ABSTRACT
In George Gifford’s view, those who chose to obey “whatsoever any prince doth set forth” were effectively denying God, and their behaviour was “worse than a Turke”. In practice, Gifford’s argument was applied by many zealous ministers to the disputed ceremonies of the established church. The military metaphors of zealous authors, who referred routinely to conversion as a “battle” and the Christian life as a “war”, were adapted seamlessly to the military situation in 1642. According to Lord Brooke, “Christ came to set a sword, not only between the good and bad, but even among professors of the same Christian religion”. The chapter explains Eales in emphasising the continuity of Elizabethan and early Stuart puritanism, and argues that many of the key developments in the two years before the civil war were shaped by the long-established preoccupations of the “hotter sort” of Protestants.
