Presbyterianism was completed, when in the church of Saint Margaret's at
Westminster the Commons of England ratified the Solemn League and
Covenant of Scotland. Over the wild time which followed it will be
unnecessary for our purpose to linger. The work was done: then followed
the reaction. In both countries the oppressed became in turn the
oppressors. The champions of religious liberty became as bigoted and
intolerant as those whose intolerance and bigotry had first goaded them
into rebellion. The old Presbyterian saw the rise of new modes of
worship with the same horror that he had shown at the ritual of Laud.
Milton protested that the "new Presbyter is but old Priest writ large."
Within only four years of the outbreak of the civil war no less than
sixteen religious sects were found existing in open defiance of the
principles of faith which that war was pledged to uphold. One common
bond, indeed, united these sects in sympathy: one and all repudiated
with equal energy the authority of the Church to prescribe a fixed form
of worship: a national Church was, in their eyes, as odious and
impossible a tyranny as the divine right of kings. But this common
hatred of the interference of a Mother Church could not teach them
tolerance for each other. Cardinal Newman has described the enthusiasm
of Saint Anthony as calm, manly, and magnanimous, full of affectionate
loyalty to the Church and the Truth. "It was not," he says, "vulgar,
bustling, imbecile, unstable, undutiful." The religious enthusiasm of
the two nations at this time, though at heart sincere and just, was
unfortunately in its public aspect the exact opposite of Saint
Anthony's. There was the essential great meaning of the matter, to
borrow Carlyle's words, but there were also the mean, peddling details.
It was the misfortune of many, of three kings of England among the
number, that the latter should seem the most vital of the two.
Presbyterian and Independent, Leveller and Baptist, Brownist and Fifth
Monarchy Man, one and all stood up and made proclamation, crying, "Look