This was the case, not only in England, but elsewhere. One of Cromwell’s letters of about this time is to the New England clergyman, John Cotton, in answer to one which showed the keen interest taken in Cromwell’s triumph by his fellow-Puritans, who, across the Atlantic, had begun the upbuilding of what is now the giant republic of the New World. The letter is marked by the continuous use of scriptural phrases and protestations of humility, so ostentatious and overstrained as to convey an uncomfortable feeling of hypocrisy; yet, without doubt, there was a base of genuineness for these expressions. Beyond question, Cromwell felt that he was doing the Lord’s work; and was sustained through the tremendous hours of labor and peril by the sense of battling for justice on this earth, and in accordance with the Eternal Will of Heaven. In dealing with Cromwell and the Puritan Revolution it must ever be kept in mind, before judging too harshly the actors, that the era saw the overlapping of two systems, both in religion and in politics; and many incongruities resulted. It was the first great stride toward the practical achievement of civil rights and individual liberty as we now understand them. It was also the era in which the old theological theory of the all-importance of dogma came into sharp conflict with the now healthily general religious belief in the superior importance of conduct. Of course, as is invariably the case in real life, the issues were not sharply drawn at all points, and at some they were wholly obscured by the strong passions and ambitions which belong, not to any particular age, but to all time. After Worcester, when Cromwell had returned to London, he one day summoned a conference, at Speaker Lenthall’s house, of the leaders of the Parliamentary army to decide how the national destiny was to be settled. He hoped that they would be able to form a policy among themselves; but the hope proved fruitless. Some of the members wished an absolute republic; some wished a setting-up of what we would now call a limited monarchy, with one of the late king’s sons recalled and put at the head.