Even in his blindness he could theorize on that, and stiffen himself more and more in his intense Religious Voluntaryism, Conscious of his irreconcileable dissent from Cromwell's policy in this great matter, and knowing that Cromwell was aware of the fact, it may have been a satisfaction to him that he was not called upon to act a Parliamentary part, in which proclamation of the dissent and consequent rupture with Cromwell on the ecclesiastical question would have been inevitable.

It may have been some satisfaction to him that he could go on faithfully and honestly as a servant of Cromwell in the special business of the Latin Secretaryship, and for the rest be a lonely thinker and take refuge in silence.

It is worth observing, indeed, that nothing of a political kind had come from Milton's pen during the last three or four years of Oliver's Protectorate,--nothing even indirectly bearing on the internal politics of the Commonwealth since his _Pro Se Defensio_ against Morus in 1655, and nothing directly bearing thereon since his _Defensio Secunda_ of 1654.

And so, if we conclude this inquiry by saying that, at the time of Richard's accession and the meeting of his Parliament, Milton was still a Cromwellian, but a Cromwellian with the old Miltonic reserves, and these strengthened of late rather than weakened, we shall be about right.

To the public, however, in the present controversy between the Protectoratists and the pure Republicans, he was distinctly a Protectoratist, a Cromwellian, one of the Court-party, an official of Richard and his Council.
Since Cromwell's death, we have now to add, Milton had been re-mustering his reserves.