ABSTRACT

This chapter demonstrates how the “predestinal damnation” metaphor was actually used in everyday life by people to label either themselves or others as inherently damned and unchangeable, and then explores the Puritan paradox of punishing people who were presumably “born damned.” The Puritan divine Davenport, for example, accused the minister of his town of being an “unconverted man” and a “hypocritic wolf in sheep’s clothing” and declared publicly that “thousands are now cursing him in hell for being the instrument of their damnation”. The chapter argues that the terminology of damnation was used in various social contexts to refer to an innate, irreversible state of deviance. Until the begining of the fourteenth century, the predominant approach to deviance in Europe was grounded in the “demon possession” metaphor, according to which the Church officially held that the insane were innocent victims of the devil.