Womans Life in Colonial Days | Page 6

astonishment after the lapse of these hundreds of years, what terror the messages must have inspired in those who lived under their terrific indictments, prophecies, and warnings. Here was a religion based on Judaism and the Mosaic code, "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth." Moses Coit Tyler has declared in his _History of American Literature_:[2] "They did not attempt to combine the sacred and the secular; they simply abolished the secular and left only the sacred. The state became the church; the king a priest; politics a department of theology; citizenship the privilege of those only who had received baptism and the Lord's Supper."
And what an idea of the sacred was theirs! The gentleness, the mercy, the loving kindness that are of God so seldom enter into those ancient discussions that such attributes are almost negligible. Michael Wigglesworth's poem, The Day of Doom, published in 1662, may be considered as an authoritative treatise on the theology of the Puritans; for it not only was so popular as to receive several reprints, but was sanctioned by the elders of the church themselves. If this was orthodoxy--and the proof that it was is evident--it was of a sort that might well sour and embitter the nature of man and fill the gentle soul of womanhood with fear and dark forebodings. We well know that the Puritans thoroughly believed that man's nature was weak and sinful, and that the human soul was a prisoner placed here upon earth by the Creator to be surrounded with temptations. This God is good, however, in that he has given man an opportunity to overcome the surrounding evils.
"But I'm a prisoner, Under a heavy chain; Almighty God's afflicting hand, Doth me by force restrain.
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"But why should I complain That have so good a God, That doth mine heart with comfort fill Ev'n whilst I feel his rod?
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"Let God be magnified, Whose everlasting strength Upholds me under sufferings Of more than ten years' length."
The Day of Doom is, in the main, its author's vision of judgment day, and, whatever artistic or theological defects it may have, it undeniably possesses realism. For instance, several stanzas deal with one of the most dreadful doctrines of the Puritan faith, that all infants who died unbaptized entered into eternal torment--a theory that must have influenced profoundly the happiness and woe of colonial women. The poem describes for us what was then believed should be the scene on that final day when young and old, heathen and Christian, saint and sinner, are called before their God to answer for their conduct in the flesh. Hear the plea of the infants, who dying, at birth before baptism could be administered, asked to be relieved from punishment on the grounds that they have committed no sin.
"If for our own transgression, or disobedience, We here did stand at thy left hand, just were the Recompense; But Adam's guilt our souls hath spilt, his fault is charg'd upon us; And that alone hath overthrown and utterly undone us."
Pointing out that it was Adam who ate of the tree and that they were innocent, they ask:
"O great Creator, why was our nature depraved and forlorn? Why so defil'd, and made so vil'd, whilst we were yet unborn? If it be just, and needs we must transgressors reckon'd be, Thy mercy, Lord, to us afford, which sinners hath set free."
But the Creator answers:
"God doth such doom forbid, That men should die eternally for what they never did. But what you call old Adam's fall, and only his trespass, You call amiss to call it his, both his and yours it was."
The Judge then inquires why, since they would have received the pleasures and joys which Adam could have given them, the rewards and blessings, should they hesitate to share his "treason."
"Since then to share in his welfare, you could have been content, You may with reason share in his treason, and in the punishment, Hence you were born in state forlorn, with natures so depraved Death was your due because that you had thus yourselves behaved.
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"Had you been made in Adam's stead, you would like things have wrought, And so into the self-same woe yourselves and yours have brought."
Then follows a reprimand upon the part of the judge because they should presume to question His judgments, and to ask for mercy:
"Will you demand grace at my hand, and challenge what is mine? Will you teach me whom to set free, and thus my grace confine.
"You sinners are, and such a share as sinners may expect; Such you shall have, for I do save none but mine own Elect.
"Yet to compare your sin with theirs who liv'd a longer time, I do confess