Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Preface
- 1 Introduction: Laurence Chaderton and the problem of puritanism
- 2 Moderate beginnings: the case of Edward Dering
- 3 Chaderton's puritanism
- 4 The moderate puritan divine as anti-papal polemicist
- 5 Thomas Cartwright: the search for the centre and the threat of separation
- 6 William Whitaker's position as refracted through his anti-papal polemic
- 7 Theory into practice: puritan practical divinity in the 1580s and 1590s
- 8 William Whitaker at St John's: the puritan scholar as administrator
- 9 The theological disputes of the 1590s
- 10 Conformity: Chaderton's response to the Hampton Court Conference
- 11 William Bradshaw: moderation in extremity
- 12 Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Thomas Cartwright: the search for the centre and the threat of separation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Preface
- 1 Introduction: Laurence Chaderton and the problem of puritanism
- 2 Moderate beginnings: the case of Edward Dering
- 3 Chaderton's puritanism
- 4 The moderate puritan divine as anti-papal polemicist
- 5 Thomas Cartwright: the search for the centre and the threat of separation
- 6 William Whitaker's position as refracted through his anti-papal polemic
- 7 Theory into practice: puritan practical divinity in the 1580s and 1590s
- 8 William Whitaker at St John's: the puritan scholar as administrator
- 9 The theological disputes of the 1590s
- 10 Conformity: Chaderton's response to the Hampton Court Conference
- 11 William Bradshaw: moderation in extremity
- 12 Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
If one end of the spectrum of religious opinion was constituted by popery, then the other was provided by the threat of separation. Presbyterians were stretched in tension between the need to oppose both of these threats and yet retain their commitment to godly principle and the discipline intact. In fact, concentration on either of these opposite poles tended to emphasise the need for moderation; in the case of popery because it emphasised that community of interest and identity which bound together both conformists and precisians as protestants; in the case of separation because it threatened that very unity and called into question the carefully cultivated respectability of the whole puritan position.
Since the whole debate between conformists and precisians can be seen as a struggle for the middle ground, their respective polemical positions can in turn be seen as attempts to shift and modify the definition of ‘true moderation’ by the manipulation of the twin threats of popery and separation. For the exact location of the centre of the spectrum of religious opinion depended entirely on the attitude adopted towards the two extremes. Hence, a sure sign of a man's religious affiliations was provided by his attitude to the relative significance to be attached to the threat of separation as compared to popery.
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- Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church , pp. 77 - 92Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1982
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