Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England

by C. H. Firth

Yet tolerant as Cromwell was, there were limits to his toleration, and certain opinions he regarded as outside the pale. The Instrument refused liberty to “such as under the profession of Christ hold forth and practise licentiousness” and the Petition and Advice added to them those who “published horrible blasphemies.”

“As for profane persons,” said Cromwell, “blasphemers, such as preach sedition; the contentious railers, evil-speakers, who seek by evil words to corrupt good manners; persons of loose conversation—punishment from the civil magistrate ought to meet with these. Because if they pretend conscience; yet walking disorderly and not according but contrary to the Gospel, and even to natural lights, they are judged by all. And their sins being open make them subjects of the magistrate’s sword, who ought not to bear the sword in vain. The discipline of the army was such that a man would not be suffered to remain there, of whom we could take notice that he was guilty of such practices as these.”

A well-ordered state, thought Cromwell, should in this respect resemble an army, but, even with regard to opinions which he held blasphemous, he was not willing to suffer the extreme penalties to be inflicted which the law sanctioned and the voice of most Puritans demanded.

In 1656, James Naylor, an old soldier who was one of Fox’s early disciples, allowed himself to be hailed by his enthusiastic followers as a new Messiah, and was consequently thrown into prison as a blasphemer. The Parliament then sitting assumed judicial powers, and, after many days’ debate, voted that he should be branded, pilloried, whipped, and imprisoned at pleasure. The Protector vainly pointed out to the House that it was going beyond its powers, and all the influence of the Government was required to save Naylor from capital punishment. What the Protector would probably have done if the punishment of Naylor had been left to him was shown by his treatment of John Biddle. Unitarians were by implication excluded from toleration by the Petition and Advice. In 1655, Biddle was prosecuted under the Blasphemy Act of 1648, and would undoubtedly have been sentenced to death. The Protector was petitioned to interfere, and replied by soundly rating the petitioners. “If it be true,” said he, “what Mr. Biddle holds, to wit, that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is but a creature, then all those who worship Him with the worship due to God are idolaters.” No Christian, was his conclusion, could give any countenance to such a person, but nevertheless he stopped the trial by issuing a warrant for Biddle’s confinement at St. Mary’s Castle in the Scilly Islands. Biddle’s life was undoubtedly saved by this intervention.

In spite of the liberality and comprehensiveness of Cromwell’s ecclesiastical policy, there were several sections of Puritans whom it failed to satisfy. Some Independents opposed any established Church, and denied that the State ought in any way to meddle with religious matters. The most distinguished adherents of this view were Vane and Milton. The magistrate, said Milton, had no coercive power at all in matters of religion. It was not his business “to settle religion,” as it was popularly termed, “by appointing either what we shall believe in divine things or practise in religious.” His duty was simply to defend the Church. “Had he once learned not further to concern himself with Church affairs, half his labour might be spared and the Commonwealth better tended.”

Another section, in the name of liberty of conscience, denied the State any right to punish blasphemous or immoral doctrines. “They tell the Magistrate,” said the Protector, “that he hath nothing to do with men holding such notions; these are matters of conscience and opinion; they are matters of religion; what hath the Magistrate to do with these things? He is to look to the outward man, not to the inward.” Cromwell’s own position with regard to dangerous opinions was that, if they were but opinions, they were best left alone. “Notions will hurt none but those that have them.” When they developed into actions, it was a different matter, and especially when they led to rebellion and bloodshed. “Our practice hath been,” he said in 1656, “to let all this nation see that whatever pretensions to religion would continue quiet and peaceable, they should enjoy conscience and liberty to themselves.” But to be quiet and peaceable was the indispensable condition. Fifth Monarchy preachers were frequently arrested for sermons against the government, both before and after the attempted rising of the Fifth Monarchy men in the spring of 1657. On one occasion, some of the congregation of John Rogers, one of their preachers, came to Whitehall to argue with the Protector, complaining that their pastor was suffering for religion’s sake. Cromwell answered that Rogers suffered as a railer, a seducer, and a stirrer-up of sedition: that to call suffering for evil-doing suffering for the Gospel was to make Christ the patron of such things. “God is my witness,” he concluded, “no man in England doth suffer for the testimony of Jesus. Nay do not lift up your hands and your eyes, for there is no man in England which suffers so. There is such liberty—I wish it be not abused, that no man in England suffereth for Christ.”

It was true. Cromwell’s was the most tolerant government which had existed in England since the Reformation. In practice, he was more lenient than the laws, and more liberal-minded than most of his advisers. The drawback was, that even the more limited amount of religious freedom which the laws guaranteed seemed too much to the great majority of the nation. Englishmen—even Puritans—had not yet learnt the lesson of toleration. “Is there not yet,” said Cromwell in 1655, “a strange itch upon the spirits of men? Nothing will satisfy them unless they can press their finger upon their brethren’s consciences to pinch them there.” To prevent this, was, he avowed, his task as a ruler.

“If the whole power was in the Presbyterians, they would force all men their way, and the Fifth Monarchy men would do the same, and so the Rebaptised persons; and his work was to keep several judgments in peace, because, like men falling out in the streets, they would run their heads one against another; he was as a constable to part them and keep them in peace.”

To induce these jarring sects to co-operate was more difficult, but that also Cromwell attempted to do. In the Puritan Church, which he organised, no agreement about ritual or discipline or doctrine was required, save only the acceptance of the main principles of Christianity. It was not so much a Church as a confederation of Christian sects working together for righteousness, under the control of the State. The absence of agreement in details and of uniformity in externals was no defect in Cromwell’s eyes. To him it was rather a merit. “All that believe,” he had once written, “have the real unity which is more glorious because inward and spiritual.”[^[8]]

The originality of the Protector’s ecclesiastical policy lay in this attempt to combine the two principles of toleration and comprehension. It reflected his character. His tolerance was not the result of scepticism or indifference, but arose from respect for the consciences of others. The comprehensiveness of his Church was the outcome of his large-hearted sympathy with every form of Puritanism. To local magistrates in local religious quarrels, he enjoined “a charity as large as the whole flock of Christ”; and the same spirit inspired his exhortation to the Little Parliament.