But even so, the suggestion that we 'need' the Puritans - we late twentieth-century Westerners, with all our sophistication and mastery of technique in both secular and sacred fields - may prompt some lifting of eyebrows. The belief that the Puritans, even if they were in fact responsible citizens, were comic and pathetic in equal degree, being na ve and superstitious, primitive and gullible, superserious, overscrupulous, majoring in minors, and unable or unwilling to relax, dies hard. What could these zealots give us that we need, it is asked.

The answer, in one word, is maturity. Maturity is a compound of wisdom, goodwill, resilience, and creativity. The Puritans exemplified maturity; we don't. We are spiritual dwarfs. A much-traveled leader, a native American (be it said), has declared that he fins North American Protestantism, man-centered, manipulative, success-oriented, self-indulgent and sentimental, as it blatantly is, to be 3,000 miles wide and half an inch deep. The Puritans, by contrast, as a body were giants. They were great souls serving a great God. In them clear-headed passion and warm-hearted compassion combined. Visionary and practical, idealistic and realistic too, goal-oriented and methodical, they were great believers, great hopers, great doers, and great sufferers. But their sufferings, both sides of the ocean (in old England from the authorities and in New England from the elements), seasoned and ripened them till they gained a stature that was nothing short of heroic. Ease and luxury, such as our affluence brings us today, do not make for maturity; hardship and struggle however do, and the Puritans' battles against the spiritual and climatic wildernesses in which God set them produced a virility of character, undaunted and unsinkable, rising above discouragement and fears, for which the true precedents and models are men like Moses, and Nehemiah, and Peter after Pentecost, and the apostle Paul.

Spiritual warfare made the Puritans what they were. They accepted conflict as their calling, seeing themselves as their Lord's soldier-pilgrims, just as in Bunyan's allegory, and not expecting to be able to advance a single step without opposition of one sort or another. Wrote John Geree, in his tract 'The Character of an Old English Puritane or Noncomformist (1646)': 'His whole life he accounted a warfare, wherein Christ was his captain, his arms, praiers and tears. The Crosse his Banner and his word [motto] Vincit qui patitur [he who suffers conquers].'

I am honored by being call a puritan

Email: rsnm10@hotmail.com

Everything that you said could also be said of the Nazis. Only one little problem ... Nazis committed the attrocities of Auschwitz. Just as the Puritans committed the attrocities at Salem.

Don't try to flatter yourself. "Pride goes before a fall".

Deist

This last post of yours is very revealing of your nature and character. I can honestly say that I am glad that I have never met you in person. People like you give Christianity a very bad name.

I hope that one day you will change your heart and see the terrible errors of your ways.

Good-day!

Deist

Dear Diest,

My nature is that of the Christ you claim to know. My character is as his. You better not ever meet me. I would level you to the ground like Jesus did to the disciples when he said "Oh ye of little faith" and like when he upbraided them for their unbelief and like when he was walking on the water and he would have passed them by. I would have no problem calling you a whited sepulcher. I would hit you with the word of God so hard it would make your head spin. But still, you would not repent of your errors. You highminded...

Christianity is SUPPOSED to have a bad name. Why did Jesus say YOU WILL BE HATED OF ALL--ALL--ALL MEN. Woe unto you if all men speak well of you. If I please men then I can not please God. Ask yourself, if you have the guts, why the salt has lost its savor.

Ron HArvey

Email: rsnm10@hotmail.com

You preach more lies ...

You said ... "Christianity is SUPPOSED to have a bad name. Why did Jesus say YOU WILL BE HATED OF ALL--ALL--ALL MEN. Woe unto you if all men speak well of you."

God says: Proverbs 15:20 ... Phillipians 4:8 ... and 1 Timothy 5:10.

Read and repent!

Deist