SOURCE: Pope, Alan H. “Petrus Ramus and Michael Wigglesworth: The Logic of Poetic Structure.” In Puritan Poets and Poetics: Seventeenth-Century American Poetry in Theory and Practice, edited by Peter White, pp. 210-26. University Park, Penn.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1985.

[In this essay, Pope introduces the idea of applying the logic of Petrus Ramus to Wigglesworth's poetry, a method of explication that would be accepted and adopted by Wigglesworth's later critics as well.]

No other Puritan poet has suffered more negative criticism and disrespect than Michael Wigglesworth, author of America's first best-seller, The Day of Doom. To many, Wigglesworth, as a caricature of the grim, high-hatted Puritan, sacrificed the fine art of poetry to the sterile dogmatics of religion. Typically, Wigglesworth is portrayed as a humorless man writing galloping fourteneers and doggerel ballads. This negative view of the critics has developed partly from their failure to appreciate, or even understand, the dialectical nature of Wigglesworth's poetry. Both The Day of Doom and Meat Out of the Eater contain structural patterns that parallel the logical system presented in the Dialectic of Petrus Ramus.

While a student and tutor at Harvard, Wigglesworth studied Ramus' Dialectic, and his Diary specifically records his study of Ramus and his use of logic, especially syllogistic reasoning, to resolve questions of religion. In The Day of Doom, Wigglesworth uses syllogisms to organize the individual stanzas and the entire debate between the sinners and Christ. Meat Out of the Eater, a distinctly Ramean poem, contains logical patterns taken from “Invention,” the first part of Ramus' Dialectic.

The earliest criticism of Wigglesworth's poetry is the most sympathetic. The fifth edition of The Day of Doom, printed in 1701, four years before Wigglesworth's death, includes the poem “On the following Work, And It's Author,” written by Jonathan Mitchell. The opening lines of the poem offer an appreciation for the craftsmanship of the verse that later critics do not share: “A verse may find him who a sermon flies, / Saith Herbert well. Great truths to dress in Meter / Becomes a Preacher, who men's Souls doth prize, / That truth in Sugar roll'd may taste the sweeter.”¹ In July, 1705, Cotton Mather published “A Faithful Man,” which includes the funeral oration he gave for Wigglesworth, a brief biography, and excerpts from his papers. Mather makes this comment on the poetry: “And that yet he might more Faithfully set himself to do Good, when he could not Preach he Wrote several Composures, wherein he proposed the edification of such Readers as are for Plain Truths, dressed up in a Plain Meeter.”² Both Mitchell and Mather appreciate the synthesis of poetry and religion. Wigglesworth's contemporaries viewed the preacher's truths and the poet's art as one, but later critics found the poetry merely an inartistic medium for preaching.

By 1863, in John Ward Dean's Sketch of the Life of Rev. Michael Wigglesworth, the religion and poetry are no longer perceived as artistically compatible. The poetry becomes a clumsy vehicle for the teaching of an outdated doctrine: “The roughness of his verses was surely not owing to carelessness or indolence, for neither of these were characteristic of the man. The true explanation may be that he sacrificed his poetical taste to this theology, and that for the sake of inculcating sound doctrine he was willing to write in halting numbers.”³

Moses Coit Tyler's History praises Wigglesworth's poetic attempts in an unpoetic time, but finds little real art in his poetry: “His verse is quite lacking in art; its ordinary form being a crude, swinging ballad-measure, with a sort of cheap melody, a shrill reverberating clatter, that would instantly catch and please the popular ear, at that time deaf to daintier and more subtile effects in poetry.” Tyler does not believe, however, that the poetry is completely without merit, for he finds “an irresistible sincerity, a reality, a vividness, reminding one of similar qualities in the prose of John Bunyan.” In his discussion of The Day of Doom, Tyler notes the “truly precocious logical acumen” of the sinners in their debate with Christ, but he does not elaborate upon this comment.⁴

In a brief, general article published in 1928, F. O. Matthiessen comments on Wigglesworth's “strange imagination,” and he also finds little artistic skill in the poetry. Matthiessen notes the logical quality of The Day of Doom: “But the tone of the whole is not sulphurous, but logical; the work is full of the homespun logic of a methodical mind.”⁵ He, too, fails to elaborate upon the nature or structure of this “homespun” logic.

The only book-length study of Wigglesworth's life and poetry is Richard Crowder's excellent, analytical biography, No Featherbed to Heaven. This thorough and readable work places Wigglesworth's life and writings in the context of Puritan ideas. Crowder notes Wigglesworth's study of Ramean logic, but he does not examine the use of the logic in the poetry. Instead, he finds the organization of Meat Out of the Eater to be musical: “To borrow a phrase from music, the book is structured like a theme and variations.”⁶ More recently in “The Day of Doom as Chronomorph,” Crowder explores the use of time in the poem and analyzes the juxtaposition of past and present verb tenses to create dramatic effects.⁷

In 1978 Robert Daly published the first book-length study of American Puritan poetry, God's Altar. Revising some of the common generalizations about Puritan poetry, Daly's examination of the individual poets and poems is insightful. Daly assesses The Day of Doom as a failure and tells why: “One reason for its failure, and one difference between Wigglesworth and most other Puritan poets, is Wigglesworth's dismissal of the natural world, his inability to perceive, and hence to use, metaphor.” But to describe the poem as a failure because it lacks metaphor is a narrow approach to The Day of Doom. If it does not rely on imagery from the sensible world, which Daly believes a criterium for a good poem, the reason is that the central focus of the poem is a careful and logical development of the religious debate between the sinners and Christ. Metaphor is replaced by logical comparisons and syllogistic debate.

Daly discusses the general influence of Petrus Ramus on Puritan aesthetics. Relying on Walter Ong's opinions, Daly argues that Ramus was studied only by children, and concludes that too much “intelligence and sophistication” have been brought to the study of Ramus. Daly contends that Ramus had little influence on Puritan writers.⁸ Two flaws underlie Daly's analysis. First, like many other critics of Ramus, Daly relies on secondary sources. Second, Daly approaches Ramus primarily as a rhetorician. By neglecting the dialectic of Ramus, Daly ignores one practical use of Ramus for Puritan writers and the logical system that serves them as a foundation for poetic form. Ramus' influence on Wigglesworth is not rhetorical, but logical.

This short summary of Wigglesworth criticism outlines the main points discussed by the critics. While some critics briefly comment upon the logical quality of The Day of Doom and Meat Out of the Eater, they do not describe the links between Wigglesworth's poetry and Ramus' logic. Despite the work of Perry Miller and Samuel Morison on the importance of Ramus for Puritan thought and education, no critic has examined any American Puritan poet from the perspective of Ramean logic.⁹ (In chapter 11, Jesper Rosenmeier considers the impact of Ramean rhetoric on the poetry of Edward Johnson.)

At Harvard, in the seventeenth century, the understanding of logic, particularly Ramean logic, prepared the student for the study of all other disciplines. The study of Ramus, as Perry Miller wrote, was a central influence on the New England mind: “The fundamental fact concerning the intellectual life of New Englanders is that they ranged themselves definitely under the banner of the Ramists. The Peripatetic system was indeed read at Harvard, but the Ramist was believed, and it exercised the decisive role in shaping New England thought.”¹⁰ Letters, speeches, and Harvard these reveal the pervasive influence of Ramus at Harvard College. Besides the Latin texts of Ramus' Dialectic, the primary text for the study of Ramean logic was Alexander Richardson's The Logicians School-Master: Or, a Comment upon Ramus Logicke. But this commentary necessitated Ramus' own text, for Richardson often cites only part of a definition or quotation and refers the reader to the Latin Ramus. Ramus' primary contribution to the history of logic was the reorganization and presentation of classical logic into an easy-to-learn schematic and diagrammatic form.¹¹

Dialectic, the art of disputing or reasoning well, is divided into two parts, Invention and Disposition (or Judgment). Invention, in the sense of coming upon or finding, declares the separate parts of which all thought is composed and presents the various kinds of arguments. Disposition explains the ways of judging or arranging these arguments.

The arguments of Invention are divided into two species, artificial and inartificial. Artificial arguments create belief by their own nature, in contrast to inartificial arguments, which are human or divine testimony that depend on the credibility of the witness rather than upon their own intrinsic logic. Wigglesworth uses this distinction between artificial and inartificial arguments in Meat Out of the Eater by presenting artificial arguments in the ten Meditations, and then offering personal testimony to convince the reader in the concluding hortatory. Artificial arguments are divided into primary and derivative. The primary arguments, which are simple and not derived from any others, have four species: cause and effect, subject and adjoint, opposite, and comparison.

The discussion of cause is one of the most interesting sections in Ramus. He presents a precise definition of the four classical causes—final, formal, efficient, and material—with a lengthy analysis and division of the efficient cause. Ramus concludes this section by saying that the causes of a thing should be considered before any other argument. Wigglesworth follows this advice in The Day of Doom, where in the prefatory poems he explains the efficient and final cause of the poem:

Thou, Christ, art he to whom I pray,
Thy Glory fain I would display.
Oh! guide me by thy sacred Sprite
So to indite, and so to write,
That I thine holy Name may praise,
And teach the Sons of men thy wayes.

[p. ix]

Effect, treated briefly by Ramus, is defined as anything which is issued from causes.

The next primary arguments are subject and adjoint. The subject is that to which something is adjoined, as the soul is the subject of science, ignorance, virtue, and vice. The adjoint is the thing adjoined to the subject, as good and bad are adjoints of the body and the soul. In Meat Out of the Eater Christians are the subject, and suffering, both to the body and the soul, is the adjoint.

Opposites are contrary or repugnant. The contraries, which differ one to one, are divided into affirmative, either relative or adverse, and negative, either depriving or contradicting. For example, Wigglesworth's poetry contains many adverse contraries whose essence is separated, such as good and bad, or black and white.

The last primary argument, comparison, has two species, quantity and quality. Things compared in terms of quantity are either equal or unequal; if unequal, one is more or less than the other. Things compared in terms of quality are either like or unlike each other.

The second part of logic, Judgment or Disposition, shows the way to arrange the invented arguments. Disposition has three divisions: enunciation, syllogism, and method. If any enunciation is not clear or if the truth of a statement is doubtful or uncertain, then it is necessary, Ramus says, to convert it into a question and by syllogistic reasoning determine the truth or falsity of the statement. After defining the parts of the syllogism—proposition (major premise), assumption (minor premise), and conclusion—Ramus presents the various types with examples. The simple syllogism has twenty types, and the compound syllogism is divided into the conditional and the disjunctive. Ramus has a great deal of respect for the ability of the syllogism to resolve difficult questions—he calls it an image of the divine in the human mind. Ramus emphasizes that in literature the three parts of the syllogism are not always given, or are put in a scrambled order, thus obliging the reader to fill in the missing parts and arrange them in the proper order: “The use of the entire syllogism is very rare, for often, and nearly always in the poets, orators, philosophers, and all authors following natural usage, although they may treat of syllogistic questions, nevertheless some part of the syllogism is neglected. …”¹² Because the complete syllogism is not always given in The Day of Doom, readers have failed to see the role of syllogistic reasoning in the poet's debates and in the larger structure of the poem.

Method, the third division of Judgment, exercised strong influence on later writers and sparked frequent debate and criticism. For Ramus, method proceeds from the most general and most known to the most particular and least known. The natural method may not be suitable for certain audiences, so poets and orators often arrange the material in a prudential order, a scrambling of the natural method. Even Socrates, Ramus says, uses the prudential order in his dialogues. Throughout the Dialectic, Ramus also presents examples from the Latin poets to illustrate the parts of logic. The literary examples emphasize that logic is natural to everyone and is especially useful to writers.

Several features of Richardson's The Logicians School-Master are suggestive in the analysis of Wigglesworth's poetry. Richardson offers a lengthy discussion of comparison of quantity, which explains one thing by comparing it with another. Wigglesworth employs many such comparisons in The Day of Doom. Although Richardson assigns less significance to method than Ramus, his brief commentary may have had special meaning for Wigglesworth, for here he would have learned about Crypticis methodi, the secret method of poets: “If a man be to deliver an Art, hee must exactly observe this method in every point; but many times it falls out in discourses that disorder must be used, not for the doctrines sake, but because of the perversity of the hearers, for they often goe out of their way by reason of their weakness.”¹³ Richardson explains how poets can disguise the order of their arguments. Such secret disordering often makes it difficult to discover Ramean patterns and to reconstruct the argument in the natural order.

Richardson frequently argues that Ramus' logic can be applied to the study of religion. Ramus, adhering to a strict division of theology and logic, does not mention religion, but Richardson, like many others after Ramus, quotes the Bible to illustrate the logic. In addition, Richardson explains how the difficult parts of logic can be used to discuss and to debate Christian doctrine. For him, the purpose of logic is to “direct man to see the wisedom of God.”¹⁴ Besides the detailed commentary of Ramus' logic, Richardson's text described to the future poet, Michael Wigglesworth, how logic can be used in religious debate and in the organization of poetry.

Graduating at the top of his class in 1651, Wigglesworth returned to Harvard a year later and served as a tutor for two years while taking his master's degree. Two entries from the Diary which Wigglesworth kept while a tutor attest to his detailed study of Ramus. In the first entry, Wigglesworth says, “I disputed for Ramus in the Distribution of the 2d part of Logick against Richardson. My arguments found such acceptation with the seniours (though contrary to their former apprehensions) that pride prevailed.” The second entry shows that Wigglesworth made a complete study of Ramus: “Yet for all this trouble god hath bin with me in my personal studys; for this day I began and finished all that part of my synopsis which treats about method.”¹⁵ Since method is the last topic in Ramus' logic, Wigglesworth is rejoicing in the completion of his synoptical study. The “synopsis” was a requirement for a master's degree, as described in New Englands First Fruits, the 1643 London publication about the new world and the recently founded Harvard College: “Every Schollar that giveth up in writing a System, or Synopsis, or summe of Logick, Naturall and Morall phylosophy, arithmetick, Geometry, and Astronomy … is fit to be dignified with his 2d Degree.”¹⁶ As an undergraduate, Wigglesworth was introduced to Ramus' logic, and as a tutor, he made Ramus a central focus of his studies and the subject of his master's synopsis.

The Diary records the effect of Ramus' logic on Wigglesworth's constant questions about his faith. In one passage he uses three different syllogisms to prove the existence of God, concluding with this final proof: “3ly My prayers have been answered from time to time, ergo there is a God who hath heard me. If there was no God, how should my prayers have been heard?” Here, the assumption is first, the conclusion second, and the proposition last. Placed in the correct order we have this syllogism:

If there were no God, my prayers could not be answered.
My prayers have been answered.
Ergo, there is a God.

This syllogism is an example of the frequently used second manner conditional. Wigglesworth also attempts to prove the existence of God by a disjunctive syllogism: “Once I was blind, but now I see, once dead but now alive, once loving sin and hating holiness; who made this change? Not self; for to me believing was impossible. Not men, for then why are not others converted sooner (whilest it was easier). Nor Sathan; he is not such a fool to destroy his own kingdom; therefore it was God; ergo God is.”¹⁷ There are multiple terms in the proposition, but Ramus says, “The parts of the disjunctive proposition may be more than two, and nevertheless the art of concluding and judging will be the same.”¹⁸ Expressed as a syllogism:

Either self or men or satan or God made this change.
Self, men, or satan did not make this change.
Therefore, God made this change.

This syllogism is an example of the second manner conditional, which contradicts one term of the proposition and concludes the other.

Another example from the Diary later appears in Wigglesworth's poetry: “If I regard not iniquity in my heart god will hear me in what I ask aco. to him: but I regard not iniquity, for els god would not once and again have heard my crys, and showed me a signe for good.”¹⁹ This passage illustrates Ramus' statement that the syllogism is useful for resolving a doubtful or uncertain proposition. Wigglesworth wonders if he regards iniquity. The entry begins with the proposition but reverses the assumption and the conclusion. Thus, we have this conditional syllogism:

If I regard not iniquity, God will hear me in what I ask.
God has heard my cries.
Therefore, I regard not iniquity.

In this syllogism, a fourth manner conditional in Ramus, the consequent part of the proposition—God will hear me in what I ask—is restated in the assumption. The conclusion restates the antecedent part of the proposition. In the Diary Wigglesworth offers proof for the assumption by recording the prayers that God has answered.

A similar syllogism is found in the “Riddles Unriddled” section of Meat Out of the Eater. In “A Dialogue between the Flesh and Spirit” the Flesh asks, “If God reject my Prayer / I fear he me rejects; / For how can he despize their Prayer / Whose person he respects?” The Spirit responds: “Be thou displeas'd with sin, / And he'll be pleased with thee, / He'll turn to thee his face, / If thou turn from iniquity.”²⁰ Here the prayers remain unanswered, but both passages are resolved by the same conditional syllogism.

Although these syllogisms may not display the subtlest levels of logic, such examples reveal Wigglesworth's use of the syllogism in questions of faith and religion. Not surprisingly, then, The Day of Doom, published only eight years after Wigglesworth left Harvard, contains many syllogisms (complete poem in Meserole, Poetry). To reconstruct the basic syllogism in The Day of Doom is not difficult because the sinners are always reasoning toward the conclusion that they should be saved. Further, and this is the significant structural element of the poem, the stanzas are elaborations of the different parts of the syllogism. Wigglesworth first formed the argument or syllogism and then composed verses to develop and illustrate the ensuing debates.

On Judgment Day all people—Goats and Sheep—are summoned before the throne of Christ. First, the Sheep are divided into groups, and then in stanzas 27-37 the Goats are introduced and distinguished according to their sin. In stanzas 38-50, Christ returns to the Sheep and explains “the ground and reason why / These men do stand at my right hand and look so chearfully.” In stanza 51, “the wicked are brought to the Bar.” Their sins are outlined in general, and then “Christ asks a reason” for their sinful nature. The debates between Christ and the sinners take place from stanza 68 to stanza 182. The sinners, pleading to be allowed to enter Heaven, present their arguments before the throne of Christ. Christ refutes the sinners by disproving the proposition or assumption of their syllogistic argument. Wigglesworth provides marginal notes to guide the reader in the development of the eleven debates.

In stanzas 92-95, “Civil honest men” who “lov'd true dealing, and hate stealing” make their plea before Christ. They claim to be righteous men and argue, “We hated vice, and set great price, by vertuous conversation; / And by the same we got a name, and no small commendation.” The second part of stanza 94 becomes the proposition of the syllogism they use to reason with Christ: “God's Laws express that righteousness, is that which he doth prize; / And to obey, as he doth say, is more than sacrifice.” Thus, the proposition is that God prizes the righteous. In the next stanza the sinners offer the assumption that they have been righteous, and they pray for the conclusion that they will be saved: “Thus to obey, hath been our way, let our good deeds, we pray, / Find some regard and some reward with thee, O Lord, this day.” Stanzas 92-93, detailing the sinners' good deeds, are poetic support for the assumption. The complete argument by which the sinners hope to convince Christ is contained in this simple syllogism:

God prizes the righteous.
We have been righteous.
God prizes us (and will save us).

Christ's refutation, an attack against the assumption of the sinners' syllogism, comes in two steps. First, he offers the definition and proposition that a righteous person must be wholly righteous: “Justice demands at all your hands perfect obedience: / If but in part you have come short, that is just offense” (St. 96). Christ illustrates this by asking if twenty pence should recompence a thousand pound debt. Then, by the argument of final cause, Christ claims that the sinners are not perfectly obedient, for God looks at the end for which men do their deeds (St. 99). In stanzas 100-101 Christ argues that not from true faith and love have the civil honest men been obedient; they worked for their own advancement, not God's. Their own “haughty pride” is proof that they are not perfectly obedient. Since they are not completely righteous, God concludes that they shall not be saved. The righteousness that the sinners thought would save them, in fact condemns them: “Your Gold is brass, your silver dross, your righteousness is sin; / And think you by such honesty eternal life to win?” (St. 106).

The argument that immediately follows illustrates the interlocking, dialectical structure of the disputation between Christ and the sinners. In the previous debate, Christ has said that it is “by the end which they intend” that men will be judged. Here, the sinners say that they intended to repent but a lack of time prevented them from doing so: “We did intend, Lord, to amend, and to reform our way: / Our true intent was to repent, and make our peace with thee; / But sudden death stopping our breath, left us no libertie” (St. 107). In stanza 108 they further explain that they had no time to repent: “Short was our time. …” Their argument can be expressed thus:

Those who intend to repent will be saved.
We did intend to repent.
Therefore, we will be saved.

Christ first attacks the idea that the sinners did not have enough time to repent: “One day, one week, wherein to seek God's face with all your hearts … You had a season, what was your reason such precious hours to waste?” (St. 110). Christ then turns directly to the sinners' argument and denies their assumption that they intended to repent: “Had your intent been to repent, and had you it desir'd, / There would have been endeavours seen, before your time expir'd” (St. 113). The intentions of the sinners were only “idle purposes.” Christ does not deny the proposition that intentions are sufficient for salvation, but he invalidates the sinners' argument by claiming that they did not intend to repent.

In a debate concerning the nature of communion, “hypocrites” argue that they should be saved because they have taken part in communion. In stanza 74 the proposition and assumption are explicitly stated. The hypocrites quote God, “as thou thy self dost say,” for the proposition that those who take communion will be saved. In the poem the assumption—we have taken communion—is placed first: “Did we not eat thy Flesh for meat, and feed on heavenly Cheer?” Stanza 75 supports the assumption, for the hypocrites say that they have “oft partaken” of the “Wine and Bread.” The sinners hope the Judge will render the obvious conclusion that they will be saved. Christ accepts the proposition, but he denies the truth of the assumption; he never saw any of these sinners at communion (St. 76). Christ explains what he means by distinguishing the fancy from the heart: “Your fancies fed on heavenly Bread, your hearts fed on some Lust: / You lov'd the Creature more than the Creator, your souls clave to the dust” (St. 79). In stanzas 77-78 Christ continues his argument that the sinners were never at communion with a repentant heart. Having rejected the sinners' assumption, Christ has invalidated their conclusion. The hypocrites, concludes Christ, are very foolish to think that by such “cloaked wickedness” they would enter into heaven.

Stanzas 144-156 contain the central debate of the poem, the meaning of election and the nature of man's free-will. The sinners argue that by “Law unalterable” they are condemned, and not even true repentance and new obedience will save someone who is not among the elect (St. 145). The pleaders ask how they can save themselves if God has already rejected them, for “Who can convert or change his heart, if God with hold the same?” (St. 146).

Initially, Christ sidesteps the issue of election and declares that the sinners are damned because they have broken his laws: “I damn you not because / You are rejected, or not elected, but you have broke my Laws” (St. 147). Settling the question that the sinners are indeed condemned, Christ turns to the nature of man's free-will. Even if God has chosen the elect, man still has his own will to act good or ill: “High God's Decree, as it is free, so doth it none compel / Against their will to good or ill, it forceth none to Hell” (St. 149). Christ says the sinners, who might have been among the elect, should not have rejected God.

Realizing the complexity of the problem, Christ continues his refutation by restating the argument of the sinners: “You argue then: But abject men, whom God resolves to spill, / Cannot repent, nor their hearts rent; ne can they change their will” (St. 153). Christ replies, in the second part of stanza 153, that not because you could not repent, but because you would not repent you are condemned: “Not for his Can is any man adjudged unto Hell: / But for his Will to do what's ill, and nilling to do well.” God has not rejected the sinners, but the opposite is true: “But you vile Race, rejected Grace, when Grace was freely proffer'd: / No changed heart, no heaven'ly part would you, when it was offer'd” (St. 154).

The next stanza, 155, explains the responsibility of the will and stresses that not God but the sinners themselves are the cause of their own damnation. These eight lines contain all three parts of a syllogism; the proposition is in the first four lines, while the assumption and the conclusion are in reverse order:

Who wilfully the Remedy,
          and means of life contemned,
Cause have the same themselves to blame,
          if now they are condemned.
You have your selves, you and none else,
          your selves have done to dy.
You chose the way to your decay,
          and perisht wilfully.

The word “wilfully,” symmetrically beginning and ending the stanza, and the six repetitions of “you” and “your” emphasize whose will is to blame for the sinners' fate. In stanza 154, an elaboration of the assumption, God details the ways that the sinners have contemned life. For the question of whom to blame, Christ places the responsibility on the sinners because they wilfully rejected God's offer of grace. Out-reasoned again by the dialectical Jesus, the sinners stand silent: “These words appall and daunt them all; dismai'd, and all amort, / Like stocks they stand at Christ's left-hand, and dare no more retort” (St. 156).

In each debate Wigglesworth portrays the ways of God as logical and rational. Christ is a lawyer and logician debating the sinners and justifying the logic of God to weak-reasoning men. In The Day of Doom syllogisms clarify religious questions and assist the author in the organization and structure of the poem. Wigglesworth's achievement is the logical examination of religious dogma and complex theological tenets in a poetic form. Whether The Day of Doom becomes a better poem when the reader realizes the underlying structure depends on one's esthetic preferences. Showing that the poem is logical does not necessarily make it good, any more than saying that because the poem does not make use of the natural world for metaphor it is bad poetry. I have attempted to define and describe the structure of The Day of Doom so that we may evaluate it from the context within which it was written.

In 1669 Wigglesworth published Meat Out of the Eater: Or Meditations Concerning the Necessity, End, and Usefulness of Afflictions unto God's Children, All Tending to Prepare them for, and Comfort them Under the Cross.²¹ Occasionally, Wigglesworth uses the syllogism to structure part of this poem, but Meat Out of the Eater depends upon the major divisions of Ramus' “Invention.” The poem has two parts. The first is the title poem, “Meat Out of the Eater,” and the second is “Riddles Unriddled, Or, Christian Paradoxes.” Following proper Ramean method, the first poem discusses “in generall about Afflictions,” and the second treats of “particular Ailes.” “Meat out of the Eater” contains ten Meditations and a Concluding Hortatory organized in a Ramean pattern, each structured around a particular logical argument from “Invention.”

Meditation I begins with the epitaph, “All Christians must be sufferers, / That would be Christ his Followers.” The first stanza restates this thought: “All that resolve to be / Christ's faithful followers, / Must be contented in this world / To be great Sufferers.” Meat Out of the Eater poetically examines the axiom, Christians suffer. Later, in Meditation IX, the poet divides the subject, Christians, into two groups: those who can find out the cause of their suffering and those who cannot. The “Business” of every Christian is to find out what sin has offended God, and “having once found out,” the Christian “amends it” and “unto the cleansing Blood / Of Jesus Christ he flies.” But some Christians never find out the cause and so continue to suffer. Such a Christian must “kiss the sharpest Rod,” and “taketh up his Cross.”

If we follow Ramus' logic, we should first examine the causes of affliction, beginning with final cause. In The Logicians School-Master, Richardson says “the finall cause is said to be the happiness of the thing; so that a thing is not to be accounted happy till it be serviceable to that end for which it was made.”²² The fifth Meditation presents a discussion of the happiness of the final rest awaiting those who suffer: “The Fifth perswades to Patience / From this Rich future Recompence; / Minding us of Our Heavenly Rest, / Which should revive us when distrest.” The final cause is the end for which a thing is made, and the narrator comforts the Christian by reminding him that his light affliction will end in glorious happiness: “For this short Grief of ours, / And our Affliction light / Shall work of glorious Happiness / A far more lasting weight.” In the middle stanzas, comparisons illustrate this sense of affliction ending in happiness. The farmer must break ground in order to reap a crop, and a soldier must engage in difficult battle in order to triumph. The reward of all the suffering is to be united with God, and at the end of the Meditation the soul pleads for his final reward:

          O Christ make haste, from bands,
          Of Sin and Death me free,
And to those Heavenly Mansions
          Be pleas'd to carry me.
          Where glorified Saints
          For ever are possest
of God in Christ their chiefest Good,
          And from all troubles Rest.

[St. 10]

The final cause, or the happiness for which the Christian suffers, is to gain entrance into the “Heavenly Mansions.”

The efficient cause, the cause by which a thing is made, has three divisions in Ramus. One division distinguishes the efficient which acts alone from the efficient which acts in company with others: “Alone is that which produces by itself its effect, as fire produces heat. The efficient in company with others is principal or minister and aide, as in a ship the captain is chief of navigation, the sailors are ministers and aides.”²³ Richardson says of the efficient with others, “that it is, as it were, a minister and an instrument.”²⁴ Using this same logical terminology, the poet begins Meditation IX with a consideration of the question of efficient cause:

          He sees a hand of God
          In his Afflictions all,
And owns it for to be his Rod
          Whatever cross befall.
          For whosoever be
          Th' immediate Instrument
He knows right well that God himself
          Was the Efficient.

[St. 1]

God, the principal efficient cause, works through his instruments to bring affliction upon the Christian. The second stanza in Meditation IX presents two other aspects of the efficient cause discussed in Ramus, efficient by nature and by counsel. The efficient by nature is the cause by which all natural things are engendered, such as the wind. Efficient by counsel is that done from counsel or reason. Wigglesworth writes: “And that Afflictions / Rise not out of the Dust / Nor are they order'd by the wit / Of Man, or Devils lust.”

After cause, Ramus discusses effect, that which is issued from the cause. The effect and the final cause are often confused because we sometimes use the word end to mean both. Richardson carefully differentiates the two: “This is the difference between the end and the effect; A house is made to dwell in, though it never be dwelt in: so for a garment, to be worne is one thing, and to be fit to weare another. So if I goe forth to speak with one, and he be gone, yet I obtaine my end: they commonly say he was frustrate of his end, but not frustrate of finis, quatenus finis [as end], but quatenus effectum [as effect].” The effect and final cause have a close relationship, for “the final cause is that that graceth the effect, and thence hath the thing his commendation.”²⁵

Meditation III contains both senses of the end: “The third doth further hint at th' Ends / For which the Lord Affliction sends.” First, the poet expresses the end, quatenus finis: “God doth chastize his own / In Love their souls to save.” This, as we have seen, is the subject of the fifth Meditation. Then, the definition of affliction is given in terms of the end, quatenus effectum: “Affliction is Christ's School / Wherein he teacheth His / To know and do their duty, / To mend what is amiss.” The effect that God seeks from affliction, that the sinner find out and amend what is amiss, is also expressed in Meditation IX. God (efficient cause) creates affliction so that the sinner will leave his sins (effect) and be able to gain entrance into heaven (final cause). The final cause, heavenly rest, “graces,” as Richardson says, the effect.

Meditation VI is organized by a Ramean comparison of quantity. In the epigraph the reader is asked to compare his sufferings to Christ's: “Christ's Sufferings are our Copy Book / Whereon we often ought to look.” The first stanza introduces the comparison: “Let every Suffering Saint / Consider Jesus Christ / What Sufferings great he underwent / Who is our Blest High Priest.” When the sinner is overcome by grief, he should compare himself to Christ: “When thou art apt to say, / No grief was ere like mine, / Then think of Christ, and sure thou'lt say, / His far exceeded thine.” The entire Meditation is structured around this comparison of unequal quantity; the suffering of Christ is greater than that of the sinful sons of men.

The most common logical pattern in Meat Out of the Eater is the adverse contrary, one of the subdivisions of the opposites. Adverses are those whose essence is separated, such as virtue and vice. After the first two stanzas stating the subject of the poem, Meditation I is organized around two adverse paths that confront the Christian: “Our way to heavenly Rest, / Is all against the Stream; / We must not sail with Wind and Tide / As too many dream.” The Christian must choose between the path “up the Hill / Which mounteth to the Skies,” or the “low and down hill” path that leads “to Death and Hell.” The strait and narrow path leads to life, but the broad path leads to destruction. Confronted by these two adverse contraries, the narrator chooses the narrow path:

          Let others take their Choice,
          and run what way they please;
Let them enjoy their Lusts, and take
          Their fill of Carnal Ease:
          Chuse thou the narrow path,
          My Soul, and walk therein,
Thou, know'st this is the only Way,
          Eternal Life to win.

[St. 8]

Meditation II is also organized by adverse contraries, expressed in the epigraph: “God doth in Mercy scourge his own / In Wrath he other lets alone.” Paradoxically, God in his mercy scourges and afflicts his own, but wrathfully lets the sinner alone. Like the first Meditation, the second ends with the Soul contemplating the correct opposite:

          This is a fearful case
          To be thus left of GOD:
Great mercy 'tis to be subdu'd
          By scourging with the Rod.
          My soul be thankful then
          That God thee thus corrects,
Who might have let thee head long run
          With those whom he rejects.

[St. 7]

Meditation VII and VIII, together, present another pair of adverse contraries, the wicked man and the saint. In Meditation VII “the worldly man's prosperity” is depicted. Stanzas three through eighteen portray the worldly men who “flow in worldly wealth,” or “Flourish like a tree.” But on Judgment Day the wicked are summoned before the Lord and receive their final pay. Meditation VIII offers a saint to contrast with the sinner: “We have the wicked view'd, / And seen his estate … Now let us take a Saint … And view him at his worst.” Although he suffers from sickness and poverty, the saint is happy: “Yet God is present with him still: / He is a happy man.”

All these artificial arguments form the logical substructure upon which Meat Out of the Eater is organized. Meditation I is structured around the adverse contraries, narrow and broad path. Meditation II contrasts two adverse contraries, merciful scourging and wrathful neglect. Meditation III presents the definition of affliction and describes the effect of it. Meditation IV summarizes the first three. Meditation V treats final cause. The structure of Meditation VI is comparison of quantity; Christ's suffering exceeds that of men. Meditation VII and VIII contrast the saint and sinner, adverse contraries. Meditation IX discusses efficient cause and effect, and makes a division of the subject, Christians. Meditation X contrasts the internal and external form of affliction: “Although Affliction tanne the Skin, / Such Saints are Beautiful Within.” Wigglesworth may have had in mind another division of cause, the formal cause, which distinguishes one thing from another. With these various artificial arguments, Wigglesworth hopes to convince the reader of the necessity to raise the cross and to suffer affliction if he wishes to enter heaven.

Just as Ramus separates artificial arguments from inartificial arguments or testimony, so too Wigglesworth offers his own personal testimony after the artificial arguments in the ten Meditations. The inartificial argument or testimony may be either human or divine: “The oracles and prophets are examples of divine testimony. The sentences of poets and distinguished persons are human testimony.”²⁶ The validity of the inartificial argument depends on the credibility or veracity of the witness. In the Concluding Hortatory, Wigglesworth offers the most reliable human testimony, his own, to persuade the reader: “I have not told thee tales / Of things unseen, unfelt, / But speak them from experience / Believe it how thou wilt.” And if the reader is still not convinced of the sincerity of his testimony, the narrator adds: “Yet I shall tell the truth, / And nothing from thee keep, / Before I wrote this sentence out / I sat down twice to weep.” The narrator concludes by once again urging the reader to choose the narrow path of suffering and to raise up the cross of Christ.

In The Day of Doom, the sinners challenge Christ with syllogistic arguments. He, in turn, refutes them by decisive, carefully structured syllogisms. Poetic structure and religious debate are fused by the logical form of the syllogism. The poetic organization of Meat Out of the Eater parallels the structure of Ramus' Dialectic; Wigglesworth uses the major divisions of “Invention” to organize the poem. These two logical substructures emphasize the difference between the poems. In The Day of Doom, Christ is a stern and omnipotent judge, dividing the sheep from the goats. Christ's logic is firm, unyielding, syllogistic. He forms propositions and assumptions that lead to irrefutable conclusions. In Meat Out of the Eater, a gentler narrator addresses the reader, and the syllogistic debates have been replaced by the logical arguments of “Invention.” These examine and explain to the Christian the nature and necessity of suffering. In both poems the logical form is an integral part of the religious teaching and the poetic structure.

Wigglesworth's poetry suggests the wide range of Ramus' influence in Protestant countries and reveals how Ramus' logic was a practical, useful tool for religious and poetic discourse. Ramus' Dialectic became the primary logic of Puritan thought because it was a pragmatic and schematic logic easily applied to the examination of religious problems. This practical quality of Ramus' logic may have been its most important and subtle influence upon the development of American Puritanism.

Notes

1. Fifth edition (Boston: B. Green and J. Allen, 1701).

2. A Faithful Man, Described and Rewarded (Boston, 1705), p. 24.

3. (Albany: J. Munsell, 1863), p. 10.

4. P. 277, 285.

5. “Michael Wigglesworth, A Puritan Artist,” NEQ I (October 1928), 499-500.

6. (Michigan State University Press, 1962), p. 133.

7. Journal of Popular Culture, IX: 4 (1976), 948-59.

8. Pp. 132, 52.

9. Leon Howard wrote several articles about Ramistic patterns in Shakespeare and Milton. Most convincing of these is “In Justifying the Ways of God to Men: The Invention of Milton's Great Argument,” The Huntington Library Quarterly, IX (February 1946), 149-73.

10. Miller, Mind, p. 126.

11. My summary is based on the Latin and French editions of Ramus' Dialectic. The 1555 French text is an analogue of the Latin text of 1554. Later Latin editions have minor changes.

12. Pierre de la Ramée, Dialectique (Paris: André Wechel, 1555), pp. 114-15. Translations are my own. This text is available in a recent edition: Michel Dassonville, ed., Dialectique (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1964).

13. Alexander Richardson, The Logicians School-Master: Or, A Comment upon Ramus Logicke (London: John Bellamie, 1629), p. 339.

14. Ibid., p. 72.

15. Michael Wigglesworth, Diary, Edmund Morgan, ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), pp. 62, 69.

16. Quoted in Miller and Johnson, Puritans, II, 704.

17. Diary, p. 94.

18. Ramée, Dialectique, p. 113.

19. Diary, p. 19.

20. Fifth Edition (Boston, 1717), pp. 49-50.

21. Citations are made in the text by Meditation number.

22. Richardson, The Logicians School-Master, p. 112.

23. Ramée, Dialectique, pp. 11-12.

24. Richardson, The Logicians School-Master, p. 85.

25. Ibid., pp. 113, 112.

26. Ramée, Dialectique, p. 62.

List of Abbreviations Used in the Texts and Notes

Daly, God's Altar: Robert Daly, God's Altar: The World and the Flesh in Puritan Poetry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978)

Miller, Mind: Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (1939; rpt. Boston: Beacon Press, 1961)

Miller and Johnson, Puritans: Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson, The Puritans: A Sourcebook of Their Writings (New York: American Book Company, 1938)

NEQ: New England Quarterly

Tyler, History: Moses Coit Tyler, A History of American Literature, 1607-1765 (1878; rpt. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1949)