In the body of the pamphlet Needham maintains that principle.

"Christ left no such rules and directions," he says, "nor was it his intention to leave such, for propagating the Gospel, as exclude the Magistrate from using his wisdom and endeavours in order thereunto." He defends the Commission of Triers and the Commission of Ejectors, and more than once twits Goodwin with having taken up at last the extreme crotchets of Roger Williams the American.

"_A Letter of Address to the Protector occasioned by Mr.Needham's Reply to Mr.
Goodwin's Book against Triers_" appeared Aug.

25; but we need not follow the controversy farther.

It had come to be Mr.John Goodwin's fate to be the severest public critic of Cromwell's Established Church; it had come to be Mr.Marchamont Needham's to be the most prominent defender of that institution.[1] [Footnote 1: Thomason Pamphlets, and Catalogue of the same for dates.] More likely than such men as John Goodwin to be classed as open revilers of the Established Church were the Quakers.