which time always brings to words of its class, whereas it still continues as a living term in our social and religious vocabulary. Rigidly and briefly to define a word which has thus had a vague and changing content throughout a dozen generations is impossible. To attempt to confine its definition to only one of its former meanings is unhistorical, however desirable it may be that an author should define it as used by himself in his own writings. Not long ago it was fashionable to decry, as showing total lack of scholarship, any attempt to apply the name to the men who founded Plymouth, it being considered as applying solely to those who founded Massachusetts. It may be true that " the Separatists were not Puritans in the original sense of the word";[1] but the word did not retain its original sense, and although Separatist and Nonconformist represent a real difference, the word Puritan may well be used to cover both. The pendulum, indeed, seems now to be swinging the other way, and several writers describe Puritanism broadly as an "attitude of mind," or as "idealism applied to the solution of contemporary problems."[2] As specific terms for the many sects and minor currents in the great movement, which for a time dominated the history of both the Englands, are by no means lacking, it would seem desirable to retain the use of the word Puritanism in its widest application, and it is so used in the present work.
The idea of unity seems to possess a peculiar fascination for the average human mind. Only a savage or a philosopher may be content with, or rise to, the conception of a pluralistic universe. Moreover, the desire to conform, and to force others to do so, is as typical of the average man as of the average boy.
It is in but few persons, and in rare periods, that the spirit of unrest, of dissatisfaction, of growth, manifests itself so strongly as to overcome the innate tendency toward static conformity. The mediaeval period was essentially, for the most part, one of
- ↑ Burrage, English Dissenters, vol. 1, p. 34. Cf. E. Charming, History of the United States (New York, 191 6), vol. 1, p. 272 n.
- ↑ Charming, History, vol. 1, pp. 271 /.; G. B. Tatham, The Puritans in Power (Cambridge, 1913), p. 2; and R. G. Usher, The Reconstruction of the English Church (New York, 19 10), vol. 1, pp. 244-46.
