This page intentionally left blank Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe The Practice of Piety Puritan Devotional Disciplines in Seventeenth-Century New England Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Cultue Williamsburg, Virginia by The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill The Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Cultue is sponsored jointly by The College of William and Mary and The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. This book was the winner of the Jamestown Manuscript Prize for 1980. © 1982 The University of North Carolina Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America First printing, November 1982 Second printing, December 1985 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Hambrick-Stowe, Charles E. The practice of piety. Includes index. i. Spiritual life—History of doctrines—lyth century. 2. Puritans—New England. 3. New England —Religious life and customs. I. Institute of Early American History and Culture (Williamsburg, Va.). II. Title. BV449O.H3 248-4'o974 81-19806 ISBN-IO: 0-8078-1518-7 ISBN-IS: 978-8078-4^5-7 pbk. ISBN-IO: 0-8078-4145-5 pbk. An early form of chapter i appeared in the Journal of Presbyterian History, LVII (1980); and parts of chapter 4 are in the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife, Annual Proceedings, IV (1979). THIS BOOK WAS DIGITALLY MANUFACTURED. For John von Rohr and David D. Hall and for Elizabeth A. Hambrick-Stowe This page intentionally left blank Preface Historians have long treated New England Puritanism as an intellectual and a social movement. At its heart, however, Puritanism was a devotional movement, rooted in religious experience. This book deals with the form, content, and spiritual impact of the worship I and private devotional activity of seventeenth-century New Englanders. In this study I am attempting to write what Catherine Albanese has recently called, though perhaps with a different method in mind, "inner history." The history of religious experience is related to tradi- tional intellectual and social history, to the study of literature, and to church history. It is kin to a great tradition in Roman Catholic his- toriography, exemplified by Pierre Pourrat's four-volume Christian Spirituality. At the same time, my study of New England spirituality at- tempts to honor recent demands, arising out of the American Studies approach to interdisciplinary research, that historians should write not only of elites but also of common folk and popular mentality. The history of personal experience at the popular level is obviously more difficult to write than conventional institutional or even social history. We are dependent on diaries, spiritual autobiographies, medi- tative poetry, and other private writings. These are primarily (though not exclusively) the product of social elites. But evidence suggests that in seventeenth-century New England the gap between elite and popu- lar culture was not wide. In many areas of religious life, clergy and populace inhabited the same cultural world. The private writing that survives pertinent to devotional practice is, I have good reason to believe, broadly reflective of common experience. Glimpses into the religious experience of folk, as recorded, for example, in the confes- sions of faith of individuals joining the Cambridge Church, show it to be of a piece with the personal religious experience of their pastor, Thomas Shepard himself, or of Anne Bradstreet and Cotton Mather. Historians of Puritanism have relied heavily on the ministry's pub- lished sermons for insight into the religious beliefs of the movement. I have read these again with an eye to the neglected area of their de- votional content and advice. But another genre altogether has been much less studied and opens a window into the nature of Puritanism. viii Preface Devotional manuals were an important part of the Puritan movement from the late sixteenth century onward, a product of the demand for pious reading matter that widespread Protestant literacy created. Such manuals were brought to New England with the immigration, were imported continually thereafter, and by the second half of the seven- teenth century were being published in Cambridge and Boston. Social historians with an interest in counting will ask certain questions: Precisely how many households owned these manuals? How many of the individuals who owned them actually used them? I have not at- tempted this research. Even if we knew the answer to the first ques- tion, the second, I am sure, is unanswerable. Still, the manuals can be trusted as revelations of popular experience for two reasons. First, the model forms of meditation and prayer contained in the manuals correspond closely with surviving records of private experience. Sec- ond, the manuals were written in a popular style, were published in large and numerous editions, and were widely disseminated. From diary references to their use and from the shabby condition of the rare extant copies, we may infer they were heavily used. Taken to- gether, the private writings and the printed devotional manuals pro- vide a fuller picture of personal and religious experience at a popular level than one might expect. Evidence from other types of popular publications, such as captivity narratives and almanacs, sheds further light on the themes of devotional practice that emerge from the his- torical study of manuals, private writing, and sermons. This book seeks to supplement certain commonly held ideas about New England religion in the seventeenth century and to correct others. Puritanism was as affective as it was rational, and Puritans were as wont to withdraw into contemplative solitude as they were to be active in the marketplace. Indeed, the particular forms of public worship and the characteristic private devotional exercises were what made a Puritan a Puritan. My interest in these exercises is a new departure in that scholars have usually maintained that early seventeenth-century New En- glanders were especially hostile to "technique," because they were ra- tionalists, were chained by an inordinate doctrine of Original Sin, or were passively dependent on the unmanipulatable will of God. But Puritans did engage in devotional exercises quite similar to those of their Catholic forebears, contemporaries, and adversaries. Devotional methods were not, as Perry Miller believed, desperate late-century in- novations. Rather, they were integral to Puritan spirituality through- out the century. And formal meditation on the sublime joys of heaven, with the resulting ecstasy, was not, contrary to Louis Martz's thesis, Preface ix introduced only in the second half of the century; it was part of Puri- tan practice from the start. I have found that despite extensive social change in the seventeenth century, devotional practice remained es- sentially the same. The changes that were introduced in the second half of the century were no more than minor modifications of existing practice, intended to secure continuity by revitalizing traditional methods and themes. Conversion, which has rightly commanded much scholarly atten- tion, was only one part, the onset, of the devotional life. Most of my discussion focuses on post-conversion experience. The order of re- demption, heretofore associated only with conversion, characterized the more advanced exercises and experiences as well. The major metaphor of the pilgrimage of the soul through ascending stages to heaven provided an interpretive framework for the ongoing life of worship, meditation, and prayer. In the state of grace progress on the pilgrimage was more important than spiritual rest, suggesting a dy- namic understanding of devotional activity as preparation for salva- tion. Salvation in Puritan spirituality was not a fully achieved state but always a journey and a goal: Resurrection from the world in union with Christ after death. I interpret the important topic of prepara- tionism more broadly than has usually been the case in the debate over human ability in the first stages of conversion. This book is the result of my dual calling as a historian and a pastor. In colonial New England it was the scholar-pastor—Thomas Prince and Cotton Mather were only the most notable—who took upon himself the task of recording and interpreting his people's history. Conscious of the high quality of their work and that twentieth-century historians rely upon it to a remarkable extent, in humility I follow in their steps. That I write in service to both the Church and the secular community of historians is partly a reflection of my own interests. It is also indicative of the breakdown of the academic monopoly on schol- arship that has prevailed since the late nineteenth century. As univer- sities find they are less and less able to contain the flood of graduates from their own doctoral programs, we can look forward hopefully to a reintegration of learning with the community outside the walls of academe. I am indebted to many people, three of whom are named in the dedication, and to several institutions. John von Rohr excited me about church history, introduced me to Thomas Hooker and the Puri- tans, and stimulated my first research at the Holbrook Library, Pacific School of Religion, a decade ago. Fr. James Hennesey wanted to know x Preface what the differences were between Puritan and Roman Catholic spiri- tuality. At Boston University, where I completed an earlier version of this book as a doctoral dissertation, Norman Pettit, Cecelia Tichi, Ellen Smith, and Susan Geib shared insight, encouragement, and support. The primary influence of David Hall is, I am sure, evident throughout. I can hardly overstate my appreciation and respect for him as a teacher and advisor. Harold Worthley helped make the Con- gregational Library in Boston a most congenial place for research. I appreciate the help I received at the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Boston University Libraries, the New England Historic Genealogi- cal Society, the American Antiquarian Society, the Union Theological Seminary, and the Folger Shakespeare Library. I am enormously grateful to the Jamestown Prize Committee of the Institute of Early American History and Culture for its 1980 award, and to Norman Fiering and his staff for vigorous and wise editing. The Consistory and people of St. Paul's United Church of Christ, Westminster, Mary- land, have been very supportive of this work over the past two years. Elizabeth is the one without whose constant presence at each stage along the way this book could not have been written, and whose loving companionship on the "parfit glorious pilgrimage" makes the journey exciting.