Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/76

 Erastian is a word usually balanced with Presbyterian and Independent in the ecclesiastical controversies of the Great Civil War; but it is not easy to frame an exact definition for it. The term was one of reproach, and applied to a set of men temporarily united to carry a point of policy rather than to a party with a definitely drawn platform to exemplify. At best Erastianism stands, not for a platform of ecclesiastical polity, but for a determination that Parliament should set up a church government without being harassed by claims that this or that must of divine right be included.

An analysis of the word will help a little. Thomas Erastus was a contemporary of Calvin who had questioned the right of church officers to excommunicate. As excommunication was the coercive weapon of the church, acceptance of Erastus’s doctrine implied the further admission that the civil state alone had coercive authority in religious affairs. In the Westminster Assembly a few Hebraists like Selden, Lightfoot, and Coleman defended this doctrine with a theory of the relation of church and state in the Hebrew nation; namely, that the two resided in the same body, and were indistinguishable. Applied to English conditions, this would mean complete control of the church by the state.