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Justice in the Puritan Covenantal Tradition
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 April 2015
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Since the publication of Perry Miller's The New England Mind in 1939, Puritan covenantal thought has received renewed attention from scholars in a number of different fields. Many of these analyses have tended, however, either to ignore the essential theological grounding of this movement in Calvin and in English evangelicalism or to exaggerate the individualistic character of Puritan ethics through failure to give adequate attention to such communal themes as religious and civil covenants, equity, virtue, and the common good.
Thus, Perry Miller, for example, interpreted covenantal (or federal) theology as an attempt to resolve the antinomy in Calvinist doctrine between determinism and human freedom by making salvation dependent upon good works. While the idea of such a conditional covenant was fundamentally inconsistent with the traditional Calvinist doctrine of decrees, Miller argued, it did nevertheless provide a pragmatic albeit unstable means of reconciling human freedom and moral responsibility with the doctrine of decrees. When one examines such early covenantal writers as Perkins, Preston, Sibbes, and Ames, however, one finds that they turned to the imagery of covenant primarily out of the need to provide a basis for assurance of salvation and moral guidance, not to resolve a conflict between predestination and human freedom. The latter conflict had already been largely resolved within the framework of Calvinist doctrine. Not only did Miller's focus upon the problem of decrees cause him to misconstrue the relationship between Calvin and covenantal thought in important respects; it also caused him to neglect the evangelical sources of covenantal theology and ethics.
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References
1. Miller, P., The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (1939)Google Scholar. In New England ‘covenant theology’ was commonly called ‘federal theology’. In the present essay these terms are used interchangeably.
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5. In the present essay attention is focused primarily upon William Perkins, John Preston, Richard Sibbes, William Ames, and Richard Baxter in England and upon John Winthrop, John Cotton, Nathanial Ward, Jonathan Mitchell, John Willard, and Samuel Wise in New England. For a fuller description of the radical implications of covenantal thought, attention would need to be given to the Left-wing English sects; to the Army Debates, particularly the Putney Debates of 1647, over who should as a matter of justice participate in the civil covenant; and to the controversies of Roger Williams with Winthrop and John Cotton in New England over the limits of the political covenant. (I am particularly indebted to Professor David Little for his suggestions in this regard.) On the Putney Debates, see Puritanism and Liberty, Being the Army Debates (1647-49) from the Clarke Manuscripts with Supplementary Documents 1–124 (Woodhouse, A.S.P. ed. 1951)Google Scholar. On Williams' disputes with Winthrop and Cotton, see Miller, P., Williams, Roger: His Contribution To The American Tradition (1958)Google Scholar; and Morgan, E.S., Roger Williams: The Church and the State (1967)Google Scholar.
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56. Id.
57. Id. at 60-61.
58. Id. at 62.
59. Id.
60. Id. at 66.
61. Id. at 72-73.
62. Id. at 71.
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65. Id. at 480. Perkins' distinction between the extremity of the law and the mitigation of the law corresponds closely to Calvin's distinction between the two laws of equity in relation to the poor. “The first law of fair-dealing,” Calvin writes, “is that no one is to lay claim to another's property, but use only what he can rightfully call his own. The second is that no one is to swallow what belongs to him like a whirlpool, but he is to be kindly toward his neighbors and lighten their want by his abundance.” Calvin, , Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, in Calvin's Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Romans and to the Thessalonians 420 (Torrance, D.W. and Torrance, T.F. eds. 1960)Google Scholar. See also Calvin, supra note 6, at Bk. 4, ch. 20 secs. 14-16. “Equity, being natural, is the same to all mankind; and consequently all laws, on every subject, ought to have the same equity for their end. Particular enactments and regulations, being connected with circumstances, and partly dependent upon them, may be different in different cases without any impropriety, provided they are all equally directed to the same object of equity…. This equity, therefore, must alone be the scope, and rule, and end, of all laws,” Id. at sec. 16.
66. Ames, supra note 13, at Book 5, 111.
67. Id.
68. Morgan, supra note 23, at 138.
69. Id. at 153.
70. Id at 155.
71. Id. at 136.
72. Miller, supra note 26, at 109.
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76. The original draft of this document, written by John Cotton, subsequently became the basic code of the New Haven Colony. A later draft, which was adopted by the Colony of Massachusetts, was written by Nathaniel Ward. Id at 177-78.
77. Id. at 178.
78. Id. at 179.
79. Miller, supra note 1, at 439-40.
80. See Morgan, supra note 23, at xi-xivii Cf. Buffinton, , The Massachusetts Experiment of 1630, in 32 Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts 308–20 (Transaction 1933–1937)Google Scholar.
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82. Id. at 93.
83. According to John Wise, the principles of natural liberty, equity, equality, and self-preservation rest fundamentally upon reason. “Revelation,” Wise declared, “is nature's law in a fairer and brighter edition.” J. Wise, A Vindication of the Government of the New England Churches, and The Churches' Quarrel Espoused; or, A Reply to Certain Proposals 27–28 (1860)Google Scholar.
84. Morgan, supra note 23, at xli.
85. Id.
86. Locke, , An Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent and End of the Civil Government, in The English Philosophers from Bacon to Mill 404 (Burtt, E.A. ed. 1939)Google Scholar.
87. Cf. J. Dunn, Locke (1984), Ch.2, The Politics of Trust. “At the center of Locke's conception of government… was the idea of trust.” Id. at 52. A comparison of the ideas of trust in Locke and in Puritanism is anticipated in an ensuing study.