To say that the Puritans were very serious thinkers is an understatement bordering on absurdity. This characteristic — a virtue, really — was also the cause of their greatest faults. As much as I want to defend the Puritans and correct popular misconceptions about them, it cannot be denied that they had their faults, and that those faults provide impetus for the slanderous treatment they have received. And it seems to me that an almost pathological seriousness was at the root of all of their failings. In Worldly Saints, Leland Ryken includes a chapter called Learning from Negative Example: Some Puritan Faults. He lists the following (among others):

An Inadequate View of Recreation
The Puritans were opposed to sport on Sundays, and against gambling and certain sports such as cock fighting, but they were certainly not against recreation, as some have concluded. They considered it a good and necessary part of life. They believed this so strongly that in England in 1647, a Puritan-controlled Parliament decreed that on every second Tuesday of the month, all businesses were to be closed from 8 A.M. until 8 P.M. to give workers time for recreation. Ryken writes that American Puritan “Thomas Shepard advised his son at college, ‘Weary not your body, mind, or eyes with long pouring on your book. . . . Recreate yourself a little, and so to your work afresh.’” [Worldly Saints, 190.] The problem with the Puritan view of recreation was that it was entirely utilitarian. They had no appreciation for the enjoyment of leisure as an end in itself. Its sole purpose was to refresh the body and mind for more work. The following statement from William Perkins is typical:

In commanding labour, [God] alloweth the means to make us fit for labour. And therefore . . . he admitteth lawful recreation, because it is a necessary means to refresh either body or mind that we may better do the duties which pertain to us. . . . And therefore recreation . . . serveth only to make us more able to continue in labour. [Ibid.]

Too Many Rules
The Puritans were a disciplined people who enjoyed living well regulated lives. This virtue was carried out so enthusiastically that it often became the vice of legalism. Ryken writes that “such legalism produced false guilt and a loss of discrimination about what constituted a serious sin.” [Ibid, 192.] The diary of sixteen-year-old Nathaniel Mather records,

When very young, I went astray from God. . . . Of the manifold sins which I was then guilty of, none so sticks in my mind as that . . . I was whittling on the Sabbath Day; and for fear of being seen, I did it behind the door. A great reproach to God! a specimen of that atheism that I brought into the world with me. [Ibid.]

Too Many Words
Ryken writes:

The characteristic Puritan style . . . is to take at least wice as many words as possible to express a thought. Like the poets of the Bible (but without their poetic conciseness and artistry), the Puritans seemed to search for ways to say everything at least twice in different words. A random specimen [Richard Sibbes] of such redundancy is this:

God hath placed us in the world to do him some work. This is God’s working place; he hath houses of work for us: now, our lot here I to do work, to be in some calling . . . to work for God.” [Ibid., 194.]

[Ibid., 194.]

Too Much Pious Moralizing
It seems they could not simply enjoy a worldly pleasure without finding some moral to teach or adding a theological qualifier. Ryken writes, “When Cotton Mather’s children fell sick, he would remind them of ‘the analogous distempers of their souls’ and instruct them ‘how to look up unto their great Saviour for the cure of those distempers.’” [Ibid.] John Winthrop wrote to his wife “that she was ‘the chiefest of all comforts under the hope of salvation.’” [Ibid.]

My own analysis is that legitimate criticisms of the Puritans can all be boiled down to two causes: the chronic seriousness already mentioned, and a proclivity for taking every good thing to the most absurd extreme. It must also be noted that the most extreme examples are not necessarily representative of the Puritans in general. Ryken concludes:

   I know of no group that has been more victimized by what today we would call its “lunatic fringe” than the Puritans. I refer to individuals whose aberrations made them a liability to the movement or good people whose blunders have been paraded through the years to the discredit of the Puritans. Throughout subsequent history, anyone wishing to discredit the Puritans has found it easy to find material, which is usually far from the norm for Puritanism generally. [Ibid., 201.]

A point that seems to come up continuously regarding biblical interpretation is that of context. The practice of wresting Scripture from its natural setting and interpreting and applying it in a user-friendly manner is nothing new.

The Puritans were as insistent as good scholars today that a given passage in the Bible must be interpreted in its context. One of them wrote, “It is the best rule to come to the understanding of the phrases of Scripture, to consider in what sense they were taken in that country, and among the people, where they were written.” William Bridge added, “If you would understand the true sense . . . of a controverted Scripture, then look well into the coherence, the scope of and context thereof.” William Perkins’s stock questions for a passage were: “Who? to whom? upon what occasion? at what time? in what place? for what end? what goeth before? what followeth?”

—Leland Ryken, Worldly Saints: The Puritans as They Really Were (Academie Books, 1986), 147.

As we have seen, Puritans preachers were diligent scholars, meticulous in their sermon preparation. But they were not show-offs, concerned with demonstrating just how scholarly they were. The purpose of their scholarship was to bring the message to all classes, from the most learned to the most simple.

William Perkins theorized that preaching “must be plain, perspicuous, and evident. . . . It is a by-word among us: It was a very plain sermon: And I say again, the plainer the better.” Richard Sibbes claimed that

truth feareth nothing so much as concealment, and desireth nothing so much as to be laid open to the view of all: when it is most naked, it is most lovely and powerful.

   And Henry Smith said that “to preach simply is not to preach rudely, nor unlearned, nor confusedly, but to preach plainly and perspicuously that the simplest man may understand what is taught, as if he did hear his name.”
   Plain preaching was defined by what it lacked as well as by what it contained. What is avoided was such things as the “heaping up of citations of Fathers, and repeating words of Latin or Greek.” What the Puritans did not want was a pastiche of quotations or an embellished style that called great attention to its own ostentatiousness. For Samuel Torshell it was a sign of bad preaching to “tell you how many Fathers we have read, how much we are acquainted with the schoolmen, what critical linguists we are or the like. It is wretched ostentation.”
   Why did the Puritans dislike the high style in sermons? For one thing, they felt it diverted attention from the content of the sermon to the preacher, for whom the occasion became, in modern parlance, an “ego trip.” In the ostentatious style, said Perkins, “we do not paint Christ, but . . . our own selves.”

—Leland Ryken, Worldly Saints: The Puritans as They Really Were (Academie Books, 1986), 104–105.

In my previous post on the Puritans, I gave them credit for the American system of free enterprise. I even went as far as to call them capitalistic. That does not mean they were greedy opportunists. Capitalists may be greedy and unethical, but greed, corruption, and free enterprise are not inseparably linked, as the Puritans demonstrated. While they believed in a legal economic freedom, they did not believe they were morally free to do business as they pleased.

It has become an axiom of modern business that the goal of business is to make as much profit as possible and that any type of competition or selling practice is acceptable as long as it is legal. The Puritans would not agree. For one thing, they looked upon business as a service to society. “We must therefore think,” wrote John Knewstub, “that when we come to buying and selling, we come to witness our love towards our neighbor by our well dealing with him in his goods.” William Perkins said, “The end of a man’s calling is not to gather riches for himself . . . But to serve God in the serving of man, and in the seeking the good of all men.” —Leland Ryken, Worldly Saints: The Puritans as They Really Were (Academie Books, 1986), 69.

While believing that their labors were a “service to society” for “the good of all men,” they were not concerned with the pursuit of economic equality.

A final force of modern life of which the Puritans would not approve is socialism, whether in its overt form of government ownership or in its subtle form of the welfare state. William Ames wrote, “Ownership and differences in the amount of possessions are ordinances of God and approved by him, Prov. 22:2; 2 Thess. 3:12.” John Robinson commented:

God could, if he would, either have made men’s states more equal, or have given every one sufficient of his own. But he had rather chosen to make some rich, and some poor, that one might stand in need of another, to help another, that so he might try the mercy and goodness of them that are able, in supplying the wants of the rest.

—Ibid., 70.

The Puritans, as we have seen, were industrious, hard-working people. This has led some to paint them as avaricious, materialistic capitalists. It is true that they were capitalistic, and it is them we have to thank (and thank them, I do) for American free enterprise. But it is not at all fair to call them greedy and materialistic. Their view of wealth was much the same as their view of work: that it was ordained by God, and therefore good in itself.

   In affirming the goodness of money, the Puritans found it necessary to defend the legitimate aspects of money against its detractors. William Perkins did so in a sermon an Matthew 6:19-20, in which he listed what Christ did not forbid:

Diligent labor in a main vocation, whereby [a person] provides things needful for himself, and those that depend on him. . . . The fruition and possessions of goods and riches: for they are the good blessing of God being well used. . . . The gathering and laying up of treasure is not simply forbidden, for the word of God alloweth herefor in some respect. 2 Corinthians 12:14.

   The puritans had no guilt about making money; to make money was a form of stewardship. . . . [Richard Baxter wrote]:

If God show you a way in which you may lawfully get more than in another way (without wrong to your soul, or to any other), if you refuse this, and choose a less gainful way, you cross one of the ends of your calling, and you refuse to be God’s steward.

In the broader context of Baxter’s writing on economics, this call for efficiency and productiveness is simply evidence of common sense and a strong sense of wishing to be a good steward of God’s gifts. —Leland Ryken, Worldly Saints: The Puritans as They Really Were (Academie Books, 1986), 58.

Likewise, the Puritans defended the concept of private property:

   The Puritans’ defense of private property was an extension of their belief in the legitimacy of money. William Ames wrote that private property is founded “not only on human but also on natural and divine right.” Elsewhere Ames wrote that there is justice “in the lawful keeping of the things we have.” when John Hull, one of the first merchant princes of Massachusetts, lost his ships to the Dutch, he took consolation in God’s providence: “The loss of my estate will be nothing, if the Lord please join my soul nearer to himself, and loose it more from creature comforts.” but when his foreman stole his horses, Hull took the view that “I would have you know that they are, by God’s good providence, mine.” —Ibid., 59.

While the puritans believed that hard work was godly, and that the success gained thereby was good, it did not follow that success was an automatic sign of godliness, or that poverty was a sign of wickedness.

   If godliness is not a guarantee of success, then the converse is also true: success is not a sign of godliness. This is how the Puritans understood the matter. John Cotton stated that a Christian “equally bears good and evil successes as God shall dispense them to him.” Samuel Willard wrote, “as riches are not evidences of God’s love, so neither is poverty of his anger or hatred.” Samuel Hieron said that just as many of God’s “beloved servants do feel the smart of poverty, so even the most wicked . . . have a large Portion in this life.” —Ibid., 60.

The Puritans believed that wealth was often a temptation and the cause of spiritual downfall. Yet they did not make a virtue of poverty.

   The puritans did not idealize poverty as something to be sought. Contrary to Catholic monastic theory, the Puritans theorized that poverty is no sure way to avoid temptation. Richard Baxter commented:

Poverty also hath its temptations. . . . For even the poor may be undone by the love of that wealth and plenty which they never get: and they may perish for over-loving the world, that never yet prospered in the world.

—Ibid., 61.

Further, the puritans believed that poverty existed to display God’s glory, both through the impoverished, and through the wealthy.

   The Puritans also rejected the ethic of unconcern that is content to let the poor remain poor. In their view, poverty is not an unmitigated misfortune, but it is certainly not the goal that we should have for people. “The rich man by liberality must dispose and comfort the poor,” said Thomas Lever in a sermon. “God never gave a gift,” preached Hugh Latimer, “but he sent occasion at one time or another to show it to God’s glory. As if he sent riches, he sendeth poor men to be helped with it.” Latimer even went so far as to say that “the poor man hath title to the rich man’s goods; so that the rich man ought to let the poor man have part of his riches to help and comfort him withal.”
   On the subject of poverty, then, the Puritans taught that it is sometimes the lot of godly and that it can be a spiritual blessing. It is not, however, meritorious in itself, and poor people require the generosity of people who have resources to help them. —Ibid.

We all know, don’t we, that the puritans hated sex and considered it to be exceedingly sinful. After all, that is what “puritanical” means, isn’t it? Well . . . maybe not. According to Leland Ryken, that attitude belongs to the Roman Catholics, particularly during the middle ages. Rome taught that sex, although less sinful for some than the alternatives, was always sinful, not in the act itself, but in the driving passions and resulting pleasure. This view was held by no less than our beloved Augustine, who commended married couples who abstained from sex!

The Puritans rejected that attitude wholeheartedly, and made no secret of their opposing view. Ryken writes that “When a New England wife complained, first to her pastor, and then to the whole congregation, that her husband was neglecting their sex life, the church proceeded to excommunicate the man.” [Worldly Saints, 39.]

Catholic doctrine had declared virginity superior to marriage; the Puritan reply was that marriage “is a state . . . Far more excellent than the condition of single life.” Many Catholic commentators claimed that sexual intercourse had been the resultof the Fall and did not occur in Paradise; the Puritan comeback was that marriage was ordained by God, “and that not in this sinful world, but in paradise, that most joyful garden of pleasure.”
   . . .
   Given the Catholic background against which they wrote and preached, the Puritans’ praise of marriage was at the same time an implicit endorsement of marital sex as good. They elaborated that point specifically and often. This becomes clearer once we are clued into the now-outdated terms by which they customarily referred to sexual intercourse: “matrimonial duty,” “cohabitation,” “act of matrimony,” and (especially) “due benevolence.”
   Everywhere we turn in Puritan writing on the subject we find sex affirmed as good in principle. [William] Gouge referred to physical union as “one of the most proper and essential acts of marriage.” It was Milton’s opinion that the text “they shall be one flesh” (Gen. 2:24) was included in the Bible

to justify and make legitimate the rites of the marriage bed; which was not unneedful, if for all this warrant they were suspected of pollution by some sects of philosophy and religions of old, and latelier among the Papists.

William Ames listed as one of the duties of marriage “mutual communication of bodies.”
   So closely linked were the ideas of marriage and sex that the Puritans usually defined marriage partly in terms of sexual union. [William] Perkins defined marriage as “the lawful conjunction of the two married persons; that is, of one man and one woman into one flesh.” Another well-known definition was this: Marriage

is a coupling together of two persons into one flesh, according to the ordinance of God. . . . By yoking, joining, or coupling is meant, not only outward dwelling together of the married folks . . . but also an uniform agreement of mind and a common participation of body and goods.

   Married sex was not only legitimate in the Puritan view; it was meant to be exuberant. Gouge said that married couples should engage in sex “with good will and delight, willingly, readily, and cheerfully.” An anonymous Puritan claimed that when two are made one by marriage they

may joyfully give due benevolence one to the other; as two musical instruments rightly fitted do make a most pleasant and sweet harmony in a well tuned consort.

Alexander Niccholes theorized that in marriage “thou not only unitest unto thyself a friend and comfort for society, but also a companion for pleasure.”
   In this acceptance of physical sex, the Puritans once again rejected the asceticism and implicit dualism between sacred and secular that had governed Christian thinking for so long. In the Puritan view, God had given the physical world, including sex, for human welfare.

—Leland Ryken, Worldly Saints: The Puritans as They Really Were (Academie Books, 1986), 42, 43–44.