The two last occasionally
[Footnote 1: Under the general name of Independents, I include, for
convenience, all the different sects enumerated at the time by Edwards
in his Gangraena,--Independents, Brownists, Millenaries, Antinomians,
Anabaptists, Arminians, Libertines, Familists, Enthusiasts, Seekers,
Perfectists, Socinians, Arianists, Anti-Trinitarians, Anti-Scripturists,
and Sceptics.--Neal's Puritans, ii. 251. I observe that some of them
maintained that toleration was due even to Catholics. Baillie repeatedly
notices it with feelings of horror (ii. 17, 18, 43, 61).]
served to restore the balance between the two others, and by joining with
the Independents, to arrest the zeal, and neutralize the votes of
the Presbyterians.[a] With their aid, Cromwell, as the organ of the
discontented religionists, had obtained the appointment of a "grand
committee for accommodation," which sat four months, and concluded nothing.
Its professed object was to reconcile the two parties, by inducing the
Presbyterians to recede from their lofty pretensions, and the Independents
to relax something of their sectarian obstinacy. Both were equally
inflexible. The former would admit of no innovation in the powers which
Christ, according to their creed, had bestowed on the presbytery; the
latter, rather than conform, expressed their readiness to suffer the
penalties of the law, or to seek some other clime, where the enjoyment of
civil, was combined with that of religious, freedom.
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