[1]
This experiment had sufficiently proved the feelings of the majority.
Aware, however, of their relative weakness, they were careful to give
Cromwell no tangible cause of offence. If they appointed committees to
revise the ordinances which he had published, they affected to consider
them as merely provisional regulations, supplying the place of laws till
the meeting of parliament. If they examined in detail the forty-two
articles of "the instrument," rejecting some, and amending others, they
still withheld their unhallowed hands from those subjects which _he_
had pronounced sacred,--the four immovable pillars on which the new
constitution was built. Cromwell, on his part, betrayed no symptom of
impatience; but waited quietly for the moment when he had resolved
[Footnote 1: Thurloe, i. 668, 681, 685. Whitelock, 607. Journals, Nov. 30.
Though the house was daily occupied with the important question of the
government, it found leisure to inquire into the theological opinions of
John Biddle, who may be styled the father of the English Unitarians. He had
been thrice imprisoned by the long parliament, and was at last liberated by
the act of oblivion in 1652. The republication of his opinions attracted
the notice of the present parliament: to the questions put to him by the
speaker, he replied, that he could nowhere find in Scripture that Christ
or the Holy Ghost is called God; and it was resolved that he should be
committed to the Gatehouse, and that a bill to punish him should be
prepared.
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