‘Stinking in the Grave’

This chapter explores the creation of conforming Puritanism, a powerful alternative to Presbyterianism in Puritan thought. This strain of Puritanism reconciled the demands of edifying reform with conformity to the Established Church, by proposing a model of godly episcopacy and showing the benefits of conformity. In the 1570s, Matthew—now a key player in Elizabethan Puritanism—argued that ‘edifying reform’ could only be secured in the Established Church. Drawing on arguments about godly magistracy first used in the vestment crisis, Matthew stressed that as part of the Established Church, ministers could rely on magistrates to exercise the monarch’s powers in the Church in order to pursue godly reform. Popularized by increasingly virulent anti-Catholicism, this vision of godly magistracy secured conformity but was potentially seditious.