These two books, along with Michael Winship's Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636–1641 (2002), represent and highlight a growing and significant change in our understanding of puritanism in England and New England. Increasingly scholars have moved away from efforts to establish a single puritan orthodoxy or a simple pattern of two orthodoxies in favor of exploring the rich varieties of beliefs and experiences existing along a broad spectrum of English religion. The effort to reform the Church of England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries elicited many different ideas, many of which rose, fell, or were redefined in a dynamic process of adjustment to changing times, different local circumstances, and shifts of the definitions of other ideas that were part of the broad religious mix. David Como, Theodore Bozeman, and Winship have had opportunities to hear and read earlier versions of each other's work, and together they (along with Peter Lake) have reshaped our understanding of early Stuart religion.

The two books under review focus on many of the same issues. The two largely agree that Elizabethan puritan clergy strove to develop and perfect ideas that would offer assurance to the many fervent Christians who came to them seeking to know if they were saved. The result was the development of what Bozeman refers to as a “pietist strain” that emphasized the evidences of sanctification to be found in a regulated, disciplined life. The growing emphasis on examination of works did not offer all the relief it was designed to and stirred some to place new emphasis on the role and effects of free grace in the process of salvation. This reaction led to the development of various strains of what critics called antinomianism. The careful explication of how both “precisianism” and “antinomianism” developed out of the evolving puritan movement is an important feature of each book. But even more important is the way in which both authors highlight the many voices within each of these two currents in the broad stream.

The earliest developments are most closely examined by Bozeman. In introducing his study, the professor of religion at the University of Iowa insists that “puritanism” is a meaningful term to describe what was a “substantive and often obsessive trait of the quest for further reformation: a hunger for purity” (3), and that it had two major characteristics: primitivism and moralism. The first of these was dealt with in Bozeman's earlier book, To Live Ancient Lives: The Primitivist Dimension in Puritanism (1988). The second is the subject of The Precisianist Strain. In this work, Bozeman starts with an analysis of covenantal themes in the thought of early English reformers and the use of covenant images as a means of providing believers with a sense of assurance. Identifying early Elizabethan puritanism as a “a presbyterian movement” (which I think might be too narrow a label), he goes on to examine the importance that reformers such as Thomas Cartwright placed on disciplined behavior. Recognizing how these thinkers drew from many sources, including Roman Catholic views on asceticism, he contends that they managed to blend their commitment to a solifidian creed with an attempt to achieve the exact perfection set forth in scripture.

Bozeman places the development of pietism and the precisianist strain in the context of the shifting social and economic landscape of Elizabethan England, tying the crafting of this pastoral stance to the drive for a reformation of manners, with virtually all of the clergy he focuses on coming from the respectable classes. He follows the lead of scholars who believe that puritan identity was largely shaped by a sense of opposition between themselves and the ungodly and discusses the role of preachers such as George Gifford and John Knewstub in the “reconstruction of identity through purity, conflict, and antithesis” (60). When their efforts to restructure the organization of the church failed, the reformers turned their energies to shape what Bozeman calls “the first great pietist venture in Protestant history” (63), though he points out that the shift represented a complement rather than an alternative to work for structural reform. He points to various factors that may have contributed to this turn, including a resurgence of Catholic spirituality, the growing self-consciousness of the gentry and middling classes, and a possible weariness with doctrinal controversy. At the center of this story is Richard Greenham, whom Bozeman labels “the seminal pietist” (68), but it also includes an examination of the works of Richard Rogers and others who sought to couple discipline with devotion in programs that included “self-inspection, meditation, mortification, watching, fasting” (82).

In the early seventeenth century, this pietist turn focused more and more on self-introspection and the “famous `practical syllogism’ of Reformed divinity, a proof of election by recourse to its biblically promised effect in the lives of believers” (126). Puritan casuists spelled out in ever more precise detail the signs and evidences of salvation. But introspection also made believers more aware of their sins, and the cataloging of their transgressions against God weighed many down. Bozeman suggests that “the ritual of self-scrutiny became, at least occasionally, an investigation of covert mental operations” that he calls puritan depth psychology that highlighted the snares of self-deception and hypocrisy (156). Developed as a means of offering assurance, puritan practical divinity became a means of stimulating self-doubt and, occasionally, despair.

Como's view of this briefly dominant puritan position is similar to Bozeman’s. Both see its development in the pastoral urge to offer assurance, and both recognize that the emphasis on human behavior and introspection threatened to undermine the strong puritan belief that salvation was due solely to God's gift of grace. Como talks about a “dialogue” (31) over these issues, but as he himself demonstrates, there were more than two positions and voices. His study “envisions puritanism not as a homogeneous ideology, but as a fractured landscape, a community in which distinctive, and in some sense, competing, visions of right religion vied for the attention of a laity whose imaginative universe was shaped and sustained through incessant engagement with the Christian scriptures” (31).

If Bozeman is stronger on the development of the precisionist voice, Como offers the greater depth in his analysis of the various strains of so-called antinomian thought that emerged in England, especially in London where various forms of free grace protests circulated through the puritan underground. Como has been able to go further than any previous researcher in uncovering new facts and insights on figures such as John Eachard, Roger Brearley, John Everarde, John Eaton, John Traske, and other, shadowy, figures such as the Cambridge scholar “Greene.” These and others shared a common opposition to what they saw as the legalistic emphases of mainstream puritan thought. Como identifies two distinct types of antinomians in Stuart England—the first, a perfectionist position that argued that believers were free from the Law and from sin, and the second position, described as “imputative,” which held that while believers were sinful, they were rendered pure in God's sight by Christ's sacrifice. Como also finds “at least five different nodes of anti-legal opinion” (45). Though there was, especially in London, a shared sense of identity and mission that generated a sense of community among the various antinomian preachers and their followers, the movement never coalesced into a party and never developed a common creed. Throughout his book, which has its origins in a Princeton University dissertation, Como demonstrates great sensitivity in unraveling the ideas of the various antilegalists and examining the social as well as intellectual contexts that enabled them to spread.

While Como is primarily concerned with a detailed exposition of English antinomian thought, he does offer a brief analysis of New England's “antinomian controversy.” That balance is reversed by Bozeman, who, while also examining various strands of English antinomianism, offers a far more detailed examination of the New England dispute and, in particular, a brilliant examination of the thought of John Cotton. Neither author suggests any direct connection between the English radicals and those who challenged the Massachusetts establishment, but that itself reinforces the point made by both authors that such attacks were understandable reactions to an overemphasis on legalism that could arise within any puritan community. And what seems apparent from both studies is that the opposing legal and free grace positions could coexist in a community for a long time as part of an ongoing, multidirectional conversation about the nature of salvation and the process of assurance. Only when one or the other point of view was challenged by a particularly zealous opponent did the general talk descend into an argument in which each position was exaggerated by its advocates and the broad ranks of believers became pressured to take sides.

The temptation is to focus on two positions, assuming that everyone followed one road or the other and that each camp was comprised of believers who fully subscribed to one position or the other, and, indeed, the dynamic of contention was to drive everyone from any middle positions into one camp or the other. Both authors for the most part resist this temptation, though neither takes much account of the regional variations in puritanism and how local circumstances (aside from those of London) may have shaped the types of conversations and disputes on which they are focusing. Bozeman, in his discussion of the events of 1636–37, does occasionally slip into overemphasizing the uniformity of both the establishment and its critics. Winship's Making Heretics is particularly valuable in exploring the differences among the Boston radicals and, particularly, in suggesting the role played by Henry Vane.

Not even a review of this length can suggest the richness of these studies. Both actively engage with the scholarship in the field. Both seek to explore connections between antinomian thought and that of the Familists and other earlier radical traditions. Both are aware of the extent to which puritan writers were influenced by Catholic thought. The strengths of each book profitably illuminate less prominent aspects of the other. Both are highly recommended to all who are interested in the religious and social history of religion in the early modern era. Some will find reason to quibble with aspects of various arguments, but all who engage these works will be enriched by the arguments presented.