sure at disobedience? And how can this be reconciled with the assumption that God prefers the transgression of his own law, in an infinite multitude of instances, to obedience? In his invitations, "Ho! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters." "Whosoever will let him take the water of life freely." "Come, for all things are now ready." Such invitations coming from the throne of the Eternal King, to perishing men, are meant not for philosophers alone, but for the poor. They are meant to be taken according to their obvious import. But such invitations addressed by one man to another would express the desire of acceptance; or certainly would not include the desire of their being rejected. Were we fully apprized that a neighbor, who had invited us to an entertainment, although for form's sake, or his own credit's sake, or any other reason, he chose to address his invitation to us, and would admit us on our coming, yet to accomplish other ends however laudable, secretly preferred our rejection of the invitation, could we regard him as sincere! Such language would mean, that he wished, or, at least, was willing, all things considered, that we should come; but his heart would not mean so. How then is the sincerity of evangelical invitations to be reconciled with the assumption of God's preferring the rejection of them by a multitude of those to whom they are addressed, instead of their being universally received?

In conclusion, we remark that we have no wish to establish the contrary assumption. We pretend not to assert, on this subject, what was, or was not possible with God. Our object has been to inquire whether men know as much respecting it, as some have assumed to know. Ought an assumption which so clogs the system of revealed truth, which is not essentially connected with any part of it, nor is capable of proof by other considerations, to be retained? Does it give to the declarations of the Eternal King respecting sin, to the law of his throne, or to the invitations of his grace, that meaning-that subduing influence, with which, in their naked forms, they would come to the mind? Are we, whenever we go before him in confession of sins, to believe that he would rather that we had committed them than not; and that, however he may have remonstrated with us respecting them, and interposed his authority to prevent us, and then by the cross of his Son intreated us to desist, still he meant not so? Or are we not rather to yield ourselves to the unmingled impres sion, that we have offended his holiness, counteracted his will, and outraged all his feelings of kindness towards us? Under this impression we may be subdued-we may be grieved-we may-we must be melted in contrition; but under the other impression it is difficult to see that we can review our sins even with a feeling of regret.

THE

CHRISTIAN SPECTATOR.

QUARTERLY---No. III.

SEPTEMBER, 1829.

ART. I.-REVIEW ON THE CHARACTER OF OLIVER CROMWELL.

History of the Commonwealth of England from its commencement to the restoration of Charles the Second. By WILLIAM GODWIN. London. Vol. 1824. Vol. II. 1826. Vol. III. 1827.

THE revolution, which drove Charles I. from a throne to a scaffold, is the most interesting and momentous event in English history. The causes and the duration of the struggle between the king and the parliament, the character of the parties, the great actors in the drama, the political and religious principles involved in the controversy, and its termination in the execution of the king and the supremacy of Oliver Cromwell, all united, stamp a pre-eminent importance upon that fearful contest. The struggle was fierce and obstinate; it was marked by every variety of triumph and disaster; it rejected every effort at conciliation. Its causes were the perfidy and tyranny of Charles, the oppression of Buckingham and Strafford, and the bigotry of Laud. Its duration was so sorely protracted, that it exhausted, successively, the strength of each party, and swept the common interests of three nations into the vortex. The parties were the king and the parliament: the king, arraying under his banner the mass of the nobility and the church, and assuming as a watchword the magic names of loyalty and religion; the parliament, upheld by the city of London and the nation at large, and fighting for liberty of conscience and inalienable rights. The actors whom the crisis summoned forth, were a constellation of such minds as England has never since beheld. There were found, and all on the side of the parliament, the juridical learning and wisdom of Coke, the stubborn patriotism of Hampden, the consistent integrity of Pym, the acuteness of Vane, the matchless erudition

of Selden, the piety of Owen and Baxter. In the same cause were united the gallantry of Essex and Waller, the steady courage of Fairfax, the fiery daring of Blake, and the resistless energy of Cromwell; and for that cause Milton wrote, as never man has written. The principles then at stake were those on which hang the happiness,-the existence of free governments and pure religion; for the question was, whether the king or the constitution and laws, whether the bigotry of Laud or the rights of conscience, should prevail. The issue of the contest was the extinction of royalty, and the elevation of Cromwell to the chief power of the state; a supremacy which he maintained during life, with equal splendor of personal greatness, and of national prosperity and glory.

Nor is this singular crisis inferior in its power of interest. As a universal truth, whatever vitally concerns our welfare, awakens at the same time the deepest feelings of the soul; and although we look back upon that era as spectators and not as performers, we feel an excitement the same in kind, although weaker in degree. No citizen of a free republic, no subject of a limited monarchy that is governed by equal laws, can forget while absorbed in the history of those days, that there first appears the record of a contest between a king and his people, which arose from principles only; that there is first beheld in all its magnificence, the spectacle of men risking life and all without which life is worthless, to secure freedom as defined by law, and religion as independent of every thing but conscience. If we turn from principles to facts, we behold a king whose very treachery seems hallowed by his romantic courage, whose obstinacy is forgotten in his disasters, whose oppression of his people seems palliated by the loyalty and devotion of those who adhered to him" through evil report and good report," whose whole reign of tyranny becomes, as it were, expiated by the piety of his last hours, and by the blood which he shed upon the scaffold. Nor does the part sustained by the Puritans appear less interesting than that of the royalists and their sovereign. Theirs was the struggle of men who thought not of honors, nor ease. nor wealth, nor fame; who looked at the throne and the cottage, with an equal eye; whom pleasure could seduce by no blandishments, and the sword vanquish by no terrors; who moved steadfastly onward to the encounter with peril, and wounds, and all the horrors of the conflict, conscious that death was not the extinction of their being, and that shame and agony on earth were the dus of the balance when weighed against the joys of paradise.

But there are reflections which invest these great events with a far stronger interest. We speak the language of sober

truth in affirming, that all the liberty which England now boasts of, all that has given security and protection to her people at home, and power and renown to her name abroad, all that has urged forward the spirit of her sons in the national strife of mental exertion, is the legacy of the Puritans and the other patriots of that day. Their eyes could read what to others was a sealed book, they treasured up its lessons till no time could efface them, and sternly and triumphantly did they adhere to its maxims in council and in the field. Among their American descendants the seed has found a still kindlier soil, a still stronger vegetation. In our own memorable contest, the principles which governed every mind, the moral courage which braced every heart, were the principles and the courage which made our Puritan fathers self-devoted exiles from Great Britain, which bade their children resist the first encroachment of oppression, and which now directs this mighty empire in its progress towards its final consummation. And when we look forward with assured hope to that day when all men, taught by our example, shall understand, and assert, and secure their rights, when every nation now sitting in bondage shall shake off its chains and be free, we err not in asserting, that the strain which shall then swell from every tongue will be that which was first heard from the lips of the Puritans, and that the fire which shall then blaze in every temple was first kindled on their altars.

Since such is the importance, such the interest, belonging to this period, it would be presumed of course that it has been a favorite subject for the historian. Accordingly it has been selected by writers without number, as a peculiarly favorable period for narration. From the grave and regular history, down to the ephemeral pamphlet, through the bulky folio of state papers, the less formal but more spirited volume of biography and memoirs, in historical letters, and the brief narrative of celebrated incidents, the events of that revolution have been recorded in every form. Perhaps no portion of equal duration in English annals is richer in historical documents, or more copious in the information which it affords. The measures of each of the great parties, the characters of the king and his adherents, of the leaders of the parliament and the generals of their armies, the countless facts of every degree of importance, the motives and conduct of each and all who were then conspicuous, have been detailed in every manner with every variety of feeling. With such abundant sources of knowledge, we should suppose that a history of that day, alike marked, by its impartiality and completeness, would long since

have been given to the world.* But strange as it may seem, no such work yet exists, and we see no prospect of its speedy appearance. Voluminous as are the publications connected with that period, they are all imperfect or partial. The detached narratives and memoirs alluded to are confined of course to but few events; the collections of state papers, however extensive, treat almost solely of public transactions; and every history of magnitude has been written in the spirit of a partisan. He then, who, moved by the grave and solemn aspect of that crisis, anxiously searches for "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," will constantly meet with disappointment, ifhe confines his inquiries to any single author or class of authors. In the works of those who have espoused the cause of Charles and of absolute monarchy, who have defended the bigotry of Laud and the persecution of the Puritans, he will find their acts of violence extenuated or denied, their characters vindicated, their fate deplored as the consummation of injustice, their memories cherished as the legacy of martyred patriotism and virtue. The resistance of the parliament he sees branded as rebellion, the conduct of its leaders he hears stigmatized as desperate ambition, its generals are traitors, its armies are fanatics or hypocrites, its adherents are honest dupes or miserable knaves. Nor is more favor granted to the enemies of religious intolerance. Their dissent is wilful clamor, their scruples are ignorant folly, their hopes are the dreams of enthusiasm, their prayers are the cant of hypocrisy. The works ofmost of the opposite class of writers are also substantially defective. While they speak of Charles as arbitrary and treacherous, of the hierarchy as intolerant and vindictive, and thus use only the language of sober truth, they forget that the king pursued but the course which his predecessors had trodden, and that the church had not then been fully taught the duty of toleration. Still more do they deserve censure for their angry crimination of those of their own party, who differed from themselves. Without referring to the causes of these dissensions which we design to notice hereafter, we cannot avoid remarking that many of these writers show a want of candor towards their dissentient brethren which no prejudices could warrant, and a bitterness which no provocations could excuse. The author, who shall supply this great desideratum in Eng

*The best account of this period, for its extent, is May's History of the Parliament. Warburton, in his letters to Hurd, styles it "an extraor dinary performance, written with great temper, good sense, and spirit ;" and Lord Chatham, in his letters to his nephew, calls it "a much honester and more instructive book than Clarendon."