It has been the peculiar lot of Puritanism that, while most men will agree that its influence—good or evil—upon Anglo-Saxon culture and history has been profound, yet great disagreement exists as to just what Puritanism was, how it began, and what aspects of traditional Anglo-Saxon thought and life are traceable to Puritanism. The most common view is that Puritanism was imported into England from Calvinistic Geneva by the returning Marian exiles. This view must then go on to account for the many non-Calvinistic elements in the Puritanism of the Civil War era. Another school of thought has sought to identify Puritanism with the beginnings of democratic political, social and economic ideals during the Tudor-Stuart era. Almost diametrically opposed to this is yet another school of thought which finds in Puritanism an ultra-rightist authoritarianism in theology and politics, and the seed-bed of an unbridled and Pharisaical capitalism. Still others see in Puritanism the long hard travail which gave birth to the ideal of complete freedom for the individual in all phases of life. Of necessity, each of these interpretations, and others not here mentioned, has sought to ground itself in the history of the English Reformation, and so we have many quite different accounts of the origins and history of Puritanism.
The colorful and powerful figure of Martin Luther dominates all study of the early years of the Reformation. Inevitably the first pages of the history of the Reformation in any region will begin with an effort by the author to trace the manner in which Luther's influence reached that area. In the study of the English Reformation one of the common ways of showing Luther's influence is to point to the work of the Bible translator William Tyndale. Numerous books on the English Reformation, on the history of the English Bible, and on Tyndale himself, have made of him a follower and an interpreter of Luther who played a major role in introducing the thought of the great reformer into England. A careful study of Tyndale's works, however, will show that his debt to Luther, and the “Lutheranism” of his views, has been over-stated. Tyndale, like many early sixteenth century religious reformers, made much use of Luther's name, fame, and works but without becoming a follower of those distinctive ideas of the German reformer which set him off from the other advocates of reform at the time. Tyndale's greatest debt was first to Christian humanism and then to the German-Swiss reformers of Zurich and Basel.
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