ame general colours, yet launched singly,
and sailing apart and alone on the vast ocean of these tumultuous
times, and exposed to every wind of doctrine, under no other conduct
than that of the word and spirit, and their particular elders and
principal brethren, without association among themselves, or so much
as holding out common lights to others to know where they were." A
petition to this effect, though not in these terms, having been
presented to his Highness, he reluctantly yielded. He allowed a
preliminary meeting of representatives of the Congregational churches
in and about London to be held on June 21, 1658, and circular letters
to be sent out to all the Congregational churches in England and
Wales convoking a Synod at the Savoy on the 29th of September. The
Confession of Faith, if any, to be drawn up by this Synod was not, of
course, to be the comprehensive State Confession foreshadowed in
Article XI. of the _Petition and Advice_, but only the voluntary
agreement of the Congregationalists or Independents for themselves.
In fact, to all appearance, if the harmonious comprehension of
moderate Anglicans, Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists, within
one and the same Church, was to be signified by written symbols as
well as carried out practically, this could be done only by a plan of
concurrent confessions justifying the concurrent endowments. Even for
that, it would seem, Cromwell was now prepared. Yet he was a little
dubious about the policy of the coming Synod, and certainly was as
much resolved as ever that Synods and other ecclesiastical assemblies
should be only a permitted machinery for the denominations
severally, and that the Civil Magistrate should determine what
denominations could be soldered together to make a suitable
State-Church, and should supervise and make fast the junctions.[1]

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of May 1658; Neal's Puritans, IV.
188 et seq.; Orme's Life of Owen, 230-232.]

There is very striking evidence of Cromwell's attention at this time
to the spiritual needs of Scotland in particular.--Early in 1657 we
left Mr. James Sharp in London as agent for the Scottish Resolutioner
clergy, and Principal Gillespie of Glasgow, Mr. James Guthrie, Mr.
James Simpson, and Johnstone of Warriston, with the Marquis of Argyle
in the background, opposing the clever Sharp, and soliciting his
Highness's favour for the Scottish Protesters or Remonstrants (ante
pp. 115-116). Both deputations