The chapter provides an account of the various authorities – the scripture, apostolic and ecclesiastical tradition, the positive law of the church – that underpinned and informed the practices of the national church. The Laudian contention that the right sort of ceremonial performance served to unite the practice of the militant church with that of the triumphant is outlined, and the Laudians’ combination of traditional conformist arguments about things indifferent with more novel contentions about scripture, and thus their capacity to render ceremonies previously held to be indifferent religiously significant and spiritually effectual while still insisting on their status as adiaphora, is stressed. The result was minimum and maximum justifications of the Laudian programme, which could be used to win over different audiences or constituencies.