From Puritan Reasonableness to Two Tendencies of Biblicist Enlightenment, 1670–1730

Abstract Beginning with the Test Acts of the 1670s through the aftermath of the Salters’ Hall gathering in February 1718/19, a new, more intensive, individualism became problematic in the transition from puritan reasonableness to evangelical enlightenment. Biblicism as taught in logic textbooks, pneumatology, and educational advice manuals divided between one tract, which narrowed as it doubled down on an individual reader who receives help from the Holy Spirit, while the other tract, also emphasizing the help of the Holy Spirit, broadened as it encouraged social and scholarly consensus. Using transatlantic friendships between Boston/Cambridge in America and London/Stoke Newington in England, the former track is best seen in the publications of Isaac Watts and the latter in Cotton Mather. Daniel Defoe, who was entangled in this biblicist group of friends, wrote Robinson Crusoe (1719), in part, as a commentary on this divide.