Puritanism and New Settlement

Abstract

escape and release, as against permanent cooperation and adjustment, this influence may appear manifested even today in the popular inability to appreciate the self-comprehending role of the productive individual in a settled society, a lesson in human values which American history has not taught because Americans have not hitherto had to face the problem. A distinctive force in the expansion of the New England frontier in the seventeenth century and later which is insufficiently appreciated is a certain explosive character in Calvinistic Puritanism itself. The dynamic church principle inherent in the doctrine of every man his own priest was in constant disharmony with the severe external authority attempted in practice by the Puritan clergy and elders. From this dichotomy of conflicting principle and authority (only temporarily and uneasily reconciled in the Congregational system), it resulted that, somewhat on the principle of rocket acceleration, Puritan settlements in the early colonies divided and subdivided until it would seem that every saint would eventually have his own habitat as well as his own church. Another important fact to be recognized in understanding the Puritan system is the authority of laymen-elders, deacons, and other prominent members-in the conduct of church affairs.' Accustomed as we are to overemphasis upon the