Puritan

in English history, the adherent of certain religious and political ideas. The Puritans came into prominence soon after the English Reformation. In religious matters they correspond to the followers of Calvin in Switzerland and John Knox in Scotland. Henry VIII shaped the English Reformation with a view to political and financial advantage. Himself in place of pope, he cared personally for no doctrinal change. Forty thousand country gentlemen, enriched by the lands and spoils of the Catholic monasteries, were opposed, it is true, to the restoration of the Catholic church; but they cared little for a change of doctrine. Even the abandonment of the doctrine of purgatory was forced on the political element by the reforming clergy. A considerable body of the English people was dissatisfied with the degree of change. They desired to break not only with papacy, but to "purify" the Church of England by casting off prelacy in the form of bishop, vestment, and book of prayer. This radical party became known in history as the Puritans.

Theologically, it contained three elements, still recognizable. The first would purify the Church of England from prelatic forms and observances. It is represented by the Low Church wing of the Episcopal church. The Puritans who settled New England were chiefly of this class. They hoped to preserve a connection with the Church of England, but distance and the force of events led them into Congregationalism. The second element would establish a national church distinct from government control. The king as church member would rank with the lowliest parishioner. This element is represented by Presbyterianism. The third element, known as Independents and Separatists, would establish individual churches, affiliated, but not nationalized. This element is still represented by Congregationalism. The Pilgrim Fathers of Plymouth Rock were of the last type.

In politics the Puritans were opposed utterly to the doctrine of the divine right of kings. They supported the idea of a constitutional monarchy or an aristocratic republic. The Puritans were opposed to the Cavaliers. From a habit of clipping the hair, then a new fashion, they were called Roundheads. The Puritan leaders were men of determination and power. England owes them a deep debt. They hedged the English home with safeguards. They beheaded Charles I and made Cromwell dictator. They made the House of Commons the real ruler of England. John Milton wrote with a Puritan pen. Bunyan was a Puritan tinker. Eliot, Pym, Hampden, Vane, and Cromwell were Puritans. Marston Moor and Naseby were Puritan victories. The Puritan fighters were men of stern stuff. In camp they knelt in prayer to the God of Battles. They buckled on their swords in the name of God and country. In the shock of battle they charged to the ringing accents of old Hebrew psalms. We cannot use space to better advantage than to quote a few sentences condensed from Macaulay's Milton:

We would speak first of the Puritans, the most remarkable body of men, perhaps, which the world has ever produced. The odious and ridiculous parts of their character lie on the surface. They were not men of letters; they were, as a body, unpopular; they could not defend themselves, and the public would not take them under its protection. They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, to the tender mercies of the satirists and dramatists. The ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their sour aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff posture, their long graces, their Hebrew names, the Scriptural phrases which they introduced on every occasion, their contempt of human learning, their detestation of polite amusements, were indeed fair game for the laughers.

Those who roused the people to resistance, who directed their measures through a long series of eventful years, who formed, out of the most unpromising materials, the finest army that Europe had ever seen, who trampled down king, church, and aristocracy, who, in the short intervals of domestic sedition and rebellion, made the name of England terrible to every nation on the face of the earth, were no vulgar fanatics. Most of their absurdities were mere external badges, like the signs of freemasonry, or the dresses of friars. We regret that these badges were not more attractive.

The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. If their names were not found in the registers of heralds, they were recorded in the Book of Life. If their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials, legions of ministering angels had charge over them. Their palaces were houses not made with hands, their diadems crowns of glory which should never fade away. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt: for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language, nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand.

Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men, the one all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion, the other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before his Maker; but he set his foot on the neck of his king.

See Cavalier; Cromwell; Revolution; Pilgrim; Stuart; Pym; Milton