In chapter 4 we examined the role of anti-papal polemic in the maintenance of the moderate puritan world-view. The theme of that chapter was the potency of such polemic as a gesture, a source of ideological leverage in the domestic disputes amongst English protestants. In the present chapter the content of some of those polemics will be examined in order to reveal the theological bases of William Whitaker's view of the world. Such a procedure involves an element of distortion. Whitaker's intention in his polemical writing was to refute the papists; our intention here is to gain some insight into his world-view as a whole. The end result will not, therefore, be a technical account or evaluation of Whitaker's performance against the papists, but a series of more general remarks about his style of divinity. As the title of this chapter suggests this position will be seen as, at best, refracted through his anti-papal works.

Such an approach is defensible on two grounds. The first is practical: Whitaker's anti-papal works provide the only source available for such an undertaking. His obsession with Rome ensured that this was the case. But the very extent of that obsession surely renders it legitimate to approach his thought through his works against Rome.