Note 605 — Chapter XI
Reading edition
Baxter intimates (429) that some disagreement arose between the presbyterians and independents as to the toleration of popery, or rather, as he puts it, as to the active concurrence of the protestant dissenters in accepting such a toleration as should include popery. The latter, conformably to their general principles, were favourable to it; but the former would not make themselves parties to any relaxation of the penal laws against the church of Rome, leaving the king to act as he thought fit. By this stiffness it is very probable that they provoked a good deal of persecution from the court, which they might have avoided by falling into its views of a general indulgence.