29 May 2018

29 May, A Chesterton Calendar

MAY 29th

THE RESTORATION

It is a commonplace that the Restoration Movement can only be understood when considered as a reaction against Puritanism. But it is insufficiently realized that the tyranny which half frustrated all the good work of Puritanism was of a very peculiar kind. It was not the fire of Puritanism, the exultation in sobriety, the frenzy of restraint, which passed away: that still burns in the heart of England, only to be quenched by the final overwhelming sea. But it is seldom remembered that the Puritans were in their day emphatically intellectual bullies, that they relied swaggeringly on the logical necessity of Calvinism, that they bound omnipotence itself in the chains of syllogism. The Puritans fell, through the damning fact that they had a complete theory of life, through the eternal paradox that a satisfactory explanation can never satisfy. ‘Twelve Types.’

Chesterton, G. K.. The G. K. Chesterton Collection [50 Books] (Kindle Locations 44245-44253). Catholic Way Publishing. Kindle Edition.

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