The following is an excerpt from The Puritan Way of Death: A Study in Religion, Culture, and Social Change, by David Brannard:
Thus for as long as he [a Puritan] lived, even the most apparently obvious candidate for Sainthood did not dare take his election for granted; there was no way in this world of knowing with certainty whether one was saved or not. In other words, the best sign of assurance was to be unsure. As a result, the devout Puritan constantly examined himself and assailed all evidence of impurity, filling journals and diaries with interminable exhortations on the depravity of all men, but most importantly himself …. The Puritan faith, then …was instead a faith marked by a never-ending, excruciating uncertainty. So intense and so demanding of resolution was this uncertainty that on one occasion, as John Winthrop related, “a woman of Boston congregation, having been in much trouble of mind about her spiritual estate, at length grew into utter desperation, and could not endure to hear of any comfort, etc., so as one day she took her little infant and threw it into a well, and then came into the house and said, now she was sure she should be damned, for she had drowned her child.”
David E. Stannard, The Puritan Way of Death: A Study in Religion, Culture, and Social Change, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 75.
Thus for as long as he [a Puritan] lived, even the most apparently obvious candidate for Sainthood did not dare take his election for granted; there was no way in this world of knowing with certainty whether one was saved or not. In other words, the best sign of assurance was to be unsure. As a result, the devout Puritan constantly examined himself and assailed all evidence of impurity, filling journals and diaries with interminable exhortations on the depravity of all men, but most importantly himself …. The Puritan faith, then …was instead a faith marked by a never-ending, excruciating uncertainty. So intense and so demanding of resolution was this uncertainty that on one occasion, as John Winthrop related, “a woman of Boston congregation, having been in much trouble of mind about her spiritual estate, at length grew into utter desperation, and could not endure to hear of any comfort, etc., so as one day she took her little infant and threw it into a well, and then came into the house and said, now she was sure she should be damned, for she had drowned her child.”
David E. Stannard, The Puritan Way of Death: A Study in Religion, Culture, and Social Change, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 75.
