ent of Religion one
of the passions of his Protectorate. It is a reflection on him, and
on Owen, Thomas Goodwin, and all his ecclesiastical advisers and
assessors, Independent or Presbyterian, for having busied themselves
in maintaining and re-shaping any State-Church, on however broad a
basis, and so having perpetuated the old distinction between
Establishment and Dissent, Orthodoxy and Heresy, instead of
abolishing that distinction utterly, and leaving all varieties of
Christianity, equally unstamped and unfavoured, to organize
themselves as they best could on the principle of voluntary
association. For the future, statesmen and ministers are invited to
cease from persevering in this delusion of the great and good
Cromwell.

The tract was addressed, as we have said, to the Parliament of
Cromwell's son. The preface, signed with Milton's name in full, is a
recommendation of the doctrine to that body in particular. "I have
prepared, Supreme Council, against the much expected time of your
sitting," Milton there says, "this treatise; which, though to all
Christian Magistrates equally belonging, and therefore to have been
written in the common language of Christendom, natural duty and
affection hath confined and dedicated first to my own nation, and in
a season wherein the timely reading thereof, to the easier
accomplishment of your great work, may save you much labour and
interruption." Then, after having stated the main doctrine, he
continues:--"One advantage I make no doubt of, that I shall write to
many eminent persons of your number already perfect and resolved in
this important article of Christianity: some of whom I remember to
have heard often, for several years, at a Council next in authority
to your own, so well joining religion with civil prudence, and yet so
well distinguishing the different power of either, and this not only
voting but frequently reasoning why it should be so, that, if any
there present had been before of an opinion contrary, he might
doubtless have departed thence a convert in that point, and have
confessed that then both Commonwealth and Religion will at length, if
ever, flourish, in Christendom, when either they who govern discern
between Civil and Religious, or they only who so discern shall be
admitted to govern." In other words, Milton's hopes of a favourable
hearing for his doctrine in Richard's Parliament were founded (1) on
the general ground that many members of the Parliament were