Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Church Quarterly Review, Vol. 140: April-June, 1945
Here the issue becomes quite clear. The Puritan Salt marsh was reopening the gulf between reason and faith which Hales and the Platonists, following an ancient tradition within Christianity, had tried to bridge. Human reason and secular learning thus became positive obstacles to spiritual salvation. By removing them something infinitely higher could be gained: direct communion with God. Men of Hales' type would never have claimed to be specially inspired, over and above the common measure granted to all men as spiritual beings. The peculiar atmosphere of Puritan religious life, on the other hand, was favourable to the growth of a certain kind of prophetic religion. At their conversion and often on subsequent occa sions, the Puritan Saints experienced extraordinary effusions of the spirit, and these breathings of God were, as Saltmarsh put it, like fire in their bones, forcing them to proclaim their message to all the world. This direct relationship provides the clue to the paradox, that men could be on intimate terms with a God whom they conceived as a most majestic and terrifying being.
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