Puritan Laughter

H.L. Mencken once wrote that "Puritanism" is "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." He never met Nathaniel Ward but I wonder if he had whether he might care to revise that statement.

Nathaniel Ward, English-American Puritan minister (1578-1652) served at a pastorate in Ipswich, Massachusetts. The same man who contributed to the creation of the Massachusetts Body of Liberties, a theocratic judicial code that many today would view as oppressive, also wrote The Simple Cobler of Aggawam (1647), which was a witty and satirical look at the rising tide of frivolous fashions and pluralistic tendencies of his day.

Ward felt strongly that joy was part of the godly life. He saw that the previous owner of his Ipswich home had carved over the mantel three words representing what Perry Miller referred to as the "sum of Puritan ethics": "sobriety, justice and piety". To this Ward carved one additional word of his own: "laughter".