pastors.

For further sources on Puritan New England, see:

James F. Cooper, Jr., Tenacious of Their Liberties: The Congregationalists in Colonial Massachusetts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Timothy George, John Robinson and the English Separatist Tradition (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1982); David D. Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (New York: Knopf, 1989); George D. Langdon, Jr., Pilgrim Colony: A History of New Plymouth, 1620– 1691 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966); Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1958); B. R. White, The English Separatist Tradition: From the Marian Martyrs to the Pilgrim Fathers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971).

On puritan New England Sermons, see:

The Puritan Pulpit: The American Puritans: Solomon Stoddard, 1643-1729, ed. Don Kistler (Orlando: Soli Deo Gloria, 2005); The Puritan Pulpit: The American Puritans: Ebenezer Pemberton, 1704-1777, ed. Don Kistler (Orlando: Soli Deo Gloria, 2006); Ronald A. Bosco, The Puritan Sermon in America, 1630– 1750, 4 vols. (Delmar: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1978).

On Puritan theology, see:

J. I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (Wheaton: Crossway, 1990) and the papers presented at the Westminster Conference (indexed at http://www.westminsterconference.org.uk/past papers/, accessed 10-21-10) which are published in annual volumes. The early papers (1956-1967) are collected in Puritan Papers, 5 vols., eds. D. Martin Lloyd-Jones and J. I. Packer (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2000-2005). See also Joel R. Beeke, Heirs with Christ: The Puritans on Adoption (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2008); idem, Puritan Reformed Spirituality (Darlington: Evangelical Press, 2006); Joel R. Beeke and Mark Jones, A Puritan Theology: Doctrine for Life (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2012); George N. Boardman, A History of New England Theology (New York: A. D. F. Randolph, 1899); Frank H. Foster, A Genetic History of the New England Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1907); Norman Fiering, Moral Philosophy at Seventeenth-Century Harvard: A Discipline in Transition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981); Lisa M. Gordis, Opening Scripture: Bible Reading and Interpretive Authority in Puritan New England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003); Janice Knight, Orthodoxies in Massachusetts: Rereading American Puritanism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994); Donald K. McKim, “Ramism in William Perkins” (PhD diss., University of Pittsburg, 1980).

On Puritan worship, see:

Horton Davies, The Worship of the American Puritans, 1629-1730 (New York: Peter Lang, 1990); E. Brooks Holifield, The Covenant Sealed: The Development of Puritan Sacramental Theology in Old and New England, 1570-1720 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974).

On Puritan Political Thought, see:

David W. Hall, Calvin in the Public Square: Liberal Democracies, Rights, and Civil Liberties (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2009); John Witte, Jr., The Reformation of Rights: Law, Religion, and Human Rights in Early Modern Calvinism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

On Psychological Studies of the Puritans, see:

Charles L. Cohen, God’s Caress: The Psychology of Puritan Religious Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); Emory Elliott, Power and the Pulpit in Puritan New England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975); David Leverenz, The Language of Puritan Feeling: An Exploration in Literature, Psychology, and Social History (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1980).

On Puritan family life, see:

Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Family: Religion and Domestic Relations in Seventeenth-Century New England, rev. ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1966); Levin L. Schucking, The Puritan Family: A Social Study from the Literary Sources, trans. Brian Battershaw (New York: Schocken Books, 1970); Laurel T. Ulrich, “Good Wives: A Study in Role Definition in Northern New England, 1650-1750” (PhD diss., University of New Hampshire, 1980).

On Puritan Poetry, see:

Mark A. Noll, “The Poetry of Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) and Edward Taylor (1642-1729),” The Devoted Life: An Invitation to the Puritan Classics, eds. Kelly M. Kapic and Randall C. Gleason (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2004), 251-69; Studies in Puritan American Spirituality: A Journal of Puritanism and the Arts in America, ed. Michael Schuldinger (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990-2004).

John Cotton (1584-1652)

John Cotton is remembered as one of the patriarchs of New England. He was educated at Cambridge where he served for six years as head lecturer, dean, catechist, and a tutor to many pupils. Initially he viewed the Puritanism of William Perkins with hostility, even rejoicing at Perkins’s death. But the preaching of Richard Sibbes convinced Cotton he had been building his salvation on intellectual prowess rather than on Christ alone. Cotton’s conversion also led him to reject the popular elegant pulpit style in favor of plain preaching of Christ. Henceforth, he called his listeners to “finde Christ, and finde life.” [20]

Cotton served as the vicar (resident pastor) in Boston, Lincolnshire, England for twenty-one years. His preaching, correspondence, and counsel established his reputation for Reformed, experiential ministry. John Preston (1587-1628), William Ames, and Dutch minister Willem Teellinck (1579-1629) sent ministerial students to sit under him. After a year of disability suffering from malaria (which killed his wife), Cotton looked into moving to New England. He had already preached a farewell sermon for John Winthrop. In 1632 Cotton was summoned to appear before William Laud’s Court of High Commission. He hid in London and then escaped the country, arriving in Massachusetts in September 1633 with his colleague, Thomas Hooker.

Cotton was joyfully received in New England and quickly given the most important position in the largest church of the colony, First Church of Boston. His influence, both in ecclesiastical and in civil affairs, was probably greater than that of any other minister in New England at the time. Yet Cotton was known for his Christ-like humility, responding to criticism by acknowledging his fallibility and asking his critics to pray for him. He served First Church until his death in 1652.

Cotton is most often remembered for his participation in the controversies surrounding Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams. These will be discussed later. However his most significant contributions to Reformed Orthodoxy may lie in his children’s catechism and his Congregationalism. His catechism, Milk for Babes (1646), bound with the New England Primer, became standard fare for New England children down to the late nineteenth century.

Cotton advocated congregational church polity in The Way of the Churches of Christ in New England (1641) and The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, and the Power Thereof (1644). These books, which went through several printings, were used extensively by the Independents at the Westminster Assembly. After being attacked by Robert Baillie, a Scottish Presbyterian, Cotton responded in 1648 with his The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared, in which he presented New England Congregationalism as steering between strict independency and Presbyterianism. All of these writings were followed up with a final call to accommodation in Cotton’s Certain Queries Tending to Accommodation (1655). No New England minister was as influential as Cotton in promoting congregational church practice.

For further sources on John Cotton, see:

Wayne H. Christy, “John Cotton: Covenant Theologian” (M.A. Thesis, Duke University, 1942); Michael J. Colacurcio, “Primitive Comfort: the Spiritual Witness of John Cotton,” English Literary History 67 (2000): 655-95; Donald R. Come, “John Cotton, Guide of the Chosen People” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1949); Everett H. Emerson, John Cotton (New York: Twayne, 1965); James W. Jones III, “The Beginnings of American Theology: John Cotton, Thomas Hooker, Thomas Shepard and Peter Bulkeley” (PhD diss., Brown University, 1970); John Norton, Abel, Being Dead, Yet Speaketh (1658) (Delmar: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1978); Harry A. Poole, “The Unsettled Mr. Cotton” (PhD diss., University of Illinois, 1956); Larzer Ziff, The Career of John Cotton: Puritanism and the American Experience (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962).

Thomas Hooker (1586-1647)

While studying at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Thomas Hooker became acutely afflicted by “the spirit of bondage” (Rom. 8:15). He was distressed by thoughts of the just wrath of God. Hooker clung to the promises of Scripture until he was soundly converted. With a certainty born of experience, he would later say to others, “The promise of the gospel was the boat which was to carry a perishing sinner over into the Lord Jesus Christ.” He graduated M.A. in 1611, and served as lecturer and catechist until 1618 at Emmanuel. There many of England’s spiritual leaders (including Stephen Marshall, Anthony Burgess, Jeremiah Burroughs, and William Bridge) listened to him preach. Beginning in 1619 Hooker served parish churches in England with visible reformation among his hearers. His listeners compared him to John the Baptist. In 1629, however, Hooker’s preaching against some Anglican rituals brought him into conflict with Archbishop William Laud of Canterbury. After several disputes, Hooker barely escaped imprisonment by boarding a ship to the Netherlands while government agents scoured the pier looking for him.

Thomas Hooker served English and Scottish believers in the Netherlands, ministering for a time alongside William Ames. Hooker deeply respected Ames, saying, “If a scholar was but well studied in Dr. Ames’s Marrow of Theology and Cases of Conscience, so as to understand them thoroughly, he would make a good divine, though he had no more books in the world.” Hooker wrote a complimentary preface for Ames’s A Fresh Suit against Human Ceremonies in God’s Worship. Ames, in turn, wrote of Hooker that though he had been “acquainted with many scholars of diverse nations, yet he never met with Mr. Hooker’s equal, either for preaching or for disputing.”

In 1633 Hooker sailed for Massachusetts on the Griffin along with his friend Samuel Stone (1602-1663), John Cotton, and two hundred others. People quipped that they now had “Cotton for their clothing, Hooker for their fishing, and Stone for their building.” Later Hooker and thirty-five families—the majority of his congregation—left the colony and settled in the Connecticut valley at Hartford. They sold their homes to the latest arrivals from England, who were led by Thomas Shepard. In 1637, he visited Boston to serve as one of the moderators of the synod that condemned the teachings of Anne Hutchinson and her followers. When the General Court of Connecticut began drafting a constitution, Hooker preached a sermon on Deuteronomy 1:13, which advocated democratic principles. In 1647 when Hooker was dying, a close friend said to him, “You are going to receive the reward of all your labors.” Hooker responded, “Brother, I am going to receive mercy.”

Hooker preached that a sinner’s heart must be prepared with conviction of sin before it can receive Christ. This view is called preparatory grace. Hooker wrote, “The Heart must be broken and humbled, before the Lord will own it as His, take up His abode with it, and rule in it.” But this humbling lay not in the power of man’s free will. Hooker said,

The effectual operation of the Word, the breaking and so converting the heart of a sinner depends not upon any preparation a man can work in himself, or any thing he can do in his corrupt estate for the attaining of life and Salvation…yet now the Lord presseth in upon them, by the prevailing power of his spirit and word and doth good to them, when they set themselves by al the policy and rage they could to oppose the work of the Lord and their own everlasting welfare. [21]

Though Hooker sometimes dwelt on the evils of sin so long that he may have bruised tender souls, his overall ministry was framed by a Reformed theology of sovereign grace calling poor doubting sinners to Christ as their all-in-all. Cotton Mather wrote of Hooker, “the very spirit of his ministry lay in the points of the most practical religion, and the grand concerns of a sinner’s preparation for, implantation in, and salvation by, the glorious Lord Jesus Christ.” [22]

For further sources on Thomas Hooker, see:

John H. Ball, III, Chronicling the Soul’s Windings: Thomas Hooker and His Morphology of Conversion (Lanham: University Press of America, 1992); Sargent Bush, Jr., The Writings of Thomas Hooker: Spiritual Adventure in Two Worlds (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980); Robert H. Horn, “Thomas Hooker—The Soul’s Preparation for Christ,” The Puritan Experiment in the New World (London: Westminster Conference, 1976), 19-37; Hubert R. Pellman, “Thomas Hooker: A Study in Puritan Ideals” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1958); Frank Shuffleton, Thomas Hooker, 1586-1647 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977).

On Hooker and Preparationism, see:

Iain H. Murray, “Thomas Hooker and the Doctrine of Conversion,” Banner of Truth 195 (1979): 19-29; 196 (1980): 22-32; 197 (1980): 12-18; 199 (1980): 10-21; 206 (1980): 9-21; David L. Parker, “The Application of Humiliation: Ramist Logic and the Rise of Preparationism in New England” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1972); Norman Pettit, The Heart Prepared: Grace and Conversion in Puritan Spiritual Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966).

Thomas Shepard (1605-1649)

Thomas Shepard was born in Towcester, Northamptonshire. Both his parents died during his childhood, and he was largely raised by his older brother, John. His days at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, were initially marked by spiritual neglect and immorality. But the preaching of John Preston opened Shepard’s mind first to his own sins and then to the sweetness and fullness of Christ the Savior. From 1627 to 1635 he ministered within the Church of England with increasing difficulty as William Laud persecuted Nonconformists.

The Shepards finally reached New England on October 3, 1635. His wife became ill from tuberculosis and died four months later. Shepard settled in Newtown (now Cambridge), Massachusetts, where he became pastor of the newly established Congregational church. He acquired a reputation for effectiveness as an evangelist. In line with the Congregational way, he asked all who applied for church membership to confess their personal experience of conversion to Christ. He also helped to establish Harvard College in Cambridge, and to support the mission to the Native Americans by John Eliot. He served in Cambridge until his death.

Thomas Shepard was unswerving in opposing the antinomians and was one of the leaders in the synod at Cambridge that condemned them for separating the revelations of the Holy Spirit from the Holy Scriptures and from a holy life. His sermons on the Parable of the Ten Virgins, published after his death, argued that the saving work of Christ must conquer sinful lusts. Shepard wrote, “There is a kind of resurrection of a man’s soul when it is brought home to Christ…. Do you think, brethren, that Christ’s blood was shed to work no more in his people than in hypocrites? Was it only shed to take away the guilt of sin from God’s sight, and then let a man wallow in the sins of his own heart?” [23] Jonathan Edwards quoted Shepard’s book frequently in his treatise on the Religious Affections.

For further sources on Thomas Shepard, see:

God’s Plot: Puritan Spirituality in Thomas Shepard’s Cambridge, ed. Michael McGiffert, rev. ed. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1972, 1994); Richard A. Hasler, “Thomas Shepard: Pastor-Evangelist (1605-1649): A Study in the New England Puritan Ministry” (PhD diss., Hartford Seminary, 1964); Richard A. Humphrey, “The Concept of Conversion in the Theology of Thomas Shepard (1605-1649),” (PhD diss., Drew University, 1967); Doris G. Marquit, “Thomas Shepard: The Formation of a Puritan Identity” (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 1978); George J. Selement, “The Means to Grace: A Study of Conversion in Early New England” (PhD diss., University of New Hampshire, 1974); Thomas Werge, Thomas Shepard (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987); Alexander Whyte, Thomas Shepard: Pilgrim Father and Founder of Harvard (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2007).

Anne Hutchinson And The Antinomian Controversy

Out of the Puritan concern for true conversion arose a controversy over the role of good works in personal assurance of salvation. Some Puritans reacted against what they perceived as “antinomianism,” the teaching that the grace of God releases believers from obedience to the law. So they emphasized the necessity of conviction of sin and submission to the commandments in order to ground assurance in true conversion. Other Puritans reacted against the danger of falling into a “covenant of works,” making one’s obedience the condition of acceptance with God as it was with Adam in the Garden. So they emphasized justification by faith alone based upon the merits of Christ alone.

Both the necessity of good works and justification by faith alone were part of the same theological system shared by the Puritans in New England. [24] But different emphases could lead to controversy as different sides saw the others in danger of heading down the slippery slope into error. In this way John Cotton debated with Thomas Hooker and Thomas Shepard. Hooker and Shepard emphasized conviction and obedience in conversion while also teaching justification by faith alone. Cotton emphasized faith and Christ while also teaching the necessity of Christ-like living. [25]

Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643), an admirer of John Cotton, took this debate to a new level and ignited a firestorm of controversy. Highly intelligent, knowledgeable in the Bible, and gifted as a nurse and midwife, Anne began hosting popular meetings in her home to discuss Cotton’s sermons. She accused all the ministers of New England except Cotton and her brother-in-law, John Wheelwright, of embracing a covenant of works. Hutchinson denied that good works were important evidences of true conversion. A nimble debater, she could not be pinned down by the theologians in any particular error. But then Anne boldly declared that the Holy Spirit spoke to her directly—immediate revelation from God. The church condemned her as a heretic and the government banished her from the colony. In 1638 Anne and her husband moved to the colony of Rhode Island. There she preached anarchy, that is, the doctrine that there should be no civil government. Five years later she and almost her entire family were murdered by Native Americans after moving to a remote portion of New Netherlands. Anne Hutchinson has been variously understood as an early champion of feminism, or a sufferer of mental illness, or a mystic in line with English radicals known as Familists seeking to dissolve her soul into God. Certainly her life ended in tragedy.

Some of the followers of Hutchinson joined with the Quaker movement. The Quakers, or “Friends” (as they called themselves) followed the inner light they believed Christ gave to all men, sometimes to the denigration of Scripture as a dead letter. This occasionally led to bizarre and provocative behavior. Persecuted by the Massachusetts establishment, the Quakers found more congenial resting places in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. [26]

For further sources on Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomian Controversy, see:

The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638: A Documentary History, Second Edition, ed. David D. Hall (Durham: Duke University Press, 1990); Early Quaker Writings, 1650-1700, ed. Hugh Barbour and Arthur O. Roberts (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973); Emery Battis, Saints and Sectaries: Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomian Controversy in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1962); Philip F. Gura, A Glimpse of Sion’s Glory: Puritan Radicalism in New England, 1620-1660 (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1984); Amanda Porterfield, Female Piety in Puritan New England: The Emergence of Religious Humanism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 95-106; Selma R. Williams, Divine Rebel: The Life of Anne Marbury Hutchinson (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1981).

Reformed Orthodoxy, Soul Freedom, And The Baptists

Religious liberty in the New World is strongly associated with the name of Roger Williams (1603-1683). Williams was not an Enlightenment free thinker, but a radical Puritan Reformed Separatist. He was educated at Cambridge, ordained by the Church of England, Reformed in doctrine and holy in life, and a friend of Oliver Cromwell. Williams came to Massachusetts in 1631. To the astonishment of the Boston authorities, he called for the state to grant religious liberty to its citizens because civil power has no authority over the conscience. He insisted that the Congregational churches formally separate from the Church of England because the latter did not limit its membership to visible saints. He also declared that the English crown had no right to grant land to the colonists as it belonged first to the Native Americans.

Banished in 1635 from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Williams formed a new settlement named Providence on land purchased from the Native Americans. There in 1639 he helped to form the first Baptist Church in America, but withdrew after a few months to become a “seeker” still looking for the true church. In 1644 he obtained a charter from the English Parliament to organize towns in the region into the colony of Rhode Island. At that time he also published his most famous writing, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, a biblical argument for religious liberty or “soul freedom.”

Roger Williams and John Cotton carried on an extensive debate over the rights of civil government to regulate worship. Against Cotton, Williams argued that the New Testament abolishes the judicial laws of Israel, for the physical kingdom of Israel was a type fulfilled in the spiritual kingdom of Christ. The sovereignty of God in creating faith excludes human coercion in matters of conscience, for only God can save. The history of the church displays the perils of religious oppression in the name of orthodoxy. On the basis of these principles he befriended the Native Americans and also evangelized them; he welcomed the Quakers to Rhode Island yet preached against their teachings. Williams is remembered as a pioneer theologian of religious liberty, yet he should also be remembered as a Puritan Reformed minister with radical leanings. [27]

Though Williams did not remain in the Baptist church, the Baptist church remained in Rhode Island. Other Baptists soon followed. John Clarke (1609-1676) started a second Baptist church in Newport in 1639. In 1648 they were joined by Mark Lucar, a Particular Baptist from John Spilsbury’s congregation in England, and then by Obadiah Holmes who had been harassed by the Plymouth Court for holding Baptist meetings in private homes. In 1651 Clarke, Holmes, and John Crandall visited the Massachusetts town of Lynn to fellowship with blind, old William Witter. In the midst of Clarke’s sermon constables arrived and arrested the three Rhode Islanders. Clarke and Crandall paid fines, but Holmes refused, receiving instead thirty lashes with a whip. John Clarke published an account of this event, Ill Newes from New-England. In it he argued that no servant of Christ has the authority to use physical force to restrain the worship of another. He based this argument on the supremacy of Christ alone as Prophet, Priest, and King to rule His church by His Word and His Spirit. Clarke and Holmes left confessions of faith indicating their belief in the Reformed Orthodox doctrines of God’s decree of all that comes to pass, unconditional election, substitutionary atonement for the elect, and perseverance of the saints. [28]

Particular Baptists formed the Philadelphia Association in 1707, and in 1742 this association affirmed a version of the Second London Confession (1677/1689), a Baptist revision of the Congregationalist Savoy Declaration (1658), itself a revision of the Westminster Confession (1646). [29] In so doing they desired to indicate that this stream of Baptists in America stood in substantial continuity with the Reformed Orthodoxy of seventeenth century Puritan England. [30] Of course, there were other streams of Baptists which did not.

For further sources on Roger Williams and Early American Baptists, see:

William H. Brackney, A Genetic History of Baptist Thought (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2004); Edwin S. Gaustad, Liberty of Conscience: Roger Williams in America (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991); Stanley Grenz, Isaac Backus—Puritan and Baptist (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1983); William G. McLoughlin, New England Dissent, 1630-1833: The Baptists and the Separation of Church and State (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971); Edmund S. Morgan, Roger Williams: The Church and the State (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967); Hugh Spurgin, Roger Williams and Puritan Radicalism in the English Separatist Tradition, Studies in American Religion, 34 (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 1989); Ola E. Winslow, Master Roger Williams: A Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1957).

A Theological Dynasty: Richard, Increase, And Cotton Mather

Richard Mather (1596-1669) was born in Lowtown, near Liverpool, England. From age fifteen to eighteen, he experienced an intense, lengthy conversion as a result of reading and hearing Puritan sermons. In 1619, Mather was ordained in the Church of England by Thomas Morton, bishop of Chester. He preached at Toxteth for fifteen years with growing success. After being twice suspended from ministry for denigrating the Church of England’s ceremonies, Richard Mather sailed for America in 1635. The next year he helped found the church of Dorchester, Massachusetts, on the basis of a congregational covenant in God’s presence, “promising first and above all to cleave unto him as our chiefe and onely good, and to our Lord Jesus Christ as our onely spirituall husband and Lord, and our onely high priest and Prophet and King.” [31] There he ministered until his death in 1669. He wrote ten works, mostly on issues of ecclesiology. Mather was a powerful preacher, known for shooting his arrows not over the heads but into the hearts of his hearers.

Richard Mather helped produce The Bay Psalm Book (1637), but he was best known for his defense of “the Congregational Way” of church government in the 1640s during debates with Samuel Rutherford, a staunch Scottish Presbyterian. Mather drafted a form of church government for the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which, after modification by the Cambridge Synod, emerged as “The Cambridge Platform of Church Government” (1648). A close friend of John Cotton, Mather nevertheless opposed Cotton’s tendency to open the doors of church membership to those unable to testify to God’s saving grace in their lives. In the late 1650s, Mather became deeply involved in the baptismal controversy that engulfed the New England churches. He participated in the “Half-Way Covenant” Synod of 1662 and wrote a tract defending its conclusions. This arrangement allowed baptized people who could not attest to their own experience of saving grace to nevertheless present their children for baptism. Solomon Stoddard (1643-1729) took this a step further in 1677 to allow baptized persons of moral life to take the Lord’s Supper without a confession of personal conversion. Mather saw this as a violation of Congregationalism, launching a controversy lasting well into the eighteenth century.

Increase Mather (1639-1723) was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts. He was raised according to the strict Puritanism of his father, Richard Mather. He studied under John Norton in Boston, then entered Harvard College at the age of twelve, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1656. He earned a master’s degree in 1658, and then preached in England and the British island of Guernsey until the Restoration.

Increase Mather returned to Boston, Massachusetts in 1661. In March of 1662, Mather married Maria, daughter of John Cotton, bringing two influential Puritan families closer together. That same year he opposed his father and other ministers by arguing against the Half-Way Covenant, which he thought weakened Congregationalism by lowering standards for church membership. After serving alongside his father, in 1664 Increase Mather was called to pastor Second Church (“Old North”) in Boston, a large congregation of 1,500 members. He served there for nearly sixty years until his death. For decades, he had a leading role in various synods that sought to reform the church. He presided at the Boston Synod of 1680 and wrote the preface to the Confession of Faith agreed upon at that synod which was their version of the Savoy Declaration. He wrote 175 books and pamphlets. He also served as president of Harvard College from 1685 until 1701.

In the early days of his ministry, Increase Mather believed that New England had a crucial role in the anticipated growth of God’s kingdom and inspiration to the Reformed churches throughout the world. So when things did not go right in New England and churches began to decline spiritually, Mather was deeply distressed. He preached jeremiads, i.e., sermons of warning and calls to repentance to the colony as a covenanted people. [32] By 1675 he changed his mind regarding the Half-Way Covenant, publishing two books in its defense as a means to strengthen the church’s influence in New England.

Increase Mather’s son Cotton joined his father in pastoral ministry in 1683. Cotton Mather (1663-1728) was destined to become the most renowned member of the Mather family. He was the eldest son of Increase Mather and grandson of Richard Mather and John Cotton, after whom he was named. Cotton had mastered Hebrew, Greek, and Latin as a child, then entered Harvard at the unprecedentedly early age of eleven, where he exhibited seriousness, a keen mind, and a capacity for strict self-examination. Upon his father’s death in 1723, Cotton Mather became the primary pastor at North Church, Boston, a position he held until his own death five years later.

Cotton Mather shared his father Increase’s commitment to promote orthodox and evangelical Calvinism and to oppose its detractors. Yet father and son were very different. Increase Mather focused on preaching and corporate worship. Cotton Mather focused on outreach, going door to door in Boston, evangelizing the unchurched. He also organized small group lay societies for Bible study and spiritual fellowship. Then, too, Cotton Mather, unlike his father, dabbled with mysticism. For example, he wrote that he had meetings with angels.

It was his indefatigable writing that made Cotton Mather one of the most celebrated New England ministers. He wrote 469 published works on biblical subjects, theology, church history, biography, science, and philosophy. His theological writings, now largely forgotten, were greatly influential in his time. They abounded with quotations from patristic and Reformation scholarship, as well as from Greek and Roman literature. Cotton Mather wrote the first American commentary on the entire Bible. [33]

Today Cotton Mather is generally regarded as the archetype of the narrow, intolerant, severe Puritan who took part in the Salem witch trials of 1692. Although he did not approve of all the trials, he did help stir up the wave of hysteria with his Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcraft and Possessions (1689). Cotton’s father, Increase Mather, played a key role in ending the witch trials. He published Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits (1692), in which he argued that courts not allow people’s testimony about seeing ghosts to be used as evidence. The Mathers and other ministers did believe in the possibility and criminality of witchcraft and were willing to see people tried as witches. But they believed that hysteria was perverting justice and endangering the innocent.

Cotton Mather was remarkably broadminded. For example, in 1718 he participated in the ordination of a Baptist minister. For most Congregationalists, that was scandalous; for Mather, it was an act that signified unity in Christ beyond church differences. He thought it was unethical that Puritans had persecuted Quakers. Cotton Mather also simplified the requirements for church membership. He said that ultimately, the three things that were necessary for a Christian are fearing God, accepting the righteousness of Christ to justify sinners by faith, and honoring God by loving one’s fellow man. By expressing briefly and simply what was essential, he tried to encourage ways of showing Christian unity.

Cotton Mather was an advocate of caring for orphans and the homeless. He promoted education, medicine, and science, and was the first native-born American to be a fellow of the Royal Society. On February 13, 1728, he died peacefully at home from asthma and a fever, surrounded by family and friends, aged sixty-five, survived by two children.

The three generations of Mathers were strong Puritan leaders in Massachusetts. From Richard Mather’s arrival in 1635 until Cotton Mather’s death in 1728, the Mathers formed a spiritual dynasty laboring for the spirituality, faithfulness, and purity of the church. Cotton Mather earnestly prayed throughout his life that God would do a great and reviving work in New England that would have worldwide ramifications. Only twelve years after his death, revival did come to New England in the Great Awakening.

For further sources on the Mathers and their controversies, see:

James A. Goulding, “The Controversy between Solomon Stoddard and the Mathers: Western versus Eastern Massachusetts Congregationalism” (PhD diss., Claremont Graduate School, 1971); Holifield, The Covenant Sealed, 169-196; Thomas J. Holmes, Cotton Mather: A Bibliography of His Works, 3 vols. (Newton: Crofton, 1940, 1968); idem, Increase Mather: A Bibliography of His Works, 2 vols. in one (Mansfield Centre: Martino, 1931, 2003); Robert Middlekauff, The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); Robert G. Pope, The Half-Way Covenant: Church Membership in Puritan New England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969).

John Eliot (1604-1657) And Native American Missions

John Eliot was born in England, growing up in Hertfordshire and later in Essex. His parents died while he studied at Jesus College, Cambridge. Eliot was ordained in the Anglican Church, but he soon became dissatisfied with its rules and policies. Instead of searching for a parish, he chose to teach at the grammar school in Little Baddow, Essex, where Thomas Hooker was master.

Eliot lived for some time with Hooker and was strongly influenced by him. He later explained how this teaching experience brought him to conversion: “To this place I was called, through the infinite riches of God’s mercy in Christ Jesus to my poor soul: for here the Lord said unto my dead soul, live; and through the grace of Christ, I do live, and I shall live for ever! When I came to this blessed [Hooker] family I then saw, and never before, the power of godliness in its lively vigour and efficacy.” Soon after his conversion, Eliot devoted himself to the ministry.

In 1630 John Eliot left England, where nonconformist pastors were being persecuted, and went to the Netherlands, then to Massachusetts, arriving in Boston on November 3, 1631. He settled in Roxbury with his godly wife, Hannah. Eliot served the Roxbury church as teacher and later as pastor for more than fifty years. The first fifteen years he devoted himself wholly to the work of the church, and the next thirty-five to pastoring the congregation and working among Native Americans. When once challenged by a Native American sagamore (great chief) with a knife, Eliot said, “I am about the work of the great God, and He is with me, so that I fear not all the sachems of the country. I’ll go on, and do you touch me if you dare.” All three of the Eliots’ adult sons served as missionaries to the Native Americans. Eliot was gifted in languages, and he used his gifts for God’s kingdom. His fluency in Hebrew earned him a position on the translation team of the Bay Psalm Book (1640). Three years later, he began studying the Algonquian language. He began preaching to the natives in their own language in 1646. In 1661 and 1663 the New Testament and Old Testament were translated and published. He also translated other works, ranging from simple primers and catechisms to works of Puritan piety. In order to fund these efforts, Eliot and others wrote what became known as the Eliot Indian Tracts published in London to win supporters.

Eliot began to set up towns of “praying Indians.” Natick was the first (1651). By 1674, there were fourteen praying towns, with an estimated population of 3,600; approximately 1,100 had been converted. In each town, the natives made a solemn covenant to give themselves and their children “to God to be His people” as the basis of the new civil government. These towns were almost entirely self-governing, though major issues could be referred to the Massachusetts General Court. For the most part, the natives were expected to adopt the Puritan lifestyle along with the Christian faith. After organizing the civil government, Eliot started establishing churches with the Congregationalist form of government. After overcoming numerous difficulties in a fifteen-year period, the first native church was officially established in 1660 at Natick, and other churches in praying towns soon followed.

Eliot’s work prospered until the onset of King Philip’s War in 1675. Fearing for their lives, numerous native converts moved to an island in the Boston harbor. Many died there. That pattern was repeated in other towns, where praying Indians were destroyed by either warring tribesmen or angry colonists. Unfortunately, the praying Indians were considered enemies of both the English and native Indians; only Eliot and a few others stood by them during the war. In the end, the fourteen praying towns were wiped out. After the war, the surviving Native Americans returned to Natick. Eliot attempted to start over, rebuilding Natick and three other towns despite the distrust of the English. It seemed at first that Eliot’s experiment in the New World might still be successful, but that effort never recovered.

In the last days of his life, Eliot was in much physical pain. However, all he could think about was Christ and his beloved Native Americans. “There is a cloud, a dark cloud among the poor Indians,” he said. “The Lord revive and prosper that work, and grant it may live when I am dead. It is a work, which I have been doing much and long about. But what was the word I spoke last? I recall that word, ‘my doings.’ Alas, they have been poor and small and lean doings, and I’ll be the man that shall throw the first stone at them all.” Eliot died May 20, 1690, at the age of eighty-six. His last words were, “Welcome joy!”

For further sources on John Eliot, see:

John Eliot’s Indian Dialogues: A Study in Cultural Interaction, eds. Henry W. Bowden and James P. Ronda (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1980); Richard W. Cogley, John Eliot’s Mission to the Indians before King Philip’s War (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1999); Frederick F. Harling, “A Biography of John Eliot, 1604-1690” (PhD diss., Boston University, 1965); Sidney H. Rooy, The Theology of Missions in the Puritan Tradition: A Study of Representative Puritans: Richard Sibbes, Richard Baxter, John Eliot, Cotton Mather, and Jonathan Edwards (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965); Ola E. Winslow, John Eliot: “Apostle to the Indians” (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968).

Puritan New England is illustrated in many ways by Eliot’s life. It was a world of deep theological convictions, fervent gospel preaching, warm human compassion, violent bloodshed, complex inter-cultural relationships, frontier hardship, bitter disappointments, and persevering ideals. Despite the voluminous river of publications analyzing and debating its nature and legacy, Puritan New England continues to invite further study.

Scotch Presbyterianism In The New World

Unlike the Puritans established in New England, Scotch Presbyterianism in America was just getting started in the late seventeenth century, and its beginnings were fragile. In the early 1680s the Scotch Presbyterians of Ireland sent Francis Makemie (1658-1708) as their first missionary to the New World. He served his countrymen for a time in Barbados, then in Somerset County, Maryland, before marrying and settling in Accomac County, Virginia. He also itinerated in New York. Makemie often had to appear in court to defend his right to preach in lands ruled by Anglican authorities, and spent some time in jail. He corresponded with Increase Mather in Boston, who considered him “a Reverend and judicious minister.” His ministry was broad and powerful, and some consider him the father of American Presbyterianism. In 1706 the first American presbytery was formed in Philadelphia by the ministers Francis Makemie, George McNish, John Hampton, Samuel Davis, John Wilson, Nathaniel Taylor, and Jedediah Andrews. [34]

In 1717 the presbytery gained a new member in the New Englander, Jonathan Dickinson (1688-1747). Dickinson, a gifted theologian and practicing physician, later proved a cautious but supportive friend of the revivals. He wrote a highly esteemed defense of Reformed soteriology. In it Dickinson said,

Whoever are chosen to eternal salvation, will be brought to see their undone state and inability to help themselves; to despair of salvation by anything they can do; to receive the Lord Jesus Christ by faith; and to depend upon him as their wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Until they thus lead the life that they live here in the flesh, by faith in the Son of God, they can have no evidence at all of their election. [35]

William Tennent (1673-1746), just having arrived from Ireland, also joined the Synod of Philadelphia in 1718. He established the “Log College” in Pennsylvania to train ministers, and later became a friend of George Whitefield. One of Tennent’s sons, Gilbert, would play a large role in fanning the flames of the Great Awakening. In 1729 the American Presbyterians passed the adopting act requiring all its ministers to subscribe to the Westminster Confession, Larger Catechism, and Shorter Catechism—the products of British Reformed Orthodoxy at its pinnacle. [36]

For further sources on Early Presbyterianism in America, see:

Sermons of the Log College: Being Sermons and Essays by the Tennents and their Contemporaries, ed. Archibald Alexander (repr. Ligonier: Soli Deo Gloria, 1995); The Presbyterian Enterprise: Sources of American Presbyterian History, eds. Maurice W. Armstrong, Lefferts A. Loetscher, and Charles A. Anderson (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1956); Archibald Alexander, The Log College: Biographical Sketches of William Tennent & his students together with an account of the revivals made under their ministries (London: Banner of Truth, 1968); J. G. Craighead, Scotch and Irish Seeds In American Soil: The Early History of the Scotch and Irish Churches and Their Relations to the Presbyterian Church of America (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1878); William H. Foote, Sketches of Virginia: Historical and Biographical (Richmond: John Knox, 1850, 1966); D. G. Hart and John R. Muether, Seeking A Better Country: 300 Years of American Presbyterianism (Phillipsburg, N.J.: P&R Publishing, 2007); Bryan F. Le Beau, Jonathan Dickinson and the Formative Years of American Presbyterianism (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997); Robert E. Thompson, A History of the Presbyterian Churches in the United States, 3rd ed. (repr. Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2003).

Anglicanism And Reformed Orthodoxy In England’s Colonies

Whereas Massachusetts began as a city on a hill for English Puritans, New York as a Dutch Reformed trading post, and Maryland as a refuge for English Catholics, the colony of Virginia was a company of Anglicans. The issue of Reformed Orthodoxy in Virginia and other colonies dominated by the Church of England is a complex matter. The “Reformed Church of England” affirmed Reformed doctrines in its 39 Articles (1562) and later in the Lambeth Articles (1595). The Lambeth Articles never received formal creedal status, but were endorsed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York. [37] Though the church was polarized by debates over worship and authority, most leaders of the church under Elizabeth and James I were essentially Reformed in their views of God, Scripture, salvation, and obedience to the law of God. [38] Therefore many Anglicans in Virginia would have held to elements of Reformed Orthodoxy. [39] Black slave Jupiter Hammon (1711-1806) was a New York Anglican who preached particular election, spiritual regeneration, and holy living.

He was influenced by the writings of Solomon Stoddard, a New England Puritan. [40] The Virginia Anglican and first President of the United States, George Washington (1732-1799), cherished his faith in the God of sovereign providence, an almighty heavenly Father who decreed and orders all things according to His wisdom and goodness—even in the tumults of war. [41]

Nevertheless Reformed Orthodoxy never fully prevailed in the Church of England and came under a dark cloud during the ascendancy of Archbishop Laud in the 1630s and later after the Restoration of the Monarchy in the 1660s. Anglican leaders such as Herbert Thorndike (1598-1672) and George Bull (1634-1710) viewed the Reformed doctrine of justification by faith alone in Christ alone as a threat to Christian morality. Thomas Bray (1656-1730) was organizer of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and the first Anglican missionary to Maryland. Bray advocated a neonomian theology where God’s covenant of grace accepted man’s imperfect obedience as the fulfillment of God’s conditions of righteousness. Similarly, Samuel Johnson (1696-1772), at one time a teacher at the Reformed citadel of Yale University, defected to Anglicanism, rejected predestination and limited atonement, and embraced high-church sacramentalism and salvation for the righteous of any religion. When Anglicans such as Devereux Jarratt and George Whitefield preached Reformed doctrines of grace on American soil in the mid-eighteenth century, their greatest opponents were their fellows in the Church of England. [42] Theological diversity has long characterized Anglicanism.

For further sources on early American Anglicanism, see:

John K. Nelson, A Blessed Company: Parishes, Parsons, and Parishioners in Anglican Virginia, 1690-1776 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Samuel Wilberforce, A History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America, 2nd ed. (London: Rivington, 1846).

The Huguenot Dispersion In America

From the mid-sixteenth century onward the Reformed church in France was bathed in its own blood. Early in the religious wars and persecution of the so-called “Huguenots,” [43] the Reformed explored possibilities of a new home in the New World. Attempts to colonize Brazil (1555), South Carolina (1562), and Florida (1564) met with failure, indeed disaster. [44] The Edict of Nantes (1598) provided a temporary peace in France. But even before the Edict of Nantes was repealed in 1685, Reformed families were fleeing persecution in France for asylum around the world. Protestants participated in the colonization of New France (Canada). But in 1627 Cardinal Richelieu barred the Huguenots from settling or trading in the French colony, closing the door for the Reformed to immigrate there.

Many Huguenots came to the American Colonies under English rule, including New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas. It may well be that some brought with them the French Confession of Faith (1559), drafted by John Calvin, which was often bound with French Bibles. Peter Minuits, the governor of New Amsterdam in the early 1620s, was not Dutch but French Reformed. Many Huguenot families settled on Staten Island. In what would later become New York the French Protestants were known for their purity of worship and life. [45] Pastors such as Elias Prioleau of Charleston and Claude Philippe de Richebourg of Virginia served with distinction in their purity of doctrine and fervent piety. Prioleau had witnessed the demolition of his church building by hostile forces in France in 1687 before coming to Charleston. [46] Richebourg served from 1700-1710 in a parish granted the French by the government of Virginia on condition that they would use the Anglican liturgy. [47]

The French Reformed lost their distinctiveness over time in America, often assimilating into Puritan Reformed in New England, the Dutch Reformed in New Netherlands, and the Church of England in New York, Virginia, and South Carolina. Unlike the English and Dutch Reformed, the French lacked a strong supporting church in their homeland. But the Huguenot dispersion enriched the English and Dutch Reformed with their faith and talents.

For further sources on the huguenot dispersion in america, see:

Timothy Bergsma, “In Search of Canada’s Reformed Heritage: The Protestants of New France” (Master’s Thesis, Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, 2010); Jon Butler, The Huguenots in America: A Refugee People in New World Society (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983); Otto Zoff, The Huguenots: Fighters for God and Human Freedom, trans. E. B. Ashton and Jo Mayo (New York: L. B. Fischer, 1942). See also the bibliography offered by the National Huguenot Society, http://www.huguenot.netnation.com/general/histread.htm (accessed 10-12-10).

The German Reformed In The American Colonies

Few Germans immigrated to the New World until the last quarter of the seventeenth century, releasing a flood which flowed for a hundred years. Among them came the German Reformed, first to New York and then later to Pennsylvania. They were driven by devastating wars with France, bitterly cold winters, and religious persecution in Germany. They brought with them the Heidelberg Catechism, that Reformed experiential book of comfort. John Frederick Hager preached among the Germans in New York, arriving there in 1709. The first German Reformed minister in Pennsylvania was Samuel Guildin from Berne (Switzerland), a Pietist who arrived in America in 1710 and devoted himself to evangelism. [48] In 1727 George Michael Weiss arrived in Pennsylvania from the Palatinate. He ministered in the Philadelphia area and also near Albany, New York. John Philip Boehm had already come to the New World and served initially as a lay minister in the Philadelphia area from 1725 until he was able to continue serving under formal ordination through the Dutch Reformed church in New York (1729). In a controversy with the Moravians Boehm defended the doctrines of election and reprobation. His gospel labors extended to many settlements, preparing the way for new churches founded upon the Heidelberg Catechism and the Canons of the Synod of Dort. [49] In 1747 the German Reformed churches organized the coetus (association) of Pennsylvania. Later they united as the Reformed Church in the United States (1893).

For further sources on German Reformed Christians in America, see:

Joseph H. Dubbs, “History of the Reformed Church, German,” in American Church History, ed. Philip Schaff, et al., 2nd ed., 13 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1894), 8:213-423; David Dunn, et al., A History of the Evangelical and Reformed Church (New York: The Pilgrim Press, 1990).

The Dutch Reformed In New Netherlands

New York and northeastern New Jersey were originally settled by Dutch immigrants after Henry Hudson’s exploratory journey in 1609. Dutch culture strongly influenced the region as late as the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. [50]

Early attempts by the Dutch West India Company to turn its small settlements on the Hudson River into a profitable endeavor made little progress. Similarly, the first two Dutch Reformed ministers, Jonas Michaelis and Everardus Bogardus, struggled to organize or edify the local population in the faith. Johannes Megapolensis served the colony from 1643 to 1673 with better results. He also labored among the Mohawk tribe of the Native Americans, studying their language and customs in order to spread the gospel among them. Similarly, Samuel Drisius, who could preach in Dutch, French, and English, served the mixed community well. Henricus Selyns ministered in New York City from 1682 to 1701. One of his Latin poems was published with the works of Cotton Mather, with whom Selyns corresponded. These ministers taught the people the Reformed doctrines of Heidelberg Catechism and the Synod of Dort, and led them in worship consisting of Scripture-reading, prayer, and the singing of psalms. [51]

Reformed ministers like Megapolensis were supported by the political leadership of Peter Stuyvesant, who led the colony into order and success from 1647 until he surrendered to British warships in 1664. Stuyvesant initially attempted to impose Reformed conformity upon the population, barring a Lutheran minister and expelling Quakers. But the Dutch West India Company reversed his policy of conformity in order to attract English Dissenters to settle in the area. The English also generally practiced a limited tolerance when they took power, except for occasional attempts to impose Anglican ministers on Reformed churches. The Dutch found it hard to persuade ministers to come and serve in the New World, often relying upon lay ministers, some of which were poorly prepared for the ministry. Others served with distinction and zeal, such as William Bartholf, who ministered in New Jersey. Influenced by Dutch Pietist Jacobus Koelman, Bartholf labored tirelessly to preach against formalism, and to declare the necessity of personal regeneration. He eventually returned to the Netherlands for ordination in 1694 and came back to America to evangelize and establish new churches. For the next fifteen years he was the only Dutch Reformed minister in New Jersey. Even his enemies came to respect him as an honorable and pious man. [52]

For further sources on the dutch reformed in america, see:

E. T. Corwin, “History of the Reformed Church, Dutch,” in American Church History, ed. Philip Schaff, et al., 2nd ed., 13 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1894), 8:xi–212; Randall H. Balmer, A Perfect Babel of Confusion: Dutch Religion and English Culture in the Middle Colonies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).

Theodorus Frelinghuysen (1691-1747)

Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen, raised and educated in the Netherlands in the teachings of Voetius, became another flaming torch among the American Dutch. Frelinghuysen arrived in New Jersey in 1720. Frelinghuysen’s preaching focused on the Voetian themes of the narrow way of salvation and the priority of internal motives which effect external observance. He spoke out forcefully against sin and stressed the Spirit’s work of convicting sinners of their sin and the solemn judgment of God against sin. He invited sinners to come to Christ, stressing that only those who have experienced conversion in Christ as needy sinners would be saved.

While some were offended by Frelinghuysen’s preaching, most of his congregants rallied behind him. At least three hundred people were converted under his ministry. Several small revivals under Frelinghuysen’s ministry paved the way for the Great Awakening. His preaching and friendship influenced Gilbert Tennent (1703-1764), a Scotch Presbyterian minister who came to New Jersey to work among English-speaking colonists. The revival that began under Frelinghuysen in the Dutch community spread to English-speaking settlers under Tennent’s ministry, later blossoming into the Great Awakening under George Whitefield, who called Frelinghuysen “the beginner of the great work.”

Frelinghuysen applied the evidences of conversion—repentance, faith, and holiness—as tests for admission to the Lord’s Supper. This divided the Dutch Reformed community, leading to a prolonged controversy which undermined Frelinghuysen’s health. He also advocated and ultimately prevailed in securing for the American Dutch Reformed church the right to preach in English, and train and ordain its own ministers. His untiring work, zeal, and piety triumphed as many of his former enemies came to respect him.

For further sources on theodorus frelinghuysen, see:

Forerunner of the Great Awakening: Sermons by Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen, ed. Joel R. Beeke (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000); James Tanis, Dutch Calvinistic Pietism in the Middle Colonies: A Study in the Life and Theology of Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1967).

Reformed Orthodox Roots Of The Great Awakening

By the end of the seventeenth century, English Reformed Orthodoxy was in decline. The decades of persecution following the 1662 ejection of Puritan Reformed ministers from the Church of England had taken their toll. Popular Anglican preacher John Tillotson (1630-1694) sought to supplant Reformed teachings with what he deemed a more rational religion. In the early eighteenth century many of the rich in England lived in open immorality while the poor drowned their sorrows in gin. Ministers lamented a withdrawal of the influences of the Spirit of God. The Age of the Enlightenment had begun, when men looked increasingly to the light of human reason instead of the Scriptures. Meanwhile, human misery and social injustices abounded.

In New England rationalism and Arminianism made inroads into the Puritan Reformed establishment. In 1702 Increase Mather published a sermon in which he warned that the glory of God stood on the threshold of the temple (Ezek. 9:3)—about to leave New England. [53] Concern over the theological drift at Harvard led to the founding of Yale College. Yet even Yale was not immune to change, as illustrated by the 1722 resignation and “great apostasy” to Anglicanism of its entire faculty, led by Timothy Cutler. Yale recovered, but the Puritan concerns continued.

Ironically American Reformed spirituality was revived not through a Puritan but an Anglican. George Whitefield (1714-1770), an ordained priest in the Church of England, visited the American colonies seven times from 1738-1770 to preach to crowds of thousands. With him spread a series of revivals now known as the Great Awakening. In reality, the revival began through the ministries of Theodorus Freylinghuysen and Gilbert Tennent. But Whitefield played a key role in broadening the scope of the revival throughout the American colonies. What is sometimes overlooked is that Whitefield’s preaching was firmly rooted in the Reformed Orthodoxy of England and Scotland. Next to the Bible his favorite books were those of the Puritans. His conversion came through reading Henry Scougal (1650-1678), and throughout his life he read from Reformed experiential writers such as Joseph Alleine (1634-1668), Thomas Boston (1676-1732), and especially the Bible commentaries of the English Puritan Matthew Henry (1662-1714). [54] Whitefield openly confessed and preached the Reformed doctrines of salvation, and commended “the Puritans of the last century” as “burning and shining lights.” [55] In 1829 selections of his works were published with the title, The Revived Puritan, a description which J. I. Packer called “uncannily apt.” [56] After Whitefield’s death he was eulogized in Boston by Ebenezer Pemberton as a man who preached “those great Doctrines of the Gospel which our venerable Ancestors brought with them from their Native Country.” [57]

For further sources on the great awakening, see:

The Great Awakening: Documents Illustrating the Crisis and Its Consequences, eds. Alan Heimart and Perry Miller (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Educational Publishing, 1967); Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007); Joseph Tracy, The Great Awakening: A History of the Revival of Religion in the time of Edwards & Whitefield (reprint ed., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1976).

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)

Jonathan Edwards is often called America’s greatest theologian and philosopher and the last Puritan. He was a powerful participant in the Great Awakening, as well as a champion of Christian zeal and spirituality. Both Christian and secular scholarship concur on his importance in American history. Edwards was a biblical exegete, theologian, philosopher, preacher, advocate of revival, and missionary to the Native Americans. As the huge body of his writings shows, Edwards was intellectually brilliant, multifaceted in his interests, and abundantly creative. The literature on Edwards is immense, a scholarly field unto itself.

Jonathan Edwards was born October 5, 1703, in East Windsor, Connecticut. His father, Timothy Edwards, and maternal grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, were Puritan ministers who had experienced revivals in their ministry. Edwards studied at Yale College, graduating valedictorian with his B.A. in 1720, then with his M.A. in 1723 after giving a Latin oration on justification by faith alone. While working on his M.A. he experienced a life-changing sense of God’s loveliness and sweetness while meditating on 1 Timothy 1:17, “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever, Amen.” In 1726 he moved to Northampton, Massachusetts, to assist at his grandfather’s church. When Stoddard died in 1729 Edwards became their sole pastor. In 1734-1735 and 1740-1742 Edwards saw remarkable awakenings among his people, the latter during the broader Great Awakening. Edwards’s attempt to limit the Lord’s Supper to those confessing a personal experience of saving grace—contrary to his grandfather’s long established position—helped lead to his dismissal by the church in 1750. From 1751-1757 Edwards served the English and Native American population in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. In 1758 he became the president of the College of New Jersey at Princeton, but he developed an infection after receiving a smallpox inoculation, and died on March 22, 1758.

Jonathan Edwards received the Reformed doctrines he inherited from the Savoy Declaration, the Congregationalist revision of the Westminster Confession of Faith. Edwards defended these doctrines against rising Enlightenment rationalism, and explored them deeply regarding the distinguishing marks of true godliness and the progress of history towards its God-ordained goals. Best known for his sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Edwards also preached a famous sermon titled, “Heaven is a World of Love.”

Some of Jonathan Edwards’s publications are:

• Discourses on Various Important Subjects (1738), the publication of sermons on conversion, justification by faith alone, and damnation.
• Religious Affections (1746), the culmination of a decade of reflecting upon revival in order to distinguish between true conversion and hypocrisy.
• Life of David Brainerd (1749), a biography of a missionary to the Native Americans which inspired many in later generations to sacrificial missions.
• Freedom of the Will (1754), a philosophical assault upon the notion that man can exercise self-determination independent of the sovereign will of God.
• Original Sin (1754), a defense of the Reformed doctrine of the universal corruption and total depravity of human nature since the fall of man.
• History of the Work of Redemption (1774), a series of sermons preached in 1739 on God’s program to establish the worldwide kingdom of His Son.

Though Theodorus Frelinghuysen, George Whitefield, and Jonathan Edwards stood in distinct church traditions, they shared a common heritage in Reformed thought concerning the doctrines of salvation and vital piety. The North American experience of the Great Awakening was profoundly shaped by these men and others like them. From this revival sprang forces which continue to propel and shape the North American Evangelical movement today. American Evangelicalism is grounded in the Great Awakening, but its roots ultimately lie in Reformed Orthodoxy. [58] Thus Reformed Orthodoxy has had a more profound impact on North American Christianity than is generally acknowledged.

For further sources on Jonathan Edwards, see:

The Cambridge Companion to Jonathan Edwards, ed. Stephen J. Stein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); John Carrick, The Preaching of Jonathan Edwards (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2008); William J. Danaher, Jr., The Trinitarian Ethics of Jonathan Edwards (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004); John H. Gerstner, The Rational Biblical Theology of Jonathan Edwards, 3 vols. (Orlando: Ligionier, 1991); M. X. Lesser, Reading Jonathan Edwards: An Annotated Bibliography in Three Parts, 1729-2005 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008); George M. Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven: Yale University, 2003); Iain H. Murray, Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1987). All 26 volumes of the Yale edition of The Works of Jonathan Edwards plus many other unpublished sources with scholarly introductions are available online at http://edwards.yale.edu/ (accessed 10-20-10).

Notes

1. Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana; or The Ecclesiastical History of New- England, 2 vols. (repr. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1979), 1:25. I wish to thank Paul Smalley and Derek Naves for their assistance on this chapter. A shorter form of this article is printed in Herman Selderhuis, ed., A Companion to Reformed Orthodoxy (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 323-49.
2. Portions of this chapter are abridged from Joel R. Beeke and Randall J. Pederson, Meet the Puritans (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2006).
3. John H. Bratt, “The History and Development of Calvinism in America,” The Rise and Development of Calvinism, ed. idem (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959), 122.
4. E. Brooks Holifield, Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 10-12.
5. See Bratt, “The History and Development of Calvinism in America,” 114-22.
6. For a helpful study of the primary sources seeking to correct misconceptions of Puritan views of marriage, money, and many other topics, see Leland Ryken, Worldly Saints: The Puritans As They Really Were (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986).
7. William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647, ed. Samuel E. Morison (New York: Modern Library, 1952), xi.
8. Francis J. Bremer, John Winthrop: America’s Forgotten Founding Father (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 173-84.
9. Michael Montgomery, American Puritan Studies: An Annotated Bibliography of Dissertations, 1882-1981 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1984), ix. For other bibliographies see Early Puritan Writers: A Reference Guide: William Bradford, John Cotton, Thomas Hooker, Edward Johnson, Richard Mather, Thomas Shepard, eds. Edward J. Gallagher and Thomas Werge (Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1976); Beeke and Pederson, Meet the Puritans, 861-88.
10. Perry Miller, Orthodoxy In Massachusetts (Gloucester: Peter Smith, 1933, 1965); idem, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1939); idem, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953); idem, Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956, 1984). See also The Puritans: A Sourcebook of Their Writings, eds. Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson (Mineola: Dover, 1938, 2001).
11. See the sources listed at the end of this section.
12. Holifield, Theology in America, 32-33. See The Logicke of the Most Excellent Philosopher P. Ramus Martyr (London: Thomas Vantroullier, 1574).
13. William Ames, The Marrow of Theology, ed. John D. Eusden (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1968), 10-11 in Eusden’s introduction.
14. John Cotton, The New Covenant (London: Francis Eglesfield & John Allen, 1654), 8-10.
15. Thomas Hooker, The Application of Redemption…the first eight Books (London: Peter Cole, 1657), 5-7, 11-23, 57-66, 73.
16. Ames, The Marrow of Theology 1.19.10-11, 132.
17. William Ames, A Sketch of the Christian’s Catechism (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2008), 161-62.
18. Mark A. Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 44.
19. Wilson H. Kimnach, “Edwards as Preacher,” The Cambridge Companion to Jonathan Edwards, ed. Stephen J. Stein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 104.
20. John Cotton, Christ the Fountaine of Life (London: Robert Ibbitson, 1651), 1.
21. Thomas Hooker, The Application of Redemption… The Ninth and Tenth Books (London: Peter Cole, 1657), 5, 297-98.
22. Cited in Miller, Errand into the Wilderness, 28.
23. Thomas Shepard, The Works of Thomas Shepard, 3 vols. (repr. New York: AMS Press, 1967), 2:208.
24. See chapters 11 and 16 in the Savoy Declaration and the Westminster Confession of Faith.
25. John Cotton, Christ the Fountaine of Life, 59-65.
26. Holifield, Theology in America, 320-23.
27. Leighton H. James, “Roger Williams: The Earliest Legislator for a Full and Absolute Liberty of Conscience,” The Puritan Experiment in the New World, 51-72; Tom Nettles, The Baptists: Key People Involved in Forming a Baptist Identity, Volume 2: Beginnings in America (Ross-Shire: Christian Focus Publications, 2005), 41-44.
28. Their confession is quoted in Isaac Backus, A History of New England with Particular Reference to the Denomination of Christians Called Baptists, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Newton: Backus Historical Society, 1871; repr. Paris: Baptist Standard Bearer, n.d.), 206-209.
29. A tabular, color-coded comparison of these confessions may be viewed at http://www.proginosko.com/docs/wcf_sdfo_lbcf.html, accessed 10-19-10.
30. Nettles, The Baptists, Volume 2, 44-49; Baptist Piety: The Last Will and Testimony of Obadiah Holmes, ed. Edwin S. Gaustad (Grand Rapids: Christian University Press, 1978), 17-29.
31. The full text of the church covenant may be found in David A. Weir, Early New England: A Covenanted Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 153-54.
32. Departing Glory: Eight Jeremiads by Increase Mather, ed. Lee Schweninger (Delmar: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1986).
33. It is now being published for the first time. Cotton Mather, Biblia Americana, Volume 1: Genesis, ed. Reiner Smolinski (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010).
34. William B. Sprague, Annals of the American Presbyterian Pulpit, 3 vols. (repr. Birmingham: Solid Ground Christian Books, 2005), 1:xi, 1-4.
35. Jonathan Dickinson, The True Scripture Doctrine Concerning Some Important Points of the Christian Faith: Particularly Eternal Election, Original Sin, Grace in Conversion, Justification by Faith, and the Saints’ Perseverance (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1841), 50-51.
36. Sprague, Annals of the American Presbyterian Pulpit, 1:14-18, 23-27; Charles Hodge, The Constitutional History of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1851), 1:127, 146.
37. Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, 3 vols. (repr. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1998), 3:486, 521.
38. Nigel Yoak, Richard Hooker and Reformed Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 3. Mark A. Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 37. Yoak’s book argues that Hooker (1554-1600), often viewed as the classic advocate of the Anglican “middle-way” between Reformed and Roman Christendom, began in the Reformed tradition but shifted away from it over time.
39. Robert W. Pritchard, A History of the Episcopal Church (Harrisburg: Morehouse, 1991), 4.
40. Holifield, Theology in America, 308-309.
41. Peter Lillback, George Washington’s Sacred Fire (Bryn Mawr: Providence Forum Press, 2006), 573-87, 592-93.
42. Holifield, Theology in America, 57, 84-88.
43. The term Huguenot is of uncertain derivation, being variously connected to meeting at night, or meeting in homes, or swearing an oath of allegiance, or the proper name Hugh or Hugo.
44. Arthur H. Hirsch, The Huguenots of Colonial South Carolina (Hamden: Archon Books, 1962), 6-7.
45. William H. Foote, The Huguenots; or, Reformed French Church (repr. Harrisonburg: Sprinkle, 2002), 504, 509.
46. Hirsch, The Huguenots of Colonial South Carolina, 9-13, 51-53. M. Charles Weiss, History of the French Protestant Refugees, trans. Henry W. Herbert (New York: Stringer & Townsend, 1854), 331-32, 377.
47. George M. Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church (Richmond: Virginia Historical Society, 1947), 263.
48. James I. Good, History of the Reformed Church in the United States, 1725-1792 (Reading: Daniel Miller, 1899), 68-88.
49. H. Harbaugh, The Fathers of the German Reformed Church in Europe and America, 3 vols. (Lancaster: Sprenger & Westhaeffer, 1857), 1:265-91.
50. Gerald F. DeJong, The Dutch in America, 1609-1974 (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1975), 10, 67.
51. DeJong, The Dutch in America, 79, 89. W. A. Speck and L. Billington, “Calvinism in Colonial North America, 1630-1715,” International Calvinism, 1541-1715, ed. Menna Prestwich (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 272-76.
52. Speck and Billington, “Calvinism in Colonial North America,” 276-78; W. R. Ward, The Protestant Evangelical Awakening (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 243-44.
53. Increase Mather, “Ichabod…the Glory of the Lord is Departing from New- England,” in Departing Glory: Eight Jeremiads by Increase Mather, 46.
54. Arnold A. Dallimore, George Whitefield: The Life and Times of the Great Evangelist of the Eighteenth-Century Revival, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1970 and 1980), 1:82, 404-405.
55. George Whitefield, The Works of the Reverend George Whitefield, 6 vols. (London: Dilly, 1771), 4:306.
56. J. I. Packer, “The Spirit with the Word: The Reformational Revivalism of George Whitefield,” The Bible, the Reformation, and the Church: Essays in Honour of James Atkinson, ed. W. P. Stephens (Sheffield, U.K.: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 176.
57. Harry S. Stout, The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 282.
58. See The Advent of Evangelicalism: Exploring Historical Continuities, eds. Michael A. G. Haykin and Kenneth J. Stewart (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2008).