But, though this might be his private ideal, his difficulties publicly and practically were enormous.

The other unlimited Tolerationists in England were Anabaptists and the like, detesting his Established Church as incompatible with true Toleration, and in league for battering it down.

Through the rest of the community there was but little voice for Toleration.

The frantic and idiotic stringency of the Presbyterians of 1644-6 was now, indeed, rather out of fashion, and a certain mild babble about a Limited Toleration was common in the public mouth.

But the old leaven was at work in many quarters; occasional pamphlets from the Presbyterian camp still wailed lamentably about "the effects of the present Toleration, especially as to the increase of Blasphemy and Damnable Errors;" and some Presbyterian booksellers had recently published _A Second Beacon Fired_, in which they insidiously tried to work upon the Lord Protector's new Conservative and State-Church instincts; by denouncing the books of some leading Anabaptists and other heretics, hostile to his Government, and humbly adjuring him to "do what might be expected from Christian magistrates" in such flagrant cases.