...titled Salem Witch Judge: The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewall by Eve LaPlante describes the common roots of Puritanism and Catholicism:
For a devout Puritan to adopt a traditionally Catholic tool of self-mortification seems surprising given the Puritans' suspicion of Rome and the history of mistrust between American Protestants and Catholics. Yet scholars have found remarkable links between seventeenth century Puritan (Reformation) and Catholic (Counter-Reformation) devotional practices...the scholar Charles Hambrick-Stowe concluded that..."To a large extent the Puritan devotional writing that blossomed in the early seventeenth century was modeled on earlier Roman Catholic devotional literature."I thought so. I liked those old Puritans too much. Certainly I can empathize with them. We Catholics come by our "Catholic guilt" honestly, given the famous Jewish guilt, so it's not too surprising Puritan guilt comes by it honestly too, getting it from Catholicism!
In the seventeenth century, strikingly, both Puritans and Catholics looked back to the fourth-century writings of Augustine of Hippo. "The tradition was passed to all parties in the seventeenth century through the writings of medieval Catholic mystics, which...were increasingly available in England. Saint Teresa of Avila...acknowledged her debt to Augustine in a passage that a Puritan could easily have penned: 'Scarcely had I begun to read the Confessions of Saint Augustine than I seemed to have discovered myself [and my] frivolous and dissipated life.." Just as Saint Teresa can seem Puritan, Cotton Mather can seem Catholic. He periodically fasted and denied himself sleep, like medieval mystics.
Judge Sewall, by the way, seems a remarkable man. He was the only judge to come forward and repent of the verdict he gave in the infamous trials. And good Lord repent he did, as the author amply demonstrates.
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