The Origins of Puritans 1558–1603

Abstract

Puritans of the sixteenth century were evangelicals, eager to bring to their neighbours the good news of justification by faith alone and predestination to election. The transforming effect of the bible on their own lives fuelled their concern with church reform or their detestation of ‘popery’, the anti-religion. The puritans were convinced that the Elizabethan church could and must go faster in evangelizing the nation; they were the vanguard of the official efforts to spread protestantism. And so they must be seen against the background of official efforts to spread the gospel among a people who were either bewildered by the decades of rapid change since Henry VIII’s Reformation or steadfast in their attachment to the old religion of Rome. Frequently the two evangelizing efforts converged and sometimes they merged; after all, the leaders of the Elizabethan church and the puritan clergy were out of the same mould. But the puritans were usually one step ahead of the official campaign, exhorting, cajoling and criticizing — at one moment urging the church on and despairing of it in the next.