Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/115

 he attempted a dispassionate estimate of the relative strength of parties. He took comfort from the fact that the regular parish ministers of London with the exceptions of John Goodwin, Burton, and one “scrupling Paedobaptism” were sound Presbyterians. But he added the mournful fact that many of the lectureships were held by Independent ministers. Further, he thought he could see the leaven of Independency at work. Most of the Independents, he wrote, were lapsing into Antinomianism, Anabaptism, Socinianism and other heresies; and “one Mr. Willams” had led off a part of the remainder into a new and extreme Independency.

Against heresy the House of Commons waged an intermittent warfare. In March it ordered prepared an ordinance against the dissemination of Antinomian and Anabaptist opinions. August 9 it voted that “one Williams his Books, intituled etc. concerning the Tolerating of all Sorts of Religion” were to be publicly burned. It set a committee at the task of considering means of checking the obnoxious sects. November 15 the Commons ordered that no person who was not ordained in some reformed church should be allowed to preach—an ordinance aimed at the “mechanic” preachers who throve in both city and army.