This system of negation and protest might have done its needed work and passed, had it not had the misfortune, from the moral and intellectual sides, to come to dominate the power of government. At first Puritanism claimed nothing that could really be termed a party. It may be compared to the Labrador current, cold and invigorating, flowing through the ocean of national life. As it proceeded, however, it met and united with another great current, and the sweep and impetuosity of the two combined carried with them the whole life of the nation, as neither could have done alone. Much had been borne by the people during the reign of Elizabeth, which it had become increasingly evident toward her end that they would not submit to under any successor. The early years of the Stuart dynasty indicated that a constitutional struggle, far transcending the religious, was in preparation. It was by no means true that all of those who were opposed to the King's views as to his prerogative agreed with the Puritan views as to prelacy; but in the case of many individuals, the two revolts were merged into one; and in any case, the two movements, being both directed against the government, would tend to unite, in order to make common cause against the same enemy, though to attain their several ends. It is true that, in the long run, the leading ideas of the Reformation led toward liberty and equality, especially through the influence of that widely diffused education which was a corollary of the new attitude toward the Bible. It is a fallacy, however, to believe, because certain results have followed certain causes, that, therefore, those results were striven for by the men who endeavored to put those causes into motion, for the purpose, perhaps, of securing results of quite another sort. The Puritan, at least, was no more a believer in the political rights of an individual as such, or in democracy, than in religious toleration, and the leaders in Massachusetts denounced both with equal vehemence. Calvin himself, who most fully represents the political philosophy of the movement, was inconsistent and confused in his thought on the subject; and, as Gooch has said, “modern democracy is the child of the Reformation, not of the Reformers.”[187] The Reformation was much broader than the Puritan groupings, and so was reform in the state; but the political leaders realized the great force to be added to the struggle for civil liberty, and welcomed the burning zeal of the religious malcontents. Thus arose the Puritan party, strong alike in numbers and in purpose, and composed, like all parties, of men infinitely varying in views and character. Their united forces helped at once to create civil liberty under the law and to establish a tyranny of public opinion. Footnote 187: G. P. Gooch, _The History of English Democratic Ideas in the 17th Century_ (Cambridge, 1898), p. 8.