As S. Bryn Roberts importantly reminds us in his account of seventeenthcentury Puritanism, most Puritans were primarily concerned with godliness. And godliness, for them, had a great deal to do with happiness. For Puritans, joy came from enjoying God, and enjoying God flowed from, and enabled, both gratitude and obedience. As Ralph Venning, the subject of Roberts’s study, characteristically wrote: “He doth not enjoy much of God, who walkes not much with God; nor doth, nor can he walke much with God, who doth not enjoy much of God” (96). Citing passages such as these, Roberts turns us to the Puritan pursuit of happiness. Such happiness came inflected by classical and medieval thought, and Roberts constantly invokes these longer traditions. Puritans liked the Stoics, especially Seneca. But the stoicism of Puritanism was not the absence of emotion; rather it was (ideally) the unfailing presence of a confident, striving, contented joy—confident because it rested in the assurance of grace and one’s adoption into God’s family; striving because it came through obedience, allowing believers to experience “a struggle against sin” as “a source of happiness” since “it signifies regeneration” (152); and contented because it looked past temporal ups and downs toward an eternal comfort, considering all the rest (including afflictions) a preparation for this lasting joy. As a result, Puritans could speak about happiness in ways that might combine it with earthly loss, distinguishing “true” joy from counterparts that chased after fleeting pleasures. In laying out this scheme (though not in precisely this way), Roberts argues that Puritans were not necessarily prone to undue fear and anxiety, nor given to great experiments of asceticism and self-loathing. In fact, not only did Venning take self-love to be a help on the way to holiness—since a true love of self would paradoxically entail a primary love of God—he also criticized those who were overly ascetic: the suppression of enjoyment is “will-worship, and meer Epicurisme, where pain is pleasant; for as long as people impose it on themselves, they do not deny their own will, but fulfill it, and while they beat down the body, they do but puffe up the flesh” (111). Furthermore, Roberts does a good job emphasizing the communal elements of this Puritan happiness: conversion was a shared experience and grace was meant to build others up. In making the case for this Puritan happiness, Roberts helps demonstrate what made the movement so attractive to so many. Many who joined the “godly” did so because they were drawn to it, nurtured by it, found comfort and community in it. The terror of Puritanism should not be 856 CHURCH HISTORY

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清教徒主义和对幸福的追求：拉尔夫·文宁的事工和神学，1621-1674年。作者：S。Bryn Roberts。伍德布里奇（Woodbridge）：博伊德尔出版社（Boydell Press），2015年。xvii+ 214页，每本115.00美元。

正如布赖恩·罗伯茨（S. Bryn Roberts）在他对十七世纪清教运动的论述中重要地提醒我们的那样，大多数清教徒主要关注敬虔。对他们而言，敬虔与幸福有很大关系。对于清教徒来说，快乐来自享受上帝，而享受上帝则来自感恩和顺服，并从中获得了使能。正如罗伯茨的研究主题拉尔夫·文宁（Ralph Venning）所写的那样：“他没有享受太多的上帝，与上帝同行的人并不多。他也不能与上帝同行，他不享受上帝的很多”（96）。罗伯茨引用这些段落，使我们转向清教徒对幸福的追求。这种幸福感受到古典和中世纪思想的影响，罗伯茨不断地引用这些较长的传统。清教徒喜欢斯多葛派，尤其是塞内卡。但是，清教徒的坚忍不拔并不是没有情感。而是（理想情况下）自信，奋斗，知足的快乐的不间断的存在-自信，因为它在于恩典的保证和被人收养在上帝的家庭中；之所以努力，是因为它是通过顺服而来的，它使信徒能够体验“与罪恶作斗争”作为“幸福的源泉”，因为“它象征着新生”（152）；之所以满足，是因为它将过去的时光起伏看向了永恒的安慰，并考虑了其余的一切（包括苦难），为这种持久的喜悦做准备。结果，清教徒可以通过将幸福与尘世损失结合起来的方式谈论幸福，从而将“真正的”喜悦与追求短暂幸福的同伴区分开。罗伯茨（Roberts）提出这个方案时（虽然不是完全以这种方式），但认为清教徒不一定容易产生不适当的恐惧和焦虑，也没有进行禁欲和自我厌恶的伟大实验。实际上，温宁不仅将自爱作为对圣洁的一种帮助-因为对自我的真正爱会自相矛盾地需要对上帝的初恋-他还批评了那些过分禁欲的人：抑制享乐是“敬畏，而享乐主义，痛苦令人愉悦；只要人们把它强加给自己，他们就不会否定自己的意愿，而是会实现它，当他们打败身体时，他们的确会抬高肉体”（111）。此外，罗伯茨出色地强调了清教徒幸福的共同元素：conversion依是一种共同的经验，恩典是为了建立他人。罗伯茨（Roberts）为这种清教徒的幸福辩护，证明了是什么使这一运动吸引了如此众多的人们。许多加入“上帝”的人之所以这样做，是因为他们受到了它的熏陶，并受到它的熏陶，在其中找到了安慰和社区。清教徒的恐怖不应是856教会历史