The Ordination Controversy and the Spirit of Reform in Puritan England

Abstract

Commencing with the Waldensian movement in the twelfth century and continuing with the Lollard and Hussite movements in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, critical thinkers in the Christian tradition began to stress the basic equality of all believers. The ideology of Protestantism embraced that principle in its doctrine of ‘the priesthood of all believers’, though the interpretation of the doctrine varied considerably. A century and a quarter after the inception of the Protestant Reformation, English writers engaged in a full-fledged debate on the right to preach. Before the debate had concluded, the original, strictly religious question had given rise to issues of much greater import, and in so doing had helped to create the spirit of reform which was the hallmark of Puritan England.