If their absolute determination be to enthral us, before so long a Lent of servitude they may permit us a little Shroving-time first, wherein to speak freely and take our leaves of Liberty, And, because in the former edition, through haste, many faults escaped, and many books were suddenly dispersed ere the note to mend them could be sent, I took the opportunity from this occasion to revise and somewhat to enlarge the whole discourse, especially that part which argues for a Perpetual Senate.

The treatise, thus revised and enlarged, is as follows." Again, the renewal of the Solemn League and Covenant by the late Parliament of the Secluded Members furnishes Milton with a fresh text.

He does not, as might have been expected, and as he certainly would have done on another occasion, upbraid the Parliament with the fact, or denounce the return to Presbyterian strictness of which it was a signal: on the contrary, he presses the fact into his service as a new argument against the recall of Charles.

The first of the following sentences had appeared in the former edition; but the rest is suggested by the revival of the Covenant in the interim:-- "What Liberty of Conscience can we then expect of others [even the good and great Queen Elizabeth, he has just said, had thought persecution necessary to preserve royal authority], far worse principled from, the cradle, trained up and governed by Popish and Spanish counsels, and on such depending hitherto for subsistence?
Especially, what can this last Parliament expect, who, having revived lately and published the Covenant, hare re-engaged themselves never to readmit Episcopacy?
Which no son of Charles returning but will most certainly bring back with him, if he regard the last and strictest charge of his father, _to persevere in not the Doctrine only, but Government, of the Church of England, [and] not to neglect the speedy and effectual suppressing of Errors and Schisms_,--among which he accounted Presbytery one of the chief.
Or, if, notwithstanding that charge of his father, he submit to the Covenant, how will he keep faith to _us_ with disobedience to _him_, or regard that faith given which must be founded on the breach of that last and solemnest paternal charge, and the reluctance, I may say the antipathy, which is in all kings against Presbyterian and Independent Discipline ?" Perhaps the most striking instance of _omission_ in the new edition of matter that had appeared in the first is in the paragraph on the subject of Spiritual Liberty to which reference has been made at p.653.He retains in that paragraph nearly all that related to Liberty of Conscience generally, but he carefully removes the two or three sentences in which he had intimated his individual opinion that there could be no perfect Liberty of Conscience without abolition of Church Establishments and dissolution of every form of connexion between Church and State.

There was practical sagacity in this omission at the moment at which he was re-issuing his pamphlet.