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have struggled, yet a long while, to fashion itself according to that divine Hebrew Gospel,-to the exclusion of other Gospels not Hebrew, which also are divine, and will have their share of fulfilment here!—But of such issue there is no danger. Instead of inspired Olivers, glowing with direct insight and noble daring, we have Argyles, Loudons, and narrow, more or less opaque persons of the Pedant species. Committees of Estates, Committees of Kirks, much tied up in formulas, both of them: a bigoted Theocracy without the Inspiration; which is a very hopeless phenomenon indeed! The Scotch People are all willing, eager of heart; asking, Whitherward? But the Leaders stand aghast at the new forms of danger; and in a vehement discrepant manner some calling, Halt! others calling, Backward! others, Forward!huge confusion ensues. Confusion which will need an Oliver to repress it; to bind it up in tight manacles, if not otherwise; and say, "There, sit there and consider thyself a little!"

The meaning of the Scotch Covenant was, That God's divine Law of the Bible should be put in practice in these Nations; verily it, and not the Four Surplices at Allhallowtide, or any Formula of cloth or sheepskin here or elsewhere which merely pretended to be it: but then the Covenant says expressly, there is to be a Stuart King in the business: we cannot do without our Stuart King! Given a divine Law of the Bible on one hand, and a Stuart King, Charles First or Charles Second, on the other: alas, did History ever present a more irreducible case of equations in this world? I pity the poor Scotch Pedant Governors; still more the poor Scotch People, who had no other to follow! Nay, as for that, the People did get through, in the end; such was their indomitable pious constancy, and other worth and fortune and Presbytery became a Fact among them, to the whole length

possible for it: not without endless results. But for the pcor Governors this irreducible case proved, as it were, fatal! They have never since, if we will look narrowly at it, governed Scotland, or even well known that they were there to attempt governing it. Once they lay on Dunse Hill, each Earl with his Regiment of Tenants round him,' For Christ's Crown and Covenant; and never since had they any noble National act which it was given them to do. Growing desperate of Christ's Crown and Covenant, they, in the next generation when our Annus Mirabilis arrived, hurried up to Court, looking out for other Crowns and Covenants; deserted Scotland and her Cause, somewhat basely; took to booing and booing for Causes of their own, unhappy mortals;—and Scotland and all Causes that were Scotland's have had to go on very much without them ever since! Which is a very fatal issue indeed, as I reckon ;-and the time for settlement of accounts about it, which could not fail always, and seems now fast drawing nigh, looks very ominous to me. For in fact there is

no creature more fatal than your Pedant; safe as he esteems himself, the terriblest issues spring from him. Human crimes are many but the crime of being deaf to the God's Voice, of being blind to all but parchments and antiquarian rubrics when the Divine Handwriting is abroad on the sky,-certainly there is no crime which the Supreme Powers do more terribly avenge!

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But leaving all that, the poor Scotch Governors, we remark, in that old crisis of theirs, have come upon the desperate expedient of getting Charles Second to adopt the Covenant the best he can. Whereby our parchment formula is indeed saved; but the divine fact has gone terribly to the wall! The Scotch Governors hope otherwise. By treaties at Jersey, treaties at Breda, they and the hard Law of Want together have constrained this poor young Stuart to their

detested Covenant; as the Frenchman said, they have 'compelled him to adopt it voluntarily.' A fearful crime, thinks Oliver, and think we. How dare you enact such mummery under High Heaven! exclaims he. You will prosecute Malignants; and, with the aid of some poor varnish, transparent even to yourselves, you adopt into your bosom the Chief Malignant? My soul come not into your secret; mine honour be not united unto you!—

In fact, his new Sacred Majesty is actually under way for the Scotch court; will become a Covenanted King there. Of himself a likely enough young man ;-very unfortunate he

too.

Satisfactorily descended from the Steward of Scotland and Elizabeth Muir of Caldwell (whom some have called an improper female1); satisfactory in this respect, but in others most unsatisfactory. A somewhat loose young man; has Buckingham, Wilmot and Company, at one hand of him, and painful Mr. Livingston and Presbyterian ruling-elders at the other; is hastening now, as a Covenanted King, towards such a Theocracy as we described. Perhaps the most anomalous phenomenon ever produced by Nature and Art working together in this World !-He had sent Montrose before him, poor young man, to try if war and force could effect nothing; whom instantly the Scotch Nation took, and tragically hanged.2 They now, winking hard at that transaction, proffer the poor young man their Covenant; compel him to sign it voluntarily, and be Covenanted King over them.

The result of all which for the English Commonwealth cannot be doubtful. What Declarations, Papers, Protocols, passed on the occasion,-numerous, flying thick between Edinburgh and London in late months,-shall remain un

'Horseloads of Jacobite, Anti-Jacobite Pamphlets; Goodall, Father Innes, &c. &c. How it was settled, I do not recollect.

2 Details of the business, in Balfour, iv. 9-22.

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known to us. The Commonwealth has brought Cromwell home from Ireland; and got forces ready for him that is the practical outcome of it. The Scotch also have got forces ready; will either invade us, or (which we decide to be preferable) be invaded by us.1 Cromwell must now take up the Scotch coil of troubles, as he did the Irish, and deal with that too. Fairfax, as we heard, was unwilling to go; Cromwell, urging the Council of State to second him, would fain persuade Fairfax; gets him still nominated Commander-in-chief; but cannot persuade him ;-will himself have to be Commander-in-chief, and go.

In Whitlocke and Ludlow2 there is record of earnest intercessions, solemn conference held with Fairfax in Whitehall, duly prefaced by prayer to Heaven; intended on Cromwell's part to persuade Fairfax that it is his duty again to accept the chief command, and lead us into Scotland. Fairfax, urged by his Wife, a Vere of the fighting Veres, and given to Presbyterianism, dare not and will not go;-sends Mr. Rushworth, his Secretary,' on the morrow, to give up his Commission,3 that Cromwell himself may be named General-in-chief. In this preliminary business, says Ludlow, Cromwell acted his part so to the life that I really thought he wished Fairfax to go.' Wooden-headed that I was, I had reason to alter that notion by and by!

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Wooden Ludlow gives note of another very singular interview he himself had with Cromwell, 'a little after,' in those same days or hours. Cromwell whispered him in the House ; they agreed to meet that afternoon in the Council of State' in Whitehall, and there withdraw into a private room to have

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1 Commons Journals, 26 June, 1650.

2 Whitlocke, pp. 444-6 (25 June, 1650); Ludlow, i. 317.

3 Commons Journals, ubi supra.

a little talk together. Oliver had cast his eye on Ludlow as a fit man for Ireland, to go and second Ireton there; he took him, as by appointment, into a private room, the Queen's Guard-chamber' to wit; and there very largely expressed himself. He testified the great value he had for me, Ludlow; combatted my objections to Ireland; spake somewhat against Lawyers, what a tortuous ungodly jungle English Law was; spake of the good that might be done by a good and brave man;-spake of the great Providences of God now abroad on the Earth; in particular talked for almost an hour upon the Hundred-and-tenth Psalm;' which to me, in my solid wooden head, seemed extremely singular !!

Modern readers, not in the case of Ludlow, will find this fact illustrative of Oliver. Before setting out on the Scotch Expedition, and just on the eve of doing it, we too will read that Psalm of Hebrew David's, which had become English Oliver's: we will fancy in our minds, not without reflections and emotions, the largest soul in England looking at this God's World with prophet's earnestness through that Hebrew Word, -two Divine Phenomena accurately correspondent for Oliver; the one accurately the prophetic symbol, and articulate interpretation of the other. As if the Silences had at length found utterance, and this was their Voice from out of old Eternity:

The Lord said unto my Lord: Sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool. The Lord shall 'send the rod of thy strength out of Zion: rule thou in the midst of thine enemies. Thy people shall be willing in the

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day of thy power; in the beauties of holiness, from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth. The Lord hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. The Lord, at thy Ludlow, i. 319.

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