We would speak first of the Puritans, the most remarkable body of men,
perhaps, which the world has ever produced. The odious and ridiculous
parts of their character lie on the surface. He that runs may read
them; nor have there been wanting attentive and malicious observers to
point them out. For many years after the Restoration they were the
theme of unmeasured invective and derision. They were exposed to the
utmost licentiousness of the press and of the stage, at the time when
the press and the stage were most licentious. They were not men of
letters; they were, as a body, unpopular; they could not defend
themselves; and the public would not take them under its protection.
They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, to the tender mercies
of the satirists and dramatists. The ostentatious simplicity of their
dress, their sour aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff posture,
their long graces, their Hebrew names, their scriptural phrases which
they introduced on every occasion, their contempt of human learning,
their detestation of polite amusements, were indeed fair game for the
laughers. But it is not from the laughers alone that the philosophy of
history is to be learned. And he who approaches this subject should
carefully guard against the influence of that potent ridicule which
has already misled so many excellent writers.
Ecco il fonte del riso, ed ecco il rio
Che mortali perigli in se contiene
Hor qui tener a fren nostro desio,
Ed esser cauti molto a noi conviene.
Those who roused the people to resistance; who directed their measures
through a long series of eventful years; who formed, out of the most
unpromising materials, the finest army that Europe had ever seen; who
trampled down king, Church, and aristocracy; who in the short
intervals of domestic sedition and rebellion, made the name of England
terrible to every nation on the face of the earth--were no vulgar
fanatics. Most of their absurdities were mere external badges, like
the signs of freemasonry or the dresses of friars. We regret that
these badges were not more attractive. We regret that a body to whose
courage and talents mankind has owed inestimable obligations had not
the lofty elegance which distinguished some of the adherents of
Charles the First, or the easy good-breeding for which the court of
Charles the Second was celebrated. But, if we must make our choice, we
shall, like Bassanio in the play, turn from the specious caskets which
contain only the Death's head and the Fool's head, and fix on the
plain leaden chest which conceals the treasure.
The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiar character
from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests.
Not content with acknowledging, in general terms, an overruling
Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the
Great Being for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection
nothing was too minute. To know Him, to serve Him, to enjoy Him, was
with them the greatest end of existence. They rejected with contempt
the ceremonious homage other sects substituted for the pure worship of
the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the Deity through
an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full on His intolerable
brightness, and to commune with Him face to face. Hence originated
their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. The difference between
the greatest and the meanest of mankind seemed to vanish when compared
with the boundless interval which separated the whole race from Him on
whom their own eyes were constantly fixt. They recognized no title to
superiority but His favor; and, confident of that favor, they despised
all the accomplishments and all the dignities of the world. If they
were unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, they were
deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names were not found in
the registers of heralds, they were recorded in the Book of Life. If
their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials,
legions of ministering angels had charge over them. Their palaces were
houses not made with hands; their diadems crowns of glory which should
never fade away. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests,
they looked down with contempt, for they esteemed themselves rich in a
more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language,
nobles by the right of an early creation, and priests by the
imposition of a mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a being to
whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged; on whose
slightest action the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious
interest; who had been destined, before heaven and earth were created,
to enjoy a felicity which should continue when heaven and earth should
have passed away. Events which shortsighted politicians ascribed to
earthly causes had been ordained on his account. For his sake empires
had risen, and flourished, and decayed.
Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men, the one all
self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion, the other proud, calm,
inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before his
Maker; but he set his foot on the neck of his king. In his devotional
retirement, he prayed with convulsions, and groans, and tears. He was
half-maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He heard the lyres of
angels, or the tempting whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam of the
Beatific Vision, or awoke, screaming, from dreams of everlasting
fire. Like Vane, he thought himself intrusted with the scepter of the
millennial year. Like Fleetwood, he cried in the bitterness of his
soul that God had hidden His face from him. But when he took his seat
in the council, or girt on his sword for war, these tempestuous
workings of the soul had left no perceptible trace behind them. People
who saw nothing of the Godly but their uncouth visages, and heard
nothing from them but their groans and their whining hymns, might
laugh at them. But those had little reason to laugh who encountered
them in the hall of debate or in the field of battle. These fanatics
brought to civil and military affairs a coolness of judgment and
immutability of purpose which some writers have thought inconsistent
with their religious zeal, but which were in fact the necessary
effects of it. The intensity of their feelings on one subject made
them tranquil on every other. One overpowering sentiment had subjected
to itself pity and hatred, ambition and fear. Death had lost its
terrors and pleasure its charms. They had their smiles and their
tears, their raptures and their sorrows, but not for the things of
this world. Enthusiasm had made them stoics, had cleared their minds
from every vulgar passion and prejudice, and raised them above the
influence of danger and of corruption. It sometimes might lead them to
pursue unwise ends, but never to choose unwise means. They went
through the world, like Sir Artegal's iron man Talus with his flail,
crushing and trampling down oppressors, mingling with human beings,
but having neither part nor lot in human infirmities, insensible to
fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain, not to be pierced by any weapon,
nor to be withstood by any barrier.
Such we believe to have been the character of the Puritans. We
perceive the absurdity of their manners. We dislike the sullen gloom
of their domestic habits. We acknowledge that the tone of their minds
was often injured by straining after things too high for mortal reach;
and we know that, in spite of their hatred of popery, they too often
fell into the worst vices of that bad system, intolerance and
extravagant austerity, that they had their anchorites and their
crusades, their Dunstans and their De Montforts, their Dominics and
their Escobars. Yet, when all circumstances are taken into
consideration, we do not hesitate to pronounce them a brave, a wise,
an honest, and a useful body.