The machinery of the _Ejectors_ and the _Triers_ was still in full operation; and, on reports from the _Trustees for the Maintenance of Ministers_, his Highness and the Council still had the pleasure, from time to time, of ordering new augmentations of clerical stipends.

The Voluntaryism which still existed in wide diffusion through the English mind had become comparatively silent; and indeed open reviling of the Established Church had been made punishable by Article X.of the _Petition and Advice_.

Perhaps the plainest speaker now against the principle of an Established Church, or at least against the constitution of the present one, was the veteran John Goodwin of Coleman Street.

"_The Triers (or Tormentors) tried and cast by the Laws of God and Men_" was the title of a pamphlet of Goodwin's, which had been out since May 1657, assailing the Commission of Triers.

Goodwin was too eminent a Commonwealth's man, and too fair a controversialist, to be treated as a mere reviler; and it was left to the Protector's journalist, Marchamont Needham, to reply through the press.