The true puritan

I have been reading William Naphy's The Protestant Revolution (a Christmas gift; I got rather a lot of books), which was the book which sparked the BBC series of the same name, presented by Tristram Hunt. The series was moderately insightful with some silly bits, and I suspect the same will be true of the book: as Richard Holloway put it in his review, "Naphy has brought his sweeping command of church history towards a controversial conclusion." I have not read the end, but I think his conclusion is going to be that the Protestant spirit is in favour of gay marriage, abortion, and general social decay and godlessness. But I digress.

There is a brilliant bit on the Puritans, which I have just been reading. He writes,

contrary to their present-day image (or the views of their supposed heirs), Puritans were not opposed to drinking alcohol in moderation or to enjoying their sexuality within the bounds of marriage as a gift from God, (p. 129–130)

which, coupled with Erskine's poem on tobacco, gave rise to the following amusing summary in my mind: the true Puritans smoked, drank and made love to their wives. Hardly matches Mencken's description of puritanism as "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy," does it?