Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T13:15:18.338Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

English and Dutch Sabbatarianism and the Development of Puritan Social Theology (1600–1660)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Keith L. Sprunger
Keith L. Sprunger
Affiliation:
professor of history inBethel College, North Newton, Kansas.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Strict observance of the Lord's Day became a distinctive feature of English and Scottish society in the seventeenth century. The Sabbatarian principle touched not only British religion but many social and economic practices as well. At some times, English Puritan settlers in the Netherlands attempted to introduce their brand of Sabbatarianism into Dutch society but with disappointing results. The success or failure of Sabbatarianism often has been identified with a certain stage of capitalistic economic development. This article examines the centrality of teachings about the Sabbath in Puritan social theology and, secondarily, the Sabbatarian-capitalism connection by comparing events in England and Holland from approximately 1600 to 1660. A comparison of Puritan Sabbatarians at home in England and abroad in Holland reveals anew the extreme difficulty of transporting values from one society, where they fit, into another location.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , March 1982 , pp. 24 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1982

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Ames, William, “Preface” (1610), in English Puritanisme, Bradshaw, William (London, 1660).Google Scholar English Puritanisme was first published in 1605.

2. Collinson, Patrick, “The Beginnings of English Sabbatarianism,” in Studies in Church History 1, ed. Dugmore, C. W. and Duggan, C., (London, 1964), pp. 211–214;Google ScholarSolberg, Winton U., Redeem the Time: The Puritan Sabbath in Early America (Cambridge, 1977), chap. 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Solberg, pp. 26–27; Knappen, M. M., Tudor Puritanism (Gloucester, Mass., 1963), p. 442;Google ScholarHill, Christopher, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England, 2d ed. (New York, 1967), p. 206.Google Scholar

4. Heylyn, Peter, The History of the Sabbath. In Two Books (London, 1636), preface and 2: 184–188.Google Scholar

5. Baxter, Richard, The Divine Appointment of the Lord's Day (1671), in The Practical Works of the Rev. Richard Baxter, 23 vols. (London, 1830), 13: 451.Google Scholar

6. Heylyn, preface.

7. Whitaker, W. B., Sunday in Tudor and Stuart Times (London, 1933), chaps. 8, 10, 12;Google ScholarLevy, Max, Der Sabbath in England (Leipzig, 1933), chap. 3.Google Scholar

8. Bahlman, Dudley W. R., The Moral Revolution of 1688 (New Haven, 1957), p. 62.Google Scholar

9. Levy, pp. 143, 207, 237, 243; Baxter, , Works, 13: 462.Google Scholar

10. Baxter, , Works, 13: 462.Google Scholar

11. Malcolmson, Robert W., Popular Recreations in English Society, 1700–1850 (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 6–8;Google ScholarBurke, Peter, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (New York, 1978), p. 219.Google Scholar

12. Thomas, Keith, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York, 1971), p. 621;Google Scholar Hill, pp. 205–208.

13. Steven, William, The History of the Scottish Church, Rotterdam (Edinburgh, 1833), pp. 260–370;Google ScholarStearns, R. P., Congregationalism in the Dutch Netherlands (Chicago, 1940), p. 121.Google Scholar

14. In addition to these English Puritans, Johannes Rulice, a German, was a copastor 1636–1639. See Carter, Alice C., The English Reformed Church in Amsterdam in the Seventeenth Century (Amsterdam, 1964).Google Scholar

15. Sprunger, Keith L., The Learned Doctor William Ames (Urbana, 1972), chap. 10.Google Scholar

16. Britain, Great, State Papers 16, vol. 225, no. 57, Public Record Office, London.Google Scholar

17. Knappert, L., Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Hervormde Kerk gedurende de 16 en 17 eeuw (Amsterdam, 1911), pp. 187–188;Google ScholarSchotel, G. D. J., De openbare eeredienst der Nederl: Hervormde Kerk in de zestiende, zeventiende en achttiende eeuw (Haarlem, 1870), p. 200.Google Scholar On differences between the English and Dutch Sunday observance, see Hill, pp. 206–207.

18. Knappert, p. 188; Evenhuis, R. B., Ook dat was Amsterdam, 4 vols. (Amsterdam, 1966), 2: 113–116.Google Scholar

19. Murris, R., La Hollande et les Hollandais au XVIIe et au XVIIIe siècles vus par les Francais (Paris, 1925), pp. 216–217.Google Scholar

20. Arber, Edward, The Story of the Pilgrim Fathers, 1606–1623 (London, 1897), p. 263.Google Scholar

21. Brerton, William, Travels in Holland, the United Provinces, England, Scotland, and Ireland, ed. Edward Hawkins (n.p., 1844), p. 6.Google Scholar

22. Breslow, Marvin A., A Mirror of England: English Puritan Views of Foreign Nations, 1618–1640 (Cambridge, 1970), p. 93.Google Scholar

23. Harris, Rendel and Jones, Stephen K., The Pilgrim Press (Cambridge, 1922), p. 60.Google Scholar

24. Graf, Matthias, Beyträge zur Kenntniss der Geschichte der Synode von Dordrecht (Basel, 1825), p. 93;Google ScholarSirCarleton, Dudley, Letters, 3d ed. (London, 1780), p. 380.Google Scholar

25. Mountague, William, The Delights of Holland (London, 1969), p. 200.Google Scholar

26. Amsterdam Consistory Register, vol. 3, 16 and 30 September 1637, Gemeente Archief, Amsterdam; Carter, p. 30.

27. Flushing Consistory Register, no. 4469, 23 April 1633, Gemeente Archief, Flushing.

28. Amsterdam Consistory Register, vol. 2, 3 July 1624; Utrecht Consistory Register, no. 848, 8 March 1658, Gemeente Archief, Utrecht.

29. van Itterzon, G. P., Franciscus Gomarus (The Hague, 1929), pp. 301–309;Google Scholar Knappert, pp. 186–188; Schotel, pp. 190–228; Visscher, Hugo, William Ames: His Life and Works, trans. Hommes, T. G. and Horton, Douglas (Cambridge, 1965), pp. 133–140.Google Scholar

30. Schotel, p. 222.

31. Knappert, p. 187; Schotel, p. 211.

32. Duker, A. C., Gisbertus Voetius, 3 vols. (Leiden, 1897–1915), 2: 216.Google Scholar

33. Engelberts, Willem J. M., Willem Teellinck (Amsterdam, 1898), pp. 1–25, 115–132;Google ScholarAmes, William, Conscience (n.p., 1639)Google Scholar, dedication.

34. Duker, 2: 216–232; Heppe, Heinrich, Geschichte des Pietismus und der Mystik in der Reformirten Kirche, namentlich der Niederlande (Leiden, 1879), pp. 106–139;Google Scholar on connections between English Puritanism and the Netherlands, see Goeters, Wilhelm, Die Vorbereitung des Pietismus (Leipzig, 1911), chap. 3.Google Scholar

35. Heylyn, 2: 193.

36. Ames, William, The Marrow of Sacred Divinity (London, [1643]), p. 286;Google Scholar Visscher, pp. 133–140.

37. Morison, Samuel Eliot, The Founding of Harvard College (Cambridge, 1935), pp. 228–234;Google Scholar Solberg, pp. 201–202.

38. Sprunger, pp. 86–87.

39. Visscher, p. 67.

40. Carter, pp. 30, 122–123; Best, William, The Churches Plea for Her Right (Amsterdam, 1635), p. 5.Google Scholar

41. Acta Kerkeraad Leiden, 23 July 1638, 6 August 1638, 11 November 1638, Gemeente Archief, Leiden.

42. Ibid., 26 August 1639, 2 September 1639.

43. Utrecht Consistory Register, 16 June 1665.

44. Rowen, Herbert T., John de Witt, Grand Pensionary of Holland, 1625–1672 (Princeton, 1978), p. 424;Google ScholarRiemersma, Jelle C., Religious Factors in Early Dutch Capitalism, 1550–1650 (The Hague, 1967), p. 83.Google Scholar

45. Sprunger, p. 175.

46. Carter, pp. 169–178.

47. Middelburg Consistory Register, vol. 1, fol. 62(26 May 1632), fol. 208(8 February 1660), Rijksarchief of Zeeland, Middleburg.

48. Amsterdam Consistory Register, vol. 3, fol. 300.

49. Perkins, William, Workes, 3 vols. (London, 1612–1613), 3: 420–421.Google Scholar

50. Hill, p. 208.

51. Ibid., p. 205.

52. Evenhuis, 2: 116.

53. Hill, pp. 208–209.

54. Wilson, Charles, England's Apprenticeship, 1603–1763 (New York, 1966), pp. 39–42, 271;Google ScholarThe Cambridge Economic History of Europe, 7 vols. (Cambridge, 1966–1967), 4: 210.Google Scholar

55. S. Simonides (1655), in Schotel, G. D. J., Het maatschappelijk leven onzer vaderen in de seventiende eeuw, 2d ed. (Amsterdam, 1905), pp. 228–229.Google Scholar

56. Heylyn, 2: 193.

57. Schama, Simon, “The Unruly Realm: Appetite and Restraint in Seventeenth-Century Holland,” Daedalus 108 (Summer 1979): 113.Google Scholar

58. For comments on Scottish Sabbatarianism as anticapitalistic, see Mathieson, William L., Politics and Religion: A Study in Scottish History from the Reformation to the Revolution, 2 vols. (Glascow, 1902), 1: 202–203.Google Scholar

59. Riemersma, pp. 83–84.