This is _our_ truth, the corner-stone of our faith. Here we stand, and alone of nations have made this our practice, and thereby given a healthful example to all men. These things he believed, and, for the first time for ages, did he announce to the world those truths which were to unsettle tyranny and open the way to universal freedom. When the king was about to return, he published “The Mode of Establishing a Free Commonwealth.” This was the last blast blown to rouse the people from their lethargy. With a prophetic energy did he predict the ills that would fall upon the nation, should the king again be established. How sadly have his words been realized in the gilded misery that now surrounds his country, where starving millions toil like beasts of the field to fatten a licentious and debased aristocracy! In this book he told the people that “no government was nearer the precepts of Christ than a free Commonwealth, wherein they who are the greatest are perpetual servants to the public, and yet are not elevated above their brethren, live soberly in their families, walk the streets as other men, may be spoken to freely, familiarly, friendly, without adoration.” After extolling the excellent beauty of freedom, and exhorting them to stand by their rights, he thus concludes, with these passages so full of grand and pathetic eloquence. “I have no more to say at present; few words will save us, well considered; few and easy things, now seasonably done. But if the people be so affected as to prostitute religion and liberty to the vain and groundless apprehension, that nothing but Kingship can restore trade, not remembering the frequent plagues and pestilences that then wasted this city, such as through God’s mercy we never have felt since; and that trade flourishes nowhere more than in the free Commonwealths of Italy, Germany, and the Low Countries, before their eyes at this day; yet if trade be grown so craving and importunate, through the _profuse living of tradesmen_, that nothing can support it but the luxurious expenses of a nation upon trifles or superfluities, so as if the people generally should betake themselves to frugality, it might prove a dangerous matter, lest tradesmen should mutiny for want of trading; and that therefore we must forego, and set to sale religion, liberty, honor, safety, all concernments, divine or human, to keep up trading. What I have spoken is the language of that which is not called amiss, “The Good Old Cause;” it seem strange to any, it will not seem more strange, I hope, than convincing to back-sliders. Thus much I should perhaps have said, though I was sure I should have spoken only to trees and stones, and had none to cry to, but with the prophet, ‘O Earth, Earth, Earth!’ to tell the very soil itself what her perverse inhabitants are deaf to; nay, though what I have spoke should happen, [which Thou suffer not, who didst create mankind free! nor Thou next who didst redeem us from being