Idolatrie, Let them alone, they are great readers of Gods booke, and if
they bee in errour, they will sooner finde it, having liberty of conscience,
then being oppressed with the Tyranny of the High Commission Court
or other kindes of persecutions which disquiet their consciences and
troubles their patience. . . . . Let the Adamites Preach in vaults
& caves as naked as their nailes, and starve themselves with cold,
they thinke themselves as innocent as Adam and Eve were in their
nakednesse before their fall, let them therefore alone till some innocent
Eve bee so curious as to eate forbidden fruit, and then they will all make
themselves aprons of figge leaves perceiving their nakednesse." The
excuse for quoting this passage must be that it offers strong evidence
regarding the authorship of the piece. If my analysis of Walwyn be
correct, he was just the man to put truths of this sort in a way that to
one not in tune with his spirit might seem the merest ribaldry.

The consideration that militates against regarding the petition as a
satire on the sects is that the satire, if satire it be, was far too delicate
for the popular consumption of the age; seventeenth-century political
satire went plainly labeled. Further, there is nothing in the piece to
indicate at first hand what religious belief its author was supporting.
An Anglican satirizing the sects would not have included apologies for
the Arminian; Hyde had the skill to forge the book, but would scarcely
have made it politically so pointless. Admitting the petition to be
serious in intent, the internal evidence all points to its composition by
a man mentally nearer like Walwyn than any other writer of the day.

A comparison of the plan of the piece, which handles the Brownists,
Socinians, Arminians, Papists, and Familists, in the same manner as
the Puritans and Adamites, with a passage in A Prediction Of Mr.
Edwards His Conversion, and Recantation, affords additional evidence.
"You shal then see him a man composed of all those opinions he hath
so much reviled! an Independent: so far as to allow every man to be
fully perswaded in his owne mind, and to molest no man for wor-
shiping God according to his conscience.

"A Brownist; so far, as to separate from all those that preach for
filthy lucre; An Anabaptist: so far, at least, as to be rebaptized in a
floud of his owne true repentent teares: A seeker; in seeking occasion,
how to doe good unto all men, without respect of persons or opinions;
he will be wholly incorporate into the Family of love, of true Christian
love, that covereth a multitude of evils . . . ."

If the surmise be correct that Walwyn was the author of this plea,
so daring that it could admit the worst practical effects that might
result occasionally from the broad application of its principle, he as-
suredly deserves a high seat among the men who fought the battle of
liberty of conscience.

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