Ramist Concepts of Testimony, Judicial Analogies, and the Puritan Conversion Narrative

Abstract

he Puritans believed that as much as possible a should be constituted of saints—regenerate persons who had experienced an infusion of God's saving grace. Their desire was to make the visible a near reflection of the invisible church; a body made of those elected by God and predestined for salvation. In connection with the congregational underpinnings of their brand of Protestantism, the seventeenth-century New England Puritans also believed that the members of the congregation should play a role in deciding who was to be admitted to the visible and who was to be excommunicated from it. In the early 1630s a controversy erupted over exactly what kind of testimony should be required at the trial of candidates when they came before the congregation to seek membership in the church. In the Puritan concepts of experiential faith and polity, it was expected that candidates would be able to testify to their experiences of conversion in a way that would provide the congregation with appropriate grounds for judging whether they were visible saints. To this end, in contrast to the earlier policy of requiring pious and civil behavior, apparent knowledge of doctiine, and a public declaration of faith, in New England John Cotton and his followers added what was termed a church relation or a conversion narrative.