Edmund Morgan The Puritatan Dilemma

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1 Edmund S. Morgan (January 17, 1916 – July 2013) is the Sterling professor Emeritus at Yale University. Morgan has authored dozens of books on Puritan and early colonial history, which are acclaimed for both of scholarly focus and appeal to a general audience. Morgan had received many awards throughout his prolific career for his work as a writer and a professor, including a lifetime achievement Pulitzer Prize is 2006 for a “creative and deeply influential body of work as an American historian that spans the last half-century. “Morgan’s own interest history grew while he was an undergraduate at Harvard ; where he went on to earn his Ph.D in 1942. At Harvard, Morgan studied under Perry Miller. Since he became a historian, he has witnessed a major change in his field.
2 The Puritan Dilemma was written in 1958. It is important to know because

3 Puritanism demanded more of the individual than it did of the church. Puritanism was a power not to be denied. Puritanism required that a man devote his life to seeking salvation but told him was helpless to do anything but evil. Puritanism required that he rest his whole hope in Christ but taught him that Christ would utterly reject him unless before he was born God foreordained his salvation. Puritanism required that man refrain from sin but told him he would sin anyhow. Puritanism required that he reform the world in the image of God’s holy kingdom but taught him that evil of the world was incurable and inevitable. Puritanism required that he work to the best of his ability at whatever task was set before him and partake of the good things that God had filled the world with, but told him he must enjoy his work and his pleasures only, as it were, absentmindedly, with his attention fixed on God.
4 For John Winthrop, Massachusetts was an ideal place to build a Puritan utopia untainted by the