Erastianism and invisible church

PG Lake writes that Whitgift “used a Calvinist view of the doctrine of predestination to shift much of Cartwright’s rhetoric about the glory and purity of the church from the visible to the invisible church. By doing so, he was able to clear the way for that erastian dominance of the church by the magistrate for which his work is famous, and to challenge the significance of a practical division between the godly and the ungodly as the crucial act in the creation of a true church.”

Lake says that as a result Whitgift developed as “laconically distances view of the membership of the visible church” and the visible church’s role in “that process whereby God was reunited with his elect was also emptied of much of its positive religious significance.” He thinks there is continuity between Whitgift’s version of Calvinism and his endorsement of pluralism and non-residence among the clergy: “Once the minister had preached the word and some of his flock had responded, he could quite legitimately and with a clear conscience go off and expound the word elsewhere, secure in the knowledge that his first set of converts were all right – if they were elect they would not fall; if they were not, well, that was hardly the minister’s fault.”