"I have prepared, Supreme Council, against the much expected time of your sitting," Milton there says, "this treatise; which, though to all Christian Magistrates equally belonging, and therefore to have been written in the common language of Christendom, natural duty and affection hath confined and dedicated first to my own nation, and in a season wherein the timely reading thereof, to the easier accomplishment of your great work, may save you much labour and interruption." Then, after having stated the main doctrine, he continues:--"One advantage I make no doubt of, that I shall write to many eminent persons of your number already perfect and resolved in this important article of Christianity: some of whom I remember to have heard often, for several years, at a Council next in authority to your own, so well joining religion with civil prudence, and yet so well distinguishing the different power of either, and this not only voting but frequently reasoning why it should be so, that, if any there present had been before of an opinion contrary, he might doubtless have departed thence a convert in that point, and have confessed that then both Commonwealth and Religion will at length, if ever, flourish, in Christendom, when either they who govern discern between Civil and Religious, or they only who so discern shall be admitted to govern." In other words, Milton's hopes of a favourable hearing for his doctrine in Richard's Parliament were founded (1) on the general ground that many members of the Parliament were old Commonwealth's men, of the kind that would have carried the abolition of Tithes and of a State-Church in the Barebones Parliament of 1653, had not Rous broken up that Parliament and resurrendered the power to Cromwell, and (2) on the special fact that some of them were men whom Milton had himself heard with admiration, in the Councils of State of the Commonwealth, when he first sat there as Foreign Secretary in attendance, avowing and expounding the principle of Voluntaryism in Religion, in its fullest possible extent.

Among these last Milton must have had in view chiefly such members of the Commons House in Richard's Parliament as Vane, Bradshaw, Harrison, Neville, Ludlow, and Scott, all of whom had been members of one, or several, or all, of the Councils of State of the old Commonwealth; but he may have had in view also such members of the present Upper House as Fleetwood, St.John, and Viscount Lisle.

Above all, Vane must have been in his mind,--Vane, on whom half of his eulogy in 1652 had been.
"To know Both spiritual power and civil, what each means, What severs each, _thou_, hast learned; which few have done.
The bounds of either sword to _thee_ we owe." Might not Vane and his fellows move in the present Parliament for a reconsideration of that part of the policy of the Protectorate which concerned Religion?
Might they not induce the Parliament to revert, in the matters of Tithes, a State Ministry, and Endowments of Religion, to the temper and determinations of the much-abused, but really wise and deep-minded, Barebones Parliament?
Nothing less than this is the ultimate purport of Milton's appeal; and little wonder that he prefixed an intimation that he wrote now only as a private man, and without any official authority whatever.

"Of Civil Liberty," he says in the conclusion of his preface, "I have written heretofore by the appointment, and not without the approbation, of Civil Power: of Christian Liberty I write now,--which others long since having done with all freedom under Heathen Emperors, I should do wrong to suspect that now I shall with less under Christian Governors, and such especially as profess openly their defence of Christian liberty, although I write this not otherwise appointed and induced than by an inward persuasion of the Christian duty which I may usefully discharge herein to the common Lord and Master of us all." The words imply just a shade of doubt whether he, a salaried servant of the Government, might not be called to account for having been so bold.
Altogether, Milton's _Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes_ can be construed no otherwise than as an effort on his part, Protectoratist and Court-official though he was, to renew his relations with the old Republican party in the Parliament in the special interest of his extreme views on the religious question.
Merely as a pleading against Religious Persecution, the treatise might have had some effect on the Parliament generally, where it was in fact much needed, in consequence of the presence of so much of the Presbyterian element, and the likelihood therefore of increased stringency against Quakers, Socinians, and other Non-Conformists.

The treatise would have found many in the Parliament, besides the Republicans, quite willing to listen to its advices so far.