Puritans and Pietists
In seventeenth-century England and New England the Puritans sought a church and a life reformed by the word, and in 1662 some two thousand ministers left their pulpits for conscience' sake. In Germany Spener's Pia Desideria of 1675 awakened Bible reading, small groups and a living faith, and the Moravians of Herrnhut sent missionaries to distant lands.
The Puritans in England, and 1662
From the reign of Elizabeth I, those who wanted the Church of England reformed more thoroughly by the word were called Puritans by their opponents. During the civil war between king and Parliament, Parliament summoned the Westminster Assembly of divines in 1643, and the assembly produced the Westminster Confession of Faith and two catechisms, the Larger and the Shorter. Their confession and theology are taught in The Reformed confessions and the Theology course's Protestant orthodoxy and the Puritans. In the 1640s and 1650s, when the Puritans held power, they too removed many ministers who kept to The Book of Common Prayer.
The return of the king in 1660 turned everything round. The Act of Uniformity of 1662 required every minister, by St Bartholomew's Day, 24 August, to assent to everything in the Prayer Book and to be ordained by a bishop: the same feast day as the Paris massacre ninety years before. Historians count some two thousand ministers who, unable in conscience to comply, left their pulpits between 1660 and that day. This is the Great Ejection, and the laws that followed forbade even the meetings of those outside the Church of England.
Among the ejected was Richard Baxter, pastor of Kidderminster. In The Reformed Pastor (1656) he had urged pastors to watch over themselves first and to teach their people household by household, and he lived so in his own parish. John Bunyan, a tinker and preacher of Bedford, was arrested in November 1660 for preaching without a licence; refusing to promise that he would preach no more, he spent nearly twelve years in Bedford gaol, until 1672. The Pilgrim’s Progress, published in 1678, begins:
As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a Den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep: and, as I slept, I dreamed a dream.
The Pilgrim's Progress, 10
A short note in the margin of early editions glosses the den as the gaol. At Vanity Fair in the story the pilgrim Faithful pleads that laws and customs flat against the word of God are opposite to Christianity The Pilgrim's Progress, 234, and is burned at the stake. Many scholars read in that trial the courts that Dissenters of Bunyan's day had to face.
New England and Salem
After the Separatist Pilgrims who crossed on the Mayflower in 1620, a great many Puritans sailed to Massachusetts from 1630 to build a church and a commonwealth governed by the word. They gathered churches by the covenant of those who professed faith, set up schools in their towns, and in 1636 founded Harvard College. The minister John Eliot learned the language of the native Massachusett people and translated the Bible, which in 1663 became the first Bible printed in America.
But they drove out those who thought otherwise, and between 1659 and 1661 they hanged four Quakers in Boston. The darkest chapter came at Salem in 1692. Early that year some girls in Salem Village fell into fits and accused neighbours of witchcraft; the accusations spread to nearby towns until more than a hundred and fifty people were accused. A special court admitted testimony that the accused's spectres had appeared and tormented the girls, and from June to September nineteen people were hanged, one man was pressed to death under stones, and several died in prison. In October Increase Mather of Boston, with other ministers' endorsement, warned that such testimony alone could not condemn anyone Mather, Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits Personating Men, and that month the governor dissolved the court.
Repentance followed. In January 1697 the colony kept a day of fasting and repentance, and that day the judge Samuel Sewall stood in his Boston church while his confession of guilt was read aloud Sewall, Confession read at the Old South Meeting House. Twelve of the jurors confessed that they had been deluded and had judged wrongly, and Ann Putnam, one of the accusing girls, confessed her wrong before her church in 1706. In 1711 the colony reversed many of the sentences and paid compensation to the families.
German Pietism and Herrnhut
In Germany after the Thirty Years' War, Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705), a Lutheran pastor in Frankfurt, began around 1670 to gather believers in his home to read the Bible and pray. In 1675 he published Pia Desideria, proposing more Scripture among the people, the priesthood of all believers put into practice, love rather than controversy, and godly ministers. The priesthood of all believers rests on the word that calls the whole church "a royal priesthood" (1 Peter 2:9), and the faith he sought was a faith alive in practice, as James says that "faith by itself, if it does not result in action, is dead" (James 2:17). What the movement taught is the Theology course's Pietism and the Great Awakening.
August Hermann Francke (1663–1727), who carried on Spener's work, opened a school for poor children and an orphanage at Halle in the 1690s. In 1706 Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg, trained at Halle, went out as a missionary of the king of Denmark to Tranquebar in southern India, where he translated the New Testament into Tamil.
Count Zinzendorf (1700–1760), a pupil of Francke's school, in 1722 took in on his estate in Saxony brethren from Moravia fleeing persecution, heirs of the faith of Jan Hus. They named the place Herrnhut, which means the Lord's watch. Renewed at the Lord's Supper in 1727, the community in 1732 sent its first two missionaries to the enslaved people of the Danish West Indies, and the next year others to Greenland. The missionaries who went out from this small village were later scattered over several continents.
For the church today
Puritans and Pietists alike wanted Scripture not to stay in the pulpit but to enter homes, small groups and daily life.
Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.
Colossians 3:16
Wesley explains "Dwell" as "Not make a short stay, or an occasional visit, but take up its stated residence" Wesley. Paul reminded Timothy that the Scriptures he had known from infancy could make him wise for salvation (2 Timothy 3:15):
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for instruction, for conviction, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, fully equipped for every good work.
2 Timothy 3:16-17
This age shows the fruit of that word: catechisms and family worship, a pilgrim's story begun in prison, orphanages and missions to distant lands. It also shows that zeal for holiness can harden into suspicion and condemnation, and that those who suffered for conscience can, once in power, press on the consciences of others. As the judge and jurors of Salem did, the church must confess its wrongs when it sees them, not hide them. The next lesson, The Great Awakening and the Methodists, follows John Wesley, who met the Moravians, and the revivals on both sides of the Atlantic.
Practice
- Practice 1 of 7
What was the Great Ejection of 1662?
- Practice 2 of 7
Why did John Bunyan spend nearly twelve years in Bedford gaol?
- Practice 3 of 7
What did Richard Baxter urge pastors to do in The Reformed Pastor?
- Practice 4 of 7
Which describes the Salem trials of 1692?
- Practice 5 of 7
Which did Spener propose in Pia Desideria in 1675?
- Practice 6 of 7
Which describes Herrnhut?
- Practice 7 of 7
What did August Hermann Francke do at Halle?
Reading to the end marks it read; tap to switch it.
Related topics
Source
- Thomas Cranmer, The Book of Common Prayer 1549 — The Church of England's worship in English; revised in 1552, and long used in its 1662 form.
- Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor 1656 — Urges pastors to watch over themselves first and to teach their people household by household.
- John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress 1678 — An allegory begun in prison: the pilgrim Christian leaves the City of Destruction for the Celestial City. Read
- Increase Mather, Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits Personating Men 1693 — 1692–1693. Read to a meeting of ministers in October 1692 and printed the next year with their endorsement: since the devil can appear in the shape of an innocent person, spectral testimony alone cannot condemn, and it were better that ten suspected witches escape than that one innocent person be condemned.
- Samuel Sewall, Confession read at the Old South Meeting House 1697 — 14 January 1697. On the colony's fast day, while Judge Sewall stood in Boston's Old South Meeting House, his minister read this bill: he acknowledges the guilt he contracted at the Salem trials, desires to take the blame and shame of it, asks pardon of men and prays God to pardon that sin.
- Philipp Jakob Spener, Pia Desideria 1675 — Pietism's manifesto: more Scripture among the people, the priesthood of all believers in practice, love over controversy, godly ministers.
Lessons from the Bible, the church's creeds and the sources and witnesses of its history. They tell the church's story fairly, as each tradition remembers it, and do not hide the church's sins. Scripture quotations: BSB.