Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
This paper considers women’s participation in the congregations of Civil War and Interregnum England. In particular it is concerned with the idea of whether women sectaries in the 1640s and 1650s had a different idea of church polity from their brethren, or whether, within the confines of the sects, they continued to play the role traditionally assigned to women in Christianity: that of the spiritually inspired, the example of holiness rather than the leader. In short, did women even in the sects remain outside the church polity?
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25 Six Women Preachers, p. 3.
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50 I am grateful to Dr W. Sheils for this point.
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