Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/137

 emphasized the fundamental differences of principle between Presbyterianism and Independency. While Presbyterians were becoming more conservative politically, Independents—at least a certain circle of them somewhat wider than Lilburne’s following—were becoming more radical. Elated at the ill-success of the Presbyterians with the “recruited” House of Commons, they extolled the authority of the House, and no longer urged the limitations on its ecclesiastical powers that they had stated in 1644 and 1645. Already the radical Independents were writing of Presbyterianism and kingship as two forms of slavery.

The Presbyterians more and more defended the few surviving elements of the old political constitution; more and more they insisted on the establishment of church government according to the Word of God, not the Commons’ idea of expediency. Their bitterness was pardonable. The rapid spread of strange, extravagant, or vicious religious doctrines, and uncouth or even immoral religious practices, proved to them the need for the sword of ecclesiastical discipline they had forged in the Assembly; and the Erastian House of Commons seemed ready to blunt it in their hands. The only satisfaction left private persons like Thomas Edwards was annoying the Independents by cataloguing the hundreds of religious and political vagaries the time afforded—not omitting the political teachings of Lilburne. The corporation of