Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600-1640

Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History

by Anthony Milton

Religious controversy was central to political conflict in the years leading up to the outbreak of the English Civil War. Historians have focused on one religious doctrine--predestination, but Catholic and Reformed analyzes the broader preconceptions that lay behind religious debate. It offers an analysis of the nature of the English Church, and how this related to the Roman Catholic and Reformed Churches of the Continent. The book's conclusions explain the nature of English religious culture and its role in provoking the Civil War.

Genres: Religion, History, British Literature, Church History, Catholic

Paperback

First published March 30, 1995

Reviews

[Jeremy]

Peter Leithart mentioned this book as one that helped him prepare for his debate with Fred Sanders and Carl Trueman (http://watch.biola.edu/future-of-prot...).

[Joel Zartman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read the conclusion first and then see if you need the intricate detail of the argument. It is an important part of understanding 17th century England to figure out the Laudian aims and results, which this book does.

“This book has argued that the religious developments and conflicts which took place during the early Stuart period were prompted in part by a gradual movement by Laudian divines away from an earlier, and perhaps more coherent, view of the Church of England and of its relations with the Churches of Rome and continental Protestantism. Previous divines had located the Church of England on the Protestant side of a polarized Christendom. The Laudians changed all this. Where previous writers had seen anti-popery as a positive form of religious expression, and as a crucial means of vindicating the Protestant credentials of the church’s hierarchy, Laudians considered anti-popery to be a destabilizing force, which prompted a false set of religious priorities and encouraged the growth of a puritan-style word-based piety.” (529)

“The Laudians ultimate goal was thus to force open the cracks that were already developing in English Calvinism, to impel a division of moderate from radical opinion in order to secure a full-hearted acceptance of their reforms and thus to remake the English Church in their image. In this process, they were especially keen to secure the allegiance of the Calvinist conformists, but only if they could effectively work a definitive division between them and the puritan principles which still wedded their ideas to those of nonconformists.” (539)

The Laudian faction sowed discord and reaped a permanent disunity.