hour of need. Foiled, though not beaten, he turned to the pages of the
Holy Scriptures themselves for guidance and information, for consolation
and revelation. In these inspired writings, if anywhere, there surely
must be found some expression, some revelation, of God's intentions
towards His children, some indication of His holy will, which, if men
would wholly follow, would lead them down the path of righteousness to
happiness and peace. And it was from these pages that Winstanley derived
those religious and political convictions that find such eloquent and
forcible expression in his writings, and which he made such heroic
efforts to proclaim by word and deed to his fellow-men.

What seems to us to give a special charm to the study of Winstanley's
writings is that they reveal the gradual development of his acute and
powerful mind. His earlier pamphlets betray the influence of the
mysticism so prevalent in his days; his last utterance on theological
questions, as we shall see, might have been penned by an advanced
thinker of the present day, imbued with modern scientific views, and
recognising the necessary relation and co-ordination of all the physical
and psychical phenomena of the universe, "of the several bodies of the
stars and planets in the heavens above, and the several bodies of the
earth below, as plants, grass, fishes, beasts, birds, and mankind."

As to how far Winstanley owes the views that find expression in his
earlier pamphlets--which deal exclusively with cosmological or
theological speculations--to others, or to the writings of earlier
mystics, we have no means of knowing.[43:1] From them we gather,
however, that he had learned or had come to regard the whole Biblical
narrative as an allegory, of which he gives a most poetical
interpretation. The Creation is mankind. The Garden of Eden is the mind
of man, which he describes as originally filled with herbs and pleasant