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The American Sense of Puritan

The cloud that hung over this society can be visualized by reading a famous sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God delivered in 1741 by the Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards.  Main points of the sermon included:
1) There is no want of power in God to cast wicked men into Hell at any moment.
2) They deserve to be cast into hell.
3) They are already under a sentence of condemnation to Hell.
4) The Devil is ready to fall upon them as soon as God permits.

Edwards pictured God as dangling mankind over a fire by a thin thread, waiting for the moment to let go.

To the Puritans, art had to serve a purpose (such as portraiture).