ACTS OF GOD: THE RHETORIC OF PROVIDENCE IN NEW ENGLAND, 1620-1730 (SERMONS, HOMILIES)

This dissertation examines the relationship of providential doctrine to the New England Puritan community. Through a rhetorical analysis of writings occasioned by earthquakes, comets, witchcraft, and other extraordinary phenomena during a one hundred year period, this study demonstrates that the Puritans' views on and applications of providence underwent a series of changes. The earliest colonial writers tended to portray the community and the events of the natural world as part of divine providence, or God's "grand scheme". By the middle of the 1660s, theological improvements of remarkable occurrences had begun to appear in Puritan writings. This "use" became increasingly ubiquitous during the following two decades, until it all but died out when the government attempted to employ special providence as the justification for its actions in the Salem witchcraft proceedings. After a period of obscurity, applications of special providence reappeared in sermons on the 1727 earthquake.; In tracing the course of providential uses, this study puts forth reasons for change and draws a number of conclusions. The dissertation reveals that Puritan shifts in attitude towards special providences were a significant, contributing factor to the dissolution of the community. In turning to special providence to prove to themselves that they remained a "chosen people", the Puritans inadvertently evolved an unorthodox form of providential doctrine in which the crucial connection between this world and the next became blurred and finally lost. As a result, the Puritans found themselves trying to maintain an inflexible, theological world view which could not satisfactorily explain secular events. Neither this form of providential doctrine nor the community applying it was able to emerge unscathed from the challenges of the orthodox critics of the witchcraft proceedings.; When special providence resurfaced in the 1727 earthquake sermons, it emerged in a new context. Instead of supporting the old Puritan notion of a communal salvation, ministers began to employ special providence to promote salvation on an individual basis.