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A new mode of autobiographical narrative was rapidly codified in England and its Atlantic colonies in the 1650s, with a burst of publications. A strict emphasis on methodologies of assent unified religious Independents. Local contingencies and universalizing tendencies are examined in the three anthologies of spiritual experiences that were published in print in London in 1653. These publications grew out of churches gathered in London, Dublin, and Natick, a praying Indian village in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The first two collections, associated with Vavasor Powell, Henry Walker, and John Rogers, have served as touchstones of the form. The third, Tears of Repentance, contains the first, albeit heavily mediated, transcription of first-person Amerindian conversion testimony from John Eliot’s mission, and has therefore figured as an originary document in a different tradition. This chapter brings to the foreground the ideological aspirations that, when wedded to institutional formations, drove this inward-looking process.

This final chapter is concerned with biography and autobiography. The texts discussed — by Lucy Cary, Frances Cook, Mary Rich, Alice Thornton, Ann Fanshawe, and the women of John Rogers's Dublin congregation — express a range of religious and political perspectives. They demonstrate the diversity of New English attitudes, and offer divergent views from those of male colonial administrators. Their adoption of a conversion paradigm for their life‐writing unites these texts. Irish experience is fitted to the teleology of conversion as a signifier of catholicism. The discussion argues that these texts are also political. Deeply concerned with worldly reputation, the chapter shows how the projection of female exemplarity often functions to camouflage the more worldly claims these writers made.

After Charles I's execution, England became officially a ‘Commonwealth.’ But discussion continued: what did a ‘commonwealth’ mean? England's new order and Cromwell (even as Lord Protector) were described by Milton and others with reference to Exodus and Judges. As more radical political alternatives were proposed, Diggers, republicans, and Fifth Monarchists all looked to the Hebrew Bible and Jewish precedent. Gerrard Winstanley's proposal for getting rid of property was grounded in his reading of the Hebrew Bible and the Hebrew prophets. The republican James Harrington looked to the biblical Jews and the commonwealth established by Moses in the wilderness. Fifth Monarchists like John Rogers wanted to reform England's judicial system by reinstituting Mosaic law. Winstanley and Rogers looked to Moses, Amos, and Isaiah, emphasizing that justice must not ‘respect persons.’ Reforms would make England the restored Israel Isaiah described.

Consciously modeling his preaching on that of John Rogers of Dedham, Hooker developed a dramatic style that drew large audiences and quickly made him a celebrity. “Civil” believers, confident that their faithful attendance at the worship services of their parish church would earn them God’s favor, found the ground cut out from under their false security. Hooker deliberately polarized his hearers; if they did not place God at the center of their lives by following the exact ways of the godly, they were no better than thieves and prostitutes. His chief rhetorical weapon was terror; God would punish sinners with hellfire and damnation in the next life as well as plague and Roman Catholic invasion in this one.

Faithful to the theological tradition he had imbibed at Emmanuel College, Hooker did not describe “conversion” as a once-in-a-lifetime opening of the heart to Jesus. Always suspicious of extraordinarily divine communication, he imagined conversion as the lifelong acquisition of a habitual inclination to obey God’s commandments. William Perkins’s careful theological descriptions provided the basic framework, but Hooker added a distinctive emphasis, almost certainly gained from John Rogers, on “saving preparation.” Hooker’s personal experience of God’s wrath, eerily similar to that of Martin Luther, reinforced his tendency to “save with fear” and made him skeptical of those who experienced God primarily as comforting and nurturing.

This chapter discusses Franklin’s family history, especially the family’s background in England. Franklin’s grandparents were trying to develop their family in England’s Midlands during the era of the civil wars, and several major battles took place in their midst. Family stories about those times came down to Benjamin Franklin through his father and his favorite uncle, also named Benjamin. These were stories Franklin reflected upon all his life, including in his autobiography written when he was a mature man. The family always embraced the ideals of liberty of conscience in matters of faith, and they admired leaders (such as John Rogers and Samuel Wells) who challenged government authority. Franklin would go on to use the story of John Rogers as an exemplary model of martyrdom for freedom of conscience when he published the New England Primer.