Puritans in Early America
Interestingly, America’s earliest European settlers were trying to get away from religion and get back to doing “bible things and bible ways.” These colonists sought to break away from the Pharisaical teachings in the churches of the day that had built their own financial empires on the backs of the poor working classes. They were seeking a pure religion that was not based on keeping man appeased but by keeping their Father pleased. Doing the things He asked us to do.
Research
A simple Google search of “American colonists practicing the sabbath” will yield a significant number of articles and books in the public record. Most of the time, a free PDF in Old English that will expound upon their beliefs.
Keeping the Calendar
They kept the feast of God
Kept the Sabbath
Believed in God’s word over mans
What’s not to like about that?
“Look therefore as when man hath run his race, finished [ 7] his course, and passed through the bigger and larger circle of his life, he then returnes unto his eternall rest; so it 〈◊〉 contrived and ordered by divine wisdom, as that he shall •n a speciall manner returne unto and into his rest once •t least within the lesser and smaller circle of every week, •hat so his perfect blessednesse to come might be foretasted every Sabbath day, and so be begun here: that looke as man standing in innocency, had cause thus to returne •rom the pleasant labours of his weekly paradise imploy∣ments, (as shall be shewn in due place) so man fallen, much more from his toilsome and wearisome labours, to this his rest again: And therefore, as because all creatures were made for man, man was therefore made in the last place after them; so man being made for God and his worship, thence it is that the Sabbath (wherein man was to draw most neare unto God) was appointed after the crea∣tion of man, as * 1.1 Peter Martyr observes: For although man is not made for the Sabbath meerly in respect of the out∣ward rest of it, as the Pharisees dreamed, yet hee is made for the Sabbath in respect of God in it, and the holinesse of it, to both which then the soule is to have its weekly re∣volution back againe, as into that Rest, which is the end of all our lives, labour, and in speciall of all our weekly labour and work.”
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A59693.0001.001/1:4.7?rgn=div2;view=fulltext
Shepard, Thomas, 1605-1649.
“The Sabbath he [Cotton] began the Evening before: For which keeping of the Sabbath, from evening to evening, he wrote Arguments before his coming to New England: And I suppose, ‘twas from his Reason and Practice, that the Christians of New England have generally done so too.” 5
https://text.egwwritings.org/read/1582.142#1582.153
Cotton, John
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