Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique

French Journal of British Studies

XXVII-3 | 2022
Émergence et transformations du puritanisme en
Angleterre (1559-1642)

Living the Puritan Life

La vie puritaine

Alec Ryrie

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DOI: 10.4000/rfcb.10040
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CRECIB - Centre de recherche et d'études en civilisation britannique

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 Living the Puritan Life 1

Living the Puritan Life

La vie puritaine

Alec Ryrie

1 In this essay, we will stand back from the political, social and theological controversies
that inevitably dominate most discussions of this subject, and venture into the interior
of puritan experience. My approach is driven by my conviction that an essential frame
– maybe the essential frame – for the history of religion is the history of emotions. 1
Belief, identity, culture, politics, all of the things that make the history of puritanism
important: none of these things make any sense unless we understand the motives of
puritans (and of antipuritans), what actually made them care about these issues enough
to reshape their lives around them. As they themselves would have said, the difference
between the godly, the “hotter sort of protestant,” and the mere carnal protestant who
assumes that identity but sits loosely to it, is a difference not of doctrine but of
intensity. So the question of what it actually meant to live one’s life as a puritan is not a
closing curiosity, but an issue which underlies everything else. In this short essay we
will explore how puritans understood their lives and the meaning of those lives, and
what consequences that might have had.
2 Despite the title of this article, there was of course no such thing as “the puritan life”.
This was a deeply individualistic religious culture; there is not one shared life but many
individual lives, each with their own distinct meaning and leading each person to their
own distinct judgement. Indeed, these puritans were incubating the novel idea that
every elect Christian’s life story was, in fact, a story: a coherent and progressive
narrative in which the Spirit providentially led the believer on a winding but sure path
to Heaven. Discerning the meaning of one’s own story was difficult, but the principle
that every life lived under God must have a coherent meaning of this kind was
unshakeable. It was one of puritanism’s greatest sources of consolation: even disasters
and failures were embraced within God’s plan. And it gave the puritan life the
distinctive, restless dynamism which is one of its most pervasive qualities.
3 And, again, despite what the title of this article implies, our focus must not be on the
regular rhythms and routines of normal everyday life as a puritan. For puritans were
suspicious of normality, stasis or rhythm. To develop and remain within a set of

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 Living the Puritan Life 2

religious habits was for them a kind of death. They looked for a spiritual life which was
linear, not cyclical, moving from conversion, through higher and greater knowledge
and holiness, until death. Spiritual progress thus becomes essential, and backsliding (a
very puritan word) fatal. As Archbishop Sandys put it:
Walk on, go forward. For if ye be in the way of life, not to go forward is to go
backward. ... Take heed, I say, of backsliding. ... Go on from strength to strength,
from virtue to virtue. ... God grant that there be not a retiring from strength to
weakness, from virtue to sinfulness!2
4 If your life did not reflect this kind of progress, you had a problem.
5 The Protestant theology of sanctification underpinned this. One of the keys to Martin
Luther’s theological breakthrough was his separation of justification (the declaration
that a sinner is righteous in God’s eyes) from sanctification (the lifelong process of
actually becoming righteous). This distinction requires that the justified person will in
fact progress towards virtue. Overlay this with Calvinist predestination, and the
implication is that anyone whose progress stalls or reverses may in fact never have
been justified at all.
6 This meant that the redeemed sinner’s life should have a very distinctive shape. As the
puritan agitator Thomas Wilcox put it: “if you be not now, as in regarde of spirituall graces,
in better estate then you were longe a go, feare your condition.” Those who are not growing
are as good as dead. “Standing water,” it was said, “putrefies and rots.” 3 Stagnation was
potentially even worse than a spectacular fall into sin, which might at least spark
appalled repentance. It was a commonplace that Christians should “leaue euery daie some
synne,” “daily procede further and further, from vertue to virtue,” “euery day grow vntil we
come to perfection.”4 Daily progress was accepted as a sign of election. This is, in other
words, unremittingly relentless.
7 The obvious result was fear of backsliding into sin, but that is not all. Nicholas Byfield
insisted that the Christian must “carefully perseuer in his first loue,” that is, maintain the
spiritual and emotional heights of conversion undimmed throughout life, and that
emphasis on preserving “our first love” (the phrase was picked up from Revelation 2:4)
was very widely cited. To “waxe cold” in our love, the Essex puritan Richard Rogers
wrote, is “an intollerable trecherie.”5
8 The problem of course was that steady, progressive sanctification was a poor fit with
real life. Squaring this circle was a major preoccupation of Reformed Protestant piety.
There were several possible resolutions, the most obvious being to set the right pace.
Progressive sanctification was a lifetime’s work, not a day’s or a year’s. Saints could
afford to take their time, and might even be wise to do so. “If wee had learned but euery
yeare one vertue since we were borne,” Thomas Tymme lamented, “we might by this time
haue bin like saints among men.” That at least seems a manageable tempo. 6 It could make
sense to avoid tackling your sins too quickly, so as to leave yourself some headroom in
the future.
9 Another possibility was to distinguish between perception and reality. If you feel
yourself to be far from God, you should remember the perseverance of the saints and
trust him. John Dod comforted those who felt “their corruptions stirring more violently,
and temptations rushing vpon them more fiercely then euer before.” It was not a sign of
backsliding, he said, but the opposite: “now that their sinne hath had a deadly blow, it
beginneth (like a madde Bull in the same case) to rage more furiously.” 7 The Devil only pays
attention to those who are threatening to escape him.

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 Living the Puritan Life 3

10 But for all the arguments, backsliding was an unavoidable lived experience. It was a
commonplace that the once-fervent were all too likely to grow “formall and cursory,”
“cold and heauy.”8 The sense of being becalmed during the long years of middle age was
particularly prevalent. Margaret Hoby expressed her frustration with it: “I Continewe in
my accostomed exercises but my increasinges in goodes waies is not as I thirst for.” 9 The
experience of sanctification did not match the theory.
11 Some puritans dealt with this by trying to complicate the narrative of sanctification.
Perhaps God intends us to leave our first love behind as our faith matures, or expects
that our progress will ebb and flow like the tides or the seasons, or trains us in holiness
by withdrawing his felt presence. But the more common response was to focus, not on
ephemeral feelings, but on actual sin. Sanctification, obviously, ought to mean
becoming less sinful. While sin of some kind was inescapable in this world, puritans
hoped that they were sinful in a different way from the reprobate. John Preston argued
that “a particular offence doth not offend [God] so much … as if we grow to a generall rebellion
against him.” In other words, when the elect sin it is out of character; the reprobate, on
the other hand, make a habit of it.10 This is of course very close to the traditional
Catholic distinction between mortal and venial sins, and in the seventeenth century we
find that distinction creeping back into puritan usage, sometimes in those very words.
11

12 A variant to this approach emphasised repentance rather than sin. Everyone sins, but
the elect match daily sin with daily repentance, whereas the reprobate simply pile sin
upon sin. Believers may be surprised or tempted into sin against their better
judgement, but failure to repent can only be deliberate obstinacy. Which is all very
well, but it could become a fixed pattern: to repent, return to the same sins, and repent
again was to be stuck “like a horse in a mill,” always turning but never really moving:
Thomas Hooker called this “the mill of prayer.”12 To repent and repeat was simply to
mock God. The author of one puritan commonplace book wrote:
I am weary of repenting; the often vowes & promises of amendment in our priuat &
publique humiliations, and our as often relapses into the same and worse iniquities
makes God weary of repenting.13
13 Thomas Goodwin remembered having been stuck in such a pattern in his own youth,
and in retrospect he saw the whole cycle as steeped in sin. 14 No-one wanted their life
story to be a tale of a dog returning to its vomit.
14 There was only one approach which recognised the reality of recurrent sin but was also
able to maintain a satisfying and plausible life narrative, and this was to make
repentance a transformative rather than a routine event. For every step back, there
must be two steps forward. Repentance must be an occasion of closing one chapter and
opening another. If you fall, ensure that you always bounce back higher. 15 And so this
was the perennial struggle of the puritan life: to keep it from sinking into mere routine.
15 We can follow the battle in puritan prayer-books. One of their recurrent features is
texts ostensibly intended for repeated use which would be almost impossible to use
routinely. Take, for example, this prayer of John Norden’s from the 1590s: “I doe
vnfainedly condemne all my former life to be most vile, determining in my heart, by thy grace to
forsake sin, & cleaue vnto godlines.”16 That particular theme – asserting that the moment
of prayer is a decisive turning-point in your life story, and that today is the first day of
the rest of your life – is a recurrent one, in private papers as well as published books.
Grace Mildmay’s manuscripts contain this prayer:

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 Living the Puritan Life 4

I doe confesse that I am not worthy of the least benefitt which thou oh God hast
bestowed on me from my byrth vnto this daye. And that I haue neglected my
seruice & myne obedience vnto thee continually, in all the whole course of my life
passed. ... I doe most humbly presente my selfe before thee, with a full purpose &
intent by thy grace from this time forward, to secke & learne to knowe my blessed
sauiour Jesus Christ.17
16 In isolation this reads like a turning-point in her life, a new conversion, but it is an
unremarkable passage in her writings. Every day was supposed to be a new beginning.
And when regularity was prescribed, it positively defied routine. John Gee’s bestselling
Steps of Ascension vnto God – the relentless sense of progress is in the very title – required
his readers to pray thus every Monday morning:
Wee are beginning the weeke, but alas we begin not to be reformed in our liues and
conuersations, but the more weekes passe ouer our heads, the greather burthen of
sin we take vpon our backes.18
17 Thomas Tymme instructed his readers to review their sins every single night, “with this
resolution in thy selfe, to spend the remainder of thy life after a better manner, (and with a
better conscience) than heretofore thou hast done.”19 And then to make the same resolution
the following night, and the night after that.
18 This kind of thing risked becoming a little silly: an attempt to keep the puritan life from
fossilising into routine by sheer intensity of rhetorical bombardment. But what else
could they do to avoid that terrible fate? Most puritans were established in their
religious identity in their teens or early twenties: they could have to live a life of this
kind of ever-accelerating intensity for half a century or more. Naturally, maintaining a
continuous sense of the presence of God is an aspiration for Christians of all kinds, a
perennial theme of devotional writing, and it is worth noticing the extent to which
puritans drew on the wider resources of the tradition in pursuit of this end, reading
medieval and even contemporary Catholic devotional works as well as their own. But
puritanism did have its own distinct approach to this problem, and that was the
cultivation of a perennial sense of crisis. Their religion was born in conflict, and it was
through such experiences that they found their identity and met their God. The earliest
reformers had exulted in the fact that they were weak, isolated, persecuted: for they
knew that God disciplines those whom he loves.
19 So one of the problems most English puritans had in the long years of civil peace after
1560 was that they were not significantly persecuted or in any real danger. So they did
their best to turn the threats of invasion, or disasters like outbreaks of plague, into
existential crises: we should not underestimate how apocalyptic a major epidemic
could feel. And, of course, ordinary life had dangers enough of its own to make a sense
of permanent crisis possible. If nothing else would serve, puritans fell back on the
incontrovertible fact that death might come at any time. John Andrewes urged both
young and old to
imagine that the Spring of our dayes are past, our Summer is spent, and that wee
are arriued at the Autumne, or fall of the leafe … the Lamp of our liues lyeth
twinckling vppon the snuffe.20
20 This does seem, often enough, to have worked: puritans who suspected they were
settling into routine often used thoughts like this to shock themselves into religious
earnestness. But while life is indeed both short and unpredictable, it is also full of false
alarms. After some decades of life, of dangers escaped, any technique you might use to
shock yourself into awareness of your spiritual state could be dulled by repetition. The

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repentance which is accompanied by hot tears one day can become part of the mill of
prayer by the next. As preachers ratcheted up their rhetoric, audiences became
progressively more inured to its effects. Arthur Dent urged, “although wee could neuer
bee moued with any Sermon hetherto, yet let vs now bee moued once at last”: a powerful
appeal, to be sure, but what then was the next preacher supposed to say? 21 It was a
commonplace to urge audiences and readers that now, the present moment, was the
time for repentance, that it should and could be a moment of crisis in their lives.
Throughout the published text of Gilbert Primrose’s 1624 fast sermon The Christian Mans
Teares, the word “NOW” was capitalised to emphasise the urgency of his call to repent. 22
But how many such calls could an audience hear before they suspected their preachers
of crying wolf?
21 There was no foolproof solution to these problems, but we may finish by noticing one
of the most widespread attempts to solve them: that is, to borrow crises from the
recent past, which for English puritans in particular meant the Marian persecution of
the 1550s. John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs needs to be recognised as one of puritanism’s
most important devotional texts. Conventicles read it aloud to one another. The Essex
puritan Samuel Ward promised readers that “the very pictures of the fires, and Martyrs,
cannot but warme thee.”23 The early abridged versions of Foxe’s book do not concentrate
on the cruelty of the persecutors or on the doctrines which Foxe documented so
painstakingly, but on the martyrs’ constancy at their deaths, their prayers, their words
of comfort, their readiness for suffering. To read these martyr-stories was almost
inevitably to ask yourself: what if it were me?
22 This kind of vicarious suffering brought a thrill of fear to puritan readers. In the 1580s,
Gervase Babington set out to dispel the anxieties with which he thought Protestants
were most often troubled, the last of which was, “I feare my nature if persecution should
arise for religion.” His description of how he dealt with it “whensoeuer I thinke of this
matter” makes it sound like an almost everyday event, and for some it may have been. 24
Satirists might lampoon those who wished “to become a martyr … like those in Foxe’s book,”
but for some it was no joke. One seven-year-old girl in the early seventeenth century,
finding herself tempted to deny her faith, consequently
began to examin my self on this manner, what wouldest thou doe ... if thou
shouldest be tempted to deny Christ, and be called to suffer for his sake, as some of
thy kindred were in Queen Maries time?25
23 The effect of reading martyr-stories, Grace Mildmay believed, was to encourage
believers “manfully to suffer death and to give our lives for the testimony of the truth of God.”
Elizabeth Juxon was said to have been
very mindfull of the fiery triall which might come vpon vs: and she for her part
looked for it, and prepared for it: Yea, she was minded rather to burne at a stake,
then euer … to betray the truth of the Gospell.26
24 In early seventeenth-century England, the real danger of such a fiery trial was pretty
distant, but its value to puritans struggling against routine and hypocrisy was
unmistakable. It could, indeed, be genuinely frightening. As an eight-year-old girl in
1617, Elizabeth Isham was alarmed by adults who she said were “of the presiser sort”
talking about Catholic invasions and of the horrors that might follow. “Hearing of the
joys of those Marters that suffered for the Prodistant Religion,” she remembered, “I was at this
time very apprehensive of there Blessednes.” Lewis Bayly’s Practice of Piety, by far the most
popular devotional book of the seventeenth century, covered all eventualities. If God
calls believers to the “honour to suffer Martyrdome,” Bayly warned, it might be by “open

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burning” (as under Mary); by “secret murdering” (as under the Spanish Inquisition); by
“outragious massacring” (as in France); or by “being blowne vp with Gun-powder” (which
needed no explanation). However it came, what mattered was living in readiness for it,
so “that wee may seale with our deaths the Euangelicall trueth which we haue professed in our
liues.”27
25 Those who did not wish to contemplate being burned, massacred or blown up could use
martyr-stories analogically. Foxe himself envisaged this, believing that the martyrs’
example ought to encourage readers “to stand more stoutly in battaile agaynst our
aduersaries,” by which he meant temptations to sin and worldliness in the present. 28
When Sessilia Dewes died in 1618, her husband wrote a long account of her exemplary
pious death “at the beginning of a large Book of Martyrs,” setting her struggles and
triumph alongside those of Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley. Foxe himself described the
victims of plague as martyrs. Not even death was necessary. Richard Sibbes said that
simple struggles with temptation “make the life of many good Christians almost a
Martyrdome.”29 But traditionally martyrdom requires a persecutor, and this mentality
helped to make puritans unusually ready to interpret any opposition as persecution.
Antipuritans, anyone who laughed at or disdained puritans’ practices or demeanours,
even anyone who questioned their judgement on a particular religious question: such
people were easily cast as persecutors, for the simple reason that puritans expected
and needed persecutors. They revelled in such “persecution”; sometimes, they actively
sought it out. “All the house against mee as too strict; but I have comfort in it,” wrote Samuel
Rogers in his diary. In George Gifford’s dialogue between a puritan and a countryman,
the countryman wishes mildly that puritans would become better subjects, and the
puritan responds with disproportionate self-righteousness: “I must suffer your reproch,
for if they haue called the good man of the house Beelzebub, howe much more those which be of
his houshold.”30

Conclusion
26 There are many other ways we could tell the story of how puritans lived their lives, but
I have chosen this way through the material in the hope of persuading the readers that
this emotional perspective on the puritan experience is both revealing and
consequential. By beginning from the inner devotional experience, the problem of how
puritans interpreted the shape of their own lives and dealt with the problem of
sanctification, we can see how these apparently deeply inward struggles could lead to
puritans constructing themselves and their lives in such a way as to accentuate their
divisions with their conformist and antipuritan neighbours, to seek out and cherish
anything that might be interpreted as persecution, and in the end to split English
society down the middle, with a particular horror of settled religious peace, which no
puritan whose life was consumed by the struggle with sin could see as anything other
than a defeat. We cannot, quite, say that it was the devotional character of puritanism
that tipped England into civil war in the 1640s. But we may perhaps recall Richard
Baxter’s observation that “the Warre was begun in our streets before the King or Parliament
had any Armies.”31 Puritans’ devotional life was part of what made them ready to expect
such a war, and, when it came, to accept it, and to fight it and to win it. It was, we might
say, a continuation of their prayers by other means.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Manuscripts
Folger Shakespeare Library, MS V.a.280

Northampton Central Library, Northamptonshire Studies Collection: Lady Mildmay’s Meditations

Princeton University Library, MS RTC01 no. 62 (Elizabeth Isham’s Book of Rememberance)

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Abbot, George, Brief Notes upon the whole Book of Psalms (Wing A65. London, 1651).

Andrewes, John, A celestiall looking-glasse: to behold the beauty of heaven (RSTC 592. London, 1621).

Andrewes, John, The Conuerted Mans New Birth: describing the direct way to go to Heauen (RSTC 595.
London, 1629).

Babington, Gervase, A briefe conference betwixt mans frailtie and faith (RSTC 1082. London, 1584).

Baxter, Richard, A holy commonwealth (Wing B1281. London, 1659).

Bayly, Lewis, The Practise of pietie. Directing a Christian how to walke that he may please God (RSTC
1604. London, 1620).

Bolton, Robert, A discourse about the state of true happinesse (RSTC 3228. London, 1611).

Brinsley, John, The True Watch, and Rule of Life … The fourth Edition, reviewed, and much inlarged
(RSTC 3775.5. London, 1608).

Brinsley, John, The True Watch, and Rule of Life ... The fifth Edition, reuiewed, and much inlarged (RSTC
3777. London, 1611).

Brinsley, John, The True Watch, and Rule of Life … The ninth Edition (RSTC 3782.5. London, 1622).

Byfield, Nicholas, The Marrow of the Oracles of God (RSTC 4220.5. London, 1622).

Cowper, William, The triumph of a Christian (RSTC 5939. London, 1618).

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Dyke, Jeremiah, A vvorthy communicant. Or A treatise, shewing the due order of receiving the sacrament
of the Lords Supper (RSTC 7429. London, 1636).

Evenden, Elizabeth and Freeman, Thomas S., Religion and the Book in Early Modern England
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011).

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Foxe, John, The ecclesiasticall history contaynyng the Actes and monuments. Newly recognised and
inlarged (RSTC 11223. London, 1570).

Gee, John, Steps of Ascension vnto God, or, A Ladder to Heaven (RSTC 11706.4. London, 1625).

Gifford, George, A briefe discourse of certaine pointes of the religion, which is among the common sorte of
Christians: which may bee termed the Countrie diuinitie (RSTC 11845. London, 1581).

Goodwin, Thomas, The Works of Thomas Goodwin, D.D. (Edinburgh, James Nichol, 1861).

Halliwell, James Orchard (ed.), The Autobiography and Correspondence of Sir Simonds D’Ewes (London,
Richard Bentley, 1845).

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1930).

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Pollock, Linda, With Faith and Physic: The Life of a Tudor Gentlewoman, Lady Grace Mildmay 1552-1620
(London, Collins & Brown, 1993).

Powell, Vavasor, Spirituall Experiences, Of sundry Beleevers (Wing P3095. London, 1653).

Preston, John, The Saints Daily Exercise. A Treatise concerning the whole dutie of prayer (RSTC 20251.
London, 1629).

Prid, William (ed.), The Glasse of Vaine-glorie … With sundry Christian Praiers added thereunto (RSTC
931. London, 1600).

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[Tymme, Thomas,] A siluer vvatch-bell. The sound wherof is able (by the grace of God) to win the most
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NOTES
1. Here I draw on the approach outlined in Alec Ryrie, Being Protestant in Reformation Britain
(Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013), esp. chapter 15.
2. Edwin Sandys, The Sermons of Edwin Sandys, DD, ed. John Ayre (Cambridge, Parker Society, 1841),
p. 233.
3. Thomas Wilcox, A right godly and learned Exposition, vpon the whole Booke of Psalmes (RSTC 25625.
London, 1586), sig. A2v; cf. Jeremiah Dyke, A vvorthy communicant. Or A treatise, shewing the due
order of receiving the sacrament of the Lords Supper (RSTC 7429. London, 1636), pp. 401-2; William
Cowper, The triumph of a Christian (RSTC 5939. London, 1618), p. 179; John Andrewes, A celestiall
looking-glasse: to behold the beauty of heaven (RSTC 592. London, 1621), sig. A8r.
4. Arthur Dent, A Sermon of Repentance (RSTC 6649.5. London, 1582), sig. B7r; John Brinsley, The
True Watch, and Rule of Life … The fourth Edition, reviewed, and much inlarged (RSTC 3775.5. London,
1608), pp. 10, 162; John Brinsley, The True Watch, and Rule of Life … The ninth Edition (RSTC 3782.5.
London, 1622), II, p. 203; Edward Dering, Godly priuate praiers, for houshoulders to meditate vppon,
and to say in their famylies (RSTC 6689.2. London, 1581), sigs. A3v, E1r, F3v.
5. Nicholas Byfield, The Marrow of the Oracles of God (RSTC 4220.5. London, 1622), pp. 464-5; Richard
Rogers, Seven treatises (RSTC 21215. London, 1603), pp. 57, 69-70, 257, 432-3. Cf. Revelation 2:4.
6. [Thomas Tymme], A siluer vvatch-bell. The sound wherof is able (by the grace of God) to win the most
profane worldling (RSTC 24421. London, 1605), p. 45.
7. John Dod and Robert Cleaver, Ten sermons tending chiefely to the fitting of men for the worthy
receiuing of the Lords Supper (RSTC 6945.4. London, 1611), p. 18.
8. Robert Bolton, A discourse about the state of true happinesse (RSTC 3228. London, 1611), p. 94; John
Brinsley, The True Watch, and Rule of Life ... The fifth Edition, reuiewed, and much inlarged (RSTC 3777.
London, 1611), II, p. 11.
9. Dorothy M. Meads (ed.), The Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby, 1599-1605 (London, George Routledge,
1930), p. 205.
10. John Preston, The Saints Daily Exercise. A Treatise concerning the whole dutie of prayer (RSTC
20251. London, 1629), p. 77; cf. Rogers, Seven treatises, p. 296.
11. For example, John Andrewes, The Conuerted Mans New Birth: describing the direct way to go to
Heauen (RSTC 595. London, 1629), pp. 25-6; Princeton University Library, MS RTC01 no. 62
(Elizabeth Isham’s Book of Rememberance), fo. 22v.
12. Thomas Hooker, The Soules Humiliation (RSTC 13278. London, 1637), p. 68; cf. Samuel Torshell,
The hypocrite discovered and cured (Wing T1938. London, 1644), p. 60.
13. Folger Shakespeare Library, MS V.a.280, II fo. 14r.
14. Thomas Goodwin, The Works of Thomas Goodwin, D.D. (Edinburgh, James Nichol, 1861), II, pp.
lviii-lix.
15. George Abbot, Brief Notes upon the whole Book of Psalms (Wing A65. London, 1651), sig. A7r.
16. John Norden, A pensiue mans practise, verie profitable for all persons (RSTC 18617.7. London,
1598), p. 70.
17. Northampton Central Library, Northamptonshire Studies Collection: Lady Mildmay’s
Meditations, II, p. 89.
18. John Gee, Steps of Ascension vnto God, or, A Ladder to Heaven (RSTC 11706.4. London, 1625), p. 28.
For other examples of scheduled, weekly spiritual crises, see Lewis Bayly, The Practise of pietie.
Directing a Christian how to walke that he may please God (RSTC 1604. London, 1620), p. 458; Michael
Sparke, Crumms of comfort, the valley of teares, and the hill of ioy (RSTC 23015.7. London, 1627), sigs.
B8v-9r.
19. Thomas Tymme, A silver vvatch-bell (RSTC 24434. London, 1640), pp. 294-5.
20. Andrewes, Conuerted Mans New Birth, pp. 11-12.
21. Dent, Sermon of Repentance, sig. C4r.

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22. Gilbert Primrose, The Christian Mans Teares, And Christs Comforts (RSTC 20389. London, 1625).
23. Samuel Ward, A Coal from the Altar, to Kindle the holy fire of Zeale (RSTC 25039. London, 1615), p.
55.
24. Gervase Babington, A briefe conference betwixt mans frailtie and faith (RSTC 1082. London, 1584),
pp. 113-4.
25. Elizabeth Evenden and Thomas S. Freeman, Religion and the Book in Early Modern England
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 186; Vavasor Powell, Spirituall Experiences, Of
sundry Beleevers (Wing P3095. London, 1653), p. 162.
26. Linda Pollock, With Faith and Physic: The Life of a Tudor Gentlewoman, Lady Grace Mildmay
1552-1620 (London, Collins & Brown, 1993), p. 23; Stephen Denison, The Monument or Tombe-Stone:
Or, a Sermon Preached … at the funerall of Mrs Elizabeth Iuxon (RSTC 6603.7. London, 1620), p. 111.
27. Princeton University Library, MS RTC01 no. 62 (Elizabeth Isham’s Book of Rememberance), fo.
9r-v; Bayly, Practise of pietie, pp. 783-4.
28. John Foxe, The ecclesiasticall history contaynyng the Actes and monuments. Newly recognised and
inlarged (RSTC 11223. London, 1570), 1541.
29. James Orchard Halliwell (ed.), The Autobiography and Correspondence of Sir Simonds D’Ewes
(London, Richard Bentley, 1845), p. 111; William Prid (ed.), The Glasse of Vaine-glorie … With sundry
Christian Praiers added thereunto (RSTC 931. London, 1600) , sigs. H12v-I8v; Richard Sibbes, The
bruised reede, and smoaking flax (RSTC 22479. London, 1630), sig. G12r.
30. Tom Webster and Kenneth Shipps (eds.), The Diary of Samuel Rogers, 1634-1638 (Church of
England Record Society, vol. 11. Woodbridge, Boydell & Brewer, 2004), p. 71; George Gifford, A
briefe discourse of certaine pointes of the religion, which is among the common sorte of Christians: which
may bee termed the Countrie diuinitie (RSTC 11845. London, 1581), fo. 83r.
31. Richard Baxter, A holy commonwealth (Wing B1281. London, 1659), p. 457.

ABSTRACTS
Puritans were wary of routine or of regular piety, as their theology convinced them that the
Christian life ought to consist of steady and observable progress towards godliness. This created
a distinct fear of ‘backsliding’ or of religious stasis, and could produce anxiety if their lives failed
to match this ideal. The essay explores various ways puritans tried to manage this problem, from
‘pacing’ their moral progress to attempts to shock themselves out of routine by making the daily
business of repentance transformative. It concludes by analysing one particular widely-used
technique, namely the devotional use of martyr-narratives, in which puritans placed themselves
imaginatively in order to awaken their drowsy piety; and by suggesting that this may have
sharpened their readiness to see the world in confrontational terms.

Les puritains se méfiaient de la routine ou d’une piété égale et invariable car leur théologie
enseignait que la vie du chrétien devait consister en une progression régulière et notable vers la
sainteté. Cette exigence causait une peur très nette de la « régression » ou de la stagnation
religieuse et pouvait susciter de l’anxiété chez les puritains dont la vie n’était pas à la hauteur de
cet idéal. Cet article explore les différentes manières dont les puritains s’efforçaient de répondre
à ce problème, en « rythmant » leur progrès moral, ou en interrompant la routine et en donnant
à la repentance quotidienne un caractère transformateur. L’article analyse enfin une technique
particulièrement répandue alors : l’usage dévotionnel des récits de martyrs dans lesquels les

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 Living the Puritan Life 11

puritains s’imaginaient jouer un rôle afin de réveiller leur piété assoupie. Il suggère en
conclusion que cette technique a peut-être renforcé la tendance des puritains à voir le monde en
termes de conflits.

INDEX
Mots-clés: puritain, émotion, sanctification, routine, régression, martyrs, martyrologie
Keywords: puritan, emotion, sanctification, routine, backsliding, martyrs, martyrology

AUTHOR
ALEC RYRIE
Durham University

Alec Ryrie is professor of the history of Christianity at Durham University, professor emeritus of
divinity at Gresham College, London, co-editor of the Journal of Ecclesiastical History and a Fellow
of the British Academy. His books include Being Protestant in Reformation Britain (Oxford, Oxford
University Press, 2013) and Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt (Cambridge, MA, Harvard
University Press, 2019).

Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique, XXVII-3 | 2022