to the siege, to the massacre, not one even of those
generous feelings which war itself permits towards a foe. He chooses to
call his enemy the enemy of God, and kneels before he fights, that the
inexpressible _mercy_ may be granted of cutting his throat!

"That the sense of difference between right and wrong," says Mr Carlyle,
"had filled all time and all space for man, and bodied itself forth into
a heaven and hell for him,--this constitutes the grand feature of those
Puritan, old-Christian ages; this is the element which stamps them as
heroic, and has rendered their works great, manlike, fruitful to all
generations." Quite on the contrary. The sense of right and wrong was
obscured, confused, lost sight of, in the promptings of a presumptuous
enthusiasm; and it is exactly _this_ which constitutes the perilous
characteristic of such men as the Puritans and Cameronians, and similar
sectaries. How can the sense of right and wrong keep its footing in an
enthusiasm which has brought itself to believe that all its successes
are a direct answer to its prayers? Success becomes the very measure of
right and wrong. The two extremes of Atheism and Fanaticism have met;
they may both dispense with conscience, and make the event the criterion
of the deed. Hear how the pious heroes of Mr Carlyle reason on one of
the most solemn occasions of the civil war. The army is remonstrating
with the Parliament because it appeared slow to shed the blood of their
conquered and captured King, and it actually speaks of the death of
Charles "as appeasing the wrath of God" against that sovereign! and bids
the Parliament "sadly to consider, as men accountable to the Highest,"
how far an accommodation with the King, "when God hath given him so
clearly into your power to do justice, can be just before God or good
men." The _power_ to do the act is full authority, is absolute command
to do it. What other doctrine could a Caesar Borgia, or an Eccelino, the
tyrant of Padua, desire to be governed, or rather to be manumitted by
from all government?

The argument drawn from the success given to their cause, is perpetually
in the mouth of Cromwell and of his Puritans. It establishes, without a
doubt, that they have used the sword justly, and are still further to
use it. Every "mercy" of this kind is in answer to prayer. Basing-House,
a private residence, cannot be sacked and plundered, and the inhabitants
put to the sword, but the pious historian of the feat