A scandal, in this sense, must always arise in your own party; you
cannot scandalise the enemy. And so it was now. The Episcopalians
were rejoiced that Milton should ruin his credit with his own side by
advocating a paradox. The Presbyterians hastened to disown a man who
enabled their opponents to brand their religious scheme as the parent
of moral heresies. For though church government and the English
constitution in all its parts had begun to be open questions,
speculation had not as yet attacked either of the two bases of
society, property or the family. Loud was the outcry of the
Philistines. There was no doubt that the rigid bonds of Presbyterian
orthodoxy would not in any case have long held Milton. They were
snapped at once by the publication of his opinions on divorce, and
Milton is henceforward to be ranked among the most independent of the
new party which shortly after this date began to be heard of under the
name of Independents.
But the men who formed the nucleus of this new mode of thinking were
as yet, in 1643, not consolidated into a sect, still less was their
importance as the coming political party dreamt of.
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