Behavior Demonstrates Predestination

• The Puritans were Calvinists. They believed each individual had been selected by God for eternal afterlife in heaven or hell --- "election" or "condemnation." Only God could know for sure, but members of the "visible church" could demonstrate that they understood how the elect would act. Someone who behaved immorally in any way was clearly not among the elect, even if a sin such as premarital sex went undiscovered until after the sinners had married.
  
  

Gender and Race Complicate the Standards

• The differences for Puritan men and women and Indian men and women were unwritten but consistent across court records. One review includes multiple cases of Englishwomen publicly humiliated for "uncleanness" with Indian men, but when a man was convicted of impregnating another man's Indian servant, he had only to compensate her master. Another man whose wife was convicted of adultery had to pay the costs of her trial and imprisonment and be humiliated in the stocks while he witnessed the couple's whippings, on a charge of abandoning his wife to such temptation.
  
  

We're Here to "Help" the Indians

• The Puritans were evangelical, in that another sign of virtue was to rouse to faith the elect who might be among the Indians. Colonists who instead corrupted themselves in sexual relations with Indians were punished as showing signs of their own, and those Indians', condemnation. The seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony shows an Indian saying "Come over and help us," a biblical allusion to the Book of Acts, chapter 16.
  
  

Punish the Condemned to Inspire the Elect

• The purpose of punishing sexual and other sins was to make sure other Puritans knew what someone looked like who was condemned by God. The common punishments were whippings, display in the stocks, and actual "scarlet letters." Colonial records show both members of adulterous pairs being required to wear "AD" on their clothing or the woman a "B." A woman who had "enticed" an Indian was to wear an unspecified badge on her left sleeve, and if she were ever caught without it, she would be marked permanently with a brand on her cheek. At least one biblical punishment is documented: In accord with Leviticus 20:15, a colonist was hanged for "buggery" after witnessing the destruction of eight of the animals on which he committed sexual acts.
  
  

On the Other Hand, Bundling

• Some of the cases of premarital sex may have been misunderstandings of an unmarried courting couple simply sharing bed space, a scarce resource, or using the only place they might find any privacy in which to talk. The best documentation of the practice seems to be in denouncing it from the late 18th century and in some cases relegating it to the relatively "less civilized" areas of Connecticut and Western Massachusetts.