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Sexing the Soul: Gender and the Rhetoric of Puritan Piety

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Susan Hardman Moore
Susan Hardman Moore*
Affiliation:
King’s College, University of London
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Extract

Patriarchs at home, but brides of Christ in spirit: it is an intriguing fact that while puritan writers opposed any confusion of gender roles in everyday life, they were happy for men to adopt a feminine identity in spiritual experience. On one hand, seventeenth-century conduct books and sermons hammered home the divinely-ordained place of husbands and wives in marriage. William Whately (1583-1639) argued that wives should always have on their lips the refrain ‘Mine husband is my superior, my better’, and that

as our Lord Jesus Christ is to his Church … so must [the husband] be to his wife an head and Saviour … the Lord in his Word hath intitled him by the name of head: wherefore hee must not stand lower than the shoulders…. That house is a … crump-shouldered or hutcht-backt house, where the husband hath made himself an underling to his wife, and given away his power to an inferior.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 34: Gender and Christian Religion , 1998 , pp. 175 - 186
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1998

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References

1 Whately, William, A Bride-Bush. Or, A Direction for Married Persons, 3rd edn (London, 1623), pp. 97–8 Google Scholar. For Whately, see DNB. See also the paper by Jacqueline Eales elsewhere in this volume, pp. 163–74.

2 Rous, Francis, The Mysticall Marriage. Experimentall Discourses of the Heavenly Marriage betweene a Soule and her Saviour (London, 1631), pp. 10–11 Google Scholar. On the soul as female, see Astell, Ann W., The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 1990), pp. 10–12 Google Scholar; Bynum, Caroline Walker, Jesus as Mother (Berkeley, CA, 1981), p. 138 Google Scholar, and Fragmentation and Redemption (Berkeley, CA, 1991), p. 165. Despite this feminization, Christian thought ranked souls by gender: Bynum, Caroline Walker, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York, 1995), pp. 8–11 Google Scholar, discusses the soul’s need for attributes of bodiliness to express individuality.

3 Gouge, William, Of Domesticall Duties (London, 1622)Google Scholar; Sibbes, Richard, ‘The Spouse, her Earnest Desire after Christ’, The Complete Works of Richard Sibbes, ed. Grosart, A. B., 6 vols (Edinburgh, 1862–4), 2, p. 203 Google Scholar. Gouge’s preaching was controversial with his female parishioners: Fletcher, Anthony, ‘The Protestant idea of marriage in early modern England’, in Fletcher, A. and Roberts, Peter, eds, Religion, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge, 1994), p. 167 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Gouge and Sibbes, see DNB.

4 On women, see n. 28. Male advocacy of men becoming brides of Christ captures the issues best, but we could explore a range of female images adopted by men (all derived from the Bible): woman as nurse and midwife representing preachers, her breasts and milk the nurturing Word of God; woman as harlot representing unfaithfulness; the ‘menstruous cloth’ (Isa. 30.22) an image of uncleanness.

5 The relative power of the imagery for laymen and clerics is impossible to quantify (ministerial writing on spirituality inevitably predominates). However, two substantial and influential tracts on the theme come from laymen, Henry Finch (1558-1625, DNB) and Francis Rous (1579-1659, DNB). Finch’s An Exposition of the Song of Solomon called Canticles (London, 1615) was published anonymously by the agency of William Gouge: for Gouge’s attribution of the work to Finch, see Pollard, A. W. and Redgrave, G. R., A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England … 1475–1640 (London, 1986)Google Scholar, no. 10874.5. For Rous’s Mysticall Marriage see Jerald C. Brauer, Types of puritan piety’, ChH, 56 (1987), pp. 53–6. The spiritual journal of the layman John Winthrop provides a striking example of a meditation that moves from the experience of human marriage to marriage with Christ: see n. 18.

6 On gender see, for example, Amussen, Susan, Gender and Class in Early Modem England (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar; Fletcher, Anthony, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England, 1500–1800 (New Haven, CT, and London, 1995)Google Scholar. Male use of female imagery has received more attention in studies of colonial America: Greven, Philip, The Protestant Temperament: Patterns of Child-Rearing Religious Experience and the Self in Early America (New York, 1977), pp. 124–40 Google Scholar; Jones, Phyllis, ‘Biblical rhetoric and the pulpit literature of early New England’, Early American Literature, 11 (1976–7), pp. 245–58 Google Scholar; Leverenz, David, The Language of Puritan Feeling: An Exploration in Literature, Psychology, and Social History (New Brunswick, NJ, 1980), pp. 83–7, 127–30 Google Scholar; Masson, Margaret, ‘The typology of the female as a model for the regenerate: puritan preaching, 1690–1730’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 2 (1976), pp. 304–15 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Morgan, E. S., ‘The puritan’s marriage with God’, The South Atlantic Quarterly, 48 (1949), pp. 107–12 Google Scholar; Porterfield, Amanda, Female Piety in Puritan New England: the Emergence of Religious Humanism (New York and Oxford, 1992), pp. 14–79 Google Scholar; Schweitzer, Ivy, The Work of Self-Representation. Lyric Poetry in Colonial New England (Chapel Hill, NC, and London, 1991)Google Scholar. On puritan spirituality, Jerald Brauer, C., ‘Types of Puritan piety’, ChH, 56 (1987), pp. 39–58 Google Scholar; Hambrick-Stowe, Charles E., The Practice of Piety: Puritan Devotional Disciplines in Seventeenth-Century New England (Chapel Hill, NC, 1982)Google Scholar; Nuttall, G. F., ‘Turitan and Quaker mysticism’, Theology, 78 (1975), pp. 518–31 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jones, R. Tudur, ‘Union with Christ: the existential nerve of puritan piety’, Tyndale Bulletin, 41 (1990), pp. 186–208 Google Scholar; G. Wakefield, Puritan Devotion (London, 1957). Brauer, Nuttall, and Wakefield discuss the varied character of puritan mysticism, which is beyond our scope here.

7 Rutherford, Samuel, Joshua Redivivus: or, Three Hundred and Fifty Two Religious Letters (London, 1671), p. 39 Google Scholar; Tudur Jones, ‘Union with Christ’, p. 201.

8 Interest began with Theodore Beza, Master Bezaes Sermons upon the Three First Chapters of the Canticle of Canticles, trans. John Harmar (Oxford, 1587); major treatments thereafter include Gifford, George, Fifteene Sermons upon the Song of Salomon (London, 1598)Google Scholar; William Gouge [Sir Henry Finch], An Exposition of the Song of Solomon called Canticles (London, 1615); Rous, Mysticall Marriage; Sibbes, Richard, Bowels Opened: or a Discovery of the Neere and Deere Love, Union and Communion betwixt Christ and his Church (London, 1639)Google Scholar; Cotton, John, A Brief Exposition of the Whole Book of Canticles (London, 1642)Google Scholar; Collinges, John, The Spouses Hidden Glory, and Faithful Leaning upon her Welbeloved (London, 1648)Google Scholar; Preston, John, The Mysticall Match between Christ and his Church (London, 1648)Google Scholar; Robotham, John, An Exposition of the Whole of Solomon’s Song (London, 1652)Google Scholar; Durham, James, Clavis Cantici or an Exposition of the Song of Solomon (London, 1668)Google Scholar; Stedman, Rowland, A Treatise of the Mystical Union of Believers with Christ (London, 1668)Google Scholar; Polhill, Edward, Christus in Corde: or the Mptical Union between Christ and Believers (London, 1680)Google Scholar. On contemporary interpretations of the Song of Songs, see Lowance, Mason I., The Language of Canaan. Metaphor and Symbol in New England from the Puritans to the Transcendentalists (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1980), pp. 41–54 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The Song’s sensual imagery nourished a wide range of devotional writing: Hambrick-Stowe, Practice of Piety, pp. 28–9; Stanley Stewart, The Enclosed Garden (Madison, WI, 1966), pp. 3–30. For its use in radical religion, 1640–60, see Smith, Nigel, Perfection Proclaimed. Language and Literature in English Radical Religion 1640–1660 (Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar, passim.

9 Beza, Master Bezaes Sermons, ‘Epistle Dedicatory’.

10 Greven, Protestant Temperament, p. 124.

11 Roper, Lyndal, The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg (Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar. Puritan commentators made much of the connection between the Song of Songs and Ephesians. The Epistle is actually rather reticent about Christ as husband of the soul: the author makes no explicit reference to spiritual marriage, but only to the phrase ‘the two shall become one flesh’ as a ‘great truth, which I take it to refer to Christ and to the church’ (Eph. 5.31-2). Other important texts for spiritual marriage include Pss 45, 62.5; Isa. 54.5-6; Hos. 2.20; I Cor. 6.17.

12 Astell, Song of Songs, p. 9, citing the work of Jean Leclercq.

13 Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination, esp. pp. 3–29, 101–23, 204–22.

14 For elaborations on Proverbs, see Gataker, Thomas, A Good Wife Gods Gift: and A Wife Indeed (London, 1623)Google Scholar; Geree, Stephen, The Ornament of Women (London, 1639)Google Scholar; Wing, John, The Crown Conjugal or Spouse Royal: A Discovery of the True Honour and Happiness of Christian Matrimony (London, 1620).Google Scholar

15 Goodwin, Thomas, ‘A sermon on Ephesians 5:30-32’, The Works of Thomas Goodwin, 12 vols (Edinburgh 1861), 2, p. 418.Google Scholar

16 Sibbes, Richard, The Bride’s Longing for her Bride-groomes Second Comming (London, 1638), p. 98 Google Scholar. In this life, ‘spiritual conjunction’ is ‘made by the promise of the Bridegroom and the faith of the spouse’, but ‘real and entire actual union’ will come after death: Beza, Master Bezaes Sermons, p. 21. For a comparison between human marriage and marriage with Christ, see Preston, Mysticall Match, pp. 2–21.

17 Sibbes, Works, 2, p. 202 (on Song of Songs 1.2).

18 ‘John Winthrop’s Experiencia, 1616–18’, Winthrop Papers, 5 vols (Boston, MA, 1929–2), 1, p. 203. For Winthrop (1588-1649) see DNB.

19 Hooker, Thomas, The Soules Exaltation (London, 1638), p. 10 Google Scholar. Calvin’s theology stressed union with Christ (Institutes, III, i, 1) but puritans elaborated its intimate meaning.

20 John Cotton, Christ the Fountain of Life (London, 1651), pp. 36–7.

21 From a memoir prefixed to Thomas Doolittle, A Complete Body of Practical Divinity (London, 1723); cited by Tudur Jones, ‘Union with Christ’, p. 197. For Doolittle (1632-1707) see DNB. Records of formal marriage covenants are rare, but illustrate men’s deep engagement with the imagery. In 1741 Joseph Bean resorted to marriage with Christ to tame his ‘unchast and immodist thoughts’: at the wedding of a friend, he left the room and went ‘up stars by my Self alone and there pleded with God that this Night be the Weden Night betwen Christ and my soul’; soon afterwards, his diary records a marriage covenant. Cited by Greven, Protestant Temperament, p. 126.

22 Lerner, Gerda, The Creation of Patriarchy (Oxford, 1986), p. 238 Google Scholar: ‘Gender is a set of cultural roles. It is a costume, a mask, a straitjacket in which men and women dance their unequal dance.’

23 Goodwin, Works, 2, p. 425; Baxter, Richard, The Saints Everlasting Rest (London, 1650), pp. 797, 799–801 Google Scholar; Winthrop Papers, i, pp. 202–4.

24 Keeble, N. H., The Literary Culture of Nonconformity (Leicester, 1987), p. 213.Google Scholar

25 Sibbes, Works, 6, p. 520: from a sermon on ‘Lydia’s conversion’, originally published in The Riches of Mercie (London, 1638). Sibbes offers a third reason for women’s religiosity. child-bearing brings them close to death, and therefore closer to God.

26 Sibbes, Works, 5, pp. 505–6; Cradock, Walter, Gospel-Libertie (London, 1648), p. 28 Google Scholar. Both cited by Tudur Jones, ‘Union with Christ’, pp. 198–9. For Cradock (1606?-59), see DNB.

27 See Bynum’s comments on medieval males’ use of female imagery, Fragmentation and Redemption, pp. 165–6, 177–8. For Penington, see Greven, Protestant Temperament, p. 125, and DNB. Schweitzer, Work of Self-Representation, pp. 1–3 5, argues that the puritan theology of conversion required men to undergo first a ‘feminized subjection’ to God, then a reconversion to masculinity by being adopted as a son of God; women were excluded from this discourse. It seems to me that she over-systematizes puritans’ free use of a wide range of biblical imagery, and simplifies the dynamic of gender relations in puritanism by ignoring the powerful puritan tradition of ministry to women. Janice Knight, Orthodoxies in Massachusetts (Boston, MA, 1994), pp. 225–6, rightly qualifies Schweitzer’s case by stressing masculine themes in conversion preaching. However, the crucial issue is not whether masculine or feminine imagery predominates, but differences in the use and value of gendered imagery for men and women.

28 For examples of women’s use of the imagery, see Mendelson, Sara Heller, ‘Stuart women’s diaries and occasional memoirs’, in Prior, Mary, ed, Women in English Society, 1500–1500 (London and New York, 1985), pp. 194–5 Google Scholar. For discussions of female spiritual experience, see Crawford, Patricia, Women and Religion in England, 1550–1720 (London, 1993). PP. 75—8$, 112–15 Google Scholar; Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination, pp. 347–63; Lake, Peter, ‘Feminine piety and personal potency: the emancipation of Mrs. Jane Ratcliffe’, The Seventeenth Century, 2 (1987), p. 147 Google Scholar; Mack, P., Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth Century England (Berkeley, CA, 1992), pp. 172–86 Google Scholar. Caroline Walker Bynum’s comparisons of male and female use of symbols in medieval devotion are relevant here: Holy Feast and Holy Fast. The Religious Significance of Food for Medieval Women (Berkeley, CA, 1987), pp. 276–94; eadem, Fragmentation and Redemption, pp. 151–79.

29 Winthrop Papers, 1, p. 189.