press, but also preaching regularly on Sundays to a small Socinian
congregation. In accordance with the general policy of the Government
since Cromwell had become master, he had been left unmolested. The
orthodox had been on the watch, however, and another Socinian book of
Biddle's, called _A Two-fold Catechism_, published in 1654, had
given them the opportunity they wanted. For this book Biddle had been
arrested on the 12th of December, and he had been brought before the
House on his knees and committed to prison on the 13th. The views
which the House were then formulating on the Limits of Toleration in
the abstract may be said therefore to have been illustrated over Mr.
Biddle's body in the concrete. His case came up again on the 15th of
January, when the House, after hearing with horror some extracts from
his books, ordered them to be burnt by the hangman, and at the same
time instructed a Committee to prepare a Bill for punishing him. The
punishment, if the Presbyterians could succeed in falling back on
their Parliamentary Ordinance of May 1648, was to be death.[1]

[Footnote 1: Wood's Ath. III. 593-598; Commons Journals of dates.]

It was really of very great consequence to the Commonwealth of the
Protectorate what theory of Toleration should be adopted into its
Constitution, whether the Parliament's or Cromwell's. For the ferment
of religious and irreligious speculation of all kinds in the three
nations was now something prodigious, and there were widely diffused
denominations of dissent and heresy that had not been in existence
ten years before, when the Long Parliament and the Westminster
Assembly first discussed the Toleration Question. Our synopsis of the
English sects and Heresies of 1644 (Vol. III. 143-159) is not,
indeed, wholly out of date for 1654, but it would require extensions
and modifications to adjust it accurately to the latter year. There