Government by polemic

This book is a study of the Anglican Church in the Jacobean period, a time of central importance in English religious and political history. By looking at official words instead of official deeds, the author challenges the recent revisionist position, made by both Anglican apologists and historians, that the reign of James I was an era of religious consensus and political moderation.

Analyzing sermons preached and then ordered into print by the king, the book demonstrates that the Jacobean claim to "moderation" and the pursuit of a so-called via media were rhetorical strategies aimed at isolating Elizabethan-style Calvinist reformers and alienating their supporters.