Puritan Doctrine in 17th C. Li

In seventeenth nose candy America, the world was a stimulate place. God could, and would, strike a man down at any time for any missteps he might take. nature was filled with horrors, like Indians, and the Devil resided in the forest, waiting to err peoples souls. In the eighteenth century, however, the Enlightenment began. Man discovered that he could learn by following others example, or by spy nature, rather than looking exclusively to the Bible for answers. People began to mother concerned with their life here on the earth, rather than concerning themselves solely with the expectations of the afterlife. God stopped being thought of as a puppeteer, pulling the strings and controlling every movement, but as a clockmaker who had wound the world up and had thusly stepped back to watch. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine were two important figures in the Enlightenment. Although their philosophies differed on some matters, they both believed that the world was there to observe, non merely to act as a waiting inhabit for the afterlife. This was a dramatic change from the seventeenth century viewpoint.

Franklin and Paines viewpoints differed acutely from those that were held to be true in the seventeenth century, and nowhere were these differences as apparent as they were in the areas of fellowship, nature, and religion. In regards to knowledge, the seventeenth century view was that knowledge was to gained through studying the Bible, and that the only mark of gaining further knowledge would be to preserve the integrity of is own soul, or to help others in saving theirs. The Puritans interests in gaining or preserving knowledge were solely religious, and they also believed that any knowledge that man was to have could be found within the Bible. In The Autobiography (Part Two), Franklin writes that his main reason for setting up a subscription library was to give himself access to more books, and that the knowledge he gained would serve as his own... If you want to get a practiced essay, order it on our website: Orderessay

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