Analyzing The Puritan Dilemma

Edmund S. Morgan's book, "The Puritan Dilemma", is an account of the events encountered by John Winthrop's mission of creating a city on a hill. In the book John Winthrop leads and commands his followers while trying to find a solution to the puritan dilemma. 

John Winthrop's mission of creating a city on a hill entails reforming and purifying the Church of England of all its flaws, instead of completely separating and starting a new church from scratch as the separatists prefer, so as to set an example for others to follow. "They should be purified of their unregenerate members, their heretical clergymen, their unwarranted ceremonies, their bishops, and archbishops, but they were nevertheless churches and must be embraced as churches"(Morgan, page 31). Winthrop's purified church will set an example of how the Church of England should be and prove to the separatists that the Church of England can be reformed and purified (Dr. Feske, Aug. 30 2005), which makes Winthrop and his followers puritans, so they travel to the New World to embark on their mission of a city on a hill.

"Puritanism required that man refrain from sin, but told him he would sin anyhow. Puritanism required that he reform the world in the image of God's holy kingdom but taught him that the evil of the world was incurable and inevitable. Puritanism required that he work to the best of his ability at whatever task was set before him and partake of the good things that god had filled the world with but told him he must enjoy his work and his pleasures only, as it were, absent-mindedly, with attention fixed on God."(Edmund S. Morgan, page 8)

"These Paradoxical, not to say contradictory, requirements affected different people in different ways. Some lived in agony of uncertainty, wondering each day whether God had singled them out for eternal glory or eternal torment."(Morgan, page 11)  How is a man supposed to be in the world but not of the world (Dr. Feske, Aug. 30 2005); that is the question Winthrop must ask himself in order to cope with and solve the puritan dilemma. That is the question that the puritans must base their everyday lives around.