1. For a discussion of some of these alternative visions of Christianity see Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979).
2. Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (London: Penguin, 2009), 130.
3. Richard L. Greaves, “The Ordination Controversy and the Spirit of Reform in Puritan England,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 21 (1970), 225.
4. Christopher Hill, Society & Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (New York: Schocken, 1964), 487–8. David D. Hall points out that in his early writings Luther took the position that “the whole body of the faithful were priests: all who were believers could offer the ‘spiritual’ sacrifice of faith,” but that by the 1530s he had retreated from this position as he came to see a greater need for order.
5. David D. Hall, The Faithful Shepherd: A History of the New England Ministry in the Seventeenth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972), 7–8.