“It is a rule and principle,” he urges,[90] “worthy to be known by Christians, that no Scripture, no, nor so much as any ancient creed, binds our faith or our obedience to any Church whatsoever denominated by a particular name; far less if it be distinguished by a several government from that which is indeed Catholic.... It were an injury to condemn the papist of absurdity and contradiction for adhering to his Catholic Romish religion, if we, for the pleasure of a king and his public considerations, shall adhere to a Catholic English.” Milton only wanted republican instead of monarchical forms. Politics were still the setting of religion. He was even more inconsistent. He deprecated any discipline by the State, although his Church was a political Church, and although Cromwell’s purposes are contradicted by Milton’s very deprecation” ”If we think”--who can forget this fine passage from his “Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing”?--“if we think to regulate printing, thereby to rectify manners, we must regulate all recreations and pastimes, all that is delightful to men. No music must be set or sung but what is grave and Doric.... I hate a pupil-teacher; I endure not an instructor that comes to me under the wardship of an overseeing fist.” How did Milton relish the Independents as “pupil teachers,” or the “overseeing fist” of the Fifth-Monarchy men, or the wardship of the Reign of Saints? Milton wants neither the Church as a Polity, nor the State as a Church. Not staying to inquire what fits the genius of England and her national traditions and customs, he seeks a Theocracy which is untheocratic, and a national republic doomed to fall when the perfect ruler is removed. “When,” he indignantly exclaims[91]--“when God shakes a kingdom with strong and healthful commotions to a general reforming, it is not untrue that many sectaries and false teachers are then busiest in seducing, but yet more true is it that God then raises to His own work men of rare abilities and more than common industry, not only to look back and revise what hath been taught heretofore, but to gain further and to go on some new enlightened steps in the discovery of truth.” So, then, a reformed commonwealth, and no visible Church are Milton’s ideals.