Religious Divisions^211
(Left) King James I. (Right) The young Charles, heir to the throne and later
Charles I.
Religious Divisions
King Charles I once claimed, “People are governed by the pulpit more than
the sword in time of peace.” In the seventeenth century, no other realm of
life so bitterly divided Europeans as religion. In England, religious divisions
helped accentuate and define the political crisis. The Established or Angli
can Church faced a challenge from the Puritans, a dissident religious group
of Calvinists that had emerged during Elizabeth s reign.
Many Puritans were more sure of what they were against than what they
were for. Puritans were strongly attracted by the Calvinist idea that each
individual was predestined by God through His grace to be saved or not to be
saved. They emphasized preaching and the individual’s personal under
standing of the Bible, spiritual devotion, discipline, and sacrifice as the basis
of religion. Because they emphasized the personal worth of the individual
minister, not the value of an ecclesiastical title, Puritans opposed the role of
bishops in the Church of England. They wanted authority to be taken away
from bishops and given to local synods (ecclesiastical councils made up of
clerical and lay leaders). They de-emphasized the sacraments and wanted
worship to be simpler than the contemporary Anglican Church services.
Relentlessly hostile to Catholicism, Puritans held that elaborate church
accoutrements in the Church of England—such as stained-glass windows
and ornate altar rails—smacked of the Roman papacy.
Puritans did not choose the name by which they came to be known in the
late sixteenth century, which was originally intended as a term of abuse.
Considering themselves “the godly,” they believed that they represented the
