1559–1647

England: royal supremacy, Hooker and Puritan models of the Church

The Acts of 1534 declared Henry VIII supreme head of the Church in his dominions; the changes concerned authority, not doctrine. The Elizabethan Settlement (1559) permitted only the Church of England, and article 34 of the Thirty-Nine Articles gave the national church – in practice the civil authorities – the right to establish and change rites. The English reformers rejected apostolic succession as the criterion of authority ("succession of doctrine," Jewel), but the state church kept control over ordination. Hooker, in Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, taught that church and state are one society with different functions, and that the criteria of polity are Scripture, tradition and reason. The Puritans held the Bible to be a complete guide to church life and divided into Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Baptists, the last understanding the Church as an assembly of believers under covenant, free from the state.