Puritans

Here are some links about the Puritans. Enjoy.

http://www.gty.org/~phil/puritans.htm


http://www.puritansermons.com/aboutprt.htm

 

Just to second what the good Squire wrote (apart from some very pedantic corrections of the ordinals of the kings - it was Henry VII I and James VI and I

....and to add my $0.02 - the vast majority of Puritans were not Separatists and had no desire to be so, although they gradually had that ecclesiology forced upon them. They primarily wanted to recreate Calvin's Geneva in England and more latterly in Massachusetts.

Yours in Christ


Matt

 

The Puritans/Congregationalists also hanged four Quakers on Boston Common.

 

The Puritans believed Covenant Theology, and the extreme version of that is occasionally seen today through the teachings of the late Greg Bahnson--theonomy! The Orthodox Presbyterian Church (Bahnson was ordained in), and the Presb. Church of America, as well as the Reformed Presbyterian denominations all have a strong strain of theonomists in their group.
D. James Kennedy (PCA) is a theonomist, and in practice, so is Jerry Falwell, and all of those who practice a "take America back for God" theology, which means more political activism than it does prayer and preaching.
This error is seen also in an even more preverted form in Pat Robertson's Regent University under the name of "Kingdom Now", I believe.
Theonomy says that our nation should be ruled by the Scriptures, just as Israel was. Thus you could burn a witch at the stake (Salem Witch Trials), or put to death a "heretic" (anyone who didn't subscribe to the Westminster Standard of Faith).
Baptist Roger Williams was driven out of the community in dead winter, because he wasn't "orthodox" enough for the Puritans. They expected him to die in the wilderness, but God in His providence sent friendly Indians to care for him. Williams was a Bible-believing, godly man, respected even by his enemies, but the "Law" required the Puritans to have no tolerance whatsoever in any small deviations, even.
Despite the ugly side of Puritanism, there have been some great & godly men and women that are a real inheritance to believers today: Anne Bradstreet, Jonathan Edwards, John Owens and Matthew Henry, for a few examples.

 

RE the New Jerusalem=theonomy/ theocracy point, the Puritans should not be confused with Separatists such as Anabaptists, at least not at the English level(? as to whether the American Puritans were Separatists); the Puritans wanted to purify (hence the name ) the Church of England and reform it along the lines of Calvin's Geneva, not abolish it or even leave it (although many were forced to, they initially believed this would be temporary and fully intended to return once the CofE had become fully Reformed) - in this way, they were no different from Calvin in believing in the concept of 'Christendom' based on coercion if necessary and should therefore be firmly distinguished from true Separatists such as Anabaptists and Baptists who believed not just that the CofE was incapable of reform but more significantly that the very concept of 'Christendom' was flawed and that in contradistinction the church should be the voluntarily 'gathered' community of true believers. However, as time went on, because of persecution from the CofE, many Puritans had Separatism thrust upon them in practice at an ecclesiological level, and the distinctions became more blurred; although it is clear that the Pilgrims still believed in coercion.

Yours in Christ

Matt

Yours in Christ

Matt

 

My explanation: too OT and not enough NT

Yours in Christ

Matt

 

It must be said there is a BIG differance between a puritian and a pilgrim. The pilgrim would basicly be an ANABAPTIST and, before they arrived in Holland (from England)would have been called Sepratist ( They had been REbaptised by the Waterland mennonite church and in a some cases before this had REbaptised themselves,)no doubt they were practising ANABAPTIST. Some of this info can be documented at http://members.aol.com/calebj/bradford_journal4.html .And of course the "puritains" calvinist ,episcopalians that couldn't understand beleivers baptism nor could they keep there hands off of those that disagreed ( this attitude was handed down to them by there father calvin (poor MICHAEL SERVETUS ).

 

<<Tangent>> Servetus was an anti-Trinitarian heretic...but he didn't deserve to be burnt...<<tangent off>>

The early Puritans definitely did support the idea of a state church which encompassed all members of society - the concept of 'Christendom' that was so alien to our Baptist forbears - and had no wish to form any kind of 'gathered church' of true believers as per strict Separatism (which thier Calivinist soteriology would have made impossible anyway since they would have stated that it was not possible to know who was saved and thereby a true believer). What they did want to do was to radically change that state church - in this case the Church of England - to align not so much with their soteriology (as the Church of England up until the more Arminian Laudian era of the 1620s was thoroughly Calvinist too) but to get rid of 'Popish' ceremonies (eg the 'vestiarian' disputes of the 1560s) and, on the more radical wing, to change the ecclesiology from episcopal to presbyterian government. 'Puritan', then, in its original English context, refers to those wholly within the Church of England.

The origins of the Separatists - Congregationalists, Baptists, Independents - are twofold. First, you have those Puritans who ultimately get fed up with waiting for the CofE to conform to their image, and who leave; they are helped in a large measure by period 'encouragement' (ie: persecution) by the state. They were essentially forced to become sectarians by there being no room for them in the CofE; their sectarian existence over time led to many adopting a more Separatist ecclesiology. Secondly, you have those who utterly rejected the concept of a state church and went staright for the Anabaptist model of the 'gathered church'. It is this bunch (who were not Puritans)whom we should really count as our 'spiritual ancestors', although many in the first group 'slipped sideways' into the second by the process described above.

On the proto-American scene, the Pilgrim Fathers should not in my view be counted within the second group and possibly not even within the first; it is true that they did separate from the CofE, but that separation was more geographical than ecclesiological. They did not abandon the idea of a state church at all; they in fact set up their own version in Plymouth and Massachusetts, and part of the early history of those two colonies is to do with the idea of coercion and conformity to the Pilgrims' ecclesiology. They were Puritans, but not Separatists.

Yours in Christ

Matt