Restorationism

===Church of England and Caroline Divines===

Perhaps the most primitivist minded of the Protestant Reformation era were a group of scholars within the Church of England known as the Caroline Divines, who flourished in the 1600s during the reigns of [[Charles I of England|Charles I]] and [[Charles II of England|Charles II]]. They regularly appealed to the Primitive Church as the basis for their reforms.<ref name="McIlhiney 1975 143–154">{{Cite journal |last=McIlhiney |first=David B. |date=1975 |title=The Protestantism of the Caroline Divines |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/42974662 |journal=Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church |volume=44 |issue=2 |pages=143–154 |jstor=42974662 |issn=0018-2486}}</ref> Unlike many other Christian Primitivists, the Church of the England and the Caroline Divines did not subject Scriptural interpretation to individual human reason, but rather to the hermeneutical consensus of the Church Fathers, holding to the doctrine of Prima Scriptura as opposed to Sola Scriptura.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Doll |first=Peter |date=1996 |title=The Idea of the Primitive Church in High Church Ecclesiology from Samuel Johnson to J.H. Hobart |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/42611756 |journal=Anglican and Episcopal History |volume=65 |issue=1 |pages=6–43 |jstor=42611756 |issn=0896-8039}}</ref> Furthermore, they did not hold to the separatist ecclesiology of many primitivist groups, but rather saw themselves as working within the historic established church to return it to its foundation in Scripture and the patristic tradition.<ref name="McIlhiney 1975 143–154"/> Among the Caroline Divines were men like Archbishop William Laud, Bishop Jeremy Taylor, Deacon Nicholas Ferrar and the Little Gidding Community and others.