These violent dissensions brought matters to extremity, and pushed the Independents to the execution of their designs.
Popery and prelacy alone, whose genius seemed to tend towards superstition, were treated by the Independents with rigor.
In the sixteenth century Quakerism was unknown; and there was not in the whole realm a single congregation of Independents or Baptists.
In opposition to this reasoning of the Independents, many of the Presbyterians showed the inconvenience and danger of the projected alteration.
The Presbyterians, it must be confessed, after insisting on such conditions, differed only in words from the Independents, who required the establishment of a pure republic.
The Independents, who had at first taken shelter and concealed themselves under the wings of the Presbyterians, now evidently appeared a distinct party, and betrayed very different views and pretensions.
In proportion to its degree of fanaticism, each sect became dangerous and destructive; and as the Independents went a note higher than the Presbyterians, they could less be restrained within any bounds of temper and moderation.
At the time of the Revolution, the Independents, Baptists, and Quakers were a majority of the dissenting body; and these sects could not be gained over on any terms which the lowest of Low Churchmen would have been willing to offer.
The Independents rejected all ecclesiastical establishments, and would admit of no spiritual courts, no government among pastors, no interposition of the magistrate in religious concerns, no fixed encouragement annexed to any system of doctrines or opinions.
Sir Henry Vane, Oliver Cromwell, Nathaniel Fiennes, and Oliver St. John, the solicitor-general, were regarded as the leaders of the Independents. The earl of Essex, disgusted with a war of which he began to foresee the pernicious consequences, adhered to the Presbyterians, and promoted every reasonable plan of accommodation.