The toleration which he advised, and which commended itself to the moderate Whigs with whom he had acted under King William and was probably acting now, was a purely spiritual Toleration.

His proposal, in fact, was identical with that of Charles Leslie's in the _New Association_, one of the pamphlets which he professed to take off in his famous squib.

Leslie had proposed that the Dissenters should be excluded from all civil employments, and should be forced to remain content with liberty of worship.

Addressing the Dissenters, Defoe, in effect, urged them to anticipate forcible exclusion by voluntary withdrawal.

Extremes on both sides should be industriously crushed and discouraged, and the extremes on the Dissenting side were those who, not being content to worship after their own fashion, had also a hankering after the public service.