Puritanism was essentially a movement of protest, and so was largely negative. In fact, to such a degree was it a matter of protest and negation, that the Puritan became absolutely fascinated in his contemplation of that first great protestor and protagonist of negation, the devil himself. It has frequently been pointed out that, in the one great poem which the movement has given us, the “Paradise Lost” of Milton, the real hero is Satan, and that it is upon him that the poet's interest centres. The Puritan's relations with the Deity were not merely fatalistic, but were expressed in the legal form of a covenant in which God and the individual were the contracting parties. Drama, or melodrama, was supplied only by the devil, who, from that standpoint, may almost be said to have been the saving grace of the Puritan doctrine. Men become eloquent over what appeals to their interest; and it is noteworthy that not only did the finest English Puritan poem centre about the devil, but the finest American Puritan prose was to be devoted to the horrors of hell, and that Jonathan Edwards was to find the last touch to the felicity of Heaven in the saints' contemplation of the tortures inflicted upon the damned by the Arch-fiend in the depths below. It was, as we have said, natural sympathy that attracted the Puritans to the Old Testament, that long protest against paganism, with its “thou shalt nots.” The positive side of the New Testament seems to have left them singularly cold. Indeed, so little appeal did the words of even Christ himself make, that, for once, they abandoned their literalism in the quoting of texts, and doubted whether the use of the Lord's Prayer should be permitted, as it savored too much of ritualism. The Puritans' virtues were thus mainly negations. Their ideals were based almost wholly upon mere avoidance of sin. They sought complete surrender of will. Humanity, in their eyes, was so utterly an evil thing, that only by an undeserved act of the grace of God was it possible that even a few human beings could possibly do anything pleasing in his sight.