Anne Bradstreet Is a Good Tonic for a Virus-Haunted Age

For many Reformed evangelicals, the Puritans are like old friends. Pastor-writers like John Bunyan, Matthew Henry, and John Owen stare down from our bookshelves. Jeremiah Burroughs and John Flavel are quoted in sermons and on social media.

Yet we hear far less about one important Puritan writer: Anne Bradstreet. We need Bradstreet because her works have many edifying things to teach us about two things in particular: God’s sovereignty and his discipline.

Who Was Anne Bradstreet?

Anne Dudley was born in 1612 in Northampton, England. Her parents provided an excellent education in history, literature, and languages, and she married Simon Bradstreet at age 16. In 1630, they sailed to the colonies as part of John Winthrop’s fleet. Bradstreet thereafter lived in Massachusetts, giving birth to eight children. She died in 1672.

Despite frenetic domestic responsibilities, Bradstreet found time to write poetry and short articles. In 1650, her book of poetry, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, was published in England. Some of her best-known poems are elegies for her grandchildren and daughter-in-law.

Bradstreet has likely sat neglected due to genre. Currently popular Puritan writers all wrote prose, except in the case of hymn-writers. Bradstreet’s oeuvre consists mainly of poetry. Many avoid poetry because they struggle to penetrate its often opaque language. Readers who give Bradstreet’s poems a chance, though, will find them approachable. Her style is simple and uses everyday metaphors.

Moreover, the most popular Puritan writers produced theology; Bradstreet’s work, by contrast, deals with wide-ranging themes. She explores faith in her poetry, yet also writes about family relationships and history. Her doctrinal prowess rings clear in “Meditations Divine and Moral” and in an autobiographical letter, both written to her children.

Some avoid Bradstreet because modern critics wrongly tout her as a proto-feminist. Nevertheless, there is much tasty meat in Bradstreet’s works for today’s reader, particularly on two topics.

Affirming God’s Sovereignty

Bradstreet’s most affecting poems are elegies penned for her grandchildren and a daughter-in-law, Mercy. As any bereaved parent or grandparent knows, the loss of a child is devastating. In the elegy for her 3-year-old namesake Anne, she wrote with “troubled heart” and “trembling hand,” asking, “Was ever stable joy yet found below?” An elegy for newborn Simon depicted the “bitter crosses” of losing three grandchildren in four years. When Mercy also died, Bradstreet lamented, “And live I still to see relations gone, / And yet survive to sound this wailing tone.”

Yet amid grief, Bradstreet affirmed God’s sovereignty over her family. In an elegy for toddler Elizabeth, she concluded that the death is “by His hand alone that guides nature and fate.” Simon’s elegy stated that he and his two sisters were:

Cropt by the Almighty’s hand; yet is He good.

With dreadful awe before Him let’s be mute,

Such was His will, but why, let’s not dispute

. . . He will return and make up all our losses.

In the elegy for daughter-in-law Mercy, Bradstreet urged her son to find comfort in God’s control over the tragedy:

Cheer up, dear son, thy fainting bleeding heart,

In Him alone that caused all this smart;

What though thy strokes full sad and grievous be,

He knows it is the best for thee and me.

Her acceptance of God’s sovereignty over family deaths is instructive for our modern church. Some who intellectually profess sovereignty react to death by calling it a “mistake.” Bradstreet’s poems encourage us not to abandon or twist God’s truth when tragic times come. God’s sovereignty over man stems not only from his nature but also from the fact that he created us. Bradstreet recognized that God’s position as creator means he alone owns everything. She expressed this through lending language.

In Elizabeth’s elegy, she wrote, “Farewell fair flower that for a space was lent, / Then ta’en away unto eternity.” And in the elegy for Anne, she remarked, “I knew she was but as a withering flower . . . More fool then I to look on that was lent / As if mine own, when thus impermanent.” It wasn’t only children whom God lent to Bradstreet, for she also recognized God’s ownership over her possessions. On July 10, 1666, the Bradstreet home burned. They lost everything. Afterward, she wrote:

I blest His name that gave and took,

That laid my goods now in the dust;

Yea, so it was, and so ‘twas just.

It was His own; it was not mine

Far be it that I should repine.

He might of all justly bereft,

But yet sufficient for us left.

God’s prerogative to take everything we love is a difficult truth. Bradstreet’s words need not tempt us to despair, though. She also stressed God’s loving purpose in our hardships—his fatherly discipline.

Accepting God’s Discipline

Bradstreet believed the tragedies of her life were not random. God’s sovereign hand worked throughout, disciplining and sanctifying her. In “Meditations Divine and Moral,” she taught wisdom via short proverbial statements:

Iron till it be thoroughly heated is incapable to be wrought: so God sees good to cast some men into the furnace of affliction, and then beats them on His anvil into what frame He pleases.

There’s one main difference between the meditations and the letter to her children. In the letter, Bradstreet connected God’s stern discipline to his deep love for her. She admitted, “I have been with God like an untoward child.” Yet she also wrote:

Among all my experiences of God’s gracious dealings with me I have constantly observed this, that he hath never suffered me long to sit loose from him, but by one affliction or other hath made me look home . . . and these times (through: his great mercy) have been the times of my greatest getting and advantage, yea I have found them the times when the Lord hath manifested the most love to me.

Bradstreet’s letter not only explains her own faith. It also teaches her children to “suffer well.”

In these difficult, virus-haunted times, it’s easy to feel fearful. It’s easy to forget God’s truth and be tempted to sin or despair. Bradstreet’s works remind us that God is in control of our world, enacting his plan for our ultimate good.