Weaks – Puritan Blog

In1630, while aboard the Arbella, John Winthrop delivered his most famous thesis. In it, he spoke of the covenants that the Puritans had with God. He compared their covenants with God to those covenants that the early Jews also had with God. When he delivered the passage below, I feel he was referring to the concept of the Covenant of Works.

“When God gives a special commission He looks to have it strictly observed in every article… We are entered into covenant with Him for this work. We have taken out a commission. The Lord hath given us leave to draw our own articles. We have professed to enterprise these and those accounts, upon these and those ends. We have hereupon besought Him of favor and blessing. Now if the Lord shall please to hear us, and bring us in peace to the place we desire, then hath He ratified this covenant and sealed our commission, and will expect a strict performance of the articles contained in it.”

The Puritans believed that the community leaders were allowed to interpret God’s laws. The above passage gives the community leaders the divine right to govern the colony with absolute authority. In my opinion, the key phase in this passage is, “The Lord hath given us leave to draw our own articles.” Again, in essence this passage gives the community leaders absolute authority to govern in any manner they see fit.

In the same thesis Winthrop speaks of God’s grace and the city upon a hill.

“The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as His own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, ‘may the Lord make it like that of New England.’ For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.”

In this passage I feel Winthrop is making reference to the concept of the Covenant of Grace. He is telling his fellow shipmates that the same God that entered in a covenant with the Jews has now entered into a covenant with them and bestowed a blessing upon them and their city will be envied by all. He is convincing his people that with the help of God they cannot fail. Good psychology.

In her poetry Anne Bradstreet also addresses the concept of the Covenant of Grace, but in a more personal manner. In her poem, Verses on the Burning of Our House, Bradstreet acknowledges that the permanent treasures of heaven far outweigh the loss of all of her earthly possessions and she freely acknowledges that the grace of God is the most important treasure of all.

“Raise up thy thoughts above the sky
That dunghill mists away may fly.
Thou hast a house on high erect
Fram'd by that mighty Architect,
With glory richly furnished
Stands permanent, though this be fled.
It's purchased and paid for too
By him who hath enough to do.
A price so vast as is unknown,
Yet by his gift is made thine own.
There's wealth enough; I need no more.
Farewell, my pelf; farewell, my store.
The world no longer let me love;
My hope and Treasure lies above.”

In my opinion, this poem exemplifies Anne Bradstreet’s personal Covenant of Grace with God where as in John Winthrop’s thesis he addressing the Covenant God has with the entire colony.

In her poem, By Night when Others Soundly Slept, it appears to me that Anne Bradstreet is pledging her absolute obedience to God’s laws when she writes,

“My hungry Soul he fill'd with Good;
He in his Bottle put my tears,
My smarting wounds washt in his blood,
And banisht thence my Doubts and fears.

What to my Saviour shall I give
Who freely hath done this for me?
I'll serve him here whilst I shall live
And Loue him to Eternity.”

I feel she is making a pledge to obey God’s Laws and I feel these passages qualify as a personal Covenant of Works.

I should have remembered from having taken two previous courses with you that blog prompts are always in red. I began answering one of the questions in the notes before I realized my mistake. I have included it below.

It is my understanding that this blog’s purpose is to focus on the events of the 18th century that shifted Puritan values. However, I’m of the opinion that Puritan values were being questioned as early as the 17th century by some members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, in particular Anne Bradstreet. I base this assumption on some of the passages in the poems of Anne Bradstreet that seem to have a decidedly feminist bent that would have been in direct conflict with 17th century Puritan values.

Returning to the question at hand, I feel the logical answer to the question “what happened in the 18th century that shifted Puritan values?” would be the American Revolution and America’s adoption of the Bill of Rights for all its citizens. In the Bill of Rights American citizens were granted great latitude in their freedom of worship, and from that new freedom was born the, “Evangelical strain and the Unitarian strain.” “Ironically, while the evangelical strain spawned fundamentalism, the Puritans themselves would never have accepted that the truth of scripture would fly in the face of reason, science or logic.” 

From my limited exposure to the beliefs of the Puritans, it appears that they believed in a literal translation of The Bible and yet also believed in the importance of education. I see conflict there, in that as one is exposed to reason, science and logic through education, one might begin to question many of the writings in the Bible such as the story of Adam & Eve.  So in essence, by founding great universities such as Harvard in 1736, the Puritans were setting the stage for future generations to question their literal interpretation of The Bible. Therefore, to some degree, the Puritans themselves were responsible for their values being questioned.

With this thought is mind, lets return for a moment to Anne Bradstreet. It appears she was not willing to accept the traditional role dictated to women by the Puritans of the early 17th century. Anne Bradstreet died at the age of 60. By today’s standards, that would be considered young, but considering the harsh conditions endured by the Puritans and her many medical maladies, she was a strong and determined woman that lived a long life in relative terms. Her poetry and writings helped set the stage for other “enlightened” women that would follow; such as Mary Wollstonecraft who in 1792 wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Women, though technically written in Britten, this work is considered by many to be the beginning of American Feminism.

It is my opinion that Anne Bradstreet used passages in the poem In Honour of that High and Mighty Princess, Queen Elizabeth as a guise to champion equality for women or better yet to assert the superiority of women. I’m not attempting to assign the term feminist to Anne Bradstreet or pigeon hole a great poet and writer, but I do feel some of Anne Bradstreet’s poems contain passages that have a decidedly feminist bent. 

I quote from, In Honour of that High and Mighty Princess, Queen Elizabeth,

“She hath wip'd off th' aspersion of her Sex,
That women wisdom lack to play the Rex.”

This is a profound passage for a woman to write in that time period, yet who among the male dominance of that era, would criticize such words being written to honor Queen Elizabeth. I realize the above passage ostensibly is referring to Queen Elizabeth, but I also feel it is a veiled attempt to assert the equality of women. I fully realize that I have at best a rudimentary understanding of Anne Bradstreet’s poetry, but again, to me the above lines reveal a definite feminist bent.

From that same poem, I quote,

“But can you Doctors now this point dispute,
She's argument enough to make you mute,” 

Again, it is my understanding, that in the above lines, Anne Bradstreet is clearly asserting the equality, or to go a little further, the superiority of the intelligence of women. Considering the time period (1643) this is an extraordinary poem to have been written by a woman, especially a woman that was a Puritan living in Puritan dominated settlements in Massachusetts. I purposely avoided naming the exact city in which she was living in 1643 as it appears she changed addresses that year. Anne Bradstreet and John Winthrop both played a significant role in early American literature and in my opinion was an excellent choice to open this course.