“For the Sake of Liberty” 1652–1654radical religious activity alarming: Quakers interrupting preachers, John Reeve
and Lodowick Muggleton proclaiming themselves the witnesses prophesied in
Revelation, Ranters and other Antinomians claiming freedom from the Decalogue
and the moral law. Cromwell and his associates determined that a loosely struc-
tured state church including Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, and other mod-
erate sectaries must be established to promote centrist Protestantism – though
with broad toleration outside that establishment. They also concluded that tithes
or another kind of state maintenance would be necessary to support some nine
thousand parish ministers, whose wholesale disaffection or impoverishment would
be catastrophic. But Cromwell’s precise intentions were difficult to read – even,
perhaps, by the man himself. On February 10, 1652 Cromwell’s friend and former
chaplain John Owen, along with several other Independent clergymen, offered
to parliament 15 Proposals for the Furtherance and Propagation of the Gospel along
with a petition to suppress notorious heresies, submitting as evidence of such
heresies the just-published Racovian Catechism.^30 Milton, back in August, 1650,
had evidently approved publication of that Socinian document.^31 On February
18 parliament established a Committee for the Propagation of the Gospel to
consider Owen’s proposals and invite others, and another committee to deal
with the Catechism and the heresy issue. Cromwell was a member of both. The
Proposals called for a complex system of local ministers and parliamentary com-
mittees to approve new ministers and schoolmasters and to eject the “unfit,”
with tithes or some other settled maintenance assumed. Worship outside the
established church was allowed in approved meeting places, but none might
preach or write against the fundamentals of the Christian religion. They enumer-
ated 15 such fundamentals, including the orthodox doctrines of the Trinity, In-
carnation, Justification by grace, and the Last Judgment; also, the necessity of
forsaking sin, the duty of public worship, and recognition that God’s will is to be
sought in scripture (not from the inner light). By the end of March the Proposals
had been published, the fundamentals were being much discussed, and orthodox
voices were pressuring parliament for a state church, tithes, and repression of
heresy.^32
On April 2 the larger committee made its report on the Racovian Catechism to
parliament, listing its horrible blasphemies (chiefly, denial of the Trinity, Christ’s
divinity, and original sin) and indicating that the committee had examined Milton
and the publisher Dugard about it; parliament, proclaiming the work “Blasphe-
mous, Erronious and Scandalous,” ordered it seized and burned.^33 There is no offi-
cial summary of the examination of Milton or the contents of his 1650 note approving
the catechism; apparently no one wanted to make trouble for the republic’s most
famous defender.^34 On February 24/March 5, 1652, Lieuwe van Aitzema, the en-
voy representing the Hanseatic towns, reported what he had learned about that
inquiry and Milton’s bold response. That he could do so only three days after the
committee’s investigation ended and a month before it reported to parliament sug-