In this video, the speaker begins by encouraging the audience to ask questions and seek clarification during the lecture. He then briefly mentions the importance of fathers leading their families in devotion and ensuring their participation in religious exercises. The speaker also discusses the concept of Calvinistic activism, which emphasizes the need for individuals to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling, as God is working within them. Lastly, he mentions the history and ideology of Puritanism, stating that the course will delve deeper into these topics in future lectures.

Well now, yesterday we looked at the history of the word Puritan and in the course of doing so we got a kind of preliminary view of the course of Puritan history over a hundred years. We saw that the word was first applied to themselves by a small separatist group Then it was used as a nickname to damn those who wanted reformation in the realm of the church's rituals and also in the realm of its discipline. Then it came to be applied to those who stood for reformed doctrine as opposed to Arminianism. Then it came to be applied to those who supported the parliament against the king in the civil war in England. And it passed into the English vocabulary from the time of the restoration in 1662 up to the present day passed into the English vocabulary as a term of abuse for a person who is regarded in general terms as a cultural philistine and a killjoy. Although at the same time, as we also saw, because of the pastoral and evangelistic achievements of some of the men who stood at the heart of the world to which this name was given various men appeared from time to time who insisted that it was an honourable name and that it was no disgrace to be called a Puritan and that indeed it was the happiest consummation that a man could wish for. Baxter, accused of being a Puritan, being a copper-bottomed Puritan as we might say, simply commented, alas, I am not so good and happy. Picking up from there, I want us to try and draw the threads together and formulate our answer to the question who then were the people called Puritans? And it will take us a number of sentences to answer this question because the word as we've seen had a pretty broad spread. I would make the following three points. First, the word was applied to both ministers and laymen of varied ecclesiastical positions. What they had in common was that they all wanted some change in either the ritual or, or sometimes the ritual and, the government and constitution of the Church of England. Some of them indeed wanted its abolition in the form in which they knew it. But they didn't all agree by any means as to the precise changes that they wanted to see. We may indeed draw a little map. Let me draw you a map to show you just what a complex set of groups there were. There were a set of palaeons, and these were two characters. Some of them were conformists, some of them were non-conformists. Conformists, non-conformists. Conformists were chaps who actually submitted to the ritual usages of the prayer book however little they may have liked them. Non-conformists were the chaps who declined to wear the purpose or to use the sign of the cross in destitution or some other of the ceremonies which the prayer book made obligatory. Then in addition to that, there were presbyterians. There were the Carchite type of people. There were the Presbyterians who in the days of the Commonwealth after the Civil War ended sought to impose on England a religious settlement according to the pattern of the Western confessional documents. All the non-conformist Episcopalians, all the Presbyterians were of course ejected in 1662. There were just a few Puritan Episcopalians who conformed in 1662 in the days of the Reformation and so kept their livings in the Episcopal Church. But the non-conformist Episcopalians and the Presbyterians all had to become dissenters. Then there were independents. These words, as you see, all apply to different positions taken regarding church governance. The independents were of different kind. They all believed in congregational independence. But some of them were non-separating. That is, they believed in the appropriateness of the parochial system of the Church of England and all they wanted was to be able to organise parochial churches on an independent basis. Some of them were separating. They believed that any form of a national church was improper and therefore that each individual congregation should be organised in separation from it. And of the separating independents, some were paedo-baptists and those are what we would nowadays call Orthodox Congregationalists and some were Baptists and they are the progenitors of the Baptists of the 20th century. So, there are the many different sorts of ecclesiastical views then held by the different people called Puritans. The second thing that I want to say about the word is that it was applied to both ministers and laymen of various political persuasions because though the majority of the people called Puritans were on the parliamentary side of the Civil War, not all of them were by any means. Some of them were Royalists. John Deary, whom I quoted yesterday as the author of The Character of an Old English Puritan of Protestants or Conformists was on the Royalist side and Richard Baxter, though he was against the King, was against Cromwell and the whole independent body of opinion in English politics from 1645 on and his position politically was distinctly uncomfortable until the Restoration in 1662 when of course his ecclesiastical position became so much more uncomfortable as the whole political question fell into the background. So again, you don't find the differentia, the distinguishing character of a Puritan in one political position rather than another any more than you find it in one position on church government and church order rather than another. And that leads on to the third thing I want to say, which is this that the word was applied to ministers and laymen who shared a common concern about biblical purity in church life, in personal life and in civil government and social life and this is the differentia the distinguishing feature which all Puritans had in common rather than any other. So if you want to define a Puritan you should say that he was first and foremost a man concerned about biblical purity in every branch of life individual and social and secondly he was a person who thought because this certainly was true of all of them who thought that more needed to be done in the way of reformation in order to secure that kind of purity in the life of the church as it existed in Britain in his day. That's the best general definition that we can reach. But don't let's minimize the complexity of this movement on both the ecclesiastical and the political front. Here we tangle head on with a long-standing misconception of what was the positive integrating, controlling principle of the Puritan outlook. Up till about thirty years ago it was commonplace to say that what controlled the Puritan outlook was the old heresy of Manichaeism that is the doctrine of certain things things of the world, pleasures of the senses in general conformity to the ways of ordinary human life was in itself sinful was in itself wrong. This is a long-standing misconception if he sprang as far as one can see from the knowledge that the Puritan regarded himself as indeed he did as being a pilgrim en route from earth to heaven and regarding this world as a wilderness through which he must pass to heaven from the knowledge further that the Puritan did as a matter of history object to music and ritual and generally anything that appealed to the senses in the worship of God and from the knowledge thirdly that the Puritan did in fact object to the theatres of their day and a great deal of the revelry that was common practice in their period and from these facts the inference was drawn that basically the Puritan's thought was this this whole area of the life of the senses this whole area of material things was irrevocably tainted that it was irredeemable that it was in itself sinful that the only thing for the Christian pilgrim to do was to have nothing to do with it so far as this was possible and so you get jives like that of Lord Macaulay in his history of England in the 17th century quote, it's the fame of the Craxus the Puritan hated bear baiting not because it gave pain to the bear but because it gave pleasure to the spectator and you've got the following little poem I can't tell you its author but it's often quoted I believe it may have been written by Alexander Pope anyway, here it is The Puritan through life's sweet garden Goes and sucks the thorns And throws away the rose He thinks to please By this peculiar whim The God who framed and fashioned it for him Well now, that's an expression of the point of view which sees Puritanism as essentially a kind of flopping over of manicheism into the minds of earnest English Christians but this I suggest to you is a complete mistake and the truth about the positive, constraining, compelling principle of Puritanism as indeed I said to you last time is that it is precisely a passion for holiness a passion to see holiness unto the Lord in personal life in social life in every department of human life in other words, it's a comprehensive religious, ecclesiastical, cultural ideology in fact a thoroughly reformed one what Kaiser thought to elaborate in the 19th century the Puritans were already trying to work out in the 70s and if one can only inject the Puritan theology into Terry Miller's book, The New England Mind a book from which the theology has been sedulously strained out then one sees that at once and this was the understood right at the outset this positively is what the Puritans were after they were concerned that everything should conform to God's will as revealed in the word of scripture they were Calvinists they were reformed in their theology and they in their day thought to work out a very positive doctrine an all-embracing doctrine not merely of reformed churchmanship but of reformed culture also and that was their great over-mastering positive thrust so, and here we get to our next heading if we now ask the question not just who were the Puritans but what was Puritanism we can answer it like this this is only just a skeleton answer a lot of the headings given here will be filled in as we go along but here's a bird's-eye view of Puritanism right at the outset of our study what was it? it was a God-centered worldview based on belief in God's absolute sovereignty based on belief that Holy Scripture was the full revelation of his mind for men and among its characteristic ideals were the following and here we subdivide one for the individual Christian a thoroughgoing evangelical religion based on the recognition of total depravity and the receiving of the grace of Christ based if you like on regeneration and conversion to Christ expressing itself in a life marked by self-sufficiency and self-examination because of the deceitfulness of one's own heart but marked also by joy and assurance of faith which joy and assurance it was believed would grow stronger if a man was simulant in self-sufficiency and measuring and testing his life by Scripture assurance grows through testing so the Puritans believed and their view of the Christian life was emphatically not that it was one of anxious gloom but that it was one of joy because it was a life of tested assurance the Puritan as a pilgrim en route to heaven knew where he was going knew that God had received him knew that he was safe in the covenant and thereby was made strong to fight the good fight of faith against sin and his forces that array themselves against God made strong therefore to fulfill his calling as a good, may I say a good Calvinistic Christian soldier he must use all the means of grace he would be very presumptuous if he didn't he must recognize his own weakness and his need of the means of grace the primary means of grace is the preaching of the word and he must be a good churchman meeting together with the people of God in the place where the word is preached listening to sermons with care taking note of them memorizing what they said making notes if need be turning the truths taught in sermons into prayer this is the primary means of grace said the Puritan they made much of sermons again he must sanctify the sermons this too is one of the means of grace he must sanctify it for the purpose of worship and he must sanctify it too for the purpose of godliness in the family the Puritan must be a good family man it is indeed to the Puritans that we owe our heritage in the realm of Christian thought about in the realm of thought about and teaching about the Christian home the Puritans we may say invented the Christian home the Puritans gave much teaching as to how the Christian home and family should be sanctified particularly on the Lord's day when the family would go to worship and then when they came home father priest in the little church which the family constituted who they regularly used to say and father must make sure that the family had learned what had been taught in the sermons father must catechize the family father must lead the family in devotion father must see that the family profited from the exercises of the Lord's day this individual Christian must be a man who lives in the light of the account that he must one day give to God he must therefore daily be seeking to stir himself up and praying for grace to stir himself up to effort, diligence, activity in the service of his God you find in the Puritans the characteristic Calvinistic activism which is something quite different from Arminian activism Arminian activism says work as hard as you can because God is depending on you Calvinistic activism says work out your own salvation with fear and trembling because God is working in you to cause you to will and to do of his own good pleasure you see how different those two sorts of activism are if I may throw this out don't oppose Arminian activism by Calvinistic passivity and inactivity activism is right, but it must be the right sort of activism in the Puritans you see what I conceive to be the right sort of activism they would not allow themselves or anyone else to sit at ease in Zion time must be redeemed, they said you must do all the good you can for the glory of the Lord if you look around you'll see that there's far more good waiting to be done than you'll have time to do well get at it and do as much as you can that was part of the Puritan philosophy of life the final aspect of the Puritan view of the life of the individual Christian he must recognize, said the Puritans the significance of time and circumstances this was a corollary of their strong doctrine of divine sovereignty all times and all circumstances they said mean something and you're intended to consider what they mean and what is the best way, says the Puritan phrase, to improve them that is to make the most of them for the glory of God if you're meeting with opposition, adversity illness, discouragement, loneliness, frustration in external things well that means something, said the Puritans just as that kind of experience meant something for Job and was sent him by God so that he could improve it make something of it by walking faithfully with his God then, despite all these discouragements so it means something for you, something similar in text of the Puritans you too must learn to walk with God in darkness and glorify him in the days of darkness as you wait on him confidently looking for the light to dawn again and similarly, if God prospers your way if things are going well for you if God in his mercy multiplies material possessions if God in his mercy gives you positions of influence and responsibility well that also means something, said the Puritans God has given you this for a purpose beware lest you become complacent and puffed up rejoicing in your success but ask yourself what it is that the Lord means you to do with the opportunities and the privileges that have come your way all circumstances mean something and one element in our Christian thinking and our Christian praying should be the attempt to discern the meaning of particular situations and, like the Men of Ithaca, to know what Israel ought to do and to know what you yourself ought to do at particular times and seasons well, here are some of the leading motifs in the Puritan exposition of the individual Christian life and we can say that the first thing that Puritanism was was an ideology of this kind for the individual believer but we can move on now to a second subject what was Puritanism? well, it was a worldview that involved, secondly in the realm of church government and worship a strictification of the principle that nothing should be done or allowed that hasn't got scriptural sanction now that formula is not so easy to apply as it looks and as this variety of different types of Puritan churchmanship will show you the Puritans weren't always able to agree among themselves as to what in fact the scriptures prescribed and what in fact the scriptures forbade in church life but at least they were insistent that nothing must be done in the life of the people of God that hasn't got sanction from the word of God in particular, things which are consensually indifferent in the life of the church so they said, and this applies to all of them ought not to be imposed but rather ought to be left to be used or not used at the discretion of the individual conscience this they said was an aspect of Christian liberty that you were left free to make up your own mind as to what you'll do in the realm of things indifferent this, in all the Puritans, is how it ought to be I must hasten to say that they then differed among themselves as to what should be done in a church situation where in fact, and in the Church of England things indifferent, like the use of the surface the sign of the cross in baptism and the rest of them were in fact imposed and some of them said that in this situation it was lawful to conform on the ground of necessity on the ground that is, that your ministry was needed in the church that you would not have opportunity to serve God in the ministry if you didn't conform and that in fact the evil, though really evil, was tolerable and the majority of Puritans said no, the evil is not tolerable the argument from necessity is not cogent we cannot conform, we must be non-conformists for this we have to leave the church over this where we must abide it in order to keep our consciences pure both these points of view were argued in print and were held by one or another of the people called Puritans then another element in the Puritan ideal the church government of worship, which they all held was that effective discipline in the congregation was part of the scriptural pattern of church life and that a church that didn't have it was a defective church again, they didn't all think, indeed very few of them thought that the absence of adequate parish discipline or so they judged it to be the absence of adequate parish discipline in the Church of England was a valid reason for separation that it itself a few did, most didn't but they all insisted that there ought to be effective discipline in the local congregation most of them thought that the Anglican provision for discipline which based it on the diocese I'll be going back over all these things but I'm not giving you a detailed account of the situations now so don't ask me questions about them it will come up in detail later on but as I say, Anglican discipline was based in general on the diocese and the bishop and the diocese and courts and that most of the few of them thought wasn't adequate the unit of discipline ought to be the local congregation but they didn't all agree amongst themselves as to how in fact congregational discipline was to be exercised and some were independent and some were presbyterian but they all of them insisted that there must be discipline and they all of them were in general strong churchmen with a very strong concern for the shape of things in the outward life of the church of Christ they were not, in other words, pietists this is the point that I want to underline at this stage a pietist is a person who is tremendously concerned about personal godliness but is unconcerned allows himself to be unconcerned about the outward face of the church and the community some people who only know Puritanism through the Pilgrim's Progress which deals, of course, entirely with the pilgrimage of the individual Christians have come to the conclusion that Puritanism was essentially a pietistic movement or that there was a kind of alternatively, that there was a kind of dichotomy between the Puritan concern for individual godliness the concerns of which Pilgrim's Progress bears witness and the Puritan concern for the holy community which was manifested in all the ecclesiastical debates that Puritanism threw up but the truth is there was no dichotomy here at all the Puritans were not changing gear when they moved from the one concern to the other both of them were integral aspects of the Puritan belief that God requires holiness in every department of life in the world that he's made personal life, church life, social life the whole concern was one and it was, as I say, differentiated in all these particular spheres but you couldn't be more wrong than to call a Puritan a pietist and imply that there were certain areas of church life and perhaps life in society in general too in which he hadn't any interest everything must be holiness under the Lord this is the over-mastering unity of the Puritan worldview well, we've looked at Puritanism as a worldview with its particular ideology for the individual Christian and its particular, its distinctive basic principles in the realm of church government and worship a third subject for a minister the Puritans had, again their own characteristic ideal that a Christian minister must be able learned godly able to preach and able to do the work of a pastor to individual troubled souls in Puritanism you find in its highest form the traditional high ideal for the ministry it always marked the reformed churches ever since Calvin came but the particular emphasis that you find in the Puritan ideal for the ministry that you haven't always found in all the reformed churches everywhere is this insistence that the minister in addition to knowing his theology and being thoroughly learned in the teaching of the scripture must be able to preach it effectively powerfully with the Puritan word and must be a good casuist must be, as we would say, a good personal worker must, that is, be able to apply truth effectively to the spiritual needs of the individual the Puritan ministers first became distinctive by their power as preachers and their skill as casuists and let me put off by that word casuists this is not the Roman sort of casuistry but the Protestant sort more about that later and, as I say, the Puritans were insistent that all ministers must be powerful preachers must seek to be powerful preachers and skillful casuists and what that meant we'll see at a later stage and then, fourthly, the Puritan worldview had a specific application to the realm of politics and civil law and society life and here the distinctive Puritan position though in fact it's only just an application of the characteristic reformed position was thus that all laws in a state must be just by scriptural standards of equity and they must be such as forward and don't hinder true religion again, judged by the scriptural standard of what true religion is and civil rulers must regard themselves as God's ministers and deputies as in Romans 13 and they must seek so to fulfill their work to give a true service of God a true ministry unto the Lord in such a way that godliness is advanced and encouraged and wickedness and vice public evil is punished and suppressed this of course raised this formula in its application in the 17th century raised the question of toleration the real issue was here should the state the real issue was this I should say should the state the Christian state penalize and punish and prohibit unorthodox belief publicly held is this the way in which the state glorifies God when it's unorthodox belief publicly held not creating any civil disorder but simply there processed, proclaimed should it be inhibited by the state or should it not at the beginning of the 17th century nearly every English Puritan thought that it should and of course this is what they thought in Calvin's Geneva and this is why Cerritos was burned but by the end of the 17th century through the testimony of Cromwell and the Independents and the Baptists all of whom were for toleration it had generally been come to be accepted as a matter of right that is a part of God's revealed will a true understanding of his mind for civil society that consciences should be allowed liberty and man should be given by the civil governor a right to be wrong provided that his wrong beliefs didn't bring with them civil disorder liberty of conscience, so the argument ran provided the situation in which the spirit of God was free to lead men into truth provided that situation in a way that compulsory a civil compulsion of orthodoxy didn't do so I say Cromwell and the Independents and the Baptists of course belong to the Independents the Independents families, the Baptists they were the first to see this and be convinced of it the Presbyterians, I'm sorry to say were the last to be convinced of it but by the time that civil toleration came in 1688 with the revolution and the end of the Stuart monarchy and the coming of William and Mary to the English throne with that went an act of toleration which gave the non-conformists the non-English and dissenters liberty which they hadn't had before by the time that came Presbyterians as well as Independents who'd been dissenters all these years were quite convinced that it was the right thing to happen toleration had made its way but there was great argument in the middle of the 17th century at the time of the Civil War and under the Commonwealth as to whether toleration of Christian beliefs or offensively Christian beliefs which in the judgement of the majority of the majority were in fact unorthodox ought to be allowed well, as I say, gradually toleration made its way and as you can see it's a real problem if the state is going to glorify God and further his truth then the likeness of toleration is by no means more obvious than the thing that's got to be argued out and in the 17th century it was and with a struggle they came through to toleration as did the other reformed churches as indeed the Dutch reformed churches had done before the English ones did and if you want to see the arguments then I'd urge you to read the chapter on politics in Abraham Keiser's lectures on Calvinism where the argument for toleration is very succinctly and effectively presented in reformed terms and fifthly what was Puritanism in the realm of culture? well, the Puritan worldview applied to the realm of culture in the following ways ways which as you'll see are the very reverse of Philistine ways which in fact are not anti-cultural but cultural in a very positive manner all man's powers are to be devoted to the service of God including his cultural powers so says the Puritans 300 years before Keiser equally all the good things of creation are given to be used and enjoyed not enjoyed in the wrong manner but enjoyed in the right manner for the praise of God and our culture must reflect a recognition of this fact so the Puritans developed a culture which in fact had great breadth and richness it had to be sure a moral cause and it was in direct conflict with the degenerates that is the immoral elements in the culture of the secular culture of 17th century England and there were plenty of degenerate and immoral elements in 17th century culture which had to be challenged and fought but for instance and in the realm of education the Puritans and themselves were university men carried on the great Renaissance tradition of founding grammar schools in many cases teaching in grammar schools in the parishes teaching their parishioners to read writing books for them founding schools, I mentioned that founding academies too after 1662, academies to do work at university level and when English Puritans emigrated to America the first thing they did was to found schools at Harvard University the Puritans were for education, not against it they should be appreciated right at the outset and B, in the realm of the arts the Puritans were pro and not con Puritanism has sometimes been accused of cultural barrenness well it certainly may be that later degenerate forms of the 17th century Puritan tradition did become culturally barren but in the Puritan period itself it certainly wasn't so take the realm of music the Puritans to be sure opposed choirs in church and they destroyed organs in church did this mean that they were against music? no, it simply meant that they thought that in churches the singing ought to be congregational singing and they were simply concerned to make way for congregational singing and that was the whole of their motive in fact they encouraged music for recreational purposes most of them played an instrument vocal music flourished under the Commonwealth they sang mad riggles as assiduously in the days of Cromwell as they had done in the days of Elizabeth the first English opera was produced under the Commonwealth The Siege of Rhodes by Sir William Denton produced in 1657 was known as a personal honour to Cromwell himself as patron of the performance and talking of Cromwell you may be interested to know that at the marriage of his daughter Frances there was a string band of 48 which kept the dancing going until 5 o'clock in the morning I don't know whether you associate that kind of thing with the Puritans, but that's a little episode from Cromwell's domestic life what about the poetry? well, if you just think of three poets Edmund Spencer, John Milton, Andrew Marvel honesty compels one to acknowledge that they were Puritans so far as their known sympathies and their known friendships and their known interests were concerned they all of them were firmly rooted in the Puritan tradition take drama to be sure the Puritans opposed the contemporary theatre largely because the performances habitually took place on Sunday, the Lord's Day partly also because so many of the plays were bawdy and the theatres in fact were centres of light but were they opposed to acting, dramatic performances or principles? a few of them were, but not all of them by any means Milton's coma is a mask for acting Cromwell in fact acted in a pastoral by Andrew Marvel at the wedding of another of his daughters, Mary and this goes for New England also again, take dancing to be sure the Puritans opposed what they called lascivious mixed dancing and you can work out from their very description why and many of us find it necessary to oppose lascivious mixed dancing at the present time that doesn't mean that they were opposed to all dancing dancing of all sorts did you know for instance that at the ordination of Jonathan Edwards' father they had a dance at two years they spread to New England and all these texts were dredged up in a most interesting if in some ways pernickety book by Percy Scholes I notice you've got it in your library, Percy Scholes S-P-H-O-L-E-S he was a musicologist and his book is called The Puritans and Music he got so fed up with hearing these repeated these repeated assurances that the Puritans were all against music when he'd come across one or two facts which seemed to throw doubt on it but he did a thorough investigation and wrote a complete book about it and it's full of interesting facts of the kind that I've said before you including this, it was from him that I got this fact about dancing at the ordination of Jonathan Edwards' father and Scholes, with a rather nice little aside imagines a person who is convinced of the essential gloom of the Puritan ethos commenting, oh these gloomy Puritans they actually had ordinations of their dancing so there you are there's a preliminary sketch with bird's eye view tones of some of the leading themes in Puritan culture what was Puritanism? well it was an ideology like that we should be developing some of these headings and some of these themes and saying more about what needs to go under some of these headings as the course goes on so that I think is enough for this afternoon that gives you your preliminary orientation and we can get down to details a little more tomorrow any questions? we've got five minutes and there was no time for questions yesterday I should have said perhaps yesterday and I think I may have failed to say to this class that I don't in the least object to being interrupted when I'm lecturing if I've said something that you haven't understood it's far better to ask a question at the time than simply lose track of what's going on for the next half hour or so so if I do say anything about which you immediately want to ask a question or which you haven't understood and want me to stop and explain put your hand up and ask straight away that's by the way any questions now about yesterday's lecture or today's or these last five minutes? will you be concentrating on the history of children's development or the teaching of children's development? I shall sketch out the former and put the microscope on the latter a more detailed treatment will be of particular themes and emphases in terms of the history I suppose will occupy it's hard to say seven or eight lectures perhaps perhaps not so much and then the theology and the explorations of the different aspects of Puritan culture will be taken away the course is English Puritanism rather than the history of the English Puritanism in commenting on the political aspect of Puritanism you said that most of them were on the side of Parliament but some were Royalists the Parliament side was it primarily composed of Puritans or were there some more co-church people also on this side? No, hardly there were a number of different groups of people on the Parliamentary side but I think it's true to say that whereas the Royalists were all the Royalists were all churchmen sorry, I'll be on my way round whereas it's true to say that all those who were Royalists were churchmen no, I'm sorry, I am saying it backwards reverse and back to where we were while it's true to say that there weren't any churchmen on the Parliamentary side that is the Parliament which you probably know took down the Church of England in the form in which it had been known since the Elizabethan Reformation the use of a prayer book was declared illegal and Archbishop Lord, like King Charles I was in due course executed Lord was executed for treason and the Church of England in its century old form was banished from the face of the earth the parochial organisation I may say remained what they tried to do was to reorganise it in presbyteries but that really never got off the ground outside London and one or two other urban centres and when Cromwell became protector what he devised was a sort of non-uniformitarian establishment where each congregation was in fact an independent congregation and the minister of this church could just do as they thought fit they weren't in synodical relation to any of the other parishes of the country and just different things were being done in the realm of church order in different parishes all the people who fought for the Parliament were, one may say, content to have this happening but some of the Puritans who wanted to see the church reformed did believe in what in some circles was called the Divine Life of King they believed that is in the Elizabethan doctrine of the godly prince which was based on the Old Testament idea that kings were by God appointed, God gave Israel its king and he was there to be a minister of God to them and since he had given since God had given them the king it was in principle wrong for them to take up arms against the king and that doctrine of the Divine Life of King came back in 1662 and was written into the Act of Uniformity an undertaking not to take up arms against the king as part of the Act of Uniformity in 1662 well, I'm sorry, I'm rambling a bit but that answers your question