40, as the Puritan Revolution began, Hartlib, Comenius, and Dury
saw the developments in England as the opportunity to put their
scientific-religious plans into effect. They joined together in London
in 1641 and, with strong support, offered proposals to prepare England
for the millennium. They proposed setting up a new university in London
for developing universal knowledge. In spite of the strong backing they
had from leaders of the State and Church, Parliament was unable to fund
the project because of the turmoil of the time. Comenius left for the
Continent, while Hartlib and Dury advanced other projects and involved
themselves in the Westminster conference to reform the Church.[2]

Hugh Trevor-Roper has called Hartlib, Dury, and Comenius "the real
philosophers, the only philosophers, of the English Revolution."[3] They
combined a long list of practical plans with an overall vision of how
these fitted into the needed antecedent events to the millennium. They
made proposals for improving and reforming many aspects of human
activities and human institutions. The advancement of knowledge, the
improvement of human life, and the purification of religion, which
included bringing the Jews and Christians together, would prepare
England for its role when God chose to transform human history. In a
long series of pamphlets and tracts, Hartlib and Dury turned Comenius's
theory into practical applications to the situation then prevailing in
England.[4]

Dury outlined this program in a sermon he gave before Parliament on 26
November 1645 entitled _Israels Call to March Out of Babylon unto
Jerusalem_. He pointed out that England, the new Israel, had a special
role in history, "for the Nations of great _Britain_ have made a new
thing in the world; a thing which hath not been done by any Nation in
the world, since the preaching of the Gospel in it, a thing which since
the Jewish Nation, in the daies of _Nehemiah_, was never heard of in any
Nation, that not only the Rulers, but the whole multitude of the people
should enter into a Covenant with their God, ... to walk in the waies
of his Word, to maintain the Cause of Religion, and to reform themselves
according to his will" (pp. 23-24).

Since England was to be God's agent in history, Dury proclaimed at the
end of his sermon that "The Schooles of the Prophets, the
Universities[,] must be setled, purged and reformed with wholsom
constitutions, for the education of the sonnes of the P