Seers of God

by Michael Winship

Early-seventeenth-century Puritans believed that divine Providence revealed itself through wonders. Storms and earthquakes might be messages from God. The fainting of a member of the House of Commons could represent an omen. Depressed people might puzzle whether their states of mind were due to God, magic, or simple melancholy. This fascination with the wonders and communications of God, some of them quite dark, accompanied the Puritans to Massachusetts. Observing that intellectual changes within late-seventeenth-century Massachusetts Puritan culture closely paralleled changes within Puritan culture in England, Michael Winship re-examines one of the more nettlesome issues in the intellectual history of early New England. How did the logic of Puritanism square itself with the contrary assumptions of the early Enlightenment? Finding themselves in an intellectual world largely hostile to Puritanism, how did Puritans try to maintain credibility? In Seers of God, Winship's compelling analys