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. 54The lengths to which the Puritans were willing to go in order to tailor the hangings tofit the house was revealed during the reign of King Charles I (1600 49), a monarchwho ultimately lost his throne to an army that paused to sing Psalms before going intobattle.Already during the reign of King James I (1566 1625), the Puritan faction hadgrown increasingly disaffected with the Stuart tenancy over the church, especially in 110 Communitieslight of the fact that James had traveled south as the king of a presbyterian land and yetstill refused fundamental reforms.Yet James had managed to keep most of the religioustensions in check during his reign.His son and successor Charles I, however, was lesssuccessful, largely because he pursued policies that threatened ideas of purity andcommunity shared by extreme and moderate Puritans alike.First among his mistakeswas his perceived patronage of the Arminians, and in particular his elevation of WilliamLaud, who would become Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633.This set the seal on theperiod of growing discontent, a phase when Laud and other like-minded clerics beganto downplay the doctrine of predestination, elevate the episcopacy, attack Sabbitarian-ism and the preaching ministry, and introduce liturgical and ceremonial changes suchas replacing wooden communion tables with stone altars or enforcing the use of thePrayer Book and the surplice that were seen by many as the first steps on the return toCatholicism.In addition, many of the radical Puritan preachers were suppressed, aswere the lectureships and unlicensed preaching.In essence Laud s notion of decentorder in the church touched on gesture and ceremony rather than doctrine.Yet it gavethe impression that the entire Protestant religion was under threat.55In the absence of a formal confession, the Puritan polemic against false religion was the most effective way to foster a shared sense of identity.This was the tried-and-true method of Protestant self-fashioning: whatever type of Christian you are, we arenot.But it was especially important for the Puritans, since there were no fixedtheological boundaries between the moderates and the radicals, just a sliding scale ofCalvinist thought.The Puritan sense of community was thus based on mutualconceits rather than a common creed, but it was substantial enough for the piousto believe that they belonged to a select (and elect) group of people who had been setaside by God to fulfill his designs.One of the indicators of this was the Puritan habit ofgiving children names that marked them out as among the visible saints.Favoredappellations included Above-Hope, Praise-God, Flee-Sin, Tribulation-Wholesome,Much-Mercy, More-Fruit, Perseverance, Deliverance, and Return.But there wereother seemingly trivial ways in which they could give expression to their sense ofuniqueness and election, including walking around with the Bible in their hands,over-pronouncing words (especially loaded words such as liberty or brotherand sister ), cutting their hair short, wearing simple, colorless clothes, and rollingtheir eyes theatrically when they prayed.56 Contemporaries, even sympatheticcontemporaries, were often irritated by the Puritan manner and the ostentatiouspiety they affected, and this more hostile perception of the godly people wasconstitutive of their sense of identity as well.Precisionists, busy controllers, over-zealous biblicists, Scripture men, enthusiasts, Anabaptists all these and similarterms were imposed on them by others.57The point to make is that there was no fixed idea of what a Puritan actually was,neither among the Puritans themselves nor among those who labeled them.The termtook on different meanings according to the context of perception.All that could besaid with certainty is that Puritanism was a movement animated by the search for a pastpurity or truth (a type of myth of origins) and that its exponents, moving along a scalethat ran from conservatism to radicalism, disagreed with the existing religious settle-ment and wished to bring it in line with a proper reading of Scripture.The laws of God,not man, were the foundation of the church. Communities 111English Puritans, no less than German and Swiss Protestants, looked to the towns inorder to establish their godly communities.English towns were generally less auton-omous than the imperial cities, but if the local officials were sympathetic to Puritanism,there were similar possibilities for the establishment of the type of regnum Christienvisioned by Bucer a century before.As early as the reign of Queen Elizabeth,dissenters and non-conformists had tried to push through Puritan reformations intowns in the southern and eastern counties, where some clergy, supported by Justices ofthe Peace and local magistrates, effectively set up presbyterian systems within theepiscopal framework.Puritans thought of these little Genevas as the theaters forreligious change they were not able to effect at the level of the state, small zions wheregodly reform could be imposed on the commune through the joint efforts of the secularand the spiritual authorities.58 As in Zwingli s Zurich, it was a symbiotic relationship:magistracy and ministry, as the Ipswich preacher Samuel Ward put it, were the principal lights, the two optic pieces through which godly order was perceivedand realised.59Godly order meant transforming the town into a haven of pious, charitable, and soberpeople whose conduct and beliefs were in absolute accordance with the teaching ofScripture and the model of Christian community expounded in sermons throughout theweek by the Puritan preachers.In practical terms, this meant the elimination oftraditional urban customs such as May Day festivities, mystery plays, religious proces-sions, charivaris, morris dancing, church ales as well as a miscellany of games and sports; itmeant the rooting out of moral indiscretions such as swearing, drunkenness, premaritalsex, idleness, dancing, thievery, and adultery; and it meant the enforcement of regularattendance at church, more rigorous and effective local education, more exactingmethods of discipline, and improved systems of poor relief and charity.The centralpurpose,asthePuritansofDorchester worded it, wasto [reduce]thetown intoorder bygood government, which in this context essentially meant government by Holy Writ.60These were the men caricatured by the London playwrights as killjoys and zealots, thetwo most memorable creations being Shakespeare s Malvolio and Jonson s Zeal-of-the-Land Busy, whose only abiding passion was to uproot all cursed mirth from the land.But the Puritan search for order reached beyond the towns and cities.ZealousPuritans wanted to reform the entire realm, starting with the Anglican church and thenmoving on to the failings of the social and political spheres.Here, as in all Protestantism,it was a question of degree rather than design.There was a wide spectrum of opinionrunning from Presbyterian Moderates to Separatists and Independents [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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. 54The lengths to which the Puritans were willing to go in order to tailor the hangings tofit the house was revealed during the reign of King Charles I (1600 49), a monarchwho ultimately lost his throne to an army that paused to sing Psalms before going intobattle.Already during the reign of King James I (1566 1625), the Puritan faction hadgrown increasingly disaffected with the Stuart tenancy over the church, especially in 110 Communitieslight of the fact that James had traveled south as the king of a presbyterian land and yetstill refused fundamental reforms.Yet James had managed to keep most of the religioustensions in check during his reign.His son and successor Charles I, however, was lesssuccessful, largely because he pursued policies that threatened ideas of purity andcommunity shared by extreme and moderate Puritans alike.First among his mistakeswas his perceived patronage of the Arminians, and in particular his elevation of WilliamLaud, who would become Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633.This set the seal on theperiod of growing discontent, a phase when Laud and other like-minded clerics beganto downplay the doctrine of predestination, elevate the episcopacy, attack Sabbitarian-ism and the preaching ministry, and introduce liturgical and ceremonial changes suchas replacing wooden communion tables with stone altars or enforcing the use of thePrayer Book and the surplice that were seen by many as the first steps on the return toCatholicism.In addition, many of the radical Puritan preachers were suppressed, aswere the lectureships and unlicensed preaching.In essence Laud s notion of decentorder in the church touched on gesture and ceremony rather than doctrine.Yet it gavethe impression that the entire Protestant religion was under threat.55In the absence of a formal confession, the Puritan polemic against false religion was the most effective way to foster a shared sense of identity.This was the tried-and-true method of Protestant self-fashioning: whatever type of Christian you are, we arenot.But it was especially important for the Puritans, since there were no fixedtheological boundaries between the moderates and the radicals, just a sliding scale ofCalvinist thought.The Puritan sense of community was thus based on mutualconceits rather than a common creed, but it was substantial enough for the piousto believe that they belonged to a select (and elect) group of people who had been setaside by God to fulfill his designs.One of the indicators of this was the Puritan habit ofgiving children names that marked them out as among the visible saints.Favoredappellations included Above-Hope, Praise-God, Flee-Sin, Tribulation-Wholesome,Much-Mercy, More-Fruit, Perseverance, Deliverance, and Return.But there wereother seemingly trivial ways in which they could give expression to their sense ofuniqueness and election, including walking around with the Bible in their hands,over-pronouncing words (especially loaded words such as liberty or brotherand sister ), cutting their hair short, wearing simple, colorless clothes, and rollingtheir eyes theatrically when they prayed.56 Contemporaries, even sympatheticcontemporaries, were often irritated by the Puritan manner and the ostentatiouspiety they affected, and this more hostile perception of the godly people wasconstitutive of their sense of identity as well.Precisionists, busy controllers, over-zealous biblicists, Scripture men, enthusiasts, Anabaptists all these and similarterms were imposed on them by others.57The point to make is that there was no fixed idea of what a Puritan actually was,neither among the Puritans themselves nor among those who labeled them.The termtook on different meanings according to the context of perception.All that could besaid with certainty is that Puritanism was a movement animated by the search for a pastpurity or truth (a type of myth of origins) and that its exponents, moving along a scalethat ran from conservatism to radicalism, disagreed with the existing religious settle-ment and wished to bring it in line with a proper reading of Scripture.The laws of God,not man, were the foundation of the church. Communities 111English Puritans, no less than German and Swiss Protestants, looked to the towns inorder to establish their godly communities.English towns were generally less auton-omous than the imperial cities, but if the local officials were sympathetic to Puritanism,there were similar possibilities for the establishment of the type of regnum Christienvisioned by Bucer a century before.As early as the reign of Queen Elizabeth,dissenters and non-conformists had tried to push through Puritan reformations intowns in the southern and eastern counties, where some clergy, supported by Justices ofthe Peace and local magistrates, effectively set up presbyterian systems within theepiscopal framework.Puritans thought of these little Genevas as the theaters forreligious change they were not able to effect at the level of the state, small zions wheregodly reform could be imposed on the commune through the joint efforts of the secularand the spiritual authorities.58 As in Zwingli s Zurich, it was a symbiotic relationship:magistracy and ministry, as the Ipswich preacher Samuel Ward put it, were the principal lights, the two optic pieces through which godly order was perceivedand realised.59Godly order meant transforming the town into a haven of pious, charitable, and soberpeople whose conduct and beliefs were in absolute accordance with the teaching ofScripture and the model of Christian community expounded in sermons throughout theweek by the Puritan preachers.In practical terms, this meant the elimination oftraditional urban customs such as May Day festivities, mystery plays, religious proces-sions, charivaris, morris dancing, church ales as well as a miscellany of games and sports; itmeant the rooting out of moral indiscretions such as swearing, drunkenness, premaritalsex, idleness, dancing, thievery, and adultery; and it meant the enforcement of regularattendance at church, more rigorous and effective local education, more exactingmethods of discipline, and improved systems of poor relief and charity.The centralpurpose,asthePuritansofDorchester worded it, wasto [reduce]thetown intoorder bygood government, which in this context essentially meant government by Holy Writ.60These were the men caricatured by the London playwrights as killjoys and zealots, thetwo most memorable creations being Shakespeare s Malvolio and Jonson s Zeal-of-the-Land Busy, whose only abiding passion was to uproot all cursed mirth from the land.But the Puritan search for order reached beyond the towns and cities.ZealousPuritans wanted to reform the entire realm, starting with the Anglican church and thenmoving on to the failings of the social and political spheres.Here, as in all Protestantism,it was a question of degree rather than design.There was a wide spectrum of opinionrunning from Presbyterian Moderates to Separatists and Independents [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]