The Puritans: Height and Decline - PowerPoint Presentation

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The Puritans: Height and Decline

Cotton Mather, Witches, and The Devil in New England

Jonathan Edwards, The Great Awakening, and the JeremiadSlide2

The Devil in New EnglandSlide3

The Basics: Salem Witchcraft Trials

Over 150 people (78% women) were accused of witchcraft in Salem, MA in 1692.

Most of the accusers were young girls.A witch was defined as a person who signed the devil’s book, thus giving the devil permission to use her shape and go around harming others.

Evidence Used in Trials: accusations of harming animals, making people sick, pinching people while they slept, unladylike behavior, yelling at husbands in public, etc.

Spectral Evidence: accusers claimed they saw specters (ghosts) of accused witches that hurt them.

Those who confessed lived; those who denied the charges lived.

Causes of Death: 19 hanged and one pressed to death (burning occurred in Europe, not Salem)Slide4

Cotton Mather

Cotton Mather, the minister of Boston's Old North church, was a true believer in witchcraft. In 1688, he had

investigated the strange behavior of four children of a Boston mason named John Goodwin. The children had been complaining of sudden pains and crying out together in chorus. He concluded that witchcraft

, specifically that practiced by an Irish washerwoman named Mary Glover, was responsible for the children's problems. He presented his findings and conclusions in one of the best known of his 382 works, "Memorable Providences." Mather's experience caused him to vow that to "never use but one grain of patience with any man that shall go to impose upon me a Denial of Devils, or of Witches."

As

it happened, three of the

five judges

appointed to the Court of Oyer and Terminer that would hear the Salem witchcraft trials were

friends of Mather and members of his church

.  Mather wrote a letter to one of the three judges, John Richards, suggesting how they might approach evidentiary issues at the upcoming trials. In particular, Mather urged the judges to

consider spectral evidence

, giving it such weight as "it will bear," and to consider the confessions of witches the best evidence of all.  As the trials progressed, and growing numbers of person confessed to being witches, Mather became firmly convinced that "an Army of Devils is horribly broke in upon the place which is our center." Slide5

Cotton Mather (cont.)

On August 4, 1692, Mather delivered a sermon

warning that the Last Judgment was near at hand, and portraying himself, Chief Justice Stroughton, and Governor Phips as

leading the final charge against the Devil's legions. On August 19, Mather was in Salem to witness the execution of ex-minister George Burroughs for witchcraft. When, on Gallows Hill, Burroughs was able to recite the Lord's Prayer perfectly (something that witches were thought incapable of doing) and some in the crowd called for the execution to be stopped, Mather intervened, reminding those gathered that Burroughs had been

duly convicted by a jury

. Mather was given the official records of the Salem trials for use in preparation of a book that the judges hoped would favorably describe their role in the affair. The book,

"Wonders of the Invisible World,"

provides fascinating insights both into the trials and Mather's own mind.

When confessed

witches began recanting

their testimony, Mather may have begun to have doubts about at least some of the proceedings. He revised his own position on the use of spectral evidence and tried to minimize his own large role in its consideration in the Salem trials. Later in life, Mather

turned away from the supernatural

and may well have come to question whether it played the role

in

life he first suspected. Slide6

SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD

Jonathan Edwards,The Great Awakening,and the JeremiadSlide7

Great Awakening: The Basics

Span: 1735-1745

Religious revival that swept New England that re-emphasized basic beliefs but also stressed that God could be apprehended through the senses.

Congregationalists (Puritans) split into two groups: New Light and Old LightNew Light

: primacy of emotions, justification by faith, itinerant evangelization, revival

Old Light

: rationalism, moderation, predestination, justification by works

Results: Baptists gained converts and

social leveling

(underscored the inherent depravity of the human soul)Slide8

Great Awakening: Origins

Church membership declined and the Great Awakening was an attempt to get people back.

Winthrop’s “A Model of Christian Charity” was based on the idea of the covenant. There were two types of covenants: external and internal.

External Covenants: Church and Society – God blesses both as a result of the deeds of members

Internal Covenants

: Redemption (through Jesus) and Grace (

Diety

through election provides man with saving grace)

“Half-Way Covenant”

: 1662 – if you were baptized and a child of the primitive church members, you could be included in church life but not have full membershipSlide9

Great Awakening: Origins

“The theology of the founders conceived man as single and alone (from individual to community) in an empty field, wrestling with his sins; once he had survived this in solitude he could walk into church and by telling about it could join the church. But the communal confession

… was something new.” The concept of renewal of the covenant.

Community members were becoming more worldly with the growth of the colonies.

Rise of

sectarianism

following immigration of Quakers, Lutherans, and Presbyterians

Doctrine of

Arminianism

: opposition to predestination, emphasis on free will, belief in good works as a means of salvation

Rise of

skepticismSlide10

Great Awakening: Key Components

ConversionAgitations of the soul lead the sinner to feel humiliated at his behavior.The sinner attempts to fix his sins by “legal obedience” to committing good works, but his efforts fail.

The sinner sees his problems and self as inconsequential before God and despairs more.At the deepest moment of despair, the sinner sees a glimmer of God’s grace.Gratitude at seeing grace causes the sinner to live a life of obedience and thanksgiving, ever vigilant to avoid temptation and backsliding

The JeremiadEpigraph: A short scriptural reading explored grammatically (restated in simpler form), logically (Biblical context), and figuratively (present context)

Doctrine: message is divided into subsets and linked to other scriptural texts

Reasons: explanation of why the doctrine is true and why the listeners should believe the truth of the doctrine.

Application: statement of how this applies to personal, communal, and world levels

Epilogue: boldly restate main points, stresses action and awarenessSlide11

Jonathan Edwards: The Basics

Life: 1703-1758Educated at Yale

Preacher, writer, missionary

New Light preacher who was influenced by Enlightenment principlesProlific writer and preacher best known for “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, though most of his sermons dealt with love and the glory of the natural world

His writings are some of the first to employ a distinctly “American voice”