Puritan doctrine in 17th C. Lit
In seventeenth century America, the world was a frightening place. God could, and would, strike a man down at any time for any missteps he might take. Nature was filled with horrors, like Indians, and the Devil resided in the forest, waiting to steal peoples' souls. In the eighteenth century, however, the Enlightenment began. Man discovered that he could learn by following others' example, or by observing nature, rather than looking solely to the Bible for answers. People began to become concerned with their life here on the earth, rather than concerning themselves solely with the expectations of the afterlife. God stopped being thought of as a puppeteer, pulling the strings and controlling every movement, but as a clockmaker who had wound the world up and had then stepped back to watch. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine were two important figures in the Enlightenment. Although their philosophies differed on some matters, they both believed that the world was there to observe, not merely to act as a waiting room for the afterlife. This was a dramatic change from the seventeenth century viewpoint. Franklin and Paine's viewpoints differed sharply from those that were held to be true in the seventeenth century, and nowher
In regards to knowledge, the seventeenth century view was that knowledge was to gained through studying the Bible, and that the only purpose of gaining further knowledge would be to preserve the integrity of one's own soul, or to help others in saving theirs. The Puritans' interests in gaining or preserving knowledge were solely religious, and they also believed that any knowledge that man was to have could be found within the Bible. In The Autobiography (Part Two), Franklin writes that his main reason for setting up a subscription library was to give himself access to more books, and that the knowledge he gained would serve as his own personal "Means of Improvement" (575). According to the Puritans, if a person had a question, he or she needed only to search the scriptures for an answer. For example, when Anne Bradstreet was searching for an answer as to why her house, and all of her possessions contained therein, had burnt to the ground, she looked to scripture, and found solace in the idea everything she had, including her own life, was on lend from God (278). In the eighteenth century, people still accepted God's position as the first cause of everything, but they were more interested in the secondary causes. For example, a person might know that God had created the trees that were used to build their house, but he or she would still want to know what had caused the fire. People of the Enlightenment did not accept the fact that the Bible was the final authority. They looked to observation using their senses to bring about an explanation for the working of the world around them. The people in the seventeenth century looked to man's study and understanding of science as heresy, and as trying to undermine the authority of God. The people of the Enlightenment, however, believed that their newfound knowledge had always existed as part of God's original b
Some common words found in the essay are:
Mary Rowlandson, John Winthrop, Contrary Puritan, Franklin Paine's, Indians Devil, Public Worship, Anne Bradstreet, People Enlightenment, Reason Paine, Thomas Paine, seventeenth century, eighteenth century, people enlightenment, knowledge nature, knowledge nature religion, believe god, nature religion, god people, people eighteenth, knowledge gained, contained therein, people eighteenth century,
Approximate Word count = 1264
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
|
