In his 2002 thesis Transmission and Transformation on Thomas Goodwin and the Puritan Project 1600-1704, TM Lawrence writes
Men who had been trained to preach and teach, men who had spent a lifetime
developing the rhetorical tools necessary to persuade a nation to godliness, were by
this act forbidden to do the very thing for which they lived. Adding injury to insult,
the harsh sanctions of the Clarendon Code were soon enacted to enforce their silence.
Cut off from both public life and public worship, Goodwin did not simply withdraw
to the tranquil world of the pastor’s study. Rather, he was forced into the quietly
furtive life of the nonconformist minister, managing his affairs in order to avoid
confrontation with the authorities.
