VIII. WEALTH, bution: fornication was felony, and adultery was CHAPTER punishable with death. But the nation was not enervated. The license and folly which pleads for COMMONexemption on the ground that the national spirit A.D.1653. must at all costs be sustained, received its abundant, and if history had been but faithful to her trust, its final answer. England is the nation of brave men, but the renown of England was never carried to a higher pitch than by the heroes of the commonwealth-by Cromwell on the land and Blake upon the sea. Bishop Burnet relates that he saw three of Cromwell's regiments at Aberdeen about the time of the battle of Dunbar.* Their demeanour excited, even in that presbyterian land, respect and admiration. There was a dignity and composure in their looks, a self-restraint, a gravity and piety in their conduct such as had never hitherto been seen in soldiers. They prayed fervently in public, and they often preached; and these men were the bravest of the brave. The soldier, it is true, broke out in them sometimes and wrestled with the saint, and the consistency of the latter was in peril. On one occasion the presbyterian clergy attacked them from the pulpit, and denounced their invasion of the ministerial office by their irregular prayers and preachings as scarcely less than blasphemy. For armed listeners the offence was too great to be endured. They interrupted the preacher with expressions of contempt, and their swords leaped by an instinct from their scabbards. No injury was done; but Cromwell severely censured their misconduct, and * Own Times, vol. i. p. 79. VIII. WEALTH, CHAPTER cashiered the commander for having overlooked the outrage. The army was probably more religious COMMON- and, apart from the fanaticism which infected some A.D.1653. regiments, better and wiser than the nation; this indeed was the secret of its power; but the leaders of the commonwealth laboured everywhere to effect the same improvement, and to exalt in England the popular standard of virtue and pure religion. Yet it cannot be said that their efforts were successful. The men were at this time boys who, in the reign of Charles II., flooded England with depravity. The shameless harlots of the most profligate court that any protestant state in Europe had ever witnessed were now receiving the lessons of their girlhood. The people, now demure and serious, and constant at the parish church, were to throw off the cloak of religion and of decency; and, upon the signal of the king's return, to assume the follies of a harlequin. The infatuation was to last for a quarter of a century; until at length, when Charles II. died, not only religion, but virtue, patriotism, and morals should be in general and profound contempt; and the most religious nation in the world should be the most degraded and debauched. The maxim is true of nations as of individuals, that none become supremely wicked on a sudden. If the explosion is terrible, the train has been laid with care and forethought. Enormous guilt may break out unexpectedly, but its way has been silently prepared; and secret depravity has existed in the mind long before its taint is visible in the conduct. Appearances were hollow and deceitful. The shew of national piety which every VIII. where prevailed was not sincere. When temptation CHAPTER came it offered no resistance; it embraced the seducer and courted infamy. Into the causes of this COMMONgreat apostacy it behoves us to inquire. 1. When the leaders of the commonwealth undertook the management of the state, religion amongst the puritans, exposed to the evil influences of civil war and frequent change, had already declined. It could not have been otherwise. It is impossible to conceive that men who had been for five years engaged in acts of deadly warfare with their own former friends and neighbours, should retain the same tenderness of conscience and that clear percep tion of right with which they entered on the war. Many an outrage had been committed, many a fellow-man destroyed, for which conscience, in her calmer moods, would have no milder term than revenge and wantonness. The uneasy victor would strive to forget the past and to silence the still voice within him. His mind would become hard and unrelenting; and he would probably take refuge in one of these two delusions, either that the end sanctifies the means, or that his whole conduct had been the subject of some absolute decree. Each of these subterfuges carries deadly poison to the soul. At the same time the political changes had obliterated something of his reverence for truth, and for the obligations of an oath. The covenant had scarcely been imposed before he was taught to evade it; and when the engagement followed, he had scarcely lifted his right hand to heaven and sworn to observe it, than its provisions were treated with the very same contempt. In man the want of reve A A WEALTH, A.D. 1653. VIII. CHAPTER rence for truth resembles in its effects the loss of chastity in woman. In that one virtue all the COMMON- others are included; and the mind having lost its WEALTH, tone, and now deeply conscious of its degradation, A.D. 1653. ceases to strive with sin; for what is left is not worth a struggle. Again, society had been to a great extent disorganized. During the war many churches were closed, and if the inefficient ministry of the Laudian school was silenced it had been too often succeeded by rant and ignorance. The pulpit during the commonwealth began to fall into contempt. The parliament found it necessary to reiterate the injunctions which king James, and Charles, and Laud himself had vainly striven to enforce. They forbad all ministers to interfere with politics, and commanded them to adhere strictly to their texts and to the preaching of the gospel. But the admonition was in vain; politics were too exciting, and the preachers too vainglorious. An ignorant visionary could always provide himself with a text, and often with a prophecy, which bore directly upon the last week's proceedings in the house of commons, or the result of the next campaign. With what desolation of heart many an humble christian returned home from such discourses, uncheered, untaught, we can never know. How infidelity grew apace, and an utter disdain of the ministrations of the pulpit, we can more readily imagine. 2. As the puritan leaders fell into contempt their characters were severely handled. For some time they had been freely charged with rapacity and pride, they were now accused of grosser vices. VIII. WEALTH, A.D. 1653. When Cromwell dissolved the parliament, he threw CHAPTER the foulest charges in the very face of his former associates. Henry Martyn and sir Peter Went- COMMONworth, he said, were known adulterers; pointing another he exclaimed, there sits a drunkard. Others he charged with fraud and perjury; and one and all of them with a life and conduct scandalous to the gospel. Whether this outburst of abuse were premeditated is not worth consideration. The same accusations were openly preferred at the time by other men of the puritan party. The writings of their opponents abound with them; and Cromwell, cunning even in the vortex of his passion, alleged no doubt the crimes which every one suspected. And it is to be noted further, that the friends of the accused shewed but little warmth in defending them. Ludlow, for instance, declaims against Cromwell for having acted a treacherous and impious part,* but says nothing of slander or of falsehood. Clement Walker, a member of the parliament, repeats some of the accusations with a grossness of language which decorum forbids us to transcribe.† Yet these men affected the greatest sanctity. They had recently enacted a law which declared adultery a felony and inflicted the penalty of death. Women of loose character and their abettors were to be whipped, branded in the face, pilloried, and imprisoned three years for the first offence, and hanged for the second. If the framers of such a law were men * Ludlow, p. 174. + e.g. Henry Martyn's gains by the revolution are stated thus: "Col. of a regiment of horse, et agmen scortorum." I veil his coarse English under decent Latin. Hist. Indep. i. 171. An act for suppressing detestable sins. May, 1650. |