A glimpse of what was going on is given by an extract from Whitelock’s Memoirs (ii. 104) of about the same date: ‘A minister presented articles to the council of war against a trooper, for preaching and expounding the scripture, and uttering erroneous opinions. The council adjudged that none of the articles were against the law or articles of war, but that only the trooper called the parson “a minister of antichrist;” for which reproach they ordered the trooper to make an acknowledgment; which he did, and was one night imprisoned.’ In contrast with this lenience of the council of war may be placed a declaration of the provincial assembly of the London ministers, which after a denunciation of twelve specific heresies, winds up with the following résumé: [1] ‘We hereby testify our great dislike of prelacy, erastinianism, brownism, and independency, and our utter abhorrency of anti-scripturism, popery, arianism, socinianism, arminianism, antinomianism, anabaptism, libertinism, and familism; and that we detest the error of toleration, the doctrine that men should have liberty to worship God in that manner as shall appear to them most agreeable to the word of God.’ Edwards, in his ‘Gangrena,’ published while this storm was at its height, had been even more minute. He enumerated a hundred and seventy-six erroneous doctrines then prevalent, distributed among sixteen sects, and appealed to parliament, taking warning from the example of Eli, to use coercive power for their suppression, or to put an end to a {315} toleration, ‘at which the dear brethren in Scotland stand amazed,’ and which is ‘eclipsing the glory of the most excellent Reformation.’ To us this agitation has its comic side. To Milton, a competent judge, it was serious enough; ‘Men whose life, learning, faith, and pure intent Would have been held in high esteem with Paul, Must now be named and printed heretics By shallow Edwards and Scotch what d’ye call.’ [1] [Neal’s _Puritans_, ii. 265.]