Affliction and the Stony Heart in Early New England

Abstract

The Puritans were realists, and experienced pastors, who fully grasped the fragile nature of spiritual happiness. A pressing pastoral difficulty was presented by affliction, a subject which this chapter explores through the lives of New England ministers and laypeople. It is all very well to preach happiness, but the reality of life in the seventeenth century—or indeed any age—is that it is filled with hardship. It was necessary to learn how to discipline the dangerous passions of anger, fear and resentment through bearing one's cross in meekness and cheerfulness. The challenge was addressed in both numerous devotional manuals and the correspondence between ministers and laity to mature in sanctification of one's affliction. Careful attention to ascetical practices could refine one's condition and usher one into divine comfort and even joy, while a faulty engagement would continue the spiral of distress and spiritual deadness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)