and, by a revolution which he had not expected, and in
which he had taken no part, the pure Republic, with the relics of the
Parliament that had first created it, was again the established
order. All round about him the men he respected most were exulting in
the change, and calling it a revival of "the Good Old Cause." Without
pronouncing on the change in all its aspects, he could join in the
exultation for a special reason. Would not the restored Republican
Parliament and their Councils of State see it to be part of their
duty to assert at last the principle of absolute Religious
Voluntaryism?

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals, May 19, 1659.]

This representation of Milton's position at the time of the
restoration of the Rump is confirmed by a private letter then
addressed to him. The writer was a certain Moses Wall, of Causham or
Caversham in Oxfordshire, a scholar and Republican opinionist of whom
there are traces in Hartlib's correspondence and elsewhere.[1] Milton
had recently written to him, sending him perhaps a copy of his
_Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes_; and this is
Wall's reply--written, it will be observed, the very day after
Richard's abdication:--

[Footnote 1: Worthington's Diary and Correspondence, by Crossley, I.
355 and 365.]

"Sir,

"I received yours the day after you wrote, and do humbly thank you
that you are pleased to honour me with your letters. I confess I
have (even in my privacy in the country) oft had thoughts about
you, and that with much respect for your friendliness to truth in
your early years and in bad times. But I was uncertain whether your
relation to the Court (though I think that a Commonwealth was more
friendly to you than a Court) had not clouded your former light;
but your last book resolved that doubt.

"You complain of the non-progressency of the nation, and of its
retrograde motion of late, in liberty and spiritual truths. It is
much to be bewailed; but, yet, let us pity human frailty. When
those who had made deep protestations of their zeal for our
liberty, both spiritual and civil, and made the fairest offers to
be the asserters thereof, and whom we thereupon trusted,--when
these, being instated in power, shall betray the good thing
committed to them, and lead us back to Egypt, and by that force
which we gave them to win us liberty hold us fast in chains,--what
can poor people do? You know who they were that watch