have communion with God; but all of us have played the adulteresses, we have had
our wicked lovers.”^169
Yet another highly significant component of spiritual marriage was the
recognition that if Jesus Christ was the divine Bridegroom then his followers were his
brides. Obviously it would not be difficult for Puritan women to conceptualize
themselves as brides of Christ since they were females. However, the same metaphor
was also applied to men. Porterfield is correct when she states that “a metaphoric
change of gender was required” for males to perceive themselves as brides of
Christ.^170 Moreover, some scholars maintain that gender flexibility or inversion^171
created anguished tension and gender gymnastics for Puritan males.^172 Others allow
too much of the twenty first-century sexual questions to be read into the seventeenth-
century and speak of “homosexual panic” among Puritan males or seek to apply queer
theory to the Song of Songs.^173 Still others read the Puritans as if Freud lived in the
seventeenth-century.^174 Additionally, Longfellow warns that some well-intentioned
(^169) Hooker, Soules Implantation (^) , 31, cf. 151, 230, 247-48, 257, 261, etc. cf. Hooker,
Soules Preparation for Christ, 41, 66, 86. Similar warnings can be found in other
writings of Hooker. (^170) Porterfield, Feminine Spirituality in America (^) , 27.
(^171) Spirituality and gender flexibility has become a very significant topic. Some of the
more helpful writings related to this chapter include Dahill, “Genre of Gender”;
Coffey, Theology and the British Revolutions, 104-110; Mullan, Scottish Puritanism,
140 - 70; Hardman Moore, “Sexing the Soul”; Webster, “Gender Inversion and
Canticles”; Belden Lane, “Two Schools of Desire,” 393-97. cf. fn 79 and fn 145
above. (^172) Westerkamp, “Engendering Puritan Religious Culture,” (^) 115. Webster
acknowledges while it was a major change it did not create anxiety for Puritan males,
“Gender Inversion and Canticles,” 151. Helpfully Hardman Moore adds that this
gender change was not an escape for men. “Sexing the Soul,” 184. 173
Walter Hughes, “Meat Out of the Eater,” 107-19; Leverenz, Language of Puritan
Feeling, 129, 132; Rambuss, Closet Devotions; and Fessenden, Radel and
Zaborowska, eds. 174 Puritan Origins of American Sex.
often veers towards a strong twentieth Leverenz, Language of Puritan Feeling-century psychological reading of the Puritans. , esp. 4, 10-1, 14-15, 20-^2 , 107. Porterfield