The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth: As Revealed in the Writings of Gerrard Winstanley, the Digger, Mystic and Rationalist, Communist and Social ReformerBerens, Lewis Henry
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The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth: As Revealed in the Writings of Gerrard Winstanley, the Digger, Mystic and Rationalist, Communist and Social Reformer
Berens, Lewis Henry
Communism; Land use; Winstanley, Gerrard, 1609-
He then further emphasises his contention, in words similar to those
that are to-day resounding throughout the advanced political centres of
the world, as follows:
"And let all men say what they will, so long as such are Rulers as
call the land theirs, upholding this particular propriety of Mine
and Thine, the common people shall never have their liberty, nor
the Land be ever freed from troubles, oppressions, and
complainings, by reason whereof the Creator of all things is
continually provoked. O thou proud, selfish, governing Adam, in
this Land called England! know that the cries of the poor, whom
thou layeth heavy oppressions upon, are heard."
And in the closing passage of the chapter he formulates his social
ideals in the following words:
"This is the unrighteous Adam, that dammed up the water springs of
universal liberty, and brought the Creation under the curse of
bondage, sorrow, and tears. But when the Earth becomes a Common
Treasury, as it was in the beginning, and the King of Righteousness
comes to rule in every one's hearts, then He kills the first
Adam--for Covetousness thereby is killed.
"A man shall have meat and drink and clothes by his labour in
freedom, and what can he desire more in Earth? Pride and Envy
likewise are killed thereby; for everyone shall look upon each
other as equal in the Creation, every man, indeed, being a perfect
Creation of himself. And so this second Adam, Christ the Restorer,
stops or dams up the running of those stinking waters of
self-interest, and causes the waters of life and liberty to run
plentifully in and through the Creation, making the Earth one Store
House, and every man and woman to live in the Law of Righteousness
and Peace, members of one household."
In a subsequent chapter (chap. vi.) he returns to this subject, and
emphasises the differences of the views of the ethical-minded man and
the ordinary conventional materialist, in the following suggestive
passage:
"The man of the flesh judges it a righteous thing that some men who
are cloathed with the objects of the Earth, and so called rich men,
whether it be got by right or wrong, should be Magistrates to rule
over the poor; and that the poor should be servants, nay, rather
slaves, to the rich. But the spiritual man, which is Christ, doth
judge according to the light of equity and reason, that all mankind
ought to have a quiet subsistence and freedom to live upon Earth;
and that there should be no bondman nor beggar in all his holy
mountain."
For, he contends:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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