Puritan Studies In The Twenty-First Century: Preambles And Projections

By Randall J. Pederson

The twentieth century witnessed a great boon in the study of Puritanism. In fact, the academic enterprise of studying Puritanism dates to the early to mid-twentieth century and a handful of modern scholars, most famous of which was Perry Miller at Harvard University. Miller introduced to the modern mind the profit of studying Puritanism as an academic discipline and re-introduced Jonathan Edwards as a worthy subject for contemplation. He started the project in 1953 that came to be known as the Yale Series of The Works of Jonathan Edwards. Its successful aim was to produce a modern critical edition of Edwards’s published and unpublished works issued in book form (prior to this, the majority of Edwards’s work was still in manuscripts). This admirable project has produced twenty-six volumes and two compilations, A Jonathan Edwards Reader (1995) and The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards: A Reader (1999), both of which are highly recommended. [1]

While Puritan studies in the twentieth century encompass more than Jonathan Edwards, Edwards is useful in that he exemplifies two poles within modern studies of Puritanism. First, as just mentioned, is the more academic or intellectual venture that seeks to illumine our understanding of Puritan culture and thought. The second is the more practical or pedagogical project, in which the Puritans are raised to public awareness as models for piety and imitation. Publishing on Jonathan Edwards incorporates both. One need only to compare one of the critical readers above with John Piper and Justin Taylor’s A God Entranced Vision of All Things: The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards (Crossway, 2004) to see what I mean. [2] Both approaches have their place and as Christians who are also historians, we can appreciate the rich and vibrant piety of the Puritans. Personally, I owe a great debt to J. I. Packer’s A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (Crossway, 1994) for introducing the benefit of reading the Puritans. My own and Joel Beeke’s Meet the Puritans: A Guide to Modern Reprints (RHB, 2006) is an attempt to incorporate both elements; whether we have succeeded or not is for others to decide. [3] So while there are two valid approaches to the subject of Puritanism, in this particular article I will mostly be concerned with the academic or intellectual ventures in contemporary scholarship. That said, I want to delve into one of the major issues in discussing Puritanism—what some historians have dubbed its “perennial problem”—or what John Coffey has recently called its “ticklish business.” [4]

A Ticklish Business: Defining Puritanism

The American Heritage Dictionary first defines “ticklish” as “sensitive to being tickled” or, when pertaining to a cough, “characterized by persisting irritation in the throat.” When you ask a historian who specializes in the sixteenth and seventeenth century what “Puritan” stands for, you will often hear a clearing of the throat, simply because they don’t know or the subject proves a constant source of irritation—they feel like they should know but they are hesitant to contribute to the discussion, knowing they are in murky waters. Historians are renowned for either being too opinionated or not opinionated at all. There are plenty of historians who fit both sides to this question: “What is a Puritan?” Thus, the second definition of “ticklish”: “difficult to deal with; requiring careful handling.” We can see why: there are so many vying definitions that it is difficult to ascertain which ones have merit and which ones don’t. Historians seem to include or exclude “Puritans” at pleasure, sometimes without rhyme or reason, at other times in a calculated effort to exclude certain members, such as early modern Baptists. [5] Others are more inclusive in their definition and talk about “the Puritan spirit” that swept through early modern England and moved well into the eighteenth and possibly nineteenth centuries. [6] Still others are more cautious in their use and have highly qualified and hesitant definitions since no one seems to know where new historiographical winds might blow. [7]

My own sense is that “Puritan” and “Puritanism” should be qualified when we use them, if for no other reason than to make sense to our readers. John Primus even opined that “Some day, no doubt, an entire dissertation will be devoted to the history of efforts to define Puritanism.” [8] He then cautions against getting caught up in “this maelstrom” of the “definition problem,” and then presents three observations on how to define it. [9] Even Peter Lake, author of what seems to be the most-often-cited essay in this discussion, [10] resorts to a more cautious attitude at times. [11] So, then, given these different attitudes and approaches to this subject, how do we define “Puritanism?”

First, we have to understand that Puritanism is a shorthand term that we use to make classifications in early modern English religious culture easier. [12] It helps us to make sense of what happened within the Church of England in the mid-to-late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We use it to define and understand a conservative or reformist wing in the English church that, at least originally, pushed for further reform—for more than the establishment allowed. [13] These “hot-tempered” or “fiery” religionists were slandered as “Puritans” or “Precisianists” because they were thought to be too precise in their desires. [14] Excellent proof for this assertion that “Puritan” to some degree is shorthand is seen in the fact that William Perkins (1558-1602), the so-called “father of English Puritanism,” despised the term himself and equated “Puritanes” to the medieval Cathari.

Second, to further complicate matters, the term “Puritan” evolved over its 150 year use. In the 1560s, the term was despised and rejected. In the 1650s, it was more favorable and descriptive of a whole class of nonconformity. We have to realize that, to some extent, our use of the term needs flexibility to it. We cannot be too static in our definitions; otherwise, we will invariably exclude whole classes without proper historical warrant. What comes to mind here is Michael R. Watts’s rather bold claim: “Historians have agonized over the meaning of the term ‘Puritan’ but there is really little need. A brief but comprehensive description was given in the seventeenth century by the Presbyterian minister John Geree.” [15] Watts here refers to Geree’s The Character of an old English Puritane, or Nonconformist (1646). But he fails to consider that not only are modern historians confused by the term, but early modern writers were equally divergent in their use and perceptions. Thus, while Geree’s depiction is a valid one, it is but one among many. As historians, we have to strive to filter through these and ask to what degree some of these texts might be hagiographic—we have to strive, as Quentin Skinner would put it, to see things their way. Part of this “seeing” is to recognize that early modern people were as fallible and often inaccurate in their telling of their own history as we are today. [16]

Third, various historians have attempted to either define Puritanism by one preeminent disposition or theological construct, or by the Puritans themselves. Thus, modern historians often refer to the covenant, predestination, conversion, or some other similar construct to probe Puritanism’s elements by looking at Puritans or Puritan families, such as Richard Baxter, William Perkins, John Owen, the Harleys of Brampton Court, or the Mathers. Both approaches have their merits but, given the complexity of early modern cultural and intellectual thought, the latter seems more fruitful, if for no other reason than that there is usually no single defining characteristic of anyone’s thought, past or present. Normally, a complex network of factors interworks on a person’s psyche; to define Puritanism by one single tenet seems misguided at best. John Coffey wrote, “Puritanism is often equated with strict Reformed orthodoxy. Historians typically depict the godly as purveyors of hardline Calvinism, intense predestinarian convictions.” Coffey further states that we tend to assume that “the godly” (as they were often called) shared a common theology, one shaped by the writings of John Calvin, Theodore Beza, and William Perkins—whom some have dubbed “the trinity of the orthodox.” While those of us who are both Reformed Christians and historians find this solution appealing, I am afraid historically it has its problems. One needs only to consider the work of John Goodwin (1594-1665) or John Milton (1608-1674) to know this illusive haven. The former was a profoundly Arminian preacher in London and the latter a quasi-Arian English poet, author, and polemicist. In fact, Carl R. Trueman rejects the term “Puritan” to describe John Owen precisely because of its hazy, inclusive nature. [17] So, can “Puritan” and “Puritanism” be salvaged? I definitely think so—that is, if we are willing to have some elasticity to our definitions, are willing to engage in productive dialogue, and continue to revise our own opinions as the field warrants.

Fourth, when looking at Puritanism we have to look at what came before and after. If, for practical purposes, we place Puritanism proper from 1558 to 1689, or perhaps even to 1714 and beyond, this means that we need to look at the early sixteenth century and the middle or latter eighteenth century to get a sense of how this historical phenomena fits. All historians agree that Puritanism first arose in the mid-sixteenth century, and they generally agree that it declined and came to an end either in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth centuries. The question is, “Why?” What were the historical circumstances that gave rise to a Puritan motif? What events happened to diminish its appeal? If we can assess these, they can help us towards a better understanding and definition of the term. While historians have long acknowledged “Elizabethan Puritanism,” to what degree can we consider a pre-Elizabethan Puritanism? What were its rudiments? What can we find in Mary Tudor’s reign that is suggestive of the later religious establishment? Is there anything in Edward VI’s Protestant advisors that hint towards what was to come? Or, even if we go back to the “evangelical preachers” in Henry VIII’s reign, what do we see?

In other words, we need to see the progress of the whole of the English Reformation in order to fully assess how Puritanism first arose and the historical and cultural precedents it provided. At all costs, however, we have to avoid seeing things our way; that is, we have to avoid anachronistic tendencies that read into the past what simply wasn’t there. This is a special danger for historians of intellectual biographies. A given writer may be “discovered” to have held a view, on the strength of some chance similarity of terminology, about an argument to which he or she cannot in principle have meant to contribute. We may think that such a writer anticipates or lays the foundation for or is notable for the extent to which he has anticipated some later event or construction, even though he knew nothing of the doctrine. So when we look at the early English Reformation, we have to attempt to see things the way they would have seen them. We can see continuities and discontinuities with the later English Reformation, but we have to be mindful and careful of anachronism in our assertions.

Also, when we look at early Elizabethan Puritanism we have to remember that such authors as Richard Greenham or William Perkins could in no way anticipate the later conflated nature of English Protestantism during the English Revolution, when Puritanism generated a plethora of different movements—Presbyterians, Congregationalists, General and Particular Baptists, Seekers, Fifth Monarchists, Ranters, and Quakers—all of which emerged from the religious subculture of “the godly.” Coffey writes, “Little wonder that in recent years some historians have begun to speak not of Puritanism, but of ‘Puritanisms.’” [18] Such notable historians as Ann Hughes and Janice Knight have both brought into question the idea of a monolithic Puritanism in the period. The former has written of “Anglo-American Puritanisms” and the latter of “orthodoxies” in Massachusetts—both of which offer revisions of Perry Miller’s monolithic “orthodoxy.” [19] My own sense here is that historians, some in reaction to Miller and others following more social methods, are now prone to a kind of deconstructionism. In examining a particular location at a particular time or looking at local histories, some historians have pushed for multiple “-isms”; or, as some recent historians have noted, there are only “Puritans, Puritanisms, and Protestantisms.” [20] Overall, local and cultural studies tend towards confirming these pluralities, and more intellectual studies tend towards affirming stronger, more united monolithisms.

Fifth, whatever the Puritans were, they were often known as “the godly.” There is a reason for this. These English Protestants took their religion seriously and embodied what some have styled “experiential piety.” One of the best historians of Puritan piety, Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe, wrote, “Historians have long treated New England Puritanism as an intellectual and social movement. At its heart, however, Puritanism was a devotional movement, rooted in religious experience.” [21] The same is true for the early English Reformation and the later Puritanism it spawned. While we have to be careful not to use this characteristic as definitive of Puritanism (many other early modern religious groups were also “experiential”), [22] we should neither minimize nor neglect this important aspect. The godly life was paramount to these early modern Protestants. [23]

How then do we define Puritanism? I have left this question open on purpose. Suffice it to say that no definition of Puritanism should be too dogmatic or assertive. There are simply too many historical variables to assert a single, definitive explanation that spans all times and continents. Thus, there is something credible to the notion of Puritanisms. That said, I do think there is an equally credible notion of Puritanism. Here we may assert a plurality in unity, as in a choir, with many harmonious cords singing a common song. With all its fluctuations in pitch, it is discernable and recognizable—G. F. Nuttall called it “the Puritan spirit,” and Peter Lake termed it a Puritan “style.”

Where Do We Go From Here?

So far, we have seen the promise and difficulty of studying Puritanism. Now I want to ask the question, “What lies ahead for Puritan studies?” As you might imagine, thousands of monographs have been published on the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century religious scene; but what ground still needs to be covered? In general, there are two methodologies that have probed this period: those of the intellectual historian and those of the more social historian. More and more, I see these two methods converging into social-intellectual studies. Historians are asking the harder questions and probing the effects of Puritanism in its broader, trans-Atlantic, and trans-continental aspects.

One of the more exciting studies to surface recently is Peter Damrau’s The Reception of English Puritan Literature in Germany. Damrau records how the English Puritan meditative tradition made its way into Germany (through translation) and so affected the course of early German pietism. [24] A more recent work by Karl A. Gunther has looked into the intellectual origins of English Puritanism, c.1525-1572. [25] Gunther has set a new trend in Puritan studies, one that begins to look at the early English Reformation for the intellectual genesis of Puritan thought. In short, he argues that Puritan conceptions of authority, church, and duties of “the godly” owe their origins to this formative period. [26] Further, Gunther has also posited the notion to incorporate recent discoveries in the early English Reformation into our understandings of the beginning of Puritanism. [27]

Susan Hardman Moore has resurfaced the question of motives for Puritans returning home in Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home. While most of us have heard of the “Puritan exodus” from England in the 1620s, relatively few of us have considered why some of them ultimately returned to England. [28] Other fertile explorations will have to do with the cross-fertilization and intellectual spores between Puritans and their continental forebears (and contemporaries). For instance, is there something of an English Lutheran tradition? Did you know that one of Queen Elizabeth I’s favorite authors was Philip Melanchthon and that she even memorized large portions of his Loci Communes? Or that Peter Martyr Vermigli, the Italian Reformer, sent Elizabeth a letter and a book, both of which were “politely” received? [29] Or that John Eaton, in his The Honey-Combe of Free Justification by Faith Alone (1642), quoted Luther more than one hundred times, and that a quotation from John Foxe’s edition of Luther’s commentary on Galatians appears on the title page, and that many of Eaton’s “turns of phrase” are clearly borrowed from the great Reformer? [30]

One of the most neglected aspects of early modern Puritanism has to do with millenarian or eschatological thinking. David Katz, Howard Hotson, Crawford Gribben, and Jeffrey K. Jue have all contributed to this discussion.31 But there is more to be addressed on the role of the Jews in early modern England and the extent to which they contributed to this millenarian fervor. You may or may not know that the Jews were expelled from England by decree of Edward I in 1290, and did not gain open access or favorable responses until the English Commonwealth of the 1650s.

Another fruitful study would be the variations of English print culture and the question of early modern genres. To what degree do commentaries from this period seem to follow a type? Further, when one looks at all the avenues for exploration in the early modern period, a glaring absence is seen in discussions on the greater question of continuity. We can all see, to a greater or lesser degree, the continuity of later English Protestants to those of earlier ones, but what about continuities with the medieval or even the apostolic church? While Theodore Bozeman looked into the idea of the “primitivist” dimension within Puritanism, there is surprisingly little else on the subject. [32]

Karl Gunther wrote, “The challenge posed by the recent historiography of Puritanism, therefore, seems to be to rethink the origins of Puritanism, not as an escalating sequence of non-conformity or as the origins of any particular doctrines (which Puritans often held in common with non-puritans), but as the development of a particular worldview within English Protestantism.” [33] While Geneva has always been important in our understanding of Puritanism, we should continue to examine the influences of the international Reformed community on the rise and progress of English Protestantism (especially on the years prior to the Marian exile, 1553-1558); in so doing, we will have a more fluid and insightful understanding of this fascinating subject.

Select Bibliography [34]

I. Noted Discussions Of “Defining Puritanism”

• Coffey, John, and Paul C. H. Lim. “Introduction” in The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism, ed. John Coffey and Paul C. H. Lim. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
• Lake, Peter. “Defining Puritanism—Again?” in Puritanism: Transatlantic Perspectives on a Seventeenth-Century Anglo-American Faith, ed. Francis J. Bremer. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1993, 3-29.

II. Notable Achievements In Intellectual Biography

• Coffey, John. John Goodwin and the Puritan Revolution: Religion and Intellectual Change in Seventeenth-Century England. Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2008.
• Hall, Michael G. The Last American Puritan: The Life of Increase Mather, 1639-1723. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1988.
• Hessayon, Ariel. ‘Gold Tried in the Fire’. The Prophet Theaurau: John Tany and the English Revolution. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2007.Lamont, William. Puritanism and Historical Controversy. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996. (Lamont examines William Prynne, Lodowicke Muggleton, and Richard Baxter.)
• Marsden, George. Jonathan Edwards: A Life. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. (This is the best biography of a Puritan to date—that is, if one recognizes Edwards as a Puritan!)
• MacCulloch, Diarmaid. The Boy King: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
• MacCulloch, Diarmaid. Thomas Cranmer: A Life. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
• Rex, Richard. Henry VIII and the English Reformation. 2nd ed. New York: Palgrave, 2006.
• Trueman, Carl R. John Owen: Reformed Catholic, Renaissance Man. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2007.

III. Noted Monographs And Collections Of Essays

• Bremer, Francis, and Lynn A. Betelho, eds. The World of John Winthrop: Essays on England and New England, 1588-1649. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Studies, 2005.
• Bucholz, Robert, and Newton Key. Early Modern England, 1485-1714. 2nd ed. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell Publishers, 2009. (This narrative history is an excellent introduction to the period. There is a companion volume of primary sources as well.)
• Coffey, John, and Paul C. H. Lim, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. (This is an excellent resource and introduction to various themes in Puritanism. Do not, however, make the mistake that this is an exhaustive survey.)
• Damrau, Peter. The Reception of English Puritan Literature in Germany. London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2006.
• Dever, Mark. Richard Sibbes: Puritanism and Calvinism in Late Elizabethan and Early Stuart England. Macon: Mercer University Press, 2000.
• Doran, Susan. Elizabeth I and Religion. 1558-1603. New York: Routledge, 1994. (Clearly outlines Elizabeth’s religious temper and her attitudes towards all her subjects, Puritans included.)
• Duffy, Eamon. Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. (Duffy is a modern Roman Catholic historian who has attempted to re-write the history of “Bloody Mary” and the popularity of her reform.)
• Duffy, Eamon, and David Loades, eds. The Church of Mary Tudor. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2006.
• Durston, Christopher, and Jacqueline Eales, eds. The Culture of English Puritanism, 1560-1700. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1996.
• Stephen Foster. The Long Argument: English Puritanism and the Shaping of New England Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.
• Hill, Christopher. Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England. 1958; reprint New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996.
• Kidd, Thomas S. The Protestant Interest: New England after Puritanism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.
• Lake, Peter. The Boxmaker’s Revenge: ‘Orthodoxy,’ ‘Heterodoxy,’ and the Politics of the Parish in Early Stuart London. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002.
• Loewenstein, David, and John Marshall, eds. Heresy, Literature, and Politics in Early Modern English Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
• Miller, Perry. The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1939.
• Milton, Anthony. Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600-1640. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
• Muller, Richard A. After Calvin: Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
• Newcombe, D. G. Henry VIII and the English Reformation. New York: Routledge, 1995. (This is a great introduction to the issues of the early English Reformation.)
• Knight, Janice. Orthodoxies in Massachusetts: Rereading American Puritanism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994.
• Ryrie, Alec. The Age of Reformation: The Tudors and the Stewarts, 1485-1603. London: Longman, 2009.
• Ryrie, Alec. The Gospel and Henry VIII: Evangelicals in the Early English Reformation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. (One of the best recent works to look into the “evangelical underground” of the Henrican reformation.)
• Spurr, John. English Puritanism, 1603-1689. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998.
• Spurr, John. The Post-Reformation, 1603-1714. London: Longman, 2006.
• Todd, Margo. The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.
• Todd, Margo, ed. Reformation to Revolution: Politics and Religion in Early Modern Religion. New York: Routledge, 1995.
• IV. Noted Books On Method
• Appleby, Joyce, et al. Knowledge and Postmodernism in Historical Perspective. New York: Routledge, 1996.
• Bradley, James E., and Richard A. Muller. Church History: An Introduction to Research, Reference Works and Methods. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995.
• Evans, Richard J. In Defense of History. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999.
• Hunter, Michael. Editing Early Modern Texts: An Introduction to Principles and Practice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
• Skinner, Quentin. Visions of Politics, I: Regarding Method. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
• Trueman, Carl R. Histories and Fallacies: Problems Faced in the Writing of History. Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2010.
• Wells, Ronald A., ed. History and the Christian Historian. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998.

Notes

1. Volume 26 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards is titled “Catalogues of Books” and is a critical edition of Edwards’s “Catalogue”—a notebook he kept of books of interest, including titles he hoped to acquire and entries from his “Account Book,” a ledger in which he noted books loaned to family, parishioners, and fellow clergy. These manuscripts are said to illumine Edwards’s “mental universe” and provide a window into eighteenth-century British intellectual and print cultures. Another useful companion book is M.X. Lesser’s Reading Jonathan Edwards: An Annotated Bibliography in Three Parts, 1729-2005 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008).
2. Perhaps a more glaring contrast in approaching Edwards is seen between Iain H. Murray’s Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1987) and Sang Hyun Lee, The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). The former sees Edwards as an exemplary pastor, evangelist, and progenitor of the Great Awakening; the latter sees Edwards as the quintessential and radically creative modernist philosopher. Those wishing to enter Edwardsean studies should begin with Stephen J. Stein, The Cambridge Companion to Jonathan Edwards (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), which clearly and accurately depicts the current state of studies.
3. Interestingly, the most popular and oft-printed “Puritan” collection is Banner of Truth’s The Valley of Vision, a collection of “Puritan” prayers and meditations.
4. John Coffey, “A ticklish business: defining heresy and orthodoxy in the Puritan revolution,” in Heresy, Literature, and Politics in Early Modern English Culture, edited by David Loewenstein and John Marshall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 108-36.
5. It is nearly universally accepted that John Bunyan was a Puritan. However, by many historians’ definitions, such as Paul Christianson’s, Bunyan would be excluded from the brotherhood. Cp. Christopher Hill, “Bunyan’s Contemporary Reputation,” in John Bunyan and His England, 1628-88, ed. Anne Laurence, W. R. Owens, and Stuart Sim (London: Hambledon & London, 2003), 3-16; and Paul Christianson, “Reformers and the Church of England under Elizabeth I and the early Stuarts,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 31 (1970): 463-84. Christianson attempts to solve the problem of definitions by narrowly delimiting “Puritan” to those nonconformist Presbyterians who chose not to obey conforming bishops but refused to separate from the Church of England and accepted royal supremacy.
6. See G. F. Nuttall, The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Practice (1947; reprint Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); idem., The Puritan Spirit: Essays and Addresses (London: Epworth Press, 1966).
7. This cautious approach is seen in Peter Lake’s numerous works.
8. John H. Primus, Richard Greenham: Portrait of an Elizabethan Pastor (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1998), 4.
9. Primus relies mostly on a synergism of Peter Lake’s and Nicholas Tyacke’s observations and concludes that Greenham represents a “moderate Puritanism.” See Primus, Richard Greenham, 4-6.
10. Peter Lake, “Defining Puritanism—Again?” in Puritanism: Transatlantic Perspectives on a Seventeenth-Century Anglo-American Faith, ed. Francis J. Bremer (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1993), 3-29.
11. Lake writes, “The difficulties involved in defining ‘puritanism’ are easier to identify than solve and I really have nothing original to say on that subject.” Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 10-11.
12. Although the use of “Puritanism” dates to 1573, here I mean its modern historiographical use.
13. In this paper I am limiting myself to English Puritanism. Others have argued for and introduced multiple variations, such as “Dutch Puritanism,” “Scottish Puritanism,” “Irish Puritanism,” and so on. There are several good books on these subcategories: Keith L. Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism: A History of English and Scottish Churches in the Netherlands in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 1982); David George Mullan, Scottish Puritanism, 1590-1638 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); and Alan Ford, “Irish Puritanism,” in Puritans and Puritanism in Europe and America, Volume 2, ed. Francis J. Bremer and Tom Webster (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2006), 432-34.
14. For a collection of contemporary portrayals, both positive and negative, see Lawrence A. Sasek, ed., Images of English Puritanism: A Collection of Contemporary Sources, 1589-1646 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989).
15. Michael R. Watts, The Dissenters: From the Reformation to the French Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 15.
16. See Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics, I: Regarding Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 1-7.
17. Trueman writes, “...whatever else Puritanism is, it is fairly minimalist in terms of theological content—if John Milton, the quasi-Arian counts as a Puritan, for example, we can scarcely include even the most basic of Christian distinctives, the doctrine of our Trinity, in our definition.” John Owen: Reformed Catholic, Renaissance Man (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2007), 5.
18. Coffey, “A ticklish business,” 109.
19. See Ann Hughes, “Anglo-American Puritanisms,” Journal of British Studies 39, no. 1 (January, 2000), 1-7; and Janice Knight, Orthodoxies in Massachusetts: Rereading American Puritanism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), 1-12.
20. Tracy Fessenden, Nicholas F. Radel, and Magdalena J. Zaborowska, “Introduction” in The Puritan Origins of American Sex: Religion, Sexuality, and National, ed. Tracy Fessenden, Nicholas F. Radel, and Magdalena J. Zaborowska (New York: Routledge, 2001), 13.
21. Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe, The Practice of Piety: Puritan Devotional Disciplines in Seventeenth-Century New England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), vii.
22. For example, Lancelot Andrewes, one of the premiere early modern Anglican devotionalists, went to great lengths to distance himself from Reformed orthodoxy and, along with others, expressed a “deep distrust of puritanism.” Peter McCullough, ed., Lancelot Andrewes: Selected Sermons and Lectures (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), xvii. Anyone who is familiar with Andrewes’s Private Devotions would be hard pressed not to call it “experiential.” See also, Christopher Haigh, The Plain Man’s Pathways to Heaven: Kinds of Christianity in the Post-Reformation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 1-16, 218-28.
23. Interestingly, what the Puritans are perhaps best known for (their experiential piety) was also, for centuries, what they were most critiqued for. One needs only to look at Victorian attitudes towards the Puritans to prove this point. Thankfully, however, the Puritans are being “redeemed” from these unfounded biases.
24. Damrau specifically looks at the work of Vavasor Powell, Joseph Hall, Richard Baker, Daniel Dyke, Richard Baxter, and John Bunyan, and their reception in German pietist literature. See Peter Damrau, The Reception of English Puritan Literature in Germany (London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2006).
25. Karl A. Gunther, “The Intellectual Origins of English Puritanism, ca. 1525-1572” (Ph.D. thesis, Northwestern University, 2007).
26. See Gunther, “Intellectual Origins,” 9-30.
27. Karl A. Gunther, “The Origins of Puritanism,” History Compass 4/2 (2006): 235-40.
28. Susan Hardman Moore, Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.
29. See John Schofield, Philip Melanchthon and the English Reformation (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2006), 186-204. I once had a conversation with Timothy Wengert, the world-expert on Melanchthon, about Schofield’s book. He both praised and lamented its contents; while Schofield has a very good topic, he often relies on outdated and in some cases discredited sources.
30. See Theodore D. Bozeman, The Precisianist Strain: Disciplinary Religion and Antinomian Backlash in Pre-Civil-War England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 190.
31. See David S. Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 1485-1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Howard Hotson, Paradise Postponed: Johann Heinrich Alsted and the Birth of Calvinist Millenarianism (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000); Crawford Gribben, The Puritan Millennium: Literature and Theology, 1550-1682 (London: Paternoster, 2008); and Jeffrey K. Jue, Heaven upon Earth: Joseph Mede (1586-1638) and the Legacy of Millenarianism (New York: Springer, 2006).
32. See Theodore D. Bozeman, To Live Ancient Lives: The Primitivist Dimension in Puritanism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 3-12.
33. Gunther, “Origins of Puritanism,” 237.
34. For a more extensive bibliography, see Meet the Puritans. At present, there are no exhaustive bibliographies of literature on Puritanism nor is there a single, critical history. These have yet to be written.