As if to show how much in earnest they were on this whole subject, the House had at that moment the notorious Anti-Trinitarian John Biddle in their custody. Since 1644, when he was a schoolmaster in Gloucester, this mild man had been in prison again and again for his opinions, and the wonder was that the Presbyterians had not succeeded in bringing him to the scaffold in 1648 under their tremendous Ordinance of that year. His Socinian books were then known over England and even on the Continent, and he would certainly have been the first capital victim under the Ordinance if the Presbyterians had continued in power. At large since 1651, he had been living rather quietly in London, earning his subsistence as a Greek reader for the press, but also preaching regularly on Sundays to a small Socinian congregation. In accordance with the general policy of the Government since Cromwell had become master, he had been left unmolested. The orthodox had been on the watch, however, and another Socinian book of Biddle's, called _A Two-fold Catechism_, published in 1654, had given them the opportunity they wanted. For this book Biddle had been arrested on the 12th of December, and he had been brought before the House on his knees and committed to prison on the 13th. The views which the House were then formulating on the Limits of Toleration in the abstract may be said therefore to have been illustrated over Mr. Biddle's body in the concrete. His case came up again on the 15th of January, when the House, after hearing with horror some extracts from his books, ordered them to be burnt by the hangman, and at the same time instructed a Committee to prepare a Bill for punishing him. The punishment, if the Presbyterians could succeed in falling back on their Parliamentary Ordinance of May 1648, was to be death.[1] [Footnote 1: Wood's Ath. III. 593-598; Commons Journals of dates.]