Devotees of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America will be more aware than most of the debt the United States owes the Puritans. While his account is impressionistic rather than historical, it captures the essential truth that Puritan notions concerning political participation, limited government, and the importance of natural and divine law shaped the nation in a variety of ways.
Yet Puritan views of government and the qualifications for godly rulers were largely of a piece with the rest of Christian political theology: All authority, rightly understood, was derived from God, and all rulers, from the king to the town selectmen, were merely His agents, responsible for the welfare of those they governed. Divine law as shown in both nature and revelation was seen as the animating force for positive law, as it not only marked the standards to which positive law ought to accord but also set limits to those things over which the state may legitimately exert its authority. Divine law was the principal source of human liberty, even as it served as the boundary keeper, preventing liberty from devolving into license.
