Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/98

 ing to do with the offenses of the first table gained general acceptance in New England. In England the doctrine of liberty of conscience had the support after 1645 of most of the radical Independents; it was a fundamental article in the creed of the Levellers.

The strength of democratic ideas in seventeenth-century Independency has already been estimated. Here it is enough to repeat that, while the practice of Independency was undemocratic, it could supply extremely democratic theories. Quoting from Nye and Goodwin’s introduction to Cotton’s Keyes:

The Levellers also succeeded to the ideas that distinguished Independency from Erastianism. The Erastians ascribed to Parliament the supreme power of legislation for the church on the same principle that had already led them to ascribe to it a similar power over the nation. The Independents were in line with Parliament’s earlier constitutional position when they insisted that there were certain