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The Cry of Sodom Enquired Into: Educational Analysis in Seventeenth-Century New England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2017

N. Ray Hiner
N. Ray Hiner*
Affiliation:
Department of History at the University of Kansas
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Extract

Charles Chauncy knew he was striking a responsive chord when in a commencement address at Harvard in 1655 he drew on the Third Epistle of John to declare, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.” The seventeenth-century Puritans who shook off the dust of the English Babylon and ventured into the “howling wilderness” of the New World clearly expected that this act of faith would insure the salvation of their children. The Scriptures told them this was so: as God promised Abraham, so he assured the inhabitants of the New Israel that he would “make thee exceeding fruitful,” and “establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant. …” Hardly a complacent group, the Puritans understood very well that the “old deluder Satan” was abroad in New England and would do his utmost to thwart the salvation of as many souls as possible, even those of the children of the covenant. Thus, they promptly established regular public worship, encouraged family and community attention to the nurture of literacy, exercised controls over apprenticeship, and built schools and colleges—all actions designed, in part, to create the conditions most favorable for the reception of God's grace. In the end, the Puritans knew their difficult struggle would culminate in victory. They could afford to be optimistic; they had God's promise that grace was hereditary: God would honor his Covenant and their children would be saved.

Type
Research Article
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , Spring 1973 , pp. 3 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © 1973 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1 Chauncy, Charles, God's Mercy Shewed to His People (Cambridge 1655), p. 12.Google Scholar

2 Genesis 17:6–7. Also see Shepard, Thomas, The Church Membership of Children (Cambridge, 1663), p. 1; Mather, Eleazer, A Serious Exhortation to the Rising Generation in New England (Boston, 1678), p. 18; and Increase Mather, A Call From Heaven to the Present and Succeeding Generations (Boston, 1679), p. 7.Google Scholar

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4 See Zuckerman, Michael, Peaceable Kingdoms: New England Towns in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1970); Lockridge, Kenneth A., A new England Town: The First Hundred Years (New York, 1970); Demos, John, A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony (New York, 1970), and Ver Steeg, Clarence L., The Formative Years, 1607–1763 (New York, 1964).Google Scholar

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12 According to Bernard Bailyn's apt phrase, education in all of English America was “wrenched loose from the automatic, instinctive workings of society, and cast as a matter for deliberation in the forefront of consciousness.” See his Education in the Forming of American Society: Needs and Opportunities for Study (New York, 1960), p. 21.Google Scholar

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18 See Morgan, The Puritan Family, p. 1.Google Scholar

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38 In 1663, Shepard, Thomas Jr. (1635–1677) arranged the posthumous publication of his father's (1605–1649) essay, The Church Membership of Children. In a lengthy preface to this essay, the younger Shepard made it clear that his father's earlier views were directly relevant to the question of the half-way covenant (see the “Preface to the Reader” and pp. 14, 25). Also see Samuel Danforth, A Brief Recognition of New England's Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge, 1671), pp. 16–17.Google Scholar

39 See Increase Mather's The Necessity of Reformation (Boston, 1670), p. 12; and his A Call From Heaven, p. 89. The mass covenant renewal is discussed perceptively by Pope, The Half-Way Covenant, pp. 241–246. Although the half-way covenant and mass covenant renewal may have been educationally viable, the presence of large numbers of unconverted persons in the churches had its own educational disadvantages, for they presented examples to children unworthy of emulation. Perhaps it was this concern which led Cotton Mather to recommend in 1710 that groups of approximately twelve families from within each church meet as “associated families” “once a fortnight” to pray, sing psalms, and repeat and discuss sermons. Such groups, he said, “should look upon themselves as bound up in one bundle of love, and count themselves as obliged in very close and strong bonds to be serviceable unto one another.” (42) That this description of associated families can be taken as a reasonably accurate definition of the aims and nature of the original seventeenth-century churches themselves is eloquent testimony to the difficulty of educating the children of saints in a church which included “chaffy hypocrites” and “profane persons.” Mather obviously did not wish to include them in his associated families. See Cotton Mather, Bonifacius: An Essay Upon the Good (Boston, 1710), pp. 82–83.Google Scholar

40 See Chauncy, , God's Mercy Shewed to His People, pp. 29, 31; Increase Mather, The Necessity of Reformation, p. 14, Shepard, Eye Salve, p. 45; and Richard Mather, A Farewell Exhortation, pp. 7–8.Google Scholar

41 Morison, Samuel Eliot, The Intellectual Life of Colonial New England (2nd ed., Ithaca, N.Y., 1956), pp. 67, 69. Also see Chauncy, God's Mercy Shewed to His People, p. 15; Increase Mather, A Call From Heaven, pp. 72–73; and Shepard, Eye Salve, p. 6.Google Scholar

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53 Ibid., p. 28.Google Scholar

54 Ibid., pp. 28–30.Google Scholar

55 Mather, Cotton, A Family Well-Ordered, pp. 22–23; and Wadsworth, The Well-Ordered Family, pp. 55–56.Google Scholar

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57 Wadsworth, , A Well-Ordered Family, p. 58.Google Scholar

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60 Lawson, , The Duty and Property of a Religious Householder, pp. 30–31.Google Scholar

61 Mather, Eleazar, A Serious Exhortation to the Rising Generation, p. 20. Also see Richard Mather, A Farewell Exhortation, p. 13; Mather, Cotton, A Family Well-Ordered p. 20; and Wadsworth, , A Well-Ordered Family, p. 61.Google Scholar

62 Ibid., pp. 83–84.Google Scholar

63 For a comprehensive discussion of the importance of the sermon in Puritan life and thought, see Miller, Perry, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century, pp. 290–392.Google Scholar

64 See Willard, , Covenant Keeping, pp. 115–117; Cotton Mather's A Family Well-Ordered, Addenda, p. 1; and Bonificius, pp. 95–102.Google Scholar

65 See Cremin, Lawrence, American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607–1783 (New York, 1970), pp. 130, 394, 484; and Morison, , The Intellectual Life of New England, pp. 79–82.Google Scholar

66 Janeway, James, A Token for Children (Boston, 1700).Google Scholar

67 Wakeman, Samuel, A Young Man's Legacy to the Rising Generation (Cambridge, Mass., 1673), pp. 42–44.Google Scholar

68 Danforth, Samuel, The Cry of Sodom Enquired Into (Cambridge, Mass., 1674).Google Scholar

69 Ibid., pp. 8–9, 19, 23–24.Google Scholar

70 See Mather, Increase, Pray for the Rising Generation; Cotton Mather's Early Religion Urged and Cares About Nurseries (Boston, 1702), pp. 47–88; Wadsworth, Exhortations to Early Piety, pp. 1–30; and Belcher, Two Sermons Preached in Dedham.Google Scholar

71 Mather, Cotton, Early Religion Urged, pp. 115–117.Google Scholar

72 Ibid., p. 49.Google Scholar

73 Lawson, , The Duty and Property of a Religious Householder, p. 57.Google Scholar

74 Foxcroft, Thomas, Cleansing Our Way in Youth (Boston, 1719), pp. 15 ff. For an interesting account of the history of the “ages of man” concept, see Philippe Aries, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, trans. Robert Baldick (New York, 1962), pp. 15–32.Google Scholar

75 Ross Beales argues convincingly that young people in colonial New England experienced a prolonged period of “adolescent” dependence. For an enlightening comparison of colonial “youth” and modern “adolescence,” see his “Cares for the Rising Generation,” pp. 20–23.Google Scholar

76 For discussions of the educational significance of the Great Awakening, see Cremin, Lawrence's American Education, pp. 310–321; and Beales, Ross, “Cares for the Rising Generation,” pp. 92–122.Google Scholar