little to be tolerated themselves, being
no less guilty of Popery in the most Popish point. Lastly, for
Idolatry, who knows it not to be evidently against all Scripture,
both of the Old and New Testament, and therefore a true heresy, or
rather an impiety; wherein a right conscience can have naught to
do, and the works thereof so manifest that a magistrate can hardly
err in prohibiting and quite removing at least the public and
scandalous use thereof."

_Christ's unique act of Compulsion_:--"We read not that Christ
ever exercised force but once; and that was to drive profane ones
out of his Temple, not to force them in."

_Concluding Recommendation to Statesmen and Ministers_:--"As
to those magistrates who think it their work to settle Religion,
and those ministers or others who so oft call upon them to do so, I
trust that, having well considered what hath been here argued,
neither _they_ will continue in that intention, nor
_these_ in that expectation from them, when they shall find
that the settlement of Religion belongs only to each particular
church by persuasive and spiritual means within itself, and that
the defence only of the Church belongs to the magistrate. Had he
once learnt not further to concern himself with Church affairs,
half his labour might be spared and the Commonwealth better
tended."

* * * * *

In this last extract there is a distinct outbreak of the intention
which is rather covert through the rest of the tract. To a hasty
reader the tract might seem only a plea for the amplest toleration,
of religious dissent, a plea for full liberty, outside of the
Established Church, not merely to Baptists, but also to Quakers,
Anti-Trinitarians, and all other sects professing in any way to be
Christians and believers in the Bible, Papists alone excepted, and
they but partially and reluctantly. There would be no censure on
Cromwell's policy, if that were all. But an acute reader of the tract
would have detected that more was intended in it than a plea for
Toleration, that the very existence of any Established Church
whatever was condemned. In the passage last quoted it is clearly seen
that this is the ultimate scope. It is a reflection on Cromwell,
almost by name, for not having freed himself from the notion that the
settlement of Religion is an affair of the Civil Magistrate, but on
the contrary having made such a supposed settlem