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JOHN CALVIN : LIFE, LEGACY AND THEOLOGY -<br />
PROF. M. M. NINAN<br />
The larger colony of Massachusetts Bay was founded in 1628-30, <strong>and</strong> by 1640 more than 20,000<br />
Puritans had arrived. These were the flower of the Puritan movement, <strong>and</strong> they were led by such<br />
men as <strong>John</strong> Cotton, Thomas Mather, <strong>and</strong> <strong>John</strong> Davenport, all from Cambridge. Their <strong>Calvin</strong>ism<br />
was not a rigid <strong>and</strong> static system, <strong>and</strong> they weren’t happy with either episcopacy or Presbyterianism.<br />
Slowly congregationalism spread throughout the Puritan colonies, though retaining elements of<br />
Presbyterianism. Thomas Hooker promoted political suffrage to all free men, even if they weren’t<br />
communicants in the church. In 1636 Roger Williams, who for his ideas of separation of church <strong>and</strong><br />
state had been ousted from Massachusetts, founded at Providence the colony of Rhode Isl<strong>and</strong>, where<br />
he allowed just about anyone to come. 1636 also saw the founding of Harvard College. Some of<br />
the Puritans stressed the responsibility of men, others of the goodness of God; still others the entire<br />
<strong>Calvin</strong>ist pattern of theology. Various synods were held to decide major issues facing the Church.<br />
The Westminster Confession was adopted bodily, except for the sections dealing with polity <strong>and</strong><br />
discipline. Cotton Mather’s writings, among others, indicate the acceptance of essentially<br />
Presbyterian views of the ministry. But the moral character of people started to slide, <strong>and</strong> revival<br />
would not come fully until Jonathan Edwards <strong>and</strong> the Great Awakening.<br />
New Engl<strong>and</strong>ers were the most famous <strong>Calvin</strong>ists to settle in America before 1700, but they were<br />
certainly not the only ones. The Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam, later New York, had established<br />
their Reformed church by 1640 (by 1665, the Dutch had also established it in South Africa, which still<br />
remains a bastion of the Dutch Reformed church). After 1685, some two thous<strong>and</strong> Huguenots, fleeing<br />
France after Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, reestablished their Reformed churches after<br />
settling in places as far apart as Boston <strong>and</strong> South Carolina. Soon afterward, thous<strong>and</strong>s of Scots-Irish<br />
colonists from Ulster (Northern Irel<strong>and</strong>) fled in order to escape Protestant persecution; they settled<br />
mostly in the middle colonies <strong>and</strong> formed their first presbytery at Philadelphia by 1706. Methodism,<br />
the largest neo-<strong>Calvin</strong>ist Protestant church in America, arrived there by the mid-eighteenth century.<br />
As the history of <strong>Calvin</strong>ist emigration to America testifies, such seventeenth-century intra-Protestant<br />
confessional quarrels were often high-stakes issues for laymen. They were even more so for clerics<br />
because public authorities quickly removed ministers from theologically incorrect factions. After 1619,<br />
Remonstrants were deprived throughout the Netherl<strong>and</strong>s; in Scotl<strong>and</strong>, many Episcopalians were<br />
deprived after 1639, <strong>and</strong> Presbyterians were deprived in about one-fourth of its thous<strong>and</strong> parishes<br />
after 1661. The situation was worst in Stuart Engl<strong>and</strong>, which exceeded its previous pastoral purges<br />
under the Tudors in 1553 <strong>and</strong> 1559. During the Puritan Revolution, over two thous<strong>and</strong> of Engl<strong>and</strong>'s<br />
nine thous<strong>and</strong> parishes lost Royalist pastors for being insufficiently <strong>Calvin</strong>ist. After the Restoration of<br />
1660 gave the Church of Engl<strong>and</strong> a head (Charles II) who had once remarked that "Presbyterianism is<br />
not a religion for gentlemen," two thous<strong>and</strong> more were removed as insufficiently Episcopalian. After<br />
the Glorious Revolution of 1688, another four hundred British clergy were deposed for refusing to<br />
swear allegiance to William <strong>and</strong> Mary.<br />
https://www.encyclopedia.com/philosophy-<strong>and</strong>-religion/christianity/protestant-denominations/calvinism<br />
https://banneroftruth.org/us/resources/articles/2009/an-outline-of-the-life-of-john-calvin/Reormer/<br />
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