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For there was hereby a Protestant Church of Ireland, of the most irrefragable nature, preaching daily in all its actions and procedure a real Gospel of Veracity, of piety, of fair dealing and good order to all men; and certain other 'Protestant Churches of Ireland,' and unblessed real-imaginary Entities, of which the human soul is getting weary, had of a surety never found footing there! But the Ever-blessed Restoration came upon us. All that arrangement was torn up by the roots; and Ireland was appointed to develope itself as we have seen. Not in the drab

colored Puritan way;-in what other way is still a terrible dubiety, to itself and to us! It will be by some Gospel of Veracity, I think, when the Heavens are pleased to send such. This 'Curse of Cromwell,' so-called, is the only Gospel of that kind I can yet discover to have ever been fairly afoot there.

CROMWELL'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES

PART VI.

WAR WITH SCOTLAND.

1650-1651.

WAR WITH SCOTLAND.

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; but they are getting into sad difficulties as to realizing it. Not easy to realize such a thing besides true will, there need heroic gifts, the highest that Heaven gives, for realizing 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 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 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

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