“Teach the Erring Soul” 1669–1674absolutism; from Cavaliers and High Churchmen who saw toleration as treason
against the church; and from dissenters who refused to buy their own ease at the
cost of unleashing the papal Antichrist in England. “No Popery” agitation was rife
in Anglican pulpits and in the press as all sides joined to denounce Roman Catholic
“idolatry” and treachery.^50 Dissenters were in some confusion as to whether to take
advantage of the Declaration since, as Bishop Gilbert Burnet wryly observed, “Few
were so blind as not to see what was aimed at by it.”^51 John Salkeld, noting that
thousands “shy quite away from it, and dare not own it, nor come near it,” sought
to reassure his brethren that it was a new manifestation of God’s providence to his
people and a cause for rejoicing.^52 On the other side, Francis Fullwood, writing as
an Anglican to a Presbyterian audience, raised the specter of Independency run riot
and the return of popery.^53 Fueling the opposition were the old rumors that papists
had been responsible for the Great Fire, fears of a papist takeover when the Roman
Catholic Duke of York should ascend the throne, and speculations about the secret
Treaty of Dover. Parliament reconvened on February 4, 1673, and on March 8
forced Charles to withdraw his Declaration of Indulgence. On March 19 the Com-
mons passed a Bill “for Ease” of dissenters who were willing to subscribe the doc-
trinal part of the Thirty-nine Articles and take oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy;
it exempted them from penalties and allowed them freedom of public worship in
licensed meeting-houses. But the Lords scuttled that bill, leaving the issue of dis-
senters unresolved. Just before its session ended on March 29, parliament passed and
the king reluctantly signed the Test Act targeting Roman Catholics: it required all
holders of public office, civil or military, to take oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy,
to receive the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England, and
formally to renounce transubstantiation.
Milton soon found that his notorious name and works had become an issue in
the controversy, in a polemic exchange between his erstwhile acquaintance Samuel
Parker – now a major Anglican apologist – and his friend Andrew Marvell. Parker
had already published two vigorous defenses of the established church, asserting in
Hobbesian terms the absolute authority of the magistrate over religious affairs and
denouncing dissenters’ arguments for toleration or the rights of conscience;^54 in the
summer of 1672 he joined the Anglican clergy’s concerted attack on the king’s
Declaration. In A Preface Shewing what Grounds there are of Fears and Jealousies of
Popery he ascribes the dangers from popery primarily to the “fanatick party” of
Nonconformists whose schisms, dissensions, and blasphemies undermine both church
and state, since they are “generally fermented with a Republican leven, and are faln
out with Monarchy it self.”^55 Marvell replied anonymously to all three treatises in
The Rehearsal Transpros’d, which takes its name and its witty and scurrilous charac-
terization of Parker as a second Bayes from Buckingham’s farce, The Rehearsal (1672),
in which Dryden was satirized under the name Bayes.^56 Marvell’s treatise supports
liberty of conscience and the king’s policy of indulgence for dissenters, justifying
their schism and laying responsibility for it on persecuting bishops. He makes no