ABSTRACT
In a fast sermon preached before members of the Commons in December 1641 Edmund Calamy made it clear that there was much still to be done. The Sabbath continued to be profaned and in the churches idolatry and superstition were flourishing. The time had come, Calamy stressed, ‘to bury all superstitious Ceremonies in the grave of oblivion and perfect a Reformation according to the Word of God.’ The Puritan squires who sat in the Long Parliament would have wholeheartedly agreed with his account of the evils of the day and with his proposal that there should be a national synod of divines which would provide advice on the settlement of religion. In the preamble to the Derbyshire petition the signatories expressed their gratitude to God for the work of reformation which had already been started and their desire that it might be brought to ‘a sweet perfection’.
