assertion of religious liberty, did not at once declare itself in favour of toleration. Salem sent back to England those who preferred to use their Prayerbook; and Massachusetts found no place for the turbulent spirit of Roger Williams, who first maintained the absolute liberty of conscience.
It was natural that Old England, not New England, should first grapple with this question of toleration; and it was the struggle of the Independents against the Presbyterians which first brought it into practical form. When the Long Parliament agreed to establish Presbyterianism in England, it did not take count of the Independents. It is true that they were few and scattered, not organised into a party. They consisted of the remnants of the Brownists and Barrowists, and of those who returned from Holland; but they were helped later by allies from New England. The Westminster Assembly drew out on paper the presbyterian system of ecclesiastical polity; but the more men saw it the less they liked it. It established a rigid discipline which threatened personal liberty: it claimed an absolute power of excommunication: it trespassed upon the supreme authority of Parliament: above all it required the Independents to submit to the coercive authority of an ecclesiastical assembly. The Independents were the first to raise objections to the assertion of a principle in which they did not agree; and in the discussion of their pleas, the first pleadings for tolerance were heard. Yet it was some unknown and enlightened Anglican who first put into shape the great argument on which tolerance rests: "It were better that many
