Chapter 22 - A Religion of the Word and the Question of Authority

Summary

This chapter outlines the Laudian critique of puritan scripturalism, and the ways in which what the Laudians saw as the puritan insistence of the right of every Christian to a private judgement of what the scripture meant and a consequent duty, on the basis of that judgement, to hold the doings of their superiors in church and state to account. This, the Laudians claimed, undermined the authority of both the clergy and the church, not to mention order in church, state and society. At stake was not only a right to interpret scripture, but also claims to the testimony of the Holy Spirit. For the Laudians, such claims upset, indeed inverted, social and gender hierarchies, and utterly subverted the authority of the clergy. Again the result was a de facto, if not all too often, a de jure, separation.