https://www.videri.org/api.php?action=feedcontributions&feedformat=atom&user=BillyVideri - User contributions [en]2026-04-06T21:11:24ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.24.1https://www.videri.org/index.php?title=The_Visible_Saints&diff=1881The Visible Saints2015-11-05T21:16:52Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Infobox book<br />
| name = The Visible Saints<br />
| author = Edmund S. Morgan<br />
| publisher = Martino Publishing<br />
| pub_date = 2013<br />
| pages = 160<br />
| isbn = 1614275300<br />
| image = [[File:51o2uFeEgzL__SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg|thumb|200px|alt=cover]]<br />
<br />
The Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea by Edward S Morgan. Publisher: Martino Fine Books (November 6, 2013), 174 pages. <br />
This book is based on a set of lectures that Morgan gave as the Anson G Phelps Lectures delivered at New York University in 1962. He used these lectures as the basis of four chapters of the book and then expanded a little by writing a conclusion chapter. At 174 pages it is a thin book with a thin, but very interesting, story. <br />
What are Visible Saints? The Puritans saw themselves as Visible Saints. Visible saints were godly Christian people who would go to heaven when they died. They took upon themselves the task of demonstrating their sainthood. They started the movement in the 16th century in order to eradicate the remnants of the Catholic Church. They spent part of each day privately praying. They attended church regularly. Although they were interested in their church and being good Puritans they realized that commerce and financial success were important. They, in effect, established in New England the idea of the protestant work ethic: be true to God, pray, and make money. Was this the birth of WASP and the importance of making money? Morgan does not go there.Morgan starts the book by explaining the historical background of the Puritans and the development of their ideas of “Church”. When Henry VIII wanted to marry Anne Boleyn he needed a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, his dead brother’s widow. The Pope frowned on divorce so, in 1534 after Pope Clement VII refused to grant the King a divorce, Henry left the Catholic Church. Henry then allowed the translation of the bible into English. He stripped the monasteries of their wealth and established the Church of England. The church swung back to Rome when Henry’s daughter Mary came on the throne; she was Catherine of Aragon’s daughter and a devout catholic. However, when Elizabeth, another of Henry’s daughters (from his marriage to Anne Boleyn), came on the throne the church swung back from Rome to England. Elizabeth a rather strong queen felt no need for papists or even ardent Protestants. The most ardent of the ardent of the Protestants, the Puritans, wanted more reforms and even greater reforms within by the Church of England. Morgan explains all this as the birth of the Puritan idea.<br />
The Puritans objected to a great number of the ceremonies carried out by the Church of England. They also objected to the very existence of bishops, canon law, and lord bishops. The Puritans set great store by preaching. They “considered this as the principal means ordained by God for instructing people in the real truth revealed by the Scriptures”. The Puritans considered many members of the Church to be ignorant and corrupt. Without good teachers the Church could never move away from Rome and truly value the word of God as explained in the Scriptures.<br />
Morgan explains that although the Puritans were generally united in their views on the wrongs in the Church of England, they still managed to separate into two groups within Protestantism: the Puritans and the Separatists. Where the Puritans wanted to stay and improve the Church of England, the Separatists wanted to leave altogether. They could not accept many of the changes in the church and they could not accept the church’s ways. The Separatists strongest criticism was that the Church of England (the Anglican Church) contained persons unfit to be members of the Church. The church accepted wicked, dissolute people as members. “The Separatists withdrew from the Church of England in order to establish churches of their own in which the membership would more closely approximate that of the invisible church”. “The invisible church consists of an "invisible" body of the elect who are known only to God, in contrast to the "visible church"—that is, the institutional body on earth which preaches the gospel and administers the sacraments. Every member of the invisible church is saved, while the visible church contains some individuals who are saved and others who are unsaved.” Although the Separatist wanted to be separate they, along with the Puritans, saw themselves as Protestants.<br />
The Puritans set sail for Massachusetts in 1630 and founded the Bay Colony. They were preceded in 1628 by a small colony of Separatists who were established at Plymouth. The Puritans quickly established a church somewhat based on Separatist principles and not on the Puritans principles as laid out in England. As Morgan explains this was a new place and it needed new ideas: a better church with more pious members; they needed “saints”. Their principles were: “The new churches rested on a covenant to which all members subscribed; each chose and ordained its own ministers, admitted properly qualified new members, and expelled incorrigible old members”. Thus, although they agreed in part with the Separatist they still believed the Church in England, although corrupt, to be the true church. They did not wish to separate from the church in England and condemned the Separatists for doing so. <br />
Hitherto, as Morgan explains, historians have generally supposed that the main outlines of the Puritan church were determined in England and transplanted to the new world. Morgan suggests, instead, that the distinguishing characteristic of the New England churches—the ideal of a church composed exclusively of true and tested saints—developed fully in the 1630's and 1640's, some time after the first settlers arrived in New England. Thus although it is generally believed that the outlines of the church were determined in England and then transplanted to Massachusetts, Morgan argues that this is not the case. In other words the flow was in the opposite direction. The idea of a church comprised of exclusively of true and tested saints was developed in Massachusetts and sent back to England. One key point of the book is that the Puritan church as founded in New England was developed in the 1630’s and 1640’s after the Puritans arrived in Massachusetts.<br />
Morgan explains how this came about. Thousands of non-separating Puritans arrived during the 1630’s. They were eager to establish their new church. They consulted with their Separatists brethren in Plymouth where they found ideas similar to their own. The non-separating Puritans were ready to ready to establish independent churches of limited membership, similar to the Separatists ideas. Morgan emphasizes that there were few Separatists as compared to the number on non-separating Puritans. The Separatists at Plymouth people gave the Massachusetts churches many ideas on practices and procedures. During this period eighteen churches were set up in Massachusetts alone. The founding of this new Puritan church began with at least seven men (no women) who had to satisfy one another about their knowledge of Christian doctrine and about their experience of saving grace. Once established the church could then admit members. “The prospective candidate was called upon to demonstrate the work of God in his soul”. The practice of testing prospective church members for actual inward "signs" of saving grace, Morgan argues, originated neither with the Separatists in England nor with the Separatists in Plymouth, but in the Bay Colony itself, by the Puritans These tests of suitability evolved over the few years as more migrants came into the Bay Colony. These tests of suitability spread to all the churches in the Bay Colony, eventually finding their way back to England. Hence Morgan’s main point: from Massachusetts to England and not the other way around.<br />
The Massachusetts Puritans did not at first insist upon these tests, but gradually came to require them. The Puritans in Massachusetts, according to Morgan, were the first Puritans to restrict membership in the church "to persons ... who had felt the stirrings of grace in their souls, and who could demonstrate this fact to the satisfactions of other saints”. The practice then spread to the churches of Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven, eventually finding its way back to England. <br />
Faith, as explained, was the indispensable quality of a true church. Explicit church covenants were important: “Let the Church look to her Covenant, and let no member come in but that he Knoweth Christ, and that knoweth he is a Child of Wrath; and let him go on not in his own strength, but in a depending frame on Jesus Christ, then all the world will that you have made an Everlasting Covenant”. As Morgan explains it was not easy to obtain membership to the church. The question was: How to obtain new members as they developed their idea of restricted membership. The churches nearly vanished since there were not enough saints to fill them. They had to gather flock from people in the real world and where in the real world could they find all these saints. The Puritans in England, on the other hand, took a different, a more pragmatic, approach. The church there embraced all the sinners in order to grasp the few saints in it. <br />
Morgan explains that by about 1660 the New England piety was in decline. There was a Declaration of Faith adopted by a meeting of English Congregationalists at the Savoy palace in in London in 1658. The minsters were urged not to “neglect others living within their parochial bounds”. It was suggested that in New England ministers were to attend all in their town. Thus the Puritan idea thus ran its course, an idea that did not last too long. Morgan ends his history on a thinking note: “But as long as men strive to approach God through the church, the world will never seem pure enough for the saints, and the Puritan experience will never be wholly unfamiliar”.<br />
<br />
References.<br />
1) Quotes within the above are from the book.<br />
2) A great variety of websites were used as further reading<br />
http://people.opposingviews.com/did-visible-saint-mean-puritans-7626.html<br />
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Puritans_under_Elizabeth_I<br />
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h573.html<br />
<br />
3) "New England's Great Migration". Lynn Betlock April 2008<br />
4) "The Puritan Migration: Albion’s Seed Sets Sail". Claire Hopley December 2008.</div>Billyhttps://www.videri.org/index.php?title=The_Visible_Saints&diff=1880The Visible Saints2015-11-05T20:53:59Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Infobox book<br />
| name = The Visible Saints<br />
| author = Edmund S. Morgan<br />
| publisher = Martino Publishing<br />
| pub_date = 2013<br />
| pages = 160<br />
| isbn = 1614275300<br />
| image = [[File:51o2uFeEgzL__SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg|200px|alt=cover]]<br />
<br />
The Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea by Edward S Morgan. Publisher: Martino Fine Books (November 6, 2013), 174 pages. <br />
This book is based on a set of lectures that Morgan gave as the Anson G Phelps Lectures delivered at New York University in 1962. He used these lectures as the basis of four chapters of the book and then expanded a little by writing a conclusion chapter. At 174 pages it is a thin book with a thin, but very interesting, story. <br />
What are Visible Saints? The Puritans saw themselves as Visible Saints. Visible saints were godly Christian people who would go to heaven when they died. They took upon themselves the task of demonstrating their sainthood. They started the movement in the 16th century in order to eradicate the remnants of the Catholic Church. They spent part of each day privately praying. They attended church regularly. Although they were interested in their church and being good Puritans they realized that commerce and financial success were important. They, in effect, established in New England the idea of the protestant work ethic: be true to God, pray, and make money. Was this the birth of WASP and the importance of making money? Morgan does not go there.Morgan starts the book by explaining the historical background of the Puritans and the development of their ideas of “Church”. When Henry VIII wanted to marry Anne Boleyn he needed a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, his dead brother’s widow. The Pope frowned on divorce so, in 1534 after Pope Clement VII refused to grant the King a divorce, Henry left the Catholic Church. Henry then allowed the translation of the bible into English. He stripped the monasteries of their wealth and established the Church of England. The church swung back to Rome when Henry’s daughter Mary came on the throne; she was Catherine of Aragon’s daughter and a devout catholic. However, when Elizabeth, another of Henry’s daughters (from his marriage to Anne Boleyn), came on the throne the church swung back from Rome to England. Elizabeth a rather strong queen felt no need for papists or even ardent Protestants. The most ardent of the ardent of the Protestants, the Puritans, wanted more reforms and even greater reforms within by the Church of England. Morgan explains all this as the birth of the Puritan idea.<br />
The Puritans objected to a great number of the ceremonies carried out by the Church of England. They also objected to the very existence of bishops, canon law, and lord bishops. The Puritans set great store by preaching. They “considered this as the principal means ordained by God for instructing people in the real truth revealed by the Scriptures”. The Puritans considered many members of the Church to be ignorant and corrupt. Without good teachers the Church could never move away from Rome and truly value the word of God as explained in the Scriptures.<br />
Morgan explains that although the Puritans were generally united in their views on the wrongs in the Church of England, they still managed to separate into two groups within Protestantism: the Puritans and the Separatists. Where the Puritans wanted to stay and improve the Church of England, the Separatists wanted to leave altogether. They could not accept many of the changes in the church and they could not accept the church’s ways. The Separatists strongest criticism was that the Church of England (the Anglican Church) contained persons unfit to be members of the Church. The church accepted wicked, dissolute people as members. “The Separatists withdrew from the Church of England in order to establish churches of their own in which the membership would more closely approximate that of the invisible church”. “The invisible church consists of an "invisible" body of the elect who are known only to God, in contrast to the "visible church"—that is, the institutional body on earth which preaches the gospel and administers the sacraments. Every member of the invisible church is saved, while the visible church contains some individuals who are saved and others who are unsaved.” Although the Separatist wanted to be separate they, along with the Puritans, saw themselves as Protestants.<br />
The Puritans set sail for Massachusetts in 1630 and founded the Bay Colony. They were preceded in 1628 by a small colony of Separatists who were established at Plymouth. The Puritans quickly established a church somewhat based on Separatist principles and not on the Puritans principles as laid out in England. As Morgan explains this was a new place and it needed new ideas: a better church with more pious members; they needed “saints”. Their principles were: “The new churches rested on a covenant to which all members subscribed; each chose and ordained its own ministers, admitted properly qualified new members, and expelled incorrigible old members”. Thus, although they agreed in part with the Separatist they still believed the Church in England, although corrupt, to be the true church. They did not wish to separate from the church in England and condemned the Separatists for doing so. <br />
Hitherto, as Morgan explains, historians have generally supposed that the main outlines of the Puritan church were determined in England and transplanted to the new world. Morgan suggests, instead, that the distinguishing characteristic of the New England churches—the ideal of a church composed exclusively of true and tested saints—developed fully in the 1630's and 1640's, some time after the first settlers arrived in New England. Thus although it is generally believed that the outlines of the church were determined in England and then transplanted to Massachusetts, Morgan argues that this is not the case. In other words the flow was in the opposite direction. The idea of a church comprised of exclusively of true and tested saints was developed in Massachusetts and sent back to England. One key point of the book is that the Puritan church as founded in New England was developed in the 1630’s and 1640’s after the Puritans arrived in Massachusetts.<br />
Morgan explains how this came about. Thousands of non-separating Puritans arrived during the 1630’s. They were eager to establish their new church. They consulted with their Separatists brethren in Plymouth where they found ideas similar to their own. The non-separating Puritans were ready to ready to establish independent churches of limited membership, similar to the Separatists ideas. Morgan emphasizes that there were few Separatists as compared to the number on non-separating Puritans. The Separatists at Plymouth people gave the Massachusetts churches many ideas on practices and procedures. During this period eighteen churches were set up in Massachusetts alone. The founding of this new Puritan church began with at least seven men (no women) who had to satisfy one another about their knowledge of Christian doctrine and about their experience of saving grace. Once established the church could then admit members. “The prospective candidate was called upon to demonstrate the work of God in his soul”. The practice of testing prospective church members for actual inward "signs" of saving grace, Morgan argues, originated neither with the Separatists in England nor with the Separatists in Plymouth, but in the Bay Colony itself, by the Puritans These tests of suitability evolved over the few years as more migrants came into the Bay Colony. These tests of suitability spread to all the churches in the Bay Colony, eventually finding their way back to England. Hence Morgan’s main point: from Massachusetts to England and not the other way around.<br />
The Massachusetts Puritans did not at first insist upon these tests, but gradually came to require them. The Puritans in Massachusetts, according to Morgan, were the first Puritans to restrict membership in the church "to persons ... who had felt the stirrings of grace in their souls, and who could demonstrate this fact to the satisfactions of other saints”. The practice then spread to the churches of Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven, eventually finding its way back to England. <br />
Faith, as explained, was the indispensable quality of a true church. Explicit church covenants were important: “Let the Church look to her Covenant, and let no member come in but that he Knoweth Christ, and that knoweth he is a Child of Wrath; and let him go on not in his own strength, but in a depending frame on Jesus Christ, then all the world will that you have made an Everlasting Covenant”. As Morgan explains it was not easy to obtain membership to the church. The question was: How to obtain new members as they developed their idea of restricted membership. The churches nearly vanished since there were not enough saints to fill them. They had to gather flock from people in the real world and where in the real world could they find all these saints. The Puritans in England, on the other hand, took a different, a more pragmatic, approach. The church there embraced all the sinners in order to grasp the few saints in it. <br />
Morgan explains that by about 1660 the New England piety was in decline. There was a Declaration of Faith adopted by a meeting of English Congregationalists at the Savoy palace in in London in 1658. The minsters were urged not to “neglect others living within their parochial bounds”. It was suggested that in New England ministers were to attend all in their town. Thus the Puritan idea thus ran its course, an idea that did not last too long. Morgan ends his history on a thinking note: “But as long as men strive to approach God through the church, the world will never seem pure enough for the saints, and the Puritan experience will never be wholly unfamiliar”.<br />
<br />
References.<br />
1) Quotes within the above are from the book.<br />
2) A great variety of websites were used as further reading<br />
http://people.opposingviews.com/did-visible-saint-mean-puritans-7626.html<br />
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Puritans_under_Elizabeth_I<br />
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h573.html<br />
<br />
3) "New England's Great Migration". Lynn Betlock April 2008<br />
4) "The Puritan Migration: Albion’s Seed Sets Sail". Claire Hopley December 2008.</div>Billyhttps://www.videri.org/index.php?title=The_Visible_Saints&diff=1879The Visible Saints2015-11-05T20:52:31Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Infobox book<br />
| name = The Visible Saints<br />
| author = Edmund S. Morgan<br />
| publisher = Martino Publishing<br />
| pub_date = 2013<br />
| pages = 160<br />
| isbn = 1614275300<br />
| image = [[File:51o2uFeEgzL__SX331_BO1,203,203,200_.jpg|200px|alt=cover]]<br />
<br />
The Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea by Edward S Morgan. Publisher: Martino Fine Books (November 6, 2013), 174 pages. <br />
This book is based on a set of lectures that Morgan gave as the Anson G Phelps Lectures delivered at New York University in 1962. He used these lectures as the basis of four chapters of the book and then expanded a little by writing a conclusion chapter. At 174 pages it is a thin book with a thin, but very interesting, story. <br />
What are Visible Saints? The Puritans saw themselves as Visible Saints. Visible saints were godly Christian people who would go to heaven when they died. They took upon themselves the task of demonstrating their sainthood. They started the movement in the 16th century in order to eradicate the remnants of the Catholic Church. They spent part of each day privately praying. They attended church regularly. Although they were interested in their church and being good Puritans they realized that commerce and financial success were important. They, in effect, established in New England the idea of the protestant work ethic: be true to God, pray, and make money. Was this the birth of WASP and the importance of making money? Morgan does not go there.Morgan starts the book by explaining the historical background of the Puritans and the development of their ideas of “Church”. When Henry VIII wanted to marry Anne Boleyn he needed a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, his dead brother’s widow. The Pope frowned on divorce so, in 1534 after Pope Clement VII refused to grant the King a divorce, Henry left the Catholic Church. Henry then allowed the translation of the bible into English. He stripped the monasteries of their wealth and established the Church of England. The church swung back to Rome when Henry’s daughter Mary came on the throne; she was Catherine of Aragon’s daughter and a devout catholic. However, when Elizabeth, another of Henry’s daughters (from his marriage to Anne Boleyn), came on the throne the church swung back from Rome to England. Elizabeth a rather strong queen felt no need for papists or even ardent Protestants. The most ardent of the ardent of the Protestants, the Puritans, wanted more reforms and even greater reforms within by the Church of England. Morgan explains all this as the birth of the Puritan idea.<br />
The Puritans objected to a great number of the ceremonies carried out by the Church of England. They also objected to the very existence of bishops, canon law, and lord bishops. The Puritans set great store by preaching. They “considered this as the principal means ordained by God for instructing people in the real truth revealed by the Scriptures”. The Puritans considered many members of the Church to be ignorant and corrupt. Without good teachers the Church could never move away from Rome and truly value the word of God as explained in the Scriptures.<br />
Morgan explains that although the Puritans were generally united in their views on the wrongs in the Church of England, they still managed to separate into two groups within Protestantism: the Puritans and the Separatists. Where the Puritans wanted to stay and improve the Church of England, the Separatists wanted to leave altogether. They could not accept many of the changes in the church and they could not accept the church’s ways. The Separatists strongest criticism was that the Church of England (the Anglican Church) contained persons unfit to be members of the Church. The church accepted wicked, dissolute people as members. “The Separatists withdrew from the Church of England in order to establish churches of their own in which the membership would more closely approximate that of the invisible church”. “The invisible church consists of an "invisible" body of the elect who are known only to God, in contrast to the "visible church"—that is, the institutional body on earth which preaches the gospel and administers the sacraments. Every member of the invisible church is saved, while the visible church contains some individuals who are saved and others who are unsaved.” Although the Separatist wanted to be separate they, along with the Puritans, saw themselves as Protestants.<br />
The Puritans set sail for Massachusetts in 1630 and founded the Bay Colony. They were preceded in 1628 by a small colony of Separatists who were established at Plymouth. The Puritans quickly established a church somewhat based on Separatist principles and not on the Puritans principles as laid out in England. As Morgan explains this was a new place and it needed new ideas: a better church with more pious members; they needed “saints”. Their principles were: “The new churches rested on a covenant to which all members subscribed; each chose and ordained its own ministers, admitted properly qualified new members, and expelled incorrigible old members”. Thus, although they agreed in part with the Separatist they still believed the Church in England, although corrupt, to be the true church. They did not wish to separate from the church in England and condemned the Separatists for doing so. <br />
Hitherto, as Morgan explains, historians have generally supposed that the main outlines of the Puritan church were determined in England and transplanted to the new world. Morgan suggests, instead, that the distinguishing characteristic of the New England churches—the ideal of a church composed exclusively of true and tested saints—developed fully in the 1630's and 1640's, some time after the first settlers arrived in New England. Thus although it is generally believed that the outlines of the church were determined in England and then transplanted to Massachusetts, Morgan argues that this is not the case. In other words the flow was in the opposite direction. The idea of a church comprised of exclusively of true and tested saints was developed in Massachusetts and sent back to England. One key point of the book is that the Puritan church as founded in New England was developed in the 1630’s and 1640’s after the Puritans arrived in Massachusetts.<br />
Morgan explains how this came about. Thousands of non-separating Puritans arrived during the 1630’s. They were eager to establish their new church. They consulted with their Separatists brethren in Plymouth where they found ideas similar to their own. The non-separating Puritans were ready to ready to establish independent churches of limited membership, similar to the Separatists ideas. Morgan emphasizes that there were few Separatists as compared to the number on non-separating Puritans. The Separatists at Plymouth people gave the Massachusetts churches many ideas on practices and procedures. During this period eighteen churches were set up in Massachusetts alone. The founding of this new Puritan church began with at least seven men (no women) who had to satisfy one another about their knowledge of Christian doctrine and about their experience of saving grace. Once established the church could then admit members. “The prospective candidate was called upon to demonstrate the work of God in his soul”. The practice of testing prospective church members for actual inward "signs" of saving grace, Morgan argues, originated neither with the Separatists in England nor with the Separatists in Plymouth, but in the Bay Colony itself, by the Puritans These tests of suitability evolved over the few years as more migrants came into the Bay Colony. These tests of suitability spread to all the churches in the Bay Colony, eventually finding their way back to England. Hence Morgan’s main point: from Massachusetts to England and not the other way around.<br />
The Massachusetts Puritans did not at first insist upon these tests, but gradually came to require them. The Puritans in Massachusetts, according to Morgan, were the first Puritans to restrict membership in the church "to persons ... who had felt the stirrings of grace in their souls, and who could demonstrate this fact to the satisfactions of other saints”. The practice then spread to the churches of Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven, eventually finding its way back to England. <br />
Faith, as explained, was the indispensable quality of a true church. Explicit church covenants were important: “Let the Church look to her Covenant, and let no member come in but that he Knoweth Christ, and that knoweth he is a Child of Wrath; and let him go on not in his own strength, but in a depending frame on Jesus Christ, then all the world will that you have made an Everlasting Covenant”. As Morgan explains it was not easy to obtain membership to the church. The question was: How to obtain new members as they developed their idea of restricted membership. The churches nearly vanished since there were not enough saints to fill them. They had to gather flock from people in the real world and where in the real world could they find all these saints. The Puritans in England, on the other hand, took a different, a more pragmatic, approach. The church there embraced all the sinners in order to grasp the few saints in it. <br />
Morgan explains that by about 1660 the New England piety was in decline. There was a Declaration of Faith adopted by a meeting of English Congregationalists at the Savoy palace in in London in 1658. The minsters were urged not to “neglect others living within their parochial bounds”. It was suggested that in New England ministers were to attend all in their town. Thus the Puritan idea thus ran its course, an idea that did not last too long. Morgan ends his history on a thinking note: “But as long as men strive to approach God through the church, the world will never seem pure enough for the saints, and the Puritan experience will never be wholly unfamiliar”.<br />
<br />
References.<br />
1) Quotes within the above are from the book.<br />
2) A great variety of websites were used as further reading<br />
http://people.opposingviews.com/did-visible-saint-mean-puritans-7626.html<br />
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Puritans_under_Elizabeth_I<br />
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h573.html<br />
<br />
3) "New England's Great Migration". Lynn Betlock April 2008<br />
4) "The Puritan Migration: Albion’s Seed Sets Sail". Claire Hopley December 2008.</div>Billyhttps://www.videri.org/index.php?title=The_Visible_Saints&diff=1878The Visible Saints2015-11-05T20:49:14Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Infobox book<br />
| name = The Visible Saints<br />
| author = Edmund S. Morgan<br />
| publisher = Martino Publishing<br />
| pub_date = 2013<br />
| pages = 160<br />
| isbn = 1614275300<br />
| image = [[File:51o2uFeEgzL__SX331_BO1,204,204,200_.jpg|200px|alt=cover]]<br />
<br />
The Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea by Edward S Morgan. Publisher: Martino Fine Books (November 6, 2013), 174 pages. <br />
This book is based on a set of lectures that Morgan gave as the Anson G Phelps Lectures delivered at New York University in 1962. He used these lectures as the basis of four chapters of the book and then expanded a little by writing a conclusion chapter. At 174 pages it is a thin book with a thin, but very interesting, story. <br />
What are Visible Saints? The Puritans saw themselves as Visible Saints. Visible saints were godly Christian people who would go to heaven when they died. They took upon themselves the task of demonstrating their sainthood. They started the movement in the 16th century in order to eradicate the remnants of the Catholic Church. They spent part of each day privately praying. They attended church regularly. Although they were interested in their church and being good Puritans they realized that commerce and financial success were important. They, in effect, established in New England the idea of the protestant work ethic: be true to God, pray, and make money. Was this the birth of WASP and the importance of making money? Morgan does not go there.Morgan starts the book by explaining the historical background of the Puritans and the development of their ideas of “Church”. When Henry VIII wanted to marry Anne Boleyn he needed a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, his dead brother’s widow. The Pope frowned on divorce so, in 1534 after Pope Clement VII refused to grant the King a divorce, Henry left the Catholic Church. Henry then allowed the translation of the bible into English. He stripped the monasteries of their wealth and established the Church of England. The church swung back to Rome when Henry’s daughter Mary came on the throne; she was Catherine of Aragon’s daughter and a devout catholic. However, when Elizabeth, another of Henry’s daughters (from his marriage to Anne Boleyn), came on the throne the church swung back from Rome to England. Elizabeth a rather strong queen felt no need for papists or even ardent Protestants. The most ardent of the ardent of the Protestants, the Puritans, wanted more reforms and even greater reforms within by the Church of England. Morgan explains all this as the birth of the Puritan idea.<br />
The Puritans objected to a great number of the ceremonies carried out by the Church of England. They also objected to the very existence of bishops, canon law, and lord bishops. The Puritans set great store by preaching. They “considered this as the principal means ordained by God for instructing people in the real truth revealed by the Scriptures”. The Puritans considered many members of the Church to be ignorant and corrupt. Without good teachers the Church could never move away from Rome and truly value the word of God as explained in the Scriptures.<br />
Morgan explains that although the Puritans were generally united in their views on the wrongs in the Church of England, they still managed to separate into two groups within Protestantism: the Puritans and the Separatists. Where the Puritans wanted to stay and improve the Church of England, the Separatists wanted to leave altogether. They could not accept many of the changes in the church and they could not accept the church’s ways. The Separatists strongest criticism was that the Church of England (the Anglican Church) contained persons unfit to be members of the Church. The church accepted wicked, dissolute people as members. “The Separatists withdrew from the Church of England in order to establish churches of their own in which the membership would more closely approximate that of the invisible church”. “The invisible church consists of an "invisible" body of the elect who are known only to God, in contrast to the "visible church"—that is, the institutional body on earth which preaches the gospel and administers the sacraments. Every member of the invisible church is saved, while the visible church contains some individuals who are saved and others who are unsaved.” Although the Separatist wanted to be separate they, along with the Puritans, saw themselves as Protestants.<br />
The Puritans set sail for Massachusetts in 1630 and founded the Bay Colony. They were preceded in 1628 by a small colony of Separatists who were established at Plymouth. The Puritans quickly established a church somewhat based on Separatist principles and not on the Puritans principles as laid out in England. As Morgan explains this was a new place and it needed new ideas: a better church with more pious members; they needed “saints”. Their principles were: “The new churches rested on a covenant to which all members subscribed; each chose and ordained its own ministers, admitted properly qualified new members, and expelled incorrigible old members”. Thus, although they agreed in part with the Separatist they still believed the Church in England, although corrupt, to be the true church. They did not wish to separate from the church in England and condemned the Separatists for doing so. <br />
Hitherto, as Morgan explains, historians have generally supposed that the main outlines of the Puritan church were determined in England and transplanted to the new world. Morgan suggests, instead, that the distinguishing characteristic of the New England churches—the ideal of a church composed exclusively of true and tested saints—developed fully in the 1630's and 1640's, some time after the first settlers arrived in New England. Thus although it is generally believed that the outlines of the church were determined in England and then transplanted to Massachusetts, Morgan argues that this is not the case. In other words the flow was in the opposite direction. The idea of a church comprised of exclusively of true and tested saints was developed in Massachusetts and sent back to England. One key point of the book is that the Puritan church as founded in New England was developed in the 1630’s and 1640’s after the Puritans arrived in Massachusetts.<br />
Morgan explains how this came about. Thousands of non-separating Puritans arrived during the 1630’s. They were eager to establish their new church. They consulted with their Separatists brethren in Plymouth where they found ideas similar to their own. The non-separating Puritans were ready to ready to establish independent churches of limited membership, similar to the Separatists ideas. Morgan emphasizes that there were few Separatists as compared to the number on non-separating Puritans. The Separatists at Plymouth people gave the Massachusetts churches many ideas on practices and procedures. During this period eighteen churches were set up in Massachusetts alone. The founding of this new Puritan church began with at least seven men (no women) who had to satisfy one another about their knowledge of Christian doctrine and about their experience of saving grace. Once established the church could then admit members. “The prospective candidate was called upon to demonstrate the work of God in his soul”. The practice of testing prospective church members for actual inward "signs" of saving grace, Morgan argues, originated neither with the Separatists in England nor with the Separatists in Plymouth, but in the Bay Colony itself, by the Puritans These tests of suitability evolved over the few years as more migrants came into the Bay Colony. These tests of suitability spread to all the churches in the Bay Colony, eventually finding their way back to England. Hence Morgan’s main point: from Massachusetts to England and not the other way around.<br />
The Massachusetts Puritans did not at first insist upon these tests, but gradually came to require them. The Puritans in Massachusetts, according to Morgan, were the first Puritans to restrict membership in the church "to persons ... who had felt the stirrings of grace in their souls, and who could demonstrate this fact to the satisfactions of other saints”. The practice then spread to the churches of Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven, eventually finding its way back to England. <br />
Faith, as explained, was the indispensable quality of a true church. Explicit church covenants were important: “Let the Church look to her Covenant, and let no member come in but that he Knoweth Christ, and that knoweth he is a Child of Wrath; and let him go on not in his own strength, but in a depending frame on Jesus Christ, then all the world will that you have made an Everlasting Covenant”. As Morgan explains it was not easy to obtain membership to the church. The question was: How to obtain new members as they developed their idea of restricted membership. The churches nearly vanished since there were not enough saints to fill them. They had to gather flock from people in the real world and where in the real world could they find all these saints. The Puritans in England, on the other hand, took a different, a more pragmatic, approach. The church there embraced all the sinners in order to grasp the few saints in it. <br />
Morgan explains that by about 1660 the New England piety was in decline. There was a Declaration of Faith adopted by a meeting of English Congregationalists at the Savoy palace in in London in 1658. The minsters were urged not to “neglect others living within their parochial bounds”. It was suggested that in New England ministers were to attend all in their town. Thus the Puritan idea thus ran its course, an idea that did not last too long. Morgan ends his history on a thinking note: “But as long as men strive to approach God through the church, the world will never seem pure enough for the saints, and the Puritan experience will never be wholly unfamiliar”.<br />
<br />
References.<br />
1) Quotes within the above are from the book.<br />
2) A great variety of websites were used as further reading<br />
http://people.opposingviews.com/did-visible-saint-mean-puritans-7626.html<br />
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Puritans_under_Elizabeth_I<br />
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h573.html<br />
<br />
3) "New England's Great Migration". Lynn Betlock April 2008<br />
4) "The Puritan Migration: Albion’s Seed Sets Sail". Claire Hopley December 2008.</div>Billyhttps://www.videri.org/index.php?title=The_Visible_Saints&diff=1877The Visible Saints2015-11-05T20:46:53Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Infobox book<br />
| name = The Visible Saints<br />
| author = Edmund S. Morgan<br />
| publisher = Martino Publishing<br />
| pub_date = 2013<br />
| pages = 160<br />
| isbn = 1614275300<br />
| image = [[File:51o2uFeEgzL__SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg|200px|alt]]<br />
<br />
The Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea by Edward S Morgan. Publisher: Martino Fine Books (November 6, 2013), 174 pages. <br />
This book is based on a set of lectures that Morgan gave as the Anson G Phelps Lectures delivered at New York University in 1962. He used these lectures as the basis of four chapters of the book and then expanded a little by writing a conclusion chapter. At 174 pages it is a thin book with a thin, but very interesting, story. <br />
What are Visible Saints? The Puritans saw themselves as Visible Saints. Visible saints were godly Christian people who would go to heaven when they died. They took upon themselves the task of demonstrating their sainthood. They started the movement in the 16th century in order to eradicate the remnants of the Catholic Church. They spent part of each day privately praying. They attended church regularly. Although they were interested in their church and being good Puritans they realized that commerce and financial success were important. They, in effect, established in New England the idea of the protestant work ethic: be true to God, pray, and make money. Was this the birth of WASP and the importance of making money? Morgan does not go there.Morgan starts the book by explaining the historical background of the Puritans and the development of their ideas of “Church”. When Henry VIII wanted to marry Anne Boleyn he needed a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, his dead brother’s widow. The Pope frowned on divorce so, in 1534 after Pope Clement VII refused to grant the King a divorce, Henry left the Catholic Church. Henry then allowed the translation of the bible into English. He stripped the monasteries of their wealth and established the Church of England. The church swung back to Rome when Henry’s daughter Mary came on the throne; she was Catherine of Aragon’s daughter and a devout catholic. However, when Elizabeth, another of Henry’s daughters (from his marriage to Anne Boleyn), came on the throne the church swung back from Rome to England. Elizabeth a rather strong queen felt no need for papists or even ardent Protestants. The most ardent of the ardent of the Protestants, the Puritans, wanted more reforms and even greater reforms within by the Church of England. Morgan explains all this as the birth of the Puritan idea.<br />
The Puritans objected to a great number of the ceremonies carried out by the Church of England. They also objected to the very existence of bishops, canon law, and lord bishops. The Puritans set great store by preaching. They “considered this as the principal means ordained by God for instructing people in the real truth revealed by the Scriptures”. The Puritans considered many members of the Church to be ignorant and corrupt. Without good teachers the Church could never move away from Rome and truly value the word of God as explained in the Scriptures.<br />
Morgan explains that although the Puritans were generally united in their views on the wrongs in the Church of England, they still managed to separate into two groups within Protestantism: the Puritans and the Separatists. Where the Puritans wanted to stay and improve the Church of England, the Separatists wanted to leave altogether. They could not accept many of the changes in the church and they could not accept the church’s ways. The Separatists strongest criticism was that the Church of England (the Anglican Church) contained persons unfit to be members of the Church. The church accepted wicked, dissolute people as members. “The Separatists withdrew from the Church of England in order to establish churches of their own in which the membership would more closely approximate that of the invisible church”. “The invisible church consists of an "invisible" body of the elect who are known only to God, in contrast to the "visible church"—that is, the institutional body on earth which preaches the gospel and administers the sacraments. Every member of the invisible church is saved, while the visible church contains some individuals who are saved and others who are unsaved.” Although the Separatist wanted to be separate they, along with the Puritans, saw themselves as Protestants.<br />
The Puritans set sail for Massachusetts in 1630 and founded the Bay Colony. They were preceded in 1628 by a small colony of Separatists who were established at Plymouth. The Puritans quickly established a church somewhat based on Separatist principles and not on the Puritans principles as laid out in England. As Morgan explains this was a new place and it needed new ideas: a better church with more pious members; they needed “saints”. Their principles were: “The new churches rested on a covenant to which all members subscribed; each chose and ordained its own ministers, admitted properly qualified new members, and expelled incorrigible old members”. Thus, although they agreed in part with the Separatist they still believed the Church in England, although corrupt, to be the true church. They did not wish to separate from the church in England and condemned the Separatists for doing so. <br />
Hitherto, as Morgan explains, historians have generally supposed that the main outlines of the Puritan church were determined in England and transplanted to the new world. Morgan suggests, instead, that the distinguishing characteristic of the New England churches—the ideal of a church composed exclusively of true and tested saints—developed fully in the 1630's and 1640's, some time after the first settlers arrived in New England. Thus although it is generally believed that the outlines of the church were determined in England and then transplanted to Massachusetts, Morgan argues that this is not the case. In other words the flow was in the opposite direction. The idea of a church comprised of exclusively of true and tested saints was developed in Massachusetts and sent back to England. One key point of the book is that the Puritan church as founded in New England was developed in the 1630’s and 1640’s after the Puritans arrived in Massachusetts.<br />
Morgan explains how this came about. Thousands of non-separating Puritans arrived during the 1630’s. They were eager to establish their new church. They consulted with their Separatists brethren in Plymouth where they found ideas similar to their own. The non-separating Puritans were ready to ready to establish independent churches of limited membership, similar to the Separatists ideas. Morgan emphasizes that there were few Separatists as compared to the number on non-separating Puritans. The Separatists at Plymouth people gave the Massachusetts churches many ideas on practices and procedures. During this period eighteen churches were set up in Massachusetts alone. The founding of this new Puritan church began with at least seven men (no women) who had to satisfy one another about their knowledge of Christian doctrine and about their experience of saving grace. Once established the church could then admit members. “The prospective candidate was called upon to demonstrate the work of God in his soul”. The practice of testing prospective church members for actual inward "signs" of saving grace, Morgan argues, originated neither with the Separatists in England nor with the Separatists in Plymouth, but in the Bay Colony itself, by the Puritans These tests of suitability evolved over the few years as more migrants came into the Bay Colony. These tests of suitability spread to all the churches in the Bay Colony, eventually finding their way back to England. Hence Morgan’s main point: from Massachusetts to England and not the other way around.<br />
The Massachusetts Puritans did not at first insist upon these tests, but gradually came to require them. The Puritans in Massachusetts, according to Morgan, were the first Puritans to restrict membership in the church "to persons ... who had felt the stirrings of grace in their souls, and who could demonstrate this fact to the satisfactions of other saints”. The practice then spread to the churches of Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven, eventually finding its way back to England. <br />
Faith, as explained, was the indispensable quality of a true church. Explicit church covenants were important: “Let the Church look to her Covenant, and let no member come in but that he Knoweth Christ, and that knoweth he is a Child of Wrath; and let him go on not in his own strength, but in a depending frame on Jesus Christ, then all the world will that you have made an Everlasting Covenant”. As Morgan explains it was not easy to obtain membership to the church. The question was: How to obtain new members as they developed their idea of restricted membership. The churches nearly vanished since there were not enough saints to fill them. They had to gather flock from people in the real world and where in the real world could they find all these saints. The Puritans in England, on the other hand, took a different, a more pragmatic, approach. The church there embraced all the sinners in order to grasp the few saints in it. <br />
Morgan explains that by about 1660 the New England piety was in decline. There was a Declaration of Faith adopted by a meeting of English Congregationalists at the Savoy palace in in London in 1658. The minsters were urged not to “neglect others living within their parochial bounds”. It was suggested that in New England ministers were to attend all in their town. Thus the Puritan idea thus ran its course, an idea that did not last too long. Morgan ends his history on a thinking note: “But as long as men strive to approach God through the church, the world will never seem pure enough for the saints, and the Puritan experience will never be wholly unfamiliar”.<br />
<br />
References.<br />
1) Quotes within the above are from the book.<br />
2) A great variety of websites were used as further reading<br />
http://people.opposingviews.com/did-visible-saint-mean-puritans-7626.html<br />
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Puritans_under_Elizabeth_I<br />
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h573.html<br />
<br />
3) "New England's Great Migration". Lynn Betlock April 2008<br />
4) "The Puritan Migration: Albion’s Seed Sets Sail". Claire Hopley December 2008.</div>Billyhttps://www.videri.org/index.php?title=The_Visible_Saints&diff=1876The Visible Saints2015-11-05T20:40:45Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Infobox book<br />
| name = The Visible Saints<br />
| author = Edmund S. Morgan<br />
| publisher = Martino Publishing<br />
| pub_date = 2013<br />
| pages = 160<br />
| isbn = 1614275300<br />
| image = [[File:51o2uFeEgzL__SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg|200px|alt=cover]]<br />
<br />
The Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea by Edward S Morgan. Publisher: Martino Fine Books (November 6, 2013), 174 pages. <br />
This book is based on a set of lectures that Morgan gave as the Anson G Phelps Lectures delivered at New York University in 1962. He used these lectures as the basis of four chapters of the book and then expanded a little by writing a conclusion chapter. At 174 pages it is a thin book with a thin, but very interesting, story. <br />
What are Visible Saints? The Puritans saw themselves as Visible Saints. Visible saints were godly Christian people who would go to heaven when they died. They took upon themselves the task of demonstrating their sainthood. They started the movement in the 16th century in order to eradicate the remnants of the Catholic Church. They spent part of each day privately praying. They attended church regularly. Although they were interested in their church and being good Puritans they realized that commerce and financial success were important. They, in effect, established in New England the idea of the protestant work ethic: be true to God, pray, and make money. Was this the birth of WASP and the importance of making money? Morgan does not go there.Morgan starts the book by explaining the historical background of the Puritans and the development of their ideas of “Church”. When Henry VIII wanted to marry Anne Boleyn he needed a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, his dead brother’s widow. The Pope frowned on divorce so, in 1534 after Pope Clement VII refused to grant the King a divorce, Henry left the Catholic Church. Henry then allowed the translation of the bible into English. He stripped the monasteries of their wealth and established the Church of England. The church swung back to Rome when Henry’s daughter Mary came on the throne; she was Catherine of Aragon’s daughter and a devout catholic. However, when Elizabeth, another of Henry’s daughters (from his marriage to Anne Boleyn), came on the throne the church swung back from Rome to England. Elizabeth a rather strong queen felt no need for papists or even ardent Protestants. The most ardent of the ardent of the Protestants, the Puritans, wanted more reforms and even greater reforms within by the Church of England. Morgan explains all this as the birth of the Puritan idea.<br />
The Puritans objected to a great number of the ceremonies carried out by the Church of England. They also objected to the very existence of bishops, canon law, and lord bishops. The Puritans set great store by preaching. They “considered this as the principal means ordained by God for instructing people in the real truth revealed by the Scriptures”. The Puritans considered many members of the Church to be ignorant and corrupt. Without good teachers the Church could never move away from Rome and truly value the word of God as explained in the Scriptures.<br />
Morgan explains that although the Puritans were generally united in their views on the wrongs in the Church of England, they still managed to separate into two groups within Protestantism: the Puritans and the Separatists. Where the Puritans wanted to stay and improve the Church of England, the Separatists wanted to leave altogether. They could not accept many of the changes in the church and they could not accept the church’s ways. The Separatists strongest criticism was that the Church of England (the Anglican Church) contained persons unfit to be members of the Church. The church accepted wicked, dissolute people as members. “The Separatists withdrew from the Church of England in order to establish churches of their own in which the membership would more closely approximate that of the invisible church”. “The invisible church consists of an "invisible" body of the elect who are known only to God, in contrast to the "visible church"—that is, the institutional body on earth which preaches the gospel and administers the sacraments. Every member of the invisible church is saved, while the visible church contains some individuals who are saved and others who are unsaved.” Although the Separatist wanted to be separate they, along with the Puritans, saw themselves as Protestants.<br />
The Puritans set sail for Massachusetts in 1630 and founded the Bay Colony. They were preceded in 1628 by a small colony of Separatists who were established at Plymouth. The Puritans quickly established a church somewhat based on Separatist principles and not on the Puritans principles as laid out in England. As Morgan explains this was a new place and it needed new ideas: a better church with more pious members; they needed “saints”. Their principles were: “The new churches rested on a covenant to which all members subscribed; each chose and ordained its own ministers, admitted properly qualified new members, and expelled incorrigible old members”. Thus, although they agreed in part with the Separatist they still believed the Church in England, although corrupt, to be the true church. They did not wish to separate from the church in England and condemned the Separatists for doing so. <br />
Hitherto, as Morgan explains, historians have generally supposed that the main outlines of the Puritan church were determined in England and transplanted to the new world. Morgan suggests, instead, that the distinguishing characteristic of the New England churches—the ideal of a church composed exclusively of true and tested saints—developed fully in the 1630's and 1640's, some time after the first settlers arrived in New England. Thus although it is generally believed that the outlines of the church were determined in England and then transplanted to Massachusetts, Morgan argues that this is not the case. In other words the flow was in the opposite direction. The idea of a church comprised of exclusively of true and tested saints was developed in Massachusetts and sent back to England. One key point of the book is that the Puritan church as founded in New England was developed in the 1630’s and 1640’s after the Puritans arrived in Massachusetts.<br />
Morgan explains how this came about. Thousands of non-separating Puritans arrived during the 1630’s. They were eager to establish their new church. They consulted with their Separatists brethren in Plymouth where they found ideas similar to their own. The non-separating Puritans were ready to ready to establish independent churches of limited membership, similar to the Separatists ideas. Morgan emphasizes that there were few Separatists as compared to the number on non-separating Puritans. The Separatists at Plymouth people gave the Massachusetts churches many ideas on practices and procedures. During this period eighteen churches were set up in Massachusetts alone. The founding of this new Puritan church began with at least seven men (no women) who had to satisfy one another about their knowledge of Christian doctrine and about their experience of saving grace. Once established the church could then admit members. “The prospective candidate was called upon to demonstrate the work of God in his soul”. The practice of testing prospective church members for actual inward "signs" of saving grace, Morgan argues, originated neither with the Separatists in England nor with the Separatists in Plymouth, but in the Bay Colony itself, by the Puritans These tests of suitability evolved over the few years as more migrants came into the Bay Colony. These tests of suitability spread to all the churches in the Bay Colony, eventually finding their way back to England. Hence Morgan’s main point: from Massachusetts to England and not the other way around.<br />
The Massachusetts Puritans did not at first insist upon these tests, but gradually came to require them. The Puritans in Massachusetts, according to Morgan, were the first Puritans to restrict membership in the church "to persons ... who had felt the stirrings of grace in their souls, and who could demonstrate this fact to the satisfactions of other saints”. The practice then spread to the churches of Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven, eventually finding its way back to England. <br />
Faith, as explained, was the indispensable quality of a true church. Explicit church covenants were important: “Let the Church look to her Covenant, and let no member come in but that he Knoweth Christ, and that knoweth he is a Child of Wrath; and let him go on not in his own strength, but in a depending frame on Jesus Christ, then all the world will that you have made an Everlasting Covenant”. As Morgan explains it was not easy to obtain membership to the church. The question was: How to obtain new members as they developed their idea of restricted membership. The churches nearly vanished since there were not enough saints to fill them. They had to gather flock from people in the real world and where in the real world could they find all these saints. The Puritans in England, on the other hand, took a different, a more pragmatic, approach. The church there embraced all the sinners in order to grasp the few saints in it. <br />
Morgan explains that by about 1660 the New England piety was in decline. There was a Declaration of Faith adopted by a meeting of English Congregationalists at the Savoy palace in in London in 1658. The minsters were urged not to “neglect others living within their parochial bounds”. It was suggested that in New England ministers were to attend all in their town. Thus the Puritan idea thus ran its course, an idea that did not last too long. Morgan ends his history on a thinking note: “But as long as men strive to approach God through the church, the world will never seem pure enough for the saints, and the Puritan experience will never be wholly unfamiliar”.<br />
<br />
References.<br />
1) Quotes within the above are from the book.<br />
2) A great variety of websites were used as further reading<br />
http://people.opposingviews.com/did-visible-saint-mean-puritans-7626.html<br />
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Puritans_under_Elizabeth_I<br />
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h573.html<br />
<br />
3) "New England's Great Migration". Lynn Betlock April 2008<br />
4) "The Puritan Migration: Albion’s Seed Sets Sail". Claire Hopley December 2008.</div>Billyhttps://www.videri.org/index.php?title=The_Visible_Saints&diff=1875The Visible Saints2015-11-05T18:55:24Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Infobox book<br />
| name = The Visible Saints<br />
| author = Edmund S. Morgan<br />
| publisher = Martino Publishing<br />
| pub_date = 2013<br />
| pages = 160<br />
| isbn = 1614275300<br />
| image = [[File:51o2uFeEgzL__SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg|200px|alt=cover]]<br />
<br />
The Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea by Edward S Morgan. Publisher: Martino Fine Books (November 6, 2013), 174 pages. <br />
This book is based on a set of lectures that Morgan gave as the Anson G Phelps Lectures delivered at New York University in 1962. He used these lectures as the basis of four chapters of the book and then expanded a little by writing a conclusion chapter. At 174 pages it is a thin book with a thin, but very interesting, story. <br />
What are Visible Saints? The Puritans saw themselves as Visible Saints. Visible saints were godly Christian people who would go to heaven when they died. They took upon themselves the task of demonstrating their sainthood. They started the movement in the 16th century in order to eradicate the remnants of the Catholic Church. They spent part of each day privately praying. They attended church regularly. Although they were interested in their church and being good Puritans they realized that commerce and financial success were important. They, in effect, established in New England the idea of the protestant work ethic: be true to God, pray, and make money. Was this the birth of WASP and the importance of making money? Morgan does not go there.<br />
Morgan starts the book by explaining the historical background of the Puritans and the development of their ideas of “Church”. When Henry VIII wanted to marry Anne Boleyn he needed a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, his dead brother’s widow. The Pope frowned on divorce so, in 1534 after Pope Clement VII refused to grant the King a divorce, Henry left the Catholic Church. Henry then allowed the translation of the bible into English. He stripped the monasteries of their wealth and established the Church of England. The church swung back to Rome when Henry’s daughter Mary came on the throne; she was Catherine of Aragon’s daughter and a devout catholic. However, when Elizabeth, another of Henry’s daughters (from his marriage to Anne Boleyn), came on the throne the church swung back from Rome to England. Elizabeth a rather strong queen felt no need for papists or even ardent Protestants. The most ardent of the ardent of the Protestants, the Puritans, wanted more reforms and even greater reforms within by the Church of England. Morgan explains all this as the birth of the Puritan idea.<br />
The Puritans objected to a great number of the ceremonies carried out by the Church of England. They also objected to the very existence of bishops, canon law, and lord bishops. The Puritans set great store by preaching. They “considered this as the principal means ordained by God for instructing people in the real truth revealed by the Scriptures”. The Puritans considered many members of the Church to be ignorant and corrupt. Without good teachers the Church could never move away from Rome and truly value the word of God as explained in the Scriptures.<br />
Morgan explains that although the Puritans were generally united in their views on the wrongs in the Church of England, they still managed to separate into two groups within Protestantism: the Puritans and the Separatists. Where the Puritans wanted to stay and improve the Church of England, the Separatists wanted to leave altogether. They could not accept many of the changes in the church and they could not accept the church’s ways. The Separatists strongest criticism was that the Church of England (the Anglican Church) contained persons unfit to be members of the Church. The church accepted wicked, dissolute people as members. “The Separatists withdrew from the Church of England in order to establish churches of their own in which the membership would more closely approximate that of the invisible church”. “The invisible church consists of an "invisible" body of the elect who are known only to God, in contrast to the "visible church"—that is, the institutional body on earth which preaches the gospel and administers the sacraments. Every member of the invisible church is saved, while the visible church contains some individuals who are saved and others who are unsaved.” Although the Separatist wanted to be separate they, along with the Puritans, saw themselves as Protestants.<br />
The Puritans set sail for Massachusetts in 1630 and founded the Bay Colony. They were preceded in 1628 by a small colony of Separatists who were established at Plymouth. The Puritans quickly established a church somewhat based on Separatist principles and not on the Puritans principles as laid out in England. As Morgan explains this was a new place and it needed new ideas: a better church with more pious members; they needed “saints”. Their principles were: “The new churches rested on a covenant to which all members subscribed; each chose and ordained its own ministers, admitted properly qualified new members, and expelled incorrigible old members”. Thus, although they agreed in part with the Separatist they still believed the Church in England, although corrupt, to be the true church. They did not wish to separate from the church in England and condemned the Separatists for doing so. <br />
Hitherto, as Morgan explains, historians have generally supposed that the main outlines of the Puritan church were determined in England and transplanted to the new world. Morgan suggests, instead, that the distinguishing characteristic of the New England churches—the ideal of a church composed exclusively of true and tested saints—developed fully in the 1630's and 1640's, some time after the first settlers arrived in New England. Thus although it is generally believed that the outlines of the church were determined in England and then transplanted to Massachusetts, Morgan argues that this is not the case. In other words the flow was in the opposite direction. The idea of a church comprised of exclusively of true and tested saints was developed in Massachusetts and sent back to England. One key point of the book is that the Puritan church as founded in New England was developed in the 1630’s and 1640’s after the Puritans arrived in Massachusetts.<br />
Morgan explains how this came about. Thousands of non-separating Puritans arrived during the 1630’s. They were eager to establish their new church. They consulted with their Separatists brethren in Plymouth where they found ideas similar to their own. The non-separating Puritans were ready to ready to establish independent churches of limited membership, similar to the Separatists ideas. Morgan emphasizes that there were few Separatists as compared to the number on non-separating Puritans. The Separatists at Plymouth people gave the Massachusetts churches many ideas on practices and procedures. During this period eighteen churches were set up in Massachusetts alone. The founding of this new Puritan church began with at least seven men (no women) who had to satisfy one another about their knowledge of Christian doctrine and about their experience of saving grace. Once established the church could then admit members. “The prospective candidate was called upon to demonstrate the work of God in his soul”. The practice of testing prospective church members for actual inward "signs" of saving grace, Morgan argues, originated neither with the Separatists in England nor with the Separatists in Plymouth, but in the Bay Colony itself, by the Puritans These tests of suitability evolved over the few years as more migrants came into the Bay Colony. These tests of suitability spread to all the churches in the Bay Colony, eventually finding their way back to England. Hence Morgan’s main point: from Massachusetts to England and not the other way around.<br />
The Massachusetts Puritans did not at first insist upon these tests, but gradually came to require them. The Puritans in Massachusetts, according to Morgan, were the first Puritans to restrict membership in the church "to persons ... who had felt the stirrings of grace in their souls, and who could demonstrate this fact to the satisfactions of other saints”. The practice then spread to the churches of Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven, eventually finding its way back to England. <br />
Faith, as explained, was the indispensable quality of a true church. Explicit church covenants were important: “Let the Church look to her Covenant, and let no member come in but that he Knoweth Christ, and that knoweth he is a Child of Wrath; and let him go on not in his own strength, but in a depending frame on Jesus Christ, then all the world will that you have made an Everlasting Covenant”. As Morgan explains it was not easy to obtain membership to the church. The question was: How to obtain new members as they developed their idea of restricted membership. The churches nearly vanished since there were not enough saints to fill them. They had to gather flock from people in the real world and where in the real world could they find all these saints. The Puritans in England, on the other hand, took a different, a more pragmatic, approach. The church there embraced all the sinners in order to grasp the few saints in it. <br />
Morgan explains that by about 1660 the New England piety was in decline. There was a Declaration of Faith adopted by a meeting of English Congregationalists at the Savoy palace in in London in 1658. The minsters were urged not to “neglect others living within their parochial bounds”. It was suggested that in New England ministers were to attend all in their town. Thus the Puritan idea thus ran its course, an idea that did not last too long. Morgan ends his history on a thinking note: “But as long as men strive to approach God through the church, the world will never seem pure enough for the saints, and the Puritan experience will never be wholly unfamiliar”.<br />
<br />
References.<br />
1) Quotes within the above are from the book.<br />
2) A great variety of websites were used as further reading<br />
http://people.opposingviews.com/did-visible-saint-mean-puritans-7626.html<br />
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Puritans_under_Elizabeth_I<br />
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h573.html<br />
<br />
3) "New England's Great Migration". Lynn Betlock April 2008<br />
4) "The Puritan Migration: Albion’s Seed Sets Sail". Claire Hopley December 2008.</div>Billyhttps://www.videri.org/index.php?title=File:Picture.jpg&diff=1874File:Picture.jpg2015-11-05T18:28:26Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div></div>Billyhttps://www.videri.org/index.php?title=The_Visible_Saints&diff=1728The Visible Saints2015-09-26T16:40:06Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Infobox book<br />
| name = The Visible Saints<br />
| author = Edmund S. Morgan<br />
| publisher = Martino Publishing<br />
| pub_date = 2013<br />
| pages = 160<br />
| isbn = 1614275300<br />
| image = [[File:51o2uFeEgzL__SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg|200px|alt=cover]]<br />
<br />
The Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea by Edward S Morgan. Publisher: Martino Fine Books (November 6, 2013), 174 pages. <br />
Hitherto, historians have generally supposed that the main outlines of the Puritan church were determined in England and Holland and transplanted to the new world. Morgan suggests, instead, that the distinguishing characteristic of the New England churches—the ideal of a church composed exclusively of true and tested saints—developed fully only in the 1630's and 1640's, some time after the first settlers arrived in New England. <br />
King Henry VIII established the Church of England in 1534 after Pope Clement VII refused to grant the King a divorce of convenience. Henry wanted a divorce from the Queen to marry a younger woman. His plans thwarted, the King broke with the Catholic Church, establishing Anglicanism as his own Christian denomination. All English citizens were at birth accepted into this new church. This fact incensed the Puritans because this meant sinners, drunkards and gamblers were members of the Anglican Church. Puritans wished there was some degree of vetting of prospective members of the Anglican Church to ensure the purity of congregations.<br />
The Puritans began their movement in the 16th century to purify the Church of England, or Anglican Church, by eradicating perceived remnants of Catholicism. Visible sainthood was central to this purification campaign. Puritans believed that individuals could prove in their daily lives that they were part of God’s chosen, or predestined, to receive salvation. Wholesome living and financial success would be visible signs of being one of God’s elect, otherwise referred to as sainthood. When it seemed England would not accept their reforms, many Puritans turned to America, where they created a “new” England full of visible saints.<br />
Morgan's historical writings focus on aspects of the American experience such as Puritanism, the Revolution, and the relationship between slavery and racism. Visible saints were people who appeared to be godly Christian people who would go to heaven when they died. Strict Puritans in colonial days only allowed visible saints to worship with them because they thought that the Church of England was irreverent for allowing everyone to worship in the same way.<br />
Morgan talks at length to explain the difference between Puritans and Separatists. Puritans are a group of extremists in Protestantism. They were not satisfied with the Reformation of the Church of England. But, they still did not leave the church and stayed with it, advising reforms. The Separatists are the group of Puritans, who got away from the Church of England as they did not accept the changes and did not agree with their ways. When the word Puritan is used in a wider sense, it includes both Puritans and Separatists. That is why it is said that all Separatists are Puritans, but not all Puritans are Separatists. Separatists want themselves to be separated from the Church of England. They would also aim at separating themselves from the so-called non-believers. Puritans would not aim at separating themselves from the Church of England. On the other hand, they only want to purify the Church of the influence of the Catholic Church. Puritans are very firm in their beliefs. Such cannot be said about separatists as they wanted to get away from everyone. They did not like the church, so they left, unlike the Puritans who stayed even when they did not agree with the methods. Puritans wanted to cleanse the Anglican Church using whatever means. Separatists were not like that. They wanted to get away from genocide and ethnic cleansing. <br />
Within the past thirty years historians have generally assumed that the Puritan fathers came to the Bay Colony fully armed with the rudiments of church discipline. Once on New England soil, it has been argued, the founders had merely to put into effect a system carefully outlined in England by William Ames and others of Congregational bent. Accordingly, it has also been assumed that church discipline on the matter of "conversion" remained consistent in the great upheaval that brought Congregationalism <br />
to New England. Candidates for full church membership, it has been said, had always to "prove" their regeneration by offering narrative "accounts" of the conversion experience. A mere "profession" of faith and a "godly walk" were never sufficient, as the inner <br />
workings of the Holy Spirit on the hearts of the unregenerate had always to be described. What is more, historians have taken it for granted that the qualifications required in Massachusetts did not vary significantly from those of the Separatists in Holland and the <br />
Pilgrims in Plymouth. The Congregational structure of the New England churches, so the argument runs, depended from the start upon a fully instituted requirement of experiential "relations." Edmund S. Morgan takes issue with this assumption. The practice of testing prospective church members for actual inward "signs" of saving grace, he argues, originated neither with the Separatists in England and Holland nor with the Pilgrims in Plymouth, but in the Bay Colony itself. Furthermore, the Massachusetts Puritans did not at first insist upon these tests, but gradually came to require them over a period of years. It was not until the mid-1630's, when the "Great Migration" to New England was well under way, that they committed themselves to a degree of purity hitherto unknown in English Puritanism, and so launched a new era in Puritan ecclesiology as well as a new phase in the history of Congregationalism. The emigrants to Massachusetts, Mr. Morgan insists, were the first Puritans to restrict membership in the church "to persons ... who <br />
had felt the stirrings of grace in their souls, and who could demonstrate this fact to the satisfactions of other saints." The practice then spread to the churches of Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven, eventually finding its way back to England. <br />
Yet the ideal of a "pure" church had long been the ultimate goal of non separating Congregationalists. Unlike the Separatists, they had chosen to remain within the Church of England in order to purify it. Augustine, they knew, had spoken of two churches; one pure but invisible, containing all those whom God had predestined for salvation; the other visible but not entirely pure, containing all who professed to believe in Christianity. And since their aim was to make the visible church as pure as possible, they soon took <br />
advantage of the removal to Massachusetts. With three thousand miles between themselves and England, they began to ask for more than a mere "profession" of faith and a "godly walk." The "stages" in conversion, which hitherto had served as a private guide for spiritual introspection, became a bulwark against hypocrisy and a matter of public policy. Nowhere else in Christendom were similar demands made on those seeking membership in the church. In his closing chapters Mr. Morgan gives a new interpretation <br />
of the responses the policy evoked, as well as fresh insights into its far-reaching implications. Until now historians have argued that the stiff requirements, together with a general "decline" in piety, soon forced the churches to revise their stand. The Synod of <br />
1662, it has been argued, lowered the admission standards by adopting the "Half-Way Covenant," which granted "membership" to the unconverted, as well as to their numerous progeny. <br />
But the membership it granted, Mr. Morgan reminds us, was not full membership. Those who failed to pass the tests of faith were still excluded from the Lord's Supper. The Half-Way Covenant, for all that has been said about it, vigorously reasserted the standards of the 1630's. If piety had indeed "declined," and if the quest for purity seemed to threaten the very life of the "Congregational Way," the Synod of 1662 did not officially recognize these problems. It neither abandoned the tests of faith nor showed any indication that they should be abandoned. It merely recognized continued procreation, and the need to keep the unregenerate under "church watch." The Half-Way Covenant, by itself, offers no proof that declension had actually occurred. <br />
New England orthodoxy thus upheld its innovation in the Congregational pattern until the churches were virtually emptied of "Visible Saints." A reaction did not set in until 1677, when the Reverend Solomon Stoddard of Northampton began to practice "open communion," or the admission of candidates to the Lord's Supper without attempting to discern saving faith. His revival of the original "Congregational Way" not only split the clergy but ignited a flame of religious enthusiasm which led to the Great Awakening. And here, with a glimpse into the future, the author ends his account. <br />
<br />
1.Betlock, Lynn. "New England's Great Migration". Retrieved 28 April 2008.<br />
2.Hopley, Claire. "The Puritan Migration: Albion’s Seed Sets Sail". Retrieved 5 December 2008.<br />
3.Roscoe Lewis Ashley (1908). American History. New York: Macmillan. p. 52. Retrieved 7 October 2013.<br />
4.Barnette, Mic. "East Anglian Puritans 1629-1640". Puritans to New England.<br />
5.Susan Hardman Moore, Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home, (2007).<br />
6.Edwin S. Gaustad, Roger Williams (2005).<br />
7.Carla Gardina Pestana, Quakers and Baptists in Colonial Massachusetts (1991).<br />
<br />
Further reading<br />
Adams, James Truslow (1921). The Founding of New England. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.<br />
Robert Charles Anderson (1999). The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620–1633. <br />
Anderson, Virginia DeJohn. "Migrants and Motives:Religion and the Settlement of New England, 1630–1640," New England Quarterly<br />
Bailyn, Bernard. The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction (1988) excerpt and text search<br />
Breen Timothy H., and Stephen Foster. "Moving to the New World" William & Mary Quarterly 30 (1973): 189–222 in JSTOR<br />
Cressy, David. Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century (1987),<br />
Dunn, Richard S. Puritans and Yankees: The Winthrop Dynasty of New England, 1630–1717 (1962).<br />
Rutman, Darrett B. Winthrop's Boston (1965).<br />
Thompson, Roger. Mobility and Migration: East Anglian Founders of New England, 1629–1640, (1994) online edition</div>Billyhttps://www.videri.org/index.php?title=The_Visible_Saints&diff=1723The Visible Saints2015-09-25T15:36:42Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Infobox book<br />
| name = The Visible Saints<br />
| author = Edmund S. Morgan<br />
| publisher = Martino Publishing<br />
| pub_date = 2013<br />
| pages = 160<br />
| isbn = 1614275300<br />
| image = [[File:51o2uFeEgzL__SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg|200px|alt=cover]]<br />
<br />
The Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea by Edward S Morgan. Publisher: Martino Fine Books (November 6, 2013), 174 pages. Morgan's historical writings focus on aspects of the American experience such as Puritanism, the Revolution, and the relationship between slavery and racism. Visible saints were people who appeared to be godly Christian people who would go to heaven when they died. Strict Puritans in colonial days only allowed visible saints to worship with them because they thought that the Church of England was irreverent for allowing everyone to worship in the same way.<br />
The Puritans began a movement in the 16th century to purify the Church of England, or Anglican Church, by eradicating perceived remnants of Catholicism. Visible sainthood was central to this purification campaign. Puritans believed that individuals could prove in their daily lives that they were part of God’s chosen, or predestined, to receive salvation. Wholesome living and financial success would be visible signs of being one of God’s elect, otherwise referred to as sainthood. When it seemed England would not accept their reforms, many Puritans turned to America, where they created a “new” England full of visible saints. Morgan talks at length to explain the difference between Puritans and Separatists? Puritans are a group of extremists in Protestantism. They were not satisfied with the Reformation of the Church of England. But, they still did not leave the church and stayed with it, advising reforms. The Separatists are the group of Puritans, who got away from the Church of England as they did not accept the changes and did not agree with their ways. When the word Puritan is used in a wider sense, it includes both Puritans and Separatists. That is why it is said that all Separatists are Puritans, but not all Puritans are Separatists. Separatists want themselves to be separated from the Church of England. They would also aim at separating themselves from the so-called non-believers. Puritans would not aim at separating themselves from the Church of England. On the other hand, they only want to purify the Church of the influence of the Catholic Church. Puritans are very firm in their beliefs. Such cannot be said about separatists as they wanted to get away from everyone. They did not like the church, so they left, unlike the Puritans who stayed even when they did not agree with the methods. Puritans wanted to cleanse the Anglican Church using whatever means. Separatists were not like that. They wanted to get away from genocide and ethnic cleansing. <br />
Within the past thirty years historians have generally assumed that the Puritan fathers came to the Bay Colony fully armed with the rudiments of church discipline. Once on New England soil, it has been argued, the founders had merely to put into effect a system carefully outlined in England by William Ames and others of Congregational bent. Accordingly, it has also been assumed that church discipline on the matter of "conversion" remained consistent in the great upheaval that brought Congregationalism <br />
to our shores. Candidates for full church membership, it has been said, had always to "prove" their regeneration by offering narrative "accounts" of the conversion experience. A mere "profession" of faith and a "godly walk" were never sufficient, as the inner <br />
workings of the Holy Spirit on the hearts of the unregenerate had always to be described. What is more, historians have taken it for granted that the qualifications required in Massachusetts did not vary significantly from those of the Separatists in Holland and the <br />
Pilgrims in Plymouth. The Congregational structure of the New England churches, so the argument runs, depended from the start upon a fully instituted requirement of experiential "relations." Edmund S. Morgan takes issue with this assumption. The practice of testing prospective church members for actual inward "signs" of saving grace, he argues, originated neither with the Separatists in England and Holland nor with the Pilgrims in Plymouth, but in the Bay Colony itself. Furthermore, the Massachusetts Puritans did not at first insist upon these tests, but gradually came to require them over a period of years. It was not until the mid-163o's, when the "Great Migration" to New England was well under way, that they committed themselves to a degree of purity hitherto unknown in English Puritanism, and so launched a new era in Puritan ecclesiology as well as a new phase in the history of Congregationalism. The emigrants to Massachusetts, Mr. Morgan insists, were the first Puritans to restrict membership in the church "to persons ... who <br />
had felt the stirrings of grace in their souls, and who could demonstrate this fact to the satisfactions of other saints." The practice then spread to the churches of Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven, eventually finding its way back to England. In presenting his argument, the author provides impressive documentary support for the view that the Separatists in Holland did not contribute to this development, mainly because their talents were directed toward defending the principle of Separation. What is more, the Separatists of Plymouth, if we may relyon William Bradford, did not require a testimony of grace until at least 1648, and did not fully incorporate the requirement into their church discipline until 1669. Whatever the Massachusetts Puritans may have learned from Plymouth, either through Deacon Samuel Fuller in 1629 or by later contacts, they did not learn to apply tests of saving faith to prospective church members. Quite to the contrary; it was probably the Bay Colony men who taught their Plymouth brethren the rigors of admission procedures. "It was the other Puritans, remaining within the Church of England," says Mr. Morgan, "who mapped the route from sin to holiness and<br />
explained the way God carried a saint along it." Indeed, well before the settlement of Massachusetts, two generations of nonseparating Puritan divines had devoted themselves to the intricacies of the conversion process. Concerned with the individual rather than with the church, "they wished to trace the natural history of conversion in order to help men discover their prospects of salvation; and the result of their studies was to establish a morphology of conversion, in which each stage could be distinguished from the next, so that a man could check his eternal condition by a set of temporal and recognizable signs." So long as these Puritans remained in England, however, they never asked for a narrative account of the "stages" as a requirement for church membership. Under Elizabeth and James I, anyone born into an English parish could qualify for communion upon coming "of age." All the established church required was a "profession" of faith, a promise to lead the moral life, and knowledge of ecclesiastical discipline. After William Laud achieved prominence, first as Bishop of London and later as Primate of all England, seventeenth-century Puritans were never in a position to demand more. <br />
Yet the ideal of a "pure" church had long been the ultimate goal of non separating Congregationalists. Unlike the Separatists, they had chosen to remain within the Church of England in order to purify it. Augustine, they knew, had spoken of two churches; one pure but invisible, containing all those whom God had predestined for salvation; the other visible but not entirely pure, containing all who professed to believe in Christianity. And since their aim was to make the visible church as pure as possible, they soon took <br />
advantage of the removal to Massachusetts. With three thousand miles between themselves and Laud, they began to ask for more than a mere "profession" of faith and a "godly walk." The "stages" in conversion, which hitherto had served as a private guide for spiritual introspection, became a bulwark against hypocrisy and a matter of public policy. Nowhere else in Christendom were similar demands made on those seeking membership in the church. In his closing chapters Mr. Morgan gives a new interpretation <br />
of the responses the policy evoked, as well as fresh insights into its far-reaching implications. Until now historians have argued that the stiff requirements, together with a general "decline" in piety, soon forced the churches to revise their stand. The Synod of <br />
1662, it has been argued, lowered the admission standards by adopting the "Half-Way Covenant," which granted "membership" to the unconverted, as well as to their numerous progeny. <br />
But the membership it granted, Mr. Morgan reminds us, was not full membership. Those who failed to pass the tests of faith were still excluded from the Lord's Supper. The Half-Way Covenant, for all that has been said about it, vigorously reasserted the standards of the 1630's. If piety had indeed "declined," and if the quest for purity seemed to threaten the very life of the "Congregational Way," the Synod of 1662 did not officially recognize these problems. It neither abandoned the tests of faith nor showed any indication that they should be abandoned. It merely recognized continued procreation, and the need to keep the unregenerate under "church watch." The Half-Way Covenant, by itself, offers no proof that declension had actually occurred. <br />
New England orthodoxy thus upheld its innovation in the Congregational pattern until the churches were virtually emptied of "Visible Saints." A reaction did not set in until 1677, when the Reverend Solomon Stoddard of Northampton began to practice "open communion," or the admission of candidates to the Lord's Supper without attempting to discern saving faith. His revival of the original "Congregational Way" not only split the clergy but ignited a flame of religious enthusiasm which led to the Great Awakening. And here, with a glimpse into the future, the author ends his account. <br />
To all of this Mr. Morgan addresses himself with the utmost clarity and perception. Although he does not pretend to deal "exhaustively" with the subject, he leaves few aspects untouched. Throughout we are presented with thoughtful original scholar- <br />
ship and with a skillful reinterpretation of a Puritan idea.<br />
<br />
The Pilgrim Fathers, or Pilgrims, were part of a church congregation of religious separatists led by pastor John Robinson, church elder William Brewster and William Bradford. Separatists were a group of Puritans who advocated total withdrawal from the Church of England. The Separatists wanted the freedom to worship independently from English authority. Their quest for religious freedom took the Pilgrim Fathers to Colonial America where they had set their sights on New England which they had read about in a book called 'A Description of New England'. The author of the book was John Smith, famous for founding the first colony in Jamestown.<br />
Morgan posits and develops a revisionary main thesis: the practice of basing membership upon a declaration of experiencing saving grace, or "conversion," was first put into effect not in England, Holland, or Plymouth, as is commonly related, but in Massachusetts Bay Colony by non-separating Puritans. Characterized by stylistic grace and exegetic finesse, "Visible Saints" is another scholarly milestone in the "Millerian Age" of Puritan historiography<br />
<br />
<br />
1.Betlock, Lynn. "New England's Great Migration". Retrieved 28 April 2008.<br />
2.Hopley, Claire. "The Puritan Migration: Albion’s Seed Sets Sail". Retrieved 5 December 2008.<br />
3.Roscoe Lewis Ashley (1908). American History. New York: Macmillan. p. 52. Retrieved 7 October 2013.<br />
4.Barnette, Mic. "East Anglian Puritans 1629-1640". Puritans to New England.<br />
5.Susan Hardman Moore, Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home, (2007).<br />
6.Edwin S. Gaustad, Roger Williams (2005).<br />
7.Carla Gardina Pestana, Quakers and Baptists in Colonial Massachusetts (1991).<br />
<br />
Further reading<br />
Adams, James Truslow (1921). The Founding of New England. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.<br />
Robert Charles Anderson (1999). The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620–1633. <br />
Anderson, Virginia DeJohn. "Migrants and Motives:Religion and the Settlement of New England, 1630–1640," New England Quarterly<br />
Bailyn, Bernard. The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction (1988) excerpt and text search<br />
Breen Timothy H., and Stephen Foster. "Moving to the New World" William & Mary Quarterly 30 (1973): 189–222 in JSTOR<br />
Cressy, David. Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century (1987),<br />
Dunn, Richard S. Puritans and Yankees: The Winthrop Dynasty of New England, 1630–1717 (1962).<br />
Rutman, Darrett B. Winthrop's Boston (1965).<br />
Thompson, Roger. Mobility and Migration: East Anglian Founders of New England, 1629–1640, (1994) online edition</div>Billyhttps://www.videri.org/index.php?title=The_Visible_Saints&diff=1722The Visible Saints2015-09-25T15:36:10Z<p>Billy: </p>
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{{Infobox book<br />
| name = The Visible Saints<br />
| author = Edmund S. Morgan<br />
| publisher = Martino Publishing<br />
| pub_date = 2013<br />
| pages = 160<br />
| isbn = 1614275300<br />
| image = [[File:51o2uFeEgzL__SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg|200px|alt=cover]]<br />
<br />
The Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea by Edward S Morgan. Publisher: Martino Fine Books (November 6, 2013), 174 pages. Morgan's historical writings focus on aspects of the American experience such as Puritanism, the Revolution, and the relationship between slavery and racism. Visible saints were people who appeared to be godly Christian people who would go to heaven when they died. Strict Puritans in colonial days only allowed visible saints to worship with them because they thought that the Church of England was irreverent for allowing everyone to worship in the same way.<br />
The Puritans began a movement in the 16th century to purify the Church of England, or Anglican Church, by eradicating perceived remnants of Catholicism. Visible sainthood was central to this purification campaign. Puritans believed that individuals could prove in their daily lives that they were part of God’s chosen, or predestined, to receive salvation. Wholesome living and financial success would be visible signs of being one of God’s elect, otherwise referred to as sainthood. When it seemed England would not accept their reforms, many Puritans turned to America, where they created a “new” England full of visible saints. Morgan talks at length to explain the difference between Puritans and Separatists? Puritans are a group of extremists in Protestantism. They were not satisfied with the Reformation of the Church of England. But, they still did not leave the church and stayed with it, advising reforms. The Separatists are the group of Puritans, who got away from the Church of England as they did not accept the changes and did not agree with their ways. When the word Puritan is used in a wider sense, it includes both Puritans and Separatists. That is why it is said that all Separatists are Puritans, but not all Puritans are Separatists. Separatists want themselves to be separated from the Church of England. They would also aim at separating themselves from the so-called non-believers. Puritans would not aim at separating themselves from the Church of England. On the other hand, they only want to purify the Church of the influence of the Catholic Church. Puritans are very firm in their beliefs. Such cannot be said about separatists as they wanted to get away from everyone. They did not like the church, so they left, unlike the Puritans who stayed even when they did not agree with the methods. Puritans wanted to cleanse the Anglican Church using whatever means. Separatists were not like that. They wanted to get away from genocide and ethnic cleansing. <br />
Within the past thirty years historians have generally assumed that the Puritan fathers came to the Bay Colony fully armed with the rudiments of church discipline. Once on New England soil, it has been argued, the founders had merely to put into effect a system carefully outlined in England by William Ames and others of Congregational bent. Accordingly, it has also been assumed that church discipline on the matter of "conversion" remained consistent in the great upheaval that brought Congregationalism <br />
to our shores. Candidates for full church membership, it has been said, had always to "prove" their regeneration by offering narrative "accounts" of the conversion experience. A mere "profession" of faith and a "godly walk" were never sufficient, as the inner <br />
workings of the Holy Spirit on the hearts of the unregenerate had always to be described. What is more, historians have taken it for granted that the qualifications required in Massachusetts did not vary significantly from those of the Separatists in Holland and the <br />
Pilgrims in Plymouth. The Congregational structure of the New England churches, so the argument runs, depended from the start upon a fully instituted requirement of experiential "relations." Edmund S. Morgan takes issue with this assumption. The practice of testing prospective church members for actual inward "signs" of saving grace, he argues, originated neither with the Separatists in England and Holland nor with the Pilgrims in Plymouth, but in the Bay Colony itself. Furthermore, the Massachusetts Puritans did not at first insist upon these tests, but gradually came to require them over a period of years. It was not until the mid-163o's, when the "Great Migration" to New England was well under way, that they committed themselves to a degree of purity hitherto unknown in English Puritanism, and so launched a new era in Puritan ecclesiology as well as a new phase in the history of Congregationalism. The emigrants to Massachusetts, Mr. Morgan insists, were the first Puritans to restrict membership in the church "to persons ... who <br />
had felt the stirrings of grace in their souls, and who could demonstrate this fact to the satisfactions of other saints." The practice then spread to the churches of Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven, eventually finding its way back to England. In presenting his argument, the author provides impressive documentary support for the view that the Separatists in Holland did not contribute to this development, mainly because their talents were directed toward defending the principle of Separation. What is more, the Separatists of Plymouth, if we may relyon William Bradford, did not require a testimony of grace until at least 1648, and did not fully incorporate the requirement into their church discipline until 1669. Whatever the Massachusetts Puritans may have learned from Plymouth, either through Deacon Samuel Fuller in 1629 or by later contacts, they did not learn to apply tests of saving faith to prospective church members. Quite to the contrary; it was probably the Bay Colony men who taught their Plymouth brethren the rigors of admission procedures. "It was the other Puritans, remaining within the Church of England," says Mr. Morgan, "who mapped the route from sin to holiness and<br />
explained the way God carried a saint along it." Indeed, well before the settlement of Massachusetts, two generations of nonseparating Puritan divines had devoted themselves to the intricacies of the conversion process. Concerned with the individual rather than with the church, "they wished to trace the natural history of conversion in order to help men discover their prospects of salvation; and the result of their studies was to establish a morphology of conversion, in which each stage could be distinguished from the next, so that a man could check his eternal condition by a set of temporal and recognizable signs." So long as these Puritans remained in England, however, they never asked for a narrative account of the "stages" as a requirement for church membership. Under Elizabeth and James I, anyone born into an English parish could qualify for communion upon coming "of age." All the established church required was a "profession" of faith, a promise to lead the moral life, and knowledge of ecclesiastical discipline. After William Laud achieved prominence, first as Bishop of London and later as Primate of all England, seventeenth-century Puritans were never in a position to demand more. <br />
Yet the ideal of a "pure" church had long been the ultimate goal of non separating Congregationalists. Unlike the Separatists, they had chosen to remain within the Church of England in order to purify it. Augustine, they knew, had spoken of two churches; one pure but invisible, containing all those whom God had predestined for salvation; the other visible but not entirely pure, containing all who professed to believe in Christianity. And since their aim was to make the visible church as pure as possible, they soon took <br />
advantage of the removal to Massachusetts. With three thousand miles between themselves and Laud, they began to ask for more than a mere "profession" of faith and a "godly walk." The "stages" in conversion, which hitherto had served as a private guide for spiritual introspection, became a bulwark against hypocrisy and a matter of public policy. Nowhere else in Christendom were similar demands made on those seeking membership in the church. In his closing chapters Mr. Morgan gives a new interpretation <br />
of the responses the policy evoked, as well as fresh insights into its far-reaching implications. Until now historians have argued that the stiff requirements, together with a general "decline" in piety, soon forced the churches to revise their stand. The Synod of <br />
1662, it has been argued, lowered the admission standards by adopting the "Half-Way Covenant," which granted "membership" to the unconverted, as well as to their numerous progeny. <br />
But the membership it granted, Mr. Morgan reminds us, was not full membership. Those who failed to pass the tests of faith were still excluded from the Lord's Supper. The Half-Way Covenant, for all that has been said about it, vigorously reasserted the standards of the 1630's. If piety had indeed "declined," and if the quest for purity seemed to threaten the very life of the "Congregational Way," the Synod of 1662 did not officially recognize these problems. It neither abandoned the tests of faith nor showed any indication that they should be abandoned. It merely recognized continued procreation, and the need to keep the unregenerate under "church watch." The Half-Way Covenant, by itself, offers no proof that declension had actually occurred. <br />
New England orthodoxy thus upheld its innovation in the Congregational pattern until the churches were virtually emptied of "Visible Saints." A reaction did not set in until 1677, when the Reverend Solomon Stoddard of Northampton began to practice "open communion," or the admission of candidates to the Lord's Supper without attempting to discern saving faith. His revival of the original "Congregational Way" not only split the clergy but ignited a flame of religious enthusiasm which led to the Great Awakening. And here, with a glimpse into the future, the author ends his account. <br />
To all of this Mr. Morgan addresses himself with the utmost clarity and perception. Although he does not pretend to deal "exhaustively" with the subject, he leaves few aspects untouched. Throughout we are presented with thoughtful original scholar- <br />
ship and with a skillful reinterpretation of a Puritan idea.<br />
<br />
The Pilgrim Fathers, or Pilgrims, were part of a church congregation of religious separatists led by pastor John Robinson, church elder William Brewster and William Bradford. Separatists were a group of Puritans who advocated total withdrawal from the Church of England. The Separatists wanted the freedom to worship independently from English authority. Their quest for religious freedom took the Pilgrim Fathers to Colonial America where they had set their sights on New England which they had read about in a book called 'A Description of New England'. The author of the book was John Smith, famous for founding the first colony in Jamestown.<br />
Morgan posits and develops a revisionary main thesis: the practice of basing membership upon a declaration of experiencing saving grace, or "conversion," was first put into effect not in England, Holland, or Plymouth, as is commonly related, but in Massachusetts Bay Colony by non-separating Puritans. Characterized by stylistic grace and exegetic finesse, "Visible Saints" is another scholarly milestone in the "Millerian Age" of Puritan historiography<br />
<br />
<br />
1.Betlock, Lynn. "New England's Great Migration". Retrieved 28 April 2008.<br />
2.Hopley, Claire. "The Puritan Migration: Albion’s Seed Sets Sail". Retrieved 5 December 2008.<br />
3.Roscoe Lewis Ashley (1908). American History. New York: Macmillan. p. 52. Retrieved 7 October 2013.<br />
4.Barnette, Mic. "East Anglian Puritans 1629-1640". Puritans to New England.<br />
5.Susan Hardman Moore, Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home, (2007).<br />
6.Edwin S. Gaustad, Roger Williams (2005).<br />
7.Carla Gardina Pestana, Quakers and Baptists in Colonial Massachusetts (1991).<br />
<br />
Further reading<br />
Adams, James Truslow (1921). The Founding of New England. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.<br />
Robert Charles Anderson (1999). The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620–1633. <br />
Anderson, Virginia DeJohn. "Migrants and Motives:Religion and the Settlement of New England, 1630–1640," New England Quarterly<br />
Bailyn, Bernard. The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction (1988) excerpt and text search<br />
Breen Timothy H., and Stephen Foster. "Moving to the New World" William & Mary Quarterly 30 (1973): 189–222 in JSTOR<br />
Cressy, David. Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century (1987),<br />
Dunn, Richard S. Puritans and Yankees: The Winthrop Dynasty of New England, 1630–1717 (1962).<br />
Rutman, Darrett B. Winthrop's Boston (1965).<br />
Thompson, Roger. Mobility and Migration: East Anglian Founders of New England, 1629–1640, (1994) online edition</div>Billyhttps://www.videri.org/index.php?title=The_Visible_Saints&diff=1716The Visible Saints2015-09-22T19:26:58Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div><br />
{{Infobox book<br />
| name = The Visible Saints<br />
| author = Edmund S. Morgan<br />
| publisher = Martino Publishing<br />
| pub_date = 2013<br />
| pages = 160<br />
| isbn = 1614275300<br />
| image = [[File:51o2uFeEgzL__SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg|200px|alt=cover]]<br />
<br />
The Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea by Edward S Morgan. Publisher: Martino Fine Books (November 6, 2013), 174 pages. Morgan's historical writings focus on aspects of the American experience such as Puritanism, the Revolution, and the relationship between slavery and racism. Visible saints were people who appeared to be godly Christian people who would go to heaven when they died. Strict Puritans in colonial days only allowed visible saints to worship with them because they thought that the Church of England was irreverent for allowing everyone to worship in the same way.<br />
The Puritans began a movement in the 16th century to purify the Church of England, or Anglican Church, by eradicating perceived remnants of Catholicism. Visible sainthood was central to this purification campaign. Puritans believed that individuals could prove in their daily lives that they were part of God’s chosen, or predestined, to receive salvation. Wholesome living and financial success would be visible signs of being one of God’s elect, otherwise referred to as sainthood. When it seemed England would not accept their reforms, many Puritans turned to America, where they created a “new” England full of visible saints. Morgan talks at length to explain the difference between Puritans and Separatists? Puritans are a group of extremists in Protestantism. They were not satisfied with the Reformation of the Church of England. But, they still did not leave the church and stayed with it, advising reforms. The Separatists are the group of Puritans, who got away from the Church of England as they did not accept the changes and did not agree with their ways. When the word Puritan is used in a wider sense, it includes both Puritans and Separatists. That is why it is said that all Separatists are Puritans, but not all Puritans are Separatists. Separatists want themselves to be separated from the Church of England. They would also aim at separating themselves from the so-called non-believers. Puritans would not aim at separating themselves from the Church of England. On the other hand, they only want to purify the Church of the influence of the Catholic Church. Puritans are very firm in their beliefs. Such cannot be said about separatists as they wanted to get away from everyone. They did not like the church, so they left, unlike the Puritans who stayed even when they did not agree with the methods. Puritans wanted to cleanse the Anglican Church using whatever means. Separatists were not like that. They wanted to get away from genocide and ethnic cleansing. <br />
Within the past thirty years historians have generally assumed that the Puritan fathers came to the Bay Colony fully armed with the rudiments of church discipline. Once on New England soil, it has been argued, the founders had merely to put into effect a system carefully outlined in England by William Ames and others of Congregational bent. Accordingly, it has also been assumed that church discipline on the matter of "conversion" remained consistent in the great upheaval that brought Congregationalism <br />
to our shores. Candidates for full church membership, it has been said, had always to "prove" their regeneration by offering narrative "accounts" of the conversion experience. A mere "profession" of faith and a "godly walk" were never sufficient, as the inner <br />
workings of the Holy Spirit on the hearts of the unregenerate had always to be described. What is more, historians have taken it for granted that the qualifications required in Massachusetts did not vary significantly from those of the Separatists in Holland and the <br />
Pilgrims in Plymouth. The Congregational structure of the New England churches, so the argument runs, depended from the start upon a fully instituted requirement of experiential "relations." Edmund S. Morgan takes issue with this assumption. The practice of testing prospective church members for actual inward "signs" of saving grace, he argues, originated neither with the Separatists in England and Holland nor with the Pilgrims in Plymouth, but in the Bay Colony itself. Furthermore, the Massachusetts Puritans did not at first insist upon these tests, but gradually came to require them over a period of years. It was not until the mid-163o's, when the "Great Migration" to New England was well under way, that they committed themselves to a degree of purity hitherto unknown in English Puritanism, and so launched a new era in Puritan ecclesiology as well as a new phase in the history of Congregationalism. The emigrants to Massachusetts, Mr. Morgan insists, were the first Puritans to restrict membership in the church "to persons ... who <br />
had felt the stirrings of grace in their souls, and who could demonstrate this fact to the satisfactions of other saints." The practice then spread to the churches of Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven, eventually finding its way back to England. In presenting his argument, the author provides impressive documentary support for the view that the Separatists in Holland did not contribute to this development, mainly because their talents were directed toward defending the principle of Separation. What is more, the Separatists of Plymouth, if we may relyon William Bradford, did not require a testimony of grace until at least 1648, and did not fully incorporate the requirement into their church discipline until 1669. Whatever the Massachusetts Puritans may have learned from Plymouth, either through Deacon Samuel Fuller in 1629 or by later contacts, they did not learn to apply tests of saving faith to prospective church members. Quite to the contrary; it was probably the Bay Colony men who taught their Plymouth brethren the rigors of admission procedures. "It was the other Puritans, remaining within the Church of England," says Mr. Morgan, "who mapped the route from sin to holiness and<br />
explained the way God carried a saint along it." Indeed, well before the settlement of Massachusetts, two generations of nonseparating Puritan divines had devoted themselves to the intricacies of the conversion process. Concerned with the individual rather than with the church, "they wished to trace the natural history of conversion in order to help men discover their prospects of salvation; and the result of their studies was to establish a morphology of conversion, in which each stage could be distinguished from the next, so that a man could check his eternal condition by a set of temporal and recognizable signs." So long as these Puritans remained in England, however, they never asked for a narrative account of the "stages" as a requirement for church membership. Under Elizabeth and James I, anyone born into an English parish could qualify for communion upon coming "of age." All the established church required was a "profession" of faith, a promise to lead the moral life, and knowledge of ecclesiastical discipline. After William Laud achieved prominence, first as Bishop of London and later as Primate of all England, seventeenth-century Puritans were never in a position to demand more. <br />
Yet the ideal of a "pure" church had long been the ultimate goal of non separating Congregationalists. Unlike the Separatists, they had chosen to remain within the Church of England in order to purify it. Augustine, they knew, had spoken of two churches; one pure but invisible, containing all those whom God had predestined for salvation; the other visible but not entirely pure, containing all who professed to believe in Christianity. And since their aim was to make the visible church as pure as possible, they soon took <br />
advantage of the removal to Massachusetts. With three thousand miles between themselves and Laud, they began to ask for more than a mere "profession" of faith and a "godly walk." The "stages" in conversion, which hitherto had served as a private guide for spiritual introspection, became a bulwark against hypocrisy and a matter of public policy. Nowhere else in Christendom were similar demands made on those seeking membership in the church. In his closing chapters Mr. Morgan gives a new interpretation <br />
of the responses the policy evoked, as well as fresh insights into its far-reaching implications. Until now historians have argued that the stiff requirements, together with a general "decline" in piety, soon forced the churches to revise their stand. The Synod of <br />
1662, it has been argued, lowered the admission standards by adopting the "Half-Way Covenant," which granted "membership" to the unconverted, as well as to their numerous progeny. <br />
But the membership it granted, Mr. Morgan reminds us, was not full membership. Those who failed to pass the tests of faith were still excluded from the Lord's Supper. The Half-Way Covenant, for all that has been said about it, vigorously reasserted the standards of the 1630's. If piety had indeed "declined," and if the quest for purity seemed to threaten the very life of the "Congregational Way," the Synod of 1662 did not officially recognize these problems. It neither abandoned the tests of faith nor showed any indication that they should be abandoned. It merely recognized continued procreation, and the need to keep the unregenerate under "church watch." The Half-Way Covenant, by itself, offers no proof that declension had actually occurred. <br />
New England orthodoxy thus upheld its innovation in the Congregational pattern until the churches were virtually emptied of "Visible Saints." A reaction did not set in until 1677, when the Reverend Solomon Stoddard of Northampton began to practice "open communion," or the admission of candidates to the Lord's Supper without attempting to discern saving faith. His revival of the original "Congregational Way" not only split the clergy but ignited a flame of religious enthusiasm which led to the Great Awakening. And here, with a glimpse into the future, the author ends his account. <br />
To all of this Mr. Morgan addresses himself with the utmost clarity and perception. Although he does not pretend to deal "exhaustively" with the subject, he leaves few aspects untouched. Throughout we are presented with thoughtful original scholar- <br />
ship and with a skillful reinterpretation of a Puritan idea.<br />
<br />
The Pilgrim Fathers, or Pilgrims, were part of a church congregation of religious separatists led by pastor John Robinson, church elder William Brewster and William Bradford. Separatists were a group of Puritans who advocated total withdrawal from the Church of England. The Separatists wanted the freedom to worship independently from English authority. Their quest for religious freedom took the Pilgrim Fathers to Colonial America where they had set their sights on New England which they had read about in a book called 'A Description of New England'. The author of the book was John Smith, famous for founding the first colony in Jamestown.<br />
Morgan posits and develops a revisionary main thesis: the practice of basing membership upon a declaration of experiencing saving grace, or "conversion," was first put into effect not in England, Holland, or Plymouth, as is commonly related, but in Massachusetts Bay Colony by non-separating Puritans. Characterized by stylistic grace and exegetic finesse, "Visible Saints" is another scholarly milestone in the "Millerian Age" of Puritan historiography<br />
<br />
<br />
1.Betlock, Lynn. "New England's Great Migration". Retrieved 28 April 2008.<br />
2.Hopley, Claire. "The Puritan Migration: Albion’s Seed Sets Sail". Retrieved 5 December 2008.<br />
3.Roscoe Lewis Ashley (1908). American History. New York: Macmillan. p. 52. Retrieved 7 October 2013.<br />
4.Barnette, Mic. "East Anglian Puritans 1629-1640". Puritans to New England.<br />
5.Susan Hardman Moore, Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home, (2007).<br />
6.Edwin S. Gaustad, Roger Williams (2005).<br />
7.Carla Gardina Pestana, Quakers and Baptists in Colonial Massachusetts (1991).<br />
<br />
Further reading<br />
Adams, James Truslow (1921). The Founding of New England. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.<br />
Robert Charles Anderson (1999). The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620–1633. <br />
Anderson, Virginia DeJohn. "Migrants and Motives:Religion and the Settlement of New England, 1630–1640," New England Quarterly<br />
Bailyn, Bernard. The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction (1988) excerpt and text search<br />
Breen Timothy H., and Stephen Foster. "Moving to the New World" William & Mary Quarterly 30 (1973): 189–222 in JSTOR<br />
Cressy, David. Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century (1987),<br />
Dunn, Richard S. Puritans and Yankees: The Winthrop Dynasty of New England, 1630–1717 (1962).<br />
Rutman, Darrett B. Winthrop's Boston (1965).<br />
Thompson, Roger. Mobility and Migration: East Anglian Founders of New England, 1629–1640, (1994) online edition</div>Billyhttps://www.videri.org/index.php?title=The_Visible_Saints&diff=1715The Visible Saints2015-09-22T19:23:51Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div><br />
{{Infobox book<br />
| name = The Visible Saints<br />
| author = Edmund S. Morgan<br />
| publisher = Martino Publishing<br />
| pub_date = 2013<br />
| pages = 160<br />
| isbn = 1614275300<br />
| image = [[File:51o2uFeEgzL__SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg|200px|alt=cover]]<br />
<br />
The Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea by Edward S Morgan. Publisher: Martino Fine Books (November 6, 2013), 174 pages. Morgan's historical writings focus on aspects of the American experience such as Puritanism, the Revolution, and the relationship between slavery and racism.<br />
Visible saints were people who appeared to be godly Christian people who would go to heaven when they died. Strict Puritans in colonial days only allowed visible saints to worship with them because they thought that the Church of England was irreverent for allowing everyone to worship in the same way.<br />
The Puritans began a movement in the 16th century to purify the Church of England, or Anglican Church, by eradicating perceived remnants of Catholicism. Visible sainthood was central to this purification campaign. Puritans believed that individuals could prove in their daily lives that they were part of God’s chosen, or predestined, to receive salvation. Wholesome living and financial success would be visible signs of being one of God’s elect, otherwise referred to as sainthood. When it seemed England would not accept their reforms, many Puritans turned to America, where they created a “new” England full of visible saints.<br />
Morgan talks at length to explain the difference between Puritans and Separatists? Puritans are a group of extremists in Protestantism. They were not satisfied with the Reformation of the Church of England. But, they still did not leave the church and stayed with it, advising reforms. The Separatists are the group of Puritans, who got away from the Church of England as they did not accept the changes and did not agree with their ways. When the word Puritan is used in a wider sense, it includes both Puritans and Separatists. That is why it is said that all Separatists are Puritans, but not all Puritans are Separatists. Separatists want themselves to be separated from the Church of England. They would also aim at separating themselves from the so-called non-believers. Puritans would not aim at separating themselves from the Church of England. On the other hand, they only want to purify the Church of the influence of the Catholic Church. Puritans are very firm in their beliefs. Such cannot be said about separatists as they wanted to get away from everyone. They did not like the church, so they left, unlike the Puritans who stayed even when they did not agree with the methods. Puritans wanted to cleanse the Anglican Church using whatever means. Separatists were not like that. They wanted to get away from genocide and ethnic cleansing. <br />
Within the past thirty years historians have generally assumed that the Puritan fathers came to the Bay Colony fully armed with the rudiments of church discipline. Once on New England soil, it has been argued, the founders had merely to put into effect a system carefully outlined in England by William Ames and others of Congregational bent. Accordingly, it has also been assumed that church discipline on the matter of "conversion" remained consistent in the great upheaval that brought Congregationalism <br />
to our shores. Candidates for full church membership, it has been said, had always to "prove" their regeneration by offering narrative "accounts" of the conversion experience. A mere "profession" of faith and a "godly walk" were never sufficient, as the inner <br />
workings of the Holy Spirit on the hearts of the unregenerate had always to be described. What is more, historians have taken it for granted that the qualifications required in Massachusetts did not vary significantly from those of the Separatists in Holland and the <br />
Pilgrims in Plymouth. The Congregational structure of the New England churches, so the argument runs, depended from the start upon a fully instituted requirement of experiential "relations." Edmund S. Morgan takes issue with this assumption. The practice of testing prospective church members for actual inward "signs" of saving grace, he argues, originated neither with the Separatists in England and Holland nor with the Pilgrims in Plymouth, but in the Bay Colony itself. Furthermore, the Massachusetts Puritans did not at first insist upon these tests, but gradually came to require them over a period of years. It was not until the mid-163o's, when the "Great Migration" to New England was well under way, that they committed themselves to a degree of purity hitherto unknown in English Puritanism, and so launched a new era in Puritan ecclesiology as well as a new phase in the history of Congregationalism. The emigrants to Massachusetts, Mr. Morgan insists, were the first Puritans to restrict membership in the church "to persons ... who <br />
had felt the stirrings of grace in their souls, and who could demonstrate this fact to the satisfactions of other saints." The practice then spread to the churches of Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven, eventually finding its way back to England. In presenting his argument, the author provides impressive documentary support for the view that the Separatists in Holland did not contribute to this development, mainly because their talents were directed toward defending the principle of Separation. What is more, the Separatists of Plymouth, if we may relyon William Bradford, did not require a testimony of grace until at least 1648, and did not fully incorporate the requirement into their church discipline until 1669. Whatever the Massachusetts Puritans may have learned from Plymouth, either through Deacon Samuel Fuller in 1629 or by later contacts, they did not learn to apply tests of saving faith to prospective church members. Quite to the contrary; it was probably the Bay Colony men who taught their Plymouth brethren the rigors of admission procedures. "It was the other Puritans, remaining within the Church of England," says Mr. Morgan, "who mapped the route from sin to holiness and<br />
explained the way God carried a saint along it." Indeed, well before the settlement of Massachusetts, two generations of nonseparating Puritan divines had devoted themselves to the intricacies of the conversion process. Concerned with the individual rather than with the church, "they wished to trace the natural history of conversion in order to help men discover their prospects of salvation; and the result of their studies was to establish a morphology of conversion, in which each stage could be distinguished from the next, so that a man could check his eternal condition by a set of temporal and recognizable signs." So long as these Puritans remained in England, however, they never asked for a narrative account of the "stages" as a requirement for church membership. Under Elizabeth and James I, anyone born into an English parish could qualify for communion upon coming "of age." All the established church required was a "profession" of faith, a promise to lead the moral life, and knowledge of ecclesiastical discipline. After William Laud achieved prominence, first as Bishop of London and later as Primate of all England, seventeenth-century Puritans were never in a position to demand more. <br />
Yet the ideal of a "pure" church had long been the ultimate goal of non separating Congregationalists. Unlike the Separatists, they had chosen to remain within the Church of England in order to purify it. Augustine, they knew, had spoken of two churches; one pure but invisible, containing all those whom God had predestined for salvation; the other visible but not entirely pure, containing all who professed to believe in Christianity. And since their aim was to make the visible church as pure as possible, they soon took <br />
advantage of the removal to Massachusetts. With three thousand miles between themselves and Laud, they began to ask for more than a mere "profession" of faith and a "godly walk." The "stages" in conversion, which hitherto had served as a private guide for spiritual introspection, became a bulwark against hypocrisy and a matter of public policy. Nowhere else in Christendom were similar demands made on those seeking membership in the church. In his closing chapters Mr. Morgan gives a new interpretation <br />
of the responses the policy evoked, as well as fresh insights into its far-reaching implications. Until now historians have argued that the stiff requirements, together with a general "decline" in piety, soon forced the churches to revise their stand. The Synod of <br />
1662, it has been argued, lowered the admission standards by adopting the "Half-Way Covenant," which granted "membership" to the unconverted, as well as to their numerous progeny. <br />
But the membership it granted, Mr. Morgan reminds us, was not full membership. Those who failed to pass the tests of faith were still excluded from the Lord's Supper. The Half-Way Covenant, for all that has been said about it, vigorously reasserted the standards of the 1630's. If piety had indeed "declined," and if the quest for purity seemed to threaten the very life of the "Congregational Way," the Synod of 1662 did not officially recognize these problems. It neither abandoned the tests of faith nor showed any indication that they should be abandoned. It merely recognized continued procreation, and the need to keep the unregenerate under "church watch." The Half-Way Covenant, by itself, offers no proof that declension had actually occurred. <br />
New England orthodoxy thus upheld its innovation in the Congregational pattern until the churches were virtually emptied of "Visible Saints." A reaction did not set in until 1677, when the Reverend Solomon Stoddard of Northampton began to practice "open communion," or the admission of candidates to the Lord's Supper without attempting to discern saving faith. His revival of the original "Congregational Way" not only split the clergy but ignited a flame of religious enthusiasm which led to the Great Awakening. And here, with a glimpse into the future, the author ends his account. <br />
To all of this Mr. Morgan addresses himself with the utmost clarity and perception. Although he does not pretend to deal "exhaustively" with the subject, he leaves few aspects untouched. Throughout we are presented with thoughtful original scholar- <br />
ship and with a skillful reinterpretation of a Puritan idea.<br />
<br />
The Pilgrim Fathers, or Pilgrims, were part of a church congregation of religious separatists led by pastor John Robinson, church elder William Brewster and William Bradford. Separatists were a group of Puritans who advocated total withdrawal from the Church of England. The Separatists wanted the freedom to worship independently from English authority. Their quest for religious freedom took the Pilgrim Fathers to Colonial America where they had set their sights on New England which they had read about in a book called 'A Description of New England'. The author of the book was John Smith, famous for founding the first colony in Jamestown.<br />
Morgan posits and develops a revisionary main thesis: the practice of basing membership upon a declaration of experiencing saving grace, or "conversion," was first put into effect not in England, Holland, or Plymouth, as is commonly related, but in Massachusetts Bay Colony by non-separating Puritans. Characterized by stylistic grace and exegetic finesse, "Visible Saints" is another scholarly milestone in the "Millerian Age" of Puritan historiography.<br />
<br />
<br />
1.Betlock, Lynn. "New England's Great Migration". Retrieved 28 April 2008.<br />
2.Hopley, Claire. "The Puritan Migration: Albion’s Seed Sets Sail". Retrieved 5 December 2008.<br />
3.Roscoe Lewis Ashley (1908). American History. New York: Macmillan. p. 52. Retrieved 7 October 2013.<br />
4.Barnette, Mic. "East Anglian Puritans 1629-1640". Puritans to New England.<br />
5.Susan Hardman Moore, Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home, (2007).<br />
6.Edwin S. Gaustad, Roger Williams (2005).<br />
7.Carla Gardina Pestana, Quakers and Baptists in Colonial Massachusetts (1991).<br />
<br />
Further reading<br />
Adams, James Truslow (1921). The Founding of New England. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.<br />
Robert Charles Anderson (1999). The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620–1633. <br />
Anderson, Virginia DeJohn. "Migrants and Motives:Religion and the Settlement of New England, 1630–1640," New England Quarterly<br />
Bailyn, Bernard. The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction (1988) excerpt and text search<br />
Breen Timothy H., and Stephen Foster. "Moving to the New World" William & Mary Quarterly 30 (1973): 189–222 in JSTOR<br />
Cressy, David. Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century (1987),<br />
Dunn, Richard S. Puritans and Yankees: The Winthrop Dynasty of New England, 1630–1717 (1962).<br />
Rutman, Darrett B. Winthrop's Boston (1965).<br />
Thompson, Roger. Mobility and Migration: East Anglian Founders of New England, 1629–1640, (1994) online edition</div>Billyhttps://www.videri.org/index.php?title=The_Visible_Saints&diff=1714The Visible Saints2015-09-22T19:18:08Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div><br />
{{Infobox book<br />
| name = The Visible Saints<br />
| author = Edmund S. Morgan<br />
| publisher = Martino Publishing<br />
| pub_date = 2013<br />
| pages = 160<br />
| isbn = 1614275300<br />
| image = [[File:51o2uFeEgzL__SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg|200px|alt=cover]]<br />
<br />
<br />
The Visible Saints The History of a Puritan Idea by Edward S Morgan<br />
Morgan's historical writings greatly enhance our understanding of such complex aspects of the American experience as Puritanism, the Revolution, and the relationship between slavery and racism<br />
Visible saints were people who appeared to be godly Christian people who would go to heaven when they died. Strict Puritans in colonial days only allowed visible saints to worship with them because they thought that the church of England was irreverent for allowing everyone to worship in the same way. They were revered because they were open about their beliefs, and they influenced Father William Joseph Chaminade. (Source: Wikipedia<br />
The Puritans began a movement in the 16th century to purify the Church of England, or Anglican Church, by eradicating perceived remnants of Catholicism. Visible sainthood was central to this purification campaign. Puritans believed that individuals could prove in their daily lives that they were part of God’s chosen, or predestined, to receive salvation. Wholesome living and financial success would be visible signs of being one of God’s elect, otherwise referred to as sainthood. When it seemed England would not accept their reforms, many Puritans turned to America, where they created a “new” England full of visible saints..<br />
<br />
Edmund S. Morgan takes issue <br />
with this assumption. The practice of testing prospective church members for actual inward "signs" of saving grace, he argues, originated neither with the Separatists in England and Holland nor with the Pilgrims in Plymouth, but in the Bay Colony itself. <br />
Furthermore, the Massachusetts Puritans did not at first insist upon these tests, but gradually came to require them over a period of years. It was not until the mid-163o's, when the "Great Migration" to New England was well under way, that they committed <br />
themselves to a degree of purity hitherto unknown in English <br />
Puritanism, and so launched a new era in Puritan ecclesiology as <br />
well as a new phase in the history of Congregationalism. The <br />
emigrants to Massachusetts, Mr. Morgan insists, were the first <br />
394 <br />
<br />
<br />
BOOK REVIEWS 395 <br />
Puritans to restrict membership in the church "to persons ... who <br />
had felt the stirrings of grace in their souls, and who could dem- <br />
onstrate this fact to the satisfactions of other saints." The practice <br />
then spread to the churches of Plymouth, Connecticut, and New <br />
Haven, eventually finding its way back to England. <br />
In presenting his argument, the author provides impressive <br />
documentary support for the view that the Separatists in Holland <br />
did not contribute to this development, mainly because their <br />
talents were directed toward defending the principle of Separa- <br />
tion. What is more, the Separatists of Plymouth, if we may rely <br />
on William Bradford, did not require a testimony of grace until at <br />
least 1648, and did not fully incorporate the requirement into <br />
their church discipline until 1669. Whatever the Massachusetts <br />
Puritans may have learned from Plymouth, either through Deacon <br />
Samuel Fuller in 1629 or by later contacts, they did not learn to <br />
apply tests of saving faith to prospective church members. Quite <br />
to the contrary; it was probably the Bay Colony men who taught <br />
their Plymouth brethren the rigors of admission procedures. "It <br />
was the other Puritans, remaining within the Church of England," <br />
says Mr. Morgan, "who mapped the route from sin to holiness and <br />
explained the way God carried a saint along it." <br />
Indeed, well before the settlement of Massachusetts, two genera- <br />
tions of nonseparating Puritan divines had devoted themselves to <br />
the intricacies of the conversion process. Concerned with the indi- <br />
vidual rather than with the church, "they wished to trace the <br />
natural history of conversion in order to help men discover their <br />
prospects of salvation; and the result of their studies was to estab- <br />
lish a morphology of conversion, in which each stage could be <br />
distinguished from the next, so that a man could check his eternal <br />
condition by a set of temporal and recognizable signs." So long as <br />
these Puritans remained in England, however, they never asked <br />
for a narrative account of the "stages" as a requirement for church <br />
membership. Under Elizabeth and James I, anyone born into an <br />
English parish could qualify for communion upon coming "of <br />
age." All the established church required was a "profession" of <br />
faith, a promise to lead the moral life, and knowledge of ecclesi- <br />
astical discipline. After William Laud achieved prominence, first <br />
as Bishop of London and later as Primate of all England, seven- <br />
teenth-century Puritans were never in a position to demand more. <br />
Yet the ideal of a "pure" church had long been the ultimate goal<br />
<br />
The Pilgrim Fathers, or Pilgrims, were part of a church congregation of religious separatists led by pastor John Robinson, church elder William Brewster and William Bradford. Separatists were a group of Puritans who advocated total withdrawal from the Church of England. The Separatists wanted the freedom to worship independently from English authority. Their quest for religious freedom took the Pilgrim Fathers to Colonial America where they had set their sights on New England which they had read about in a book called 'A Description of New England'. The author of the book was John Smith, famous for founding the first colony in Jamestown.<br />
Morgan posits and develops a revisionary main thesis: the practice of basing membership upon a declaration of experiencing saving grace, or "conversion," was first put into effect not in England, Holland, or Plymouth, as is commonly related, but in Massachusetts Bay Colony by non-separating Puritans. Characterized by stylistic grace and exegetic finesse, "Visible Saints" is another scholarly milestone in the "Millerian Age" of Puritan historiography.<br />
<br />
1.Betlock, Lynn. "New England's Great Migration". Retrieved 28 April 2008.<br />
2.Hopley, Claire. "The Puritan Migration: Albion’s Seed Sets Sail". Retrieved 5 December 2008.<br />
3.Roscoe Lewis Ashley (1908). American History. New York: Macmillan. p. 52. Retrieved 7 October 2013.<br />
4.Barnette, Mic. "East Anglian Puritans 1629-1640". Puritans to New England.<br />
5.Susan Hardman Moore, Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home, (2007).<br />
6.Edwin S. Gaustad, Roger Williams (2005).<br />
7.Carla Gardina Pestana, Quakers and Baptists in Colonial Massachusetts (1991).<br />
<br />
Further reading<br />
Adams, James Truslow (1921). The Founding of New England. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.<br />
Robert Charles Anderson (1999). The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620–1633. <br />
Anderson, Virginia DeJohn. "Migrants and Motives:Religion and the Settlement of New England, 1630–1640," New England Quarterly<br />
Bailyn, Bernard. The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction (1988) excerpt and text search<br />
Breen Timothy H., and Stephen Foster. "Moving to the New World" William & Mary Quarterly 30 (1973): 189–222 in JSTOR<br />
Cressy, David. Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century (1987),<br />
Dunn, Richard S. Puritans and Yankees: The Winthrop Dynasty of New England, 1630–1717 (1962).<br />
Rutman, Darrett B. Winthrop's Boston (1965).<br />
Thompson, Roger. Mobility and Migration: East Anglian Founders of New England, 1629–1640, (1994) online edition</div>Billyhttps://www.videri.org/index.php?title=The_Visible_Saints&diff=1713The Visible Saints2015-09-22T19:13:25Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div><br />
{{Infobox book<br />
| name = The Visible Saints<br />
| author = Edmund S. Morgan<br />
| publisher = Martino Publishing<br />
| pub_date = 2013<br />
| pages = 160<br />
| isbn = 1614275300<br />
| image = [[File:51o2uFeEgzL__SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg|200px|alt=cover]]<br />
<br />
<br />
The Visible Saints The History of a Puritan Idea by Edward S Morgan<br />
Morgan's historical writings greatly enhance our understanding of such complex aspects of the American experience as Puritanism, the Revolution, and the relationship between slavery and racism<br />
Visible saints were people who appeared to be godly Christian people who would go to heaven when they died. Strict Puritans in colonial days only allowed visible saints to worship with them because they thought that the church of England was irreverent for allowing everyone to worship in the same way. They were revered because they were open about their beliefs, and they influenced Father William Joseph Chaminade. (Source: Wikipedia<br />
The Puritans began a movement in the 16th century to purify the Church of England, or Anglican Church, by eradicating perceived remnants of Catholicism. Visible sainthood was central to this purification campaign. Puritans believed that individuals could prove in their daily lives that they were part of God’s chosen, or predestined, to receive salvation. Wholesome living and financial success would be visible signs of being one of God’s elect, otherwise referred to as sainthood. When it seemed England would not accept their reforms, many Puritans turned to America, where they created a “new” England full of visible saints..<br />
<br />
Edmund S. Morgan takes issue <br />
with this assumption. The practice of testing prospective church members for actual inward "signs" of saving grace, he argues, originated neither with the Separatists in England and Holland nor with the Pilgrims in Plymouth, but in the Bay Colony itself. <br />
Furthermore, the Massachusetts Puritans did not at first insist upon these tests, but gradually came to require them over a period of years. It was not until the mid-163o's, when the "Great Migration" to New England was well under way, that they committed <br />
themselves to a degree of purity hitherto unknown in English <br />
Puritanism, and so launched a new era in Puritan ecclesiology as <br />
well as a new phase in the history of Congregationalism. The <br />
emigrants to Massachusetts, Mr. Morgan insists, were the first <br />
394 <br />
<br />
<br />
BOOK REVIEWS 395 <br />
Puritans to restrict membership in the church "to persons ... who <br />
had felt the stirrings of grace in their souls, and who could dem- <br />
onstrate this fact to the satisfactions of other saints." The practice <br />
then spread to the churches of Plymouth, Connecticut, and New <br />
Haven, eventually finding its way back to England. <br />
In presenting his argument, the author provides impressive <br />
documentary support for the view that the Separatists in Holland <br />
did not contribute to this development, mainly because their <br />
talents were directed toward defending the principle of Separa- <br />
tion. What is more, the Separatists of Plymouth, if we may rely <br />
on William Bradford, did not require a testimony of grace until at <br />
least 1648, and did not fully incorporate the requirement into <br />
their church discipline until 1669. Whatever the Massachusetts <br />
Puritans may have learned from Plymouth, either through Deacon <br />
Samuel Fuller in 1629 or by later contacts, they did not learn to <br />
apply tests of saving faith to prospective church members. Quite <br />
to the contrary; it was probably the Bay Colony men who taught <br />
their Plymouth brethren the rigors of admission procedures. "It <br />
was the other Puritans, remaining within the Church of England," <br />
says Mr. Morgan, "who mapped the route from sin to holiness and <br />
explained the way God carried a saint along it." <br />
Indeed, well before the settlement of Massachusetts, two genera- <br />
tions of nonseparating Puritan divines had devoted themselves to <br />
the intricacies of the conversion process. Concerned with the indi- <br />
vidual rather than with the church, "they wished to trace the <br />
natural history of conversion in order to help men discover their <br />
prospects of salvation; and the result of their studies was to estab- <br />
lish a morphology of conversion, in which each stage could be <br />
distinguished from the next, so that a man could check his eternal <br />
condition by a set of temporal and recognizable signs." So long as <br />
these Puritans remained in England, however, they never asked <br />
for a narrative account of the "stages" as a requirement for church <br />
membership. Under Elizabeth and James I, anyone born into an <br />
English parish could qualify for communion upon coming "of <br />
age." All the established church required was a "profession" of <br />
faith, a promise to lead the moral life, and knowledge of ecclesi- <br />
astical discipline. After William Laud achieved prominence, first <br />
as Bishop of London and later as Primate of all England, seven- <br />
teenth-century Puritans were never in a position to demand more. <br />
Yet the ideal of a "pure" church had long been the ultimate goal<br />
<br />
The Pilgrim Fathers, or Pilgrims, were part of a church congregation of religious separatists led by pastor John Robinson, church elder William Brewster and William Bradford. Separatists were a group of Puritans who advocated total withdrawal from the Church of England. The Separatists wanted the freedom to worship independently from English authority. Their quest for religious freedom took the Pilgrim Fathers to Colonial America where they had set their sights on New England which they had read about in a book called 'A Description of New England'. The author of the book was John Smith, famous for founding the first colony in Jamestown.<br />
Morgan posits and develops a revisionary main thesis: the practice of basing membership upon a declaration of experiencing saving grace, or "conversion," was first put into effect not in England, Holland, or Plymouth, as is commonly related, but in Massachusetts Bay Colony by non-separating Puritans. Characterized by stylistic grace and exegetic finesse, "Visible Saints" is another scholarly milestone in the "Millerian Age" of Puritan historiography.<br />
<br />
1.Betlock, Lynn. "New England's Great Migration". Retrieved 28 April 2008.<br />
2.Hopley, Claire. "The Puritan Migration: Albion’s Seed Sets Sail". Retrieved 5 December 2008.<br />
3.Roscoe Lewis Ashley (1908). American History. New York: Macmillan. p. 52. Retrieved 7 October 2013.<br />
4.Barnette, Mic. "East Anglian Puritans 1629-1640". Puritans to New England.<br />
5.Susan Hardman Moore, Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home, (2007).<br />
6.Edwin S. Gaustad, Roger Williams (2005).<br />
7.Carla Gardina Pestana, Quakers and Baptists in Colonial Massachusetts (1991).<br />
<br />
Further reading<br />
Adams, James Truslow (1921). The Founding of New England. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.<br />
Robert Charles Anderson (1999). The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620–1633. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society. Three volumes.<br />
Anderson, Virginia DeJohn. "Migrants and Motives: Religion and the Settlement of New England, 1630–1640," New England Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 3 (Sep., 1985), pp. 339–383 in JSTOR<br />
Anderson, Virginia DeJohn. New England's Generation: The Great Migration and the Formation of Society and Culture in the Seventeenth Century (1991) excerpt and text search<br />
Bailyn, Bernard. The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction (1988) excerpt and text search<br />
Breen Timothy H., and Stephen Foster. "Moving to the New World: The Character of Early Massachusetts Migration," William & Mary Quarterly 30 (1973): 189–222 in JSTOR<br />
Cressy, David. Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century (1987),<br />
Dunn, Richard S. Puritans and Yankees: The Winthrop Dynasty of New England, 1630–1717 (1962).<br />
Fischer, David Hackett. Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (1989), comprehensive look at major ethnic groups excerpt and text search<br />
Rutman, Darrett B. Winthrop's Boston (1965).<br />
Thompson, Roger. Mobility and Migration: East Anglian Founders of New England, 1629–1640, (1994) online edition</div>Billyhttps://www.videri.org/index.php?title=File:51o2uFeEgzL_SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg&diff=1712File:51o2uFeEgzL SX331 BO1,204,203,200 .jpg2015-09-22T17:25:58Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div></div>Billyhttps://www.videri.org/index.php?title=The_Visible_Saints&diff=1710The Visible Saints2015-09-22T17:21:10Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div><br />
{{Infobox book<br />
| name = The Visible Saints<br />
| author = Edmund S. Morgan<br />
| publisher = Martino Publishing<br />
| pub_date = 2013<br />
| pages = 160<br />
| isbn = 1614275300<br />
| image = [[File:51o2uFeEgzL__SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg|200px|alt=cover]]<br />
<br />
<br />
The Visible Saints The History of a Puritan Idea by Edward S Morgan<br />
Morgan's historical writings greatly enhance our understanding of such complex aspects of the American experience as Puritanism, the Revolution, and the relationship between slavery and racism<br />
Visible saints were people who appeared to be godly Christian people who would go to heaven when they died. Strict Puritans in colonial days only allowed visible saints to worship with them because they thought that the church of England was irreverent for allowing everyone to worship in the same way. They were revered because they were open about their beliefs, and they influenced Father William Joseph Chaminade. (Source: Wikipedia<br />
The Puritans began a movement in the 16th century to purify the Church of England, or Anglican Church, by eradicating perceived remnants of Catholicism. Visible sainthood was central to this purification campaign. Puritans believed that individuals could prove in their daily lives that they were part of God’s chosen, or predestined, to receive salvation. Wholesome living and financial success would be visible signs of being one of God’s elect, otherwise referred to as sainthood. When it seemed England would not accept their reforms, many Puritans turned to America, where they created a “new” England full of visible saints..<br />
<br />
Edmund S. Morgan takes issue <br />
with this assumption. The practice of testing prospective church members for actual inward "signs" of saving grace, he argues, originated neither with the Separatists in England and Holland nor with the Pilgrims in Plymouth, but in the Bay Colony itself. <br />
Furthermore, the Massachusetts Puritans did not at first insist upon these tests, but gradually came to require them over a period of years. It was not until the mid-163o's, when the "Great Migration" to New England was well under way, that they committed <br />
themselves to a degree of purity hitherto unknown in English <br />
Puritanism, and so launched a new era in Puritan ecclesiology as <br />
well as a new phase in the history of Congregationalism. The <br />
emigrants to Massachusetts, Mr. Morgan insists, were the first <br />
394 <br />
<br />
<br />
BOOK REVIEWS 395 <br />
Puritans to restrict membership in the church "to persons ... who <br />
had felt the stirrings of grace in their souls, and who could dem- <br />
onstrate this fact to the satisfactions of other saints." The practice <br />
then spread to the churches of Plymouth, Connecticut, and New <br />
Haven, eventually finding its way back to England. <br />
In presenting his argument, the author provides impressive <br />
documentary support for the view that the Separatists in Holland <br />
did not contribute to this development, mainly because their <br />
talents were directed toward defending the principle of Separa- <br />
tion. What is more, the Separatists of Plymouth, if we may rely <br />
on William Bradford, did not require a testimony of grace until at <br />
least 1648, and did not fully incorporate the requirement into <br />
their church discipline until 1669. Whatever the Massachusetts <br />
Puritans may have learned from Plymouth, either through Deacon <br />
Samuel Fuller in 1629 or by later contacts, they did not learn to <br />
apply tests of saving faith to prospective church members. Quite <br />
to the contrary; it was probably the Bay Colony men who taught <br />
their Plymouth brethren the rigors of admission procedures. "It <br />
was the other Puritans, remaining within the Church of England," <br />
says Mr. Morgan, "who mapped the route from sin to holiness and <br />
explained the way God carried a saint along it." <br />
Indeed, well before the settlement of Massachusetts, two genera- <br />
tions of nonseparating Puritan divines had devoted themselves to <br />
the intricacies of the conversion process. Concerned with the indi- <br />
vidual rather than with the church, "they wished to trace the <br />
natural history of conversion in order to help men discover their <br />
prospects of salvation; and the result of their studies was to estab- <br />
lish a morphology of conversion, in which each stage could be <br />
distinguished from the next, so that a man could check his eternal <br />
condition by a set of temporal and recognizable signs." So long as <br />
these Puritans remained in England, however, they never asked <br />
for a narrative account of the "stages" as a requirement for church <br />
membership. Under Elizabeth and James I, anyone born into an <br />
English parish could qualify for communion upon coming "of <br />
age." All the established church required was a "profession" of <br />
faith, a promise to lead the moral life, and knowledge of ecclesi- <br />
astical discipline. After William Laud achieved prominence, first <br />
as Bishop of London and later as Primate of all England, seven- <br />
teenth-century Puritans were never in a position to demand more. <br />
Yet the ideal of a "pure" church had long been the ultimate goal<br />
<br />
The Pilgrim Fathers, or Pilgrims, were part of a church congregation of religious separatists led by pastor John Robinson, church elder William Brewster and William Bradford. Separatists were a group of Puritans who advocated total withdrawal from the Church of England. The Separatists wanted the freedom to worship independently from English authority. Their quest for religious freedom took the Pilgrim Fathers to Colonial America where they had set their sights on New England which they had read about in a book called 'A Description of New England'. The author of the book was John Smith, famous for founding the first colony in Jamestown.<br />
Morgan posits and develops a revisionary main thesis: the practice of basing membership upon a declaration of experiencing saving grace, or "conversion," was first put into effect not in England, Holland, or Plymouth, as is commonly related, but in Massachusetts Bay Colony by non-separating Puritans. Characterized by stylistic grace and exegetic finesse, "Visible Saints" is another scholarly milestone in the "Millerian Age" of Puritan historiography.<br />
<br />
Betlock, Lynn. "New England's Great Migration". Retrieved 28 April 2008.<br />
2.Jump up ^ Hopley, Claire. "The Puritan Migration: Albion’s Seed Sets Sail". Retrieved 5 December 2008.<br />
3.Jump up ^ Roscoe Lewis Ashley (1908). American History. New York: Macmillan. p. 52. Retrieved 7 October 2013.<br />
4.Jump up ^ Barnette, Mic. "East Anglian Puritans 1629-1640". Puritans to New England.<br />
5.Jump up ^ Susan Hardman Moore, Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home, (2007).<br />
6.Jump up ^ Edwin S. Gaustad, Roger Williams (2005).<br />
7.Jump up ^ Carla Gardina Pestana, Quakers and Baptists in Colonial Massachusetts (1991).<br />
<br />
Further reading[edit]<br />
Adams, James Truslow (1921). The Founding of New England. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.<br />
Robert Charles Anderson (1999). The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620–1633. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society. Three volumes.<br />
Anderson, Virginia DeJohn. "Migrants and Motives: Religion and the Settlement of New England, 1630–1640," New England Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 3 (Sep., 1985), pp. 339–383 in JSTOR<br />
Anderson, Virginia DeJohn. New England's Generation: The Great Migration and the Formation of Society and Culture in the Seventeenth Century (1991) excerpt and text search<br />
Bailyn, Bernard. The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction (1988) excerpt and text search<br />
Breen Timothy H., and Stephen Foster. "Moving to the New World: The Character of Early Massachusetts Migration," William & Mary Quarterly 30 (1973): 189–222 in JSTOR<br />
Cressy, David. Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century (1987),<br />
Dunn, Richard S. Puritans and Yankees: The Winthrop Dynasty of New England, 1630–1717 (1962).<br />
Fischer, David Hackett. Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (1989), comprehensive look at major ethnic groups excerpt and text search<br />
Rutman, Darrett B. Winthrop's Boston (1965).<br />
Thompson, Roger. Mobility and Migration: East Anglian Founders of New England, 1629–1640, (1994) online edition</div>Billyhttps://www.videri.org/index.php?title=The_Visible_Saints&diff=1709The Visible Saints2015-09-22T17:10:43Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div><br />
{{Infobox book<br />
| name = The Visible Saints<br />
| author = Edmund S. Morgan<br />
| publisher = Martino Publishing<br />
| pub_date = 2013<br />
| pages = 160<br />
| isbn = 1614275300<br />
| image = [[File:American Slavery, American Freedom.jpg|200px|alt=cover]]<br />
<br />
<br />
The Visible Saints The History of a Puritan Idea by Edward S Morgan<br />
Morgan's historical writings greatly enhance our understanding of such complex aspects of the American experience as Puritanism, the Revolution, and the relationship between slavery and racism<br />
Visible saints were people who appeared to be godly Christian people who would go to heaven when they died. Strict Puritans in colonial days only allowed visible saints to worship with them because they thought that the church of England was irreverent for allowing everyone to worship in the same way. They were revered because they were open about their beliefs, and they influenced Father William Joseph Chaminade. (Source: Wikipedia<br />
The Puritans began a movement in the 16th century to purify the Church of England, or Anglican Church, by eradicating perceived remnants of Catholicism. Visible sainthood was central to this purification campaign. Puritans believed that individuals could prove in their daily lives that they were part of God’s chosen, or predestined, to receive salvation. Wholesome living and financial success would be visible signs of being one of God’s elect, otherwise referred to as sainthood. When it seemed England would not accept their reforms, many Puritans turned to America, where they created a “new” England full of visible saints..<br />
<br />
Edmund S. Morgan takes issue <br />
with this assumption. The practice of testing prospective church members for actual inward "signs" of saving grace, he argues, originated neither with the Separatists in England and Holland nor with the Pilgrims in Plymouth, but in the Bay Colony itself. <br />
Furthermore, the Massachusetts Puritans did not at first insist upon these tests, but gradually came to require them over a period of years. It was not until the mid-163o's, when the "Great Migration" to New England was well under way, that they committed <br />
themselves to a degree of purity hitherto unknown in English <br />
Puritanism, and so launched a new era in Puritan ecclesiology as <br />
well as a new phase in the history of Congregationalism. The <br />
emigrants to Massachusetts, Mr. Morgan insists, were the first <br />
394 <br />
<br />
<br />
BOOK REVIEWS 395 <br />
Puritans to restrict membership in the church "to persons ... who <br />
had felt the stirrings of grace in their souls, and who could dem- <br />
onstrate this fact to the satisfactions of other saints." The practice <br />
then spread to the churches of Plymouth, Connecticut, and New <br />
Haven, eventually finding its way back to England. <br />
In presenting his argument, the author provides impressive <br />
documentary support for the view that the Separatists in Holland <br />
did not contribute to this development, mainly because their <br />
talents were directed toward defending the principle of Separa- <br />
tion. What is more, the Separatists of Plymouth, if we may rely <br />
on William Bradford, did not require a testimony of grace until at <br />
least 1648, and did not fully incorporate the requirement into <br />
their church discipline until 1669. Whatever the Massachusetts <br />
Puritans may have learned from Plymouth, either through Deacon <br />
Samuel Fuller in 1629 or by later contacts, they did not learn to <br />
apply tests of saving faith to prospective church members. Quite <br />
to the contrary; it was probably the Bay Colony men who taught <br />
their Plymouth brethren the rigors of admission procedures. "It <br />
was the other Puritans, remaining within the Church of England," <br />
says Mr. Morgan, "who mapped the route from sin to holiness and <br />
explained the way God carried a saint along it." <br />
Indeed, well before the settlement of Massachusetts, two genera- <br />
tions of nonseparating Puritan divines had devoted themselves to <br />
the intricacies of the conversion process. Concerned with the indi- <br />
vidual rather than with the church, "they wished to trace the <br />
natural history of conversion in order to help men discover their <br />
prospects of salvation; and the result of their studies was to estab- <br />
lish a morphology of conversion, in which each stage could be <br />
distinguished from the next, so that a man could check his eternal <br />
condition by a set of temporal and recognizable signs." So long as <br />
these Puritans remained in England, however, they never asked <br />
for a narrative account of the "stages" as a requirement for church <br />
membership. Under Elizabeth and James I, anyone born into an <br />
English parish could qualify for communion upon coming "of <br />
age." All the established church required was a "profession" of <br />
faith, a promise to lead the moral life, and knowledge of ecclesi- <br />
astical discipline. After William Laud achieved prominence, first <br />
as Bishop of London and later as Primate of all England, seven- <br />
teenth-century Puritans were never in a position to demand more. <br />
Yet the ideal of a "pure" church had long been the ultimate goal<br />
<br />
The Pilgrim Fathers, or Pilgrims, were part of a church congregation of religious separatists led by pastor John Robinson, church elder William Brewster and William Bradford. Separatists were a group of Puritans who advocated total withdrawal from the Church of England. The Separatists wanted the freedom to worship independently from English authority. Their quest for religious freedom took the Pilgrim Fathers to Colonial America where they had set their sights on New England which they had read about in a book called 'A Description of New England'. The author of the book was John Smith, famous for founding the first colony in Jamestown.<br />
Morgan posits and develops a revisionary main thesis: the practice of basing membership upon a declaration of experiencing saving grace, or "conversion," was first put into effect not in England, Holland, or Plymouth, as is commonly related, but in Massachusetts Bay Colony by non-separating Puritans. Characterized by stylistic grace and exegetic finesse, "Visible Saints" is another scholarly milestone in the "Millerian Age" of Puritan historiography.<br />
<br />
Betlock, Lynn. "New England's Great Migration". Retrieved 28 April 2008.<br />
2.Jump up ^ Hopley, Claire. "The Puritan Migration: Albion’s Seed Sets Sail". Retrieved 5 December 2008.<br />
3.Jump up ^ Roscoe Lewis Ashley (1908). American History. New York: Macmillan. p. 52. Retrieved 7 October 2013.<br />
4.Jump up ^ Barnette, Mic. "East Anglian Puritans 1629-1640". Puritans to New England.<br />
5.Jump up ^ Susan Hardman Moore, Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home, (2007).<br />
6.Jump up ^ Edwin S. Gaustad, Roger Williams (2005).<br />
7.Jump up ^ Carla Gardina Pestana, Quakers and Baptists in Colonial Massachusetts (1991).<br />
<br />
Further reading[edit]<br />
Adams, James Truslow (1921). The Founding of New England. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.<br />
Robert Charles Anderson (1999). The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620–1633. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society. Three volumes.<br />
Anderson, Virginia DeJohn. "Migrants and Motives: Religion and the Settlement of New England, 1630–1640," New England Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 3 (Sep., 1985), pp. 339–383 in JSTOR<br />
Anderson, Virginia DeJohn. New England's Generation: The Great Migration and the Formation of Society and Culture in the Seventeenth Century (1991) excerpt and text search<br />
Bailyn, Bernard. The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction (1988) excerpt and text search<br />
Breen Timothy H., and Stephen Foster. "Moving to the New World: The Character of Early Massachusetts Migration," William & Mary Quarterly 30 (1973): 189–222 in JSTOR<br />
Cressy, David. Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century (1987),<br />
Dunn, Richard S. Puritans and Yankees: The Winthrop Dynasty of New England, 1630–1717 (1962).<br />
Fischer, David Hackett. Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (1989), comprehensive look at major ethnic groups excerpt and text search<br />
Rutman, Darrett B. Winthrop's Boston (1965).<br />
Thompson, Roger. Mobility and Migration: East Anglian Founders of New England, 1629–1640, (1994) online edition</div>Billyhttps://www.videri.org/index.php?title=The_Visible_Saints&diff=1708The Visible Saints2015-09-22T17:08:31Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div><br />
{{Infobox book<br />
| name = The Visible Saints<br />
| author = Edmund S. Morgan<br />
| publisher = Martino Publishing<br />
| pub_date = 2013<br />
| pages = 160<br />
| isbn = 039332494X<br />
| image = [[File:American Slavery, American Freedom.jpg|200px|alt=cover]]<br />
}}<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The Visible Saints The History of a Puritan Idea by Edward S Morgan<br />
Morgan's historical writings greatly enhance our understanding of such complex aspects of the American experience as Puritanism, the Revolution, and the relationship between slavery and racism<br />
Visible saints were people who appeared to be godly Christian people who would go to heaven when they died. Strict Puritans in colonial days only allowed visible saints to worship with them because they thought that the church of England was irreverent for allowing everyone to worship in the same way. They were revered because they were open about their beliefs, and they influenced Father William Joseph Chaminade. (Source: Wikipedia<br />
The Puritans began a movement in the 16th century to purify the Church of England, or Anglican Church, by eradicating perceived remnants of Catholicism. Visible sainthood was central to this purification campaign. Puritans believed that individuals could prove in their daily lives that they were part of God’s chosen, or predestined, to receive salvation. Wholesome living and financial success would be visible signs of being one of God’s elect, otherwise referred to as sainthood. When it seemed England would not accept their reforms, many Puritans turned to America, where they created a “new” England full of visible saints..<br />
<br />
Edmund S. Morgan takes issue <br />
with this assumption. The practice of testing prospective church members for actual inward "signs" of saving grace, he argues, originated neither with the Separatists in England and Holland nor with the Pilgrims in Plymouth, but in the Bay Colony itself. <br />
Furthermore, the Massachusetts Puritans did not at first insist upon these tests, but gradually came to require them over a period of years. It was not until the mid-163o's, when the "Great Migration" to New England was well under way, that they committed <br />
themselves to a degree of purity hitherto unknown in English <br />
Puritanism, and so launched a new era in Puritan ecclesiology as <br />
well as a new phase in the history of Congregationalism. The <br />
emigrants to Massachusetts, Mr. Morgan insists, were the first <br />
394 <br />
<br />
<br />
BOOK REVIEWS 395 <br />
Puritans to restrict membership in the church "to persons ... who <br />
had felt the stirrings of grace in their souls, and who could dem- <br />
onstrate this fact to the satisfactions of other saints." The practice <br />
then spread to the churches of Plymouth, Connecticut, and New <br />
Haven, eventually finding its way back to England. <br />
In presenting his argument, the author provides impressive <br />
documentary support for the view that the Separatists in Holland <br />
did not contribute to this development, mainly because their <br />
talents were directed toward defending the principle of Separa- <br />
tion. What is more, the Separatists of Plymouth, if we may rely <br />
on William Bradford, did not require a testimony of grace until at <br />
least 1648, and did not fully incorporate the requirement into <br />
their church discipline until 1669. Whatever the Massachusetts <br />
Puritans may have learned from Plymouth, either through Deacon <br />
Samuel Fuller in 1629 or by later contacts, they did not learn to <br />
apply tests of saving faith to prospective church members. Quite <br />
to the contrary; it was probably the Bay Colony men who taught <br />
their Plymouth brethren the rigors of admission procedures. "It <br />
was the other Puritans, remaining within the Church of England," <br />
says Mr. Morgan, "who mapped the route from sin to holiness and <br />
explained the way God carried a saint along it." <br />
Indeed, well before the settlement of Massachusetts, two genera- <br />
tions of nonseparating Puritan divines had devoted themselves to <br />
the intricacies of the conversion process. Concerned with the indi- <br />
vidual rather than with the church, "they wished to trace the <br />
natural history of conversion in order to help men discover their <br />
prospects of salvation; and the result of their studies was to estab- <br />
lish a morphology of conversion, in which each stage could be <br />
distinguished from the next, so that a man could check his eternal <br />
condition by a set of temporal and recognizable signs." So long as <br />
these Puritans remained in England, however, they never asked <br />
for a narrative account of the "stages" as a requirement for church <br />
membership. Under Elizabeth and James I, anyone born into an <br />
English parish could qualify for communion upon coming "of <br />
age." All the established church required was a "profession" of <br />
faith, a promise to lead the moral life, and knowledge of ecclesi- <br />
astical discipline. After William Laud achieved prominence, first <br />
as Bishop of London and later as Primate of all England, seven- <br />
teenth-century Puritans were never in a position to demand more. <br />
Yet the ideal of a "pure" church had long been the ultimate goal<br />
<br />
The Pilgrim Fathers, or Pilgrims, were part of a church congregation of religious separatists led by pastor John Robinson, church elder William Brewster and William Bradford. Separatists were a group of Puritans who advocated total withdrawal from the Church of England. The Separatists wanted the freedom to worship independently from English authority. Their quest for religious freedom took the Pilgrim Fathers to Colonial America where they had set their sights on New England which they had read about in a book called 'A Description of New England'. The author of the book was John Smith, famous for founding the first colony in Jamestown.<br />
Morgan posits and develops a revisionary main thesis: the practice of basing membership upon a declaration of experiencing saving grace, or "conversion," was first put into effect not in England, Holland, or Plymouth, as is commonly related, but in Massachusetts Bay Colony by non-separating Puritans. Characterized by stylistic grace and exegetic finesse, "Visible Saints" is another scholarly milestone in the "Millerian Age" of Puritan historiography.<br />
<br />
Betlock, Lynn. "New England's Great Migration". Retrieved 28 April 2008.<br />
2.Jump up ^ Hopley, Claire. "The Puritan Migration: Albion’s Seed Sets Sail". Retrieved 5 December 2008.<br />
3.Jump up ^ Roscoe Lewis Ashley (1908). American History. New York: Macmillan. p. 52. Retrieved 7 October 2013.<br />
4.Jump up ^ Barnette, Mic. "East Anglian Puritans 1629-1640". Puritans to New England.<br />
5.Jump up ^ Susan Hardman Moore, Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home, (2007).<br />
6.Jump up ^ Edwin S. Gaustad, Roger Williams (2005).<br />
7.Jump up ^ Carla Gardina Pestana, Quakers and Baptists in Colonial Massachusetts (1991).<br />
<br />
Further reading[edit]<br />
Adams, James Truslow (1921). The Founding of New England. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.<br />
Robert Charles Anderson (1999). The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620–1633. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society. Three volumes.<br />
Anderson, Virginia DeJohn. "Migrants and Motives: Religion and the Settlement of New England, 1630–1640," New England Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 3 (Sep., 1985), pp. 339–383 in JSTOR<br />
Anderson, Virginia DeJohn. New England's Generation: The Great Migration and the Formation of Society and Culture in the Seventeenth Century (1991) excerpt and text search<br />
Bailyn, Bernard. The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction (1988) excerpt and text search<br />
Breen Timothy H., and Stephen Foster. "Moving to the New World: The Character of Early Massachusetts Migration," William & Mary Quarterly 30 (1973): 189–222 in JSTOR<br />
Cressy, David. Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century (1987),<br />
Dunn, Richard S. Puritans and Yankees: The Winthrop Dynasty of New England, 1630–1717 (1962).<br />
Fischer, David Hackett. Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (1989), comprehensive look at major ethnic groups excerpt and text search<br />
Rutman, Darrett B. Winthrop's Boston (1965).<br />
Thompson, Roger. Mobility and Migration: East Anglian Founders of New England, 1629–1640, (1994) online edition</div>Billyhttps://www.videri.org/index.php?title=The_Visible_Saints&diff=1707The Visible Saints2015-09-22T17:04:18Z<p>Billy: Created page with "The Visible Saints The History of a Puritan Idea by Edward S Morgan Morgan's historical writings greatly enhance our understanding of such complex aspects of the American expe..."</p>
<hr />
<div>The Visible Saints The History of a Puritan Idea by Edward S Morgan<br />
Morgan's historical writings greatly enhance our understanding of such complex aspects of the American experience as Puritanism, the Revolution, and the relationship between slavery and racism<br />
Visible saints were people who appeared to be godly Christian people who would go to heaven when they died. Strict Puritans in colonial days only allowed visible saints to worship with them because they thought that the church of England was irreverent for allowing everyone to worship in the same way. They were revered because they were open about their beliefs, and they influenced Father William Joseph Chaminade. (Source: Wikipedia<br />
The Puritans began a movement in the 16th century to purify the Church of England, or Anglican Church, by eradicating perceived remnants of Catholicism. Visible sainthood was central to this purification campaign. Puritans believed that individuals could prove in their daily lives that they were part of God’s chosen, or predestined, to receive salvation. Wholesome living and financial success would be visible signs of being one of God’s elect, otherwise referred to as sainthood. When it seemed England would not accept their reforms, many Puritans turned to America, where they created a “new” England full of visible saints..<br />
<br />
Edmund S. Morgan takes issue <br />
with this assumption. The practice of testing prospective church members for actual inward "signs" of saving grace, he argues, originated neither with the Separatists in England and Holland nor with the Pilgrims in Plymouth, but in the Bay Colony itself. <br />
Furthermore, the Massachusetts Puritans did not at first insist upon these tests, but gradually came to require them over a period of years. It was not until the mid-163o's, when the "Great Migration" to New England was well under way, that they committed <br />
themselves to a degree of purity hitherto unknown in English <br />
Puritanism, and so launched a new era in Puritan ecclesiology as <br />
well as a new phase in the history of Congregationalism. The <br />
emigrants to Massachusetts, Mr. Morgan insists, were the first <br />
394 <br />
<br />
<br />
BOOK REVIEWS 395 <br />
Puritans to restrict membership in the church "to persons ... who <br />
had felt the stirrings of grace in their souls, and who could dem- <br />
onstrate this fact to the satisfactions of other saints." The practice <br />
then spread to the churches of Plymouth, Connecticut, and New <br />
Haven, eventually finding its way back to England. <br />
In presenting his argument, the author provides impressive <br />
documentary support for the view that the Separatists in Holland <br />
did not contribute to this development, mainly because their <br />
talents were directed toward defending the principle of Separa- <br />
tion. What is more, the Separatists of Plymouth, if we may rely <br />
on William Bradford, did not require a testimony of grace until at <br />
least 1648, and did not fully incorporate the requirement into <br />
their church discipline until 1669. Whatever the Massachusetts <br />
Puritans may have learned from Plymouth, either through Deacon <br />
Samuel Fuller in 1629 or by later contacts, they did not learn to <br />
apply tests of saving faith to prospective church members. Quite <br />
to the contrary; it was probably the Bay Colony men who taught <br />
their Plymouth brethren the rigors of admission procedures. "It <br />
was the other Puritans, remaining within the Church of England," <br />
says Mr. Morgan, "who mapped the route from sin to holiness and <br />
explained the way God carried a saint along it." <br />
Indeed, well before the settlement of Massachusetts, two genera- <br />
tions of nonseparating Puritan divines had devoted themselves to <br />
the intricacies of the conversion process. Concerned with the indi- <br />
vidual rather than with the church, "they wished to trace the <br />
natural history of conversion in order to help men discover their <br />
prospects of salvation; and the result of their studies was to estab- <br />
lish a morphology of conversion, in which each stage could be <br />
distinguished from the next, so that a man could check his eternal <br />
condition by a set of temporal and recognizable signs." So long as <br />
these Puritans remained in England, however, they never asked <br />
for a narrative account of the "stages" as a requirement for church <br />
membership. Under Elizabeth and James I, anyone born into an <br />
English parish could qualify for communion upon coming "of <br />
age." All the established church required was a "profession" of <br />
faith, a promise to lead the moral life, and knowledge of ecclesi- <br />
astical discipline. After William Laud achieved prominence, first <br />
as Bishop of London and later as Primate of all England, seven- <br />
teenth-century Puritans were never in a position to demand more. <br />
Yet the ideal of a "pure" church had long been the ultimate goal<br />
<br />
The Pilgrim Fathers, or Pilgrims, were part of a church congregation of religious separatists led by pastor John Robinson, church elder William Brewster and William Bradford. Separatists were a group of Puritans who advocated total withdrawal from the Church of England. The Separatists wanted the freedom to worship independently from English authority. Their quest for religious freedom took the Pilgrim Fathers to Colonial America where they had set their sights on New England which they had read about in a book called 'A Description of New England'. The author of the book was John Smith, famous for founding the first colony in Jamestown.<br />
Morgan posits and develops a revisionary main thesis: the practice of basing membership upon a declaration of experiencing saving grace, or "conversion," was first put into effect not in England, Holland, or Plymouth, as is commonly related, but in Massachusetts Bay Colony by non-separating Puritans. Characterized by stylistic grace and exegetic finesse, "Visible Saints" is another scholarly milestone in the "Millerian Age" of Puritan historiography.<br />
<br />
Betlock, Lynn. "New England's Great Migration". Retrieved 28 April 2008.<br />
2.Jump up ^ Hopley, Claire. "The Puritan Migration: Albion’s Seed Sets Sail". Retrieved 5 December 2008.<br />
3.Jump up ^ Roscoe Lewis Ashley (1908). American History. New York: Macmillan. p. 52. Retrieved 7 October 2013.<br />
4.Jump up ^ Barnette, Mic. "East Anglian Puritans 1629-1640". Puritans to New England.<br />
5.Jump up ^ Susan Hardman Moore, Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home, (2007).<br />
6.Jump up ^ Edwin S. Gaustad, Roger Williams (2005).<br />
7.Jump up ^ Carla Gardina Pestana, Quakers and Baptists in Colonial Massachusetts (1991).<br />
<br />
Further reading[edit]<br />
Adams, James Truslow (1921). The Founding of New England. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.<br />
Robert Charles Anderson (1999). The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620–1633. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society. Three volumes.<br />
Anderson, Virginia DeJohn. "Migrants and Motives: Religion and the Settlement of New England, 1630–1640," New England Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 3 (Sep., 1985), pp. 339–383 in JSTOR<br />
Anderson, Virginia DeJohn. New England's Generation: The Great Migration and the Formation of Society and Culture in the Seventeenth Century (1991) excerpt and text search<br />
Bailyn, Bernard. The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction (1988) excerpt and text search<br />
Breen Timothy H., and Stephen Foster. "Moving to the New World: The Character of Early Massachusetts Migration," William & Mary Quarterly 30 (1973): 189–222 in JSTOR<br />
Cressy, David. Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century (1987),<br />
Dunn, Richard S. Puritans and Yankees: The Winthrop Dynasty of New England, 1630–1717 (1962).<br />
Fischer, David Hackett. Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (1989), comprehensive look at major ethnic groups excerpt and text search<br />
Rutman, Darrett B. Winthrop's Boston (1965).<br />
Thompson, Roger. Mobility and Migration: East Anglian Founders of New England, 1629–1640, (1994) online edition</div>Billyhttps://www.videri.org/index.php?title=Early_America/Colonial_History&diff=1706Early America/Colonial History2015-09-22T17:02:20Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>==Book Summaries==<br />
* Anderson, [[Crucible of War|Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America]], 2000<br />
* Axtell, [[The Invasion Within|The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America]], 1985<br />
* Bailyn, [[The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson]], 1974<br />
* Bilder, [[The Transatlantic Constitution: Colonial Legal Culture and Empire]], 2004<br />
* Breen, [[The Marketplace of Revolution]], 2005<br />
* Bushman, [[From Puritan to Yankee|From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut]], 1980<br />
* Bushman, [[The Refinement of America|The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities]], 1993<br />
* Calloway, [[One Vast Winter Count|One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis & Clark]], 2006<br />
* Calloway, [[The American Revolution in Indian Country|The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities]], 1995<br />
* Cronon, [[Changes in the Land|Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England]], 1983<br />
* Dayton, [[Women Before the Bar|Women Before the Bar: Gender Law and Society in Connecticut]], 1995<br />
* Dubois, [[Avengers of the New World|Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution]], 2004<br />
* Eccles, [[France in America]], 1972<br />
* Hancock, [[Citizens of the World|Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the Atlantic Community]], 1997<br />
* Hoffman, [[Princes of Ireland, Planters of Maryland|Princes of Ireland, Planters of Maryland: A Carroll Saga, 1500-1782]], 2002<br />
* Isaac, [[The Transformation of Virginia 1740-1790]], 1982<br />
* Kerber, [[Women of the Republic]], 1980<br />
* Kramer, [[The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review]] (2004)<br />
* Kulikoff, [[From British Peasants to Colonial American Farmers]], 2000<br />
* Kupperman, [[ Settling with the Indians|Settling with the Indians: The Meeting of English and Indian Cultures in America]], 1580-1640, 1980<br />
* Lemon, [[The Best Poor Man's Country|The Best Poor Man's Country: A Geographical Study of Early Southeastern Pennsylvania]], 1972<br />
* Morgan, E, [[American Slavery, American Freedom]], 1975<br />
* Morgan, E, [[The Visible Saints]], 1975<br />
* Morgan, P, [[Slave Counterpoint|Slave Counterpoint, Black Culture in the Eighteenth Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry]], 1998<br />
* Newman, [[Parades and the Politics of the Street: Festive Culture in the Early American Republic]] (1997)<br />
* Pybus, [[Epic Journeys of Freedom|Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and their Quest for Global Liberty]], 2006<br />
* Rakove, [[Original Meanings – The Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution]], 1996<br />
* Roeber, [[Palatines, Liberty, and Property|Palatines, Liberty, and Property: German Lutherans in Colonial British North America]], 1998<br />
* Rorabaugh, [[The Alcoholic Republic|The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition]], 1981<br />
* Slauter, [[The State as a Work of Art: The Cultural Origins of the Constitution]], 2009<br />
* Usner, [[Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy]], 1992<br />
* White, [[The Middle Ground|The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region]], 1991<br />
* Wood, [[The Radicalism of the American Revolution]], 1992<br />
* Sehat, [[The Myth of American Religious Freedom ]], 2011</div>Billyhttps://www.videri.org/index.php?title=Early_America/Colonial_History&diff=1705Early America/Colonial History2015-09-22T16:59:58Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>==Book Summaries==<br />
* Anderson, [[Crucible of War|Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America]], 2000<br />
* Axtell, [[The Invasion Within|The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America]], 1985<br />
* Bailyn, [[The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson]], 1974<br />
* Bilder, [[The Transatlantic Constitution: Colonial Legal Culture and Empire]], 2004<br />
* Breen, [[The Marketplace of Revolution]], 2005<br />
* Bushman, [[From Puritan to Yankee|From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut]], 1980<br />
* Bushman, [[The Refinement of America|The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities]], 1993<br />
* Calloway, [[One Vast Winter Count|One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis & Clark]], 2006<br />
* Calloway, [[The American Revolution in Indian Country|The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities]], 1995<br />
* Cronon, [[Changes in the Land|Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England]], 1983<br />
* Dayton, [[Women Before the Bar|Women Before the Bar: Gender Law and Society in Connecticut]], 1995<br />
* Dubois, [[Avengers of the New World|Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution]], 2004<br />
* Eccles, [[France in America]], 1972<br />
* Hancock, [[Citizens of the World|Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the Atlantic Community]], 1997<br />
* Hoffman, [[Princes of Ireland, Planters of Maryland|Princes of Ireland, Planters of Maryland: A Carroll Saga, 1500-1782]], 2002<br />
* Isaac, [[The Transformation of Virginia 1740-1790]], 1982<br />
* Kerber, [[Women of the Republic]], 1980<br />
* Kramer, [[The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review]] (2004)<br />
* Kulikoff, [[From British Peasants to Colonial American Farmers]], 2000<br />
* Kupperman, [[ Settling with the Indians|Settling with the Indians: The Meeting of English and Indian Cultures in America]], 1580-1640, 1980<br />
* Lemon, [[The Best Poor Man's Country|The Best Poor Man's Country: A Geographical Study of Early Southeastern Pennsylvania]], 1972<br />
* Morgan, E, [[American Slavery, American Freedom]], 1975<br />
* Morgan, E, ((The Visible Saints, The History of a Puritan Idea)), 2013<br />
* Morgan, P, [[Slave Counterpoint|Slave Counterpoint, Black Culture in the Eighteenth Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry]], 1998<br />
* Newman, [[Parades and the Politics of the Street: Festive Culture in the Early American Republic]] (1997)<br />
* Pybus, [[Epic Journeys of Freedom|Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and their Quest for Global Liberty]], 2006<br />
* Rakove, [[Original Meanings – The Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution]], 1996<br />
* Roeber, [[Palatines, Liberty, and Property|Palatines, Liberty, and Property: German Lutherans in Colonial British North America]], 1998<br />
* Rorabaugh, [[The Alcoholic Republic|The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition]], 1981<br />
* Slauter, [[The State as a Work of Art: The Cultural Origins of the Constitution]], 2009<br />
* Usner, [[Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy]], 1992<br />
* White, [[The Middle Ground|The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region]], 1991<br />
* Wood, [[The Radicalism of the American Revolution]], 1992<br />
* Sehat, [[The Myth of American Religious Freedom ]], 2011</div>Billyhttps://www.videri.org/index.php?title=Early_America/Colonial_History&diff=1702Early America/Colonial History2015-09-22T16:56:54Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>==Book Summaries==<br />
* Anderson, [[Crucible of War|Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America]], 2000<br />
* Axtell, [[The Invasion Within|The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America]], 1985<br />
* Bailyn, [[The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson]], 1974<br />
* Bilder, [[The Transatlantic Constitution: Colonial Legal Culture and Empire]], 2004<br />
* Breen, [[The Marketplace of Revolution]], 2005<br />
* Bushman, [[From Puritan to Yankee|From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut]], 1980<br />
* Bushman, [[The Refinement of America|The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities]], 1993<br />
* Calloway, [[One Vast Winter Count|One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis & Clark]], 2006<br />
* Calloway, [[The American Revolution in Indian Country|The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities]], 1995<br />
* Cronon, [[Changes in the Land|Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England]], 1983<br />
* Dayton, [[Women Before the Bar|Women Before the Bar: Gender Law and Society in Connecticut]], 1995<br />
* Dubois, [[Avengers of the New World|Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution]], 2004<br />
* Eccles, [[France in America]], 1972<br />
* Hancock, [[Citizens of the World|Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the Atlantic Community]], 1997<br />
* Hoffman, [[Princes of Ireland, Planters of Maryland|Princes of Ireland, Planters of Maryland: A Carroll Saga, 1500-1782]], 2002<br />
* Isaac, [[The Transformation of Virginia 1740-1790]], 1982<br />
* Kerber, [[Women of the Republic]], 1980<br />
* Kramer, [[The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review]] (2004)<br />
* Kulikoff, [[From British Peasants to Colonial American Farmers]], 2000<br />
* Kupperman, [[ Settling with the Indians|Settling with the Indians: The Meeting of English and Indian Cultures in America]], 1580-1640, 1980<br />
* Lemon, [[The Best Poor Man's Country|The Best Poor Man's Country: A Geographical Study of Early Southeastern Pennsylvania]], 1972<br />
* Morgan, E, [[American Slavery, American Freedom]], 1975<br />
* Morgan, E, (The Visible Saints, The History of a Puritan Idea), 2013<br />
* Morgan, P, [[Slave Counterpoint|Slave Counterpoint, Black Culture in the Eighteenth Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry]], 1998<br />
* Newman, [[Parades and the Politics of the Street: Festive Culture in the Early American Republic]] (1997)<br />
* Pybus, [[Epic Journeys of Freedom|Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and their Quest for Global Liberty]], 2006<br />
* Rakove, [[Original Meanings – The Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution]], 1996<br />
* Roeber, [[Palatines, Liberty, and Property|Palatines, Liberty, and Property: German Lutherans in Colonial British North America]], 1998<br />
* Rorabaugh, [[The Alcoholic Republic|The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition]], 1981<br />
* Slauter, [[The State as a Work of Art: The Cultural Origins of the Constitution]], 2009<br />
* Usner, [[Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy]], 1992<br />
* White, [[The Middle Ground|The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region]], 1991<br />
* Wood, [[The Radicalism of the American Revolution]], 1992<br />
* Sehat, [[The Myth of American Religious Freedom ]], 2011</div>Billy