‘Is not liberty of conscience in religion a fundamental? so long as there is liberty for the supreme magistrate, to exercise his conscience in erecting what form of church government he is satisfied he should set up, why should he not give it to others? Liberty of conscience is a natural right, and he that would have it, ought to give it, having liberty to settle what he likes for the public. Indeed that hath been the vanity of our contests: every sect saith, Give me liberty; but give it him, and to his power he will not yield it to any body else. Where is our ingenuity? Truly that is a thing that ought to be very reciprocal. The magistrate hath his supremacy, and he may settle religion according to his conscience. And I may say to you, I can say it, all the money in the nation would not have tempted men to fight upon such an account as they have engaged, if they had not had hopes of liberty, better than they had from episcopacy, or than would have been afforded them from a Scottish Presbytery, or an English either, if it had made such steps, or been as sharp and rigid as it threatened when it was first set up. This I say is a fundamental: it ought to be so. It is for us and the generations to come.’ Cromwell spoke more in confirmation hereof; and indeed he would have been a brave man, if really he had performed what he asserted with binding arguments. But though now he seemed to disapprove the behaviour of Presbytery, (for then he was for Independency,) yet after some time he courted the Presbyterians; and these fawning upon him from the pulpit, as their preserver and the restorer of the church, he suffered the Quakers to be persecuted under his government, though he pretended not to know it, when he might easily have stopt it. But by hearkening to the flatteries of the clergy, at length he lost his credit, even with those who with him had fought for the common liberty; and thus at last befel him after his death, what he seemed to have imprecated on himself in the foregoing speech, if he departed from allowing due liberty. For he further said, that many of the people had been necessitated to go into the vast howling wilderness in New England, for the enjoyment of their liberty; and that liberty was a fundamental of the government; adding, that it had cost much blood to have it so, and even the hazarding of all. And in the conclusion he said, that he could sooner be willing to be rolled into his grave, and buried with infamy, than give his consent to the wilful throwing away of that government; so testified unto in the fundamentals of it. Now who knows not what infamy befel him afterwards, when in the reign of King Charles the Second, it is said, his corpse was digged up, and buried near the gallows, as may be further mentioned in its due place?