Conversion and the Imitation of Christ in Anglican and Puritan Writing

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
In recent years a great deal of scholarly energy has been expended in attempts to identify differing religious parties and movements in Elizabethan and early Stuart England. On the one hand, J.F.H. New has described the actions of Anglicans and Puritans as “teleological acts – attempts to make practice conform to preconceived philosophies.” He believes that Anglican and Puritan doctrines derived from quite different conceptions of human moral capacity, conceptions which were distinct from their sixteenth-century origins and which grew more so as time passed. On the other hand, Charles and Katherine George have insisted that we can at best talk about minor differences of emphasis and of degree within a doctrinally unified “English Protestant mind” before 1640. There were, so this thesis goes, no really significant Anglican-Puritan ideological distinctions, and therefore religious differences had nothing to do with the coming of the English Civil War. The effect of these efforts has been to make historians aware that defining the terms “Anglican” and “Puritan” is a much more difficult enterprise than used to be thought. Despite the Georges' book, the terms are still being used; but New's argument about their meaning has not gone uncriticized.It would be impossible in a short article to deal with all of the points raised in this extensive debate. The present purpose is to concentrate upon only two of many points of difference between writers traditionally identified as Anglicans and Puritans by means of their activities, attitudes, and associates.

This publication has 5 references indexed in Scilit: