Nick Bunker - Making Haste from Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World: A New History

A pest, a fanatic, and a hypocrite, worse than a cattle thief: that was a Puritan, said King James I of England. Despite his many talents, the king had many flaws, and we cannot trust him to describe men and women whom he loathed. We have to find a less insulting way to define them, briefly but with fairness. Without such a definition, what follows will make very little sense.

The word Puritan first appeared early in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, in about 1565. Puritans were people who believed that she failed to go far enough when she established a Protestant Church of England. They urged her to abolish every last trace of Roman Catholic ritual that still lingered within it. They also wished to see an end to the hierarchy of bishops that the queen had left intact.

Her Majesty had not the slightest intention of agreeing to these demands. So, if Puritans could not have the kind of official religion they wanted, they chose to look for God in private. As the law required, they went to their parish church every Sunday, but at home they prayed, discussed sermons, and studied the Bible.

Mainly, Puritans read the book of Genesis, the letters of Saint Paul, and the Psalms. In the New Testament, they also paid special attention to the Acts of the Apostles. Here they found the story of the early Church, and a portrait of Christianity in what seemed to be its most authentic form. Free from distortion by popes and cardinals, it offered a model they felt obliged to copy.

Before the English Civil War, almost every single Puritan was also a Calvinist. What did this label signify? It meant that they followed the teachings of the French reformer John Calvin, who died in 1564. A lawyer by training, Calvin began by precisely defining the nature of God. Then, with the austere logic of a judge, he explained the fearful consequences of divinity.

For Calvin, God was an absolute monarch, a king who created the universe and then sustained it at every moment by a supreme act of will. But if God was almighty, and foresaw everything that occurred, then before the beginning of time he must have decided already the fate of each human soul. This was called the doctrine of double predestination.

Like Calvin, English Puritans believed that God had divided the human race in two. Before they were born, those chosen to receive the gift of faith were set apart for eternal life. They were called the elect. The remainder of humanity were doomed to punishment forever. Try as they might, they could never obtain salvation, and so they were known as the lost.

Did these ideas make men and women fatalistic? If human beings could not change the mind of God, why bother with faith, hope, and charity at all? In fact, Calvinists reached the opposite conclusion. If Christians wanted to be sure that they belonged to the elect, it was all the more important to do good deeds and to worship correctly. To persevere in holiness gave them the best evidence that they were saved.

Among the Puritans in England, some of those who persevered the most were a small minority known as Separatists. In terms of theology, they were strict Calvinists too, but they carried Puritan beliefs as far as they would go. They argued that the Church of England was beyond redemption because of its Roman Catholic past. In their eyes, it bore the marks of Satan, not those of Jesus Christ.

Because of this, Separatists felt compelled to do more than read and pray in private. They decided to leave the established Church entirely and set up alternative congregations. Untainted by the influence of Rome, these assemblies would be pure in their membership, and in the way they worshipped. In 1593, Parliament and Queen Elizabeth made Separatism a crime.

Rivers: from Gulf of Maine Watershed Map, Maine State Planning Office, 1991. Canoe routes: from David S. Cook, Above the Gravel Bar (3rd edition, 2007).