e theory of Toleration as it might be
applied round about his Established Church. In his heart, I believe,
he was for persecuting nobody whatsoever, troubling nobody
whatsoever, for mere religious heresy, even of the kinds he himself
most abhorred. But, though this might be his private ideal, his
difficulties publicly and practically were enormous. The other
unlimited Tolerationists in England were Anabaptists and the like,
detesting his Established Church as incompatible with true
Toleration, and in league for battering it down. Through the rest of
the community there was but little voice for Toleration. The frantic
and idiotic stringency of the Presbyterians of 1644-6 was now,
indeed, rather out of fashion, and a certain mild babble about a
Limited Toleration was common in the public mouth. But the old leaven
was at work in many quarters; occasional pamphlets from the
Presbyterian camp still wailed lamentably about "the effects of the
present Toleration, especially as to the increase of Blasphemy and
Damnable Errors;" and some Presbyterian booksellers had recently
published _A Second Beacon Fired_, in which they insidiously
tried to work upon the Lord Protector's new Conservative and
State-Church instincts; by denouncing the books of some leading
Anabaptists and other heretics, hostile to his Government, and humbly
adjuring him to "do what might be expected from Christian
magistrates" in such flagrant cases. In the late Parliament there had
been much of this Presbyterian spirit, and it had been proved
abundantly that the Protector's idea of Toleration would have been
voted down by the national representatives. Then what a harassing
definition of proper Christian Toleration had come even from
Cromwell's favourite Independents, Messrs. Owen and the rest, with
their twenty fundamentals! Add the difficulties arising from the
nature of some of the current heresies themselves, as tending
directly to the defamation of his government, the subversion of laws
and institutions, and the disturbance of the peace.[1]

[Footnote 1: Various Thomason Pamphlets of 1654-1656. The _Second
Beacon Fired_ was published in Oct. 1654 by six London
booksellers--Luke Fawne, John Rothwell, Samuel Gellibrand, Thomas
Underhill, Joshua Kirton, and Nathaniel Webb. Two of them, Rothwell
and Underhill, had published for Milton in former days. The heretics
chiefly denounced are Biddle, Dell, Farnworth, Norwood, Braine, John
Webster, and Feake. John G