Puritans
Definition
The Puritans were the ministers, writers, and laypeople of Puritanism, the intense strand of Reformed Protestantism that sought to purify the Church of England’s worship and reorder personal and church life by Scripture alone, from the mid-sixteenth through the late seventeenth centuries.1 As the movement matured it divided into Presbyterian, Congregationalist, and Separatist and Baptist streams, so the figures below range from conforming Elizabethan divines to the New England heirs of the movement’s final generation.2
Notable Puritans
The following, grouped by generation, are drawn primarily from Joel Beeke and Randall Pederson’s biographical guide to Puritan authors.3
Founding generation: Elizabethan and early Jacobean
- John Rainolds (1549-1607)
- Robert Browne (1550-1633)
- John Smyth (1554-1612)
- William Perkins (1558-1602)
- Paul Baynes (c. 1560-1617)
- Arthur Hildersham (1563-1632)
- Thomas Gataker (1574-1654)
- Joseph Hall (1574-1656)
- William Ames (1576-1633)
- John Davenant (1576-1641)
- Richard Sibbes (1577-1635)
- William Twisse (1578-1646)
- William Gouge (1578-1653)
- James Ussher (1581-1656)
- John Ball (1585-1640)
- Joseph Mede (1586-1638)
- John Preston (1587-1628)
Civil War and Westminster Assembly generation
- Jeremiah Burroughs (1599-1646)
- Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658)
- Edward Reynolds (1599-1676)
- Hanserd Knollys (1599-1691)
- Tobias Crisp (1600-1643)
- Edmund Calamy (1600-1666)
- Thomas Goodwin (1600-1680)
- John Trapp (1601-1669)
- Joseph Caryl (1602-1673)
- John Lightfoot (1602-1675)
- John Milton (1608-1674)
- Thomas Brooks (1608-1680)
- Isaac Ambrose (1604-1662)
- Samuel Bolton (1606-1654)
- Thomas Adams (c. 1583-1652)
- Richard Baxter (1615-1691)
- John Owen (1616-1683)
- William Gurnall (1617-1679)
- Christopher Love (1618-1651)
- William Guthrie (1620-1665)
- Thomas Manton (1620-1677)
- Thomas Watson (1620-1686)
- Christopher Ness (1621-1705)
- David Clarkson (1622-1686)
- James Durham (1622-1658)
- Matthew Poole (1624-1679)
- William Bates (1625-1699)
Restoration and the Great Ejection generation
- Edward Fisher (1627-1656)
- Stephen Charnock (1628-1680)
- John Bunyan (1628-1688)
- John Flavel (1630-1691)
- John Howe (1630-1705)
- Isaac Chauncy (1632-1712)
- Andrew Gray (1634-1656)
- Joseph Alleine (1634-1668)
- Benjamin Keach (1640-1704)
- Robert Traill (1642-1716)
- Solomon Stoddard (1643-1729)
- Daniel Williams (1643-1716)
New England and later heirs
- Matthew Henry (1662-1714)
- Cotton Mather (1663-1728)
- Thomas Boston (1676-1732)
- Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)
Related Doctrines
- Puritan, for the movement’s history and theology
- Regulative principle
- Calvinism
- Presbyterian
- Congregationalism
- Baptist
- Westminster Confession
Further Reading
- Joel R. Beeke and Randall J. Pederson, Meet the Puritans, With a Guide to Modern Reprints (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2006).
- Joel R. Beeke and Mark Jones, A Puritan Theology: Doctrine for Life (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2012).
- John Coffey and Paul C. H. Lim, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
- Leland Ryken, Worldly Saints: The Puritans As They Really Were (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990).
References
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Daniel David Scheiderer, “Benjamin Keach: Baptist Expositor of Puritan Doctrine,” in “Eternal Covenant: The Trinitarian Shape of an Historic Baptist Doctrine” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2022), 21n3, quoting Francis J. Bremer, Puritanism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 2. ↩
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Scheiderer, “Benjamin Keach: Baptist Expositor of Puritan Doctrine,” 20-21n3, quoting John Coffey and Paul C. H. Lim, introduction to The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism, ed. John Coffey and Paul C. H. Lim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 1-2. ↩
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Joel R. Beeke and Randall J. Pederson, Meet the Puritans: With a Guide to Modern Reprints (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2006). ↩