Puritan History :: essays research papers

in the 17th century some Puritan groups disjointed from the Church of England. Among these were the Pilgrims, who in 1620 founded Plymouth Colony. Ten years later, under the auspices of the mom Bay Company, the first major Puritan migration to New England took place. The Puritans brought strong ghostlike impulses to bear in all colonies north of Virginia, but New England was their stronghold, and the Congregational churches established there were able to perpetuate their viewpoint about a Christian society for more than 200 years. Richard Mather and John Cotton provided clerical leadership in the dominant Puritan colony planted on Massachusetts Bay. Thomas Hooker was an example of those who sett direct new areas far west according to traditional Puritan standards. Even though he broke with the authorities of the Massachusetts colony over questions of religious freedom, Roger Williams was besides a true Puritan in his zeal for personal religion and doctrinal correctness. Most of these men held ideas in the mainstream of Calvinistic thought. In sum total to believing in the absolute sovereignty of God, the total depravity of man, and the bring about dependence of human beings on divine grace for salvation, they stressed the grandeur of personal religious experience. These Puritans insisted that they, as Gods elect, had the duty to direct national affairs according to Gods will as revealed in the Bible. This union of church and fix to form a holy commonwealth gave Puritanism direct and exclusive prevail over most colonial activity until commercial and political changes pressure them to relinquish it at the end of the 17th century. Because of its diffuse nature, when Puritanism began to decline in America is difficult to say. Some would hold that it lost its influence in New England by the early 18th century, but Jonathan Edwards and his able disciple Samuel Hopkins revived Puritan thought and kept it alive until 1800. Others would point to the inert decline in power of Congregationalism, but Presbyterians under the leadership of Jonathan Dickinson and Baptists led by the example of Isaac Backus (1724 - 1806) revitalized Puritan ideals in several denominational forms through the 18th century.