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Other controversies which raged during the first half of the seventeenth century, those between catholics and protestants, between prelatists and presbyterians, between socinians and trinitarians, between latitudinarians, puritans, and sacramentalists, all tended to weaken theological exclusiveness. This slackening, however, was no more than partial.
Occasionally he vindicated with great animation the right of every freeman to worship God according to his own conscience; and presently he charged the guilt and misery of the people on the awful negligence of their rulers, who had not only failed to establish presbytery as the national religion, but had tolerated sectaries of various descriptions, Papists, Prelatists, Erastians, assuming the name of Presbyterians, Independents, Socinians, and Quakers: all of whom Kettledrummle proposed, by one sweeping act, to expel from the land, and thus re-edify in its integrity the beauty of the sanctuary.
Wherefore I, Win-Grace Porringer, testify against the people of this land; against Prelatists and Papists, Presbyterians and Independents, Baptists, Quakers and heathen; against princes, governors, and men in high places; against them that call themselves planters and trample the vineyard of the Lord; against their sons and their daughters who are haughty, and walk with stretched-forth neck and wanton eyes, walking and mincing and making a tinkling with their feet.
These arrangements had to be carried out with the most extreme caution, for there were many Prelatists in the village, and in the present disturbed state of the public mind any activity on the part of so well known a man would have at once attracted attention.
It appeared that the Prelatists had been looking to ends of state policy, while the Puritans kept religion in view. The Conformists thought their ends were reached when Roman prelacy was set aside, and certain local ecclesiastical changes had been effected; but the real Puritans wanted to get and to establish the essential Gospel. Dr. Palfrey tells this story concisely, but emphatically.
After this he turned his attention to the Independents, whom he hated scarcely less than the Prelatists, and was among those expelled from the House of Commons by Cromwell, whom he had opposed in regard to the execution of the King with such asperity that he again suffered imprisonment, from which he was released in 1652.
But, to prevent mistakes, let it be here observed, that the presbytery do not testify against any of these oaths, out of the remotest regard to the spurious pretended right of a popish pretender to the throne and crown of these kingdoms; for they judge and declare, that, by the word of God, and fundamental laws of the nations, he can have no right, title or claim, to be king of these covenanted kingdoms seeing, by our covenants and laws, establishing the covenanted reformation, which are well founded on the divine law, all Papists, as well as Prelatists, are forever excluded from the throne of these, and especially of this land.
He was conscious his doctrines were suspected, and his proceedings watched, by the two principal sects of Prelatists and Presbyterians, who, however inimical to each other, were still more hostile to one who was an opponent, not only to a church establishment of any kind, but to every denomination of Christianity.
"We find all wise legislators have had regard to the tempers, inclinations, and prejudices, &c." This paragraph false. It was directly contrary in several, as Lycurgus, &c. "All the skill of the prelatists is not able to discover the least distinction between bishop and presbyter." Yet, God knows, this hath been done many a time.
The king had suffered so much in his reputation by his complaisance to the presbyterians of Scotland, and was so displeased with the conduct of that stubborn sect of religionists, that he thought proper to admit some prelatists into the administration.
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