Change and Continuity

This chapter explains that by the mid-1640s, a Holy Spirit-centered understanding of conversion and assurance (nicknamed “Antinomianism”) had acquired a new group of advocates who hailed it as an alternative to the practical divinity. Orthodoxy had constantly spawned renegades and outliers who tested its boundaries. Now, however, originality was becoming more widespread and controversy more intense in response to a mixture of political and intellectual circumstances that included the collapse of censorship. How the practical divinity was being assailed and defended are topics that lead to the Antinomians of mid-century, the Westminster Confession, and the reasoning of ministers such as Samuel Rutherford on behalf of orthodoxy. The chapter then revisits the Antinomian controversy that roiled mid-1630s Massachusetts. Here, too, debate was prompted by criticism of the practical divinity. The chapter also describes change and continuity in institutional and cultural practices in the orthodox colonies in New England.