Puritanism

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: assaults upon the present Bishop of Connecticut, for a charge delivered, in the ordinary course of duty, to the clergy of his own diocese?a prelate who has meekness enough, (if it could be imputed to them, ) to make amiable even reviewers in the testy New Englander. P. S.?With writers like Punchard to deal with, some of my labor might have been spared altogether; for, on further examination, I find him yielding the contested point, without a struggle. He explicitly says, it is evident from this account of Brownism, that, in its essential features, it corresponded with Congregationalism, as since established in New England. (History of Cong., p. 248.) So the Hon. F. C. Gray admits it. He says, in good round terms, Our ancestors were of the strictest sect of the Puritans. ?Mass. Hist. Col. 3d Ser. viii. 198. LETTER III. Having thus sketched, as my limits allow, something of the origin and aim of Puritanism in England, my next object will be to offer some developments, (development being now a fashionable doctrine, ) of its temper and treatment there. Of course I have unavoidably given some hints of these things, in an oblique way already; but the more formal consideration of them is necessary for my purpose, before tracing the career of Puritanism in this land of its ultimate supremacy. The credulity of human nature, respecting those who claim the honor of being persecuted, has been imposed upon, most egregiously, by statements respecting the inoffensiveness of the Puritans, and the ferocity of their opponents. Take such a specimen as the following, from the pen of Dr. Morse, which was long ago reiterated in England, in his own words, (I quote an English edition of his Geography of 1792, ) and has been resounded since on a million of tongues. During the successi...