The ecclesiastical aspects of the civil war may be seen in the State Papers issued at the time. For the present, it suffices to observe that the English and the Scotch differed in their views respecting the relation in which the religious and political questions of the day stood to each other. The Scotch entered the field under the banner of Church, Crown, and Covenant, to carry on a contest, if not purely religious, yet one which was so in the main. Political considerations were subordinate: the flag was unfurled, and the sword drawn for Presbyterianism against Popery and against Prelacy. The rights of synods, and the interests of pure and undefiled religion, more than the privileges of Parliament, constituted the precious national treasure, to secure which the veteran General Leslie encamped with that great host, which Baillie so graphically describes. In the case of the Parliamentary army of England, it was otherwise. In the beginning, indeed, the Lancashire Puritans, when taking up arms, proceeded entirely on religious grounds, and emulated their more northern neighbours in that respect. They dreaded the Papists living amongst them; and it was against those Papists, not against the King, as they expressly declared, that they threw themselves into the civil war. During the siege of Manchester, the inhabitants, in their answer to the Royalist Lord Strange, identified his proceedings with the cause of the Roman Catholics, many of whom were marching under his flag.[305] And in connection with this prominence, in one part of the country at least, given to the religious phase of the conflict, it should be remembered that English Puritans never counted religion in any of its relations as less than supreme; that they always professed obedience to Christianity as the supreme law of life; and that they were thoroughly religious, as to motive and spirit, in all their military service. So completely was this the case, that no Crusader could be more devout, as he buckled on his sword to fight for the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre, than the Roundhead was, when he buttoned his 'souldier's pocket bible' in his waistcoat, and shouldered his musket to fight against Rome and the devil--as well as against political despotism. But still, this latter object appears most conspicuous in our civil war. Pym and his associates were emphatically Parliament men: they engaged in a Parliament struggle, to save the English Constitution from the absorbing encroachments of the King's prerogative. Ecclesiastical questions necessarily connected themselves with such as were political, but the former were kept subordinate; and, when appearing in State documents, they occupy a far less space, and are treated with much less minuteness and fulness than the latter. The previous history of our country had given this shape to the controversy. As prior circumstances in Scotland had made the war for the Scotch principally one on behalf