duty... His whole life he accounted a warfare, wherein Christ was his Captain, his arms, prayers and tears. (^38)
Central to Geree’s description of a Puritan is the strong emphasis on piety.
Significantly, this echoes Lake’s assertion, “I would wish to see Puritanism as a
distinctive style of piety and divinity.”^39 Other scholars have advanced the premise
that at the heart of it “Puritanism was a devotional movement, rooted in religious
experience.”^40 Further, the Puritans were concerned about reforming the devotional
life of the Church and encouraging a more passionate experimental relationship with
the Triune God. Therefore, for the purpose of this thesis Puritanism in the
seventeenth-century refers to those who were nonconformists as well as some
conformists who worked towards a continuing reformation of piety and were known
as the godly demonstrating a penchant for affectionate practical divinity.
Further, some scholars have sought to classify Puritans more specifically into
different categories. According to Jerald Brauer Puritans can be divided into four
different streams of piety: legalist (that Brauer names nomism), evangelical,
rationalist, and mystical.^41 Brauer maintains this approach of classification is helpful
because “[t]ypology is a heuristic tool that enables a historian to account for obvious
differences and to distinguish between figures in the same movement.”^42 Less rigidly
Janice Knight has simplified the field by reducing it to two categories: “Intellectual
Fathers” who were represented by Thomas Hooker, Thomas Shepard, and William
(^38) Geree, Character of English Puritan (^) , 1-6.
(^39) Lake, “Defining Puritanism---again?” 6, cf. 4. See also Collinson, “Puritans.” s.v.,
3:368. 40
Hambrick-Stowe, Practice of Piety, vii, cf. 23, 38, 53, 113. cf. Packer, Quest for
Godliness, 28; Dewey Wallace, Spirituality of Later Puritans, xi; and Haller, Rise of
Puritanism 41 , 9.
42 Brauer, “Types of Puritan Piety,” 42, 44 Brauer, “Types of Puritan Piety,” 42. - 58.^
axel boer
(Axel Boer)
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