Lamont sees Coleman's preaching in 1644 as an important precursor of Thomas Hobbes, anticipating principles to be found in Leviathan.
Matters were left to drift while the Presbyterians made hopeful comments about the possible good to come from orderliness within the churches.
But they made for strange bedfellows, with the Presbyterians now borrowing the positions of the Independents, considering that the actual contemporary situation was a breakdown of order, and all for the sake of denying the Erastian position of effective control through the state,[4] According to Lamont: ...Coleman, Prynne and their colleagues were Calvinists who believed that the reprobate majority must be disciplined into virtue (they were outraged by 'toleratorists'); they no longer believed, however, that the clerics were the men to administer that discipline.
[5]Lamont sums up the Erastians in relation to theocracy in this way: While Coleman and his fellow-Erastians were merely emphasising the failure of the Westminster Assembly and the dishonouring of the Covenant as signs of God's Displeasure, they were still talking the language of 'Godly Rule'.
When they took the further step of generalising from this experience — of emphasising the inadequacy of any attempt to read God's Mind — they were moving beyond 'Godly Rule' and towards Hobbes.