"This freedom, then, is of high concern to be had and enjoy, as well for the magistrates sake as for the peoples common good; and it consists, as hath been said, in the magistrates forbearing to put forth the power of rule and coercion in things that God hath exempted out of his commission. So that all care requisite for the peoples obtaining this may be exercised with great ease, if it be taken in its proper season; and that this restraint be laid upon the supreme power before it be erected as a fundamental constitution among others, upon which the free consent of the people is given, to have the persons brought into the exercise of supreme authority over them, and on their behalf; and if besides, as a further confirmation hereunto, it be acknowledged the voluntary act of the ruling power, when once brought into a capacity of acting legislatively, that herein they are bound up, and judge it their duty so to be (both in reference to God, the institutor of magistracy, and in reference to the whole body by whom they are entrusted), this great blessing will hereby be so well provided for that we shall have no cause to fear, as it may be ordered. [Sidenote: 1655.] "By this means a great part of the outward exercise of anti-Christian tyranny and bondage will be plucked up by the very roots; which, till some such course be held in it, will be always apt to renew and sprout out afresh, under some new form or refined appearances, as by late years' experience we have been taught. For since the fall of the Bishops and persecuting Presbyteries, the same spirit is apt to rise in the next sort of clergy, that can get the ear of the magistrate, and pretend to the keeping and ruling of the conscience of the governors; although this spirit and practice hath been all along decried by the faithful adherents to this cause as a most sore oppression, and insufferable yoke of bondage most unrighteously kept up over the consciences of the people, and therefore judged by them most needful to be taken out of the way; and in this matter the present governors have been willing very eminently to give their testimony in their public declarations, however in practice there is much of grievance yet found among us, though more, in probability, from the officiousness of subordinate ministers, than any clear purpose or design of the chief in power."[125] In such teaching the rights of conscience are planted on their proper ground. No one, after reading Vane's words, can fail to see the truth and justice of the lines addressed to him by John Milton: "Besides, to know Both spiritual power and civil, what each means, What severs each, thou hast learn'd, which few have done; The bounds of either sword to thee we owe: Therefore on thy firm hand Religion leans In peace, and reckons thee her eldest son." [Sidenote: _Suffering Vane._]