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Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..60f3e92 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #63280 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63280) diff --git a/old/63280-0.txt b/old/63280-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index dc8523a..0000000 --- a/old/63280-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4031 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Four Lectures on the English Revolution, by -Thomas Hill Green - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Four Lectures on the English Revolution - -Author: Thomas Hill Green - -Editor: Richard Lewis Nettleship - -Release Date: September 23, 2020 [EBook #63280] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOUR LECTURES--ENGLISH REVOLUTION *** - - - - -Produced by gdurb - - - - -THOMAS HILL GREEN - -FOUR LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION, - -From Vol. III of Green’s _Works_, edited by R.L. Nettleship -Longman, Green & Co., London, 1888 - -From the Editor’s Preface: - -The four lectures on ‘The English Revolution’ were delivered for -the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution in January 1867; he did -not intend them for publication, but they are printed on the -recommendation of competent judges. ... I am also indebted to Mr. C.H. -Firth for revising the lectures on ‘The English Revolution.’ - -OXFORD, August, 1888. - -Transcriber’s Note: Page numbers are the same as in the _Works_, -so commence at {277}. All of the footnotes appear to have been -added by the editor, and have been located under the paragraphs or -quotations to which they relate, and renumbered accordingly, with a -few transcriber’s notes, which are marked “Tr.” - -CONTENTS - -LECTURE I 277 -LECTURE II 296 -LECTURE III 323 -LECTURE IV 345 - - - - -LECTURE I. - -The period of which I am to speak is one of the most trodden grounds -of history. It has not indeed the same intense attraction for an -Englishman which the epoch of 1789 has for the Frenchman, for the -interest in one case is purely historical, in the other it is that -of a movement still in progress. Our revolution has long since run -its round. The cycle was limited and belonged essentially to another -world than that in which we live. Doubtless it was not insulated; its -force has been felt throughout the subsequent series of political -action and reaction, but the current along which European society -is being now carried has another and a wider sweep. In the one we -are ourselves too thoroughly absorbed to contemplate its course from -without. From the other we have emerged far enough for our vision of -it to be complete and steady. - -But though this is so, and though the period in question is perhaps -more familiar than any other to historical students, it may be -doubted whether its character has ever been quite fairly exhibited. -By partisans it has been regarded without ‘dry light,’ by judicious -historians with a light so dry as not at all to illustrate the -real temper and purpose of the actors. In reaction from the latter -has appeared a mode of treatment, worked with special force by Mr. -Carlyle, which puts personal character in the boldest relief, but -overlooks the strength of circumstance, the organic life of custom -and institution, which acts on the individual from without and from -within, which at once informs his will and places it in limits -against which it breaks itself in vain. Such oversight leaves out an -essential element in the tragedy of human story. In modern life, as -Napoleon said to Goethe, political {278} necessity represents the -destiny of the ancient drama. The historic hero, strong to make the -world new, and exulting in his strength, has his inspiration from a -past which he knows not, and is constructing a future which is not -that of his own will or imagination. The providence which he serves -works by longer and more ambiguous methods than suit his enthusiasm -or impatience. Sooner or later the fatal web gathers round him too -painfully to be longer disregarded, when he must either waste himself -in ineffectual struggle with it, or adjust himself to it by a process -which to his own conscience and in the judgment of men is one of -personal debasement. - -It is as such a tragic conflict between the creative will of man and -the hidden wisdom of the world, which seems to thwart it, that the -‘Great Rebellion’ has its interest. The party spirit of the present -day is ill-spent on it. Neither our conservatism nor our liberalism, -neither our oligarchic nor our ‘levelling’ zeal, can find much to -claim as its own in a struggle which was for a hierarchy under royal -licence on the one side, and for a freedom founded in grace on the -other. But if our party spirit is out of place here, not less so -is our censoriousness. As our critical conceit gets the better of -our political insight when we judge of the political capacity of a -nation or class by the roughness of its ideas or the bad taste of -its utterances, so it masters our historical sense when we treat -the enthusiasm of a past age as simulation, its unscrupulousness -as want of principle, and the energy which regards neither persons -nor formulae in going straight to its end as a selfish instinct -of aggrandisement. Yet, again, we do but dishonour God and the -rationality of his operation in the world, if, by way of cheap honour -to our hero, we depreciate the purposes no less noble than his -own which crossed his path, and find nothing but unreason in that -necessity of things which was too strong for his control. - -It will be my endeavour in speaking of the short life of English -republicanism to avoid these opposite partialities, and to treat it -as the last act in a conflict beginning with the Reformation, in -which the several parties had each its justification in reason, and -which ended, not simply, as might seem, in a catastrophe, but was -preliminary to a reconciliation of the forces at issue of another -kind than could to an actor in the conflict be apparent. If I seem to -begin far back, I must trust to the sequel for vindication. - -{279} The Reformation, we know, opened a breach in the substantial -unity of Christendom, or rather brought to view in a new form one -as old as the conflict between the spirit and the flesh. Such a -breach lies deep down in the constitution of man, as a spirit -self-determined and self-contained, yet related to a world which -it regards as external and its opposite, and so related that from -this world it receives its character, nay, in the proper sense, its -reality. Outward ordinances were in St. Paul’s eyes fleshly and alien -to the spirit. Yet had they been the spirit’s schoolmaster, and in -outward ordinances it was fain in turn to embody itself when it went -forth to recast the world in a Christian society. - -The Christianity of the west remained till the Reformation -essentially a Christianity of ordinances. The opposition of church -and empire, of ecclesiastical and secular jurisdiction, was not in -any proper sense an opposition of the spirit and the world. The -church and its law had not yet been questioned by the reason, and -hence their authority had not been recognised as rational. The -obedience rendered to them was that of the servant rather than of -the son. The Christ who ruled through them was still a ‘Christ after -the flesh.’ The two swords which Peter showed to Jesus were taken -by medieval fancy as emblematic of the double sovereignty of church -and state, and indeed fitly represented the sameness in kind of the -two powers. Each was a carnal weapon, nor was there any essential -distinction between the objects to which each was applied. Neither -touched the spirit, or rather the spirit was not in a state to be -conscious of the wound. To the higher intellects of the time, like -Dante, the co-ordination of the two seemed an evil, for under the -name of a separation between the spiritual and temporal was covered -an antagonism of sovereignties equally temporal. The one thwarted, -supplemented, combined with the other in the same sphere of outward -relations. Together they built up the firmament of custom and -ordinance, which the boundless spirit had not yet learned to feel as -a limitation. - -The Reformation, however, had a history. Not only was it struggling -into life during the whole fifteenth century; it was the result -of the same spiritual throes which long before had issued in -movements superficially most opposite to it; in the impulse to find -in Palestine the Christ whom ordinances had hidden, in periodic -revulsions from recognised and {280} comfortable usage to monastic -poverty and contemplation, in the scholastic effort to rationalise -and thus reconcile to the spirit the dogmas of the church. All these -movements, however, the church, as an outward authority, had been -able to direct. She had been general of the crusades, had stereotyped -monasticism into a ceremonial discipline, and had kept the schoolmen -to the work of spinning threads of which she held the ends. Thus the -very effort of the reason to break its shell had complicated its -confinement. As it was growing more conscious of its inward rights, -the institutions in which it had to acquiesce were becoming more -artificial, and the dogmas to be accepted by it more abstract. The -result was such a conscious entanglement in the yoke of bondage, -holding back the believer from free intercourse with God, as provoked -the spiritual revolt of Luther. - -‘Justification by faith’ and ‘the right of private judgment’ are the -two watchwords of the Reformation. Each indicates a new relation -between the spirit and outward authority. ‘Faith’ in the Lutheran -language is raised to a wholly different level from that which it -had occupied in the language of the church. It no longer means the -implicit acceptance of dogma on authority, for lack of which the -‘infidel’ was out of the pale of salvation. As with St. Paul it -expressed the continuous act in virtue of which the individual breaks -loose from the outward constraint of alien ordinances, and places -himself in a spiritual relation to God through union with his Son, so -with Luther faith is simply the renunciation by which man’s falser -self, with its surroundings of observance and received opinion, -slips from him that he may be clothed upon with the person of -Christ. The ghost of scholasticism, no doubt, still haunted Luther, -and led him astray into disquisitions on the relation of faith to -the other virtues. But according to his proper idea, faith was no -positive, finite virtue at all. It was the absorption of all finite -and relative virtues, as such, in the consciousness of union with -the infinite God. Again the spirit searcheth all things, even the -deep things of God, as mysteries which Christ had opened. Again the -handwriting of ordinances contrary to us was blotted out. Again the -conscience moved freely in a redeemed world. [1] - -[1] [This passage, from ‘Justification by faith’ occurs in the essay -on Dogma, above, pp. 178-179.] - -{281} How was this new consciousness of spiritual freedom and right -to be reconciled with submission to institutions which seemed to rest -on selfish interest or the acquiescence of the animal nature? How -was the dominion of God in the believer’s soul to be adjusted to his -dominion in a church which restrained the operations of his spirit, -and in a state which only honoured him with the lips? Such was the -practical question which the Reformation offered to European society. -Raised first and in its rudest form by Münzer’s anabaptists, it -worked with more subtle influence in all the countries which felt the -Reformation. The opposition between the inward and outward, between -reason and authority, between the spirit and the flesh, between -the individual and the world of settled right, no longer a mere -antithesis of the schools, was being wrought into the political life -of Christendom. It gives the true formula for expressing the nature -of the conflict which issued in the English commonwealth. - -This conflict was rightly regarded by the higher intellects that took -part in it as but a stage in a vaster one of which all christendom -was the arena [1]; as a completion of the Reformation, a struggle -against the catholic reaction. In the special form which it assumed -in England we shall find the reason why the course of religious, -and indirectly of political development, with us has been different -from that which obtained severally in protestant Germany, in France, -and in southern Europe. It is only by considering the modes in -which the spiritual forces brought into play in the Reformation -had their relations adjusted elsewhere, that we can appreciate the -nature of their collision and reconciliation in England. These -modes may be summed as respectively jesuitry, the divorce of the -secular from the religious, and the complete assimilation of the -religious to the political life of states. The power by which the -catholic church met the new emergency, the new demand for personal -spiritual satisfaction, was, speaking broadly, jesuitry. So long -as human life remained in that ‘wholeness’ which is health, there -was no room for such an agency. The catholic of the middle ages had -no thought of a spiritual world beyond that presented to him in -the outward institutions of the church. His sins were sins against -some established ordinance, which the upholder of the ordinance -could absolve. But with the awakened conscience of a spiritual -world, apart from all {282} ordinances, to which the soul in its -individual essence for good or evil was related, came a new need -of spiritual direction. Where the reason was strong enough to be a -law to itself, this direction was found in the Bible as interpreted -by the individual conscience. Where the authority of the church -retained its hold, it could only do so by regulating the most secret -intricacies of personal experience, and by meeting the importunities -of personal fear or aspiration by an answer equally personal. Through -the jesuits, as educators and confessors, it was able to do this. -It supplied an elaborate mechanism through which the individual -might work out his own justification in disregard of recognised -outward duties. The protestant idea of an inward light, to whatever -extravagances it might be open, stimulated the sense of a universal -law which the inward light revealed. Hence it has issued, as among -the quakers, in a far-reaching zeal of cosmopolitan philanthropy. -Jesuitry, on the other hand, is the ruin of all public spirit. It -satisfies the individual soul and reconciles it to the church by -casuistical devices which give the guise of reason to the interested -suggestions of personal passion. In saving the soul it ruins nations, -not because it proposes a higher law than that of which the kingdoms -of this world are capable, but because it makes salvation a process -of self-seeking no other than the satisfaction of the hunger of -sense. In southern Europe jesuitry had its way. Sometimes it might -justify the tyrant, sometimes (as in France under the League) the -tyrannicide; but it was equally antagonistic to rational freedom. -Acting on the ruler, it derationalised the state, which came to be, -not the passionless expression of general right, but the engine of -individual caprice under alternating fits of appetite and fear. -Acting on the subject, again, it gave him over to private interests -in the way either of vicious self-indulgence or of the religious zeal -which compounds for such indulgence. The creature of the jesuits is -no longer spontaneously loyal to the institutions under which he is -born, nor yet has he, like the puritan, a new law written on his -conscience which he is to enact in society, but he has a transaction -of his own to negotiate with a power wielding spiritual terrors. He -may be either rake or devotee, but never a citizen, as the Spain and -southern Germany of the seventeenth century too plainly testified. - -[1] [Amended from “area”. Tr.] - -Thus directed, then, the conflict between inward and {283} outward -interest ends in such a supremacy of the former as gives the state -over to caprice and undermines the outward morality which forms the -moral man. So far as catholic countries have escaped, or recovered -from, such a result, they have done so by the gradual obliteration -or confinement within strict limits of all personal interest in -religion. The Romance nations, it has been often remarked, have not -the same instinct of spiritual completeness as the Teutonic. They are -not distressed by the spiritual divorce which is implied in leaving -religion and morality as unreconciled principles of action. Thus -in some of them we find a political and social interest growing up -in complete independence of the church, and organising itself with -a rational regularity which the protestant politician, constantly -thwarted in schemes which he deems secular by religious intrusion, -may sometimes be disposed to envy. Religion, meanwhile, is regulated, -and the agencies such as jesuitry by which it might interfere with -secular life are carefully watched. Under such regulation it is left -to itself. To the citizen it becomes a mere ceremonial. His attitude -towards it is simply passive. At best it does but fill up the -vacancies of his social life or comfort him in his final seclusion -from it. The devout become a class by themselves, estranged from the -activities of civil life. Only for them and for women, as the passive -element in society, is religion a permanent influence. Wherever -in catholic countries, under the influence of the revolutionary -revival of the last century, the reorganisation of society has been -achieved, it has only been under the condition of this confinement -and passivity of religion. In France, as the source of this revival, -the condition has been most fully realised. It is the natural sequel, -indeed, of the compromise of interests effected by Henry IV. - -To the Germans, as to every other nation, the quickened Christianity -of the Reformation brought not peace but a sword. Their religious -wars, however, were rather brought on by crowned violence and the -ambition of the house of Hapsburg than the result of any strife of -principles involved in lutheranism itself. The protestantism of -North Germany, growing up under the protection of princes, from -the first blended with the existing institutions of the state. -It escaped internal rupture, and had not seriously to fight for -existence till the time of the thirty years’ war. It then {284} -owed its preservation, not to itself, but to the sword of Gustavus -and the diplomacy of Richelieu, and Germany emerged from the war in -such a state of wretchedness and exhaustion, that popular religion -was in no condition to assert itself against princely patronage and -control during the ‘constituted anarchy’ which followed the peace -of Westphalia. This circumstance, acting on the German instinct of -comprehension, prevented the antagonism of the secular and religious -from developing itself in the lutheran countries. The German, with -his speculative grasp, has no difficulty in regarding church and -state as two sides of the same spiritual organism. To him each -expresses an idea which is the necessary complement of the other, -and each alike commends itself to his reason. How little the reality -of either church or state may correspond to the idea, how powerless -in action may be the permeating strength of German thought, an -Englishman needs not to be told. But it is important to observe -the effect of this union of strength with weakness, of the faculty -of intellectual fusion with moral acquiescence, in reconciling the -freest spiritual consciousness to secular limitations, and in healing -the breaches of religious strife. All that we associate with the term -‘sectarian’ is for good or evil unknown in Germany. The conflict -of reason and authority has not indeed ceased among the countrymen -of Luther. It has its wars and its truces, its conquerors and its -victims; but its arena has been the study and the lecture-room, not -the market-place or the congregation. - -The Reformation in England begins simply with the substitution of -royal for papal power in the government of the church. If Henry -VIII. had left a successor capable of wielding his sceptre, English -religion would scarcely have grown up, as it has done, in the -bracing atmosphere of schism. During the minority of Edward, a form -of protestant episcopacy, unique among the reformed churches, grew -up with a certain degree of independence, while at the same time -ideas of a different order, whose mother was Geneva, were working -undisturbed. The Marian persecution, while it strengthened the -influence of the aggressive Genevan form of protestantism on England, -completed its estrangement from the state. Thus when ‘anglicanism,’ -episcopal, sacramental, ceremonial, was established by Elizabeth, -it had at once to deal with an opposite system, thoroughly formed -and {285} nursed in antagonism to the powers of this world. This -system is, so to speak, the full articulation of that voice of -conscience, of the inner self-asserting spirit, in opposition to -outward ordinance, which the Reformation evoked. In this light let us -consider its action in England. - -The lutheran doctrine, as we have seen, brings the individual soul, -as such, into direct relation to God. From this doctrine the first -practical corollary is the placing of the bible in the hands of the -people; the second is the exaltation of preaching. From these again -follows the diffusion of popular education. The soul, admitted in -its own right to the divine audience, still needs a language. It -must know whom it approaches, and what it is his will to give. But -as the intercourse is inward and spiritual, so must be the power -which regulates it; not a priest or a liturgy, but the voice of the -divine spirit in the bible, interpreted by the believer’s conscience. -Religion being thus internalised and individualised, preaching, -as the action of soul on soul, becomes the natural channel of its -communication. It is the protestant’s ritual, by which the heart is -elevated to the state in which the divine voice speaks not to it in -vain. Education, again, is the means by which the individual must be -rendered capable of availing himself of his spiritual independence. - -A people’s bible, then, a reading people, a preaching ministry, were -the three conditions of protestant life. The force which results from -them is everywhere an unruly one. With the English, who have neither -the acquiescence nor the comprehensive power of the Germans, it at -once, to use the language of a German philosopher, ‘stormed out into -reality.’ It demanded and sought to create an outward world, a system -of law, custom, and ordinance, answering to itself. Not only is the -law of the bible to be carried directly and everywhere into action; -whatever is of other origin is no law for the society whose head is -Christ. An absolute breach is thus made between the new and the old. -Those who by a conscious, deliberate wrench have broken with the old, -and lived themselves into the new, are the predestined people of -God. Outside them is a doomed world. They are the saints, and their -prerogative has no limits. They admit of no co-ordinate jurisdiction -which is of the world and not of Christ. The sword of the magistrate -must be in their hands, or it is a weapon of offence against Christ’s -people. - -{286} Such a system soon builds again the bondage which it began -with destroying. Originating, as we have seen, in the consciousness -of a spiritual life which no outward ordinances could adequately -express, it hardens this consciousness into an absolute antithesis, -false because regarded as absolute, between the law of Christ and -the law of the world. The law of Christ, however, must be realised -in the world, and thus from this false antithesis there follows by -an inexorable affiliation of ideas, a new authority, calling itself -spiritual, but binding the soul with ‘secular chains,’ which from -the very fact of its sincerity and logical completeness, from its -allowing no compromise between the saints and the world, is more -heavy than the old. It behoves us to note well these conflicting -tendencies to freedom and bondage, often almost inextricably -convolved, which puritanism contained within itself. It was the -temporary triumph of the one tendency that made the commonwealth -a possibility, and the interference of the other that stopped its -expansion into permanent life. The one gave puritanism its nobility -during its period of weakness while it struggled to dominion; the -other made its dominion, once attained, a contradiction in fact which -no individual greatness could maintain. - -Puritanism, in the presbyterian form, had obtained supremacy in -Scotland, while it was still struggling for life in England. In -execution of its principle that a system of positive law was to be -found in the bible, so absolute and exclusive as to leave no room for -things indifferent, it not only established an absolute uniformity -of church government and worship, but made itself virtually the -sovereign power in the state. Without scruple or disguise it pursued -‘the work of reformation’ by conforming under pains and penalties -the manners and opinions of men to a supposed scriptural model. In -England, though the theory of puritanism was the same speculatively, -its position was happily different. No one who believes that the -scriptures are to be looked to, not for a positive moral law, much -less for a system of church polity and ceremonial, but for moral -impulse and principle, can sympathise with the doctrine, which at -first was the ostensible ground of puritan opposition to the church -of England, that whatever scripture does not command, it forbids. In -contrast with this, the position of the early protestant bishops, -that the true rule for matters of church {287} polity is practical -expediency, if it fitted less aptly the interest of its maintainers, -would seem to represent the higher wisdom that gives the world its -due, and recognises the continuity of custom and institution which -builds up the being that we are. Compared, indeed, with such pedantry -as that of Cartwright, the great puritan controversialist under -Elizabeth, the ‘judiciousness’ of Hooker becomes real philosophy. -But in the confused currents of the world it is not always the party -whose maxims are the more rationally complete which has the truer -lesson for the present or the higher promise for the future. The -reforming impulse, the effort to emancipate the inward man from -ceremonial bondage, was with puritanism rather than with the church. -Judaic itself, it yet broke the pillars of Judaism. Its limitations -were its own, and happily it had no chance of fixing them finally -in an outward church. Its force belonged to a larger agency, which -was transforming religion from a sensuous and interested service to -a free communion of spirit with spirit, and just for this reason it -kept gathering to itself elements which its own earthen vessel could -not long contain. - -From the puritanism of Cartwright to that of Milton is a long -step upwards; it answers to the descent from the anglicanism of -Hooker to that of Laud or Heylin. The ‘Polity’ of Hooker, under an -appearance of theological artifice, covers a statesmanlike endeavour -to reconcile the protestant conscience to the necessities of the -state and society. The anglicanism of Laud was simply the catholic -reaction under another name. The political change corresponded to the -theological. Elizabeth had ruled a nation. James and Charles never -rose beyond the conception of developing a royal interest, which -religion should at once serve and justify. Thus there arose that -combination, by which the catholic reaction had everywhere worked, -of a court party and a church party, each using the other for the -purpose of silencing the demand for a ‘reason why’ in politics and -religion. Charles and Laud alike represent that jesuitical conscience -(if I may be allowed the expression) which is fatal to true loyalty. -As Milton has it, ‘a private conscience sorts not with a public -calling.’ Such a conscience may be true to a cause, as Charles -and Laud were doubtless, from whatever reason, both true to the -cause of a sacerdotal church. But it dare not look into the law of -liberty, or {288} conceive the operation of God except in a system of -prescribed institutions, about which no questions are to be asked, -and in the maintenance of which cruelty becomes mercy and falsehood -truth. Through the policy of the fifteen years which preceded the -Long Parliament, a policy sometimes outrageous, sometimes trivial, -the same purpose runs. The promulgation of the Book of Sports, the -torturing of writers against plays and ceremonies, the persecution -of calvinism, the suppression of the lectureships by which the more -wealthy puritans sought to maintain a preaching ministry uncontrolled -by the bishops, all tend to divert the human spirit from the -consciousness of its right and privilege to acquiescence in what -is given to it from without. Whether this diversion were effected -in the interest of court or sacerdotalism, whether the head of the -sacerdotal system were the old pope or ‘my lord of Canterbury,’ -‘lineally descended from St. Peter in a fair and constant manner of -succession,’ mattered little. The result, but for puritan resistance, -must have been that freedom should yield in England, as it had -yielded in Spain and South Germany, and was soon to yield in France, -to a despotism under priestly direction, which again could end only -in the ruin of civil life, or in its recovery by the process which -relegates religion to women and devotees. - -The body of protestant resistance, however, had no organic unity -but that of a common antagonism. Already there was in existence -a sect, not yet directly opposed to presbyterianism, but created -by the demand for a more free spiritual movement than that system -allowed of. The men commonly reckoned as the authors of independency -or congregationalism, an influence which more than any other has -ennobled the plebeian elements of English life, bore the fitting -names of Brown and Robinson. That the brownists were a well-known -sect as early as 1600 is shown by the healthy hatred of Sir Andrew -Aguecheek, who ‘would as lief be a brownist as a politician.’ It was -in 1582, when the puritans were discussing the propriety of temporary -conformity, that Brown wrote his treatise on ‘Reformation, without -tarrying for any,’ and by way of not tarrying for any in his own -case, took to preaching nonconformity up and down the country. After -seeing the inside of thirty-two prisons as the reward of his zeal, -he betook himself to Holland, carrying a congregation with him. -This he afterwards left, and it does not seem {289} certain whether -the subsequent brownist congregations were directly affiliated to -it. Certain views of church polity, however, were current among -them, which formed the principles of independency in later years. -The chief of those were the doctrine of the absolute autonomy of -the individual congregation, and the rejection of a special order -of priests or presbyters. Each congregation was to elect or depose -its own officers, the officer who should preach and administer the -sacraments among the rest. When tho number of communicants in a -congregation became too large to meet in any one place, a new one was -to be formed, but no congregation or sum of congregations was to have -any control in regard to doctrine or discipline over another. - -Such a system of church government may not in itself be of more -interest than others. As giving room for a liberty of prophecy -which the rule of bishops or a presbytery denies, its importance -was immense. This appears already in Robinson’s disavowal of the -pretension to theological finality. Robinson, driven from England by -episcopal persecution, had formed a congregation at Leyden. Here, in -regard at least to the reformed churches of the continent, he gave up -the strict separatist doctrine of the original brownists, ‘holding -communion with these churches as far as possible.’ In 1620 the -younger part of his congregation transferred itself to America, where -it founded the colony of New Plymouth. His well-known exhortation -to them at parting breathes a higher spirit of christian freedom -than anything that had been heard since christianity fixed itself in -creeds and churches. - - ‘If God reveal anything to you by any other instrument - of his, be as ready to receive it as ever you were - to receive any truth by my ministry; for I am verily - persuaded the Lord has more truth yet to break forth out - of his holy word. For my part, I cannot sufficiently - bewail the condition of the reformed churches, who are - come to a period in religion, and will go at present no - farther than the instruments of their reformation. The - lutherans cannot be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw; - whatever part of his will God has revealed to Calvin, - they will rather die than embrace it; and the calvinists, - you see, stick fast where they were left by that great - man of God, who yet saw not all things. This is a misery - much to be lamented, for though they were burning and - shining lights in their time, yet they penetrated {290} - not into the whole counsel of God, but were they now - living, would be as willing to embrace farther light as - that which they first received. I beseech you remember, - it is an article of your church covenant, that you be - ready to receive whatever truth shall be made known to - you from the written word of God. Remember that ... for - it is not possible the christian world should come so - lately out of such thick anti-christian darkness, and - that perfection of knowledge should break forth at once.’ - [1] - -[1] [Neal, _Puritans_, i. p. 477, Ed. 1837.] - -It is as giving freer scope than any other form of church to this -conviction, that God’s spirit is not bound, that independency has its -historical interest. - -During the period of Laud’s persecution the difference between -the presbyterian and independent order of ideas could not come -prominently to view. The court and sacerdotal party would recognise -no distinction but a greater or less violence of opposition to the -ceremonies enforced by the High Commission, and to the arminianism -and Sunday sport, which were the great means, one inward, the other -outward, of evaporating the consciousness of spiritual privilege -and strength. The so-called puritans were mostly of presbyterian -sympathies, but their ministers, though under frequent suspensions, -adhered to their benefices. They were obliged, indeed, by statute -to use no other than the established liturgy, but no statute then -existed, like that passed after the Restoration, requiring absolute -agreement of opinion with everything contained in the liturgy. The -attitude of temporary conformity under protest might therefore be -a legitimate one for a puritan minister; at any rate it was the -one commonly held. A certain number, however, insisting like the -original Brown on a nonconformity that would tarry for no man, formed -separate congregations, and these were known as Brownists. Their only -chance, however, under Laud, was either to keep in absolute hiding -or withdraw to Holland or New England. If there were many of them in -England at the meeting of the Long Parliament, their presence was due -to an order in council of 1634, a strange instance of the blindness -of persecution, which prohibited emigration to New England without -royal licence. - -In the Long Parliament, at the time of its meeting, the only -recognised representative of independency was young Sir Harry Vane. -He was not, indeed, properly of the {291} independent or any other -sect. Baxter, who hated him as a despiser of ordinances, gives him -a sect to himself; but he represented that current of thought which -flowed through independence, but could not be contained by it. His -ideas are worth studying, for they are the best expression of the -spirit which struggled into brief and imperfect realisation during -the commonwealth. In his extant treatises, entitled a ‘Retired Man’s -Meditations’ and a ‘Healing Question,’ and in extracts from other -writings preserved by his contemporary biographer Sikes, we find, -under a most involved phraseology and an allegorising interpretation -of scripture, a strange intensity of intellectual aspiration, -which, if his secondary gifts had been those of a poet instead of a -politician, might have made him the rival of Milton. The account of -him by Baxter, who, with all his saintliness, was never able to rise -above the clerical point of view, may be taken to express the result, -rather than the spirit, of his doctrines. - - ‘His unhappiness lay in this, that his doctrines were so - cloudily formed and expressed, that few could understand - them, and therefore he had but few true disciples. - Mr. Sterry is thought to be of his mind, but he hath - not opened himself in writing, and was so famous for - obscurity in preaching (being, said Sir Benjamin Rudyard, - too high for this world and too low for the other) that - he thereby proved almost barren also, and vanity and - sterility were never more happily conjoined’ (a clerical - pun). ‘This obscurity was by some imputed to his not - understanding himself; but by others to design, because - he could speak plainly when he listed. The two courses in - which he had most success, and spake most plainly, were - his earnest plea for universal liberty of conscience, and - against the magistrate’s intermeddling with religion, - and his teaching his followers to revile the ministry, - calling them blackcoats, priests, and other names which - then savoured of reproach.’ [1] - -[1] [_Reliquiae Baxterianae_, p. 76.] - -His zeal for liberty of conscience and disrespect for ministers -were early called into play by his experience as governor of -Massachusetts. The eldest son of one of the most successful courtiers -of the time, he had, when a boy, shown a soul that would not fit his -position. - - ‘About the fourteenth or fifteenth year of my age,’ he - said of himself on the scaffold, ‘God was pleased to - lay the foundation or groundwork of repentance {292} in - me ... revealing his Son in me, that ... I might, even - whilst here in the body, be made partaker of eternal - life.’ - -In this temper he was sent to Oxford, where he would not take the -oath of supremacy, and was consequently unable to matriculate. He -then spent some time at Geneva. On his return, his nonconformity gave -such offence to the people about court, that the powers of Laud were -applied in a special conference for the purpose, to bring him to a -better mind. The final result is best stated in the words of a court -clergyman: [1] - - ‘Mr. Comptroller Vane’s eldest son hath left his father, - his mother, his country, and that fortune which his - father would have left him here, and is, for conscience’ - sake, gone to New England, there to lead the rest of his - life, being but twenty years of age. He had abstained two - years from taking the sacrament in England, because he - could get no one to administer it to him standing. He was - bred up at Leyden; and I hear that Sir Nathaniel Rich and - Mr. Pym have done him much hurt in their persuasions this - way.’ - -Already on the voyage he found that he had not left bigotry behind -him. He had, according to Clarendon, ‘an unusual aspect, which made -men think there was somewhat in him of extraordinary.’ He seems to -have had long hair, a lustrous countenance, and the expression of a -man looking not with, but through, his eyes. ‘His temper was a strong -composition of choler and melancholy.’ These ‘circumstances of his -person’ and his honourable birth, ‘rendered his fellow-passengers -jealous of him, but he that they thought at first sight to have too -little of Christ for their company, did soon after appear to have too -much for them.’ [2] It appeared notably enough in the matter of Anne -Hutchinson, with whom he had to deal as governor of Massachusetts, -having been chosen to that office soon after his arrival, while still -only twenty-three. This brought him into direct relation to the -spirit which the clergy called sectarian, and of which he became the -mouthpiece and vindicator under the commonwealth. Let us consider -what that spirit was. I have already ventured to describe faith in -the higher lutheran sense as the absorption of all merely finite and -relative virtues, as such, in the consciousness of union with the -infinite God. From this principle, as extravagances, if we like, but -necessary {293} extravagances, are derived the fanatic sects of the -seventeenth century, antinomians, familists, seekers, quakers. We -live perhaps an age too late for understanding them. The ‘set gray -life’ of our interested and calculating world shuts us out from the -time when the consciousness of spiritual freedom was first awakened -and the bible first placed in the people’s hands. Here was promised -a union with, a realisation of, God; immediate, conscious, without -stint, barrier, or limitation. Here, on the other hand, were spirits -thirsting for such intercourse. Who should say them nay? Who could -wonder if they drank so deep of the divine fulness offered them, -that the fixed bounds of law and morality seemed to be effaced, and -the manifestation of God, which absorbs duty in fruition, to be -already complete? The dream of the sectary was the counterpart in -minds where feeling ruled instead of thought, of the philosophic -vision which views the moving world ‘sub quadam specie aeterni.’ It -was the anticipation in moments of ecstasy and assurance of that -which must be to us the ever-retreating end of God’s work in the -world. Its mischief lay in its attempt to construct a religious -life, which is nothing without external realisation, on an inward -and momentary intuition. It is needless to investigate the history -of Mrs. Hutchinson’s antinomian heresy, which bears the normal type. -It expressed the consciousness of the communication of God to the -individual soul apart from outward act or sign. Its formula was that -sanctification, _i.e._ a holy life, was no evidence of justification; -and this again was said to lead to a heresy as to the nature and -operation of the Holy Ghost. Practically, perhaps, it was the result -of reaction from the rule of outward austerity under which she lived. -It must have escaped persecution, had she not employed it (in this, -again, anticipating the sectaries of the commonwealth) as a weapon -of offence against the puritan ministers. It was the custom in the -colony to hold weekly exercises, in which lay people expounded and -enforced the sermons heard on Sunday. Mrs. Hutchinson was allowed -to hold such an exercise for women, and unhappily soon turned -exposition into hostile criticism. This roused the fury of the more -rigid professors, who demanded her death as a heretic. Vane protected -her, and in consequence, though supported by the Boston people, was -superseded by Winthrop in the annual election of governor. This -led, soon afterwards, to his return {294} to England; not, however, -before Roger Williams had, through Vane’s influence with the Indians, -obtained a settlement at Rhode Island, and there, for the first time -in Christian history, founded a political society on the basis of -perfect freedom of opinion. In Rhode Island Mrs. Hutchinson found -shelter, but was pursued by the clergy with hideous stories of her -witchcraft and commune with the devil. These Baxter with malignant -credulity was not ashamed to accept, and to ascribe her cruel murder -by the Indians to the judgment of heaven. - -[1] [_Strafford’s Letters_, i. p. 463.] - -[2] [_The life and Death of Sir Henry Vane_, by George Sikes, p. 8, -Ed. 1662.] - -I dwell at some length on this story, because it exhibits in little -the forces whose strife, tempered but not governed by the practical -genius and stern purpose of Cromwell, formed the tragedy of the -commonwealth. Here we find the puritan enthusiasm by a necessary -process, when freed from worldly restraints, issuing in the sectarian -enthusiasm, and then weaning and casting out the child that it has -borne. We see the rent which such schism makes in a society founded -not on adjustment of interests but on unity of opinion, and may judge -how fatal this breach must be when the society so founded, like the -republic in England, is but the sudden creation of a minority, and -exists, not in a new country with boundless room where the cast-off -child may find shelter, but in the presence of ancient interests, -which it ignores but can neither suppress nor withdraw from, and in -the midst of an old and haughty people, proud in arms, whom it claims -to rule but does not represent. In detachment from both parties -stands the clear spirit of Vane, strong in a principle which can give -its due to both alike, yet weak from its very refusal to obscure its -clearness by compromise with either. This principle, which became the -better genius of independence in its conflict with presbyterianism, I -will endeavour to state as Vane himself conceived it. - -The work of creation in time, he held, which did but reflect the -process by which the Father begets the eternal Son, involved two -elements, the purely spiritual or angelic, represented by heaven or -the light, on the one hand, and the material and animal on the other, -represented by the earth. Man, as made of dust in the image of God, -includes both, and his history was a gradual progress upward from a -state which would be merely that of the animals but for the fatal -gift of rational will, to a life of pure spirituality, which he {295} -represented as angelic, a life which should consist in ‘the exercise -of senses merely spiritual and inward, exceeding high, intuitive -and comprehensive.’ This process of spiritual sublimation, treating -the spirit under the figure of light or of a ‘consuming fire,’ he -described as the consuming and dissolving of all objects of outward -sense, and a destruction of the earthly tabernacle, while that which -is from heaven is being gradually put on. In the conscience of man, -the process had three principal stages, called by Vane the natural, -legal, and evangelical conscience. The natural conscience was the -light of those who, having not the law, were by nature a law unto -themselves. It was the source of ordinary right and obligation. -‘The original impressions of just laws are in man’s nature and very -constitution of being.’ These impressions were at once the source and -the limit of the authority of the magistrate. The legal conscience -was the source of the ordinances and dogmas of the christian. It -belongs to the champions of the covenant of grace as much as to their -adversaries. It represents the stage in which the christian clings to -rule, letter, and privilege. It too had its value, but fell short of -the evangelical conscience, of the stage in which the human spirit, -perfectly conformed to Christ’s death and resurrection, crucified to -outward desire and ordinance, holds intercourse ‘high, intuitive and -comprehensive’ with the divine. - -Doctrine of this kind is familiar enough to the student of theosophic -and cosmogonic speculation. Whether Vane in his foreign travels -had fallen in with the writings of Jacob Boehme we cannot say, but -the family likeness is strong. The interest of the doctrine for us -lies in its application to practical statesmanship by the keenest -politician of a time when politicians were keen and strong. That -it should have been so applied has been a sore stumbling-block to -two classes of men not unfrequently found in alliance, sensational -philosophers, and theologians who find the way of salvation -in scripture construed as an act of parliament. The man above -ordinances, as Vane was called by his contemporaries, [1] was -naturally not a favourite with men whom he would have reckoned in -bondage to the legal conscience. Baxter’s opinion of him has been -already quoted. To the lawyers, calling themselves theologians, of -the next century he was even less intelligible. Burnet had ‘sometimes -taken pains to see if I could find out his meaning in his words, yet -I could never reach it. And since many others {296} have said the -same, it may be reasonable to believe that he hid somewhat that was -a necessary key to the rest.’ [2] Clarendon had been more modest; -when he had read some of his writings and ‘found nothing in them of -his usual clearness and ratiocination in his discourse, in which he -used much to excel the best of the company he kept’ (the company, we -must remember, that called Milton friend), ‘and that in a crowd of -very easy words the sense was too hard to find out, I was of opinion -that the subject of it was of so delicate a nature that it required -another kind of preparation of mind, and perhaps another kind of -diet, than men are ordinarily supplied with.’ [3] Hume was superior -to such a supposition; ‘This man, so celebrated for his parliamentary -talents, and for his capacity in business, has left some writings -behind him. They treat all of them of religious subjects and are -absolutely unintelligible. No traces of eloquence, even of common -sense, appear in them.’ In this language is noticeable a certain -resentment common to men of the world and practical philosophers, -that a man whom they deem a fool in his philosophy should not be -a fool altogether. From his derided theosophy, however, Vane had -derived certain practical principles, now of recognised value, which -no statesman before him had dreamt of, and which were not less potent -when based on religious ideas struggling for articulate utterance, -than when stated by the masters of an elegant vocabulary from which -God and spirit were excluded. - -[1] [Amended from “cotemporary”. Tr.] - -[2] [Burnet, _Own Time_, p. 108, Ed. 1838.] - -[3] [Clarendon on ‘Creasy’s answer to Stillingfleet,’ as quoted in -the _Biographia Britannica_ (art. ‘Vane.’)] - - - - -LECTURE II. - -In Vane first appears the doctrine of natural right and government -by consent, which, however open to criticism in the crude form of -popular statement, has yet been the moving principle of the modern -reconstruction of Europe. It was the result of his recognition of the -‘rule of Christ in the natural conscience’ in the elemental reason, -in virtue of which man is properly a law to himself. From the same -idea followed the principle of universal toleration, the exclusion -of the magistrate’s power alike from the maintenance and restraint -of any kind of opinion. This principle did not {297} with Vane and -the independents rest, as in modern times, on the slippery foundation -of a supposed indifference of all religious beliefs, but on the -conviction of the sacredness of the reason, however deluded, in every -man, which may be constrained by nothing less divine than itself. - - ‘The rule of magistracy’ says Vane, ‘is not to intrude - itself into the office and proper concerns of Christ’s - inward government and rule in the conscience, but it - is to content itself with the outward man, and to - intermeddle with the concerns thereof in reference to - the converse which man ought to have with man, upon - the grounds of natural justice and right in things - appertaining to this life.’ [1] - -[1] [‘A Retired Man’s Meditations,’ (quoted by Forster, _Eminent -British Statesmen_, iv. p. 84).] - -Nor would he allow the re-establishment under the name of christian -discipline, of that constraint of the conscience which he refused -to the magistrate. Such discipline, he would hold, as he held the -sabbath, to be rather a ‘magistratical institution’ in imitation -of what was ‘ceremonious and temporary’ among the Jews, ‘than that -which hath any clear appointment in the gospel.’ [1] Christ’s spirit -was not bound. A system of truth and discipline had not been written -down once for all in the scriptures, but rather was to be gradually -elicited from the scriptures by the gradual manifestation in the -believer of the spirit which spoke also in them. A ‘waiting,’ seeking -attitude, unbound by rule whether ecclesiastical or secular, was that -which became a spiritual church. The application of this waiting -spirit to practical life is to be found in the policy of Cromwell. - -[1] [Sikes, quoted by Forster, _ib_. p. 81, note.] - -It would be unfair to ascribe the theory of Vane in its speculative -fulness to the independents as a body. It seems, however, to be but -the development of the view on which Mr. Robinson had dwelt in his -last words to the settlers of New Plymouth; and, so far as it could -be represented by a sect, it was represented by the independents. -It came before the world, in full outward panoply, in the army of -Cromwell. The history of its inevitable conflict with the spirit of -presbyterianism on the one hand and the wisdom of the world on the -other, of its aberrations and perplexities, of its brief triumph and -final flight into the wilderness, is the history of the rise and fall -of the English commonwealth. I have yet {298} to speak, however, of -the representation of the wisdom of the world in the Long Parliament. - -Before the outbreak of the war, as I have explained, Vane was the -only man in the house of commons whose opinions were recognised as -definitely opposed both to episcopacy and presbyterianism. In the -lords his only recognised follower was lord Brook, known to the -readers of Sir Walter Scott as the ‘fanatic Brook,’ really an eminent -scholar and man of letters, who was shot in storming the close at -Lichfield in the first year of the war, leaving as a legacy to the -parliament a plea for freedom of speech and conscience. The majority -of the parliament, however, had no special love for the presbyterian -discipline and theology. Their favour to it was merely negative. They -dreaded arminianism, as notoriously at that time the great weapon in -the hands of the jesuits; they objected to the high episcopacy as -sacerdotal, and as maintaining a jurisdiction incompatible with civil -liberty. In 1641 a modified episcopacy on Usher’s plan was a possible -solution of the difficulty. Each shire was to have a presbytery of -twelve members, with a bishop as president who, ‘with assistance of -some of the presbytery,’ was to ordain, degrade, and excommunicate. -Though the pressure of strife with the king prevented anything being -done to carry out this resolution, it probably represented the views -even of the more advanced parliamentary leaders; but only, however, -as afterwards appeared, on the supposition that the presbyters with -their bishop should be strictly under civil control. The worldly -wisdom of the Long Parliament was, in the party language of the -times, essentially erastian. - -As the presbyterian claims mounted higher, this became more apparent. -The calling of the assembly of divines, and the adoption of the -covenant, might seem to give presbyterianism a sufficiently broad -charter of privilege; yet both these steps were taken by parliament -with restrictions which showed its temper. The ordinance which -called the assembly gave it power ‘until further order should -be taken by parliament to confer of such matters concerning the -liturgy, discipline, and government of the church of England, or -the vindicating of the doctrine of the same from false aspersions -and misconstructions, as shall be proposed by both or either house -of parliament, and no other.’ [1] It concludes by providing {299} -that ‘this ordinance shall not give them, nor shall they in this -assembly assume to exercise, any jurisdiction, power, or authority -ecclesiastical whatsoever, or any other power than is herein -particularly expressed.’ This document has nothing revolutionary -about it. It is the natural utterance of what Brook pronounced to -have been an ‘episcopal and erastian parliament of conformists.’ -This parliament, however, had soon under military necessity to raise -a spirit which no episcopacy or erastianism could lay. The divines -came to Westminster, according to Brook, all conformists, with the -exception of eight or nine independents. They came, that is, from the -cooling atmosphere of benefices, and had not yet begun to discuss the -liturgy or object to a modified episcopacy. If they came conformists, -however, they did not long remain so. Contact with each other, and -the applause of London congregations, essentially presbyterian in -their sympathies, bred a warmer temper. The introduction of the -Scotch commissioners, and the adoption of the covenant, gave spirit -and strength to their disciplinarian humour, and in a few months, -men who had come to the assembly anxious only for some restraint -on episcopal tyranny, were clamouring for the establishment of -presbyterianism as _jure divino_. - -[1] [Rushworth, June 12. 1643.] - -I have spoken of the adoption of the covenant in England as matter -of military necessity. It was the condition of alliance between -parliament and the Scotch; without this alliance the year 1644 would -in all probability have been fatal to the parliamentary cause. -Supposing the Scotch army to have simply held aloof, the royal party -would have been so triumphant in the north as to enable the king to -advance with irresistible force on Lichfield. Till the parliament -had secured it, however, it could not be trusted to stand aloof; it -might at any time have been gained for the king by his consenting, as -he did too late in 1648, to the covenant. The English negotiators, -of whom Vane was the chief, had hoped to secure the alliance by a -merely civil league, and when the Scotch insisted on the adoption of -the religious covenant, they still succeeded in having the document -entitled ‘league and covenant’ instead of ‘covenant’ alone. In later -years, as we shall see, they always insisted on interpreting it as a -league in virtue of which each kingdom was to help the other in the -establishment of what religion it chose, not as binding either to -any particular form. {300} The desirableness of such interpretation -is more obvious than its correctness. By the first and second -clauses, as they originally stood, the covenanters bound themselves -to ‘the preservation of the reformed religion in Scotland,’ and ‘the -reformation of religion in England and Ireland, in doctrine, worship, -discipline and government’; also to the ‘extirpation of prelacy.’ -After the words ‘reformation etc.’ Vane procured the insertion of -the qualification ‘according to the word of God,’ in order to avoid -committal to any particular form. To ease the conscience of those -who favoured Usher’s form of episcopacy, prelacy was interpreted to -mean ‘church government by archbishops, bishops, their chancellors -and commissaries, deans, chapters, archdeacons, and all other -ecclesiastical officers depending on that hierarchy.’ This modified -covenant was taken by the parliament and the assembly at Westminster, -and enjoined on every one over the age of eighteen. Practically it -was by no means universally imposed even on the clergy; in Baxter’s -neighbourhood none took it. Still, its operation was to eject from -their livings some two thousand clergymen, whose places were mostly -filled by presbyterians. A shifty and exacting alliance was thus -dearly purchased at the cost of at once spreading loose over the -country an uncontrolled element of disaffection to the parliament, -and giving vent to a spirit of ecclesiastical arrogance which would -soon demand to rule alone. This spirit was not long in showing -itself. The Scotch army entered England at the beginning of 1644, -and throughout that year the kirk, either by petition or through -the commons in England, was pressing for a presbyterian settlement -of church government in England. At last the assembly, still under -special permission from parliament, was allowed to proceed to the -discussion of this question. The first step was to propose a vote in -the assembly that presbyterian government was _jure divino_. The only -opponents of this decree were the small band of independents headed -by Goodwin, the lay assessors Selden and Whitelock representing -the erastian majority in parliament, whose only clerical supporter -seems to have been Lightfoot the Hebraist. Selden, a layman of vast -ecclesiastical lore, had a way of touching the sorest points of -clerical feeling. In 1618 he had written his great work disproving -the divine origin of tithes, and had been brought, in consequence, -before the {301} High Commission court. There, with the ordinary -suppleness of the erastian conscience, he signed the following -recantation: [1] - - ‘My good lords, I most humbly acknowledge my error - in publishing the history of tithes, and especially - in that I have at all (by shewing any interpretation - of scripture, or by meddling with councils, canons, - fathers, or by what else soever occurs in it) offered any - occasion of argument against any right of maintenance - _jure divino_ of the ministers of the gospel; beseeching - your lordships to receive this ingenuous and humble - acknowledgment, together with the unfeigned protestation - of my grief, that I have so incurred his majesty’s and - your lordships’ displeasure.’ - -[1] [Neal, _Puritans_, i. p. 471.] - -The consciousness of debasement does not strengthen one’s affection -for those who have been the occasion of it, and perhaps Selden’s -remembrance of his usage by the ‘old priest’ may not have quickened -his friendship for the ‘new presbyter.’ ‘In the debates of the -divines,’ says Whitelock, ‘Mr. Selden spoke admirably and confuted -divers of them in their own learning. Sometimes when they had cited -a text of scripture to prove their assertion, he would tell them, -“Perhaps in your little pocket bibles with gilt leaves (which they -would often pull out and read) the translation may be thus, but the -Greek or the Hebrew signifies thus and thus,” and so would totally -silence them.’ [1] Whitelock himself opposed much grave law-logic -to the claims of the divines, which he quotes at length in his -memoirs, but his most satisfactory argument, to modern ears, is the -simple one, ‘If this presbyterian government be not _jure divino_, -no opinion of any council can make it to be what it is not; and if -it be _jure divino_, it continues so still, although you do not -declare it to be so.’ [2] The divines, however, thought otherwise. -Presbyterianism was duly voted _jure divino_, and parliament in -1645 was applied to to enforce the _jus divinum_ under pains and -penalties. That the presbyterian _jus_ was _divinum_ parliament -could never be induced to decide. It was very near doing so on one -occasion, when the divines had contrived to bring the question on -in a packed house, but by the skill of sergeant Glyn and Whitelock -in talking against time the danger was averted. At length, however, -under pressure from the Scots and city of London, it established -a presbyterian régime. This régime, {302} never carried out save -in London and Lancashire, was the same in kind as that existing in -Scotland, except that the ‘kirk session’ was called a parochial -presbytery, and the combination of parochial presbyteries not a -presbytery as in Scotland, but a ‘classis.’ This was referred to in -Milton’s lines, - - ‘To ride us with a classic hierarchy - Taught ye by mere A.S. and Rutherford.’ [3] - -It was established, however, with such erastian limitations that -while it excluded the independents, it gave no satisfaction to the -Scots. The independent principle was violated on two points; both by -the subjection of the independent congregation to the ‘classis,’ and -by the method of ordination adopted which recognised the presbyter -as of a distinct order, to be set apart by other presbyters, instead -of as a simple officer appointed by a single congregation. The -thoroughgoing presbyterians were alienated by the refusal to the -church of the absolute power of the keys. The offences for which -the presbyteries were allowed to suspend from the sacrament or -excommunicate were distinctly enumerated, and an ultimate appeal, -in all ecclesiastical cases, was given to the parliament. The whole -system, moreover, was declared for the present merely provisional. -The restrictions at once raised an outcry among the Scots and the -presbyterians of the city, and the assembly itself was bold enough -to vote a condemnation of the clause giving a final appeal to -parliament. A seasonable threat of a _praemunire_, however, from -the commons, laid the rising dust in the assembly; but the mounting -spirit of the new forcers of conscience was shown in the opposition -made to the petition which the independents offered to parliament, -that their congregations might have the right of ordination within -themselves, and that they might not be brought under the power of -the ‘presbyterian classes.’ It would be tedious to follow the war -of committees, sermons, pamphlets, which this request, modest in -itself, and more modest in form, excited. The assembly, the city, the -Scotch parliament, urged the maintenance of an absolute uniformity. -No plea of conscience was to be listened to. To admit one was to -admit all. The independent claim was schismatic, and, as such, -excluded by the covenant. In the words of a pamphlet of the time; ‘to -let men serve God {303} according to conscience is to cast out one -devil that seven worse may enter.’ The new synod of the city clergy, -meeting at Sion House, petitioned the assembly to oppose with all -their might ‘the great Diana of the independents,’ and not to suffer -their new establishment ‘to be strangled in the birth by a lawless -toleration.’ The language of the Scotch parliament, addressed through -their president to the two houses at Westminster, was specially high -and irritating. ‘It is expected,’ says the president, ‘that the -honourable houses will add the civil sanction to what the assembly -have advised. I am commanded by the parliament of this kingdom to -demand it, and in their name do demand it.’ The temper in which this -demand was made, was shown by a declaration against ‘liberty of -conscience and toleration of sectaries,’ published at the same time -by the Scotch, in which, after taking due note of ‘their own great -services,’ they announce that, ‘being all bound by one covenant, they -will go on to the last man of the kingdom in opposing that party in -England which was endeavouring to supplant true religion by pleading -for liberty of conscience.’ Evidence might be tediously multiplied -to show, that if Marston Moor and Naseby had been won by the Scots -and the trained bands of the city, the civil sword would really have -been applied ‘to force the consciences which Christ set free,’ at a -time when these consciences were at their quickest, to a conformity, -if not more oppressive than that exacted by Laud, yet more fatal to -intellectual freedom. - -[1] [Whitelock, _Memorials_, i. p. 209, Ed. 1853.] - -[2] [Whitelock, i. p. 294.] - -[3] [_On the new forcers of conscience under the Long Parliament._] - -Meanwhile the parliamentary erastians had a power at their back, no -child of their own, too strong for the Scots and the assembly, and -soon to prove too strong for parliament itself. The first note of -alarm at this power had been sounded by the wary Scots about the end -of 1644. - - ‘One evening,’ says Whitelock, ‘Maynard and I were - sent for by the Lord General’ (Essex) ‘to Essex House. - There we found with him the Scotch commissioners, Mr. - Hollis, Sir Philip Stapleton’ (presbyterian leaders in - the commons) ‘and others of his special friends. After - compliments, and that all were set down in council, the - lord chancellor of Scotland was called on to explain the - matter on which he desired the opinion of Maynard and - Whitelock. ‘Ye ken verra weel that lieutenant-general - Cromwell is no friend of ours, and not only is he no - friend to us and to the government of our church, but he - is also no well-wisher to his excellency” {304} (Essex), - “whom you and we all have cause to love and honour; and - if he be permitted to go on his ways, it may endanger - the whole business; therefore we are to advise of some - course to be taken for prevention of this business. Ye - ken verra weel the accord’ ’twixt the two kingdoms, and - the union by the solemn league and covenant, and if any - be an incendiary between the two nations, how he is to - be proceeded against. Now the matter is, wherein we - desire your opinions, what you tak the meaning of this - word _incendiary_ to be, and whether lieutenant-general - Cromwell be not sike an incendiary as is meant thereby, - and which way wad be best to tak to proceed against - him, if he be proved to be sike an incendiary, and that - will clepe his wings from soaring to the prejudice of - our cause. Now, ye may ken that by our laws in Scotland - we clepe him an incendiary whay kindleth coals of - contention in the state to the public damage; whether - your law be the same or not, ye ken best who are mickle - learned therein; and therefore, with the favour of his - excellency, we desire your judgment in these points.”’ [1] - -In reply, Maynard and Whitelock, after much disquisition on the -meaning of the word ‘incendiary,’ one ‘not much conversant in our -law,’ explain that lieutenant-general Cromwell is ‘a gentleman of -quick and subtle parts, and one who hath (especially of late) gained -no small interest in the house of commons, nor is he wanting of -friends in the house of peers, nor of abilities in himself to manage -his own defence to the best advantage,’ and that on the whole, till -more particular proof of his incendiarism should be forthcoming, -it would be better not to bring the matter before parliament. The -incendiarism of lieutenant-general Cromwell really consisted in this, -that he had (again to quote Whitelock) ‘a brave regiment of horse of -his countrymen, most of them freeholders, or freeholders’ sons, who -upon matter of conscience engaged in this quarrel. And thus being -well armed within by satisfaction of their own consciences, and -without by good iron arms, they would as one man stand firmly and -charge desperately.’ [2] Nearly every military success of importance -that had been won for the parliament had been won by these soldiers -of conscience, and unhappily their conscience was not of a kind that -would brook presbyterian uniformity. At the time of the conference -at Essex House, {305} Cromwell, with the help of the persuasive arts -of Vane, was moving the parliament, disgusted with the practical -inefficiency of its conservative and presbyterian commanders, to -measures which would give it an army led by officers mostly of his -own training, and fired by that religious inspiration of which -freedom of conscience was the necessary condition. - -[1] [Whitelock, i. pp. 343-7.] - -[2] [_ib_. i. p. 209.] - -The story of the new-modelling of the army, of the self-denying -ordinance, and of the special exemption of Cromwell from its -operations, is too well known to need repetition. Two points deserve -special notice; one, the long discussion against the imposition of -the covenant on the new army, ending in an ordinance of parliament -after the army was already formed, that it should be taken by the -officers within twenty days, which does not appear to have been ever -carried into effect; the other, that the self-denying ordinance, as -originally passed by the commons, excluded from military command, -during the war, all members of either house of parliament. It would -thus have been general and prospective in its operation. In this -form, the lords, with judicial blindness, rejected it. The commons -then sent it up in a new form, merely discharging from their present -commands those who were at present members of either house of -parliament. In this form it was passed, and thus when Vane at the -end of 1645 carried a measure, declaring vacant the seats of those -members who had adhered to the king and ordering them to be filled, -the officers of the new-model army were eligible, and elected in -large numbers. If the party of the army and the sectaries had not -thus gained a footing in the house, the course of history would -probably have been very different. - -The new-model army went to the war, according to May, the clerk of -the Long parliament, ‘without the confidence of their friends and an -object of contempt to their enemies.’ [1] Their outward triumph it is -needless to describe; we should rather seek to appreciate the nature -of the spiritual triumph which the outward one involved. It used to -be the fashion to treat the sectarian enthusiasm of the ‘Ironsides’ -as created, or at least stimulated, by Cromwell. The army went mad, -and it was to gain Cromwell’s private ends. The prevalent conception -of our time, that the great men of history have not created popular -ideas or events, but merely expressed or {306} realised them with -special effect, excludes such a view. The sectarian enthusiasm, as we -have seen, was a necessary result of the consciousness of spiritual -right elicited by the Reformation, where this consciousness had -not, as in Scotland, been early made the foundation of a popular -church, but had been long left to struggle in the dark against an -unsympathetic clergy and a regulated ceremonial worship. The spirit -which could not ‘find itself’ in the authoritative utterance of -prelates, or express its yearnings unutterable in a stinted liturgy, -was not likely, when war had given it vent and stimulus, to acquiesce -in a new uniformity as exact as that from which it had broken. It had -tasted a new and dangerous food. Taught as it had been to wait on -God, in search for new revelations of him, it now read this lesson -by the stronger light of personal deliverances and achievements, and -found in the tumultuous experience of war at once the expression and -the justification of its own inward tumult. - -[1] [_Breviary of the History of the Long Parliament_, Maseres, -Tracts, i. 74.] - -It is a notion which governs much of the popular thought of the -present day, and which the most cultivated ‘men of feeling’ are -not ashamed to express, that the world is atheised when we regard -it as a universe of general laws, equally relentless or equally -merciful to the evil and to the good. If such a notion, through -mere impatience of thought, can dominate an educated age, we may -well excuse uncultivated men, who clung close to God, for believing -him to manifest himself to his favoured people by sudden visitation -and unaccountable events. This was indeed the received belief -of Christendom at the time of our civil war. The man who was to -vindicate a higher reason for God’s providence, and to be called -an atheist for doing so, was still at Mr. van den Ende’s school in -Amsterdam. It was in the realisation of the belief by individuals -that the difference lay. Where the bible was not in the hands -of the people, it could be regulated by priests and ceremonial. -Elsewhere it was controllable by state-churches, or by ecclesiastical -authority, claiming to be _jure divino_ like the presbyterian, and -which appealed to popular reason, but to this reason as regulated by -fitting education and discipline. Everywhere, in ordinary times, law -and custom would put a veil on the face which the believer turned -towards God. But now in England the bands were altogether loosed. -Enthusiasts who had been waiting darkly on God while he was hidden -behind established {307} worships and ministrations of the letter, -who had heard his voice in their hearts but seen no sign of him in -the world, were now enacting his work themselves, and reading his -strange providences on the field of battle. Their own right hand -was ‘teaching them terrible things.’ Here was the revelation of the -latter days, for which they had been bidden to wait. That which -they had sought for literally ‘with strong crying and tears,’ which -they had not found in the system of the church, in the reasoning of -divines, in the ungodly jangle of the law, was visible and audible in -war. There - - God glowed above - With scarce an intervention ... - ... his soul o’er theirs. - They felt him, nor by painful reason knew.’ [1] - -[1] [ ‘My own East! - How nearer God we were. He glows above - With scarce an intervention, presses close - And palpitatingly, his soul o’er ours! - We feel him, nor by painful reason know!’ - BROWNING, Luria.] - -Henceforth, whatever authority claimed their submission as divine, -must come home to their conscience with a like directness, and -this the _jus divinum_ of the presbyterians failed to do. This new -spiritual force the ministers had left to itself. While they were -wrangling at Westminster or settling warmly into the berths which -the episcopal clergy had vacated, it had been gathering strength -unheeded. At the outbreak of the war each regiment had a regular -minister as its chaplain, but after the battle at Edgehill made it -clear that the business would be a longer one than had been expected, -these divines, according to Baxter, withdrew either to the assembly -or to their livings. Baxter himself lost an opportunity which he -afterwards regretted, in declining the chaplaincy of Cromwell’s -regiment, ‘which its officers proposed to make a gathered church.’ -’These very men,’ he says, ‘that then invited me to be their pastor, -were the men that afterwards headed an army, and were forwardest in -all our charges; which made me wish I had gone among them, for all -the fire was in one spark.’ [1] The news of the battle of Naseby, -however, so far stirred Baxter, then living at Coventry, that he must -needs join his old friends, and for two years he moved about with the -army, as chaplain to Whalley’s regiment which had been {308} formed -out of Cromwell’s. The sectarian spirit he then found too strong for -his mild piety to control. - -[1] [_Reliquiae Baxterianae_, p. 51.] - - ‘We that lived quietly at Coventry did keep to our old - principles; we were unfeignedly for king and parliament; - we believed the war was only to save the parliament - and kingdom from papists and delinquents and to remove - the dividers, that the king might return again to his - parliament, and that no changes might be made in religion - but with his consent. But when I came to the army among - Cromwell’s soldiers, I found anew face of things which - I never dreamt of. The plotting heads were very hot - upon that which intimated their intentions to subvert - church and state. Independency and anabaptistry were most - prevalent. Antinomianism and arminianism were equally - distributed.’ - -Hot-headed sectaries in the highest places, Cromwell’s chief -favourites, were asking what were the lords of England but William -the Conqueror’s colonels, or the barons but his majors, or the -knights but his captains? ‘plainly showing that thy thought God’s -providence would cast the trust of religion and the kingdom upon -them as conquerors.’ Of some of these dangerous men, particularly of -Harrison and Berry, then reckoned Cromwell’s prime favourites, Baxter -gives a more particular account. Berry - - ‘was a man of great sincerity before the wars, and of - very good natural parts, affectionate in religion, and - while conversant with humbling providences, doctrines, - and company, he carried himself as a great enemy to - pride. But when Cromwell made him his favourite and his - extraordinary valour met with extraordinary success, and - when he had been awhile most conversant with those that - in religion thought the old puritan ministers were dull, - self-conceited men of a lower form, and that new light - had declared I know not what to be a higher attainment, - his mind, aim, talk and all were altered accordingly. - Being never well studied in the body of divinity or - controversy, but taking his light among the sectaries, he - lived after as honestly as could be expected in one that - taketh error for truth.’ - - ‘Harrison,’ says Baxter, ‘would not dispute with me at - all, but he would in good discourse very fluently pour - out himself in the extolling of free grace, which was - savoury to those that had right principles, though he had - some misunderstandings of free grace himself. He was a - man of excellent natural parts for affection and oratory; - but not well seen in the principles of his religion; of a - sanguine {309} complexion, naturally of such a vivacity, - hilarity, and alacrity as another man hath when he hath - drunken a cup too much; but naturally also so far from - humble thoughts of himself, that it was his ruin.’ [1] - -[1] [_Reliquiae Baxterianae_, p. 57.] - -One day, during the fight at Langport, Baxter happened to be close -to Harrison just as Goring’s army broke before the charge of the -Ironsides, and heard him ‘with a loud voice break forth into the -praises of God, as if he had been in a rapture.’ [1] Such a temper -could only be moderated by one who shared its raptures, its wild -energy, its scorn of prescription, and who yet had the practical -wisdom, the wider comprehension, of which it was incapable. Such -a one was Cromwell, a tumultuous soul, but with a strange method -in his tumult. The old notion, that this method consisted in a -persistent design of personal aggrandisement, may be taken to have -been dispelled once for all by the publication of his letters and -speeches. That he was a genuine enthusiast, that he was perfectly -sincere in the sense that his real ends were those that he professed, -that his own advancement was not his object, but merely the condition -or result of his getting work done which others could not do, this -is the only theory that will explain the facts, if we include among -the facts his own language at times when there can have been no -motive for insincerity, and the impression which he made on his -contemporaries, not when they looked back on his acts in the light -of personal grievance, but at the time when they were done. The -life-long hypocrisy which the opposite theory ascribes to him is -incompatible with the personal attraction which a revolutionary -leader must exercise if he is to do his work. In Napoleon, though -he did not so much lead a revolution as turn revolutionary forces -to military account, there was no touch of hypocrisy. His hard -selfishness and his zeal for the material improvement of European -life were equally explicit. The assertion, however, of Cromwell’s -unselfish enthusiasm is quite consistent with the imputation to him -of much unscrupulousness, violence, simulation, and dissimulation, -sins which no one has escaped who ever led or controlled a -revolution; from which in times like his no man could save his -soul but by such saintly abstraction as Baxter takes credit for to -himself, and Mrs. Hutchinson to her husband, which in aspiration to -heaven leaves earth to its chance. - -[1] [_Reliquiae Baxterianae_, p. 54.] - -{310} When Baxter was with the army he found that ‘Cromwell and his -council took on them to join no religious party, but to be for the -equal liberty of all.’ This account corresponds with the conception -of Cromwell’s views to be gathered from his own letters. His relation -to the sectaries was the same practically as we have seen Vane’s -to have been more speculatively. Without any of Vane’s theosophy, -he had the same open face towards heaven, the same consciousness -(or dream, if we like,) of personal and direct communication with -the divine, which transformed the ‘legal conscience’ and placed him -‘above ordinance.’ Having thus drunk of the spring from which the -sectarian enthusiasm flowed, he had no taste for the reasonings which -led it into particular channels, while he had, more than any man of -his time, not indeed the speculative, but the political instinct of -comprehension. In this spirit he entered on the war, where it soon -took practical body from the discovery that ‘men of religion’ alone -could fight ‘men of honour,’ and that the men of religion, once in -war, inevitably became sectaries. To him, as to his men, the issues -of battle were a revelation of God’s purpose; the cause, which in -answer to the prayers of his people God owned by fire, had the true -_jus divinum_. The practical danger of such a belief is obvious. To -Cromwell is due the peculiar glory, that it never issued, as might -have been expected, in fanatic military licence, but was always -governed by the strictest personal morality and a genuine zeal for -the free well-being of the state and nation. - -His extant letters, written during the first years of the war, -written, be it remembered, by a farmer-squire, forty-four years old, -simply exhibit a man of restless and infectious energy, gathering -about him, without reference to birth or creed, the men who had the -most active zeal for the common cause and promoting of religion, and -gradually, as the work of these men grew in importance and was more -visibly owned by God, asserting their claims in a louder key. In -their tone they sometimes recall the man who some years before, in a -parliamentary committee of enclosures, had defended the cause of some -injured countrymen of his with so much passion and so ‘tempestuous a -carriage,’ that the chairman had been obliged to reprehend him. Among -the most frequent topics are the discouragement of his soldiers by -their want of pay and supplies (to be borne in mind with reference -{311} to subsequent history), his anxiety for godly men and the -offence he was giving by the promotion of men of low birth or -sectaries. A letter to his cousin, solicitor-general St. John, may -be taken as an instance. It was written during the period of feeble -management that preceded the self-denying ordinance, before Vane had -got the upper hand in the house. [1] - - ‘Of all men I should not trouble you with money matters, - did not the heavy necessities my troops are in, press - upon me beyond measure. I am neglected exceedingly!... - If I took pleasure to write to the house in bitterness, - I have occasion.... I have minded your service to - forgetfulness of my own and soldiers’ necessities.... You - have had my money; I hope in God, I desire to venture my - skin, so do my men. Lay weight upon their patience; but - break it not!... Weak counsels and weak actings undo all! - all will be lost, if God help not! Remember who tells - you.’ - -[1] [Carlyle, _Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches_, No. xvii.] - - In the same letter he says, ‘My troops increase. I have - a lovely company; you would respect them, did you know - them. They are no “anabaptists”; they are honest sober - christians; they expect to be used as men.’ - - Of the way in which this ‘lovely company’ had been got - together we have such indications as this in a letter - [1] to the Suffolk committee. ‘I beseech you be careful - what captains of horse you choose, what men be mounted. - A few honest men are better than numbers. If you choose - godly honest men to be captains of horse, honest men will - follow them.... I had rather have a plain, russet-coated - captain that knows what he fights for, and loves what - he knows, than that which you call a gentleman, and is - nothing else. I honour a gentleman that is so indeed.’ - -[1] [Carlyle, _Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches_, No. xvi.] - - In another letter [1] he says, ‘It may be it provokes - some spirits to see such plain men made captains of - horse. It had been well that men of honour and birth - had entered into these employments; but why do they not - appear? Who would have hindered them? But seeing it was - necessary the work must go on, better plain men than - none; but best to have men patient of wants, faithful and - conscientious in their employment.... If these men be - accounted “troublesome to the country,” I shall be glad - you would send them all to me. I’ll bid them welcome. And - when they have fought for you, and endured some other - difficulties of war {312} which your “honester” men will - hardly bear, I pray you then let them go for honest men!’ - -[1] [Carlyle, _Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches_, No. xviii.] - - Writing to a rigid presbyterian general, who had got - the ear of the Earl of Manchester, and had suspended an - officer for unconformable opinions, he says, [1] ‘The - state in choosing men to serve it, takes no notice of - their opinions; if they be willing faithfully to serve - it, that satisfies.... I desire you would receive this - man into your favour and good opinion. I believe, if he - follow my counsel he will deserve no other but respect - from you. Take heed of being sharp, or too easily - sharpened by others, against those to whom you can object - little but that they square not with you in every opinion - concerning religion. If there be any other offence to be - charged upon him, that must in a judicial way receive - determination.’ - -[1] [Carlyle, _Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches_, No. xx.] - -I will quote extracts from other letters of Cromwell, as illustrating -the temper in which he won his victories, and his view of them as the -consecration of a new military church, having claims that were not -to be put by. One is from a letter written just after the battle of -Marston Moor, [1] to his brother-in-law, colonel Walton, who had lost -a son in it. - - ‘Truly England and the church of God hath had a great - favour from the Lord, in this great victory given unto - us, such as the like never was since this war began. It - had all the evidences of an absolute victory gained by - the Lord’s blessing upon the godly party principally, We - never charged, but we routed the enemy.... God made them - as stubble to our swords. We charged their regiments of - foot with our horse, and routed all we charged. ... Sir, - God hath taken away your eldest son by a cannon-shot. - It brake his leg. We were necessitated to have it cut - off, whereof he died. Sir, you know my own trials this - way; but the Lord supported me with this, that the Lord - took him into the happiness we all pant for and live - for. There is your precious child, full of glory, never - to know sin or sorrow any more.... Before his death he - was so full of comfort that to Frank Russell and myself - he could not express it, “It was so great above his - pain.” This he said to us. Indeed, it was admirable. A - little after, he said one thing lay upon his spirit. I - asked him what that was? He told me it was that God had - not suffered him to be any more the executioner of his - enemies.... Truly he was exceedingly beloved in the army - of all that knew him. But {313} few knew him; for he was - a precious young man, fit for God. You have cause to - bless the Lord. He is a glorious saint in heaven; wherein - you ought exceedingly to rejoice. Let this drink up your - sorrow; seeing these are not feigned words to comfort - you, but the thing is so real and undoubted a truth. ... - Let this public mercy to the church of God make you to - forget your private sorrow.’ - -[1] [Carlyle, _Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches_, No. xxi.] - -The other quotation is from the conclusion of his account of the -storming of Bristol, addressed to the Speaker of the house of -commons; [2] - - ‘All this is none other than the work of God. He must - be a very atheist that doth not acknowledge it.... Sir, - they that have been employed in this service know that - faith and prayer obtained this city for you. I do not - say ours only, but of the people of God with you and all - England over, who have wrestled with God for a blessing - in this very thing. Our desires are that God may be - glorified by the same spirit of faith by which we ask all - our sufficiency, and have received it. It is meet that - he have all the praise. Presbyterians, independents, all - have here the same spirit of faith and prayer; the same - presence and answer; they agree here, have no names of - difference; pity it is it should be otherwise anywhere! - All that believe have the real unity, which is most - glorious; because inward and spiritual, in the body, and - to the head. For being united in forms, commonly called - uniformity, every Christian will for peace-sake study and - do as far as conscience will permit. And for brethren, in - things of the mind we look for no compulsion but that of - light and reason.’ - -[1] [Carlyle, _Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches_, No. xxxi.] - -With such a spirit and such a cause, with a leader who could so -express it, and as it seemed manifestly owned by God, the army rested -victoriously from its labours in the field by midsummer 1646. For -the next year it was looking on, with an impatience that gradually -became unmanageable, while the presbyterian majority in parliament -was contriving its suppression. The leaders of this majority were, on -the one hand, the lawyers, Holles, Glyn, and Maynard, on the other, -the military members, such as Sir Philip Stapleton, who had been -removed from their command by the self-denying ordinance. The motives -of these men were a mixture of zeal for presbyterian uniformity, fear -of unsettling the monarchical basis of government, and animosity to -the army, as sectarian, {314} democratic, and generally irreverent -to dignities, or, in their language, dangerous to gentry, ministry, -and magistracy. The ministry and magistracy of the city backed them, -vigorously worrying parliament every week with statements of church -grievances. In December, 1646, the lord mayor in person presented a -petition, complaining specially of the contempt put on the covenant, -and of the growth of heresy and schism, the pulpits being often -usurped by preaching soldiers. To cure these evils they pray that -the covenant may be imposed on the whole nation, under penalties; -that no one be allowed to preach who has not been regularly ordained, -and that all separate congregations be suppressed. In answer to this -parliament passed an order against lay-preachers, to be enforced by -local magistrates, an order not very likely to be effective, when -the preachers were soldiers. A glimpse of what was going on is given -by an extract from Whitelock’s Memoirs (ii. 104) of about the same -date: ‘A minister presented articles to the council of war against -a trooper, for preaching and expounding the scripture, and uttering -erroneous opinions. The council adjudged that none of the articles -were against the law or articles of war, but that only the trooper -called the parson “a minister of antichrist;” for which reproach -they ordered the trooper to make an acknowledgment; which he did, -and was one night imprisoned.’ In contrast with this lenience of -the council of war may be placed a declaration of the provincial -assembly of the London ministers, which after a denunciation of -twelve specific heresies, winds up with the following résumé: [1] ‘We -hereby testify our great dislike of prelacy, erastinianism, brownism, -and independency, and our utter abhorrency of anti-scripturism, -popery, arianism, socinianism, arminianism, antinomianism, -anabaptism, libertinism, and familism; and that we detest the error -of toleration, the doctrine that men should have liberty to worship -God in that manner as shall appear to them most agreeable to the word -of God.’ Edwards, in his ‘Gangrena,’ published while this storm was -at its height, had been even more minute. He enumerated a hundred and -seventy-six erroneous doctrines then prevalent, distributed among -sixteen sects, and appealed to parliament, taking warning from the -example of Eli, to use coercive power for their suppression, or to -put an end to a {315} toleration, ‘at which the dear brethren in -Scotland stand amazed,’ and which is ‘eclipsing the glory of the most -excellent Reformation.’ To us this agitation has its comic side. To -Milton, a competent judge, it was serious enough; - - ‘Men whose life, learning, faith, and pure intent - Would have been held in high esteem with Paul, - Must now be named and printed heretics - By shallow Edwards and Scotch what d’ye call.’ - -[1] [Neal’s _Puritans_, ii. 265.] - -To the sectarian soldiers, who had been fighting, not for a theory of -parliamentary right, but for a spiritual freedom which the sacerdotal -establishment had not allowed, ‘who knew what they fought for, and -loved what they knew,’ it represented a power which threatened to -rob them of all for which they had shed their blood. The danger was -at its height when the Scotch army was still in England and the king -in its keeping. If the king had then closed with the presbyterian -offers, he might have returned to London and directed the whole -power of parliament (which had still Massey’s soldiers at command), -the presbyteries, and the Scotch against the sectarian army. A new -and more desperate civil war must have followed, to end probably -in a reaction of unlimited royalism. Charles, however, with all -his ability, had not enough breadth of view even to play his own -game with advantage. He would play off the two parties against each -other, without committing himself to either, trusting that while they -tore each other to pieces, Montrose’s army and the ‘Irish rebels,’ -with whom he had already a treaty, would come in and settle the -business in his favour. Thus while he was still with the Scotch, -or even before, he was tampering unsuccessfully with Vane and the -independents, till at last the Scotch got tired of him, and having -received their arrears of pay from the parliament at the beginning of -the year 1647, returned back to their own country. - -During all this interval, Cromwell was at his place in parliament, -watching events. His position was a strong one. The quartering of -the army in the midland counties prevented any sudden advance of -the Scots on London, and the election of several of his military -friends, notably his son-in-law Ireton, to the vacant seats at the -end of 1645, established a regular communication between the army -and parliament. Among the old members his supporters were chiefly -Vane, Marten, and St. John, men in several respects antipathetic to -{316} Cromwell and each other, but for the present held together by -a common antagonism. Vane’s interest was for freedom of opinion on -deep religious grounds. So far he and Cromwell were at one; but Vane -had qualities, as appeared in the sequel, which unfitted him to lead -a revolution when it took military form. He was reputed physically -a coward; he had none of the rough geniality which gives personal -influence at such times; military interference and the predominance -of an individual were specially abhorrent to him. Marten was of a -rougher type. In the earlier stages of the war he alone had avowed -republicanism. He was the wit of the house of commons, the one man -of the time whose recorded speeches can be read with pleasure. -Presbyterian uniformity Marten hated with a hearty hatred, but he -was avowedly void of religious feeling, and thus out of sympathy -with the moving spirit of the time. On him, even less than on Vane, -could Cromwell have any personal hold. In August, 1643, when the -house was censuring Mr. Saltmarsh, a minister who had urged that if -the king would not grant the parliamentary demands, he and the royal -line should be ‘rooted out,’ Marten vindicated him, saying that ‘it -were better one family should be destroyed than many.’ Upon this, we -are told, there was a storm in the house, and many members ‘urged -against the lewdness of Mr. Marten’s life, and the height and danger -of his words.’ The indignation was such that he was committed to -the tower for a time, and did not resume his seat for a year and a -half. St. John was an erastian lawyer, who had pleaded for Hampden in -the ship-money business, and was now about head of his profession. -There was a darkness both in his skin and his character, which in -contrast with his intellectual light won him the nickname of the -‘dark-lantern.’ He was strong for liberty of conscience, but had a -lawyer’s belief in the necessity of monarchy, and would always take -the shortest road to his end. With him Cromwell’s friendship was -personal, and like all his personal friendships, lasting. He was -the practical link between the enthusiasm of the military saint and -the wisdom of the world. In concert with these men, Cromwell had -anxiously watched and hastened the negotiations for the withdrawal -of the Scotch. Their withdrawal, however, and the removal of the -king in parliamentary custody to Holmby, though it simplified the -dangers by which the cause was {317} threatened, by no means removed -them. During the first half of 1647, the presbyterian managers were -pressing forward their two projects of a reconciliation with the -king and the disbanding of the army, necessary for the success of -their cause. Their plan for dealing with the army was to send part -of it to Ireland, under Massey and Skippon as generals, of whom -one was a creature of their own, the other a strong presbyterian; -to disband the rest, with the exception of a few regiments that -could be managed; and to retain no one except Fairfax above the -rank of colonel, a restriction aimed specially at Cromwell. -Votes to this effect passed the house in the spring of 1647, not -apparently without great pressure from the city, which was constantly -presenting petitions against the army and lay preachers, roughly -enforced by mobs of apprentices. But meanwhile the army had got a -parliament of its own. The several troops in a regiment elected each -a representative to form the regimental council, from which again -one member was delegated to join the general council of the army. -The president of this council seems generally to have been Berry, -one of Cromwell’s special friends, whose character we have heard -described by Baxter. The army had thus a regular organisation of -opinion, and henceforward came to regard itself and to act as the -true representative of the ‘godly interest’ in England, sanctioned -by a higher than parliamentary authority. At first its demands -were modest enough. They were all ready to go to Ireland, if only -Cromwell and Fairfax might lead them; they were ready to disband so -soon as they should get their arrears of pay and be secured by an -act of indemnity against punishment for offences committed during -war. The nominal difficulty at last was about the arrears of pay. -Parliament would only agree to pay arrears for eight weeks, and the -army asserted its claim for at least fifty weeks. Meanwhile the -militia of the city had been placed in trusty presbyterian hands; -the king had accepted provisionally (with what insincerity his -correspondence showed) the preliminary presbyterian propositions, and -pressed for a personal treaty. The lords so far assented to this as -to vote that he should be brought to Oatlands, in the neighbourhood -of London. If once this had been done, he would have been in direct -communication with interests hostile to the army, and the fusion -of royalism and presbyterianism would for the time have been {318} -complete. Holles and his friends thought the prize was within their -grasp, and against the discreet advice of Whitelock pressed the -disbanding. The tone of the army grew higher, till one day at the -beginning of June, news was brought to the parliament that a troop of -horse, under one cornet Joyce, had appeared at Holmby and demanded -the king of the commissioners. ‘The commissioners,’ in the words of -Whitelock, ‘amazed at it, demanded of them what warrant they had for -what they did; but they could give no other account but that it was -the pleasure of the army.’ The king afterwards asked them for their -commission. Joyce answered, ‘that his majesty saw their commission; -the king replied that it had the fairest frontispiece of any he ever -saw, being five hundred proper men on horseback.’ [1] On the same -day that this happened, Cromwell had ridden out of town with one -servant to the quarters of the army, just in time to escape forcible -detention by Holles’s friends. The plot now thickened. The army had -a general rendezvous at Triploe Heath, and greeted the parliamentary -commissioner who met them there with cries of ‘justice! justice!’ -Thence gradually moving towards London, they sent up articles of -charge against Holles and ten other members, for obstructing the -business of Ireland, and acting against the army and the liberty of -the subject. During two months they waited for the execution of their -demands, sending parliament a reminder now and then, but maintaining -perfect self-restraint. Holles and his party, on the other hand, -showed all the precipitation of weakness. Under their management the -authorities of the city got together a loose army of militiamen, -of which the command was given to Massey, and organised the mob of -apprentices, which finally put so much pressure on parliament that -the speaker and many members of both houses took refuge with the -army. This was the turning-point. The army, now under parliamentary -sanction, easily walked through Massey’s lines, and quartered in the -suburbs. The city was in a panic. ‘A great number of people attended -at Guildhall. When a scout came in and brought news that the array -made a halt, or other good intelligence, they cry “one and all!” But -if the scouts reported that the army was advancing nearer them, then -they would cry as loud, “Treat, treat, treat!”’ [2] The corporation, -{319} its cheap vaunts at an end, sent resolutions to the army in -favour of ‘a sweet composure.’ In calm indifference to its good words -and its bad, the army on August 6 marched through London, ‘in so -orderly and civil a manner, that not the least offence was offered by -them to any man in word, action, or gesture.’ - -[1] [Whitelock, ii. 154.] - -[2] [_ib_. ii. 189.] - -The king, now in the hands of the army, had been following its -movements, and when it finally established its headquarters at -Putney, he was allowed to live in considerable state at Hampton -Court, with his own attendants, but under the guard of Colonel -Whalley, Cromwell’s trusted cousin. Here he stayed till his flight -to Carisbrook in the Isle of Wight, in the following November. Those -who explain Cromwell’s life by its result, as a long scheme for his -own elevation, suppose that during this period he carried on private -negotiations with the king, first perhaps with the view of restoring -him to power under his own direction, but afterwards to lure him on -to destruction; that with this object he encouraged him by vain hopes -to refuse the proposals of parliament, and finally to escape from -Hampton, whence by some mysterious means he was guided to an asylum -of Cromwell’s own preparing at Carisbrook. Such a view is expressed -even in the panegyric of Marvell, written on Cromwell’s return from -Ireland in the summer of 1650; - - ‘What field of all the civil war - Where his were not the deepest scar? - And Hampton shows what part - He had of wiser art, - - Where, twining subtle fears with hope, - He wove a net of such a scope - That Charles himself might chase - To Carisbrook’s narrow case; - - That thence the royal actor borne - The tragic scaffold might adorn.’ - -In this, however, as in other cases, history is really less personal -and mysterious than is commonly supposed. Cromwell and Ireton -doubtless negotiated personally with the king during the summer -of this year, but it was on the basis of a public program for -resettlement agreed to by the army and communicated to parliament. -At the same time the parliament, still presbyterian in feeling, was -submitting to the king, in conjunction with the Scots, propositions -the {320} same in substance as those which he had rejected when -with the Scotch army at Newcastle. One of the essential points in -the army’s scheme, of which more will be said afterwards, was that -it allowed the use of the Common Prayer, and provided against the -compulsory imposition of the covenant. The parliamentary scheme, -on the other hand, was conceived in the strict presbyterian sense. -When the proposals of the army were publicly presented to Charles -in the month of July, he treated them in a way which set the heart -of the army against him once for all. Cromwell and Ireton, however, -continued to treat with him. They simply wanted to keep him from -closing with the presbyterians, not having made up their minds to any -further step, while he strangely fancied that he was cajoling them -and playing off the army against the parliament. They did not, while -treating him with all respect, for a moment lower their tone with -him. They would not consent to kiss his hand, and the king himself -complained that no promise of favour or decoration could affect them. -Their perfect explicitness is witnessed by two opposite authorities, -both good, and both on different grounds unfriendly to Cromwell, by -Berkley the king’s confidant, and the wife of colonel Hutchinson. By -the middle of September they had given up all hopes of him. It is a -well-known story that Charles sent a letter to the queen, sewn in the -skirt of the messenger’s saddle, in which he said that the army and -the Scots were both courting him, and that he should close with the -party that bid fairest, probably with the Scots; that Cromwell and -Ireton having secret information of this, sat drinking, in the dress -of common troopers, at the Blue Boar in Holborn, where the messenger -was to put up; that there they seized him, ripped up the skirts -of the saddle, and found the letter. This story has received many -embellishments, such as that the letter said that Cromwell and Ireton -were expecting a silken garter, but would find a hempen cord, but is -probably in substance true. There was no need, however, of any such -mysterious discovery to satisfy Cromwell and Ireton that the king was -playing a double game. With that inability to conceal exultation in -his own artifice which was one of his most curious characteristics, -he told them so plainly, while they pronounced no less plainly that -God had hardened his heart. - -While these negotiations were going on, the sectarian {321} -enthusiasm of the army was becoming rapidly republican, and worse -than this, the republican was but one mode of the ‘levelling spirit,’ -the spirit of resentment against ‘gentry, ministry, and magistracy’ -in general, which might at any time break into flames. The soldiers -had their own printing-press from which pamphlets, voted seditious -by the parliament, were constantly issuing. Cromwell and Ireton, at -the prayer-meetings of the army, which they were in the habit of -attending, could feel its pulse, and tell when the beating of the -heart was no longer controllable. They were clearly neither of them -republicans of deliberate purpose, but some time during the autumn of -1647 they found that the only way to control the levelling impulse -was to yield to the republican. It was probably because they had -thus made up their minds that things must be worse before they were -better, that they allowed the king a liberty at Hampton, of which -he availed himself to come to an understanding with Capel, Ormond, -and Lauderdale for a combined royalist rising in England, Ireland, -and Scotland. On November 8 he escaped from Hampton, and made for -Carisbrook. He preferred this asylum to Scotland under a notion, for -which there was clearly some foundation, that he had an interest in -the army, and that Hammond, the governor, might be wrought upon. - -During the month of October, Cromwell in his place at Westminster -was pressing forward the propositions of parliament to the king, -and in doing so, he found himself in opposition to the small -party of thorough republicans, which consisted chiefly of the -newly-elected officers of the army. This has been reckoned a piece -of his duplicity, as he must have known, it is said, that the king, -relying on his interest elsewhere, would reject the propositions -and thus make a final breach with the parliament. It is to be -observed, however, that he supported them on two conditions, one -that a clause should be inserted securing liberty of conscience, the -other that a limit should be put to the duration of the presbyterian -government. The real key to his conduct in this crisis, as throughout -the subsequent history, is his desire for such a reconciliation of -parties as would at once prevent government by a faction and secure -the ‘godly interest.’ With this object he sought, without breaking -wholly from the moderate presbyterians, to commit parliament to such -a {322} policy as would conciliate the milder spirit of the army. -The strength of the levelling spirit, which made such conciliation -essential, was soon formidably apparent; only the courage and -persuasiveness of Cromwell could have held it down. On November 15 -the dangerous regiments were ordered to a rendezvous at Ware, where -Fairfax and Cromwell met them. A ‘remonstrance’ was read by Fairfax -to the troops. It recited their old demands for pay and indemnity -and for the calling of a new and free parliament; these Fairfax said -that he was willing to support, if the soldiers would promise perfect -obedience to his orders. This satisfied all the regiments but one, -which showed signs of mutiny. Cromwell then rode along its armed -front, looking the men literally in the face. Eleven, whose looks he -did not like, he ordered out of the ranks. The men acquiesced. Three -were then tried on the field and condemned to die. One only, however, -was shot, and the rest pardoned. Thus at the loss of a single life -the plague of mutiny was for the time stayed. The secret of the -good temper of the army was a renewed assurance that their leaders -would not again imperil the cause of the Lord’s people by ‘carnal -conferences’ with his crowned enemy. - -The king was followed to Carisbrook by four bills, which formed -the ultimatum of the parliament. They represent the predominance -of independency in the house, which the efforts of Cromwell and -his friends had at last attained. They make no more mention of -religion, but simply secure the supremacy of the commons. These -Charles rejected, while at the same time, swallowing his zeal for -bishops and liturgy, he signed a treaty with the Scots, which, at the -price of the establishment of presbyterianism, secured him a Scotch -army to deliver him from the sectaries and restore him to London on -terms that would have made him virtually irresistible. This was the -beginning of the end. On January 3, 1648, Cromwell writes to Governor -Hammond, evidently in high spirits: ‘The House of Commons is very -sensible of the king’s dealings, and of our brethren’s (the Scots), -in this late transaction.... It has this day voted as follows: 1st, -they will make no more addresses to the king; 2nd, none shall apply -to him without leave of the two houses, upon pain of being guilty -of high treason; 3rd, they will receive nothing from the king.’ -Henceforth there could be but two {323} alternatives. Either the new -royalist rising would prevail and restore a short-lived tyranny of -presbyters to end in a longer one of priests, or it would fail, and -on its wreck be established a military republic. - - - - -LECTURE III. - -In the last lecture I followed the course of events to the time -when it became clear that a military republic was the only possible -alternative for an unconditional triumph of Charles. Whether -this republic should be more or less exclusive, depended on the -possibility of bringing the English presbyterians to an understanding -with the erastian or independent party in parliament, and both to -an understanding with the army. During the spring of 1648 we find -Cromwell, true to his instinct of comprehension, working for this -end, and rewarded by all parties with jealousy for his pains. He had -a conference at his house, Ludlow tells us, ‘between those called -the grandees of the house and army, and the commonwealth’s men.’ The -grandees of the house would probably be the original members of the -Long parliament who might be of erastian or independent sympathies, -such as St. John, Nathaniel Fiennes, one or two uninteresting -lords, and perhaps Vane, who was not a declared republican. The -commonwealth’s men, not grandees, would be members elected to fill up -vacancies at the end of 1645, such as Ludlow himself, Hutchinson, and -Thomas Scott, officers of the army, but not of Cromwell’s training. -Marten, though in standing a grandee, headed this republican party. -The grandees, according to Ludlow, with Cromwell at their head, ‘kept -themselves in the clouds, and would not declare their judgments -either for a monarchical, aristocratical, or democratical government, -maintaining that any of them might be good in themselves, or for us, -according as providence should direct us. The commonwealth’s men -declared that monarchy was neither good in itself, nor for us. That -it was not desirable in itself they urged from the eighth chapter -of the 1st book of Samuel, where the choice of a king was charged -upon the Israelites by God himself as a rejection of him.’ That it -was not good ‘for us’ was proved ‘by the infinite mischiefs and -oppressions we had suffered under {324} it and by it; that indeed our -ancestors had consented to be governed by a single person, but with -this proviso, that he should govern according to the direction of -the law, which he always bound himself by oath to perform; that the -king had broken this oath, and therefore dissolved our allegiance, -protection and obedience being reciprocal; that ... it seemed to be a -duty incumbent upon the representatives of the people to call him to -account for the blood shed in the war ... and then to proceed to the -establishment of an equal commonwealth, founded upon the consent of -the people, and providing for the rights and liberties of all men.’ -So elaborate an utterance of republican formulae did not look like -conciliation, and finally, says Ludlow, ‘Cromwell took up a cushion -and flung it at my head and then ran downstairs; but I overtook him -with another, which made him hasten down faster than he desired.’ - -He was not more successful with the presbyterians, whose leaders he -got to confer with the independents, and whom he afterwards addressed -in the city. ‘The city,’ according to a contemporary presbyterian -writer, ‘were now wiser than our first parents, and rejected the -serpent and his subtleties.’ The presbyterian zeal in fact, as it -boasted of itself, would learn nothing by events. During the summer -of 1648, while the army under Cromwell and Ireton was trampling out -the royalist risings and scattering the intrusive Scots (no longer -led by Lesley), Holles availed himself of the absence of the military -members to return to the house and regain his majority. Under his -direction, and at the pressure of the city, negotiations in the -exclusive presbyterian interest were re-opened with the king. These -led to concessions on his part, only made to gain time, which at -last, in the beginning of December, in a house of two hundred and -forty-four, were voted a sufficient basis of agreement. This vote -made the final rent between military and parliamentary power, and -Vane, who more than anyone else dreaded this rent, resisted it to the -utmost. Marten, however, was already bringing up Cromwell from the -north, and Cromwell a few days before had given voice to the ‘great -zeal he found among his officers for impartial justice on offenders.’ -Soldiers full of the same zeal were already in the suburbs. The day -after the vote was passed, colonel Pride ‘purged’ the house of the -‘royalising’ members; within two days Cromwell appeared in it arm -in {325} arm with Marten, and the military republic was virtually -established. - -It is needless to repeat the story of the king’s trial and execution, -or tell how his judges wore all the dignity of men who believed -themselves in the sight of God and the world to be violating the -false divinity of consecrated custom that a true divinity might -appear, or how Charles, after a few bursts of misplaced contempt or -passion, yet at the last, in Marvell’s words, - - ‘Nothing common did or mean - Upon that memorable scene, - But with his keener eye - The axe’s edge did try; - - Nor called the gods, with vulgar spite, - To vindicate his helpless right; - But bowed his comely head - Down, as upon a bed.’ - -The new government, in the exhilaration of sudden success, and -conscious that its strength lay in the awe which it inspired, ‘went -on roundly with its business.’ Considering its position, however, -it kept its hands strangely free from blood. It had the temptation, -generally so fatal in times of revolution, of feeling irresistible -force at its command for the moment without the least guarantee of -permanent stability. Yet its severity was confined to inflicting -banishment and confiscation on fifteen magnates who had been -prominent in the second war, to imprisoning a few others, and to -killing Hamilton, Holland, Capel, and colonel Foyer. Of these, Capel -alone, according to the ideas of the time, could have hoped for a -better fate, for he alone was exempt from the charge of treachery, -but the very greatness of his character, as Cromwell with his usual -explicitness stated, made it necessary for the commonwealth that he -should die. - -Meanwhile the purged house of commons was constituting itself a -sovereign power. Only such members were re-admitted to it who would -declare dissent from the vote that the king’s concessions afforded -a ground of settlement. First and last about a hundred and fifty -members seem to have been admitted on these terms. Two days after the -king’s death the lords sent a humble message to the commons inviting -them to a conference on the condition of the state. The commons took -no heed of the message, which was {326} repeated several times, till -February 6, when they responded by a vote that the tipper house -was ‘useless, dangerous, and ought to be abolished.’ The next day -‘kingship’ was abolished by a formal vote, and soon afterwards the -executive government was delegated to a council of state of forty -members, to be nominated yearly by the commons. The accessories of -republicanism were arranged mainly by Marten, who clearly did his -work with glee. At his instance the old ‘great seal’ was broken, and -a new one made with the arms of England and Ireland on one side, and -a ‘sculpture or map of the commons sitting’ on the other. Under this -new seal, and under oath to ‘the parliament and people,’ the judges -were to hold their commissions, which six of the twelve agreed to do. -A new coinage was also issued with a cross and harp and the motto -‘God with us’ on one side; the arms of England between a laurel and -palm, with the legend ‘Commonwealth of England,’ on the other. At the -same time the royal statues were all taken down, and on the pedestals -was inscribed with the date, ‘Exit tyrannus regum ultimus.’ All these -were the devices of Mr. Henry Marten. A more serious business was the -issue of an ‘engagement’ to the new government. This, though at first -promulgated in a severe retrospective form, was finally reduced to a -promise of fidelity to the ‘commonwealth, as established without king -or lords.’ Without taking this engagement, no one was to have the -benefit of suing another at law, ‘which,’ says Baxter, ‘kept men a -little from contention, and would have marred the lawyers’ trade.’ - -The question whether Charles deserved his death, is one which even -debating societies are beginning to find unprofitable. His death -was a necessary condition of the establishment of the commonwealth, -which, again, was a necessary result of the strife of forces, or more -properly, the conflict of ideas, which the civil war involved. At -first sight, indeed, it might seem the result merely of accident, or -at any rate of personal action and character, of the military talent -of Cromwell, of the nature of the army which he got together, of the -parliamentary animosities begotten of the self-denying ordinance, of -the foolish confidence of Charles in his ability to shatter the two -parties against each other, and lastly of the resolution of Cromwell -in self-defence to command the situation. Beneath the confused web of -personal relations, {327} however, may be seen the conflict of those -religious ideas which I have spoken of as resulting from the action -of the Reformation on the spirit of Christendom. On the one hand was -the _jus divinum_ of a sacerdotal church; not simply appealing by -ritual or mystery to the devout, but applied at once to strengthen -and justify a royal interest. To this was opposed the _jus divinum_ -of the presbyterian discipline, resting, not on priestly authority, -but on the popular conscience, yet claiming to be equally absolute -over body and soul with the other. Their antagonism elicited the -_jus divinum_ of individual persuasion, a right hitherto unasserted -in christendom, which, while the old recognised rights were in the -suspense of conflict, became a might. In the rapture of war it felt -its strength, and a master-hand gave it the form and system which it -lacked. The ancient order, too weak to regulate or absorb it, tried -blindly, while it was still armed and exultant, to crush it, and -itself necessarily fell to pieces in the attempt. But this might of -individual persuasion, though in a revolutionary struggle it could -conquer, was unable to govern. It was a spirit without a body, a -force with no lasting means of action on the world around it. Even at -the present day its office is to work under and through established -usage and interests, rather than to control them. Much less capable -was it of such control, when it was still in the stage of mere -impulse or feeling, with none of the calm comprehension which comes -of developed thought. - -When it first faced the world in organic shape as a military -republic, it already presented practical contradictions which -ensured its failure. The republic claimed, and claimed truly, to be -the creation of the impulse of freedom, yet it found nothing but -sullen acquiescence around it; it spoke in the name of the people, -not half of whom, as lady Fairfax said, it represented; it asserted -parliamentary right, though parliament had been ‘purged’ (nearly -clean) to make room for it; it was directed by men of a ‘civil’ -spirit, and had civil right to maintain, while it rested on the -support of armed enthusiasts, who cared only for the privilege of -saints. It was, in fact, founded on opinion, the opinion of a few, -brought to sudden strength and maturity, as it might have been in -an Athenian assembly, by debate in and about the parliament and in -the council of the army, but which had {328} no hold either on the -sentiment or the settled interests of the country. In the counties -which throughout the war had served as the screen of London, those, -that is, which formed the eastern association, together with -Buckinghamshire and Berkshire, it seems to have had a certain amount -of genuine support. Here the influence of Cromwell and his immediate -friends, in Berkshire especially the influence of Marten, was strong; -and the sentiment emanating from London, through the pervasive action -of sectarian preachers was quickly felt. Even here, however, the -sympathy was with the new government as a source of religious reform -and protection of tender consciences, rather than as republican; -and close at its doors the commonwealth had evidence of a different -feeling, not only opposed to it, but on which it could not hope to -work. In the spring of 1648, before Cromwell took the field, when the -whole country was simmering with insurrection, the parliament had -been specially troubled with a movement under its own eyes, of which -Whitelock has given a particular account. [1] A petition from Surrey -was brought up by some hundreds of the petitioners in person, that -the king might ‘forthwith be established on his throne, according -to the splendour of his ancestors.’ The petition was not presented -to the commons till the afternoon, ‘when some of the countrymen, -being gotten almost drunk, and animated by the malignants, fell a -quarrelling with the guards, and asked them “why they stood there -to guard a company of rogues.” Then words on both sides increasing, -the countrymen fell upon the guards, disarmed them, and killed one -of them’; till more soldiers were brought up, and the countrymen -dispersed. About the same time there was a ‘high and dangerous riot’ -in the city, which began in Moorfields about ‘sporting and tippling -on the Lord’s day,’ contrary to the ordinance of parliament. [2] -For a whole day the rioters seem to have been masters of the city. -They seized the lord mayor’s house, and took thence a ‘drake.’ With -this they ‘possessed a magazine in Leadenhall,’ and then ‘beat drums -on the water to invite the seamen for God and king Charles.’ The -next day a couple of regiments crushed the tumult. All the time a -general lawless riot was spreading over Kent, got up by malignants, -who circulated a rumour that the parliament meant to hang two men in -every town. - -[1] [Whitelock, ii. 313.] - -[2] [April 10, Rushworth, vii. 1051.] - -{329} If such things could happen where the parliament could make -itself felt most quickly, we may imagine the popular condition in -regions where there was the same ignorance, the same liability to -panic, the same tendency to tippling and gaming not on Sundays only, -for malignants to work on in the interest of ‘God and king Charles,’ -and where no voice from the republican headquarters ever penetrated. -‘The inconstant, irrational, image-doting rabble,’ as the proud -republicans called it, which, when the king was being brought from -Newcastle to Holmby, had thronged his path to be touched for the -evil, which eagerly bought up fifty editions in twelve months of -the Eikon Basilikè with the picture of the king at his prayers, was -constant enough in two feelings, of which the republicans would have -done well to take account, a reverence for familiar names, and a -resentment against virtues which profess to be other than customary -and commonplace. It was at once the merit and the weakness of the -commonwealth’s men that they irritated these feelings at every point. - - ‘Before them shone a glorious world, - Fresh as a banner bright, unfurled - To music suddenly;’ [1] - -and they could not wait to attain it by slow accommodations to sense -and habit. They believed that God through them was ‘casting the -kingdoms old into another mould,’ and in the pride of triumphant -reason they took pleasure in trampling on the common feelings and -interests, through which reason must work, if it is to work at all. -In the writings of Milton, the true exponent of the higher spirit -of the republic, we find on the one hand a perfect scorn of the -dignities and plausibilities then as now recognised in England (which -makes him the best study for a radical orator that I am acquainted -with), on the other, a free admission of the sensual degradation of -the people, which estranged them from a government founded on reason. -In the latter respect there is a marked contrast between the language -he held at the beginning of the war, when ‘he saw in his mind a noble -and puissant nation rousing itself like a strong man after sleep,’ -and the language of the ‘Eiconoclastes,’ where he admits that the -people ‘with a besotted and degenerate baseness of spirit, except -some few who yet retain in them the old English {330} fortitude and -love of freedom, imbastardised from the ancient nobleness of their -ancestors, are ready to fall flat and give adoration to the image -and memory of this man, who hath more put tyranny into an act than -any British king before him.’ To him, throughout, the puritan war -had seemed a crisis in the long struggle between the spirit and -the flesh, a great effort to reclaim the spirit from ‘the outward -and customary eye-service of the body,’ and a system of political -asceticism was its proper result. Such a system to its believing -supporters was the commonwealth. Its claim was not gradually to -transmute, but suddenly to suppress, the feeling of the many by the -reason of the few; a claim which all the while belied itself, for -it appealed to popular, and even natural right, and which implied -no concrete power of political reconstruction. It was a democracy -without a δημος, [2] it rested on an assertion of the supremacy of -reason, which from its very exclusiveness gave the reason no work to -do. - -[1] [Wordsworth, _Ruth_.] - -[2] [Greek demos = people, Tr.] - -The great interests of the nation at that time may be taken as -the landed, the mercantile, and the clerical; and the republic at -starting might reckon on hostility from each of them. With the landed -interest it dealt at once too severely to have its friendship, and -too lightly to crush it. If it had adopted a sweeping measure of -confiscation, as other revolutionary governments have done, and as -it did itself in Ireland, it might have settled the soldiers on -the confiscated lands, thus easing itself of their too obtrusive -support, while it established a permanent interest in its favour -over the whole country. As it was, the land was only confiscated -in a few special cases, when it was given to the various grandees -of the parliament, in reward of services, and in return for money -spent on the public behalf. The ordinary gentry who had been in arms -for the king, ‘delinquents,’ as they were called, were allowed to -retain their estates on payment by way of composition of some part of -the income. They thus retained their old means of influence, along -with a memory of a grievance to intensify their natural royalism. -Nor was the trouble got over once for all at the foundation of the -commonwealth. The composition paid on the estates was one of the -chief sources of revenue, and when, through a Dutch war or the like, -the republic was short of money, delinquents were hunted out who -had hitherto escaped. Thus the sore was kept running, and if the -humbled gentry, like {331} colonel Poyer of Pembroke, were ‘sober and -penitent in the morning,’ they were also like him often ‘drunk and -full of plots in the afternoon.’ Their meetings for horse-races and -cock-fighting were reckoned nurseries of disaffection, and the best -security against them was that secrets sworn to over the bottle were -not generally well kept. - -The royalist squire, when he was not at a cock-fighting, would often -have his loyalty fanned by an excluded episcopal clergyman whom he -had taken as his chaplain. A large number of the clergy, as we have -seen, had been driven from their livings by the imposition of the -covenant. A fifth of the yearly income of their several benefices -was set apart for the benefit of their families (an example not -followed at the ejectment of St. Bartholomew’s day), but the excluded -clergy themselves were liable to be driven from their old parishes, -and would generally take refuge with the royalist gentry. It would -seem indeed that under the commonwealth, which, in England at least, -was true to its principle of toleration, there was nothing to -prevent an episcopalian clergyman who would recognise the republican -government from being presented to a living or from using the Common -Prayer in his church. Some residue of the old assembly still sat at -Westminster, to examine men who presented themselves for ordination -or induction to livings, but they had no power to compel such -presentation, and there is no sign that they were uniformly resorted -to. From passages in Baxter’s life we may infer that many moderate -episcopalians, men, that is, who were in favour, according to the -technical language of the time, of compresbyterial, as distinct from -prelatical, episcopacy, held benefices under the new régime. Still -there were no doubt numbers of excluded ‘prelatical divines’ about -the country, and while they were natural enemies of the commonwealth, -the presbyterian ministers were not its friends. Whatever was not -sectarian in it, was erastian. Its very existence they reckoned a -violation of the covenant, and, if its abolition of kingship could -have been borne, its refusal to give the presbyteries a coercive -jurisdiction, its declared intention to remove all penal ordinances -in matters of conscience, they could not brook. They refused to -read its ordinances from the pulpit, as had previously been done, -they prayed openly against it, and turned the monthly fast into a -general exercise of disaffection. The parliament on its part issued -stringent {332} injunctions that all ministers should subscribe the -engagement of fidelity to the commonwealth, and finding that the -monthly fast had become a ‘fast for strife and debate,’ it declared -its abolition and appointed fasts of its own on special occasions. -The ministers, however, ‘condemned the engagement to the pit of -hell’ and shut up the churches on the new fast days. According to -Baxter, as a general rule only the sectarians and the old cavaliers, -who were seldom ‘sick of the disease of a scrupulous conscience,’ -would swallow the engagement. He not only refused it himself, but -circulated letters against it among the soldiers, ‘barking monitories -and mementoes,’ in Milton’s phrase. Yet he seems to have been left -undisturbed, nor except at the universities do we hear of any -penalties for the refusal of the engagement being inflicted. The -parliament knew that the presbyterian pulpit was the most powerful -lever of popular opinion in the country, and showed a magnanimous -patience in dealing with it. It put out declarations, promising -protection to the ministers in their benefices, and a maintenance -of all ordinances that had been made for reformation in doctrine, -worship, and discipline, except such as were penal and coercive. At -last it passed an order that state affairs were not to be discussed -in sermons, and appointed a committee to receive informations against -such as disregarded it. The beneficed ministers, however, stimulated -by missives from the Scotch kirk, now in arms for Charles II., -continued, says the gentle Mrs. Hutchinson, to ‘spit fire out of -their pulpits,’ and even the rout of their allies at Dunbar, though -it made their tongues less dangerous, did not make them more smooth. - -The reason of the case is obvious. It is the true nemesis of -human life that any spiritual impulse, not accompanied by clear -comprehensive thought, is enslaved by its own realisation. -Presbyterianism at the beginning of the war had been a struggling -impulse, noble, but not understanding its own nobleness. It had -now, with success, hardened into an interest; its inarticulate idea -had become a shallow, though articulate formula; and it was seeking -to suppress the spiritual force in which it had itself originated. -The genuine commonwealth’s men, on the other hand, were still in -the stage of the ‘unbodied thought.’ They announced principles. -In practice the presbyterian clergy should be supported and well -paid, but universal toleration must be maintained, and tithes were -{333} declared judaic and objectionable. The offensiveness of such -principles did more to provoke the clergy than the excellence of the -practice, which Baxter, at least, was obliged to confess, did to -conciliate them. - -The best illustration of the real feeling of the republican clique in -London towards the preaching presbyterian royalists is to be found in -Milton’s treatise on the ‘Tenure of kings and magistrates,’ written -just at this crisis, when he was in constant communication with the -chief commonwealth’s men. - - ‘Divines, if we observe them, have their postures and - their motions no less expertly than they that practise - feats in the artillery ground. Sometimes they seem, - furiously to march on, and presently march counter; - by-and-by they stand, and then retreat; or if need be, - can face about or wheel in a whole body, with that - cunning and dexterity as is almost unperceivable, to - wind themselves by shifting ground into places of - more advantage. And providence only must be the drum; - providence the word of command, that calls them from - above, but always to some larger benefice.... For while - the hope to be made classic and provincial lords led them - on, while pluralities greased them thick and deep, to - the shame and scandal of religion, more than all sects - and heresies they exclaim against; then to fight against - the king’s person, and no less a party of his lords and - commons, or to put force on both the houses was good, - was lawful, was no resisting of superior powers; they - only were powers not to be resisted who countenanced - the good, and punished the evil. But now that their - censorious domineering is not suffered to be universal, - truth and conscience to be freed, tithes and pluralities - to be no more, though competent allowance provided, and - the warm experience of large gifts, and they so good at - taking them, yet now to exclude and seize on impeached - members, to bring delinquents without exemption to a fair - tribunal by the common law against murder, is to be no - less than Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. He who but erewhile - in the pulpits was a cursed tyrant, an enemy to God and - saints, laden with innocent blood, is now, though nothing - penitent, a lawful magistrate, a sovereign lord, the - Lord’s anointed, not to be touched, though by themselves - imprisoned.’ [1] - -[1] [Milton’s Prose Works, ii. pp. 45 and 6, ed. 1848.] - -When we reflect that the men of whom this was written were the -most active and popular section of the beneficed {334} clergy, and -that the other section, the accommodating episcopalians, had been -covertly hostile to the parliament all along, we shall appreciate -the estrangement of the ideas, that were ruling for the time, from -the average sentiment of the country. The only agency through which -the government could now hope to work on this sentiment was that of -the independents and sectaries, who were unbeneficed, and even the -support of the independents was not very hearty, for independency -in the larger towns was becoming an ‘interest,’ while that of the -sectaries might at any time become unmanageable. - -The republic, having thus to reckon on open hostility from the -clergy, and on a deeper hatred, tempered with fear, from most of the -gentry, had no countervailing influence with the commercial class. -This class, which never loves experiments in government, took its -political tone largely from the presbyterian preachers; and in the -city, as we have seen, gave great strength in the crisis of 1648 to -the royalist reaction. The financial necessities, moreover, of an -armed republic aggravated the offence of its moral and spiritual -innovation. Hitherto the army had been supplied with provisions -by a system of free quarter. Its leaders had been quite aware of -the popular grievance which this system caused, and which only its -admirable discipline prevented from being far greater. The removal -of it had been a constant topic in the documents issuing from the -army-council; but this implied the introduction of new and heavy -taxation. The purged parliament, however, had spirit for the work, -and quickly imposed an ‘assessment’ of 90,000_l_. a month (more than -1,000,000_l_. a year). Such a burden was sure to be a permanent -source of complaint, but for the present the impressive display of -restrained power, with which the new government had begun its rule, -and the apprehension that it might be the only present alternative -for a worse rule of levellers, had made the city more civil. At the -special instance of Cromwell and Vane it advanced money on security -of the tax, and the lord mayor, with other city magnates, was placed -on the committee of assessment. A prompt suppression of a levelling -mutiny by Cromwell, in May 1649, seems for the time to have composed -the commercial mind, and a few days after a great banquet was given -by the city to the parliament and officers of the army, remarkable -chiefly {335} for the description of it by Whitelock, which indicates -that in one respect at least, good taste, superior to that of -our times, went along with puritan gravity. ‘The feast was very -sumptuous, the music only drums and trumpets, no healths drunk, nor -any incivility.’ The mercantile interest was further conciliated by -an act passed soon afterwards (the beginning of legislation which -was gradually to transfer the carrying trade of the world from the -Dutch to the English), to the effect that no foreign ship should -bring merchandise to England except such as was of the growth or -manufacture of the country to which the ship belonged. Still the -breach between the high spiritual endeavour on which alone the -republic really rested, and the aspiration of the smug citizen who -left such endeavour to his minister and to Sundays, was too great for -orderly and vigorous administration to fill. The condition of this -administration, moreover, was that Cromwell should keep its enemies -at a distance. - -With such dangerous elements all around it, the household of the -republic was by no means united in itself. It rested on a temporary -coalition between three sets of men, between whom as we have seen -there was no real love; the genuine commonwealth’s men, a section -of the ‘grandees of the parliament,’ and the leaders of the army. -The ‘grandees of the parliament’ had, with scarcely an exception, -kept their hands from the death-warrant of Charles. They recognised -the new order of things partly to avoid a breach with the army, -partly from fear of presbyterian ascendency and an unchecked -royalist reaction. So far as they looked ahead at all, they probably -contemplated a re-establishment of monarchy in the person of the duke -of Gloucester, the late king’s youngest son, whom the parliament had -in its keeping. This at least was the case with Whitelock, who was in -his way a representative man. On the new council of state (of forty), -which included seven peers or eldest sons of peers, five baronets, -four knights, and some temporising lawyers, this section had a -numerical majority. On the other hand, the stiff republicans were -in a decided minority on the council. Only ten regicides were upon -it, and from these must be deducted Cromwell and one or two officers -whom he could command, and who were not republican on principle. -The most eminent of this section were Marten, Bradshaw, Ludlow, and -Scott. Bradshaw, a special friend of Milton, had presided at the -trial of Charles, {336} in a high beaver hat lined with steel, with -the composure, according to Milton, of a man with whom the trial of -kings had been the business of life. He was afterwards president of -the council of state, where Whitelock, a rival and perhaps jealous -lawyer, complains that he did not understand the nature of his -office, and made long discourses of his own that no one wanted to -hear. Scott had been an officer in the new-model army, but seems -already to have been jealous of Cromwell, being one of those men with -whom hatred of the ‘rule of a single person’ was a principle of life. -In later days, when Monk was supreme, the restoration inevitable, -and the republicans fleeing, he stood up in parliament and said -that, though he knew not where to hide his head, yet he must say -that not his hand only but his heart had been in the execution of -Charles. As might be expected, the restoration brought him the honour -of martyrdom for his cause. Ludlow was a man of the same temper. -His qualities were clearly much valued by Cromwell, and there seems -to have been more real friendship between them at this time than -Ludlow, looking back upon it from his exile at Vevay in the light of -subsequent events, was willing to admit. Marten alone had some touch -of the modern French republican about him. We have seen with what -zest he arranged the more sensational incidents of the commonwealth. -When the motion for the abolition of the house of lords, as ‘useless -and dangerous,’ was being discussed, he proposed to substitute the -words ‘useless but not dangerous.’ On another occasion, it is said, -in drawing up a republican document, he spoke of ‘England being -restored to its ancient government of commonwealth,’ and in answer -to an objection that a commonwealth never before existed in England, -quoted a text which had always puzzled him, where a man blind from -his birth was said to be ‘restored’ to the sight he _should have -had_. Under cover of this gaiety, however, and of a life reputed to -be lewd, Marten had a strong republican enthusiasm, which he carried -with him to his death through an imprisonment of twenty years. - -These republicans, one would suppose, must have felt the uneasiness -of their position. They had been the first to appeal from the -unpurged parliament to the army. Ludlow, indeed, in his memoirs -professed to have been shocked when Cromwell, in the spring of 1647, -whispered to him in the house {337} that Holles and his party would -never leave ‘till the army pulled them out by the ears’; yet by his -own confession a few months later, during the treaty of Newport, he -urged Ireton to put force on the parliament before Ireton himself -was prepared to do so, and Marten had done the like with Cromwell. -To the army they had thus appealed, but to the army, now that -they were successful, they no longer meant to go. Its enthusiasm -was not theirs. They had too much of the ancient Roman in them, -Marten, perhaps, rather of the ancient Greek, to sympathise with the -‘foolishness of Christ’ as it was presented in the army. It was not -in them that men, whose pastime was preaching and being preached to, -who discovered strange lights in their bibles to interpret strange -events, could find a natural leader, but in one who in his private -prayers would ‘throw himself on his face and pour out his soul with -tears for a quarter of an hour,’ who never went into battle without -a text to feed on, who sang psalms as he led them to victory. The -army, though it had no representative of its peculiar spirit on the -council of state except Cromwell, was the real constituency of the -republican parliament. It contained dangerous elements over which -parliament had not the least control, and which might at any time -overturn the parliamentary system. These may be summed up as the -spirit of simple military arrogance, represented by Lambert, the -levelling spirit represented by Lilburne and Wildman, and the ‘Fifth -Monarchy’ spirit represented by Harrison. Lambert appears to have had -the most conspicuous military talent of any of Cromwell’s officers. -In the critical spring of 1648 he held an independent command in the -north of England. He showed great skill in hanging on the skirts of -Hamilton’s army before Cromwell joined him, and afterwards headed -the pursuit. At Dunbar he led the fatal attack on the Scotch right -wing, and next year when Charles was marching to Worcester, hung on -his flank with cavalry, as he had before done on Hamilton’s. But -as soon as he was off active service, he became mischievous. Vain, -restless, and of extravagant habits, he perpetually chafed alike -against Cromwell’s control and the authority of the parliament. -He alone of the leading officers had never obtained a seat in -parliament, and thus never became habituated to its civilising -influence. Mrs. Hutchinson, while including him and Cromwell in the -same condemnation, admits that there was this difference, {338} that -while the one was gallant and great, the other had nothing but an -unworthy pride, most insolent in prosperity and as abject and base -in adversity.’ The term ‘leveller,’ then as now, was very loosely -and ambiguously applied. According to Mrs. Hutchinson, who is a good -authority on this point, the nickname was originally given to a: - - ‘certain sort of public-spirited men,’ who, when the - presbyterian and independent factions were at their - hottest, ‘declared against the ambition of the grandees - of both and against the prevailing partiality, by - which great men were privileged to do those things for - which meaner men were punished. Many then got shelter - in the house and army against their debts, by which - others were undone. The lords, as if it were the chief - privilege of nobility to be licensed in vice, claimed - many prerogatives, which set them out of the reach of - common justice, which these good people would have had - equally belong to the poorest as well as to the mighty.’ - ‘But,’ continues Mrs. Hutchinson, taking a turn at - philosophy, ‘as all virtues are mediums and have their - extremes, there rose up after under the same name a - people who endeavoured the levelling of all estates and - qualities, which these sober levellers were never guilty - of desiring.’ [1] - -[1] [_Life of colonel Hutchinson_, ii. 125; ed, 1885.] - -This account corresponds with the tenor of the petitions which we -read of as presented to the republican parliament by ‘levellers.’ -They are simply a continuation of the agreements and remonstrances -issued by the council of the army during the agitation of 1648, which -in the main no doubt expressed the mind of Cromwell and Ireton. -Their demand is for reforms, which for the most part stood over for -nearly another two hundred years, till they began to be carried out -by the ‘purged parliament’ of 1832. With minor variations according -to circumstances, they pray, firstly, for a cheap and expeditious -process of law, to be the same for all, with no exemptions in -virtue of tenure or privilege; the laws to be written and in -English; secondly, the abolition of all feudal courts, payments, and -privileges; thirdly, the maintenance of the clergy by some other -method than tithes, which, let us remember, were not then commuted, -but were a perpetual source of carnal dispute between the clergy and -the farmers; fourthly, the removal of monopolies, custom-duties, and -excise, and the imposition of equal taxation; fifthly, the abolition -of imprisonment for debt; all {339} estates to be liable for debt, -and the rich not to turn prisons into places of protection; sixthly, -the establishment of perfect freedom of conscience; and seventhly and -lastly comes the demand, which presented the real difficulty, the -dissolution of the sitting parliament, with provision for calling a -new one at regular intervals. - -This, we shall agree, is a sufficiently large and reasonable -programme of reform. Sometimes farther details appear, of a kind -which show a curious forecast of modern legislation, such as the -establishment of registers of mortgage and the sale of lands. The -rational desire for reform, however, which these petitions indicate, -was always liable in the army to pass into a spirit of mutiny and -disaffection, or into an ecstatic revolt, such as constantly appeared -in those times against the clothing, literal and metaphorical, with -which custom has covered the nakedness of human life. The grand mover -of the mutinous spirit was John Lilburne, the object of Marten’s -well-known joke, that if he were the only man left in the world, John -would quarrel with Lilburne and Lilburne with John. His obligations -to Cromwell were of long standing. In a tract published in 1647 he -says to Cromwell, ‘You took compassion on me when I was at death’s -door, and in 1640 set me free from the long tyranny of the bishops -and the Star chamber.’ (In 1640 no one will suppose that Cromwell’s -sympathy was other than disinterested.) ‘I have looked on you,’ he -proceeds, ‘as the most absolute, single-hearted great man in England, -untainted and unbiassed with ends of your own.’ He did not long -continue, however, to use this language. He had made himself useful -to Cromwell in the matter of the self-denying ordinance by showing up -certain scandals in connection with the earl of Manchester and other -officers of the original army. This made him many enemies, one of the -obscurer of whom prosecuted him for damaging his character. The case -was decided against Lilburne, who was called on for heavy damages. -He appealed to the parliament, and its disregard of his appeal -was the beginning of a long series of grievances, accumulating in -intensity as grievances do, and gradually drawing within the circle -of his animosity every one who declined to make his vindication the -sole object of political action. Cromwell and Marten seem really -to have done what they could to help him, but he would not wait to -be helped. From time to {340} time a parliamentary committee was -appointed to consider his case, but before anything could be done, -there would appear some violent pamphlet of his against parliament -and its grandees in general, for which he would be lodged in the -tower. ‘Jonah’s cry,’ ‘The oppressed man’s oppression,’ ‘The just -man’s justification,’ ‘Jugglers discovered,’ are among the titles -of his tracts, all most trenchantly written, that appeared during -the military agitation which culminated in the rendezvous at Ware. -Because Cromwell would not break on his account with ‘the grandees -of the parliament’ and the more worldly-wise of the officers, he -became one in Lilburne’s eyes who had bartered his high calling for -the glory of the world. His supposed machinations were exhibited in a -pamphlet published during the first months of the commonwealth, under -the title ‘The hunting of the foxes from Triploe Heath to Whitehall -by five small beagles’; the foremost ‘beagle’ being Lilburne. [1] -It strongly illustrates the freedom of discussion allowed in the -army, which indeed was the condition of its peculiar enthusiasm, -that this and other seditious manifestoes from the same hand, such -as ‘England’s new chains discovered,’ had apparently unchecked -circulation in it, and that at a time when a strong leaven of mutiny -was at work. At three different places in the spring of 1649, in -London, at Banbury, and at Salisbury, while the ‘five beagles’ were -happily under lock and key in the tower, the troops broke into open -revolt. Through want of leaders, and the swift energy of Cromwell, -the revolt was suppressed without bloodshed, and of the captured -mutineers, altogether some two thousand in number, only five were -shot. It is a fact probably unique in military history, that the -one who was shot in London was carried to the grave with military -honours, followed by the whole body of troops quartered about the -city with the ‘levelling’ badges in their hats. The fact is unique -because the army also was unique, being not a mercenary machine, or -even an embodiment of patriotic impulse, but an armed organisation of -opinion. - -[1] [“Lilburn” amended to “Lilburne”, twice. Tr.] - -Contemporaneously with this outburst of mutiny, the levelling spirit -had taken another direction, sufficiently peaceable, but equally -tending to sap the foundation of a government resting on opinion. - - ‘In April of the year 1649,’ says Whitelock, [1] ‘the - council of state had intelligence of new {341} levellers - at St. Margaret’s Hill, near Cobham in Surrey, and at - St. George’s Hill, and that they digged the ground and - sowed it with roots and beans; one Everard, once of the - army, is the chief of them.’ A few days after Everard was - brought before the general. He said that he ‘was of the - race of the Jews; that all the liberties of the people - were lost by the coming in of William the Conqueror, - and that ever since the people of God had lived under - tyranny and oppression worse than that of our forefathers - under the Egyptians. But now the time of deliverance was - at hand.... And that there had lately appeared to him - a vision, which bade him arise, and dig and plough the - earth, and receive the fruits thereof; that their intent - is to restore the creation to its former condition.... - That they intend not to meddle with any man’s property - ... but only with what is common and untilled; ... that - the time will suddenly be that all men shall willingly - come in, and give up their lands and estates, and submit - to this community ..., For money, there was not any need - of it, nor of clothes more than to cover nakedness.... - As their forefathers lived in tents, so now it would - be suitable to live in the same,’ with more to the - like effect. ‘I have set down this the more largely,’ - adds Whitelock, ‘because it was the beginning of the - appearance of this opinion, and that we might the better - understand and avoid these weak persuasions.’ - -[1] [iii. p. 17.] - -This ‘persuasion,’ ‘weak’ though it might be, was simply an -expression of that individual consciousness of spiritual capacity and -right, which had been strong enough to pull down an ancient church -and monarchy, and was now tearing off the encumbrances by which, as -it seemed, ages of selfish activity had clogged its motion. It was -the sectarian enthusiasm, seeking wildly to withdraw itself from -secular, as it had already done from religious ordinance. Ultimately -clothed and in its right mind under the form of quakerism, it was -to serve as a permanent protest against the plausibilities of the -world, and to supply a constant spring of unconventional beneficence -to English life. Even in this rude agricultural form, which it took -among the diggers on Cobham Heath, it was perfectly peaceable. -‘They would not defend themselves with arms, but would submit unto -authority, and wait till the promised opportunity be offered, which -they conceived to be at hand.’ Their existence, however, showed that -the enthusiasm which {342} had created the commonwealth was taking -the inevitable course which made it useless as a support for any -civil government whatever. - -A kindred impulse to theirs, moreover, was at work in high places -of the army, where it did not forswear the use of a carnal sword. -Major-general Harrison was now directing his course by a verse in -the prophet Daniel, which promises the kingdom of the world to the -saints of the Most High, and was looking to the Rump parliament to -introduce this kingdom with all speed. If their factions and worldly -interests prevented them from doing so, Cromwell, he held, by some -method above that of civil government, could and would. It was not -for a constitutional theory or a pagan republicanism that he had -been fighting, but for a dominion of grace, and he would not long -be still while grandees of parliament, whom God had never owned in -war, wrangled over the legal adjustment of his mercies. Overton, the -governor of Hull, was the most eminent of those who shared his view, -which, however, was but the legitimate doctrine of the military saint. - -During more than two years, from the midsummer of 1649 to the autumn -of 1651, the republican oligarchy was able to shut its eyes to the -real situation. The military spirit was absorbed in the conquest -under Cromwell of Ireland and Scotland, and the English royalists, -hardly recovered from their crushing failure at home, were watching -the fortune of war in these other countries. The only chance for the -permanence of republicanism was that it should avail itself of this -interval to establish itself on a more popular basis, and initiate -practical reforms. If it had had the will or ability to do so, the -levelling clamour, which with the return of the army was sure to be -heard again, would have had nothing in popular sentiment to appeal -to. The name of a ‘free parliament’ had been made to English ears, -by the very men to whom it was now a word of ill omen, the familiar -symbol of good government. The interference with the ordinary course -of justice by special courts and parliamentary committees was a -grievance that everyone could understand. An ecclesiastical anarchy, -such as the journal of George Fox the quaker exhibits to us, was a -scandal that came home to the parochial mind. In an ordinary parish, -a presbyterian clergyman would be in possession of the benefice, to -attempt {343} an irritating but ineffectual discipline and haggle -over tithes, while in the same place there would be a knot of -‘common-prayer men’ with an excluded minister at hand to stimulate -their zeal, and a congregation of baptists or independents, who, -now that their friends were in power, would see no reason why their -enemies should be beneficed. In the absence of any settled rule, -each party might hope by local faction or intrigue to get the tithes -for itself, and meanwhile would resist the payment of them to its -adversaries. - -The only hopeful line then for the commonwealth’s men to take would -have been to provide for the election of a new parliament by reformed -constituencies, to abolish all criminal prosecution not sanctioned -by the common-law, to reform chancery and simplify legal process, -and to resettle the church on some plan that would admit at least -the independents and the ‘moderate’ or anti-prelatist episcopalians, -and substitute a fixed salary for tithes. Whether this line was -practicable for them is another question. They had no hold on popular -feeling; a powerful Scotch army, with the young king in its keeping, -was in the field against them, and the presbyterian clergy were -praying for its success. Under such circumstances there was much -plausibility in Henry Marten’s argument that their ‘commonwealth was -yet an infant, of a weak growth and a very tender constitution’; and -therefore his opinion was, ‘that nobody could be so fit to nurse it -as the mother who brought it forth; and that they should not think of -putting it under any other hands till it had obtained more years and -vigour.’ Marten, however, had forgotten that the true mother of the -republic was not the Rump parliament, but the army, whose maternal -discipline, unless some foster-parentage could be found in popular -interests, would be too much for the child as soon as it sought to -take a way of its own. - -The essential difficulty of the situation was aggravated by the -oligarchical temper which it bred in the republican leaders. With -the best of them this temper took that higher form which appears -in Milton’s complaint, [1] that when God has given the victory -to a cause in the field of battle, ‘then comes the task to those -worthies which are the soul of it, to be sweat and laboured out -amidst the throng and noses of vulgar and irrational men.’ Even in -this form it cannot face facts, for it is {344} not this pride of -exclusion but the higher pride, which can possess itself in sympathy -and comprehension, that represents the divine reason in the world. -But the pride of protected intellect, once clothed with political -power, soon passes into the jealousy of a clique. So it was within -our memory in France under the Orleanist régime, and so it was with -the leading spirits of the Long parliament. They mistook the success -of their military administration for a real faculty of government, -and hugged power for its own sake, in the mood of a self-conscious -aristocracy of virtue. If this was the case with the best of them, -a more vulgar kind of self-interest was sure to prevail among the -rest. Thus, though their administration was singularly pure, they got -credit even among their best friends, if Milton’s ‘Second defence’ -may be taken as expressing his real mind, for a spirit of faction and -obstructiveness. - -[1] [_Tenure of kings and magistrates_.] - -The one man among them who seems really to have comprehended the -situation, was Sir Henry Vane. Shrinking from the touch of military -violence, he had withdrawn from parliament after Pride purged it, -though the purgation was specially in his interest, and had only been -induced to join the council of state at the pressing instance of -Cromwell. He at once saw the need of popularising the government, and -stirred the question of new elections. A committee for considering -the question seems to have been constantly sitting during the -first year of the commonwealth, with Vane as its chairman, which -reported at the beginning of 1650 in favour of a new parliament of -four hundred members, and a re-arrangement of constituencies. A -corresponding resolution was voted by the house, but no bill was -introduced, and meanwhile Vane’s energies were absorbed by the -management of the wars with the Scots and the Hollanders. On this, as -on the other pressing questions, parliament could never get beyond -the stage of resolutions. It resolved to deal with the question of -tithes, to provide for popular education out of ecclesiastical funds, -and to simplify the law, but no actual legislation was achieved. -Thus by the autumn of 1651 it could take credit for an effective -administration of war and finance, and for the introduction of a -preaching ministry and schoolmasters into Wales. Towards facing the -hostile forces which only slumbered around them, towards meeting -the demands of the enthusiasm of reformation to {345} which they -owed their temporary power, they had done absolutely nothing. On -September 6 they heard the speaker read Cromwell’s account of -the battle of Worcester, ‘a mercy’ of which ‘the dimensions are -beyond my thoughts,’ ‘it is for aught I know a crowning mercy.’ -Cromwell, meanwhile, was riding up to London with a look which Mr. -Peters, his chaplain, interpreted, or afterwards believed himself -to have interpreted, to mean that he would be king of England yet. -At Aylesbury he was met, on behalf of the parliament, by St. John -and Whitelock, both special representatives of the lawyer’s desire -for ‘settlement,’ and ‘government by a single person,’ with whom, -especially with St. John, he had long discourse. On the 16th, we -read in Whitelock, he took his seat in the house, and there is the -significant addition, ‘the parliament resumed the debate touching a -new representative,’ also ‘of an act of oblivion and general pardon, -with some expedients for satisfaction of soldiery and the ease of the -people.’ The question of settlement was now in the hands of one who -would not allow it to tarry. - - - - -LECTURE IV. - -In the last lecture we saw that the immediate result of Cromwell’s -presence in the house after his return from Worcester was the revival -of the questions of a new election and a general settlement, which, -during the last two years the republican oligarchy, with its head -in the bush, had not chosen to face. In pressing these questions -Cromwell was true to the instinct of comprehension which had governed -his course throughout. It appears from the Memoirs of Berkley, who -had been the chief negotiator with him on the king’s behalf in the -summer of 1647, that he was then convinced of the difficulty of -establishing a government on so narrow a foundation as was afforded -either by the army or an oligarchical parliament. His project at -that time was to restore the king on the condition of his calling a -new parliament, from which he declared royalists should be excluded. -This forms the basis of the propositions which the army offered -to the king, while he was still in their keeping, and which, with -expansion and variation according to circumstance, were pressed -upon parliament during the following {346} year. They provide that -the sitting parliament should come to an end within a year; that -afterwards a parliament should be summoned every two years, to sit -for not less than a hundred and twenty, or more than two hundred and -forty days; that members should be taken away from the decayed towns, -and representation awarded to the several counties according to the -amount of taxation. No one who had borne arms for the king was to be -eligible to parliament for five years. The old privy council was to -be superseded by a council of state, of which the members for the -next seven years were to be agreed on at once; after that they were -to be nominated by parliament. The coercive jurisdiction of bishops -was to be abolished; the use of the common prayer and the taking of -the covenant to be alike voluntary. Subject to these conditions the -king was to be restored, and a general act of oblivion was to be -passed, with power to parliament to except certain persons, not more -than five in number, from its benefit. - -This document was supposed to come directly from the hand of Ireton, -who was more at his ease in composition than Cromwell. As Cromwell -says in a letter of this period to his daughter, Ireton’s wife, he -writes to her rather than to her husband, ‘for one line of mine -begets many of his.’ - - ‘In these declarations and transactions of the army,’ - says Whitelock, [1] ‘colonel Ireton was chiefly employed, - or took on him the business of the pen.’ He was ‘of a - working and laborious brain and fancy, and set himself - much upon these businesses, wherein he was encouraged - and assisted by lieutenant-general Cromwell, his - father-in-law. Having been bred in the Temple, he had - a little knowledge of law, which led him into the more - errors.’ - -[1] [ii. 162.] - -If Ireton, however, held the pen, the scheme, we may be sure, -was Cromwell’s no less than his, and a more statesmanlike plan -of reconstruction it is difficult to conceive. If carried out -in its completeness it would have given England at once a -genuine parliamentary government and a free national church. Two -centuries of government by borough-mongering and corruption, of -church-statesmanship and state-churchmanship would have been saved. -Charles, as we have seen, rejected it, and began his game anew. -No such opportunity for reconciliation could ever occur again, -but Cromwell’s purpose remained the same, {347} though his mode -of executing it varied with events. The anxiety for a settlement -which should reconcile the old interests with the new enthusiasm is -the key to his subsequent conduct. The reconciliation, for reasons -which I have sufficiently described, was, in fact, impossible. The -new piece would not fit the old garment. To us, looking backward -with historical calmness, it seems well that it would not, for -the enthusiasm adjusted to the interests would have been poetry -translated into prose. That of which it is the essence to be motive, -negative, abstract, would have become fixed, positive, and concrete. -The sudden palpable reconciliation of the spirit and the flesh, -apparently, perhaps, a spiritualising of the flesh, would have been -really a carnalising of the spirit. The hopelessness, however, of -the pacification which he contemplated was the tragedy of Cromwell’s -later life. In the stress of protecting the ‘godly interest’ against -itself, ‘worldly mixtures’ inevitably came to prevail over the pure -spiritual fire. To the saints he seemed in serving the Lord’s people -to lose his own soul, and his conscience was too sympathetic not to -shrink under their judgment. Its burden, perhaps, found voice in -his exclamation on his death-bed that ‘he knew he had been in grace -_once_.’ - -There were certain qualities and beliefs in Cromwell, well known in -their outward character, which have won for him _par excellence_ -the title of hypocrite. Looked at from the inner side, which the -preservation of his letters enables us to see, they appear as the -plastic medium through which an honest purpose of conciliation -worked, and for lack of which the same purpose was inoperative in -others. The ultimate spring of his conduct was a belief, wrought -to special strength in the formation and triumphant leadership of -the sectarian army, that he was the chosen champion of the despised -people of the Lord. In the realisation of this belief, it was his -habit (in modern language) to wait on events, and to surrender -himself to temporary sympathy with men of the most various views. -That this sympathy, though sometimes unctuous and exaggerated in -expression, was yet perfectly genuine, is proved by its evident -infectiousness. Nor was it really deceptive. There is no sign that he -ever committed himself to the positive maintenance of the doctrines -of the men to whose sympathy he appealed. On the contrary, {348} -there is evidence that the protection of the godly interest in its -freedom of conscience, by whatever means might be available, was -the only line of conduct to which he ever committed himself, and to -this he was faithful throughout. He caught eagerly at every element -in the character or belief of those with whom he had to do, which -might be turned to account for the furtherance of this end. When -it ceased to further it, it lost his sympathy. The interpretation -which the men whom he thus treated naturally put on his conduct was -that he sought to use them for his selfish purposes. But it was just -the qualities which ruined his reputation with the less compliant -of his contemporaries and with posterity that enabled him to do his -work. For his reputation he cared little, for his work much. What -we call waiting on events, he called a recognition of the ‘outward -dispensations’ of God. His belief that this guidance was divine made -him at once more bold and more free from selfish regards in following -it. There is a touch of nature in a letter of his to Oliver St. John, -written just after his rout of Hamilton’s army. [1] - - ‘Remember my love to my dear brother, H. Vane. I pray - he make not too little, nor I too much, of outward - dispensations.... Let us all be not careful what men will - make of these actings. They, will they, nill they, shall - fulfil the good pleasure of God; and we shall serve our - generations. Our rest we expect elsewhere; that will be - durable. Care we not for to-morrow, nor for anything.’ - -[1] [Carlyle, _ib_. No. lxvii.] - -This utterance, fresh from the heart, explains the subsequent -alienation of Cromwell from Vane and the high republicans. He had the -fatalism about him without which nothing great is achieved in times -of political crisis; the consciousness of a divine work that must -be done through him, though personal peace and honour were wrecked -in the doing. They were men of theory and principle, ‘brave men and -true.’ but with a sense of what was ‘due to their own reputation,’ -or, to speak, more kindly, men who would sacrifice themselves or -a nation indifferently to the maintenance of what might merely be -a formula. In these days of playing at heroes among the ‘inferior -races,’ such men, perhaps, receive less credit than is their due, nor -is it my purpose to measure the man of principle against the ‘man -of destiny,’ who may be a political gambler, but merely to indicate -their inevitable {349} collision. If Cromwell had been a political -gambler, he would not have been always showing his hand, nor should -we have the strange collection of impromptu letters and speeches, -speeches of which ‘he could not recall four words’ after they were -spoken, which let us see into the workings of his soul. - -In the last lecture I showed that during the interval between the -final break of the independents and army with the king, marked by -the vote of no more addresses at the beginning of 1648, and his -setting out for the extinction of Hamilton, Cromwell was labouring -for such a reconciliation of parties as would gain for the inevitable -commonwealth a more general support than that of the professed -republican clique. The equal impracticability of presbyterians and -republicans, or, if we like, their equal devotion to principle, -made reconciliation impossible, and the republicans for the time -triumphed. Strong in a text of scripture, in a theory of right -borrowed from the municipal republics of Holland and Switzerland, -they shut their eyes and had their way. Cromwell knew well to what -such a spirit must lead, and his irritation at it once broke out in a -conversation with Ludlow. ‘They were a proud set of people,’ he said, -‘only considerable in their own conceits.’ For the time, however, he -had to leave them to their conceit, that he might crush the common -enemy. During the campaign, the direction in which the logic of -events, of ‘outward dispensations,’ was leading became more apparent, -and the sense of it pervades his letters. The rapture of successful -war brought back to him the old enthusiasm, the consciousness of -being the chosen leader of the saints. The righteous judge, he -thought, had been appealed to in battle, and had shown which cause -was his ‘even to amazement and admiration.’ - - ‘Surely, sir,’ he writes to the speaker after the rout - at Preston, ‘this is nothing but the hand of God; and - wherever anything in this world is exalted, or exalts - itself, God will pull it down; for this is the day - wherein he alone will be exalted. It is not fit for me - to give advice ... more than to pray you, and all that - acknowledge God, that they would exalt him, and not hate - his people, that are as the apple of his eye, and for - whom even kings shall be reproved.’ [1] - -[1] [_ib_. No. lxiv.] - -The prosaic meaning of these new ‘dispensations,’ we {350} shall say, -was that the military excitement against the royal ‘delinquent’ had -become uncontrollable, that Hamilton’s invasion, instigated and aided -by the royalist presbyterians in England, had rendered their fusion -with the commonwealth’s men impossible, and that the republic must -represent the latter party and the army alone. This was no doubt the -final judgment which Cromwell’s practical insight had unwillingly -arrived at. But we do not really understand this judgment or its -consequences, till we appreciate the ‘wondrous alchemy’ of the -enthusiasm with which it was fused and molten in Cromwell’s own mind. -The whole mental process is exhibited in a letter to Colonel Hammond, -written when it had become clear that the presbyterian majority in -parliament were determined to treat with the king and restore him to -London. Its object was to induce Hammond to disregard the impending -vote of parliament, which (as we have seen) would have been ruinous -to the cause of free conscience, and to give the king up to the army. - - ‘You say,’ he writes,’ God hath appointed authorities - among the nations to which active or passive obedience - is to be yielded. This resides in England in the - parliament.’ Then comes Cromwell’s reply to this view; - ‘Authorities and powers are the ordinance of God. This - or that species is of human institution, and limited, - some with larger, others with stricter bands, each one - according to its constitution. But I do not therefore - think the authorities may do _anything_, and yet such - obedience be due. All agree that there are cases in which - it is lawful to resist.... The query is whether ours be - such a case.’ In answer to this query, Cromwell commends - to Hammond three considerations; ‘first, whether _salus - populi_ be a sound position; secondly, whether in the way - in hand’ (_i.e._ by the proposed treaty), ‘really and - before the Lord, before whom conscience has to stand, - this be provided for; or if the whole fruit of the war - is not like to be frustrated, and all most like to turn - to what it was, and worse.... Thirdly, whether this army - be not a lawful power, called by God to fight against - the king upon some stated grounds; and being in power - to such ends, may not oppose one name of authority, for - those ends, as well as another name, since it was not - the outward authority summoning them that by _its_ power - made the quarrel lawful, but the quarrel was lawful in - itself.... My dear friend, let us look into providences; - surely they mean somewhat. {351} They hang so together; - have been so constant, so clear, unclouded. Malice, swoln - malice against God’s people, now called ‘saints,’ to root - out their name; and yet they’ (the saints) ‘getting arms, - and therein blessed with defence and more! I desire he - that is for a principle of suffering would not too much - slight this.... Not the encountering difficulties makes - us to tempt God; but the acting before and without faith. - If the Lord have in any measure persuaded his people, as - generally he hath, of the lawfulness, nay of the _duty_, - this persuasion prevailing on the heart is faith; and - acting thereupon is acting in faith; and the more the - difficulties are, the more the faith.... Have not some - of our friends, by their passive principle, ... been - occasioned to overlook what is just and honest, and to - think the people of God may have as much or more good the - one way than the other? Good by this man against whom the - Lord hath witnessed; and whom thou knowest!’ [1] - -[1] [Carlyle, _ib_. No. lxxxv.] - -That the enthusiasm of this letter is sincere it would be hard to -dispute; that it might be a dangerous cover for self-deceit, not -less so. That in Cromwell, as a matter of fact, it was an expansive -element, in which a sympathy with the ‘waiting spirit’ of the -sectaries, such as was necessary for their guidance, went along with -a prevailing zeal for the ‘_salus populi_’ and a clear judgment of -its needs, is the only interpretation that will explain the history -as a whole. To the guidance of a man possessing such a strange -compound of qualities, it is due that our great religious war ended -not simply in blood, but in a real step forwards of English society. - -‘God’s providence and necessity, not his own choice,’ as he solemnly -said, having forced him to pull down monarchy and put the republic -in its place, he once more pressed forward his plan for a general -adjustment of interests under a new parliament. The possibility of a -settlement, however, which should secure the ‘godly interest,’ was -very different now from what it would have been if Charles’s spleen -and superstition had permitted him honestly to come to terms in 1647. -Then Cromwell had hoped by restoring the king with a council, which -might have been under his own direction, to obtain that unity of -initiative under a familiar name, which, important at all times, is -specially necessary when order is to be rebuilt out of a chaos of -factions heated with civil war. - -{352} Henceforward there could but be two alternatives. The familiar -unity might be obtained, as it was ultimately to be at the blessed -Restoration, but only at the cost of an absolute suppression of -the ‘godly interest’: or an unfamiliar unity might take its place, -but only on the condition of its maintenance by a hand that could -hold the sword, and a temper that by either force or sympathy -could control the sectaries, a condition which death might at any -time remove. The military ecstasy, however, was still strong upon -Cromwell, and he had a spirit for the work. In Whitelock’s journal of -February 25, [1] not quite a month after the execution of Charles, we -read, - - ‘From the council of state Cromwell and his son - Ireton went home with me to supper; where they were - very cheerful, and seemed extremely well-pleased; we - discoursed together till twelve o’clock at night, and - they told me wonderful observations of God’s providence - in the affairs of the war, and in the business of the - army’s coming to London and seizing the members; in all - which were miraculous passages.’ - -[1] [ii. 540.] - -Cromwell had yet to learn that the providence on which he waited -wrought by a longer method, because it had a wider comprehension than -was dreamt of in the puritan philosophy. - -In the following spring Cromwell was appointed to the command of -the army that was to conquer Ireland. Thence he was recalled in the -summer of 1650, and shortly afterwards was sent into Scotland. Thus -till his return from the battle of Worcester in September 1651, he -had no chance of pressing his projects of conciliation and reform at -the headquarters of government. Such glimpses as we have, however, -of his civil activity during this period show a constant tendency -in the same direction. It was he who prevailed on Vane to join the -council of state, and obtained a modification of the engagement to -suit Vane’s views. Thus to restore to the government the ablest -civilian of the time, who had a special dislike for military -domination, was a strange course if it was his object to clear the -way for himself, but a most natural one if his object was general -conciliation. Again, in the summer of 1650, when it was proposed to -send the army under Fairfax into Scotland, and while Fairfax, ‘being -hourly persuaded by the presbyterian ministers and his own lady, who -was a great patroness of them,’ was doubting of the justness of the -war, and finally resolving to lay down his {353} command, Cromwell -was foremost in urging him to retain it. The memoir-writers of the -time, interpreting events by the jealousy of later years, treat -Cromwell’s earnestness on this occasion as simulated, a piece of the -‘great subtlety with which he now carried himself,’ but what its -object might be, if it were simulated, they do not explain. If his -object were personal aggrandisement, it is unaccountable that he -should go out of his way to put the command of the army in the hands -of another. If on the other hand it were a general settlement, it -was quite natural that he should seek to conciliate the presbyterian -interest to the commonwealth, in the person of the man who alone -combined presbyterian sympathies with toleration of the sectaries. - -But though Cromwell, during this period, was quite free from the -thought which Mr. Peters attributed to him, ‘that he would be king of -England yet,’ still the impatience for an establishment of a ‘free -church of saints’ in a free state, and the ‘heat of inward evidence’ -that he was himself the man to achieve it, was growing constantly -stronger in him. He led his army into Ireland, as Joshua into Canaan, -and his last letter to the parliament, as he was setting sail from -Milford Haven, offered to their consideration the removal of penal -statutes that enforce the consciences of honest conscientious men. -His conquest of Ireland, and afterwards of Scotland, was achieved in -and through a constant fire of enthusiasm. - - ‘It was set upon some of our hearts,’ he writes after - the storm of Tredah, ‘that a great thing should be done, - not by power or might, but by the spirit of God. And is - it not so, clearly? That which caused your men to storm - so courageously, it was the spirit of God, who gave - your men courage, and took it away again; and gave the - enemy courage, and took it away again; and gave your men - courage again, and therewith this happy success.’ [1] - -[1] [Carlyle, _ib_. No. cv.] - -During his brief sojourn in London between the two wars it appears -from a dialogue with Ludlow [1] that his thoughts were running on -the need of swift reforms, especially of the law, and that he ‘was -feeding on’ the hundred and tenth psalm; ‘The Lord shall send the -rod of thy strength out of Zion.... Thy people shall be willing in -the day of thy power; in the beauties of holiness, from the womb of -the morning.’ The experience of the Scotch campaign, full, as he -conceived, {354} of miraculous passages, was not likely to temper -his consciousness of a divine mission. ‘There may be a spiritual -fulness,’ he writes to the general assembly of the kirk, [2] ‘which -the world may call drunkenness, as in the second chapter of the -Acts.’ In such spiritual fulness he lay on September 2, with a -sickly, half-starved army about Dunbar, in the face of an enemy -double in number and apparently commanding his position, yet sure, -as he says, that just ‘because of their numbers, their advantages, -and their confidence, because of our weakness, our strait, we were -in the mount, and in the mount the Lord would be seen, and that he -would find a way of deliverance for us.’ Through ‘an high, act of -the Lord’s providence’ Lesley made a false move, and the way of -deliverance was found. - - ‘It is easy to say,’ he writes to parliament after - the victory, ‘the Lord hath done this. It would do - you good to see and hear our poor foot go up and down - making their boast of God. But it’s in your hands, and - by these eminent mercies God puts it more into your - hands to give glory to him; to improve your power and - his blessings to his praise.... Disown yourselves and - own your authority.... Relieve the oppressed, hear the - groans of poor prisoners in England. Be pleased to reform - the abuses of all professions; and if there be any one - that makes many poor to make a few rich’ (a hit at the - lawyers), ‘that suits not a commonwealth.’ [3] - -[1] [_Memoirs_, p. 123; ed. 1751.] - -[2] [Carlyle, _ib_. No. cxxxvi.] - -[3] [Carlyle, _ib_. No. cxl.] - -It was this exhilaration of energy in the Lord’s work, not a vulgar -ambition of kingship, that shone in Cromwell’s countenance as he -rode up from Worcester a year later, and that made him press, as we -have seen, on the first day when he resumed his seat in the house, -for measures of settlement and reform. ‘Peace hath her victories,’ -as Milton wrote to him at this time, ‘no less renowned than war,’ -but they were to be won not in days but in centuries, and by the -energy not of feeling but of thought. He had a temper, he once -said of himself, that ‘caused him often to overact business,’ and -his trusted ‘son Ireton,’ in whose ‘working brain’ the same plans -were combined with a more cautious and calculating temper, was no -longer at hand to restrain him. He had died at his post in Ireland -three months after the battle of Worcester; his death, we are told, -‘striking a great sadness in Cromwell.’ [1] ‘No man could prevail -with him so much or {355} order him so far as Ireton could,’ but -there is no reason to think that had Ireton lived he would have -altered, though he might sometimes have checked, Cromwell’s career. -If Cromwell had died when Ireton did, he would have died like him in -the full odour of republican sanctity, and his subsequent breach with -the republicans was due to his pressing forward the army project of -reform and reconstruction which had first taken shape in Ireton’s -brain. In his letter to the parliament after Dunbar he professed a -desire (a notable instance of his frankness) not to ‘precipitate -them by importunities’ in the work of settlement, and he was true -to his profession. For a year and a half, however, from September -16, 1651, to April 20, 1653, he loyally endeavoured to rouse the -republican oligarchy to the necessities of the situation. If his -importunity was not pressing, that of the people was, and it was -clear that the parliament must give some practical ‘reason why’ for -its existence, or lose its prestige. Petitions from the country -were constantly coming in, all conceived in the ‘levelling’ sense -which I described in the last lecture. Their general burden is that -tithes may be either abolished as levitical and Romish, or gathered -into a common treasury, and then some part of them applied to the -maintenance of a godly ministry in each county; that those ‘drunken, -malignant, scandalous, and profane ones,’ that go under the name -of ministers, be put to work for their living; that justice may be -given, not bought, and all matters of _meum_ and _tuum_ determined -free, yet by a written law; that some check may be put on the swarms -of lawyers, attorneys, and solicitors, nourished with the bread of -oppression by long and tedious suits. Sometimes they wax eloquent, -hoping that ‘justice may come down like a mighty stream, free for the -poorest to resort unto, too strong for the richest to divert.’ The -Rump parliament meanwhile, not, we may fairly suppose, considering -its previous inaction, without pressure from Cromwell, showed -great activity in appointing committees to consider grievances, -and in pressing resolutions, which if carried out would have made -English law more cheap, and English land more free, than it has ever -been since. There was no result however in the way of effective -legislation, and the old conviction of the army, that it was the true -parliament and judicature of the nation, was beginning to revive. At -the end of 1650 letters were read in {356} the house, ‘that officers -of the army by commission from Lambert did determine controversies -between party and party; wherewith the people were much satisfied -with the quick despatch they received with full hearing.’ At the same -time petitions were circulating in the army for reform of abuses and -a new parliament, in the same tone which had prevailed when the army -had before (in the year 1648) been in direct contact with the civil -power. The real fact was that the parliament was once more face to -face with its true, its sole constituency, the military saints, with -whom its conceit of antique republicanism would avail little, unless -it could realise in the hard world of ‘interests’ the reforming -enthusiasm which had created it. Such realisation, if possible at -all, was clearly impossible to an oligarchy which had always been -unpopular and was becoming factious. - -[1] [Whitelock, iii. p. 371.] - -We have not the means of tracing in detail the conduct of Cromwell -during this crisis. It is clear that he made no secret of his -thoughts. In November 1651 he obtained a vote of the house that it -would put a term to its sitting, but only one so remote as November -1654. The next question necessarily was, how should the new election, -and the general work of reconstruction, be regulated? That it would -require rigorous control in the presence of the royalist gentry and -the angry presbyterian clergy, was abundantly clear. Was this control -to be in the hands of the Rump oligarchy, disunited, estranged from -the army, incapable of swift and secret action as a deliberative -assembly must be, or in the hands of a single person who had a name -of terror and hope, and to whom the heart of the army was as his -own? This was the real question at issue, and at the end of 1651 we -find Cromwell, at a conference which he invited between the grandees -of parliament and the officers, explicitly stating it. It was as -impossible for him now, however, as it had been on a like occasion in -1648, to bring about an understanding. The great lawyers of the house -generally were in favour of government by a single person, but only -St. John seems to have shared Cromwell’s views as to who the single -person should be. Whitelock was in favour of restoring monarchy in -the person of the duke of Gloucester. To the enthusiasts of the -army the very name of monarchy was blasphemy against Christ, whom -they were expecting shortly to restore the kingdom to the saints. -The theoretical republicans of {357} the Rump were in favour of -constituting themselves a permanent body on the Venetian model, only -filling up vacancies as they should occur. - -In this dead-lock of conflicting jealousies and opinions the year -1652 passed away, the only vigour being shown in the prosecution -of the Dutch war and the settlement of Scotland. Cromwell’s views -were well known, and one day when in debate he spoke of Mr. Marten -accidentally as ‘Sir Harry,’ Marten interrupted him by saying with -a low bow, ‘I always expected when your majesty became king, you -would make me a knight.’ He was clearly most unwilling, however, to -break with the parliament, which he had absolutely in his hands, -and if its leaders could have been induced, recognising their -weakness and swallowing their formula, to invest him with a temporary -dictatorship, he would have kept them at peace, as he alone had -hitherto done, with the army, and worked with them constitutionally -for the settlement of the nation. As it was, there are indications -that he controlled the discontent of the army as long as he was able. -Lambert’s vanity had been rudely affronted by the Rump, and his busy -brain was brewing mischief. Harrison was becoming impatient for -the inauguration of the ‘fifth monarchy.’ The military saints were -finding, as Cromwell afterwards expressed it, that ‘all tenderness -was forgotten to the good people, though it was by their hands and -their means that the parliament sat where it did.’ ‘The reformation -of law,’ he adds, ‘was a thing that many good words were spoken for; -but we know that many months together were not sufficient for the -settling of one word, “incumbrances.”’ [1] - -[1] [Carlyle, _ib_. Speech I.] - -By the beginning of the year 1653, Sir Henry Vane, who had hitherto -been organising victory for Blake, had become alive to the danger of -military domination, which he specially dreaded, and was pressing -forward a bill for a new parliament. It was upon this bill that the -final rupture with Cromwell took place. In its chief features it -corresponded with the petitions of the army and levellers which had -been rife in the agitation of 1647-8. There was to be a parliament of -four hundred members, who should be distributed among the counties -according to wealth and population. In the boroughs there was to be -a uniform rental qualification of householders; in the counties such -a property qualification {358} as should exclude tenants subject -to control. There was to be a freehold qualification of 40_s_., a -copyhold of 5_l_., and a leasehold of 20_l_. annual value. This -system of distribution and qualification was afterwards adopted by -Cromwell, except that he substituted for the property qualifications -the uniform, and very high, one of 200_l_. of real or personal -estate. Cromwell’s objection to the bill was that it gave the -existing members the right both of sitting in the new house without -re-election and of deciding on the admissibility of new members. In -other words it constituted the Rump a many-headed dictatorship, to -regulate the work of reconstruction. To this he opposed a plan of his -own for delegating the re-settlement to an assembly of notables, to -be specially summoned for the purpose; a plan which we may readily -admit was merely meant as such a screen for his own dictatorship -as would satisfy the demands of the ‘fifth monarchy’ or republican -officers. As usual he behaved with, perfect explicitness. On April 19 -he had a conference of members of parliament and officers of the army -at his lodgings, and urged the importance of an immediate dissolution -and a convocation of notables. St. John was the only civilian who -supported him, but according to his own account the meeting closed -with an understanding that Vane’s bill should not be pressed. Next -morning the conference was renewed, but in the presence of only a -few ‘parliament men,’ of whom Whitelock was one. The sequel is best -described in his words. [1] - - ‘Cromwell being informed during this debate that the - parliament was sitting, and that it was hoped they would - put a period to themselves, which would be the most - honourable dissolution for them; hereupon he broke off - the meeting, and the members of parliament with him left - him at his lodgings and went to the house, and found - them in debate of an act, the which would occasion other - meetings of them again, and prolong their sitting.’ This - was Vane’s bill, which he was pressing through its last - stages, in disregard, according to Cromwell, of the - pledge given the night before. Colonel Ingoldsby brought - word to Cromwell of what the house was doing, ‘who was so - enraged thereat, expecting they should have meddled with - no other business but putting a period to their sitting - without more delay, that he presently commanded some - of the officers of the army to fetch a party {359} of - soldiers, with whom he marched to the house.’ - -[1] [iv. p. 4.] - -The rest of the story is too familiar to need repetition. It is -noticed, however, that he did not introduce the soldiers at once, -but sat quietly in his place, till the motion was put from the -chair, ‘that the bill do now pass.’ It was then, at the last moment, -_i.e._ at which it was possible to stop the establishment of a -permanent oligarchy under the forms of law, that he broke into a -violent speech, which ended with his calling in the soldiers. His -conduct at this crisis, as throughout his public life, corresponded -exactly to the account which he gave of it himself. Into parliament, -as into battle, he carried the ‘waiting spirit’ in which the -sectaries believed. He trusted for guidance to a sudden inspiration -interpreting the necessity of events. At last, at the critical point, -just when he saw Lesley making a gap in his line at Dunbar, ‘the -spirit of God was strong upon him,’ he would no longer consult ‘flesh -and blood,’ but took the decisive step. The dissolution of the Rump -was clearly inevitable so soon as it broke with and sought to defy -its armed constituency, which, as Cromwell had always maintained, -was an equally legitimate authority with itself, and far more truly -representative. The violence of manner with which Cromwell turned -it out and locked the door, of which, says Whitelock, even ‘some of -his bravadoes were ashamed,’ is quite unique in his history, and -doubtless aggravated the difficulty of subsequent reconciliation -with the commonwealth’s men. The best explanation of it is a remark -in one of his private letters; ‘I have known my folly do good, when -affection (passion) has overcome my reason.’ It is a curious trait -in his character, that when wrought up after much hesitation to a -decisive act, of which he saw the danger, he gave the loose to that -boisterous vehemence for which he had early been noted, but which he -could generally suppress. The same trait appears in his behaviour at -the signature of the death-warrant of Charles. - -He had now to grapple with the question which the Rump had fingered -in vain. The Lord’s people were to be saved from themselves, and -the interests of the world so reformed and adjusted that it might -yield them fit habitation. The task, as I have shown in the previous -lectures, was in the nature of the case a hopeless one. The claim -of the saints was at once false and self-contradictory; false, for -the secular world, which it sought to ignore, had rights no less -divine than its own; {360} and self-contradictory, since even amongst -the most sectarian of the sectaries it was constantly hardening -into authority hostile to the individual persuasion in which it -originated. ‘That hath been one of the vanities of our contest. Every -sect saith, “Oh, give me liberty.” But give it him, and to the best -of his power he will yield it to no one else.’ [1] Cromwell’s labour, -however, was not wholly in vain. During five years, by the mere -force of his instinct of settlement, his commanding energy, and that -absorbing sympathy miscalled hypocrisy, which enabled him to hold the -hearts of the sectaries even while he disappointed their enthusiasm, -he at least kept the peace between the saints and the world, secured -liberty of conscience, and placed it on ground which even the flood -of prelatical reaction was not able wholly to submerge. But while -protecting the godly interest, he was obliged more and more to -silence its pretension. A gradual detachment from the saints, and -approximation to the ancient interests, was the necessary policy of -his later years. - -[1] [Carlyle, _ib_. Speech III.] - -The dissolution of the Rump caused no derangement of administration. -As captain-general in a council of officers, Cromwell directed all -officials to continue their work, and summoned a body of notables to -act as a constitutive assembly. The change was generally acceptable -to puritan sentiment. - - ‘I told the parliament,’ said Cromwell afterwards, ‘what - I knew better than anyone else, because of my manner of - life, which took me up and down the country, thereby - giving me to know the temper of all men, that the nation - loathed their sitting. I knew it, and when they were - dissolved, there was not so much as the barking of a dog, - or any general and visible repining at it.’ [1] - -[1] [_ib_.] - -The addresses of congratulation which came in from all parts of the -country quite bore out this statement. It was not from the pagan -republicanism of the commonwealth-clique that Cromwell had difficulty -to apprehend, but from the smothered fire of the fifth-monarchy -men, with whom the necessities of settlement compelled him, to -break. This soon became apparent in the assembly of notables. They -elected an executive council, of which Cromwell was an ordinary -member, and for five months all went smoothly along. Then the -fifth-monarchy enthusiasm, represented by general Harrison, and -stimulated by anabaptist ministers who met with him ‘at one {361} -Mr. Squib’s house,’ became unmanageable. It fell foul of ‘ministry -and magistracy,’ demanding the simple abolition of tithes and of -the court of chancery, and the establishment of the judicial law of -Moses, to be administered ‘according to the wisdom of any man that -would interpret the text this way or that.’ [1] This led to the -resignation of the assembly, whether under pressure from Cromwell it -is difficult to say, but certainly with his good-will. Henceforth -he let it be known explicitly that the world must have its due and -settled interests be maintained. A few days after the council of -state presented him with an ‘instrument of government,’ establishing -a protectorate with a free parliament, to be elected according to the -original scheme of Ireton, Vane, and Cromwell himself. Under this -instrument he ruled for about four years, when ‘the petition and -advice,’ passed by his second parliament, took its place, which did -not materially alter the system, but put it on a parliamentary basis. - -[1] [Carlyle, _ib_. Speech XIII.] - -The protectorate must have the credit of having been at least -perfectly true to the great end of settlement, and of having been, -however arbitrary, yet perfectly honest in its arbitrariness. It was -quite free from the jugglery with recognised names and institutions -which is the chosen device of modern despotism. The three points of -the Cromwellian programme--restoration, so far as might be, of the -old constitution, reform of the law, and the protection of the godly -interest--were really inconsistent with each other, for to restore -the constitution was impossible without a restoration of royalism, -and the restoration of royalism meant the subjection of the godly, -while a reformation of the law, not resting on a constitutional -basis, hung only on the thread of a single life. His effort, however, -to govern constitutionally was genuine and persistent. Two conditions -he always announced as fundamental, the sovereignty of the protector, -and the maintenance of liberty of conscience. The protectorate -was ‘what he would be rolled in the grave and covered with infamy -sooner than give up.’ It was for a liberty of conscience, he always -said, better than episcopacy or presbyterianism had allowed, that -the army, the true national representative, had shed its blood. To -surrender it would be to violate his most sacred trust. Subject to -these two conditions he would give parliament its way, but {362} in -the first the republican minority, in the second the presbyterian -majority, would not acquiesce. One of his parliaments imprisoned -Biddle the socinian, the other was very near burning poor James -Nayler, the quaker, but finally let him off with putting him on -the pillory and boring through his tongue. In both cases Cromwell -interfered. The final breach, however, with each of his parliaments -was due to its insisting on a discussion of the basis of government -by a single person. To tolerate this, in the presence of royalist -plots, sanctioned by a proclamation in Charles Stuart’s name for the -assassination of ‘the base mechanic fellow, Oliver Cromwell,’ and of -fifth-monarchy men who were gathering arms to fight for ‘king Jesus’ -under the standard of the tribe of Judah, would have been ‘to let all -run back to blood again.’ - -He was thus constrained to carry out the reform of law, and the -settlement of religion, by the method of ordinances of council, most -of which were subsequently confirmed by his second parliament. In -this way he reformed chancery and simplified legal procedure. As -regarded the church, since the dissolution of the assembly, there -had been, as I before explained, no regular system, but the only -recognised way of becoming eligible for a benefice was through -presbyterian ordination, though it was probably not uniformly -resorted to. For this Cromwell substituted a board of ordination, -representing presbyterians, independents, and baptist preachers -alike, and containing a certain number of laymen. No one was to have -a claim to levy tithes till approved by this board, which seems, -however, to have had power to delegate its authority to subordinate -boards in the provinces. Other county boards were established for -‘detecting and rejecting scandalous, ignorant, and insufficient -ministers.’ An ordinance for the more equal distribution of church -property completed the ecclesiastical reform. - -This scheme was liberally worked, and except to the believers in -the necessity of episcopal ‘succession,’ for which Cromwell had no -bowels, opened a wider door than has been open since. It appears that -episcopalians in Baxter’s sense, and arminians, had now access to -the benefices, though the ordainers might sometimes be more severe -with them than with others. Even the high prelatists, so long as -they kept free from plots, were allowed to form congregations and -use the common prayer, which had never been the case under {363} -the presbyterian régime. Of the fidelity of Cromwell to the work of -reformation and godliness, which he had undertaken to reconcile with -a general settlement, the best evidence is the eye-witness of Baxter -and Burnet; both were royalists, and Baxter, at least, personally -unfriendly to Cromwell. - -The unruliness of the elements which Cromwell had wrought into a -system of rational government became sufficiently apparent at his -death. My limits do not allow me to trace minutely the course of -events which led to the restoration. For some time a triangular -contest went on between the junto of officers, headed by Fleetwood -and Lambert, which Cromwell had kept in hand to the last, the court -party of real statesmen, such as Thurloe and Whitelock, who supported -Richard Cromwell, and the republicans headed by Vane and Scott. The -slumbering fanaticism of Fleetwood once more broke out into a zeal -for a dominion of grace. He allowed the officers, whom Cromwell had -kept at their commands at a distance, to get together in London, -and collogue with the more violent clergy. Henry Cromwell, watching -events from Ireland, saw what was coming and warned Fleetwood in a -tone worthy of his father’s son. Fleetwood, however, was deaf to -such advice, and finally combined with the republicans to overthrow -Richard Cromwell and restore the Rump parliament. Tho republicans, -however, though they did not scruple now any more than they had -done in 1648, to apply to the soldiers for support, could not long -agree with them. The Rump soon took courage to cashier the dangerous -officers, and afterwards, at the request of Monk, who was advancing -from Scotland with an army purged of enthusiasts, removed their -regiments from London. The situation was now at Monk’s command. The -presbyterians, still in possession of most of the pulpits, began to -reassert their claims, and Monk, a man without ideas, combined with -them as the stronger party. After a brief saturnalia of ordinances -against quakers and sectaries, they listened to the fair promises of -Charles Stuart, and gave themselves over to a king who was already -a papist, and a court which had but one strong conviction, that -presbyterianism was no religion for a gentleman. - -Thus ended, apparently in simple catastrophe, the enterprise of -projecting into sudden reality the impulse of spiritual freedom. -Its only result, as it might seem, had been to {364} prevent the -transition of the feudal into an absolute monarchy, and thus to -prepare the way for the plutocracy under feudal forms which has -governed England since the death of William III. This, however, is -but a superficial view. Two palpable benefits the short triumph -of puritanism did win for England. It saved it from the catholic -reaction, and it created the ‘dissenting bodies.’ If it seems but a -poor change from the fanatic sacerdotalism of Laud to the genteel -and interested sacerdotalism of modern English churchmanship, yet -the fifteen years of vigorous growth which Cromwell’s sword secured -for the church of the sectaries, gave it a permanent force which no -reaction could suppress, and which has since been the great spring -of political life in England. The higher enthusiasm, however, which -breathed in Cromwell and Vane, was not puritanic or English merely. -It belonged to the universal spiritual force which as ecstasy, -mysticism, quietism, philosophy, is in permanent collision with the -carnal interests of the world, and which, if it conquers them for a -moment, yet again sinks under them, that it may transmute them more -thoroughly to its service. - - ‘Death,’ said Vane on the scaffold, ‘is a little word, - but it is a great work to die.’ So his own enthusiasm - died that it might rise again. It was sown in the - weakness of feeling, that it might be raised in the - intellectual comprehension which is power. ‘The people of - England,’ he said again, ‘have been long asleep. I doubt - they will be hungry when they awake.’ - -They have slept, we may say, another two hundred years. If they -should yet wake and be hungry, they will find their food in the ideas -which, with much blindness and weakness, he vainly offered them, -cleared and ripened by a philosophy of which he did not dream. - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Four Lectures on the English Revolution, by -Thomas Hill Green - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOUR LECTURES--ENGLISH REVOLUTION *** - -***** This file should be named 63280-0.txt or 63280-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/3/2/8/63280/ - -Produced by gdurb -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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