John Calvin, who died in 1564. His creed, known as Calvinism, emphasized the importance of the individual, of A In ADAM's Fall LETTER "A" IN "NEW ENGLAND PRIMER" life's continuous moral In the New England were taught the first article of belief, as they learned the letter A: "In Adam's fall, We sinned all." Calvinism stressed the doctrine of foreordination, that certain ones, "the elect," had been foreordained to be saved. Thomas Shepard (1605-1649), one of the great Puritan clergy, fixed the mathematical ratio of the damned to the elect as 66 a thousand to one." On the physical side, scientists have pointed out a close correspondence between Calvin's creed and the theory of evolution, which emphasizes the desperate struggle resulting from the survival of the fittest. The "fittest are the "elect"; those who perish in the contest, the "damned.” In the evolutionary struggle, only the few survive, while untold numbers of the unfit, no matter whether seeds of plants, eggs of fish, human beings, or any other form of life, go to the wall. In spite of the apparent contradiction between free will. and foreordination, each individual felt himself fully responsible for the saving of his soul. A firm belief in this tremendous responsibility made each one rise the stronger to meet the other responsibilities of life. Civil responsibility seemed easier to one reared in this school. The initiative bequeathed by Elizabethan times was increased by the Puritans' religion. Although there were probably as many university men in proportion to the population in early colonial Massachusetts as in England, the strength and direction of their religious ideals helped to turn their energy into activities outside the field of pure literature. In course of time, however, Nathaniel Hawthorne appeared to give lasting literary expression to this life. The New England Clergy.-The clergy occupied a leading place in both the civil and religious life of New England. They were men of energy and ability, who could lead their congregations to Holland or to the wilds of New England. For the purpose in hand the world has never seen superior leaders. Many of them were graduates of Cambridge University, England. Their great authority was based on character, education, and natural ability. A contemporary historian said of John Cotton, who came as pastor from the old to the new Boston in 1633, that whatever he "delivered in the pulpit was soon put into an order of court . . . or set up as a practice in the church." The sermons, from two to four hours long, took the place of magazines, newspapers, and modern musical and theatrical entertainments. The church members were accustomed to hard thinking and they enjoyed it as a mental exercise. Their minds had not been rendered flabby by such a diet of miscellaneous trash or sensational matter as confronts modern readers. Many of the congregation went with notebooks to record the different heads and the most striking thoughts in the sermon, such, for instance, as the following on the dangers of idleness :— "Whilst the stream keeps running, it keeps clear; but let it stand still, it breeds frogs and toads and all manner of filth. So while you keep going, you keep clear." The sermons were often doctrinal, metaphysical, and extremely dry, but it is a mistake to conclude that the clergy did not speak on topics of current interest. Winthrop in his Journal for 1639 relates how the Rev. John Cotton discussed whether a certain shopkeeper, who had been arraigned before the court for extortion, for having taken "in some small things, above two for one," was guilty of sin and should be excommunicated from the church, or only publicly admonished. Cotton prescribed admonition and he laid down a code of ethics for the guidance of sellers. With the exception of Roger Williams (1604 ?–1683), who had the modern point of view in insisting on complete "soul liberty," on the right of every man to think as he pleased on matters of religion, the Puritan clergy were not tolerant of other forms of worship. They said that they came to New England in order to worship God as they pleased. They never made the slightest pretense of establishing a commonwealth where another could worship as he pleased, because they feared that such a privilege might lead to a return of the persecution from which they had fled. If those came who thought differently about religion, they were told that there was sufficient room elsewhere, in Rhode Island, for instance, whither Roger Williams went after he was banished from Salem. The history of the Puritan clergy would have been more pleasing had they been more tolerant, less narrow, more modern, like Roger Williams. Yet perhaps it is best not to complain overmuch of the strange and somewhat repellent architecture of the bridge which bore us over the stream dividing the desert of royal and ecclesiastical tyranny from the Promised Land of our Republic. Let us not forget that the clergy insisted on popular education; that wherever 37 there was a clergyman, there was almost certain to be a school, even if he had to teach it himself, and that the clergy generally spoke and acted as if they would rather be "free among the dead than slaves among the living." POETRY The trend of Puritan theology and the hard conditions of life did not encourage the production of poetry. The Puritans even wondered if singing in church was not an exercise which turned the mind from God. The Rev. John Cotton investigated the question carefully under four main heads and six subheads, and he cited scriptural authority to show that Paul and Silas (Acts, xvi., 25) had sung a Psalm in the prison. Cotton therefore concluded that the Psalms might be sung in church. Bay Psalm Book. "The divines in the country" joined to translate "into English metre" the whole book of Psalms from the original Hebrew, and they probably made the worst metrical G THE VVHOLE BOOKE OF PSALMES TRANSLATED into ENGLISH Whereunto is prefixed a discourse de- Coll. m. Let the word of God dwell plenteously in you, inall wisdome, teaching and exhorting one another in Pfalmes, Himnes, and fpirituall Songs, finging to the Lord with grace in your hearts. Iames V. If any be afflicted, let him pray, and if any be merry let him fingpfalmes. Imprinted FACSIMILE OF TITLE PAGE TO "BAY PSALM BOOK" translation in existence. In their preface to this work, known as the Bay Psalm Book (1640), the first book of verse printed in the British American colonies, they explained that they did not strive for a more poetic translation because "God's altar needs not our polishings." The following verses from Psalm cxxxvii. are a sample of the so-called metrical translation which the Puritans sang: "I. The rivers on of Babilon there when wee did sit downe: yea even then wee mourned, when "2. Our Harps wee did it hang amid, "3. Because there they that us away Requir'd of us a song, & thus askt mirth: us waste who laid, sing us among a Sion's song, Michael Wigglesworth (1631-1705). This Harvard graduate and Puritan preacher published in 1662 a poem setting forth some of the tenets of Calvinistic theology. This poem, entitled The Day of Doom, or a Poetical Description of the Great and Last Judgment, had the largest circulation of any colonial poem. The following lines represent a throng of infants at the left hand of the final Judge, pleading against the sentence of infant damnation: "Not we, but he ate of the tree, whose fruit was interdicted; Yet on us all of his sad fall the punishment's inflicted. How could we sin that had not been, or how is his sin our, Without consent, which to prevent we never had the pow'r ?'" |