![]() ![]() He embraced poetry, reading the works of so-called pagan writers. While at Harvard, Danforth became interested in learning all aspects of culture and literature, not just the traditional texts of Puritan ideals. Danforth attended Harvard College to become a minister. In 1634, Samuel, his brother Thomas (who would later become a colonial governor) and his father immigrated to New England, settling in the Boston area. His mother, Elizabeth, died when Samuel was three years old. Reverend Samuel Danforth was born in 1626 in Framlingham, a community in Suffolk, England. Nevertheless, the colony was founded on Puritan principles and values, with the Puritan congregational church clearly the dominant social and cultural force in the region. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was to remain loyal to the Crown, led by a governing body known as the Massachusetts General Court. A group of Puritans, led by John Winthrop, joined the Massachusetts Trading Company in traveling to New England to start a new colony. By this time the son of James I, Charles I, had assumed the throne and continued the trend of despotism that had grown since Elizabeth’s death. The Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620. Some of the separatists who had fled to Holland decided to join the increasing number of groups traveling to the New World to start colonies. In doing so, he allowed for the increased repression of the Puritans (even those who were loyal to the throne). Scottish King James I assumed the throne, vowing to reinvigorate the Church of England. In 1603, Elizabeth I died, leaving no heirs. ![]() Meanwhile, a group of separatist Puritans, observing the corruption and general malfeasance of the local church representatives, decided to leave England altogether, settling in Holland (now the Netherlands). However, Elizabeth allowed for the election of Puritans to Parliament, and even retained some Puritans as advisors. ![]() Although, she did away with many aspects of the Catholic mass, she kept some of the traditions, which angered Puritans. Elizabeth signed the Act of Supremacy in 1559, reestablishing the Church of England after the reign of her Catholic half-sister, Mary I. The conflict between the English church and the Puritans abated somewhat by 1558, when Queen Elizabeth I took the throne. As the English church grew, so did the Puritan movement, with the two groups at odds. Puritans stressed the word of the Bible as the true road to salvation, eschewing any of the traditions and trappings of the Catholic Church or the Church of England. Meanwhile, the Puritans (a term originally intended to be derogatory) protested the fact that the Church of England retained many of the tenets of Catholicism-as Calvinists, the Puritans took issue with such ideological similarities. Henry VIII, as monarch of England, assumed the ultimate authority over the church (as would his successors), directing his bishops and clergymen to administer his particular religious ideals among the people. His Church of England, which was fully established in the latter part of the sixteenth century, seemed to strike a middle ground between the ceremony and iconography of Catholicism and the stripped-down faith known as Calvinism. In the early to mid-sixteenth century, English King Henry VIII cut ties with the Vatican and forged a new church during the period known as the Reformation. The sermon, therefore, cautioned the delegates to be mindful of their duties to the church (and God) as well as the body politic. The primary focus of the new leaders should be to uphold these spiritual ideals, placing them above more earthbound matters of public policy. As he delivered the sermon before the newly elected members of the General Court of that state, Danforth used the occasion to remind the delegates that the reason the New England colonies came into being was to create a society based on Puritan values and traditions. “A Brief Recognition of New England’s Errand into the Wilderness” was a sermon by Reverend Samuel Danforth, pastor of the Puritan church in Roxbury, a town near Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. “What went ye out into the Wilderness to see?” Summary Overview ![]()
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