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where! All that believe have the real unity which is most glorious because inward and spiritual in the Body and to the Head As for being united in forms, commonly called uniformity, every Christian will, for peace sake, study and do as far as conscience will permit. And from brethren, in things of the mind, we look for no compulsion but that of light and reason. In other things, God hath put the sword in the Parliament's hands for the terror of evil-doers and the praises of them that do well. If any plead exemption from that, he knows not the Gospel; if any would wring that out of your hands, or steal it from you, under what pretence soever, I hope they shall do it without effect."

No words can better depict the state of Cromwell's mind at this time. Of the religion to which the King and his followers clung there is no question in his thoughts. He would be unwilling to listen to the suggestion that it was to be counted as religion in any worthy sense. Parliament, mutilated as it was, is the authority ordained by God to keep order in the land. For that very reason Parliament was bound to allow full liberty to God's children, whatever might be their differences on matters of discipline or practice. Within the limits of Puritanism, no intolerance might be admitted. A common spiritual emotion-not external discipline or intellectual agreement-was the test of brotherhood. So resolved was the House of Commons

to discountenance this view of the case, that in ordering the publication of Cromwell's two despatches, it mutilated both of them by the omission of the passages advocating liberty of conscience.

At the present day we are inclined to blame Cromwell, not for going too far in the direction of toleration, but for not going far enough. In the middle of the seventeenth century the very idea of toleration in any shape was peculiar to a chosen few. That the majority of the Puritan clergy were bitterly opposed to it affords no matter for surprise. As men of some education and learning, and with a professional confidence in the certainty of their own opinions, they looked with contempt not merely on views different from their own, but also on the persons who, often without the slightest mental culture, ventured to produce out of the Bible schemes of doctrine sometimes immoral, and very often—at least in the opinions of the Presbyterian divines-blasphemous and profane. Even where this was not the case, there remained the danger of seeing the Church of England-which was held to have been purified by the abolition of episcopacy and the banishment of the ceremonies favoured by the bishops-degenerate into a chaos in which a thousand sects battled for their respective creeds, instead of meekly accepting the gospel dealt out to them by their well-instructed pastors. Richard Baxter was a favourable specimen of the Presbyterian clergy.

Conciliatory in temper, he was yet an ardent controversialist, and, for a few months after the battle of Naseby, he accepted the position of chaplain to Whalley's regiment, with the avowed intention of persuading the sectaries to abandon their evil ways. He soon discovered that the greater part of the infantry of the New Model Army was by no means sectarian or even Puritan in its opinions. "The greatest part of the common soldiers," he wrote, " especially of the foot, were ignorant men of little religion, abundance of them such as had been taken prisoners or turned out of garrisons under the King, and had been soldiers in his army; and these would do anything to please their officers." In other words, the sectarian officers could command the services of the army as a whole, backed as they would be by the most energetic of the private soldiers. Nor was Baxter longer in discovering that the military preachers were ready to question received doctrine in politics as well as in religion. "I perceived," he declared, "they took the King for a tyrant and an enemy, and really intended to master him, and they thought if they might fight against him they might kill or conquer him, and if they might conquer they were never more to trust him further than he was in their power; and that they thought it folly to irritate him either by wars or contradictions in Parliament, if so be they must needs take him for their King, and trust him with their lives when they

had thus displeased him." These audacious reasoners went further still. "What," they asked, "were the Lords of England but William the Conqueror's colonels, or the Barons but his majors, or the Knights but his captains?" "They plainly showed me," complained Baxter, "that they thought God's providence would cast the trust of religion and the Kingdom upon them as conquerors; they made nothing of all the most wise and godly in the armies and garrisons that were not of their way. Per fas aut nefas, by law or without it, they were resolved to take down not only Bishops and liturgy and ceremonies, but all that did withstand their way. They . . . most honoured the Separatists, Anabaptists and Antinomians; but Cromwell and his council took on them to join themselves to no party, but to be for the liberty of all."

'To be for the liberty of all' was recognised as being Cromwell's position. There is every reason to suppose that he had at this time little sympathy with the aspirations of those who would have made the army the lever wherewith to obtain political results otherwise unobtainable. In his Bristol despatch he had pointedly adhered to the doctrine that the sword had been placed by God in the hands of Parliament, and for the present he was inclined to look to Parliament alone for the boon he asked of it. What makes Cromwell's biography so interesting is his perpetual effort to walk in the paths of legality—

an effort always frustrated by the necessities of the situation.

It is difficult for us, nursled as we are under a regime of religious liberty, to understand how hateful Cromwell's proposal was in the eyes of the vast majority of his contemporaries. Not only did it shock those who looked down with scorn on the vagaries of the tub-preacher, but it aroused fears lest religious sectarianism should, by splitting up the nation into hostile parties, lead the way to political weakness. To every nation it is needful that there be some bond of common emotion which shall enable it to present an undivided front against its enemies, and such a bond was more than ever needful at a time when loyalty to the throne had been suspended. It was Cromwell's merit to have seen that this bond would be strengthened, not weakened, by the permission of divergencies in teaching and practice, so long as there was agreement on the main grounds of spiritual Puritanism. If on the one hand he was behind Roger Williams in theoretical conception, he was in advance of him in his attempt to fit in his doctrines with the practical needs of his time.

Some assistance Cromwell had from men with whom, on other grounds, he had little sympathy. The Westminster Assembly of divines, which had been sitting since 1643, had done its best to impose the Presbyterian system on England, but in the House of

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