heir own to supersede some of
these,--especially a new Bill for the Ejection of Scandalous
Ministers, and a new Bill for Reform of the Court of Chancery. But of
all the incidental work undertaken by this Parliament none seems to
have been undertaken with so much gusto as that which consisted in
efforts for the suppression of Heresy and Blasphemy. Here was the
natural outcome of the Presbyterianism with which the Parliament was
charged, and here also the Parliament was very vexatious to the soul
of the Lord-Protector.

After all, this portion of the work of the Parliament can hardly be
called incidental. It was part and parcel of their main work of
revising the Constitution, and it was inter-wrought with the question
of Cromwell's negatives. Article XXXVII. of the original Instrument
of the Protectorate had guaranteed liberty of worship and of
preaching outside the Established Church to "such as profess faith in
Jesus Christ," and Cromwell, in his last speech, had noted this as
one of the "fundamentals" he was bound to preserve. How did the
Parliament meet the difficulty? Very ingeniously. They said that the
phrase "such as profess faith in Jesus Christ" was a vague phrase,
requiring definition; and, the whole House having formed itself into
a Committee for Religion, and this Committee having appointed a
working sub-Committee of about fourteen, the sub-Committee was
empowered to take steps for coming to a definition. Naturally enough,
in such a matter, the sub-Committee wanted clerical advice; and, each
member of the sub-Committee having nominated one divine, there was a
small Westminster Assembly over again to illuminate Parliament on the
dark subject. Dr. Owen and Dr. Goodwin were there, with Nye, Sidrach
Simpson, Stephen Marshall, Mr. Vines, Mr. Manton, and others. Mr.
Richard Baxter had the honour of being one, having been asked to
undertake the duty by Lord Breghill, when the venerable ex-Primate
Usher had declined it; and it is from Baxter that we have the fullest
account of the proceedings. When he came to town from Kidderminster,
he found the rest of the divines already busy in drawing up a list of
"fundamentals of faith," the profession of which was to be the
necessary title to the toleration promised. Knowing "how ticklish a
business the enumeration of fundamentals was," Baxter tried, he says,
to stop that method, and suggested that acceptance of the Creed, the
Lord's P[r]ayer, and the Decalogue would be a suf