Catholic and Reformed The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600–1640

Challenging account of religious controversy between Catholic and Protestant before the Civil War.

Religious controversy was central to political conflict in the years before the English Civil War. Where earlier historians have focused more narrowly on the doctrine of predestination, Dr Milton analyses the broader attitudes which underlay notions of religious orthodoxy. Through the first comprehensive analysis of how contemporaries viewed the Roman and foreign Reformed churches in the early Stuart period, Milton demonstrates the way in which an author's choice of a particular style of religious discourse could be used either to mediate or to provoke religious conflict. This study challenges many current historical orthodoxies. It identifies the theological novelty of Laudianism, but also exposes areas of ideological tension within the Jacobean Church. Its wide-ranging conclusions will be of vital concern to students of early Stuart religion and the origins of the English Civil War.

Introduction: English Protestantism at the dawn of the seventeenth century; Part I. The Church of Rome: 1. 'This Immortal Fewde': anti-popery, 'negative popery' and the changing climate of religious controversy; 2. The rejection of Antichrist; 3. Rome as a true church; 4. The errors of the Church of Rome; 5. Unity and diversity in the Roman communion: inconsistency or opportunity?; 6. Visibility, succession and the Church before Luther; 7. Separation and reunion; Part II. The Reformed Churches: 8. Doctrinal links: a harmony of confessions?; 9. 'The best reformed church': church government and politics; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

Catholic and Reformed analyses the preconceptions that lay behind religious controversy in the years before the English Civil War. It offers an analysis of the nature of the English church and explains the nature of English religious culture and its role in provoking the Civil War.