Dressing Up with Arthur Dent

Arthur Dent’s The Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven is a great read. It’s colourful and direct. Whilst the dialogue is contrived in places this classic of late Elizabethan Puritan divinity still reads well. It was among the books that Ussher recommended to ordinands.

Among the social evils decried by preacher Theologus is pride in dress. The predictable anxieties about conspicuous consumption, foreign foppery, and chasing of fashions, all made possible by the growing urban economy and international trade, are all there, as is the blurring of boundaries when one dresses above one’s social rank. But the deeper problem is pride. Philagathus, the godly man, joins in and gets hot under the collar as he describes these dedicated followers of fashion:

Yet we see how proud many (especially women) be of such baubles. For when they have spent a good part of the day in tricking and trimming, pricking and pinning, pranking and pouncing, girding and lacing, and braving up themselves in most exquisite manner, then out they come into the streets, with their pedlar’s shop upon their back, and carry their crests very high, taking themselves to be little angels, or at least somewhat more than other women. Whereupon they do so exceedingly swell with pride, that it is to be feared they will burst with it, as they walk in the streets. And truly we may think the very stones in the street, and the beams in the houses do quake, and wonder at their monstrous, intolerable, and excessive pride. For it seemeth that they are altogether a lump of pride, a mass of pride, even altogether made of pride, and nothing else but pride, pride.

Let me just add that men do come under fire too, especially as Theologus discusses the judgement prophesied by Zephaniah on the ‘mincing minions of Jerusalem’. As I said, colourful stuff and some good theology thrown in. You can download it here. You might also want to look out for the Soli Deo Gloria reprint.

Insolence or Flatulence?

It wasn’t just the wind of the Spirit blowing in Coggeshall in 1594. Thomas Squeere was presented to the church courts for not receiving communion ‘and also for refusing to satisfy the congregation which he offended by a wicked fart committed’. Diocesan records are full of such disciplinary cases showing the challenge that godly ministers faced in the parishes. Coggeshall, Essex, would later be the second pastoral charge of John Owen.

About 700 examples from the court records are described in Christopher Haigh’s The Plain Man’s Pathways to Heaven: Kinds of Christianity in Post-Reformation England (Oxford University Press, 2007), the fruit of years of archival spadework. Haigh organises his book around the characters of Arthur Dent’s classic, Theologus (a preacher), Asunetus (an ignorant man), Philagathus (an honest godly man), and Antilegon (a scoffer). They are joined by the Papist from George Gifford’s Dialogue between a Papist and a Protestant. He uses these as types of the plain men in the pews (or not in the pews as the case may be). Some of these offences were just larking about (e.g. tying a dog to a bell-rope), others more serious (from urinating in the font up to assaults and murder). The offence and its presentment show both disobedience and a concern for obedience and Haigh’s discussion of the dynamics makes interesting reading. He describes the tensions between the godly and ungodly and shows that it was often a particularly divisive individual that proved to be the flashpoint in disputes. Most of the time the routines of everyday communal living worked against segregation and open conflict. People more or less managed to get along.

This book is an entertaining read and illuminates the ways in which people thought about and practised their religion, how the preachers saw the people and the people saw the preachers. It should be read by anyone considering the nature of Puritanism and how the word ‘Puritan’ was used. In his conclusion Haigh also makes an interesting suggestion regarding the factors that came together at the outbreak of civil war.

I am going the colloquium held in his honour at Jesus College, Oxford tomorrow.

Cambridge Companion to Puritanism

 

The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism, eds. John Coffey and Paul C.H. Lim (Cambridge University Press, 2008).

For what it’s worth, a few thoughts:

Up until last week, if you had asked me what was the best place to approach the study of Puritanism from I would have had to scratch my head and think about it. There was no really obvious starting point to begin reading. It would depend on one’s special interests and the period under consideration. For those simply wishing to read Puritan practical divinity for personal edification I would still recommend J.I. Packer’s The Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (published as Among God’s Giants in the U.K.), but for anyone embarking on a serious study of Puritanism I would now confidently recommend The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism.

This collection comprises an introduction and twenty essays. The first section gives an account of English Puritanism by period; the second takes the reader further afield with descriptions of Puritanism in New England, Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, with a discussion of the interchange of ideas with continental Reformed Protestants; the third dissects a number of important themes such as ecclesiology and millenarianism. The fourth and final section considers the legacy of the phenomenon and its historiography. From these essays, their notes and suggested further reading, one begins to appreciate the vast expanse of the field of Puritan scholarship.

Highlights must include the chapter by Patrick Collinson. The godfather of modern puritan research sets up the discussion of English Puritanism which follows with an examination of ‘Antipuritanism’. This encapsulates Collinson’s nominalist reading of Puritanism and the dialectical relationship between the godly and the ungodly. Anthony Milton’s chapter, ‘Puritanism and the continental Reformed churches’, describes a complex and changing relationship ‘characterised as much by tension and ambiguity as by instinctive fraternalism’ (p. 109). This intertraffic with the continent, the Netherlands playing a particularly important role, was conducted on many levels, and this chapter is a warning against insularity in the study of Puritanism. Margo Todd’s solution to ‘The problem of Scotland’s Puritans’ is a real gem. By not overreaching and by sticking to the question of whether there were Puritans in Scotland, and to some extent that depends on how one defines the terms, she supplies one of the most enjoyable contributions. Alex Walsham’s analysis of ‘The godly and popular culture’ is judicious and in many ways develops the discussion begun earlier by Collinson.

The final two chapters alone are worth the price of the volume. John Coffey scrutinizes the treatment Puritanism has received at the hands of modernity theorists such as Weber, Tawney and Hill, as well as Whigs, sociologists, historians of science, and those seeking the origins of an American identity. He notes the flaws in much of this work and the obsession with Purtanism’s secular by-products rather than the living religious legacy it has left to evangelicalism today. Peter Lake, with characteristic humour, charts the historiography of Puritanism from Richard Bancroft down through Gardiner, Neale and Collinson, to the twists and turns of revisionist and post-revisionist schools. These surveys of the plethora of literature on Puritanism will provide a sound orientation for those setting out on their study of the subject.

There were only two chapters which disappointed. One in which the author seemed to be trying to be a little too clever, and another in which the occasional sentence was tortured to the extent that I could barely bring myself to watch. In addition, Ann Hughes, in her essay on ‘Puritanism and gender’, claims that Puritanism ‘inspired the prosecution of vulnerable and deluded women as witches’ (p. 295). This questionable assertion is not buttressed by so much as a footnote, and is left hanging there, unqualified and unsubstantiated. The editors’ use of the term ‘legalism’ (p.3) to describe Reformed teaching on the role of the law in the Christian life was also unfortunate.

Such minor gripes aside, this is a book well worth purchasing for reading and future reference. It will greatly assist the student of Puritanism and also the non-specialist who has to teach something about the subject. The editors are to be commended for bringing together such an illustrious team to provide an accessible introduction to Puritanism.

Cambridge Companion Countdown

(I have an affinity for alliteration, don’t I).

Amazon.co.uk claim they will have the Cambridge Companion to Puritanism in stock in 10 days time. This will be essential reading for all students of the period. I have pasted the contents list below. Juicy.

Introduction John Coffey and Paul C. H. Lim

 Part I. English Puritanism

 1. Antipuritanism - Patrick Collinson

 2. The growth of English Puritanism - John Craig

 3. Early Stuart Puritanism – Tom Webster

 4. The Puritan revolution - John Morrill

 5. Later Stuart Puritanism - John Spurr

 Part II. Beyond England

 6. Puritanism and the Continental Reformed Churches – Anthony Milton

 7. The Puritan experiment in New England, 1630–1660 - Francis J. Bremer

 8. New England, 1660–1730 - David D. Hall

 9. Puritanism in Ireland and Wales – Crawford Gribben

 10. The problem of Scotland’s Puritans – Margo Todd

 Part III. Major Themes

 11. Practical divinity and spirituality – Charles Hambrick-Stowe

 12. Puritan polemical divinity and doctrinal controversy – Dewey D. Wallace, Jr.

 13. Puritans and the Church of England: historiography and ecclesiology – Paul C. H. Lim

 14. Radical Puritanism, c. 1558–1660 – David R. Como

 15. Puritan millenarianism in old and New England – Jeffrey K. Jue

 16. The Godly and popular culture – Alexandra Walsham

 17. Puritanism and gender – Ann Hughes

 18. Puritanism and literature N. H. Keeble

 Part IV. Puritanism and Posterity

 19. Puritan legacies - John Coffey

 20. The historiography of Puritanism - Peter Lake

Calvinism under a Cloud?

I have spent a cheery day reading John Stachniewski’s The Persecutory Imagination: English Puritanism and the Literature of Religious Despair. This paints Calvin’s theology in dark colours, arguing that his doctrines of election, reprobation, and temporary faith did untold damage to the psyches those that sat under the preaching of Reformed ministers in seventeenth-century England. The puritan self in particular was driven inward in search of signs and marks. This introspection would all too often lead to religious despair and contemporaries recognized that suicide had become a problem in society.

Interesting read. My instinct would be to suspect that those who left spiritual journals, a major source for such a study, would be the sort who would be more inclined to introspection in the first place. Stachniewski anticipates this objection and claims he will build a case to the contrary, so I will have to keep reading. This book is very negative about Reformed theology and describes the typical puritan pastoral approach as ‘morally disgusting’. Anyone else read it? I imagine Chris Ross has. Care to comment?

In the meantime, here is a darkly comic moment as Henry Jessey recalls a meeting between two young women:

‘Mris Sarah saw one walk about and about in a sad habit, and went to her, and asked how shee did, shee answered; In as sad a condition as ever was any. Mris Sarah, None is in a Condition like to mine. So they sate together; and after that, they went together, and spake further of their sad conditions: each counting their own state the worse’.

I call this a case of ‘My cat’s twice as black’. Stachniewski describes it as an ‘edifying contest in ultimate one-downmanship’.

Puritan Pith

I found the following line in a MS notebook of Daniel Cawdrey of Westminster Assembly fame:

Hee that dyes before hee dyes, shall not dye when hee dyes.

I liked it so thought I would blog it. For various reasons, I suspect it is actually cannibalised from William Perkins (probably Cases of Conscience) but have not checked.

Popish Puritans?

I have long been aware that the word ‘Puritan’ can be used equivocally, but the following usage was a new one for me. It comes from the sermon preached by Joseph Hall, Dean of Worcester and later Bishop of Exeter, at the Synod of Dort, November, 1618:

Fit companions for such a one [the Pharisee] are (if they choose) those Popish Thrasos, most sanctified men, who boast that they keep the law to the greatest exactness, and can afterwards bestow something upon God beyond what is required of them. Truly these are the real Puritans of these days; a term which they use as a reproach to others.

Thrasos being the Greek spirit of rashness and insolence. This is obviously directed at the doctrine of works of supererogation. I don’t know if there was a particular target for this remark. The context suggests not. So, popish puritans. There you are!

Poetry and Polemic

I suspect that it’s a rather bad reflection on me that I occasionally get a laugh from reading this type of thing. Polemic. Sixteenth and seventeeth-century theologians were good at it. It’s something of a lost art, and some might say perhaps that’s just as well. It could all get a bit too personal. It’s not just that they attacked their opponent, but that they used some of their best metaphorical writing to do so. A recent favourite line comes from Hugh Broughton as he lays into Thomas Bilson on the descensus ad inferos.  

It is great pitie that D. Bilson consulted not with others before such wordes fled through the hedge of his teeth. Higher blasphemies never were uttered.

Hugh Broughton, Declaration of generall corruption of religion, Scripture and all learning; wrought by D. Bilson While he breedeth a new opinion, that our Lord went from Paradiseto [sic] Gehenna, to triumph over the devills. To the most reverend Father in God Iohn Wm. Doct. in Divinitie, and Metropolitan of England (1603). 

Anyone care to post lines that have tickled them?

Did the Puritans dis the Cross?

I have just finished reading The Rise of Puritanism by William Haller. The book shows its age (publ. 1938 ) and the weaknesses of Haller’s method and controlling paradigm have been exposed by more recent studies. Despite these weaknesses I did find some interesting titbits and found my thinking stimulated.

One thing that didn’t ring true is an idea which is found in a few passages. Haller writes:

The spiritual attitude which the preachers endeavored to inculcate was one of active struggle on the part of the individual against his own weakness. The supreme image which, for that purpose, they sought to impress upon the minds of the people was that of the soldier enlisted under the banners of Christ. They could not and did not seek to eliminate all vestige of the doctrine of the atonement, but they made the atonement signify the appointment of the elect soul to join with Christ in the war against the eternal enemy…The Puritan saga did not cherish the memory of Christ in the manger or on the cross, that is, of the lamb of God sacrificed in vicarious atonement for the sins of man. The mystic birth was the birth of the new man in men. The mystic passion was the crucifixion of the new man by the old, and the true propitiation was the sacrifice of the old to the new.

Strong words. Surely he can’t be justifying this from the Puritan rejection of the liturgical calendar in their focus on the Lord’s Day. There is certainly a move towards interiorising biblical narrative in later Puritanism, especially as cognitive dissonance kicked in when hopes were dashed (see, for example, Crawford Gribben’s The Puritan Millenium) but at this point Haller is speaking of the pre-revolutionary spiritual brotherhood. I think he rightly notices a tendency in Puritan preaching to major on the ordo salutis rather than the historia salutis (though I suspect that would be true of most evangelical preaching), but the ordo relies on the historia. From reading Ussher, I can sense his wonder as he lingers and rhapsodises on the mysteries of the incarnation and the atonement. And yet Haller describes these as ‘those episodes of the Biblical story which the Puritans found least congenial and expressive’. 

Bonkers? Let’s open this one up for discussion. Did the Puritans dis the cross?

Burn Out

Sometimes I feel tired. Like right now. Easy to whinge. But then I look at some of the Puritans and their committment to do the work entrusted to them, and I’m humbled. I was struck recently by some words of John Preston (1587-1628):

Spend your fat and sweetnesse for God and man; weare out, not rust out; flame out, not smoke out; burne out, bee not blowne out. (Foure Treatises, 1632)

Master of Emmanuel College, he was also Trinity Lecturer, preacher at Lincoln’s Inn (not a pub!), and a court preacher. Rushing constantly between Cambridge and London, he contended for the Reformed faith against the rise of the Laudian party, and died aged 40.

Here there was no talk of work-life balance.