In Vane first appears the doctrine of natural right and government by consent, which, however open to criticism in the crude form of popular statement, has yet been the moving principle of the modern reconstruction of Europe. It was the result of his recognition of the ‘rule of Christ in the natural conscience’ in the elemental reason, in virtue of which man is properly a law to himself. From the same idea followed the principle of universal toleration, the exclusion of the magistrate’s power alike from the maintenance and restraint of any kind of opinion. This principle did not {297} with Vane and the independents rest, as in modern times, on the slippery foundation of a supposed indifference of all religious beliefs, but on the conviction of the sacredness of the reason, however deluded, in every man, which may be constrained by nothing less divine than itself. ‘The rule of magistracy’ says Vane, ‘is not to intrude itself into the office and proper concerns of Christ’s inward government and rule in the conscience, but it is to content itself with the outward man, and to intermeddle with the concerns thereof in reference to the converse which man ought to have with man, upon the grounds of natural justice and right in things appertaining to this life.’ [1] [1] [‘A Retired Man’s Meditations,’ (quoted by Forster, _Eminent British Statesmen_, iv. p. 84).] Nor would he allow the re-establishment under the name of christian discipline, of that constraint of the conscience which he refused to the magistrate. Such discipline, he would hold, as he held the sabbath, to be rather a ‘magistratical institution’ in imitation of what was ‘ceremonious and temporary’ among the Jews, ‘than that which hath any clear appointment in the gospel.’ [1] Christ’s spirit was not bound. A system of truth and discipline had not been written down once for all in the scriptures, but rather was to be gradually elicited from the scriptures by the gradual manifestation in the believer of the spirit which spoke also in them. A ‘waiting,’ seeking attitude, unbound by rule whether ecclesiastical or secular, was that which became a spiritual church. The application of this waiting spirit to practical life is to be found in the policy of Cromwell. [1] [Sikes, quoted by Forster, _ib_. p. 81, note.]