The Puritans wrote dozens of treatises about family life, describing the proper roles and relationships between husbands and wives, fathers, mothers, and children.⁹ They placed every family relationship in the light of God’s sovereignty and fatherhood, and called every family member to live in the faith and fear of the Lord. Part of their genius was teaching people to stop looking at what others were doing, and to focus upon what they must do as their loving duty to God. Christ, of course, is the model in this; for what would become of us if Christ treated us the way we treat Him? God’s sovereign love is freely given, and so should ours be.

The universal scope of God’s sovereignty teaches us that we must glorify Him with all of our being. There is no “must” to enjoying God; it is but the consequence of glorifying Him. Do the one, and you will have the other. The Puritans fervently practiced this conviction in seeking to bring all of life under the direction of God’s Word. They believed in the great conclusion of Ecclesiastes 12:13: “Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.” John Bunyan (1628–1688) said that fearing God “sanctifies the whole duty of man.”¹ He wrote, “It is a universal grace; it will stir up the soul unto all good duties. It is a fruitful grace, from which…flows abundance of excellent virtues, nor without it can there be anything good, or done well that is done.”²

To be lived out, a worldview must be practical, and that requires wisdom. The Reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone released Christians from an unbiblical system of sacramental salvation and church-mandated penance. After the Reformation, the human tendency to drift into formalism and inconsistency of doctrine and practice became commonplace. The Puritans revived Reformation doctrine and made it more practical by stressing how to live the Christian life in every possible facet. Authors such as Richard Greenham (c. 1542–1594), Richard Rogers (1550–1618), William Perkins (1558–1602), William Ames, and Richard Baxter (1615– 1691) wrote treatises addressing various “cases of conscience” to guide believers on how to fear the Lord and do His will in every sphere of human existence.³

Since so much is available today on Puritan views of personal godliness, family piety, and church reformation, we will touch briefly on these topics before immersing ourselves in the Puritan views of economics and politics.

Godly Personal Life

Ultimately, each of us will stand before the Lord to be judged for our own thoughts, words, and actions in life (2 Cor. 5:10). Therefore, the Puritans placed great emphasis upon personal godliness. The most important “case of conscience” they addressed was, “Am I a true child of God?”⁴ The Puritans relished full assurance of salvation and peace with God through the blood of Christ, for both afforded the believer the stability and power to serve God. Knowing God as a loving Father through Jesus Christ helped a believer live for God’s pleasure by the Holy Spirit as directed through the written Word.

The Puritans believed that all of life should be offered to God as a continual act of consecration in response to His mercies (Rom. 12:1).

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