St. George and St. Michael, Volume 1MacDonald, George
History
St. George and St. Michael, Volume 1
MacDonald, George
Great Britain -- History -- Civil War, 1642-1649 -- Fiction
ANIMADVERSIONS.
From the time when the conversation recorded had in some measure
dispelled the fog between them, Roger and Richard Heywood drew
rapidly nearer to each other. The father had been but waiting until
his son should begin to ask him questions, for watchfulness of
himself and others had taught him how useless information is to
those who have not first desired it, how poor in influence, how soon
forgotten; and now that the fitting condition had presented itself,
he was ready: with less of reserve than in the relation between them
was common amongst the puritans, he began to pour his very soul into
that of his son. All his influence went with that party which,
holding that the natural flow of the reformation of the church from
popery had stagnated in episcopacy, consisted chiefly of those who,
in demanding the overthrow of that form of church government, sought
to substitute for it what they called presbyterianism; but Mr.
Heywood belonged to another division of it which, although less
influential at present, was destined to come by and by to the front,
in the strength of the conviction that to stop with presbyterianism
was merely to change the name of the swamp--a party whose
distinctive and animating spirit was the love of freedom, which
indeed, degenerating into a passion among its inferior members,
broke out, upon occasion, in the wildest vagaries of speech and
doctrine, but on the other hand justified itself in its leaders,
chief amongst whom were Milton and Cromwell, inasmuch as they
accorded to the consciences of others the freedom they demanded for
their own--the love of liberty with them not meaning merely the love
of enjoying freedom, but that respect for the thing itself which
renders a man incapable of violating it in another.
Roger Heywood was, in fact, already a pupil of Milton, whose
anonymous pamphlet of 'Reformation touching Church Discipline' had
already reached him, and opened with him the way for all his
following works.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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