The Precisianist Strain: Disciplinary Religion and Antinomian Backlash in Puritanism to 1638

In an examination of transatlantic Puritanism from 1570 to 1638, Theodore Dwight Bozeman analyzes the quest for purity through sanctification. The word “Puritan,” he says, accurately depicts a major and often obsessive trait of the English late Reformation: a hunger for discipline. The Precisianist Strain clarifies what Puritanism in its disciplinary mode meant for an early modern society struggling with problems of change, order, and identity.

Focusing on ascetic teachings and rites, which ...