There were certain qualities and beliefs in Cromwell, well known in their outward character, which have won for him _par excellence_ the title of hypocrite. Looked at from the inner side, which the preservation of his letters enables us to see, they appear as the plastic medium through which an honest purpose of conciliation worked, and for lack of which the same purpose was inoperative in others. The ultimate spring of his conduct was a belief, wrought to special strength in the formation and triumphant leadership of the sectarian army, that he was the chosen champion of the despised people of the Lord. In the realisation of this belief, it was his habit (in modern language) to wait on events, and to surrender himself to temporary sympathy with men of the most various views. That this sympathy, though sometimes unctuous and exaggerated in expression, was yet perfectly genuine, is proved by its evident infectiousness. Nor was it really deceptive. There is no sign that he ever committed himself to the positive maintenance of the doctrines of the men to whose sympathy he appealed. On the contrary, {348} there is evidence that the protection of the godly interest in its freedom of conscience, by whatever means might be available, was the only line of conduct to which he ever committed himself, and to this he was faithful throughout. He caught eagerly at every element in the character or belief of those with whom he had to do, which might be turned to account for the furtherance of this end. When it ceased to further it, it lost his sympathy. The interpretation which the men whom he thus treated naturally put on his conduct was that he sought to use them for his selfish purposes. But it was just the qualities which ruined his reputation with the less compliant of his contemporaries and with posterity that enabled him to do his work. For his reputation he cared little, for his work much. What we call waiting on events, he called a recognition of the ‘outward dispensations’ of God. His belief that this guidance was divine made him at once more bold and more free from selfish regards in following it. There is a touch of nature in a letter of his to Oliver St. John, written just after his rout of Hamilton’s army. [1] ‘Remember my love to my dear brother, H. Vane. I pray he make not too little, nor I too much, of outward dispensations.... Let us all be not careful what men will make of these actings. They, will they, nill they, shall fulfil the good pleasure of God; and we shall serve our generations. Our rest we expect elsewhere; that will be durable. Care we not for to-morrow, nor for anything.’ [1] [Carlyle, _ib_. No. lxvii.]