John Cotton (1584-1652) was a key figure in the English Puritan movement in the first half of the seventeenth century, a respected leader among his generation of emigrants from England to New England. This volume collects all known surviving correspondence by and to Cotton. These 125 letters--more than 50 of which are here published for the first time--span the decades between 1621 and 1652, a period of great activity and change in the Puritan movement and in English history. Now carefully edited, annotated, and contextualized, the letters chart the trajectory of Cotton's career and revive a variety of voices from the troubled times surrounding Charles I's reign, including those of such prominent figures as Oliver Cromwell, Bishop John Williams, John Dod, and Thomas Hooker, as well as many little-known persons who wrote to Cotton for advice and guidance. Among the treasures of early Anglo-American history, these letters bring to life the leading Puritan intellectual of the generation of the Great Migration and illustrate the network of mutual support that nourished an intellectual and spiritual movement through difficult times.

Why is so little heard about John Cotton, who was acknowledged in his own lifetime as the greatest Puritan preacher in America? Why has he alone remained an enigma among the founding fathers of American protestantism? Professor Ziff examines Cotton's career as a teacher and preacher, both in England and New England; comparing Cotton’s preaching and theology with that of his contemporaries in both the established church and the various Puritan sects, he shows Cotton as a significant man of his own time. Yet his influence, although of great importance to the crucial early beginnings of the protestant churches in America, could not extend itself beyond his generation. In this study, Cotton emerges clearly as a vital stabilizing influence between the separatist extremists and those who sought to re-establish the old order in the new world. Originally published in 1962. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Statues of Thomas Hooker and Samuel Stone grace downtown Hartford, Connecticut, but few residents are aware of the distinctive version of Puritanism that these founding ministers of Harford's First Church carried into to the Connecticut wilderness (or indeed that the city takes its name from Stone's English birthplace). Shaped by interpretations of the writings of Saint Augustine largely developed during the ministers' years at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Hartford's church order diverged in significant ways from its counterpart in the churches of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Hartford Puritanism argues for a new paradigm of New England Puritanism. Hartford's founding ministers, Baird Tipson shows, both fully embraced - and even harshened - Calvin's double predestination. Tipson explores the contributions of the lesser-known William Perkins, Alexander Richardson, and John Rogers to Thomas Hooker's thought and practice: the art and content of his preaching, as well as his determination to define and impose a distinctive notion of conversion on his hearers. The book draws heavily on Samuel Stone's The Whole Body of Divinity, a comprehensive exposition of his thought and the first systematic theology written in the American colonies. Virtually unknown today, The Whole Body of Divinity not only provides the indispensable intellectual context for the religious development of early Connecticut but also offers a more comprehensive description of the Puritanism of early New England than any other document.

In The American Puritans , Dustin Benge and Nate Pickowicz tell the story of the first hundred years of Reformed Protestantism in New England through the lives of nine key figures: William Bradford, John Winthrop, John Cotton, Thomas Hooker, Thomas Shepard, Anne Bradstreet, John Eliot, Samuel Willard, and Cotton Mather. Here is sympathetic yet informed history, a book that corrects many myths and half-truths told about the American Puritans while inspiring a current generation of Christians to let their light shine before men. Table of Contents: Introduction: Who Are the American Puritans? 1. William Bradford 2. John Winthrop 3. John Cotton 4. Thomas Hooker 5. Thomas Shepard 6. Anne Bradstreet 7. John Eliot 8. Samuel Willard 9. Cotton Mather

Mather is a well-known name in the persons of Increase and Cotton Mather. Here for the first time is a biography of the father and grandfather, respectively, of those two great figures of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Richard Mather left few personal records of his life in the form of letters, diaries, or autobiographical writings. In his research, Mr. Burg sought out little used ecclesiastical records in England, pieced together events from inferences and deductions, and analyzed by sociological, psychological, and anthropological methods the life of this seventeenth-century divine. As a result, Mather here emerges from the historical evidence in brief but brilliant flashes, revealing a man with a desperate need to verify his own personal worth and to make valid the way he had chosen to direct his life and to worship his God. Through this study of Richard Mather, Mr. Burg illuminates the struggles of the first generation settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Mather was the author of a considerable corpus of unpublished and published writings. Ever seeking to enhance his reputation as a polemicist and biblical exegete, he spent much of his time penning theological treatises that set forth the true faith of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. While he was sought out a number of times by his colleagues to defend the religious practices of the new colony to those who had remained in the mother country, the task of writing the major defenses of New England doctrine and polity was entrusted to clerics such as John Cotton, Thomas Hooker, and Thomas Shepard—a situation that continually irritated the Dorchester clergyman. Mather's career, although marked by minor victories, was in his own estimation characterized by major defeats. It was on those defeats, affronts, and rejections that Richard Mather built his life. The reconstruction of his experiences—both in England and in America—reveals a man of the preindustrial world whose very ordinariness makes his life significant. His biography provides a broader understanding of the ordinary pastors and teachers in seventeenth- century Massachusetts Bay.

In an examination of transatlantic Puritanism from 1570 to 1638, Theodore Dwight Bozeman analyzes the quest for purity through sanctification. The word "Puritan," he says, accurately depicts a major and often obsessive trait of the English late Reformatio

In Godly Letters, Michael J. Colacurcio analyzes a treasury of works written by the first generation of seventeenth-century American Puritans. Arguing that insufficient scrutiny has been given this important oeuvre, he calls for a reevaluation of the imaginative and creative qualities of America's early literature of inspired ecclesiological experiment, one that focuses on the quality of the works as well as the demanding theology they express. Colacurcio gives a detailed, richly contextualized account of the meaning of these "godly letters" in rhetorical, theological, and political terms. From his close readings of the major texts by the first generation of Puritans-including William Bradford, Thomas Hooker, Edward Johnson, John Winthrop, Thomas Shepard, and John Cotton-he expertly illuminates qualities other studies have often overlooked. In his words, close study of the literature yields work "comprehensive, circumspect, determined subtle, energetic, relentlessly intellectual, playful in spite of their cultural prohibitions, in spite of themselves, even, they are in every way remarkable products of a culture that . . . assigned an extraordinarily high place to the life of words." Magisterial in sweep, Godly Letters is likely to stand as the definitive work on the Puritan literary achievement.

The Antinomian controversy--a seventeenth-century theological crisis concerning salvation--was the first great intellectual crisis in the settlement of New England. Transcending the theological questions from which it arose, this symbolic controversy became a conflict between power and freedom of conscience. David D. Hall's thorough documentary history of this episode sheds important light on religion, society, and gender in early American history. This new edition of the 1968 volume, published now for the first time in paperback, includes an expanding bibliography and a new preface, treating in more detail the prime figures of Anne Hutchinson and her chief clerical supporter, John Cotton. Among the documents gathered here are transcripts of Anne Hutchinson's trial, several of Cotton's writings defending the Antinomian position, and John Winthrop's account of the controversy. Hall's increased focus on Hutchinson reveals the harshness and excesses with which the New England ministry tried to discredit her and reaffirms her place of prime importance in the history of American women.