Puritan Doctrine In 17th C. Li

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to be true in the seventeenth century, and nowhere were these differences as apparent as they were in the areas of knowledge, nature, and religion.
In regards to knowledge, the seventeenth century view was that knowledge was to gained through studying the Bible, and that the only purpose of gaining further knowledge would be to preserve the integrity of one’s own soul, or to help others in saving theirs. The Puritans’ interests in gaining or preserving knowledge were solely religious, and they also believed that any knowledge that man was to have could be found within the Bible. In The Autobiography (Part Two), Franklin writes that his main reason for setting up a subscription library was to give himself access to more books, and that the knowledge he gained would serve as his own personal “Means of Improvement” (575). According to the Puritans, if a person had a question, he or she needed only to search the scriptures for an answer. For example, when Anne Bradstreet was ...

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