Complains; heart-weary of the strife of Parties: Goodwin's Sermon, On the Deliverance out of Egypt, SPEECH III. To the First Protectorate Parliament, 12 Cannot have the Foundations of Government sub- Whitehall, 12 CXCVII. To Captain Crook: Whitehall, 20 Jan. 1654-5 To watch Adjutant-Gen. Allen. PAGE 368 408 SPEECH IV. Dissolution of the First Protectorate Parlia- ment, 22 Jan. 1654-5 . 415 Regrets that they have not communicated with WAR WITH SCOTLAND. but they THE Scotch People, the first beginners of this grand Puritan Revolt, which we may define as an attempt to bring the Divine Law of the Bible into actual practice in men's affairs on the Earth, are still one and all resolute for that object; are getting into sad difficulties as to realising it. Not easy to realise such a thing: besides true will, there need heroic gifts, the highest that Heaven gives, for realising it! Gifts which have not been vouchsafed the Scotch People at present. The letter of their Covenant presses heavy on these men; traditions, formulas, dead letters of many things press heavy on them. On the whole, they too are but what we call Pedants in conduct, not Poets: the sheepskin record failing them, and old use-and-wont ending, they cannot farther; they look into a sea of troubles, shoreless, starless, on which there seems no navigation possible. The faults or misfortunes of the Scotch People, in their Puritan business, are many: but properly their grand fault is this, That they have produced for it no sufficiently heroic man among them. No man that has an eye to see beyond the letter and the rubric; to discern, across many consecrated rubrics of the Past, the inarticulate divineness too of the Present and the Future, and dare all perils in the faith of that! With Oliver Cromwell born a Scotchman; with a Hero King and a unanimous Hero Nation at his back, it might have been far otherwise. With Oliver born Scotch, one sees not but the whole world might have become Puritan; might |