as a private man, and without any official authority whatever.  “Of Civil Liberty,” he says in the conclusion of his preface, “I have written heretofore by the appointment, and not without the approbation, of Civil Power:  of Christian Liberty I write now,—­which others long since having done with all freedom under Heathen Emperors, I should do wrong to suspect that now I shall with less under Christian Governors, and such especially as profess openly their defence of Christian liberty, although I write this not otherwise appointed and induced than by an inward persuasion of the Christian duty which I may usefully discharge herein to the common Lord and Master of us all.”  The words imply just a shade of doubt whether he, a salaried servant of the Government, might not be called to account for having been so bold.

Altogether, Milton’s Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes can be construed no otherwise than as an effort on his part, Protectoratist and Court-official though he was, to renew his relations with the old Republican party in the Parliament in the special interest of his extreme views on the religious question.  Merely as a pleading against Religious Persecution, the treatise might have had some effect on the Parliament generally, where it was in fact much needed, in consequence of the presence of so much of the Presbyterian element, and the likelihood therefore of increased stringency against Quakers, Socinians, and other Non-Conformists.  The treatise would have found many in the Parliament, besides the Republicans, quite willing to listen to its advices so far.  But only or chiefly among the old Republicans can there have been any hope of an acceptance of its extreme definition of Christian Liberty, as involving Disestablishment and entire separation of Church and State.

The Treatise, so far as we can see, produced no effect whatever.  So far as the Religious Question did appear in the Parliament, it was evident that the preservation of Cromwell’s Church-Establishment, its perpetuation as an integral part of Richard’s Protectorate, was a foregone conclusion in the minds of the vast majority.  Any Disestablishment proposal, emanating from the Republican party, or from any individual member like Vane, would have been tramped out by the united strength of the Presbyterians, the Cromwellians of the Court, and the Wallingford-House Cromwellians.  The danger even was that there might be a retrogression in the matter of mere Toleration, and that the presence and pressure of so many Presbyterians among the supporters of Richard might compel Richard’s Government, against his own will and that of his Cromwellian Councillors, to a severer Church-discipline than had characterized the late Protectorate.  But, indeed, it was not on the Religious Question in any form that the Republicans found time or need to try their strength.  Their battles in the Parliament were on the two main constitutional questions:—­first, the question of the Protectorate