Godly Reformers of Church and State in New and Old England During the Seventeenth Century

Despite all the writing about Puritanism produced over the years, the subject still suffers from a certain elusive quality. The problem is partly one of distinguishing Puritanism from Protestantism more generally but also involves the challenge of relating the strictly religious to other dimensions, such as politics and economics. In despair, some historians have advocated abandoning the term "Puritan" altogether, while others have reacted strongly against what they see as an illegitimate secularizing tendency. On the whole, however, American scholars have kept their nerve rather better than their British counterparts, probably due to the different historiographical traditions of the two countries. Yet the British too have recently begun a reappraisal of the subject, which promises to yield significant dividends. In this context, A Reforming People by David D. Hall is especially to be welcomed, not least because of the comparative dimension provided by the author as regards developments in America and England. Hall is also unusual in being concerned with the civil as well as the religious aspects of New England Puritanism. In this regard, his book most obviously follows in the tradition of George Lee Haskins' classic Law and Authority in Early Massachusetts: A Study in Tradition and Design (1960). As Haskins put it, Puritanism, in addition to involving church reform, was "a way of life" with "social and political implications of great magnitude."¹ But while Haskins focused mainly on law reform in Massachusetts, Hall ranges much more widely in terms of subject matter and geography.

The chronological focus of A Reforming People is on the two decades between 1630 and 1650, running, that is to say, from the period of the great migration to the execution of Charles I in 1649. Frustrated in their ambitions at home, the English Puritans who went across the Atlantic, Hall argues, were in large measure able to translate their ideals into reality from the 1630s onward. This is a potentially very fruitful thesis and deserving of further elaboration. Granted that the so-called "Congregational Way" offended English Presbyterians, it was the failure to achieve much in the way of civil reform even under Oliver Cromwell that most obviously serves to differentiate old from New England at this time. A crucial insight here relates to the role played by the Bible in Puritan thinking, both as a source of inspiration and a court of appeal. Haskins had earlier grasped this point, although most subsequent commentators have tended to assume that it only really applied in the spheres of religion and, to some extent, family life. Biblical influence is most obvious in the law codes adopted by the various colonies, in the drafting of which clergy such as John Cotton often had a major part to play. Thus the preamble to the Massachusetts Code of 1648 states that "so soon as God had set up political government among his people Israel he gave them a body of laws for judgement both in civil and criminal causes." From these "brief and fundamental principles . . . clear deductions were to be drawn to all particular cases in future times."² The English legal profession generally might pay lip service to such views, but Puritans, including some lawyers, sought to act on them; they also claimed that the axioms of government were similarly laid down by God.

Hall divides his book into five chapters, along with an introduction and a conclusion, covering civil and religious government, ethics and law conceived as facets of an "equitable society," and a study in depth of Cambridge, Massachusetts, under the ministry of Thomas Shepard. The whole is also framed by a discussion of the various ways in which New England society has been portrayed—ranging from a theocracy to a democracy—by past historians and others. Both critics and admirers can, in fact, be shown to have worked from somewhat anachronistic assumptions. Hall himself seeks to strike a judicious balance; yet...