se. Thus the most notable theological treatises and controversies of the
Elizabethan period, for example the Apology, the Admonition
Controversy, the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, did not entail overly
detailed debates about theology. If Tyacke’s distinction between
experiential Calvinism and Church Calvinism proves correct in
demarcating later Elizabethan Puritanism from many of the ensconced
clergy, then is this difference, even if only incipiently, discerned in an
earlier period, namely, in the earliest years of Elizabeth’s Church. Such a
contrast of competing Calvinisms Peter Lake has demonstrated, and
distinguishes the moderately Calvinist, evangelical establishment from
those who believed themselves unable to condone the Settlement, and
who thus took an active role in opposing it stretching back into
Elizabeth’s reign.^35 Though Lake does not extend this distinction back
into the 1560s, beginning his study with the conflict between Thomas
Cartwright and John Whitgift, nonetheless, Cartwright’s contentions did
not stem from any Puritan aversion to the doctrine of the Church of
England. With respect to the 1560s Tyacke’s and Lake’s findings and
distinctions require a sharper focus, for in 1559 and even in 1563, there
cannot be perceived a clear Puritan party, as was later to emerge even as
early as the Vestarian Controversy of 1566, and more explicitly by
1571–72 with the Admonition Controversy, and again in 1587 with the
controversy over Cope’s Bill and Book. What instead should be
recognized is the existence of a Zurich party on the one hand, and a
Genevan party on the other. If one group looked to Calvin and then
Beza, then another group looked to Peter Martyr and Heinrich Bullinger
and Zurich. This distinction is proved in its most notorious exception,
Thomas Sampson, though also Laurence Humphrey to a lesser degree.
Sampson had been a student at Oxford when Martyr was there, and was
at Strasbourg during Mary’s reign, both in Martyr’s presence and
absence. Even when Martyr was forced to leave Strasbourg, Sampson
kept in contact with him. Upon Elizabeth’s accession and during the first
years of her reign he persistently importuned Martyr about matters of
polity and rite, yet throughout he just as persistently refused to take
Martyr’s advice. Humphrey did the same, though he later conformed. As
regards the other leading clerics of the first decade-and-a-half of
Elizabeth’s reign, they all followed form in regard to whom they chose
as their ecclesiastical referees.
Yet to see England’s reception of Calvinism (that is, predestination,
even Beza’s articulate definition, let alone Calvin’s) effected only through
THE IDENTITY OF THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH 237
(^35) Peter Lake, Anglicans and Puritans (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988), pp. 25–26. Cf.
especially ‘Predestinarian Propositions’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History46, No. 1
(January 1995), pp. 110–23.