This book straddles a crucial divide in British history, as calls for
religious reform and renewal mutated into political revolution. It seeks
to bring coherence to a pre-revolutionary historiography that focuses on
questions of conformity to and (semi-)separatism from 'the church by law
established' and a post-1642 historiography built around a coarse
polarity of 'Presbyterian' and 'Independent', and modern notions of
religious toleration.
This book argues that the fundamental ecclesiological issue in 1638-44
was the question of church power. Once Parliament conceded that
ecclesiastical power did not reside in the diocesan bishop, the state,
along with its leading puritan divines, needed to isolate where church
power existed and how that power was executed. Parliament wanted a
church that would stymie a clerical usurpation of state control, but
could equally fend off the burgeoning call for separation of church and
state. When Parliament called the Westminster assembly of divines, it
knew that one of the most destabilising elements of the body politic was
an inchoate national church, where heterodoxy presented as much of a
threat as prelacy.
This book rigorously examines this pivotal moment of religious reform by
analysing a small but vitally important group of these assembly divines,
their writings, and their private interaction as Parliament began
national church reform in the midst of a civil war. It challenges many
long-held assumptions surrounding religious and political debates during
the Puritan Revolution and will provide a new framework for both
students and teachers to understand one of the most important moments in
British history.
