‘It is expected,’ says the president, ‘that the honourable houses will add the civil sanction to what the assembly have advised. I am commanded by the parliament of this kingdom to demand it, and in their name do demand it.’ The temper in which this demand was made, was shown by a declaration against ‘liberty of conscience and toleration of sectaries,’ published at the same time by the Scotch, in which, after taking due note of ‘their own great services,’ they announce that, ‘being all bound by one covenant, they will go on to the last man of the kingdom in opposing that party in England which was endeavouring to supplant true religion by pleading for liberty of conscience.’ Evidence might be tediously multiplied to show, that if Marston Moor and Naseby had been won by the Scots and the trained bands of the city, the civil sword would really have been applied ‘to force the consciences which Christ set free,’ at a time when these consciences were at their quickest, to a conformity, if not more oppressive than that exacted by Laud, yet more fatal to intellectual freedom. [1] [Whitelock, _Memorials_, i. p. 209, Ed. 1853.] [2] [Whitelock, i. p. 294.] [3] [_On the new forcers of conscience under the Long Parliament._] Meanwhile the parliamentary erastians had a power at their back, no child of their own, too strong for the Scots and the assembly, and soon to prove too strong for parliament itself. The first note of alarm at this power had been sounded by the wary Scots about the end of 1644.