The Puritan as a Colonist and a Reformer. By Ezra
Hoyt Byington. (Gay and Bird. as.)—Mr. Byington supplements with this volume a work published some three years ago under the title of "The Puritan in England and New England." It seems a fair and candid account of the early period of New England history, and of various matters which are more or less cognate. We do not find ourselves always in agreement with the author. He gives a very glowing account of Jonathan Edwards, but is there not another side to the picture, and that a very lurid one ? Did he not hold a very harsh doctrine of "Reprobation"? To his "account of the conversion of a child about four years of age" we should have applied another epithet than " interest- ing." On the much discussed question of Puritan toleration Mr. Byington holds the balance fairly. The New Englanders were not as tolerant as they might have been. But who was in that age ? As for the Quakers, they gave much provocation. The persecution of the Baptists was more of a gratuitous cruelty. But on the whole they were on the way to better principles, just as the Protestant Churches were, in spite of occasional lapses into old ways.
Previous page
