Chapter 8
PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS OF MORAL PURIFICATION
IN ELIZABETHAN AND PURITAN ENGLAND
Martin Luther’s Reformation movement against the Church of Rome in the early part of the sixteenth century set down the first important doctrines for the Protestant Reformation. Among them were some political principles. Politics, however, was not the prime concern of his thought. The revolt that Luther unleashed let loose a broad stream of reformers of all kinds. The only thing they had in common was a desire for change; hence the mode and motto of the age were reformation and purification.
England’s geographical situation made it more independent from Rome, especially after Henry VIII’s noisy rupture in 1534 with the Rome Catholic Church which gave Protestantism a safe haven and both civil and theological acceptability in England.
England became the place where the Protestant principles were carried to their ultimate political test in the brief reign of Puritanism (1649-1660), which had overthrown the monarchy. By colonizing New England in the early seventeenth century, the Puritan exiles set the stage for experiment in North America.
England was also a land in which independent and sometimes even iconoclastic thinking and expression was generally allowed. The most advanced original English thinker of the age is Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) -- the Renaissance Man personified. Though he was a lover of order and aphorism, he tried to be cautious against over-systematization, superficial cleverness, and other flaws in thought and action, so as to gain a full and clearer understanding of the world as it was, comprising both nature and human society.
Bacon’s intellect tended toward purifying the dross. He called people to “ward off and expel idols.” He named them: “The idols of the tribe are inherent in human nature and the very tribe or race of man”; “the idols of the market, from the commerce and association of man with each other”; finally, “the idols of the theatre: for we regard all the systems of philosophy hitherto received or imagined, as so many plays brought out and performed, creating fictions and theatrical worlds.” 1
Bacon proposed that people needed to develop a new logic in order to discover the “forms” of simple nature, and to collect a comprehensive natural history. Since his main concern was to advance in scientific knowledge in general, he left to others around him much of consideration regarding the proper conduct of political life and morality. Yet ultimately the modern science he helped to formulate would have benefitted from giving a better attention to both.
The Puritan Age and Puritan Ideas
The paradigm of the Age of Reformation was moral consciousness. It became a driving force behind the new social, political, and economic movements. Because the Bible was made available to the common people for the first time in history, through translations that were then conveyed into printed books, Christians could access standards for making moral judgments, on their rulers (including priests as well as kings) as well as themselves.
Since the Bible appeared in translations into vernacular English, circulating rapidly and widely. Everyone who could read therefore might make his own interpretation of the Bible’s instructions. Not only did this new, direct relationship between individuals and God result in the growth of individualism in religious thought, but it also brought on the spirit of independence in church polity and democracy in politics. 2 This implies that for the good of the commonwealth, the people have as much right as the magistrates to purge the evil, whoever that might be. Underlying this theory is the danger that if everyone assumes he is as good as his master, it may be permissible to exercise tyrannicide. Unpopular monarchs might then face ceaseless rebellions.
John Knox (1514-1572) was a chief foster father of English Puritanism. The Presbyterian Church, originally the Church of Scotland, evolved from his theological and political tenets. In 1554 Knox had issued his Faithful Admonition. It “included a direct attack upon the Queen [Mary Tudor] as more bloodthirsty than Jezebel.” 3 Instead of stressing the obedience of subject citizens, “pray for a Jehu to remedy the situation,” 4 Knox at this point referred to the Old Testament military chief-captain of Israel, who engineered a coup, killed Queen Jezebel and purified the nation. One can easily understand why Elizabeth (reigning from 1558 to 1603) regarded Puritans as a dangerous revolutionary force within her kingdom and therefore never showed her favor to this thought and sect.
In its early period especially, Puritan theology differed little from other sects of Protestants. Justification by faith, the Bible as the only supreme authority for Christian thought, Christ as the only mediator between God and mankind – these doctrines were (and are) generally shared by all Protestants. But the Puritans, significantly, stressed the additional concept of Purification.
According to the Puritans, God’s Elect are the true Christians -- saved by God’s implanted grace and motivated by an in-dwelling Holy Spirit. Having obtained salvation and sanctification, these saints are predestined for good works in society.
There is always the question of how pure saints should dwell within an impure world. Some people enter monasteries to escape from the world, leading an ascetic life that is cut off from the impure. Others find the only hope rested on the new Jerusalem, the new Heaven and new Earth to come. The Puritans prescribed another way: to live a pure life on Earth, and to treat the daily experiences of life as a process of purifying oneself. 5
“Thus saith the LORD” was no longer a phrase that belonged to a privileged few, who uttered it as God’s oracles, but to everyone who could read the Bible. Consequently, when Puritanism emerged in England, it was not only a religious or philosophical concept, but one that had everything to do with daily life. 6 Puritanism 7 was a sect of Protestantism that originated in sixteenth-century England. 8 Its aim was the immediate and thorough reformation and purification of Church polity and religious practice from anything not specifically authorized by Scriptures. Puritans therefore enjoined the strictest purity in every walk of daily life.
As time passed, the Puritans grew in number. By the time Elizabeth ascended the throne in 1558, the spirit of this segment of society had acquired considerable power -- even though it had not yet acquired its distinctive, special name. Less than a year after Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, the advocates of political reform made a vocal political stand:
A joint statement of faith presented to the Queen by returning exiles… contained such phrases as these: A tyrant or evil magistrate… is a power ordained of God, and is also to be honoured and obeyed of the people in all things not contrary to God, as their magistrate and governor. It is not lawful for any private person or persons to kill, or by any means to procure the death of, a tyrant or evil person, being the ordinary magistrate. All conspiracies, seditions, and rebellions, of private men, against the magistrates, men or women, good governors or evil, are unlawful and against the Will and Word of God. 9
This statement, interestingly, unlike the standard oath of allegiance taken by subjects to their newly enthroned queen, voiced that: 1) private citizens, including Christians, should obey their liege so far as such action is “not contrary to God”; 2) private citizens shall not kill any persons, so they should not kill their ruler, thus implying a sense of equality of ruler and ruled, giving no special status to those holding office; 3) Parliament may have the right to deal with a tyrant; and 4) God is above the ruler. However, the crucial point made was that if the civil government or ruler is ever “contrary to God,” then the people are not obliged to obey and can act on their liberty of conscience.
But how does one know God’s Will? Both God’s Word -- the Bible -- and His Will leave much room for interpretation. Luther’s principles stressed justification by faith, the Bible as the source of Christian knowledge, and Christ alone as the mediator, not the prelacies. This claim had significant political implication.
The year of 1569 is a landmark in the growth of Puritanism, for in that year many Puritans turned to Presbyterianism, in part doubtless because they now thought of the bishops as their opponents. 10
Even so, there were people among the Puritans who showed their moderate stand. Instead of arguing on church polity, they emphasized on the purifying of the “two pestilent fountains, self-love and ambition,” 11 by pointing out these vices as most fearful, able to “wound and destroy the society of the saints and the polity of kingdoms.” 12 That is to say, though the majority of Puritans shifted their theological stand towards Calvinism, their central concept of purification remained. For John Knox, John Hooper and Thomas Cartwright to William Perkins, Thomas Gataker, Thomas Hooker, and even John Milton, this concept was generally held true and unvarying.
Generally speaking, the earlier Puritans sought reform within the Anglican Church. Their revolutionary attitude only appeared in the later period, when they began to make political declarations and then become involved in forcing changes in religious practices, in public morality, and in the government.
The Puritan Revolt in seventeenth-century England resulted in the capture and eventually beheading of King Charles Stuart II. To justify this regicide, poet John Milton, as Latin Secretary of the Protectorate government, penned The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, Eikonoklasles, and The Second Defense of the People of England. 13 The Puritans tended to regard this deed as necessary to purify morally a corrupt political state.
The concept of purification is not altogether unknown in the Bible. 14 But for the Puritans it was extremely important, serving as a central concept to synthesize different theological and philosophical views and to draw the people of different thoughts together. It takes away people’s resistance to and fear of change, by assuring them that purifying is not a degenerate change, but a path of evolution, a means of getting rid of the dross and moving toward a promising perfect ideal. Thus emerged the twin concepts of individual purification and social purification, which were easily adapted to St. Augustine’s City of God, the historic conception of progress which underlay the climate of opinion of the Tudor-Stuart era.
Purification is a powerful idea because: 1) it offers a hope of perfection and removes people’s mental inertia, making “change” not only desirable but irresistible; 2) it elevates the criteria of right and wrong above the old criteria of degree and order; 3) it links the theology and ethics of Christian conduct with political philosophy. This important development finds varied expression in the literature of the age, not only among the Puritans, but in the other camps as well.
The significance of this concept, I believe, led to a change in the dominating concern for the social order, to a concern for the moral health of individuals. That is to say, the concept of the Great Chain of Being, or, the Ladder to All High Designs, gradually loses its power. Instead of seeing society as a collective body requiring order, right and wrong become essentially an individual moral concern. Vice, regardless of the social or political position of its agent, needs to be purged. Therefore, the need for moral purification became a significant part of the thought and expression of the age and the century that succeeded it.
We can look now for evidence in English literature, from the sixteenth through the seventeenth centuries, for the concept of moral purification. Just as the ethical ideas within Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism, which included a form of moral purification, were spread in China through literary works, so in England we might expect to see the Puritans’ emphasis on purification promoted from the pulpit, but also expressed in more private and personal forms, such as poetry.
However, subtle traces of it can also be encountered in unexpected quarters.
Notes for Chapter 8
1. Francis Bacon, Novum Organum. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1984, pp. 109-110.
2. D. M. Lloyd-Jones, The Puritans: Their Origins and Successors. Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1987, pp. 150-152.
3. Lloyd-Jones, The Puritans, p. 116.
4. Cf. Lloyd-Jones, The Puritans, p. 117. But Knox’s suggestion of revolution implied divine leadership of an unusual and extraordinary type. He did not think in terms of a popular or national uprising without such assistance. The message which made James I furious and led him to denounce The Geneva Bible was its note on Exodus 1:19, “Their disobedience herein was lawful; which referred to the midwives fearing God and disobeying Pharaoh; and in vs. 20-21: “God therefore prospered the midwives… and because the midwives feared God, therefore He made them houses.” Another note that did no little to irritate His Majesty was “on II Chronicles 15:16, which stated that King Asa’s mother should have been executed, and not merely deposed, for her idolatry.” Such was the spirit of Puritanism. q.v. Bruce, History of The Bible in English, pp. 96-97.
5. Max Weber sees this Puritan “Worldly asceticism” as attributing to the rise of capitalism. Cf. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958, ch. IV, pp. 95-154.
6. “Puritans [were] noted for a spirit of moral and religious earnestness that determined their whole way of life, and they sought through church reform to make their lifestyle the pattern for the whole nation.” q.v. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1984.
7. The term “Puritan,” was first used by a Catholic, Thomas Stapleton. It seems to have occurred in Catholic attacks on the official Anglican policy statement. In an attack on Jewel, Nowell and the Protestant’s claim to represent the primitive church in general; Stapleton referred to “the Puritans” and the vestment controversy in a book published in 1565. Cf. Leonard J. Trinterud, Elizabethan Puritanism. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971, p.7.
8. The Puritan movement in England became a dynamic social force in the latter half of the sixteenth-century. William Haller marked its starting at the time of Thomas Cartwright’s expulsion from Cambridge University in 1570. Marshall Mason Knappen, on the other hand, dated the beginning of the Puritan movement as early as 1524, almost right after the Reformation took place in the Continent, and even before England became officially Protestant. In 1524, William Tyndale decided to go to Germany in order to prepare an English translation of the Bible and in the hope of bringing reform to his native country. As to the term “Puritan,” it was used around 1563-1567. D. M. Lloyd-Jones asserted that John Knox was the founder of Puritanism. Cf. William Haller, The Rise of Puritanism. New York: Harper & Row, 1957, p. 5. Marshall Mason Knappen, Tudor Puritanism. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1963, pp. 3-30. D. M. Lloyd-Jones, The Puritans, pp. 260-281.
9. Knappen, p. 172.
10. Everett H. Emerson, English Puritanism: From John Hooper to John Milton. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 1968, p. 15.
11. Emerson, p. 105.
12. Emerson, p. 107.
13. Cf. John Milton, Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes. Indianapolis: Odyssey Press, 1957, pp. 750-838.
14. As to the purification of God’s Elect, it is a subject not uncommon in the Bible, e.g., Malachi, 3:2-3: “He is like a purging fyre, and like fullers sope. He shall sit down to try and fine the siluer.” I Peter, 1:22: “Seing your foules are purified in obeing the trueth through the Spirit…” (quote from The Geneva Bible).