The English Concentration 
in the Liberal Studies Degree 

A colonial Puritan minister, Thomas Shepard, nicely summarized the paradox of the Puritan religion when he noted that “The greatest part of Christian grace lies in mourning the want of it.”  Shepard suggests, in this passage, that good Christians should spend their days, indeed their entire lives, exploring and proclaiming their own depravity and sinfulness, their “want” of Christian grace.  Paradoxically, only this kind of a life could lead, ultimately, to the possibile attainment of God’s grace and thus entrance into heaven.  For the Puritans, such a formula posed a never-ending, internal conflict: good Christians who hope for grace can never believe that they are worthy of such grace.  Indeed, Puritans who want to be moral and upright must constantly keep in mind the fact that they are sinful and wicked and not deserving of God’s attention, much less admittance to heaven.

The paradox of Shepard’s passage is one that the early Puritans not only firmly believed but also lived day in and day out.  As a central tenet of their existence, this paradox led Puritans to experience a constant internal struggle between two aspects of the Puritan self:  the sinful, wicked side and the redeemed, saved side.  Significantly, the struggle became a common motif in many Puritan works, including Anne Bradstreet’s “The Flesh and the Spirit.”  In this poem, Bradstreet describes not only the dual self that was the result of Puritan theology but also the psychological significance of the Puritan paradox.  “The Flesh and the Spirit” demonstrates that the road to attainment of grace, and thus to salvation, lies not in resolving the conflict between the two aspects of the Puritan self but rather in maintaining, until death, the tension between the sinful self and the redeemed self.

The opening lines of “The Flesh and the Spirit” set up the psychological dimensions of the poem, suggesting that the dialogue that follows exists in the narrator’s mind.  The narrator notes:

In secret place where once I stood
Close by by the banks of Lacrim flood,
I heard two sisters reason on
Things that are past and things to come . . . . (302)

The dialogue begins with Flesh chastizing Spirit for her concern with spiritual matters and suggesting that she turn to earthly matters and thus put an end to their struggle.  Flesh asks of Spirit: 

what liv’st thou on,
Nothing but meditation?
Doth contemplation feed thee so
Regardlessly to let earth go?
Can speculation satisfy
Notion without reality? (302)

Yet such a resolution of conflict could only lead to damnation, and the Spirit replies that she will maintain the conflict until death.  Spirit tells Flesh:

I have vowed (and so will do)
Thee as a foe still to pursue,
And combat with thee will and must,
Until I see the laid in th’ dust. (303)

Sisters we are, yea, twins we be,
Yet deadly feud ’twixt thee and me;
For from one father are we not,
Thou by old Adam was begot.  (303)

In maintaining the conflict between the Flesh and the Spirit, the narrator continually reminds herself of her depravity and thus questions her spiritual worthiness;  indeed, as the Spirit suggests, she has occasionally given in to the demands of the Flesh with disastrous consequences.  The Spirit notes in her dialogue with Flesh:

How oft thy slave, hast thou me made,
When I believed what thou hast said,
And never had more cause of woe
Than when I did what thou bad’st do. (303)

While the conclusion of “The Flesh and the Spirit” describes the heavenly city, New Jerusalem, that the good Puritan will attain, the poem itself ends in a hopeful, not a certain, stance, insisting on the preeminence of the struggle while in this life.  The narrator notes:  “The city where I hope to dwell, / There’s none on earth can parallel . . .” (304).  In the detailed description of this heavenly city that follows, the Spirit borrows heavily from the bible, the center piece of the Puritan religion, and asserts that only the redeemed self, not the wicked self, will abide there:  “This city pure is not for thee, / For things unclean there shall not be” (305).  Thus, only in death can the sisters separate and the struggle come to an end;  indeed, the last two lines of the poem reassert the struggle that exists in this life through its less than certain tone:  “If I of heaven may have my fill, / Take thou the world and all that will” (305).  The Spirit does not conclude here that she will ascend into heaven, but only that she hopes that salvation might be hers;  such an awareness of the lack of certain grace, of course, must be maintained in this life if the narrator is to remain a dutiful Puritan.

Like many Puritan texts, Bradstreet’s “The Flesh and the Spirit” describes the internal, psychological struggle that existed because of the Puritan belief in total depravity.  The conflict between the sinful self and the redeemed self originated from the condition that, according to Puritans, humans, who are stricken with original sin because of Adam’s fall, must always keep an awareness of their depraved status in the forefront of their thoughts.  Such a belief led to a serious internal, psychological struggle that would only come to an end in death.  While the Puritans could never be assured of receiving God’s grace, they believed that if they maintained the struggle between their dual self in this life, when they died, they might be chosen to receive grace and thus attain salvation.
 

Bradstreet, Anne.  “The Flesh and the Spirit.”  The Heath Anthology of American Literature.  Ed. Paul Lauter, et al. 2nd ed. Vol. 1.  Lexington:  Heath, 1994.  302-305.