The Puritans 63

the other hand, the Georges, in a book whose occasional
crudities and lack of comprehension must not be allowed to
overshadow its insights, have concluded (from a new and some-
times naive study of the same body of writings) that no funda-
mental difference existed between so-called puritan and angli-
can intellectual attitudes.371 As doubts began to grow, Walzer
restored some spirit to the older view by extracting a kind of
revolutionary essence from puritan writings and constructing
a morphology of the modern revolutionary, first discernible in
these men.372 Remarkable as his book is, it fails to make some
necessary distinctions, but the attempt to do so has led to
unresolved debates. Underdown and Yule argue the differences
between presbyterians and independents;373 Foster, with quite
unnecessary rudeness and without being able to clinch the
point, holds that the question never existed;874 Kaplan shows
that it certainly did, at least at precise moments in time;375
Pearl finds men of genuine 'independent' convictions who
could not stomach the puritan commonwealth.376 Abernathy
is sure that he can treat the presbyterians at least as a definable
group, once they had lost the battle for control.377 The level-
lers, thanks to their ideas which were 'ahead of their time* and

571 Charles H. and Katherine George, The Protestant Mind of the
English Reformation. Princeton UP: 1961. Pp. x, 452. Rev: HJ 5,

S78 Michael Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints. G (Mass.): Harvard
UP: 1965. Pp, xiv, 334. Rev: History and Theory 7, losff.; Hist 52,

873 George Yule, The Independents in the English Civil War. CUP:
1958. Pp. viii, 156. Rev: AHR 64, 362^ - D. E. Underdown, 'The
Independents reconsidered', JBS 3 (1964), 57-84. - George
Yule, 'Independents and revolutionaries', JBS 7 (1968), 11-32.

874 Stephen Foster, 'The presbyterian independents exorcized: a ghost
story for historians', PP 44 (1969), 52-75.

*75 Lawrence Kaplan, 'Presbyterians and Independents in 1643*,
EHR 84 (1969), 244-56.

876 Valerie Pearl, "The "Royal Independents" in the English civil
war', TRHS (1968), 69-96.

877 George R. Abernathy, The English Presbyterians and the Stuart
JRtstoration, 1648 - 1663. Philadelphia: American Philos. Soc,: 1965.
Pp. loi. Rev: EHR 82 I7of.