History of the English People, Volume VI: Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683Green, John Richard
History
History of the English People, Volume VI: Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683
Green, John Richard
Great Britain -- History
"The hour is come," cried Cromwell, "for the Parliament to save the
kingdom and to govern alone." But the Parliament showed no will to
"govern alone." It looked on the rising and the intervention of the
Scots as means of freeing it from the control under which it had been
writhing since the expulsion of the eleven. It took advantage of the
crisis to profess its adherence to Monarchy, to reopen the negotiations
it had broken off with the king, and to deal the fiercest blow at
religious freedom which it had ever received. The Presbyterians flocked
back to their seats; and an "Ordinance for the Suppression of
Blasphemies and Heresies," which Vane and Cromwell had long held at bay,
was passed by triumphant majorities. Any man--ran this terrible
statute--denying the doctrine of the Trinity or of the Divinity of
Christ, or that the books of Scripture are "the Word of God," or the
resurrection of the body, or a future day of judgement, and refusing on
trial to abjure his heresy, "shall suffer the pain of death." Any man
declaring (amidst a long list of other errors) "that man by nature hath
free will to turn to God," that there is a Purgatory, that images are
lawful, that infant baptism is unlawful; any one denying the obligation
of observing the Lord's day, or asserting "that the Church government by
Presbytery is antichristian or unlawful," shall, on a refusal to
renounce his errors, "be commanded to prison." It was plain that the
Presbyterians counted on the king's success to resume their policy of
conformity, and had Charles been free, or the New Model disbanded, their
hopes would probably have been realized.
[Sidenote: The Scotch Invasion.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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