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That's what they all wanted. Because of the Restoration of the monarchy and the ejections of Puritan ministers in 1662, it never happened. But they did extraordinarily well considering how much was stacked against them from the start.

Why did some Puritans leave England to go to continental Europe or the New World, while others stayed?

Those who left England mostly did so under a cloud. James I, a Presbyterian, came down from Scotland to be king of England in 1603. He had said of the nonconforming Puritans—the Puritans who wouldn't use the bits of the Prayer Book that they didn't like—that they would have to conform or he would "harry them out of the land, or else do worse." Puritans knew that they were back in a similar situation to Christians in the Roman Empire in the second century A.D. They were practicing religion in a way that involved technical lawbreaking. There was no police force, of course, but every local magistrate had his own posse of soldiers whom he would send out to arrest the nonconforming clergymen and would then report them to the bishop, who was the disciplinarian for each diocese.

Some Puritans decided they could conform under protest and sufferance, simply stressing that they didn't like these rituals. They didn't believe they sinned in using them. But other Puritans did.

I think it's fair to say that the people who left England were the clergy and laity who felt most strongly about the inadequacies of religion in England. The Prayer Book offended them because these ceremonies were still in there. The clergy, knowing that James I thought that conformity to Prayer Book order was very important, felt themselves to be under threat from the authorities if they stepped out of line. So they had a new idea: If they started a colony in the New World, New England would be out of reach of the restrictive powers that were crippling them in old England, and so they could realize their ideal of the godly community and be a beacon for the world. England's vocation under God was stirring their minds, but they had given up hope of achieving it at home.

Those who stayed in England believed that patient suffering under pressure was part of the Christian vocation, and they were prepared to do that. The majority of these Puritan clergy became lecturers—people hired by a parish to preach sermons once a week (usually on Thursday) to make up for the fact that the rector who took services in church on Sundays wasn't a preaching man. The Puritans believed that the Word is the prime means of grace, so it was important to have lecturers where no good preaching was going on.

What key ideas characterized the Puritan view of the Christian life?

Everybody is a sinner, and the Puritans spent a lot of time and energy establishing that fact. God in his grace has sent his Son to save us through his death, which is the basis of our justification. Now he gives a covenant promise to those who have faith. Faith is committing yourself to the God of the promises, and specifically to Jesus Christ the living Lord. You become his penitent, obedient disciple.

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