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Puritan Doctrine In 17th C. Li - Papers

Puritan Doctrine In 17th C. Li

In seventeenth century America, the world was a frightening place. God could, and would, strike a man down at any time for any missteps he might take. Nature was filled with horrors, like Indians, and the Devil resided in the forest, waiting to steal peoples’ souls. In the eighteenth century, however, the Enlightenment began. Man discovered that he could learn by following others’ example, or by observing nature, rather than looking solely to the Bible for answers. People began to become concerned with their life here on the earth, rather than concerning themselves solely with the expectations of the afterlife. God stopped being thought of as a puppeteer, pulling the strings and ...

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to be true in the seventeenth century, and nowhere were these differences as apparent as they were in the areas of knowledge, nature, and religion.
In regards to knowledge, the seventeenth century view was that knowledge was to gained through studying the Bible, and that the only purpose of gaining further knowledge would be to preserve the integrity of one’s own soul, or to help others in saving theirs. The Puritans’ interests in gaining or preserving knowledge were solely religious, and they also believed that any knowledge that man was to have could be found within the Bible. In The Autobiography (Part Two), Franklin writes that his main reason for setting up a subscription library was to give himself access to more books, and that the knowledge he gained would serve as his own personal “Means of Improvement” (575). According to the Puritans, if a person had a question, he or she needed only to search the scriptures for an answer. For example, when Anne Bradstreet was ...

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PAPER DETAILS

Added: 7/27/2006 07:52:05 AM
Category: English
Type: Premium Paper
Words: 1216
Pages: 5

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