A Puritan Art Mystery

There are questions surrounding a work of art to which I have been unable to ascertain the answers. Perhaps a kind reader will be able to help.

The questions pertain to a portrait said to be that of English-American Puritan John Davenport (1597-1670), who co-founded New Haven, Connecticut. Davenport is a link in the chain between Matthew Poole, who began a project to record "illustrious providences," and Increase Mather, who published in 1684 his own "Remarkable Providences," having been given Poole's notes by Davenport.

The portrait shown in the Wikipedia entry for John Davenport is held at the Yale University Art Gallery (and is viewable online here). The curators there have not responded to my inquiry. At one time the subject of this painting was said to be one Francis Higginson (d. 1630), according to The Diary of William Bentley, Vol. 3, p. 52. It was in the 20th century, according to what I have read, that the painting was identified as that of John Davenport.

However, the painting also bears a strong resemblance to one found in Samuel Eliot Morrison, Builders of the Bay Colony (1930), p. 122, which Morrison identifies as representing John Wheelwright (1592-1679). Wheelwright's picture (the same as that found in Morrison's book) may be viewed here. Wheelwright was banished from the Massachusetts colony in November 1637, along with his sister-in-law Anne Hutchinson.

The artist of the work is unknown; for shorthand, he is referred to by art students and scholars as the "Davenport Limner." The date of the work is thought to be around 1670, but that too is unknown.

Aside from the question of the proper identity of the subject of this portrait, whether Davenport or Wheelwright, a further art history wrinkle comes into play with a statement found in Davenport's Wikipedia entry:

While in Holland, it is believed that he was the model for several portraits by Rembrandt, which are now thought to be self portraits of Rembrandt.

Elsewhere, another source says:

It is a possibility that many of the so-called "self portraits" that Rembrandt did of himself, were in fact portraits of Davenport since Rembrandt was sometimes known to associate with those who ministered to the destitute, and known pictures of John Davenport bear a striking resemblance to Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn.[citation needed] The portrait that accompanies this article purports to have been done during Davenport's lifetime, although it is dated to 1670 when he died.

Is this mere speculation, or is there some substantive reason to give credence to this line of thought? I am unable to say at this point in time, but the possibility is intriguing.

As an amateur art sleuth, I am left with the following questions:

1. Is the painting held at Yale University's Art Center accurately said to be that of John Davenport, or might it be that of John Wheelwright?

2. Is it possible that some of Rembrandt's famous self-portraits might be, in fact, portraits of John Davenport?

Religion and the Arts

Increase Mather (Discourse Concerning the Danger of Apostasy, an election sermon preached before the Massachusetts General Assembly in 1677, published in A Call From Heaven (1679)):

Some have well and truly observed that the interest of religion and good literature hath risen and fallen together.

Martin Luther, Letter No. 580 to Eobanus Hessus (March 29, 1523), in Preserved Smith and Charles M. Jacobs, trans. and ed., Luther's Correspondence and Other Contemporary Letters, Vol. 2, pp. 175-176:

I am convinced that without knowledge of literature pure theology cannot at all endure, just as heretofore, when letters have declined and lain prostrate, theology, too, has wretchedly fallen and lain prostrate; nay, I see that there has never been a great revelation of the Word of God unless he has first prepared the way by the rise and prosperity of languages and letters, as though they were John the Baptists. There is, indeed, nothing that I have less wish to see done against our young people than that they should omit to study poetry and music. Certainly it is my desire that there shall be as many poets and rhetoricians as possible, because I see that by these studies, as by no other means, people are wonderfully fitted for the grasping of sacred truth and for handling it skillfully and happily. To be sure, "Wisdom maketh the tongues of those who cannot speak eloquent," but the gift of tongues is not be despised. Therefore I beg of you that at my request (if that has any weight) you will urge your young people to be diligent in the study of poetry and rhetoric. As Christ lives, I am often angry with myself that my age and my manner of life do not leave me any time to busy myself with the poets and orators. I had bought me a Homer that I might become a Greek. But I have worried you enough with these little things.

A Pen In God's Hand

An evil report was circulated, as has happened to other great saints, that Richard Baxter on his deathbed suffered great pains of conscience. In fact, the author of The Saints' Everlasting Rest, one of the greatest works ever written on the subject of heavenly meditation and preparations for death, along with his Dying Thoughts Upon Philippians 1.23, written shortly before his passing, gave a godly testimony on his deathbed.

William Orme, The Life and Times of the Rev. Richard Baxter, Vol. 1, pp. 355-356:

"As to himself, even to the last, I never could perceive his peace and heavenly hopes assaulted or disturbed. I have often heard him greatly lament, that he felt no greater liveliness in what appeared so great and clear to him, and so very much desired by him. As to the influence thereof upon his spirit, in order to the sensible refreshments of it, he clearly saw what ground he had to rejoice in God; he doubted not of his right to heaven. He told me, he knew it should be well with him when he was gone. He wondered to hear others speak of their sensible, and passionately strong desires to die, and of their transports of spirit, when sensible of their approaching death; when, though he thought he knew as much as they, and had as rational satisfaction as they could have that his soul was safe, he could never feel their sensible consolations. I asked him, whether much of this was not to be resolved into bodily constitution, he told me that he thought it might be so.
...
A wicked and groundless report appears to have been circulated shortly after his death, that his mind had been greatly troubled with skeptical doubts before he died. It was brought to [Matthew] Sylvester on such authority that he found it necessary to give it a formal refutation. After quoting a letter from Worcestershire, referring to it, he thus replies to it:

"Audax facinus!" says Sylvester; "What will degenerate man stick at! We know nothing there that could, in the least, minister to such a report as this. I that was with him all along, have ever heard him triumphing in his heavenly expectation, and ever speaking like one that could never have thought it worth a man's while to be, were it not for the great interest and ends of godliness. He told me that he doubted not, but that it would be best for him when he had left this life and was translated to the heavenly regions.

"He owned what he had written, with reference to the things of God, to the very last. He advised those that came near him carefully to mind their souls' concerns. The shortness of time, the instancy of eternity, the worth of souls, the greatness of God, the riches of the grace of Christ, the excellency and import of an heavenly mind and life, and the great usefulness of the word and means of grace pursuant to eternal purposes, ever lay pressingly upon his heart, and extorted from him very useful directions and encouragements to all that came near him, even to the last; insomuch that if a polemical or casuistical point, or any speculation in philosophy or divinity, had been but offered to him for his resolution, after the clearest and briefest representation of his mind, which the proposer's satisfaction called for, he presently and most delightfully fell into conversation about what related to our Christian hope and work."

Those present at Baxter's side while he laying dying included William Bates, who preached his funeral sermon, and Increase Mather, Baxter's New England friend, who both visited him the day before he died.

Baxter, author of around 170 publications including an estimated 60 million published words (I.D.E. Thomas; other estimates range from 10 million to 24 million; his Christian Directory alone comprises around 1.25 million words), among which is included a regrettable work titled Aphorisms on Justification, told Increase Mather before his death, "Sir, if you know of any errors in any of my writings, I pray you to confute them after I am dead." Bates reports that Mather spoke words of comfort to him, to which Baxter replied, "I have pain, there is no arguing against sense, but I have peace, I have peace....I believe, I believe...[to Mather...] I bless God that you accomplished your business, the Lord prolong your life."

More extracts from William Bates, "Mr. Baxter's Funeral Sermon," in Works, Vol. 4, pp. 337-338:

Not long after his last sermon, he felt the approaches of death, and was confined to his sick bed. Death reveals the secrets of the heart, then words are spoken with most feeling and least affectation. This excellent saint was the same in his life and death: his last hours were spent in preparing others and himself to appear before God. He said to his friends that visited him, 'You come hither to learn to die, I am not the only person that must go this way, I can assure you, that your whole life be it never so long it little enough to prepare for death. Have a care of this vain deceitful world, and the lusts of the flesh: be sure you choose God for your portion, heaven for your home, God's glory for your end, his word for your rule, and then you need never fear but we shall meet with comfort.'

Never was penitent sinner more humble and debasing himself, never was a sincere believer more calm and comfortable. He acknowledged himself to be the vilest dunghilworm (it was his usual expression) that ever went to heaven. He admired the divine condescension to us, often saying, 'Lord what is man, what am I vile worm to the great God?' Many times he prayed, "God be merciful to me a sinner," and blessed God, that that was left upon record in the gospel as an effectual prayer. He said, 'God may justly condemn me for the best duty I ever did, and all my hopes are from the free mercy of God in Christ,' which he often prayed for.

After a slumber he waked and said, 'I shall rest from my labour:' a minister then present said, 'And your works follow you:' to whom he replied, 'No works, I will leave out works, if God will grant me the other.' When a friend was comforting him with the remembrance of the good many had received by his preaching and writings, he said, 'I was but a pen in God's hand, and what praise is due to a pen.'

His resigned submission to the will of God in his sharp sickness, was eminent. When extremity of pain constrained him earnestly to pray to God for his release by death, he would check himself: 'It is not fit for me to prescribe, and said, when thou wilt, what thou wilt, how thou wilt.'

Being in great anguish, he said, 'O how unsearchable are his ways and his paths past finding out! the reaches of his providence we cannot fathom:' and to his friends, 'Do not think the worse of religion for what you see me suffer.'

Being often asked by friends, how it was with his inward man, he replied, 'I bless God I have a well-grounded assurance of my eternal happiness, and great peace and comfort within; but it was his trouble that he could not triumphantly express it, by reason of his extreme pains.' He said, 'Flesh must perish, and we must feel the perishing of it: and that though his judgment submitted, yet sense would still make him groan.'

Near the end, he was asked again how he did. Baxter replied: "Almost well." His final words to his friend Matthew Sylvester were: "The Lord teach you how to die."

John Hamilton Davies, The Life of Richard Baxter, of Kidderminster: Preacher and Prisoner, p. 445:

So they who were permitted to visit his chamber have recorded his last words, which the Church cannot willingly let die.

To add smiles to tears, Joseph Addison, some years later, wrote in The Spectator, No. 445, July 31, 1712:

I remember, upon Mr. Baxter's death, there was published a sheet of very good sayings, inscribed 'The Last Words of Mr. Baxter.' The title sold so great a number of these papers, that about a week after there came out a second [spurious] sheet, inscribed 'More Last Words of Mr. Baxter.'

This proverbial story, the veracity of which I am unable to confirm, was morphed over the years to refer to his wife rather than himself and appears in the 1879 edition of E. Cobham Brewer, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, p. 593:

When Richard Baxter lost his wife, he published a broadsheet, headed Last Words of Mrs. Baxter, which had an immense sale. The printer, for his own profit, brought out a spurious broadsheet, headed More Last Words; but Baxter issued a small handbill with this concise sentence: “Mrs. Baxter did not say anything else.”

The Continuators Continued (Part 3)

This is a part of a series on the continuators of certain Puritan works.

Remarkable Providences

In 1657-58, Matthew Poole initiated a Design for the Recording of illustrious Providences. This was a project to take not of the providential workings of God in the lives of the saints and among nations as well. It had the support of Richard Baxter and other ministers. But the tumultuous events of the Restoration era prevented it from going forward. In 1670, Poole's notes came into the hands (via John Davenport) of Increase Mather, who published in 1684 his Remarkable Providences, An Essay For the Recording of Illustrious Providences. In 1697, the work inspired by Matthew Poole, Increase Mather, and also Philip Henry, was carried forward again by the publication of William Turner's (1653-1701; he was a tutor of Matthew Henry) A Compleat History of the Most Remarkable Providences, published by John Dunston, who worked with both Mather and Turner.

D’Aubigné's History of the Reformation

J.H. Merle D’Aubigné died after completing the five-volume set History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century and began work on another series, which was a continuation of the former: History of the Reformation in Europe During the Time of Calvin. He lived to complete 5 volumes of the latter series, but the last three were completed by his editor and son-in-law, Adolphe Duchemin, following D’Aubigné's notes.

Blackstone's Formulation

While Increase Mather believed in the existence of witches, and that civil sanctions should be employed against them, he was opposed to the use of spectral evidence during the infamous Salem Trials. In one treatise on the subject, Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits (1692), he wrote, "It were better that Ten Suspected Witches should escape, than that one Innocent Person should be Condemned."

This statement draws on the earlier statement of Sir John Fortescue, De Laudibus Legum Angliae (c. 1470), who wrote that "one would much rather that twenty guilty persons should escape the punishment of death, than that one innocent person should be condemned and suffer capitally."

This legal theory has been designated "Blackstone's Formulation" after Sir William Blackstone, who wrote in his famous Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769), it is "better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." This maxim was opposed by William Paley and defended by Samuel Romilly. Others have embraced this principle as well. Voltaire wrote in Zadig (1747) that "Il vaut mieux hasarder de sauver un coupable que de condamner un innocent" ("It is better to risk sparing a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one"). Benjamin Franklin later wrote in 1785 (Works, p. 293) "it is better [that one hundred] guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer." The theory that it is better to err by letting the guilty live or go free than to punish the innocent has since become part of the bedrock of American common law.

In dictatorial fashion, however, Otto von Bismarck is quoted as saying "it is better that ten innocent men suffer than one guilty man escape" (John W. Wade, Uniform Comparative Fault Act, 14 Forum 379, 385 (1979), and Pol Pot said, "You can arrest someone by mistake; never release him by mistake."..."Better to kill an innocent by mistake than spare an enemy by mistake." (Henri Locard, Pol Pot's Little Red Book: The Sayings of Angkar, pp. 208-209). Other statists have uttered similar sentiments.

But the principle articulated by Blackstone, Mather and others is derived from Abraham's famous statement to God in Gen. 18.23-26:

And Abraham drew near, and said, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein? That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? And the LORD said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.

It was during the Albigensian Crusade at the massacre of Albigensians or Cathars (proto-Protestants) at Béziers, France, in July 1209, almost exactly 800 years ago, that Abbot Arnold Amalric is said to have uttered the infamous phrase, "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius" ("Kill them. For the Lord knows those who are his, or, Kill them all, let God sort them out"). Although justice is imperfect here on earth, magistrates do better to follow the example set by our Lord and expressed by his servant Abraham, by sparing the wicked lest the innocent perish.

Of Periwigs and Puritans

When one views 17th and 18th century portraits it is apparent that at least some Puritans wore powdered hair or wigs, and the modern stereotype of a stern Puritan magistrate wearing a wig (often imagined presiding over a witch trial) is powerful, vivid image in our minds today. The modern European custom of wearing periwigs, or wigs for short, developed in France in the 1620s when King Louis XIII, who was going bald, began to wear a wig. Likewise in England, it was during the Restoration with the royal patronage of King Charles II that male wigs became popular. Before this, Queen Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots, had both employed them, but the practice became a symbol of social status for men in Restoration-era England. Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary the first time he wore a wig to church in 1664: "I found that my coming in a periwig did not prove so strange as I was afraid it would..."

But while the custom caught on quickly, there were those among the Puritans who opposed it. William Prynne took an early stand in 1628 when he wrote that "the wearing of counterfeite, false, and suppositious Haire, is utterly unlawfull" (The Unlovelinesse of Lovelockes). The Scottish Covenanter John Carstares wrote in his preface to the reader to James Durham's Practical Exposition of the Ten Commandments (1665, 2002):

To over-costly, curious, vain and conceity dressing and decking of the body, and setting of the hair now after one mode, now after another. (Wherein, as in other vanities, many men, somewhat unmanning themselves, do now contend with women, partly by their unnaturally nourished long hair, and horrid bushes of vanity, as Mr. [Robert] Bolton calls them, and partly by their variously and strangely metamorphosing modes and colors of periwigs) --

James Durham goes on to say further (quoting Robert Bolton again at one point), pp. 334-337:

And therefore we say that in men and women both, there is condemned by the Lord:
...
2. Strangeness in the ever-changing fashions, and extravagant modes of apparel; whileas the Lord by nature has continued the shape of men's bodies to be the same. For what is meant else by strange apparel, so often forbidden in Scripture, but that which is commonly called the fashion, or new fashion, a new and uncouth garb?...There is a lightness in clothing as to color, mounting as they call it, etc, and in dressing of the body, which may be seen in these dressings of the hair, powderings, laces, ribbons, points, etc, which are so much in use with gallants of the time; this, especially in women, is insisted on and condemned (Isa. 3:16-17, etc.) Some things indeed there mentioned are not simply unlawful, especially to persons of higher quality, and at all times; but the following particulars are condemned....

There is in clothes a base effeminateness amongst men (which someway emasculates or un-mans them) who delight in those things which women dote upon, as dressing of hair, powderings, washing, (when exceeded in) rings, jewels, etc, which are spoken of, and reproved in the daughters of Zion (Isa. 3), and so must be much more unsuitable to men. Also interchanging of apparel is condemned; men putting on women's, and women men's clothes, which is unsuitable to that distinction of sexes which the Lord hath made, and is condemned in the word, as a confusion, an absurd, unnatural thing, and an inlet to much wickedness. Whereof the Dutch annotators, as several fathers did long before them, on 1 Cor. 11:14, make men’s nourishing and wearing of long hair to be some degree, it being given to women, not only for an ornament and covering, but also in part for distinction of the female sex from the male.

And here, having touched a little on this vain dressing of the hair (now almost in as many various modes as thee are fashions of apparel), especially incident to women; it will not be impertinent to subjoin a strange story, which learned, pious, and grave Mr. Bolton, in his Four Last Things, p. 40, repeats from his author the famous Herculus Saxonia, professor of physic in Padua:

The Plica (saith he) is a most loathsome and horrible disease in the hair, unheard of on former times, as morbus gallicus, and fudor anglicus, bred by modern luxury and excess; it seizeth especially upon women, and by reason of a viscuous, venomous humour, glueth together, as it were, the hairs of the head, with a prodigious ugly implication and entanglement, sometimes taking the form of a great snake, sometimes of many little serpents, full of nastiness, vermin, and noisome smell: And that which is most to be admired, and never eye saw before, these being pricked with a needle, they yield bloody drops. And at the first spreading of this dreadful disease in Poland, all that did cut off their horrible and snaky hair, lost their eyes, or the humour falling down upon other parts of the body, tortured them extremely. It began first, not many years ago, in Poland, it is now entered into many parts of Germany. And methinks (says Mr. Bolton) our monstrous fashionists, both male and female, the one for nourishing their horrid bushes of vanity, the other for their most unnatural and cursed cutting their hair, should every hour fear and tremble, lest they bring it on their own heads, and amongst us in this kingdom.

And John Eliot was one who viewed afflictions upon New England society as attributable in part to God's wrath against men wearing wigs, and prayed against the practice.

Convers Francis, Life of John Eliot, the Apostle to the Indians (1836), pp. 322-323:

Mr. Eliot had a few whims, to which he was pertinaciously attached. One of these was an unsparing hostility to the practice of wearing long hair and wigs. He could not endure it; he regarded it as an iniquity not to be tolerated. The man, and especially the minister of the Gospel, who wore a wig, he considered as committing an offence, not only against decency, but against religion. His zeal about "prolix locks" was warm, but unavailing. He lived to see the practice prevail in spite of his remonstrances, and at last gave over his warfare against it with the despairing remark, "The lust has become insuperable!" The readers of New England history will remember, that in 1649 an association was formed, and a solemn protest published, against wearing long hair, by Governor Endicot and the other magistrates.

In this punctiliousness we see the influence of sympathy with the English Roundheads carried even into trifles. In England periwigs were permitted quietly to cover the head soon after the restoration of Charles. But for more than thirty years after that time, they were deemed by many a sore grievance in New England. Gradually during that period they were coming into use; but they need all the authority derived from the practice of such divines as [John] Owen, [William] Bates, and [Joseph] Mede, to find protection at last. The intolerance they experienced from Mr. Eliot was not, therefore, a singularity in the good man; he only persevered in his stern hostility against them longer than many others.

In 1675, as a response to the devastating consequences of the King Philip's War, the General Court of Massachusetts legislated against the sin of pride in wearing wigs:

Whereas there is manifest Pride openly appearing amongst us in that long Hair, like Womens Hair, is worn by some men, either their own or others Hair, made into Perewigs: And by some Women wearing Borders of Hair, and their Cutting, Curling, and Immodest laying out their Hair; which practice doth prevail and increase, especially among the younger sort.

This Court doth Declare against this ill custome as Offensive to them, and divers sober Christians amongst us, and therefore do hereby exhort and advise all persons to use moderation in this respect; And further do impower all Grand juries to present to the County Court such Persons, whether Male, or Female, whom they shall judge to exceed in the Premises; and the County Court being authorized to proceed against such Delinquents either by Admonition, Fine, or Correction, according to their good discretion.

Increase Mather, likewise, saw the wrath of God poured out against men wearing wigs and took note of them in a sermon following the burning of Boston, Burnings Bewailed: in a Sermon, Occasioned by the Lamentable Fire Which was in Boston, Octob. 2, 1711. In which the Sins which Provoke the Lord to Kindle Fires, are Enquired into. (1711):

Monstrous Perriwigs, such as some of our Church-Members indulge in, which make them resemble ye Locusts that come out of ye bottomless Pit. Rev. ix. 7,8, -- and as an eminent Divine calls them, Horrid Bushes of Vanity; such strange apparel as is contrary to the light of Nature and to express Scripture. I Cor. xi. 14, 15. Such pride is enough to provoke the Lord to kindle fires in all the towns in the country.

However, his son "Cotton Mather first wigged in 1691" (Bruce C. Daniels, Puritans at Play, p. 198) and defended the practice against those "who preached against an innocent fashion, taken and used by the best of men."

Cotton Mather's chief opponent on this score was Samuel Sewall, whose opposition to periwigs, as recorded in his diary, is legendary. He himself did wear a skull cap in his old age to keep his head warm, but he inveighed against the rising custom of wearing wigs in his day with great fervency. His diary (Vol. 1, p. 342) records his opinion of one sermon by Cotton Mather on hypocrisy:

In his proem said, Totus mundus agi histrionem. Said one sign of a hypocrit was for a man to strain at a Gnat and swallow a Camel. Sign in's Throat discovered him to be zealous against an innocent fashion, taken up and used by the best of men; and yet make no conscience of being guilty of great Immoralities. 'T is supposed means wearing of Perriwigs: said would deny themselves in any thing but parting with an opportunity to do God service; that so might not offend good Christians. Meaning, I suppose, was fain to wear a Perriwig for his health. I expected not to hear a vindication of Perriwigs in Boston Pulpit by Mr. Mather; however, not from that Text. The Lord give me a good Heart and help to know, and not only to know but also doe his Will; that my Heart and Head may be his."

One authority he cited against the practice was a sermon by Vincent Alsop, which appeared in the Cripplegate Morning Exercises, "What Distance Ought We to Keep, in Following the Strange Fashions of Apparel, Which Come Up in the Days Wherein We Live?", published in Puritan Sermons, 1659-1689, Vol. 3, pp. 488-530, and appended to the Soli Deo Gloria edition of Vincent Alsop's Practical Godliness: The Ornament of All Religion. While acknowledging that social status is lawful factor in the selection of one's apparel, Alsop saw little to no value in the use of wigs. Alsop even quoted Increase Mather against their use, which was likely known to Sewall.

INFER. II. All youthful periwigs and paintings, which are sinful in youth, are doubly sinful in the aged. (p. 507)
...
How do our gallants expect reverence, if not adoration, for their whistling silks and ruffling periwigs; and that all should rise and bow to their state, port, and grandeur! Thy silks and periwigs are but excrements; and the latter, perhaps, of one that died of the foul disease, or at the gallows. Tertullian nips this humour severely: Ne exuvias alieni, forsan immundi, forsan nocentis et gehennae destinati, sancto et Christiano capiti suppares.* "O, do not," says he, "wear on thy sacred and Christian head the hair of another, perhaps some foul-diseased fellow, perhaps one that was a malefactor and is now in everlasting burnings!"

* Tertullianus De Cultu Feminarum. (p. 513)
...
I know, both paintings and periwigs have their palliations and excuses: --

(1.) They that ruffle in their waving perukes, and look like the locusts that "came out of the smoke of the bottomless pit," whose "faces were as the faces of men, and they had hair as the hair of women," (Rev. ix.8;) do plead that they wear them upon good advice, for their health's sake, to divert catarrhs, to prevent consumptions.

ANSWER (i.) And is it indeed so, that the nation is become almost one great hospital? Are the generality of men among us just dropping into consumption? Then what other lust, what debauchery, has introduced a sinful necessity, and then taught them to plead it? But is it not evident, that the corruption is much larger than the pretended occasion? (ii.) But if cutting off the hair be in some degree useful for that end, are periwigs therefore so? Can no other thing substitute for the place of hair, but such a vanity? (iii.) But if this vanity be any ways useful, what does the curling contribute to it? and what does the change of the colour conduce to that effect? Is it no colour but one contrary to the natural, that will do the deed? Or if it must be so, what does the immoderate length signify to that end? How much more ingenuous had it been, to have confessed the sin, and yet persisted in it, than to palliate it with such slender, thin excuses? (pp. 526-527)

Solomon Stoddard also took a hard line against wigs in a letter to Samuel Sewall dated July 29, 1701:

I cannot condemn them universally. Yet there is abundance of sin in this country, in wearing wigs. Some cut off their hair, because it is red or gray; some, because it is straight; some, frizzled; and some, because it is their own. Some of the wigs are of an unreasonable length, and generally they are extravagant as to their business. They are wasteful as to cost. The wearing of them is pride, to make a vain show. It is contrary to gravity -- is light and effeminate. It makes the wearers of them look as if they were more disposed to court a maid than to bear upon their hearts the weighty concernments of God's kingdom.

There were those Puritans then who viewed wigs as an innocent fashion, and those who saw them as unnatural, effeminate, and vain, mixed with much that is sinful. Although we see some Puritans wearing them in portraits, even the Mather family itself was divided on the practice, and, lest we fall into stereotypes, we should recognize that not all Puritans approved of wigs, and some argued vehemently against them, with some nuances not to be overlooked (and I have here quoted from the opponents of wigs more extensively for the purpose of breaking that stereotype). Fashions are curious things, and while it is fashionable to view the Puritans as monolithic, the periwig controversy of the 17th and 18th centuries shows otherwise.

The Wickedest City on Earth

As a boy I lived in Kingston, Jamaica for a season, and nearby is the famous city of Port Royal. Or, I should say, was. In 1692, the city that was known as "the richest and wickedest city on earth," "the Sodom of the New World," and "the Sodom of the Caribbean," was destroyed by an earthquake, and mostly submerged under the sea.

In the 17th century, Port Royal became a pirate haven. It was a melting pot, as well -- a mix of religious refugees, entrepreneurs, sailors, merchants, prostitutes, slaves and many others who made this capital city of Jamaica their home. The pirates were expelled some years before the great earthquake, but it was still very much a boom town consisting of a population of around 6,500 permanent residents (and -- along with churches for Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Huguenots, Baptists, Quakers, Jews and the like -- a ratio of one tavern for every 10 inhabitants) when the ground began to rumble on the morning of June 7, 1692.

Contemporary accounts indicate that the earthquake occurred shortly before noon; in the 1960's, underwater archaeologists uncovered a pocket watch that had stopped at precisely 11:43 am. Following an initial light tremor, a more powerful shockwave caused houses to begin sliding into Kingston Harbor. The city had been unwisely built upon a small bedrock foundation along with built-up sand. Houses built on the bedrock withstood the impact, but those on the unconsolidated sediment collapsed as it began to liquefy, sliding into the water. Two-thirds of the city was destroyed, and around 2,000 inhabitants were killed by the quake, with another 2,000 killed soon after by disease.

It was a disaster of Biblical proportions, and it reverberated spiritually on both sides of the Atlantic. Cotton Mather mentioned the event in his diary and in Magnalia Christi Americana, Vol. 1, p. 99. Sermons were preached about the judgment of God upon this debauched city which had provoked the Lord with its audacious display of evil. When a major earthquake hit Belgium and was felt across the Channel in England later that year on September 18, many understood this to be another in a series of God's providential judgments punishing men and calling them to repentance. Example: Thomas Doolittle, Earthquakes Explained and Practically Improved: Occasioned by the Late Earthquake on Sept. 8 1692. in London, Many Other Parts in England, and Beyond Sea (1693).

But while the earthquake was a disaster for many, one tale of delivery at least is worth noting. The story of a French Huguenot refugee who survived has been told and retold in the annals of remarkable providences, and his tombstone (once located at Green Bay, opposite Port Royal, but since transported to the cemetery at St. Peter's Church in Port Royal) summarizes it succinctly:

Here lies the body of Lewis Galdy, Esquire, who departed this life at Port Royal, the 22d of December, 1736, aged eighty years. He was born at Montpellier, France, but left that country for his religion, and came to settle in this island; where he was swallowed up in the great earthquake in the year 1692; and, by the Providence of God, was, by another shock, thrown into the sea, and miraculously saved by swimming, until a boat took him up. He lived many years after in great reputation, beloved by all who knew him, and much lamented at his death.

Port Royal never recovered from this disaster, although the surviving residents tried to persevere. However, a fire in 1703, a flood in 1722, another fire in 1750, a major hurricane in 1774, another fire in 1815, a cholera epidemic in 1850, and another major earthquake in 1907, all ultimately led to the decline of what remained of Port Royal, along with the rise of Kingston in importance. When I visited the site, I saw many artifacts retrieved from the ruins underwater, and I sailed over the submerged city, but what remained on that spit of land by Kingston Harbor was negligible. I also sailed by Rackhams Cay (also known as Hangman's Cay), a tiny uninhabited island, which got its name from being the execution site for pirate Calico Jack (John Rackham) in 1720. I had my own adventure being stranded on nearby Gun Cay for a day, but that is another story.

Port Royal is also the place where Scottish Covenanter Alexander Shields died on June 14, 1700, and was buried, following the failure of the New Caledonia colony in Panama, where the Scottish General Assembly had sent him as a missionary.

Port Royal, once known as "the wickedest city on earth," now known as "the city that sank," is today an historical footnote to some -- an underwater ruined city to archaeologists and a monument to providential judgments to church historians. Increase Mather spoke for the Puritan viewpoint that "[t]here never happens an earthquake, but God speaks to men on the Earth by it: And they are very stupid, if they do not hear his Voice therein" (A Discourse Concerning Earthquakes, Occasioned by the Earthquakes Which Were in New England...June 22, 1705 (1706), p. 8).

Tennis in Worship

Puritans in general were opposed to antiphonal or responsive reading and singing in public worship. This practice found in Anglican churches to which they objected they likened to, in the words of John Cotton, "Tennisse Plaie." Along with the use of organs in worship, and other ceremonial trappings, Puritans saw antiphonal or responsive reading and singing as a mark of confusion and not edification.

John Field in A View of Popish Abuses (1572) lists as his 13th Anglican abuse:

In all their order of service there is no edification, according to the rule of the Apostle, but confusion, they tosse the Psalmes in most places like tennice balles....As for organes and curious singing, thoughe they be proper to popishe dennes, I meane to Cathedral churches, yet some others also must have them. The queenes chappell, and these churches must be paternes and presidents to the people, of all superstitions.

A confession of faith written by Field while imprisoned at Newgate in December 4, 1572 includes:

Concerning singing of psalms, we allow of the people’s joining with one voice in plain tune, but not of tossing the psalms from one side to the other, with the intermingling of organs

The Puritan authors of A Request of all true Christians to the Honorable House of Parliament (1586) wrote :

That all Cathedral churches may be put down, where the service of God is greviously abused by piping with organs, singing, ringing, and trowling of psalms from one side of the choir to another, with the squeaking of chauting choristers, disguised (as are all the rest) in white surplices; some in corner caps and filthy copes, imitating the fashion and manner of antichrist the pope, that man of sin and child of perdition, with his other rabble of miscreants and shavelings.

Increase Mather, A Brief Discourse Concerning the Unlawfulness of the Common Prayer Worship (1686) described Anglican worship services as consisting of:

broken Responds and shreds of Prayer which the Priests and People toss between them like Tennis Balls

Horton Davies, The Worship of the English Puritans, p. 68, explains the Puritan rationale:

Moreover, the responses of the people were stigmatized as 'vain repetitions' because of their reduplications. The Puritans frequently cited I Cor. xiv. 16 as a proof that only one person should speak at once, which appeared to them to veto congregational responses, with the single exception of the word Amen.[*]
...
It was felt therefore that all responds or responsive reading ('the tossing to and fro of tennis balls') was prohibited by the Word of God.

[*] Further to the view that normally (excepting extraordinary vows, and apart from congregational singing, and the congregation's "amen" at the end of a ministerial prayer or sermon) only the minister should be speaking during public worship, see Thomas Cartwright, The Reply to the Answer of the Admonition, Chap. 2, 21st Division, Sec. 2, p. 109:

For God hath ordained the minister to this end, that, as in public meetings he only is the mouth of the Lord from him to the people, even so he ought to be the only the mouth of the people from them unto the Lord, and that all the people should attend to that which is said by the minister, and in the end both declare their consent to that which is said, and their hope that it should so be and come to pass which is prayed, by the word "Amen;" as St Paul declareth in the epistle to the Corinthians, and Justin Martyr sheweth to have been the custom of the churches in his time.

And also, William Gouge, The Sabbath's Sanctification, pp. 3-4:

Question 11. What duties are done by the people?
...
(4.) Saying "amen" audibly to the blessing.
...
As for an audible pronouncing of "amen," if the minds of them that pronounce it have been upon that which the minister uttered, and their hearts have given consent thereto, it compriseth altogether as much as the minister hath uttered. This is the only warrantable means for people to utter their minds in a congregation. It must, therefore, be uttered by everyone, altogether, so loud, as the minister may hear their consent, as well as they hear what he hath uttered in their name. For the one is as requisite as the other.