What happened at the two following meetings, which were held on the 7th and 12th December,[105] we do not know in detail. The records of the time only afford us scanty glimpses of the opinions expressed, without any indication of the days on which they were respectively uttered. It is clear, however, that the feeling of the clergy turned out to be on the whole unfavourable to Menasseh’s petition. The calumnies of the pamphleteers had done their work. The idea of public religious services at which Christ might be blasphemed stayed the hands of the most tolerant. Others feared that unrestricted liberty of Jewish worship would create in the Synagogue a nucleus round which the Judaical sectaries would rally. Dr. Newcomen drew a harrowing picture of English converts to Judaism joining the immigrants in offering children to Moloch.[106] The moderate majority, impressed, probably, by a weighty and elaborate opinion drawn up by Dr. Barlow, librarian of the Bodleian, and presented to the Conference by Dr. Goodwin,[107] were strongly in favour of an admission under severe restrictions. Even the level-headed Nye, who was ready to tolerate all religious follies so long as they were peaceable, asked for “due cautions warranted by Holy Scripture.”[108] It was in vain that Lawrence and Lambert, supported by the learned commentator Caryll, combated these opinions.[109] On the eve of the third meeting Cromwell sought to strengthen the Judeophils by adding to the Conference Hugh Peters, the oldest of the advocates of unrestricted Readmission, together with his favourite chaplain, Peter Sterry, and Mr. Bulkeley, the Provost of Eton.[110] This, however, did not improve matters, for Peters had meanwhile heard something of the Marranos in London and their papistical dissimulation of their religion, and he vigorously denounced the Jews as “a self-seeking generation” who “made but little conscience of their own principles.”[111] This discourse seems to have produced a considerable impression on the Conference, for Thurloe, writing to Henry Cromwell on the 17th, expressed the shrewd opinion that “nothing will be done.”[112] So far, however, the essential point for which Cromwell had been striving had not been jeopardised. He was desirous of securing the admission of the Jews on liberal terms, but at a pinch he would no doubt have agreed to religious and civil restrictions, provided the commercial activity of the immigrants was not unduly fettered. Hence the terms favoured by the majority of the clergy did not trouble him very seriously.