The first church forms discussed, albeit briefly, are broadly monarchical. In consecutive chapters (9 and 10) Lawson deals with the papacy qua church form and as claimant to the power of the Keys; and then with the claims of secular monarchs to head a church. The papacy began as a permissible church form necessitated by the sheer growth of the Christian community. But this was illicitly converted into a pseudo-monarchy. It became institutionalised force arrogating unto itself the Keys of the community, challenging the true monarchy of Christ and threatening the equality of visible churches by conflating the notions of universal and particular church (Pol. 261f.). It is thus a supreme example of the fallacy of transmission which will be found operating in the aristocratic claims of episcopacy and Presbyterianism. Peter and his successors are worlds apart, but it is the assumption of direct lineage of office which bolsters papal claims. The remarkable survival of this designated usurper at no point elicits a providential explanation from Lawson and the only role for the papacy in a cosmic context is as a possible Antichrist (Pol. 441).

The claims of civil authority symbolically associated with monarchy are taken more seriously. Here Lawson treads a pencil-thin path of abstraction between the claims of Erastianism and the incipient possibility of thoroughgoing independence. One extreme threatened a settlement devoid of integrity, the other any national settlement at all.