The cause of Religious Liberty was, however, not the only force which was working in the country for the readmission of the Jews. The religious fervour of the nation had been stirred to a high pitch, and there were few men whose minds had not become influenced by Messianic and other mystical beliefs. It is curious indeed to note that this current of thought ran parallel with the evolution of the secular idea of Toleration. Seven years after the first publication of Leonard Busher’s famous Toleration pamphlet, Mr. Sergeant Finch wrote anonymously a book entitled “The Calling of the Jewes” (1621), with a prefatory epistle in Hebrew, in which he invited the children of Israel to realise the prophecies by asserting their national existence in Palestine. At the same time he called upon all Christian princes to do homage to the Jewish nation. This early manifestation of Zionism did not meet with much sympathy in high places, for James I. was so incensed at it that he clapped its publisher into jail.[24] The book, however, was a symptom, and the movement it represented only derived strength from persecution. The gloomier the lot of the sectaries, the more intense became their reliance on the Messianic prophecies. Even after the triumph of the Puritan cause, the sanest Independents held to them firmly side by side with their belief in Religious Liberty; and in the Cartwright petition we find both views expounded. Extremists like the Fifth Monarchy Men made them the pivots for fresh outbursts of Sectarianism. Judaical sects arose, the members of which endeavoured to live according to the Levitical Law, even practising circumcision. Prosecutions for such practices may be traced back to 1624.[25] Some of the saints, like Everard the Leveller, publicly called themselves Jews;[26] others went to Amsterdam, and were formally received into the synagogue.[27] Colchester was the headquarters of one of these Judaical sects, but there were others in London and in Wales.[28] The practical effect of this movement was not only the production of a very widespread philo-Semitism, but a strong conviction that, inasmuch as the conversion of the Jews was an indispensable preliminary of the Millennium, their admission to England, where they might meet the godliest people in the world, was urgently necessary.