The Failure of the Puritan Community

I. The Consciousness of SinII. The Impossibility of a City on a Hill

1) The Presence of Sin: The True and False Principles of Trade (1639)

2) Compromises with the World: a) The Halfway Covenant b) Sumptuary Laws

III. Land, Class and Community

Terms:

Sumptuary Laws“Spiritual Milk for American Babes” (1646)True & False Principles of Trade (1639)Halfway Covenant (1662)

Themes:

1) Puritans lived with tremendous inner tension. The consciousness of sin always battled with the aspiration toward grace.

2) Their perfect community was doomed to failure. Human imperfections and growing social tensions made it impossible to sustain.

The Tension Within

John Cotton, Spiritual Milk for American Babes (1646) reflects the inner anxieties of Puritanism

John Cotton, 1585-1652

The Impossibility of Puritan Community

"forced worship stinks in God's nostrils“ – Roger

Williams.

Williams arrived in Massachusetts in 1631

and was in exile in Rhode Island by 1636

True & False Principles

Compromises With the World

Solomon Stoddard’s House, Northampton

Stoddard was a major supporter of the Halfway Covenant

Sumptuary Laws Attempted to Control How Puritans Dressed

Land, Class & Community

The Savage Family, a 1779 painting by the New England painter Edward Savage

Within a few generations competition for land undermined the early sense of community.