William Livingston Essay, Research Paper

& # 8220 ; The Puritans. & # 8221 ; 1

We would talk foremost of the Puritans, the most singular organic structure of work forces, possibly, which the universe has of all time produced. The abominable and pathetic parts of their character prevarication on the surface. He that runs may read them ; nor have there been desiring attentive and malicious perceivers to indicate them out. For many old ages after the Restoration, they were the subject of immeasurable invective and derision. They were exposed to the extreme wantonness of the imperativeness and of the phase, at the clip when the imperativeness and the phase were most licentious. They were non work forces of letters ; they were, as a organic structure, unpopular ; they could non support themselves ; and the populace would non take them under its protection. They were hence abandoned, without modesty, to the stamp clemencies of the ironists and playwrights. The pretentious simpleness of their frock, their rancid facet, their rhinal twang, their stiff position, their long graces, their Hebrew nanes, the Scriptural phrases which they introduced on every juncture, their disdain of human acquisition, their abhorrence of polite amusements, were so just game for the laughers. But it is non from the laughers alone that the doctrine of history is to be learnt. And he who approaches this topic should carefully guard against the influence of that potent ridicule, which has already misled so many first-class authors.

& # 8220 ; Ecco il fonte del riso, ed ecco Illinois Rio de Janeiro

Che mortali perigli in se contiene:

Hor qui tener a fren nostro a desio,

Ed esser cauti molto a noi conviene. & # 8221 ;

Those who roused the people to resistance & # 8211 ; who directed their steps through a long series of eventful old ages & # 8211 ; who formed, out of the most unpromising stuffs, the finest ground forces that Europe had of all time seen & # 8211 ; who trampled down male monarch, church, and nobility & # 8211 ; who, in the short intervals of domestic sedition and rebellion, made the name of England awful to every state on the face of the Earth, were no vulgar fiends. Most of their absurdnesss were mere external badges, like the marks of freemasonry or the frocks of mendicants. We regret that these badges were non more attractive. We regret that a organic structure, to whose bravery and endowments world has owed incomputable duties, had non the lofty elegance which distinguished some of the disciples of Charles I. , or the easy good genteelness for which the tribunal of Charles II. was celebrated. But, if we must do our pick, we shall, like Bassanio in the drama, bend from the spurious coffins, which contain merely the decease & # 8217 ; s caput and the sap & # 8217 ; s caput, and repair our pick on the field leaden thorax which conceals the treasure.2

The Puritans were work forces whose heads had derived a curious character from the day-to-day contemplation of superior existences and external involvements. Not content with admiting, in general footings, an overturning Capital of rhode island, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being, for whose power nil was excessively huge, for whose review nil was excessively infinitesimal. To cognize him, to function him, to bask him, was with them the great terminal of being. They rejected with disdain the pompous court which other religious orders substituted for the pure worship of the psyche. Alternatively of catching occasional glances of the Deity through an obscuring head covering, they aspired to stare full on the unbearable brightness, and to commune with him face to face. Hence originated their disdain for tellurian differentiations. The difference between the greatest and meanest of world seemed to disappear, when compared with the boundless interval which separated the whole race from him on whom their ain eyes were invariably fixed. They recognized no rubric to high quality but his favour ; and, confident of that favour, they despised all the achievements and all the self-respects of the universe. If they were unacquainted with the plants of philosophers and poets, they were profoundly read in the prophets of God. If their names were non found in the registries of trumpeters, they felt assured that they were recorded in the Book of Life. If their stairss were non accompanied by a glorious train of menials, hosts of ministering angels had charge over them. Their castles wer

vitamin E houses non made with custodies: their crowns, Crowns of glorification which should ne’er melt away! On the rich and the eloquent, on Lords and priests, they looked down with disdain: for they esteemed themselves rich in a more old hoarded wealth, and eloquent in a more empyreal linguistic communication – Lords by the right of an earlier creative activity, and priests by the infliction of a mightier manus. The really meanest of them was a being to whose destine a cryptic and awful importance belonged – on whose slightest actions the liquors of visible radiation and darkness looked with dying involvement – who had been destined, before Eden and Earth were created, to bask a felicitousness which should go on when Eden and Earth should hold passed off. Events which short-sighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes had been ordained on his history. For his interest imperiums had risen, and flourished, and decayed. For his interest the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the pen of the revivalist, and the harp of the prophesier. He had been rescued by no common Jesus from the appreciation of no common enemy. He had been ransomed by the perspiration of no vulgar torment, by the blood of no earthly forfeit. It was for him that the Sun had been darkened, that the stones had been rent, that the dead had arisen, that all nature had shuddered at the agonies of her run outing God!

Therefore the Puritan was made up of two different work forces, the one all penance, repentance, gratitude, passion ; the other proud, composure, inflexible, perspicacious. He prostrated himself in the twilight before his Maker ; but he set his pes on the cervix of his male monarch. In his devotional retirement, he prayed with paroxysms, and moans, and cryings. He was half maddened by glorious or awful semblances. He heard the lyres of angles, or the alluring susurrations of monsters. He caught a glow of the Beatific Vision, or woke shouting from the dreams of everlasting fire. Like Vane3, he thought himself intrusted with the sceptre of the millennian twelvemonth. Like Fleetwood4, he cried in the resentment of his psyche that God had hid his face from him. But when he took his place in the council or girt on his blade for war, these stormy workings of the psyche had left no perceptible hint behind them. Peoples, who saw nil of the godly but their coarse countenances, and heard nil from them but their moans and their whining anthem, might express joy at them. But those had small ground to laugh who encountered them in the hall of argument, or in the field of conflict. These fiends brought to civil and military personal businesss a imperturbability of judgement and an immutableness of intent which some authors have thought inconsistent with their spiritual ardor, but which were in fact the necessary effects of it. The strength of their feelings on one topic made them tranquil on every other. One overmastering sentiment had subjected to itself commiseration and hatred, aspiration and fright. Death had lost its panics and pleasance its appeals. They had their smilings and their cryings, their ecstasies and their sorrows, but non for the things of this universe. Enthusiasm had made them Stoics, had cleared their heads from every vulgar passion and bias, and raised them above the influence of danger and of corruptness. It sometimes might take them to prosecute unwise terminals, but ne’er to take unwise agencies. They went through the universe like Sir Artegale & # 8217 ; s press adult male Talus5 with his flail, oppressing and treading down oppressors, mixing with human existences, but holding neither portion nor batch in human frailties ; insensible to tire, to pleasure, and to trouble, non to be pierced by any arm, non to be withstood by any barrier.

Such we believe to hold been the character of the Puritans. We perceive the absurdness of their manners. We dislike the sullen somberness of their domestic wonts. We acknowledge that the tone of their heads was frequently injured by striving after things excessively high for mortal range. And we know that, in malice of their hate of Popery, they excessively frequently fell into the worst frailties of that bad system, intolerance and excessive asceticism & # 8211 ; that they had their hermits and their campaigns, their Dunstans and their Do Montforts, their Saint dominics and their Escobars. Yet when all fortunes are taken into consideration, we do non waver to articulate

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