The strongest practical intellect in England dared to answer, Yes!
This I call a noble true purpose; is it not, In its own dialect, the
noblest that could enter into the heart of Statesman or man? For a
Knox to take it up was something; but for a Cromwell, with his great
sound sense and experience of what our world _was_,--History, I think,
shows it only this once in such a degree. I account it the culminating
point of Protestantism; the most heroic phasis that 'Faith in the
Bible' was appointed to exhibit here below. Fancy it: that it were
made manifest to one of us, how we could make the Right supremely
victorious over Wrong, and all that we had longed and prayed for, as
the highest good to England and all lands, an attainable fact!

Well, I must say, the _vulpine_ intellect, with its knowingness, its
alertness and expertness in 'detecting hypocrites,' seems to me a
rather sorry business. We have had one such Statesman in England; one
man, that I can get sight of, who ever had in the heart of him any
such purpose at all. One man, in the course of fifteen hundred years;
and this was his welcome. He had adherents by the hundred or the ten;
opponents by the million. Had England rallied all round him,--why,
then, England might have been a _Christian_ land! As it is, vulpine
knowingness sits yet at its hopeless problem, 'Given a world of
Knaves, to educe an Honesty from their united action;'--how cumbrous a
problem, you may see in Chancery Law-Courts, and some other places!
Till at length, by Heaven's just anger, but also by Heaven's great
grace, the matter begins to stagnate; and this problem is becoming to
all men a _palpably_ hopeless one.--

* * * * *

But with regard to Cromwell and his purposes: Hume and a multitude
following him, come upon me here with an admission that Cromwell _was_
sincere at first; a sincere 'Fanatic' at first, but gradually became a
'Hypocrite' as things opened round him. This of the Fanatic-Hypocrite
is Hume's theory of it; extensively applied since,--to Mahomet and
many others. Think of it seriously, you will find something in it; not
much, not all, very far from all. Sincere hero hearts do not sink in
this miserable manner. The Sun flings forth impurities, gets balefully
incrusted with spots; but it does not quench itself, and become no Sun
at all, but a mass of Darkness! I will venture to say that such never
befell a great, deep Cromwell; I think, never. Na