The Practice of Piety

Abstract In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, Protestant writers started to publish “guides to godliness” in a conscious effort to match Catholic handbooks of spiritual life. Lewis Bayly’s bestseller The Practise of Pietie gave its name to a style of spirituality that took root in England and Wales, Scotland, New England, and the Netherlands. Its backstory lay in medieval cloisters, its future in evangelicalism. This chapter explores the hallmarks of piety through Bayly’s book. It then looks at three behaviors that injected intensity and urgency into practice: meditating, to take truth from head to heart; stirring up emotion, to experience God’s work in the soul keeping a close watch on time, as a precious gift from God. The practice of piety was time-hungry and created a clash of cultures that could attract the name “puritan.”