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1 results

  • Chapter 5 - The Puritans Prepare for the Second Coming

  • from Part II - American Apocalypse in (and out of) History
  • Edited by John Hay, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
  • Book:
    Apocalypse in American Literature and Culture
    Published online:
    03 December 2020
    Print publication:
    17 December 2020, pp 71-83

  • Summary

    For Puritans living in a “New” England, the promise of Jesus Christ’s return was a source of both dread and hope, a paradox that lay at the heart of their eschatology. In their writings, the end times was figured, by turns, as an epoch unfolding in the churches of New England, a cataclysmic "Day of Doom" and judgment, and a ray of hope for physical and spiritual restoration. Jesus’s words recorded in Matthew 24:42, "Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come," commanded righteous vigilance and detachment from worldly things; they also spurred paranoia and a keen attention to world affairs, especially in Palestine. Though Puritan theologians did not agree on the time, manner, or place of Christ’s return, they imagined a unique role for New England, even if as a "specimen of the new heavens and new earth," as Increase Mather wrote. This essay examines how Puritan writers dramatized and tested these apocalyptic visions in a range of literary forms, from sermons and treatises to epic poetry and meditative verse.