commanders may tend to the improvement of the military discipline, which they shall digest and introduce into the Senate; and if the Senate shall thereupon frame any article, they shall see that it be observed, in the musters or education of the youth. And whereas the Council of War is the sentinel or scout of this commonwealth, if any person or persons shall go about to introduce debate into any popular assembly of the same, or otherwise to alter the present government, or strike at the root of it, they shall apprehend, or cause to be apprehended, seized, imprisoned, and examine, arraign, acquit, or condemn, and cause to be executed any such person or persons, by their proper power and authority and without appeal. “The Council of Religion, as the arbiter of this commonwealth in cases of conscience more peculiarly appertaining to religion, Christian charity, and a pious life, shall have the care of the national religion, and the protection of the liberty of conscience with the cognizance of all causes relating to either of them. And first as to the national religion: they shall cause all places or preferments of the best revenue in either of the universities to be conferred upon no other than such of the most learned and pious men as have dedicated themselves to the study of theology. They shall also take a special care that, by such augmentations as be or shall hereafter be appointed by the Senate, every benefice in this nation be improved at least to the value of £100 a year. And to the end that there be no interest at all, whereby the divines or teachers of the national religion may be corrupted, or corrupt religion, they shall be capable of no other kind of employment or preferment in this commonwealth. And whereas a directory for the administration of the national religion is to be prepared by this council, they shall in this and other debates of this nature proceed in manner following: a question arising in matter of religion shall be put and stated by the council in writing, which writing the censors shall send by their beadles (being proctors chosen to attend them) each to the university whereof he is chancellor, and the vice-chancellor of the same receiving the writing, shall call a convocation of all the divines of that university being above forty years of age. And the universities, upon a point so proposed, shall have no manner of intelligence or correspondence one with another, till their debates be ended, and they have made return of their answers to the Council of Religion by two or three of their own members, that they may clear their sense, if any doubt should arise, to the council, which done, they shall return, and the council, having received such information, shall proceed according to their own judgments, in the preparation of the whole matter for the Senate: that so the interest of the learned being removed, there may be a right application of reason to Scripture, which is the foundation of the national religion.