A paragraph at the close, where he hints
that the time may be come to suppress the suppressors, intimates, but
so obscurely as to be likely to escape notice, that Milton had already
made up his mind that a struggle with the Presbyterian party was to be
the sequel of the overthrow of the Royalists. He has not yet arrived
at the point he will hereafter reach, of rejecting the very idea of
a minister of religion, but he is already aggrieved by the implicit
faith which the Puritan laity, who had cast out bishops, were
beginning to bestow upon their pastor; "a factor to whose care and
credit he may commit the whole managing of his religious affairs."
Finally, it must be noted, that Milton, though he had come to see
round Presbyterianism, had not, in 1644, shaken off all dogmatic
profession. His toleration of opinion was far from complete. He
would call in the intervention of the executioner in the case of
"mischievous and libellous books," and could not bring himself to
contemplate the toleration of Popery and open superstition, "which as
it extirpates all religious and civil supremacies, so itself should be
extirpate; provided first that all charitable and compassionate means
be used to win and gain the weak and misled.
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