Of toleration and of comprehension there was very much more than there had been in England, or than could be found at the same time elsewhere; but both toleration and comprehension had respect to different forms of polity, worship, and discipline, rather than to different phases of doctrinal sentiment. Liberty was conceded to various parties so long as they were orthodox and evangelical. But when teachers lapsed into what Puritans believed to be error, when they lost their sympathy in what Puritans believed to be Christian experience, they became at once objects of suspicion and dislike to the Government, and ran the risk of being deprived and silenced. There was freedom of speech, if not State support, for all who were esteemed true and faithful servants of Christ, in spite of their peculiar principles and usages. But toleration belonged to them only as saints, not as subjects. Liberty was counted a religious privilege, not a social right. The grounds of toleration rested upon by Government, however they might appear in the speculations of individual thinkers, were not of the same breadth and of the same strength as they are in the present day. But if there was less of liberty than some admirers of the Commonwealth imagine, there was vastly more of order in the administration of ecclesiastical affairs than those who dislike Cromwell and his Government are disposed to admit. What has been already advanced in these pages serves to shew that things were not left to be shaped by chance; that a definite system of policy was framed; that there was a defined establishment based on law; that liberty was fenced round by distinct lines; and we may now remark, in conclusion, on this subject, that Council books, and other documents in the State Paper Office, prove that the ecclesiastical and other departments of the State, throughout an imagined reign of confusion, were really administered with singular and unprecedented regularity. [Sidenote: 1657, April.]