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The Gospel of Reformation: the Origins of the Great Puritan Migration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Avihu Zakai
Avihu Zakai
Affiliation:
Department of History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91905, Israel
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Extract

They [the Puritans] drew in a sea of matter, by applying all things unto their own company, which are any where spoken concerning divine favours and benefits bestowed upon the old commonwealth of Israel: concluding that as Israel was delivered out of Egypt, so they spiritually out of the Egypt of this world's servile thraldom unto sin and superstition; as Israel was to root out the idolatrous nations, and to plant instead of them a people which feared God; so the same Lord's good will and pleasure was now, that these new Israelites should under the conduct of other Joshuas, Samsons and Gideons, perform a work no less miraculous in casting out violently the wicked from the earth, and establishing the kingdom of Christ with perfect liberty.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , October 1986 , pp. 584 - 602
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

1 It will be sufficient here to deal only with the representatives of each interpretation which seeks to explain the origins of the Puritan migration to New England by a ‘crisis’ within English society. Thus Adams, James Truslow in his famous book, The Founding of New England, Boston 1949 [1921], 122–4,Google Scholar stressed the view that both a political’ crisis’ and an economic ‘crisis’ in the late 1620s were responsible for the Puritan migration. A decade later Miller, Perry, Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, Gloucester 1965 [1933], 99Google Scholar , distancing himself from the economic emphasis typified by Adams, stressed the essentially religious motivation behind the Puritan migration. Yet his account tended rather to reinforce Adams's emphasis on the importance of the political ‘crisis’ in the late 1620s. Thus, for Miller, a crisis occasioned by Charles I'S dissolution of the parliament of 1629 had enormous consequences for the Puritan migration. The political ‘crisis’ then, according to Miller, was essentially associated with the ecclesiastical ‘crisis’. Similarly, Hall, David D. in his excellent book, The Faithful Shepherd, New York 1972, 72–3Google Scholar , attributed the Puritan migration, in part, to an ecclesiastical ‘crisis’ within the circle of Puritan ministers in England during the 1630s.

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On the Puritan emigration to New England as a part of the migration from England in the early seventeenth century see: Stone, L., ‘Social mobility in England, 1500-1700’, Past and Present xxxiii (1966), 16–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For the number of emigrants to New England in the early seventeenth century see: Breen, T. H. and Foster, S., ‘Moving to the New World: the character of early Massachusetts immigration’, William and Mary Quarterly xxx (1973), 189–222CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Banks, Charles E., The Planters of the Commonwealth, Boston 1930, 3–43Google Scholar.

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14 , Winthrop, ‘A Model of Christian Charity’, 283, 294.Google Scholar

14 On the issue of the laity and the Church see the two excellent studies by Claire Cross: Church and People, 1450-1660: the triumph of the laity in the English Church, Trowbridge 1976,Google Scholar and Royal Supremacy in the Elizabethan Church, London 1969Google Scholar.

16 Spufford, Margaret, Contrasting Communities, English Villagers in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Cambridge 1974, 262–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Hart, A. Tindal, The Country Clergy, London 1958, 27Google Scholar ; Richardson, R. C., Puritanism in North-west England, Manchester 1972, 27Google Scholar ; Collinson, Patrick, ‘The Godly: aspects of popular Protestantism in Elizabethan England’, cited by , Richardson, op. cit. 74Google Scholar.

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19 Clap, Roger, Memoirs of Roger Clap, Boston 1844, 18, 39.Google Scholar

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21 , Winthrop, ‘Religious Experiencia’, i. 196Google Scholar ; Baxter, Richard, The Autobiography of Richard Baxter, ed. Thomas, J. M. Lloyd and Keeble, N. H., London 1974, 4, 6Google Scholar.

22 , Richardson, Puritanism in North-west England, 27–8.Google Scholar

23 Ibid. 48.

24 , Ziff, The Career of John Cotton, 49.Google Scholar

25 Nuttall, Geoffrey F., Visible Saints, the Congregational Way, 1640-1660, Oxford 1957, 134–5Google Scholar ; , White, The Planters Plea, 59–61Google Scholar . For a further analysis of the separatist impulses in Massachusetts Bay see my ‘Exile and kingdom: reformation, separation, and the millennial quest in the formation of Massachusetts and its relationship with England, 1628-1660’, unpublished PhD diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1982Google Scholar.

26 Ames, William, The Marrow of Sacred Divinity, London 1642, 140–1.Google Scholar

27 Ames, William, Conscience with the Power and Cases Thereof, London 1641, 63.Google Scholar On the close relationship between Ames and the great Puritan migration from its beginnings see: Sprunger, K. L., ‘William Ames and the settlement of Massachusetts Bay’, New England Quarterly xxxix (1966), 66–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Johnson, Edward, Wonder-working Providence of Sion Saviour in New England, 1628-1651 ed. Jameson, J. Franklin, New York 1910, 25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 , Johnson, Wonder-working Providence, 23–5.Google Scholar

30 Tillan, Thomas, ‘Uppon the First Sight of New England, June 29 1638’, in Seventeenth-century American Poetry, ed. Meserole, Harrison T., New York 1968, 397–8Google Scholar; Welde, Thomas, ‘A letter of Master Wells from New England to Old England… 1633’, Massachusetts Colonial Society, Transactions xiii (1910-1911), 130–1Google Scholar. For a further analysis of the Puritan pursuit of religious reformation and its profound social and political consequences in Massachusetts see my ‘Exile and Kingdom’.