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The Teachings of Classical Puritanism on Conjugal Love

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2019

Roland Mushat Frye
Roland Mushat Frye*
Affiliation:
Emory University
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Extract

Many of the old clichés about Puritanism have been dispelled by the researches of such eminent modern scholars as Haller, Knappen, and Miller, so that we are now more likely to understand the Puritans than were our less well-informed predecessors. Certain areas of misconception and uncertainty still remain, however, and the function of this paper is to explore one of these areas, namely, the teachings of classical Puritanism on physical love in marriage. Although judgments have already been pronounced by scholars on this subject—judgments which are both varied and conflicting—there has, as yet, been available no study which provides detailed and conclusive documentation of the Puritan teaching on the physical relations of marriage, for even the most useful studies usually skirt the sexual aspects of marriage, or dismiss these aspects with a sentence or two, and but little documentation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in the Renaissance , Volume 2 , 1955 , pp. 148 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1955

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References

1 In his valuable studies of the Puritan view of marriage, William Haller treats Puritanism as sexually non-ascetic, but he does not nail down this conception by detailed documentation (“Hail Wedded Love,” ELH, xiii, 86, and “The Puritan Art of Love,” Huntington Library Quarterly, v, 235-72). Edmund S. Morgan also regards the Puritans as non-ascetic in their attitudes towards conjugal love. In his instructive work on New England Puritanism, where the documentation is valuable but unfortunately restricted by the natural limits of the subject, he concludes that the Puritans’ reputation for asceticism is unjustified in view of their own attitudes but suggests that it may be explained by reference to some of their modern descendants (The Puritan Family … in Seventeenth Century New England, Boston, 1944, p. 26).

A different conception seems to underlie the discussion by Louis B. Wright when he says that only a few among the Elizabethan middle-class (he is not specifically discussing the Puritans) recognized that “marriage had a fundamental sexual basis” (Middle-Class Culture in Elizabethan England, Chapel Hill, 1935, p. 220). M. M. Knappen opens his rather cursory treatment of domestic life in Tudor Puritanism (Chicago, 1939, pp. 451-65) with the admission that his general thesis (Puritanism's conservation of the medieval Catholic attitudes) breaks down on this point of Puritan theories of marriage, but he proceeds to develop throughout a large part of this chapter the theme of Puritan suspicion of sex. Although Knappen's documentation in this area is relatively slight, his influence is indeed great, and the general impression which he leaves is that the Puritans were scarcely less ascetic than Roman Catholics in their attitudes towards sexual love.

The state of affairs is so confused that a leading medical authority on sexual relations states that even after sustained effort he could find only “partial and fragmentary” reports on the subject, while a distinguished church historian writes of Puritanism in terms of “an inner worldly asceticism” in which “the sexual side of marriage was in so far as possible ignored” and in which “there should be no more enjoyment of sex in marriage than of wine in the sacrament” ( Van de Velde, Th. H., Ideal Marriage, New York, 1930, p. 319 Google Scholar, and Bainton, Roland H., “Christianity and Sex,” in Sex and Religion Today, ed. Doniger, Simon, New York, 1953, pp. 76 and 84Google Scholar).

The division of opinion indicated above can only be resolved by the submission of more evidence. In the present state of the question it is not surprising that there should be the honest indecisiveness indicated in a recent biography of Thomas Becon, where the British scholar Derrick Bailey makes peace with all contenders by saying that “despite changes introduced by the reformers into the concept of Christian marriage, it is often overlooked that protestantism took over, and even exaggerated, certain traditional views of sexual relation”, a statement which allows each reader to give full rein to his own imagination (Thomas Becon and the Reformation, Edinburgh, 1952, p. 112 n.).

2 Paradise Lost, IV, 728, 755.

3 Sandys to Parker, 30 April 1559, in Correspondence of Matthew Parser, ed. John Bruce (Cambridge, 1853), p. 66; “The injunctions of Elizabeth, A. D. 1559,” in Henry Gee and William J. Hardy, Documents Illustrative of English Church History (London, 1914), p. 431; and Howard, George E., A History of Matrimonial Institutions (Chicago and London, 1904), i, 396-98.Google Scholar

4 Powell, Chilton, English Domestic Relations: 1487-1653 (New York, 1917), pp. 120-21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Powell's statement, however, may apply quite accurately to the emerging Laudian party, with whose views on this subject I am not familiar.

5 Comus, 786-87, and The Institutes of the Christian Religion, tr. Thomas Norton, 4. 12. 28, and see also 3. 19.7-11.

6 For Howard, see Matrimonial Institutions, 1, 325. For the sexual mores of medieval society, see Briffault, Robert, The Mothers (New York, 1927), iii, 413-19Google Scholar, for example, and for the development of ascetic teachings see ibid., 372-75, the long quotation being from 373-74. An interesting and instructive survey of the medieval developments is to be found in Bainton, Roland H., “Christianity and Sex,” in Sex and Religion Today, ed. Doniger, Simon (New York, 1953), pp. 30–61.Google Scholar

7 The quotation is from the Summa Theologica, II, ii, Q. 152, Art. 1, with other references to Art. 2, 3, and 5, and to I, Q. 98, Art. 2.

8 Erasmus, Modest means to marriage, tr. N. L[eigh?] (London, 1568), B7, and Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II, i, Q. 70, Art. 3. Cotton is quoted in Morgan, Edmund S., The Puritan Family … in Seventeenth-Century New England (Boston, 1944), pp. 26-7.Google Scholar For another interesting contrast between specifically Roman and Puritan points of view, compare the statement by Archbishop Herman of Cologne (A brefe and playne declaratyon of the dewty of maried folkes, tr. H. Dekyn, London, [1553?], B6v-B7) that for a husband his children should stand next before God in his affection and joy, with Puritan William Whately's denial of this position and declaration that the wife should so stand (A bride-bush, London, 1619, p. 38).

9 Bullinger, Henry, The Decades, tr. H. I. (Cambridge, 1849-52), I, 406.Google Scholar

10 Ibid., 401, 420, 401.

11 Gouge, William, Of domesticall duties (London, 1634), p. 365.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., p. 366.

13 Quoted in Haller, William, “The Puritan Art of Love”, Huntington Library Quarterly, v, 264.Google Scholar

14 Wing, John, The crowne conjugall (Middelburgh, 1620), p. 19.Google Scholar

15 Whately, William, A bride-bush (London, 1619), pp. 16 and 51.Google Scholar See also Thomas Becon quoted by Powell, p. 127. Note, too, that in her attack upon lust in Comus, the Lady links it with “base ingratitude” and blasphemy (776-79), a point which will also have relevance to the treatment, below, of lust as idolatry.

18 Gouge, 366. Note also Robert Crofts’ attack upon those who are so “Stoicall and Rigid, as they will scarce allow moderate and lawful Recreations … . [and] esteeme honest, and harmlesse Love sports, pleasures, and discourses (though in the way of marriage) profanenesse” (The lover, or nuptiall love, London, 1638, C6-C6v). I have no definite evidence for Crofts’ position, but suspect him of having been Puritan.

17 Gataker, Thomas and Bradshaw, William, Two marriage sermons (London, 1620), p. 14.Google Scholar

18 Bullinger, Henry, The christen state of matrimonye (London, 1543), E7r.Google Scholar

19 Ibid., E6. See also Whately, p. 16.

20 Smith, Henry, A preparatiue to marriage (London: T. Orwin for T. Man, 1591), p. 23.Google Scholar

21 Whately, p. 14, and Gouge, p. 224.

22 Whately, pp. 45 and 24. The same general points are made by the New England Puritans as, for example, when Benjamin Wadsworth teaches married couples that “out of Conscience to God” they must study and strive “to please, gratifie and oblige one another” with “very great affection” and when he warns them not to live apart from each other “for if it once comes to this, Satan has got a great advantage against you, and tis to be fear'd he'l get a greater” (quoted by Morgan, pp. 12 and 27).

23 Quoted by Morgan, p. 27.

24 Paradise Lost, IV, 761.

25 The office of Christian parents (Cambridge, 1616), p. 140.

26 Gouge, pp. 392-93 and 365-66.

27 Gataker, Thomas, Marriage duties briefely couched togither; out of Colossians 3.18,19 (London, 1620), p. 43.Google Scholar

28 Whately, A bride-bush (1617 ed.), p. 7. This is the only reference to the 1617 edition, all others being to the 1619 edition, as cited in fn. 15

29 Niccholes, Alexander, A discourse of marriage and wiving (London, 1620), pp. 8, 7, and 32.Google Scholar

30 Ibid., p. 30.

31 Ibid., pp. 7-9, and Jeaffreson, John C., Brides and Bridals (London, 1873), i, 354.Google Scholar

32 See also Becon, Thomas, Prayers and Other Pieces (Cambridge, 1844), p. 612.Google Scholar

33 R[obert] C[leaver], A godly form of householde government (London: F. Kingston for T. Man, 1598), p. 179. See also the anonymous Discourse of the maried and single life (London, 1621), p. 46.

34 Cleaver, p. 191; and D[aniel] R[ogers], Matrimoniall honour (London, 1642), pp. 334-35.

35 Cleaver, pp. 151-52.

36 Gataker, , A good wife Gods gift (London, 1623), M3v Google Scholar

37 Note that the anonymous Lawes resolution of womens rights (London, 1632), p. 65, refers to adultery as idolatry.

38 Wilson, Thomas, A christian dictionarie (London, 1655), s.v. “Idolatry” (p. 303).Google Scholar

39 Smith, p. 56.

40 Quoted by Morgan, p. 16.

41 Quoted by Morgan, pp. 16 and 25. See also Whately, p. 38; Gataker, A good wife, M3v; Wing, p. 21; and Smith, pp. 111-12.

42 Paradise Lost, IV, 506, and Whately, p. 16.

43 Rogers, p. 19. See also Paradise Lost, IV, 720-75.

44 Quoted by Haller in “The Puritan Art of Love”, p. 258.