The Influence of Puritanism

For more than 100 years after the Pilgrim landing in 1620, life and writing in New England were dominated by the religious attitude known as Puritanism. To understand colonial life and literature one must understand Puritanism, one of the major influences in American life.
The early settlers in New England were Protestants. England had become a Protestant country when Henry VIII broke away from the Roman Catholic church. Some Englishmen, however, felt that the break was not complete. They wanted to "purify" the church of Catholic features; they were therefore known as Puritans. Another group, the Separatists, wanted to separate, or break away entirely, from the Church of England. These were the Pilgrims. Both groups came to the New World in order to worship God in their own way and to escape persecution by English authorities. They felt they had a divine mission to fulfill. It was the will of God, they believed, that they establish a religious society in the wilderness. This belief must have helped them endure the hard life they faced as colonists.
In the Puritan view, God was supreme. The Puritans held that He revealed His will through the Bible, which they believed literally. Clergymen interpreted the Bible in sermons, but each man and woman was obliged to study it for himself too. The people had to be educated in order to read the Bible, to discuss it, and to write about it. Harvard College was founded in 1636 partly to meet this demand for an educated populace. Other colleges and public schools followed. Indeed, the intellectual quality of New England life, which later influenced other parts of the country, is traceable to the Puritans' need for a trained and literate population.

Religious Quality of Puritan Writing

New Englanders have always been industrious writers. Most of what they wrote in colonial times was prompted by their religious feeling. Many sermons were published and widely read. Cotton Mather (1663-1728), the leading clergyman in Boston in the early 1700s, wrote more than 400 separate works. The most ambitious was his 'Magnalia Christi Americana' (Christ's Great Achievements in America), published in 1702.
Clergymen encouraged some people to keep personal diaries or journals. The most readable of these today is the diary of Samuel Sewall (1652-1730). The 'Diary of Samuel Sewall 1674-1729' (published 1878-82) is lively and often amusing, as when the author wrote of his courtship of Madame Winthrop: "Asked her to acquit me of rudeness if I drew off her glove. Enquiring the reason, I told her 'twas great odds between handling a dead goat and a living lady."
Sewall was a courageous man. A judge during the witchcraft trials in 1692, he concurred in the decision to hang 19 persons condemned as witches. After the hysteria had died down, however, he alone among the judges stood up in meeting and publicly asked "to take the blame and shame" for his part in the executions. He was also an early foe of slavery. His 'Selling of Joseph' (1700) was perhaps the earliest antislavery pamphlet in America.
The Puritans wrote little imaginative literature. The theater was not welcomed by them any more than it was by the Puritans who closed the London theaters in 1642. Fiction writing was in its infancy in England, and it probably did not occur to colonists in the New World to write stories. Their only imaginative literature was poetry; and that, like everything else in Puritan life, was prompted by religion.
The first book in English to be published in the New World was the 'Bay Psalm Book' (1640). The new translations of the Biblical psalms were plain; the meter and rhyme were regular, as in Psalm xxiii, which begins as follows:
The Lord to me a shepherd is, want therefore shall not I. He in the folds of tender-grass doth cause me down to lie.
This familiar rhythm was used by Michael Wigglesworth (1631-1705) in 'The Day of Doom' (1662), a 224-stanza account in verse of the Last Judgment. Based on the Puritan religious belief in Calvinism, the poem presents in dramatic terms the divine judgment of those condemned to eternal torment in hell and also of those who, by God's grace, are elected to gain eternal salvation in the world to come. Many Puritans, both the young and the old, committed 'The Day of Doom' to memory.
More interesting, because it is better poetry, are the religious verses of Edward Taylor (1642-1729). These were first published in 1939. Taylor was a devout clergyman, but his poems are not harsh and gloomy. Instead, they express his feeling of joy and delight in the Christian life. For instance, in one poem he pictured the church members as passengers in a coach, Christ's coach, singing as they rattle along to salvation in the next world:
For in Christ's coach they sweetly sing, As they to Glory ride therein.
Taylor's verse is full of such vivid and exciting metaphors. His is the most interesting American poetry of colonial times.

Jonathan Edwards--The Last Puritan

Puritanism could not maintain its authority forever. As the seaboard settlements grew and people became prosperous, as more political power was given to the people, and as a more scientific attitude challenged the old religious way of thinking, men and women in New England came to be more worldly and to take their religion for granted. It was to combat this worldliness that Jonathan Edwards (1703-58), the last and the greatest Puritan, taught and preached and wrote. Puritanism was fated to die out, but not before Edwards made heroic efforts to keep it alive.
Edwards believed that the people were too matter-of-fact about religion. To be religious, one must feel deeply, he thought. He therefore joined with others in preaching emotional sermons. These produced a wave of religious revivals. After the enthusiasm had passed, however, Edwards was dismissed from his congregation and became a missionary to the Indians. He was a brilliant theologian and philosopher, and most of his writings are difficult to read. His 'Personal Narrative', however, which tells the story of his youthful religious experiences, is an honest and moving revelation. It was written in about 1740.
The nation owes a great debt to Puritanism. It is true that in several ways Puritan life was harsh and unlovely, as one learns from reading 'The Scarlet Letter', Nathaniel Hawthorne's great novel. Nevertheless one must admire the Puritans for their zeal, their courage, and their strong moral nature. They recognized that man is often guilty of evil actions. The 20th century has seen enough cruelty and depravity for one to believe that the Puritan view of human beings was valid in some respects.