Puritans and Quakers

Abstract

WTE may as well make two admissions at the very beginning. First: our Puritan ancestors were not saints. They sometimes referred to themselves as saints; but in their day a saint was one who not only lived a life of conspicuous rectitude, gentleness, and humility, but also one who had been elected to salvation, and except for the regrettable mischance that he was still alive on earth, was to all practical intents and purposes a denizen of the heavenly realm. They spoke of themselves not infrequently as saints in that theological sense, but sainthood in the ordinary sense they neither claimed nor deserved any more than we. Second: their treatment of all Antinomians, including Anabaptists and Quakers, is essentially unforgivable. In the last analysis, when every reason has been weighed, every extenuation advanced, and every possible excuse thrown into the scale, they stand guilty of actions that cannot be defended. The French have a proverb: To understand all is to forgive all. The purpose of this paper is to understand as much as possible, but if it leads you to forgive I shall be surprised. Of course there are people, and among them some historians of standing, who find an uncanny delight in seeing the Puritans condemned. I am not of that number. No man would be