Puritan Providentialism in the Restoration and Early Enlightenment
This study asks: how did the logic of Puritanism square itself with the increasingly hostile assumptions of the early Enlightenment?; and, faced with a new intellectual world largely opposed to Puritanism, how did Puritans try to maintain credibility?
Observing that intellectual changes within late-seventeenth-century Massachusetts Puritan culture closely paralleled changes within Puritan culture in England, Michael Winship re-examines one of the more nettlesome issues in the intellectual history of early New England. How did the logic of Puritanism square itself with the increasingly hostile assumptions of the early Enlightenment? And, faced with a new intellectual world whose parameters were formed to a large extent in opposition to Puritanism, how did Puritans try to maintain credibility? In Seers of God, Winship's compelling analysis of topics ranging from theology to witchcraft places the problem of intellectual change fully in a transatlantic context.