Not only did parties widely differ, but each regarded the other as an enemy. They fought as for life--and certainly the subjects of contention were not trifles. Scarcely could it be expected that on either side there would be an unprejudiced estimate of what was thought, said, and done on the other. Moreover, as in every age some peculiar type of piety is found to prevail, whether it be Primitive, or Nicene, or Mediæval, or Reformed; so, during the English Commonwealth, influence flowing from the past and mingling with the present, washed thoughts and habits into form and hue so as to give to all religious parties a somewhat similar appearance not to be overlooked. Much time was spent by all pious persons in retirement, in reading, in meditation, and in prayer. Piety was active as well as contemplative, but the contemplative side was most apparent: the mind dwelt much upon memories of the past, the Nicene age being the background of thought in the one case, and the age of the Reformation in the other; whilst over the whole religion of the day there rested the solemn shadows of an ascetic spirituality. Moreover, there pertained to Anglicans and Puritans in common a singularly strong conviction of the absolute reality of spiritual and eternal things. They could truly say "we walk by faith, not by sight"--in contrast with so many religionists in our own time whose views are entirely walled in by objects of sense, and who walk by sight, not by faith. Our fathers of the seventeenth century "tasted the good Word of God and the powers of the world to come." They lived "on the sides of eternity," and their souls breathed a bracing air which came from the goodly land and the "Lebanon afar off." Visiting the sick and the poor, and managing some hospital for boys, or for old men and women, constituted the usual methods of beneficence in those times, inasmuch as Bible Societies, Missions, and Sunday-schools, were institutions then unknown. Together with the difference between one age of Christendom and another, we must consider the differences between sect and sect. It is only fair for the historian to apply the term sect to any party exhibiting avowed symbols; whether found existing within the same Episcopal Church, as were all Anglo-Catholics and some of the Puritans--or existing outside, as was the case with Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists. Each division appears marked by the strength and the weakness of all such bodies. Each had a concentrated power of attack and of defence. Each was strong in its polemical attitude and action: each was powerful against the other. The weakness lay--as is ever the case--in defective self-culture, and in an imperfect extent of teaching within its own borders. Sectarianism is always one-sided. It seizes on certain points and magnifies them beyond all rules of proportion. Other parts of Divine truth and other portions of human nature suffer from neglect. [Sidenote: _Idiosyncrasies._]