Continuing through The Worship of the English Puritans by Horton Davies:
The author gives some of his own appraisals rather than immediately quoting Durel, even though that is how he began his chapter. In Davies’ opinion, while the Puritans would invoke their own interpretation of Scripture in order to condemn, say, Calvin’s Church in Geneva when a difference was pointed out to them, they were ultimately ignorant of the greatness of the variance between their own convictions and those of the Continental Reformed Churches.
They would probably have been surprised had they realized the extent of their divergence from the customs of the Reformed Churches. They would have been even more amazed that, in certain features of her worship, the Established Church in England approximated more closely to the Reformed Tradition than they did themselves (p. 38).
The main point here was the use of written prayers, as opposed to only extemporaneous prayers, in public worship. Some Puritans, such as Richard Baxter, had no such scruples against using written prayers. But many did. Their influence is seen in the Westminster Directory, which Horton Davies says, “brought Puritan practice nearer to Calvin’s” (p. 39), but couldn’t actually include written prayers to be read in worship.
FWIW, I am convinced that the “early Reformers” (the Reformers proper) got it right, and that the seventeenth century reveals a certain downgrade, especially in England with the Puritan movement. Increasingly the evidence for this is coming forth. How can one have confidence in people who quibble over the sign of the cross over the baptismal water, prescribed prayers like the Lord’s Prayer, and object to wedding rings?
The English nation gave them their chance during the Republic, and they blew it. The people couldn’t wait to have a king back, and the old Church of England with its Protestant and Reformed sanity.
The BCP is a jewel of truly Reformed religion, and it embodies true English Reformation theology and worship.
The Puritans wanted to reform a church that was already Reformed!
One partial corrective: The Anglican Church did truly suffer from a concerted effort to proclaim Arminianism and to marginalize Calvinism. This is recorded in Nicholas Tyacke’s Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism c. 1590-1640 (Oxford Historical Monographs). So there was a need for a Reformed movement.
On the other hand, your point is substantiated by one strategy used against the Calvinists, which was to claim that Calvinism was particularly the theology of the Puritans/Dissenters. Good Calvinists in the Church of England saw themselves portrayed as people with all these scruples.
If I’m correct in my perceptions of the common view of history held by most Presbyterians, then there is a certain irony to be found in the fact that there view of the Puritans as the Reformed remnant in the Church of England has more in common with the Arminian propagandists than with the views of most English Calvinists of the day.
It certainly seems that Archbishop Laud was a bit dodgy, and he was even accused of being a secret Roman, which he denied till his death. I don’t know anything about his beliefs except from the Puritan perspective, thanks to my evangelical background. He may simply have been a high churchman and an anti-Puritan.
Perhaps one of the historians can enlighten us.
A telling historical fact is that when the Church of England was resurrected in 1662 there was no attempt to Arminianise it at all. If there was such a desire, then that was certainly the time to do it! What happened instead? Cranmer’s BCP 1552 was restored with minor tweakings to appease the Puritans (!), with the original 39 Articles, which are soundly and completely Reformed. No trace of Arminianism at all in them. In fact, free will in salvation is explicitly denied.
To me that is tellingly significant.