, is it not altogether as that of a true and
devout man? He has renounced the world and its ways; _its_ prizes are
not the thing that can enrich him. He tills the earth; he reads his
Bible; daily assembles his servants round him to worship God. He
comforts persecuted ministers, is fond of preachers; nay can himself
preach,--exhorts his neighbours to be wise, to redeem the time. In all
this what 'hypocrisy,' 'ambition,' 'cant,' or other falsity? The man's
hopes, I do believe, were fixed on the other Higher World; his aim to
get well _thither_, by walking well through his humble course in
_this_ world. He courts no notice: what could notice here do for him?
'Ever in his great Taskmaster's eye.'

It is striking, too, how he comes-out once into public view; he, since
no other is willing to come: in resistance to a public grievance. I
mean, in that matter of the Bedford Fens. No one else will go to law
with Authority; therefore he will. That matter once settled, he
returns back into obscurity, to his Bible and his Plough. 'Gain
influence'? His influence is the most legitimate; derived from
personal knowledge of him, as a just, religious, reasonable and
determined man. In this way he has lived till past forty; old age is
now in view of him, and the earnest portal of Death and Eternity; it
was at this point that he suddenly became 'ambitious'! I do not
interpret his Parliamentary mission in that way!

His successes in Parliament, his successes through the war, are honest
successes of a brave man; who has more resolution in the heart of him,
more light in the head of him than other men. His prayers to God; his
spoken thanks to the God of Victory, who had preserved him safe, and
carried him forward so far, through the furious clash of a world all
set in conflict, through desperate-looking envelopments at Dunbar;
through the death-hail of so many battles; mercy after mercy; to the
'crowning mercy' of Worcester Fight: all this is good and genuine for
a deep-hearted Calvinistic Cromwell. Only to vain unbelieving
Cavaliers, worshipping not God but their own 'lovelocks,' frivolities
and formalities, living quite apart from contemplations of God, living
_without_ God in the world, need it seem hypocritical.

Nor will his participation in the King's death involve him in
condemnation with us. It is a stern business killing of a King! But if
you once go to war with him, it lies _there_; this and all else lies
there. Once at war, you h