Half right. Because the evidence of persecution (especially after the Civil War) is that they met in secret in houses, that they suffered the Five Mile Act that threw their meeting places outside towns, and had to wait for the King's Indulgences and then the Act of Toleration in 1689.
The Puritans wanted liberty for themselves. What is true is that they wanted a Puritan Commonwealth, a pure godly land where they could practice their ideas alone. Indeed, these first imported Americans could be called Religious Communists.
It is only later, as they had liberalised, that they began to see liberty as an ideal - for themselves and others.
He also claimed that Puritans were pictured in their Sunday best, in black, but otherwise wore clothes like the rest of the people. Only, however, if the clothes were sober, plus we know that the more moderate and parish minded Calvinists wore less severe clothing than the Independents and clear sectarians.
The Puritans were Bible only people and yet reasoned their Bibles, first in a harsh trinitarian way (and very opposed to Socinians, even to the point of wanting the death penalty) and then via many and various theories of interpretation the academies set up continued the liberalising through Arminianism and even into Socinianism later on.
They were merchants, saving money and investing, and rich people don't keep a severe religion down the generations. They later became the capitalists that wanted in on political life (the 1832 Reform Act) to overturn the feudal Church of England monopoly. We now see that at St. Pauls the Church of England has joined the capitalist establishment.
2 comments:
I am sure that on some desks in Whitehall and the Highways Agency there is a megaplan costing megabucks for a megasite lasting years to construct a full-flow junction here. It might look a bit like the A1(M)/M1/M62 complex in the Knottingley area turned 90 degrees anti-clockwise. Your fix would be classified as abortive works and so not qualify for funding if this is in the offing.
These things are modelled on a big strategic canvas. Saturation delays between the A14 and M6 are bound to be suppressing some traffic here by enforced choice of alternative routes, and of course freeing up one junction always transfers weight of traffic downstream. Benefits might be eroded by such considerations. But I would expect a scheme soon, and perhaps it is only being held up by present cuts.
Try a Freedom of Information request- it might surprise you.
I can never match you at theology, big fella, but this sort of thing was part of my patch as a Chartered Logistician (MCILT).
Jim Stearn
Jim meant this comment for the later entry on the Catthorpe road problem. I'm sure he is right about this, and also about displacement, though the A14 is a difficult one for displacement. I agree that freeflowing traffic off the A14 will impact on the already so busy M6. I look at this rather like water flows and sizes of pipes, but also the effect of individual vehicles introducing collective wave patterns - so often experienced (by me) on the M1 for example.
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