Whatever difficulties and ambiguities attend the term “Puritan,” scholars are nevertheless obliged to employ it. For general purposes “Puritanism” refers to an identifiable group of English Protestants from the period of Elizabeth I to the interregnum who embraced Reformed theology to a substantial degree and sought in various ways further to reform the Church of England. When these reform efforts were met with increasing persecution, what had begun as an ecclesiastical reform movement within the
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