The puritans

The puritans’ beliefs can be summarized by four main ideas. They believed that everyone was born sinful. They also believed that God saves a select few from hell. Their third belief was that Jesus died for the chosen few, and that salvation is not earned by good works but, is a matter of predestination. A fourth belief was that only those elected had the power to interpret the word of God.


Response to Of Plymouth plantation-
The pilgrims lived a very rough lifestyle. Moving across the Atlantic Ocean and adapting to the environment must have been very hard, but they did it to the best of their ability. I thought it was great how arriving at cape cod the settlers set out in the boat to get a better idea of the land. Even though the pilgrims seemed kooky at first ,reading the piece by Bradford allowed me to understand that the pilgrims weren’t stupid people, as I thought at first by learning about their religious beliefs.

Another thing that was interesting about the piece was the relations that the pilgrims had with the Indians. I have often wondered how the pilgrims interacted with the Indians at first. Because they called them derogatory names like “savages” and such, it led me to believe that they had some type of prejudice against them. But it seemed to me by reading the history that they weren’t prejudice, but that they treated them pretty fair by making civilized agreements with them.

Response to Sinners in the hands of an angry god-
My first thought about the sermon was that it was a crazy bunch of B.S., and I am sticking to my original thought. He states that god is holding us over the pit of hell and that we have done everything to deserve eternal damnation, this makes me wonder whether or not Jonathon Edwards actually read the bible or not. In the bible god is a forgiving and goodly god.
He also says that if you don’t believe what he believes than you are going to hell and there is nothing between you and hell but the aid and that the power of god is the only thing that holds you up, and if god was to let go that you would immediately fall into hell. He spoke of hell like it’s an actual place underneath the earth or something, which is crazy because this day in age we know that there is no actual place underneath the ground.

Total depravity is expressed in Sinners in the hands of an angry god when he starts talking about god is holding you in his hand over the pit of hell and that it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire at every moment. Another example I found was an example of Limited Atonement When he states that they have done nothing to appease that anger and that god is not bound by any promise to hold them up from hell at any moment