XXVI. 1659. Influence of religion of the spirit of a soldier and a sailor. When persons were CHAP. wanting to man the fleet, and to fight the battles of their country in the Dutch war, they were drafted from the army. All the lessons they had learned ashore, they carried with them to the ocean. They were still citizens, who had gone forward to where their duty, and the voice of their country called them, and who were afterwards to return, each man to his hearth, to enjoy the benefits they had secured by their valour. They were familiarly acquainted with the character of their freedom, and understood the value of liberty, both civil and religious. Lastly, the sailor was not less penetrated than the soldier with all those feelings that rose out of the devout spirit of the times, for, as has already been said, the classes were not divided. A sense of religion was scarcely ever so deeply engraved upon the people of any age or country, as upon the men of the victorious party, by whom monarchy was extinguished in England in the middle of the seventeenth century. Happy is he who can unite the loftiness of an erect and independent spirit, to a conscious intercourse with, and an undoubting reliance on the protection of, the Author of the Universe. Religion is then chiefly an evil, when it inspires men with a selfish, an exclusive, and a pusillanimous frame of thinking. The republicans of this period regarded themselves * Scc above, p. 395. in both. BOOK III. 1653. as fighting in the power of the Lord. It was not they who won the field; but the Lord who gave them the victory. They sought not themselves; they sought the kingdom of Christ, or in other words, as they understood it, the kingdom of genuine piety and true virtue. They emptied themselves of vain-glory; and, having purged their spirits of the grossness of terrestrial things and carnal impulses, they believed that they were chosen vessels in the guidance of the great Master of all. They fought, they acted, and they walked, as in the sight of God. No pusillanimous thoughts, no timidity or cowardice, could therefore find harbour in their bosoms. They feared the divine displeasure, because the divine displeasure is ever directed against what is evil, and had no apprehension of "what man could do unto themy.” These habits of mind rendered them at once heroic and invincible 2. ▾ Psalm LVI, 11. This spirit is marvellously displayed by Harrison, Cooke, and others, in the Trials of the Regicides. I am tempted to illustrate this principle from my Lives of Edward and John Philips, Nephews of Milton. Appendix, No. IV: On Ben Jonson, and Milton's imitations of that Author. "The difference between the two poets may perhaps best be illustrated from the topic of religion. They had neither of them one spark of libertine and latitudinarian unbelief. But Jonson was not, like Milton, penetrated with his religion. It is to him a sort of servitude. He 'trembles to think towards the least profaneness.' His religion is therefore what I may call his Sunday's garb. At other times, it is not the principle that actuates, but the check that XXVI. 1653. controls him. But in Milton, it is the element in which he breathes, CHAP. a part of his nature. He acts, as ever in his great task-master's eye' and this is not his misfortune; but he rejoices in his condition, that he has so great, so wise, and so sublime a being, to whom to render his audit. It encourages him to a chastised and a sacred boldness. He feels that he has a helper, an ally, and is a 'labourer together with God.' He stands unabashed in his presence, and finds within him a conscious affinity to the divine nature. This his widow expresses in her mode, when, 'being asked whether he did not often read Homer and Virgil, she understood it as an imputation upon him for stealing from those authors, and answered with eagerness, that he stole from nobody but the Muse who inspired him; and being further questioned by a lady who was present, Who the Muse was? she replied, It was God's grace and the Holy Spirit that visited him nightly.'' 446 CHAPTER XXVII. CROMWEL CALUMNIATES THE PARLIAMENT.— III. of Crom the parlia ment. BOOK MEANWHILE Cromwel, by calumnies, and the most insidious suggestions, had succeeded in alienating 1653. the major part of the army from the parliament. Calumnies His first topic was that they were statesmen, who, wel against without undergoing hardships and being exposed to dangers themselves, were willing to use the army as their tool, and felt no genuine interest in its prosperity and happiness. The next argument was, that these lazy men, these "baleful, unclean birds, perched as they were at fortune's top," divided all the good things and the emoluments of the state among them, totally insensible to the adversities and privations which such a system inevitably entailed upon men of greater merit than themselves. Vane he treated as an obscure visionary, whose speculations no man could understand, and who, while he pretended to superior them CHAP. 1653. ness of his proceed sanctity and patriotism, had no bowels of compassion for such as were not ready to engage selves, heart and soul, in his projects. Others, agreeably to the austerity of the times, he exclaimed against as men of loose morals, and therefore unfit to be intrusted with the public safety a. His own professed object was equality, and a pure Indirectcommonwealth, without a king, or permanent chief magistrate of any kind. We have no reason to ings. believe that to any other person had he expressed himself in the plain and unequivocal terms he had used to Whitlocke. Whitlocke was a man of no party, of a cool and reasoning head, and a lawyer. The great officers of the army were to a man enthusiasts, and, if they had seen his drift, would not have doubted, almost unanimously, to have declared themselves against him. tween cer and certain members of We have already seen the numerous conferences Confewhich had been held, at the invitation of the offi- rences becers of the army, between them and certain lead- tain officers ing members of parliament. If Cromwel enter- leading tained no hope of bringing the latter over to his parliament. views, yet these conferences answered his purpose in making him apparent to his own adherents as a friend of sober and moderate proceedings, who could not prevail upon himself to proceed to violence, till he had tried every other expedient to induce his adversaries to recede from their mea a See below. |