“Without some understanding of Puritanism, and that at its source, there is no understanding of America,” Perry Miller said in the foreword to “The American Puritans: Their Prose and Poetry,” a little book I’ve long had around, but have, until now, never read.
And even after having read it, I have some doubt that I understand fully. They (“Republicans,” Mary calls them) assuredly did not embody the ideals that were to be propounded 150 or so years later in the Declaration of Independence. Free speech? Forget it. For if fallen man were given license to speak great things, he was also given license to greatly blaspheme.
Freedom of religion? Or “poly-piety” in Nathaniel Ward’s words? Forget it. Roger Williams was exiled from Massachusetts for daring to suggest such an idea. Women’s rights? Hah. They were to submit. “So let there be due bounds set — and I may apply it to families,” said John Cotton. “It is good for the wife to acknowledge all power and authority to the husband.”
John Winthrop lamented the case of one woman who had wholly given herself to reading and writing and had written many books. “Her husband, being very loving and tender of her, was loath to grieve her; but he saw his error, when it was too late.” Her wits by then having been irretrievably lost.
As to first settlers, “God had His creatures in this wilderness before we came,” said William Stoughton, “and His rational creatures too — a multitude of them; but as to sons and children that are covenant-born unto God, are not we the first in such a relation? In this respect we are surely the Lord’s first-born in this wilderness.”
Equality? Say again? “Nothing therefore can be imagined more remote either from right reason or true religion,” said William Hubbard, “than to think that, because we were all once equal at our birth and shall be again at our death, therefore we should be so in the whole course of our lives. . . . So that it appears: whoever is for a parity in any society will in the issue reduce things into an heap of confusion.”
Well, there was John Wise . . . who said that “since human nature agrees equally with all persons, and since no one can live a sociable life with another that does not own or respect him as a man, it follows as a command of the law of nature that every man esteem and treat another as one who is naturally his equal. . . . The end of all good government [he favored democracy and feared uncontrollable power] is to cultivate humanity and promote the happiness of all.”
The intellectual line from Wise (1652-1725) to the Declaration of Independence was direct, Miller said.
So I must read on.