Chapter 24 - Of Moderate Puritans and Popular Prelates

Summary

The chapter examines the puritan claim that ‘moderate puritan’ was an oxymoron; that even self-professedly moderate or conforming puritans were in fact the carriers of an ideology subversive of all order in church and state. Indeed, the Laudians claimed that those puritans who at least pretended to conform were in fact more dangerous than out-and-out non-conformists, since the latter identified themselves and could thus be the more easily disciplined or removed. The others represented a fifth column, far harder to detect or discipline, and thus able to undermine the church from within. Within the episcopal hierarchy, the correlative of the moderate puritan was the so-called popular prelate, someone who cared far too much about his reputation amongst the godly and thought that the unity of the church could best be preserved by accommodating various sorts of puritans rather than by subjecting them to firm episcopal government. Such men represented a threat to the church almost as great as the puritans themselves. Here the figures of bishops like Williams of Lincoln or Hall of Exeter, and then Norwich, could be discerned between the lines of various Laudian diatribes.