tactics and the lack of efficient troops. The Presbyterians always consistently opposed toleration, and their defeat by the Independent party alone made toleration possible. This appears clearly in the work of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, which, after sitting constantly since 1643, had established Presbyterianism in 1647.
In spite of many fine words on freedom of conscience, the Assembly gave the magistrate authority to preserve the peace and unity of the Church, and even to proceed against published opinions.
In the same year, however, the more sceptical school of Anglican thought revived with the publication of Jeremy Taylor's " Liberty of Prophesying." Taylor maintained that the Apostles' Creed is the only necessary test of faith, that reason itself, or reason as embodied in proper authority, is the ultimate court of appeal,[1] and that God is the only arbiter between sects.[2]
But he reserves persecution for blasphemers, for disturbers of public order, and for men who can be "dispensed" from civil obligations, like Papists. Taylor's attitude was rather different in the next reign. The book is interesting, because, for the time being, it does not regard error as a wilful crime, and entirely surrenders the Laudian theory of Church and State.
The Cromwellian toleration, marred as it was by
