Puritan Rhetoric: The Issue of Emotion in Religion

Transition and Culmination: Unifioation of Man and the Pe1'Vasion of the Emotions

Transition and Culmination rathet' than hermetio units. Too, not all Puritans adhered to the commonly accepted views concerning the natUf'c of man, the morphology of conversion, 01' the p1'inciples of se1'monology, One nonconformist, for example, was John Cotton, who did not endorse the mOlphology of conversion or the concept of preparation itself. Another was Thomas HooIuritans to the faculty of the Understanding. In his A SU1'vey of the Summe of Church Discipline, Hooker anticipated the latcr revivalists by asserting that "the scope of" the minister's "office is to work upon the Will and the Affections. . . . Not that the pastor may not interpret the text, and lay open the meaning so far as he may make way for the truth to work more kindly, and prevail more effectually with the Affections, but that is not :his ... main work. . . . His labour is to lay open the lothsome nature of sin, and to let in the terror of the Lord upon the conscience." 43 Transition and Culmination: Unifioation of Man and the Pe1'Vasion of the Emotions As a consequent of their recurrent emphasis upon the conditional promise of the covenant of grace, most English Puritan ministers tended to preach an optimistic religion. At times, in their stressing the rationality of true religion and the necessity for an intellectual acceptance of Christian doctrine, they seemed almost to teach that man could reason himself to salvation. At times, in their accentuation of sin, the need for l'eformation, and the reforming influence of saving faith upon man's behavior, they very nearly seemed to teach that piety indicated justification and that man might "will" himself to grace.44 In comparison to the preaching of English Puritans like John Preston and Richard Sibbes, during the first generation of the New England experience, the generality of the ministers probably preached a somewhat less optimistic theology, with a somewhat greater emphasis upon the absolute values of the covenants . A reason for this difference in stress may be partly that many of the settlers believed themselves to be the spiritual seed of Abraham. God had selected them to establish the promised THE DEVELOPING EXIGENCE land and had bound them to Him in a church and a social covenant. As a chosen people they were predestined to a privileged status and, therefore, were possibly more receptive to the preachments of a totally sovereign God and of the terrors of the Law. It is perhaps indicative that in New England John Cotton appears to have emphaSized to a signi:ficantly greater extent the absolute aspects of the covenants than he had previously in Old England.45 . Generally speaking, during the first generation the New England ministers applied the sermon format soberly and intently to the faculties of their hearers. The basic tone of the sermon was that of reasoned argument. The style was "plaine'" and "painful." The thrust of the sermon appears to have been directed principally to church members and their childrenthe consequential element in the congregation and in societyrather than to the unconverted nonmembers who were compelled to attend services. Although exceptions existed, as in the exhortations of Thomas Hooker and Thomas Shepard, instead of serving a stTongly evangelistic function, the sermon baSically sought to guide the elect to the realization of their predestined saving faith and to reaffirm the rational convictions and strengthen the piety of those who already believed they possessed saving grace, or fervently hoped that they did.46 During the first years in the American wilderness, the Puritan system served effectively the needs of society. Virtually from the very start, however, emergent problems forced modifications in pulpit practice. Because of space limitations, these envolvements can be treated in only the most general sort of way. Perhaps the reader should be cautioned, therefore, that such compression tends to produce a historical time-lapse photographic effect, converting what was complex into the overly simple, what were general tendencies into sharply etched processes, and what were incrementally produced changes into escalated transformations.41 Early Changes. Never monolithic in character, the New England society almost immediately began to fragment, and the social covenant began its attenuated course to extinction.'s For Transition and Culmination the social covenant to work, society had to be "knit together as one man" in furthering the design of God. If zeal were lacking or if sin were untrammeled, God would punish the land and, if the...