ove reason, he fairly observes: "If a man will
consent to give up his reason, I would as soon converse with a
beast as with that man." Nevertheless, how many do so still!

Fry wrote as a rational churchman, not as an anti-Christian,
"from a hearty desire for their (the clergy's) reformation, and a
great zeal to my countrymen that they may no longer be deceived
by such as call themselves the ministers of the Gospel, but are
not." This appears on the title-page; but a good motive has
seldom yet saved a man or a book, and the House, having debated
about both tracts from morning till night, not only voted them
highly scandalous and profane, but consigned them to the hangman
to burn, and expelled Fry from his seat in Parliament (February
21st, 1651).

So far of the political utterances that for the offence they gave
were condemned to the flames; but these only represent one side
of the activity of the legislature of that time. Nothing, indeed,
better illustrates the mind of the seventeenth century than the
several instances in which Parliament, in the exercise of its
assumed power over literature generally, interfered with works of
a theological nature, nor does anything more clearly or curiously
reveal the mental turmoil of that period than does the perusal of
some of the works that then met with Parliamentary censure or
condemnation. In undertaking this interference it is possible
that Parliament exceeded its province, and one is glad that it
has long since ceased to claim the keepership of the People's
Conscience. But in those days ideas of toleration were in their
infancy; the right of free thought, or of its expression, had not
been established; and the maintenance of orthodoxy was deemed as
much the duty of Parliament as the maintenance of the rights of
the people. So a Parliamentary majority soon came to exercise as
much tyranny over thought as ever had been exercised by king or
bishop; and, in fact, the theological writer ran even greater
personal risks from the indignation of Parliament than he would
have run in the period preceding 1640, for he began to run in
danger of his life.

The first theological work dealt with by Parliament appears to
have been that curious posthumous work, entitled _Comfort for
Believers about their Sinnes and Troubles_, which appeared in
June 1645, by John Archer, Master of Arts, and preacher at All
Hallows', Lombard Street. It had but a short life, for the very
next month the Assem