Puritans Concerning the Family

With nearly 60 percent of marriages among professed believers ending in divorce today, the Puritan teaching on marriage serves as a biblical remedy to our "quickie-divorce" culture.

Erroll Hulse said, "The Puritan ethic of marriage was not to look for a partner whom you do love passionately at this moment, but rather for one you can love steadily as your best friend for life, and then proceed with God's help to do just that."

Thomas Manton declared that, "marriages are made in heaven before they are made on earth" and Daniel Rogers, son of [Puritan preacher] John Rogers of Dedham commented on what today we call 'falling in love' like this: "Marriage love is often a secret work of God, pitching the heart of one party upon another for no known cause; and therefore when this strong lodestone attracts each to the other, no further questions need to be made but such a man and such a woman's match were made in heaven, and God has brought them together.'"

The Puritans held forth a clearly biblical foundation for the duties of husbands and wives based upon Genesis 2 and Ephesians 5. They saw the first duty of husbands and wives as to love each other entirely in accord with Ephesians 5:25,28 and 33. Husbands and wives also were to be helpers of each other's salvation.

Hulse also stated, "They were to stir up each other to faith, love and obedience, and good works; to warn and help each other against sin and all temptations; to join in God's worship in the family and in private; to prepare each other for the approach of death and comfort each other in the hope of eternal life."

For the husband and father, the Puritans asserted the biblical doctrine of headship. That is, the husband and father is the accountable head for what takes place in the family and is the provider for and protector of his wife and children. The husband is responsible for the spiritual development and biblical instruction of the wife and children.

Fathers sought to equip their sons and daughters with a thorough knowledge of Scripture beginning at an early age.

"The headship is not a ticket to privilege but a charge to responsibility," Hulse said. "It is not tyranny, but leadership based on love."

To the Puritans, concern for family extended to live-in servants and the elderly, who were cared for in the home until death and not relegated to retirement homes, he said.

The Puritans esteemed the family as the basic unit of society and aimed that it be a little church in itself with the husband as its pastor and his wife as assistant. Puritan pastors believed fervently that the family was the foundational unit of a godly society.

The Puritan ethic was to train up children in the way they should go, to care for their bodies and souls together, and to educate them for sober, godly, socially useful adult living. The Puritan way of home life was based on maintaining order, courtesy and family worship.