1. Bayly, Lewis, The Practice of Piety: Directing a Christian How to Walk, That He May Please God (London, 1615).Google Scholar

2. Miller, Perry, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (New York, 1939), pp. 3–63.Google Scholar

3. Woodhouse, A. S. P., Puritanism and Liberty (Toronto, 1938), pp. 36–37, 43–44, 81–82, 233–247, 390–396.Google Scholar

4. Haller, William, The Rise of Puritanism (New York, 1938), pp. 128–172.Google Scholar

5. Ball, Bryan W., A Great Expectation: Eschatological Thought in English Puritanism to 1660 (Leiden, 1975);Google ScholarToon, Peter, ed. Puritans, the Millennium: Puritan Eschatology, 1600–1660 (London, 1970);Google ScholarLamont, William M., Godly Rule: Politics and Religion, 1600–1660 (New York, 1969);CrossRefGoogle ScholarChristianson, Paul, Reformers and Babylon: English Apocalyptic Visions (Toronto, 1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar An exception to this generalization is Gilpin, W. Clark, The Millenarian Piety of Roger Williams (Chicago, 1979).Google Scholar

6. The term Puritan piety has been used widely for many years, but few scholars took the trouble to analyze its nature, substance, structure, or particularity. The best study to date has been done by Hambrick-Stowe, Charles E., The Practice of Piety: Puritan Devotional Literature in Seventeenth-Century New England (Chapel Hill, 1982)Google Scholar, but he deals only with the mainstream of New England piety represented by the leading and respected clergy and laity. Greven, Philip, The Protestant Temperament: Patterns of Child Rearing, Religious Experience and the Self in Early America (New York, 1977)Google Scholar, provides a number of insights into New England spirituality and piety, as does Hall, David, The Faithful Shepherd: A History of the New England Ministry in the Seventeenth Century (Chapel Hill, 1972).Google Scholar The introduction of Michael McGiffert's editing of Shepard is a splendid analysis, God apos;s Plot: The Paradoxes of Puritan Piety, Being the Autobiography and Journal of Thomas Shepard (Amherst, Mass., 1972), pp. 3–33.Google Scholar Both the quantity and the quality of studies on New England Puritan piety are superior to those of English Puritan piety. One of the first students to focus on the English problem was Wakefield, Gordon, Puritan Devotion: Its Place in the Development of Christian Piety (London, 1957)Google Scholar, written from a neoorthodox theological perspective which ignores or denies mysticism within Puritan spirituality. Still the best analysis to date is Watkins, Owen C., The Puritan Experience (New York, 1972).Google Scholar Also of interest is Morgan, Irvonwy, Puritan Spirituality: Illustrated from the Life and Times of the Reverend Dr. John Preston (London, 1973).Google Scholar In his The Rise of Evangelical Pietism (Leiden, 1971), pp. 24–102Google Scholar, F. Ernest Stoeffler attempted to subsume English Puritanism under the term pietism by developing an indefensible distinction between so-called polemical English Puritans and pietistic Puritans.

7. Even Perry Miller can be accused, in part, of that error. His effort to account for the rise of covenant theology is grounded on the view that it was an answer to the strict double election belief that cut the moral nerve for the disciplined life. Miller, , “The Marrow of Puritan Divinity,” Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts 32 (1943): 247–300.Google Scholar Beginning with Neal's, DanielThe History of the Puritans, 2 vols. (New York, 1858)Google Scholar, double predestination has been identified as the essence of English Puritanism. It was Max Weber who combined that insight with the assertion that the English Puritans upheld the strenuous life to prove to themselves that they were of the elect. Weber, , The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London, 1948).Google Scholar Ernst Troeltsch wove this into the center of his analysis of the Puritan ethic; Troeltsch, , The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, 2 vols. (New York, 1960), 2: 656–690.Google Scholar

8. Compare Wallace, Dewey D. Jr, Puritans and Predestination: Grace in English Protestant Theology, 1525–1695 (Chapel Hill, 1982).Google ScholarKendall, R. T., in Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649 (New York, 1979)Google Scholar, argues that Puritans along with others were double predestinarians, but they developed a special emphasis—experimental predestination.

9. Nuttal, Geoffrey, The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience (Oxford, 1946).Google Scholar This represents the best effort to date to analyze Puritanism as a spectrum of responses from right to left with considerable shading of differences as one moves through the spectrum; hence, one is able to note the continuities within Puritanism from Presbyterians to Quakers yet also note the basic differences at several essential points. Above all, it enables one to understand Puritanism in terms other than polity alone.

10. G. H., and George, K., The Protestant Mind of the English Reformation (Princeton, 1961).Google Scholar

11. Hall, Basil, “Puritanism: The Problem of Definition,” Studies in Church History 2 (1965): 283–296;CrossRefGoogle ScholarCollinson, Patrick, “A Comment: Concerning the Name Puritan,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 23 (1980): 486–490.Google ScholarHill, Christopher, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (London, 1964)Google Scholar, chap. one; Seaver, Paul, The Puritan Lectureships: The Politics of Religious Dissent, 1560–1662 (Stanford, 1970).Google Scholar Any effort to give an exact, precise, clear, and unambiguous definition to Puritanism is doomed to failure; nevertheless, the designation will continue to be employed by historians in an effort to understand and write about a movement and individuals within it during sixteenth and seventeenth-century English history.

12. Woodhouse, A.S.P., Puritanism and Liberty, pp. 36–60;Google ScholarMcGee, J. Sears, The Godly Man in Stuart England (New Haven, 1976).Google Scholar

13. The classic study of early Puritan efforts along these lines remains Collinson's, PatrickThe Elizabethan Puritan Movement (Berkeley, 1967);Google Scholar Marshall M. Knappen's older study ought not to be overlooked, Tudor Puritanism (Chicago, 1939);Google Scholar a major contribution which advances our understanding of the nature of Puritanism and its presence within the Church of England is the excellent study by Lake, Peter, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (Cambridge, 1984).Google Scholar

14. Hügel, Friedrich von, The Mystical Element of Religion as Studied in St. Catherine of Genoa and Her Friends, 2 vols. (London, 1927), 1: 50–82.Google Scholar

15. Tillich, Paul J., Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (Chicago, 1963), 3: 15–30.Google Scholar

16. Grosart, A.G., ed., The Complete Works of Richard Sibbes, D. D., Master of Catherine Hall, Cambridge, 7 vols. (Edinburgh, 1862–1864), 1: 24, 65, 69, 79–85; 2: 11–13, 24, 58, 87, 125, 200, 227, 223, 246, 451, 467; 4: 181, 191, 272,; 5: 182, 278, 315, 486; 6: 55, 98, 124, 387–399, 401–412, 536–560; 7: 67.Google Scholar

17. Literalism does not do justice to this dimension of Puritan piety as it is too narrow and restrictive and implies a total absence of the rationalistic dimension. Nomists reasoned carefully from the texts and did not simply apply them willy-nilly to a situation or in an argument. A simple literalism is not what lies behind the nomistic dimension but rather an entire cosmology that is clearly grounded in nomos—the eternal law, the law of nature, the moral law—all of which demand and inculcate the highest and most faithful human response, obedience. What is lacking or repressed in nomism is an emphasis on the dynamic presence and operation of the Spirit which is always subsumed under nomos.

18. “Piety is not dialectic, and what men believe in their hearts does not need to be logical. Yet the strong emphasis which Puritanism placed upon the absolute sovereignty of God made it necessary for theologians to keep an eye on consistency.” Miller, , The New England Mind, p. 17.Google Scholar Also, Miller, quoted from Richard Bernard's The Faithful Shepherd (London, 1621), pp. 49–50Google Scholar, that a “sermon without logic … ‘is but an ignorant discourse,’ and logic therefore must be the ‘sterne to guide the course of our speech, that the sudden and stormie blasts of violent affections overwhelme it not’” (p. 114).

19. Bonar, A. A., ed. Letters of the Rev. Samuel Rutherford (New York, 1875), pp. 35, 45, 56–59, 63–64, 244–246, 395.Google ScholarRutherford's, nomism is the bedrock on which he builds his Lex Rex (London, 1644).Google Scholar For a penetrating analysis of four Puritans which takes into account their four different emphases in piety, see Burgess, John, “The Problem of Scripture and Political Affairs as Reflected in the Puritan Revolution: Samuel Rutherford, Thomas Goodwin, John Goodwin, and Gerrard Winstanley” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1986).Google Scholar

20. Peel, A. and Carlson, Leland H., eds., Cartwrightiana (London, 1951), pp. 33, 36–37, 127–130, 144–145.Google Scholar Also see Cartwright's Second Admonition.

21. Greenwood, John, “Reply to George Gifford,” The Writings of John Greenwood, 1587– 1590, ed. Carlson, Leland H. (London, 1962), pp. 17–18;Google Scholar “The Answers of John Greenwood at London …, ” ibid, pp. 23–24. “A Few Observations of Mr. Gifford's Last Cavills …, ” in The Writings of John Greenwood and Henry Barrow, 1591–1593, ed. Leland H. Carlson (London, 1970), pp. 51–54, 76–84;Google Scholar Henry Barrow, “A Few Observations to the Readers …, ” ibid, pp. 104–113, “Barrow's Final Answer to Gifford,” p. 134. Barrow, Henry, “A Brief Discovery of the False Church,” The Writings of Henry Barrow, 1587–1590, ed. Carlson, Leland H. (London, 1962), pp. 269–274, 355–366.Google Scholar

22. Prynne, William, Anti-Arminianisme or the Church of England's Old Antithesis to New Arminianisme (London, 1630), p. 124–125.Google Scholar The entire argument of Prynne rests on a nomistic understanding of scripture and of the nature of salvation as literal obedience to God's revealed law.

23. Rogers, J., Sagir, , Doomes-day drawing nigh … (London, 1653)Google Scholar, “set upon their Generation-worke then in these dayes, which is, to model and conforme the civil affairs for Christ's coming … move off the fourth Monarchy, and move on to the fifth … Constitute none but honest faithfull men, such as follow the Lambe, into places of trust, or officers of this Nation, seeing none but the Saints of Christ shall be his Officers”; pp. 136–137. The absolute literal application of the biblical prophecies was advanced without deviation by the Fifth Monarchists. Compare Capp, B. S., The Fifth Monarchy Men (Totowa, N.J., 1972).Google Scholar

24. Nutall, , Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, pp. 23–33.Google Scholar

25. It is unnecessary to document this because a quick reading of the major Puritan divines such as Richard Greenham, John Preston, Richard Sibbes, or Thomas Goodwin immediately demonstrates the point. Most major divines wrote a commentary on Canticles. Curiously, Max Weber was completely wrong on this point when he followed the error of Sanford in Studies and Reflections of the Great Rebellion: “the influence of the God fearing but perfectly unemotional wisdom of the Hebrews, which is expressed in the books most read by the Puritans, the Proverbs and the Psalms, can be felt in this whole attitude toward life. In particular, its rational suppression of the mystical, in fact, the whole emotional side of religion.” Weber went on to argue that the Songs of Songs “was for the most part simply ignored by the Puritans. Its Oriental erotism has influenced the development of certain types of religion, such as that of St. Bernard.” But certainly not the Puritans! eber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Parsons, T. (London, 1948), pp. 123, 238, n. 97.Google Scholar

26. Trinterud, Leonard J., “The Origins of Puritanism,” Church History 20 (1951): 37–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27. All of these exemplify the evangelical dimension of Puritan piety with a heavy admixture of nomism.

28. Brauer, Jerald C., “Francis Rous, Puritan Mystic, 1579–1659: An Introduction to the Study of the Mystical Element in Puritanism” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1948), pp. 33–44.Google Scholar

29. Sibbes, , The Complete Works, 2: 125–126.Google Scholar

30. Goodwin, John, The Divine Authority of Scripture Asserted (London, 1648);Google Scholar compare “To The Reader,” pp. 99–101. Biddle, John, XII Arguments Drawn out of the Scripture (London, 1647), pp. 1–17.Google Scholar The entire refutation of the Trinity is based on syllogistic argument from scripture. Zimdars, Dale E., “John Goodwin and the Development of Rationalism in Seventeenth Century England” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1967).Google Scholar

31. On Milton's rationalism, see Barker, Arthur E., Milton and the Puritan Dilemma (Toronto, 1942), chaps. 4, 6, pp. 47–59;Google ScholarLieb, Michael, Poetics of the Holy: A Reading of Paradise Lost (Chapel Hill, 1981), pp. 95.Google Scholar An early effort to deal with Milton's Christian Doctrine is Kelley, Maurice, The Great Argument: A Study of Milton's “De doctrina Christiana” as Gloss upon “Paradise Lost” (Princeton, 1941).Google Scholar Kelley's view of Milton's two works was totally repudiated by C. A. Patrides, but not Milton's use of reason. Patrides viewed Christian Doctrine as “thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season” and as a “by-product of literalistic puritanism,” though he was prepared to admit that it might be more than that. Patrides, C. A. “Paradise Lost and the Language of Theology,” Bright Essence: Studies in Milton's Theology, ed. Hunter, W. B., Patrides, C.A., and Adamson, John (Salt Lake City, 1971).Google Scholar

32. “Reason hath no precedent, for Reason is the fountain of all just precedents…. Therefore when that is, there is sufficient and justifiable precedent.” Overton goes on to state, “God is not a God of irrationality and madmen, or tyranny: therefore all his communications are reasonable and just, and which is so, is of God.” Overton, Richard, “An appeal from the Degenerate Representative Body the Commons…,” Leveller Manifestos of the Puritan Revolution, ed. Wolfe, Don M. (New York, 1944), pp. 158–159.Google Scholar

33. The clearest formulation of this view is in Hill, Christopher, “Irreligion in the ‘Puritan’ Revolution,” Radical Religion in the English Revolution, ed. McGregor, J. F. and Reay, B. (Oxford, 1984), pp. 198–211.Google Scholar

34. One of the first scholars to note this was Hudson, Winthrop, “Mystical Religion in the Puritan Commonwealth,” Journal of Religion 28 (1948): 51–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35. Wakefield, , Puritan Devotion, pp. 33–35, 101–108.Google Scholar

36. Troeltsch, , The Social Teachings, 2: 729–805, esp. 773–784.Google Scholar

37. J. F. McGregor and B. Reay, eds., Radical Religion in the English Revolution, passim.

38. Rous, Francis, Testis Veretates: The Doctrine of King James our Late Soveraigne … Plainly showed to bee One in the points of Predestination, Free Will … (London, 1626).Google Scholar

39. Brauer, , “Francis Rous, Puritan Mystic, 1579–1659,” pp. 10–28.Google Scholar

40. Butler, Dom Cuthbert, Western Mysticism (New York, 1923), pp. 2–17, 179–192.Google Scholar

41. Brauer, , “Francis Rous, Puritan Mystic, 1579–1659,” pp. 131–147.Google Scholar

42. Rous, Francis, The Heavenly Academie… (London, 1638), p. 114.Google Scholar

43. Ibid., pp. 108–109.

44. Rous, Francis, Treatises and Meditation (London, 1657), pp. 87–90, 480, 486, 489–490, 539–549, 552, 577–578.Google ScholarRous, Francis, The Mysticall Marriage, Or Experimentall Discoveries of the heavenly Mariage betweene a Soul and her Saviour (London, 1635), pp. 318–347.Google Scholar

45. Ibid., A Reason of this Worke.

46. Ibid., pp. 322–323.

47. Ibid., pp. 330–332.

48. Rous, , Treatise, p. 179.Google Scholar

49. Rous, , Mystical Marriage, pp. 321, 97–169, 335–342.Google Scholar

50. Though he does not employ the term Spirit Mysticism or designate all the radicals as religious, Christopher Hill first saw the significance of these Puritans in The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas during the English Revolution (New York, 1972)Google Scholar and continued his analysis in The Experience of Defeat (New York, 1984).Google Scholar A number of scholars have built on Hill's interest in the radicals, and a number of works have appeared in the past decade.

51. Many years ago, Rufus Jones first called attention to these Puritan types in his Mysticism and Democracy in the English Commonwealth (Cambridge, Mass., 1932)Google Scholar, and considerable material was made available by Johnson, George A. in “From Seeker to Finder: A Study in Seventeenth Century English Spiritualism Before the Quakers” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1948).Google Scholar

52. In spite of a vast literature on George Fox and the Quakers, there is yet no study that concentrates on the nature of Fox's piety. A number of scholars have referred to him as a mystic, but nobody seems concerned to explicate exactly what that means.

53. SirVane, Harry Jr, An Epistle General … (London, 1662), pp. 21, 34–35.Google Scholar

54. “Now through these two things, the Word and Faith, the Spirit communicates to us a new birth, it begets us unto God, and so we partaking of the nature of God, partake also of the Spirit of God. They that are born of Men, have nothing in them but the Spirit of Men, but they that are both of God, have the Spirit of God”; Dell, William, Christ's Spirit, A Christian's Strength… (London, 1651), p. 45.Google Scholar “Others have only the nature of men in them, or which is worse, the nature of the Devil, but the faithful, have in them the nature of God, communicated to them through a New Birth”; Dell, William, “The Building, Beauty, Teaching …,” in Several Sermons and Discourses of William Dell (London, 1651), p. 89.Google Scholar Similar statements can be found in John Saltmarsh, William Erbury, Thomas Collier, Sir Harry Vane, Jr., and other Spirit mystics.

55. For a detailed analysis, see Johnson, , From Seeker to Finder, pp. 75–91.Google Scholar

56. King, Rachel, George Fox and the Light Within, 1650–1660 (Philadelphia, 1940).Google Scholar

57. Wach, Joachim, “Casper Schwenckfeld, A Pupil and Teacher in the School of Christ,” Journal of Religion 26 (1946): 1–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For an analysis of Stilistand, see Jones, Rufus, Spiritual Reformers in the 16th and 17th Centuries (London, 1914), pp. 67, 86, 273.Google Scholar