"Your word-divinity darkens knowledge. You talk of a body of
Divinity, and of Anatomysing Divinity. O fine language! But when it
comes to trial, it is but a husk without the kernel, words without
life. The Spirit is in the hearts of the people whom you despise
and tread under foot."--WINSTANLEY, _The New Law of Righteousness
(1649)_.


Gerrard Winstanley, whose strange entry on the stately stage of English
History we have recorded in the previous chapter, was born at Wigan in
the County of Lancashire, on October 10th, 1609.[41:1] He was,
therefore, some ten years younger than his great contemporary Oliver
Cromwell (born 1599), one year the junior of the immortal Milton (born
1608), and some fifteen years older than George Fox (born 1624). Of his
earlier years we know nothing; but, to judge from many passages in his
writings, he appears to have received a good middle-class education, and
to have been brought up a dutiful follower of the Church as by law
established. When arrived at man's estate, he settled as a small trader
in London, of which City he probably became a freeman; for in a pamphlet
addressed to the City of London,[41:2] he claims to be "one of thy sons
by freedom." He then goes on to relate how, "by thy cheating sons in
the thieving art of buying and selling, and by the burdens of and for
the soldiery in the beginning of the war," he "had been beaten out of
both estate and trade," and had been forced "to accept of the good-will
of friends, crediting of me, to live a country life."

Those who have passed through a similar experience, who have been driven
from the comparatively comfortable middle-class life to the precarious
and comfortless existence of the vast majority of the toiling masses,