The Puritan Greatness With Words

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For many years, one of the things I have most liked to do is stick up for Puritans. If there is ever a contest for “most misrepresented” groups within the history of Christendom, the Puritans will certainly be in the final four, and would probably win the championship. Caricatured as stuffy, priggish, censorious, prim, prudish and more, the Puritans have long been type-cast as the sour brethren. I have written a great deal on how wrong this stereotype is, particularly when we are considering the early Elizabethan Puritans. At the same time, the caricature was not manufactured out of whole cloth—from Shakespeare’s Malvolio to Hawthorne’s Rev. Dimmesdale, the caricature was aimed at something. What was that something?

Here is a tentative suggestion for those who are willing to work with me for a bit. There are many parallels between the Puritans and the Pharisees, even down to what their names meant. The Puritans wanted to purify the Church of England of its remaining popish tendencies. The word Pharisee comes from the Hebrew word that means to “set apart” or to “separate.” Even to this day, strict evangelical churches teach and insist on a “separated life.” The names of both groups therefore indicated their deep desire for holiness.

Both started as reform movements that were desperately needed in their time. The first Pharisee was probably Ezra, and, if so, this means that they had a long and honored history before they got themselves all tangled up in their scruples. The Puritans were the same—at the beginning, their work was liberating, a breath of fresh air. But after a century or so, something bad began to happen. That “bad” development was seized on by the Puritan’s enemies to provide material to taunt them with, along with over-emphasizing those traits, and those same traits were seized by certain members within the Puritan party who decided for various reasons to embrace the caricature.

This is related to a third point, which is that one of the central aims of the Pharisees was the goal of getting all Israelites to live in accordance with the requirements of the law for priests. One of the central aims of the Puritans was to take the consecration of the monastery and extend it to the entire commonwealth. The Pharisees wanted every Israelite to be as holy as the priests. The Puritans wanted every Englishman to be as holy as the monks . . . much holier than the monks, in fact.

Think of the Puritan settlements in America as attempts to build monastic communities where marital sex was encouraged and permitted. But the problem is that where there is sex, there are children, and where there are children, there are subsequent generations. The old style monastery perpetuated itself by means of recruits, which mean that there was much slower organic development over time. But children accelerate the process of change. The Puritan project here was audacious, and for my money, they got farther with this ambitious aim than any other group in church history. But still, something bad did happen.

What is commonly caricatured as the “puritanical” mentality is actually a mentality that can be found in the church of all ages. You can find this mindset in some of the early fathers, you can find it with Syrian ascetics, you can find it in medieval monasteries, and you can find it (after the first generations) among the Puritans. This religious type translates every serious call to holiness into terms it can understand, which is that of being stuffy, priggish, thin-lipped, censorious, prim, prudish and more.

Not only does it translate every serious call to holiness into this legalistic straitjacket, but it is attracted to every serious call to holiness—with the intention of burying it under a rock pile of rules. If God raises up someone to call the Church back to serious devotion to Him in a particular area, and this call is characterized by all those things that ought always to characterize such a call—joy, peace, love, contentment, laughter, feasting, and more joy—then it can be guaranteed that the joy, peace, love books will be published and distributed, and within a very short period of time, the mirthless will show up prepared to take the whole thing to what they honestly believe to be the next level.

This is what happened to some of the Puritans, and to the reputation of all of them. The first Puritans really were liberated. They were seriously joyful, which is a form of being serious, I suppose. And because they wanted their whole nation to experience this joy, and they were total Christians, they brought the words of Christ to bear on everything. Their joy was infectious, their talents prodigious, and their logic unanswerable. At the center of their greatness was a greatness with words, prose and poetry both.

They carried everything before them, but before you could blink, they found themselves being represented by other “Puritans” who were recognizable in the popular caricature. By the middle of the 17th century, there were two kinds of Puritans, a mixed multitude. There were the free men and there were the gnat-stranglers. But the gnat-stranglers were not the Puritans’ unique contribution to the history of religious pathologies—rather, they were a garden variety religious weed that eventually began growing in the Puritans’ garden, just as they had grown in every Christian garden up to that point.

I have said that the Puritans were great, and that their greatness included a greatness with words. This kind of claim is easily dismissed by those who those who have been entirely persuaded by the caricatures, but it cannot be dismissed by anyone who is willing to consider the historical facts. It is true that the poetaster Michael Wigglesworth was a best-selling poet among the New England Puritans, but do we really want to judge the literary merits of any group or any age by means of the popular fads and bestsellers? What would become of us as judges in such a case, we who exalt books like Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey, and who have not even had a bestselling poet since the time of Kipling?

If we were to take Puritan poets from the front rank, we not only have wonderful representatives for the Puritans, we also find that we are looking at some of the finest poets our culture has ever produced. I am thinking of men like Spenser, Milton, Herbert, and more.

But before mentioning any other names, I have to say a word about terminology. In the 16th century, the term Calvinism likely referred to your doctrine of the sacraments, while today it refers to your views of predestination. Thus Hooker was not a Calvinist in their sense, but he was in ours. Herbert was a churchman, happily established in the Elizabethan settlement, but he was a Calvinist in our sense. In a similar fashion, the word Puritan referred in their time to those who wanted to reform the liturgy, getting rid of all popish rags, but today it can be aptly applied to anyone who was robustly Protestant and Calvinistic (our sense).

Such literary lights that can be thrown into the mix are those who are acknowledged as great cultural voices (Tyndale, Spenser, Milton, Herbert, Donne, Marvell, Sidney, et al.), others who are seen as representative and good but not that famous (Taylor, Bradstreet), and those who are (in my view) unjustly disparaged (Bunyan). Then there are others whose theological underpinnings are ambiguous, thus enabling Protestants and Catholics to fight over the body of Shakespeare. But however you examine it, the Protestant Reformation in the English speaking world was the location, the context, the setting, of a literary supernova.

There are those who argue that when Calvinism produces works of literary genius, it is “in spite of” the theology, and when it doesn’t, it is “because of” that theology, are operating in the comfortable zone of “heads I win, tails you lose.”

If I might, I would like to spend the rest of my time citing others who have observed some of these same realities, making a few comments of my own as we go. For some this might seem like a rock pile of quotations, but given the delightful and surprising nature of what is being said, I have no trouble asking you to bear with me.

What were some of the first indications that a literary storm was brewing?

“But on almost any view, Tyndale who inaugurated, and the Genevan translators who first seriously advance, our tradition, tower head and shoulders above all others whom I have yet mentioned” (C.S. Lewis, English Literature in the 16th Century, p. 211).

This was not something that was occurring in a separated realm from the foment caused by the Reformation.

“Many surrendered to, all were influenced by, the dazzling figure of Calvin . . . The fierce young don, the learned lady, the courtier with intellectual leanings, were likely to be Calvinists. When hard rocks of Predestination outcrop in the flowery of the Arcadia or the Faerie Queen, we are apt to think them anomalous, but we are wrong. The Calvinism is as modish as the shepherds and goddesses” (C.S. Lewis, English Literature in the 16th Century, p. 43).

The nature of the Protestant literary outpouring came from the fact that the gospel (understood in the ancient sense of good news) had broken loose, and was out in the streets.

“But there is no understanding the period of the Reformation in England until we have grasped the fact that the quarrel between the Puritans and the Papists was not primarily a quarrel between rigorism and indulgence, and that, in so far as it was, the rigorism was on the Roman side. On many questions, and specially in their view of the marriage bed, the Puritans were the indulgent party; if we may without disrespect so use the name of a great Roman Catholic, a great writer, and a great man, they were much more Chestertonian than their adversaries” (C.S. Lewis, Selected Literary Essays, p. 116).

The theological currents were not just consistent with the literary production, but were incorporated into it.

“Similarly, William H. Halewood argues that the pervasive Augustinianism of the period—Augustine as interpreted by the Reformation—led Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, Marvell, and Milton to develop a poetic mode exploring man’s radical sinfulness and God’s overpowering grace” (Lewalski, Protestant Poetics, p. 14).

Not only so, but we can shatter several caricatures at once. The Puritans are not only thought of by moderns as cultural Philistines, but also as sexually repressed. This is not only “inadequately true,” it is a resounding lie. Speaking of Edmund Spenser, Osgood says this:

“The point is that in those particular sonnets which all agree were addressed to Elizabeth Boyle, and supremely in his Epithalamion, the greatest wedding song in the world, he sings with the same full-throated ease, the same happy assurance that we hear in the contemporary and mature Hymn of Heavenly Love and Hymn of Heavenly Beauty” (Osgood, Poetry as a Means of Grace, pp. 61-62).

Lewis makes the same or a very similar point:

“This antithesis, if once understood, explains many things in the history of sentiment, and many differences, noticeable to the present day, between the Protestant and the Catholic parts of Europe. It explains why the conversion of courtly love into romantic monogamous love was so largely the work of English, and even of Puritan, poets” (C.S. Lewis, Selected Literary Essays, p. 117).

The Puritans were not only good poets, they were also sensual poets. In his book, God’s Altar, Daly makes a similar point.

“We can, however, examine Puritan appeals to both the sensuous and the sensual in man. Such an examination reveals that one who believes that Puritans avoided sensuous and even erotic imagery in expressing religious doctrine or describing spiritual states does so in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary” (Daly, p. 22).

“Relief and buoyancy are the characteristic notes . . . It follows that nearly every association which now clings to the word puritan has to be eliminated when we are thinking of the early Protestants. Whatever they were, they were not sour, gloomy, or severe; nor did their enemies bring any such charge against them . . . For More, a Protestant was one ‘dronke of the new must of lewd lightnes of minde and vayne gladness of harte’ . . . Protestantism was not too grim, but too glad, to be true . . . Protestants are not ascetics but sensualists” (C.S. Lewis, English Literature in the 16th Century, p. 34).

But we are still not done. Another caricature is that the Puritans were stodgy, didactic, pedestrian. But no—they were sophisticated in their use of symbolism and imagery.

“For the Puritan, however, the world in which he lived was symbolic. Things meant . . . Puritan poets saw symbols in the Bible and the world. From these sources they derived not only most of their symbols, but the symbolic method itself, the lens through which they perceived and expressed their own experience. Not ornaments retrospectively imposed upon a simple narration, the Puritan’s symbols were central to their writings because they were central to their lives” (Daly, pp. 30-31).

“Puritan poets . . . knew that part of their work in this world was to wean their affections from the unmixed love of it. But they also knew that this world was God’s metaphor for His communicable glories and that another part of their duty was to see and utter that metaphor, to use the figural value of this world to turn their attentions and affections to the next” (Daly, p. 81).

Some have been misled by the fact that there was an iconoclastic element to the Reformation, which there certainly was. But it was not a case of banishing images, and replacing it all with nothing. It was a case of banishing certain kinds of images, and replacing them with images that many people are not sophisticated enough to understanding.

“We are quite rightly impressed by the iconoclastic dimensions of the Reformation, the pruning of the liturgies and the decimation of the saints’ days, the removal of statues, paintings and even stained glass from the churches. But such iconoclasm may be eclipsed by what we can call the iconopoaic energies of the Reformation, its creativity in producing new allegories and metaphors for the divine and the human which, by their novel connections and collocations, bedded together the hitherto incompatible and subverted one cosmos while paving the way for another . . . When your metaphors change, your world changes with them” (Matheson, pp. 6-7).

Given the high view of Scripture, it is natural that the Protestant aesthetic gravitated toward the written word. This partly explains why many moderns think that a Protestant aesthetic never happened at all.

“We should, however, approach Augustinian aesthetics not in medieval but in Reformation terms, taking account of the important new factor introduced by the Reformation—an overwhelming emphasis on the written word as the embodiment of divine truth. In this milieu the Christian poet is led to relate his work not to ineffable and intuited divine revelation, but rather to its written formulation in scripture. The Bible affords him a literary model which he can imitate in such literary matters as genre, language, and symbolism, confident that in this model at least the difficult problems of art and truth are perfectly resolved. My proposition is, then, that far from eschewing aesthetics for a rhetoric of silence or a deliberate anti-aesthetic strategy, these poets committed themselves to forging and employing a Protestant poetics, grounded upon scripture, for the making of Protestant devotional lyrics” (Lewalski, Protestant Poetics, pp. 6-7).

I mentioned earlier that it is de rigueur to think contemptuously of Bunyan, a man of true literary genius, and someone who was Protestant to his back teeth. So allow me to finish with a few observations from Lewis, and then from Chesterton.

“But this fault is rare in Bunyan — far rarer than in Piers Plowman. If such dead wood were removed from The Pilgrim’s Progress the book would not be very much shorter than it is. The greater part of it is enthralling narrative or genuinely dramatic dialogue. Bunyan stands with Malory and Trollope as a master of perfect naturalness in the mimesis of ordinary conversation” (C.S. Lewis, Selected Literary Essays, p. 146).

“We must attribute Bunyan’s style to a perfect natural ear, a great sensibility for the idiom and cadence of popular speech, a long experience in addressing unlettered audiences, and a freedom from bad models” (C.S. Lewis, Selected Literary Essays, p. 150).

The high view that Lewis takes of Bunyan’s abilities is perhaps well known. Perhaps a little more surprising would be these tributes from Chesterton.

“The Pilgrim’s Progress certainly exhibits all the marks of such a revival of primitive power and mystery . . . Nowhere, perhaps except in Homer, is there such a perfect description conveyed by the use of merely plain words” (Quoted in Belmonte, p. 205).

“Before the Puritans were swept off the scene for ever, they had done two extraordinary things. They had broken to pieces in plain battle on an English meadow the chivalry of a great nation, bred from its youth to arms. And they had brought forth from the agony a small book, called The Pilgrim’s Progress, which was greater literature than the whole contemporary culture of the great Renaissance, founded on three generations of the worship of learning and art” (Belmonte, p. 206).

To reapply Chesterton from another context, there are certain things a man might want to oppose, but honesty would constrain him to do it without patronizing. And I would argue that the monuments to Puritan literary achievements should be, at the very least, in that category.

“Reformation was less a shopping-list of demands than the choreography for a new dance” (Matheson, p. 9).

All of this has applications for our own time.

“The new vogue for dialogue, satire and narrative history gave priority to story-telling, to the via rhetorica over the via dialectica; conversation, intuition and empathetic imagination took over from logic, paradox from syllogism, open disputations in the ‘public square’ from magisterial pronouncements behind closed doors. These are not just matters of style and form. They point to a fundamentally new way of perceiving and presenting the truth” (Matheson, The Imaginative World of the Reformation, p. 28).

When the Reformation broke out, as Matheson argues persuasively, it was a revolution of the imagination. It was not a matter of one dusty scholastic replacing another, but rather scholastic bores being replaced by the poets and prophets. This state of affairs describes wonderfully the first century (more or less) of the Reformation. Elizabethan Puritans, Tyndale, Luther, and countless others—these men were alive to the grace of God in everything; they were holy, and mischievous. Read over Matheson’s description of the Reformation again. Dialogue. Satire. Narrative. Story-telling. Imagination.

Whatever would we do if the spirit of the reformation broke out once again in our Reformed churches of today. I suspect that the curators would do everything in their power to get it all back into the museum cases. If there were to be another Reformation today, who would be the dialecticians resisting it? Who would be the imaginative poets promoting it? What would they be called? What would they be called three centuries after the fact?

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jon
jon
7 years ago

Speaking of many words…that was a lot of words. Prolific one might even say. But quite a lot of fun. And words and language are such a wonderful heritage.

"A" dad
"A" dad
7 years ago

So…..in other words,…..real puritans were really good at “Calvinball”?
????

Nord357
Nord357
7 years ago
Reply to  "A" dad

That was funny!

andrewlohr
andrewlohr
7 years ago

God’s glory is infinite; we all fall short of it; as we understand it better, we may reflect it better; so there’ll always be room to purify. Let us all be puritans. Pride is sin. Anyone satisfied with what we have now of God’s glory is (expletive deleted); is, well, almost as far off as anyone unthankful to Him for what we have now. Just because we’ve written books of Scripture and seen the 3rd Heaven does not mean we’ve yet taken hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold on us. (Just because we have great Calvinist theology… Read more »

Dave Voetberg
Dave Voetberg
7 years ago

Recently ordered Bunyan’s Complete Works & I’m really looking forward to digging in. Even outside of Pilgrim’s Progress, I find his writings to be very engaging & enriching. A breath of fresh intellectual & literary air. His way with words concerning the gospel has served as a means of upbuilding the health of my soul much. Thankful for men like him. Thank you for the article, Mr. Wilson.

jillybean
jillybean
7 years ago
Reply to  Dave Voetberg

I love Bunyan. I like to wonder how many faithful Christian souls over the centuries have faced their deaths bravely by thinking of Christiana: “Then she called for old Mr. Honest, and said of him, ‘Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!’ Then said he, I wish you a fair day when you set out for Mount Sion, and shall be glad to see that you go over the river dry-shod. But she answered, Come wet, come dry, I long to be gone; for however the weather is in my journey, I shall have time enough when I… Read more »

Douglas Michael Singer
Douglas Michael Singer
7 years ago

Pr. Wilson, a little off topic, but staying with the Puritans: what do you think of Thomas Brooks? Is he a solid theologian from which to draw wisdom (specifically, “Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices”)?

Andrew Kelly
Andrew Kelly
7 years ago

I think you mean Michael Wigglesworth. Smith Wigglesworth was a pentecostal British faith healer of the late 1800s / early 1900s – the one who punched someone in the stomach and declared, “I didn’t punch you, I punched the devil.”

John Callaghan
John Callaghan
7 years ago

I believe that was the best defense of the Puritans that I’ve read. Just a few points in rebuttal. 1) The dynamic that you describe: “They carried everything before them, but before you could blink, they found themselves being represented by other “Puritans” who were recognizable in the popular caricature.” is a familiar feature of most revolutions. The intellectuals and revolutionaries who thought and fought to liberate peasants and workers in France and Russia by destroying the old order saw their goals of Liberté, égalité, fraternité give way to the guillotine and the gulag. 2. The Soviet Union produced Solzhenitsyn… Read more »

Andy
Andy
7 years ago

Addressing the first part, I’m interested in comparing the Scrooby Separatists (Pilgrims) to what became the more prominent, Puritan Mass. Bay Colony. Have you written on this – or does anyone else know if he’s written on this – or could anyone point me to writings on this? And it seems maybe there could be some helpful comparisons between the Pharisees and Pilgrims. It seems the Pilgrims were only interested in separating from culture (even Holland wasn’t good enough for them because, among other reasons, Pilgrim children were beginning to…speak DUTCH!) and the Puritans were interested in influencing all of… Read more »

John Callaghan
John Callaghan
7 years ago

Some of those C.S. Lewis quotes are really very deceptively edited. Read in context, they argue against your thesis. For example, the quote you give from page 43 of English Literature in the 16th Century starts with a sentence from page 42: Many surrendered to, all were influenced by, the dazzling figure of Calvin. It ought to be easier for us than for the nineteenth century to understand his attraction. He was a man born to be the idol of revolutionary intellectuals; an unhesitating doctrinaire, ruthless and efficient in putting his doctrine into practice. Though bred as a lawyer, he… Read more »

"A" dad
"A" dad
7 years ago
Reply to  John Callaghan

J’, isn’t “moral severity” way better than immoral severity,
Or any other version of Pharisee severity, Roman or otherwise ?
Isn’t one of the “problems” with God, that He Rules with “moral severity”?
Righteousness often gets a bad rap in the context of popularity contests!????

John Callaghan
John Callaghan
7 years ago
Reply to  "A" dad

C.S. Lewis disagrees:

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.

The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth.” (God in the Dock)

"A" dad
"A" dad
7 years ago
Reply to  John Callaghan

Generally speaking, Puritan rule was “public”, as opposed to monarchical or papal.
I get what Lewis is saying in your quote, but I don’t think Lewis is saying Calvin was a tyrant, are you?????

A good example of a semi “omnipotent moral busybody”
would be Ryan Sather, not John Calvin.
(Sorry about putting them in the same sentence !) ????

John Callaghan
John Callaghan
7 years ago
Reply to  "A" dad

Sorry for the delayed reply. I have not interacted with Ryan Sather myself, so I had to dig a bit to understand the reference. Here’s what I’ve gathered from my reading: It seems that Ryan Sather’s beef with Doug Wilson is that he thinks our host here represents a corrupt and discredited form of Christianity. In Sather’s view, Wilson’s version of Christianity has lost the original gospel message (especially as relates to race and poverty). Wilson, for his part, appears to have replied to the younger man’s charges calmly. He has laid out his case without obvious bitterness or anger.… Read more »

"A" dad
"A" dad
7 years ago
Reply to  John Callaghan

John, thanks for your response! Sounds like we both value aspects of puritans, and have minor differences on what their deficiencies might be.

John Callaghan
John Callaghan
7 years ago
Reply to  "A" dad

The original Puritans, as C.S. Lewis shows, were the polar opposite of conservative and libertarian. I am sure many of them were personally admirable individuals. Their political programs, though, were nothing short of disastrous. Doug Wilson did a skillful job of directing the blame for that towards their grandchildren. The main problem with his theory is that their worst aspects can be traced all the way back to Calvin’s Geneva. Chesterton, of course, said it best: “The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right.” but Doug Wilson recognizes the problem too… Read more »

"A" dad
"A" dad
7 years ago
Reply to  John Callaghan

J’, the mayflower pilgrims were pretty conservative and libertarian .
Our issue is, how do we define several hundred years of history into a sound bite? For example, I am an Anerican, this does not mean that I am just like Barak Obama! ????

Dunsworth
Dunsworth
7 years ago
Reply to  John Callaghan

But Lewis in that quote is talking about a severity unmoored from law, the dominant ethic of which is “I am doing this for your good, and I am the judge of that.” This is quite different from actual moral severity, which is rooted in fixed morality and cannot go beyond the bounds of what that morality requires one man to require of another. Calvin, being absolutely committed to defining his legal structure by biblical requirements, is particularly immune to that charge, I think, whatever other criticisms he may be open to. A moral ruler and a moral busybody are… Read more »

John Callaghan
John Callaghan
7 years ago
Reply to  Dunsworth

The phrase “actual moral severity” puts me in mind of this account: The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such. What do you say about her?” This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up… Read more »

jillybean
jillybean
7 years ago
Reply to  John Callaghan

I’m not sure that is entirely fair. I took Jane to mean fixity of moral principle, not a permanent rejection of mercy in actual practice.

John Callaghan
John Callaghan
7 years ago
Reply to  jillybean

Moral principles are indeed fixed and absolute. The problem is that they have been left in the hands of fallible and fallen creatures to put into practice.

Were someone to propose that the application of all moral laws be personally overseen by Jane, I would be willing to give the proposal some serious consideration. Sadly, Jane (and you as well) are exceedingly rare individuals – and no one even slightly inferior would be fit for the job.

John Callaghan
John Callaghan
7 years ago
Reply to  Dunsworth

Reflecting on the two terms in your final sentence may make the problem clearer. They both employ “moral” as an adjective – but with different default understandings. Think of them in isolation. The term “moral ruler” brings to mind a president, king or queen who is personally moral; a man or woman who strives to do what is right and just in his personal and public life. A “moral ruler” keeps the Ten Commandments. “Moral” here is usually understood as a descriptor of the person’s character, as in: “Moral rulers are in short supply this election year.” The adjective in… Read more »

John Callaghan
John Callaghan
7 years ago
Reply to  John Callaghan

The rest of the quote also reads very differently in context. This type of out-of-context quoting is akin to movie ads that creatively mine critics’ negative reviews to mislead potential viewers as to their actual opinions. Here’s the context (again with emphasis and breaks added): Modern parallels are always to some extent misleading. Yet, for a moment only, and to guard against worse misconceptions, it may be useful to compare the influence of Calvin on that age with the influence of Marx on our own; or even of Marx and Lenin in one, for Calvin had both expounded the new… Read more »

"A" dad
"A" dad
7 years ago
Reply to  John Callaghan

So John, everybody gets that inquisitors were Catholics , but not all Catholics are inquisitors.
In like fashion there were tyrant puritans and “good” puritans . In your opinion, which kind was Calvin?

jillybean
jillybean
7 years ago
Reply to  "A" dad

This Catholic is an inquisitor. I have been chided for my inquisitiveness for as long as I can remember.

"A" dad
"A" dad
7 years ago
Reply to  jillybean

There once was a girl named jilly,
Who could be both brilliant and silly.
We like all her thoughts,
Because they’re well wrought,
And she’s not too pre, or
Post milly????

jillybean
jillybean
7 years ago
Reply to  "A" dad

Love it! It’s been a long time since someone wrote a poem for me!

"A" dad
"A" dad
7 years ago
Reply to  jillybean

Roll over George Herbert ! ????

John Callaghan
John Callaghan
7 years ago
Reply to  John Callaghan

C.S. Lewis seems to have anticipated the objections that are being raised to his descriptions of puritanism. Here is the next paragraph following the two above (with continued modernized paragraphy): Of course not all Calvinists were puritans. Nor am I suggesting that the great fighting puritans who risked ruin and torture in their attack on the bishops were merely conforming to a fashion. We must distinguish a hard core of puritans and a much wider circle of those who were, at varying levels, affected by Calvinism. But a certain severity (however seriously we may take it) was diffused even through… Read more »

jillybean
jillybean
7 years ago

I dearly love the seventeenth century English poets, and their poetry can almost never be appreciated as something distinct from their theology. I very much like juxtaposing works from both the Puritan and Catholic Baroque traditions. Compare Crashaw’s “A Hymn of the Nativity Sung by Shepherds” with Milton’s “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity.” One is all tenderness tipped in gold Baroque; the other is a pearly heavenly light. I disagree with Doug only if his suggestion that there have been no best-selling poets since Kipling means that there have been no poets since then whose works are worth buying.… Read more »

jon
jon
7 years ago
Reply to  jillybean

Thanks for this. It is true, how little these last generations have been exposed to good poetry. I grew up with no poetry in my life, and even a contempt for it. All I had appetite for was prose, and even now it is work to get myself to pull myself from other literature to read it. But yet, I have grown to love it, and my kids as well, but they are an anomaly, I am sure. What poets today would you say are worth reading? I have pretty much confined myself to reading the older poets that I… Read more »

Mark Hanson
Mark Hanson
7 years ago

“…who have not even had a bestselling poet since the time of Kipling?”

Of course, you are forgetting Rod McKuen, America’s bestselling poet by almost any measure. Now you’ll probably quibble with my use of the word “poet”…

jillybean
jillybean
7 years ago
Reply to  Mark Hanson

It is cruel to make me feel sick this early in the day.

MinistryAddict
6 years ago

“seized on by the Puritans’ enemies,” not “Puritan’s enemies”