Thomas Carlyle

“ PRAYER-MEETING The Scotch Army of Forty-thousand, ‘to deliver the King from Sectaries’, is not a fable but a fact. Scotland is distracted by dim disastrous factions, very uncertain what it will do with the King when he is delivered; but in the meanwhile Hamilton has got a majority in the Scotch Parliament; and drums are beating in that country: the ‘ Army of Forty-thousand, certainly coming,’ hangs over England like a flaming comet, England itself being all very combustible too. ”

“ For these things that have lately come to pass have been the wonderful works of God; breaking the rod of the oppressor, as in the day of Midian,—not with garments much rolled in blood, but by the terror of the Lord; who will yet save His people and confound His enemies, as on that day. The Lord multiply His grace upon you, and bless you, and keep your heart upright; and then, though you be not conformable to the men of this world nor to their wisdom, yet you shall be precious in the eyes of God, and He will be to you a horn and a shield. ”

“ Monro, lying about Appleby, has a party of horse ‘sent into the Bishopric’; firing divers houses’ thereabouts, and not forgetting to plunder the Lord Wharton’s tenants’ by the road: Cromwell penetrating towards Berwick, yet still at a good distance, scatters this and other predatory parties rapidly enough to Appleby, as it were by the very wind of him; like a coming mastiff smelt in the gale by vermin. They are swifter than he, and get to Scotland, by their dexterity and quick scent, unscathed. ”

“ All Puritanism has grown inarticulate; its fervent preachings, prayings, pamphleteerings are sunk into one indiscriminate moaning hum, mournful as the voice of subterranean winds. So much falls silent: human Speech, unless by rare chance it touch on the ‘Eternal Melodies,’ and harmonise with them; human Action, Interest, if divorced from the Eternal Melodies, sinks all silent. The fashion of this world passeth away.
The Age of the Puritans is not extinct only and gone away from us, but it is as if fallen beyond the capabilities of Memory herself ”

“ LETTER XLIX The immeasurable Negotiations with the King, ‘Proposals of the Army,’ ‘Proposals of the Adjutators of the Army,’ still occupying tons of printed paper, the subject of intense debatings and considerations in Westminster, in Putney Church, and in every house and hut of England, for many months past,—suddenly contract themselves for us, like a universe of gaseous vapour, into one small point: the issue of them all is failure. ”

“ FOR THE RIGHT HONOURABLE MY LORD OF YORK: THESE
“Putney,” 1st Sept. 1647. My Lord,—Your Advices will be seriously considered by us. We shall endeavour, to our uttermost, so to settle the affairs of North Wales as, to the best of our understandings, does most conduce to the public good thereof and of the whole. And that without private respect, or to the satisfaction of any humour,—which has been too much practised on the occasion of our Troubles. ”

“ All past Centuries have rotted down, and gone confusedly dumb and quiet, even as that Seventeenth is now threatening to do. Histories are as perfect as the Historian is wise, and is gifted with an eye and a soul! For the leafy blossoming Present Time springs from the whole Past, remembered and unrememberable, so confusedly as we say:—and truly the Art of History, the grand difference between a Dryasdust and a sacred Poet, is very much even this: To distinguish well what does still reach to the surface, and is alive and frondent for us ”

“ The good people likewise, even our most cordial friends in the Nation, beholding our turning aside from that path of simplicity we had formerly walked in and been blessed in, and thereby much endeared to their hearts,—began now to fear, and withdraw their affections from us, in this politic path which we had stepped into, and walked in to our hurt, the year before. And as a farther fruit of the wages of our backsliding hearts, we were also filled with a spirit of great jealousy and divisions amongst ourselves; having left that Wisdom of the Word, which is first pure and then peaceable ”

“ We are sure the goodwill of Him who dwelt in the Bush has shined upon us; and we can humbly say, We know in whom we have believed; who can and will perfect what remaineth, and us also in doing what is well-pleasing in His eyesight.
I find some trouble in your spirit; occasioned first, not only by the continuance of your sad and heavy burden, as you call it, but “also” by the dissatisfaction you take at the ways of some good men whom you love with your heart, who through this principle, That it is lawful for a lesser part, if in the right, to force “a numerical majority” etc. ”

“ In which great works,—wanting a spirit of faith, and also the fear of the Lord, and also being unduly surprised with the fear of man, which always brings a snare, we, to make haste, as we thought, out of such perplexities, measuring our way by a wisdom of our own, fell into Treaties with the King and his Party: which proved such a snare to us, and led into such labyrinths by the end of that year, that the very things we thought to avoid, by the means we used of our own devising, were all, with many more of a far worse and more perplexing nature, brought back upon us. ”

“ Has our impatient friend forgotten that it is Destiny withal as well as ‘Stupidity’; that such is the case more or less with Human History always? By very nature it is a labyrinth and chaos, this that we call Human History; an abatis of trees and brushwood, a world-wide jungle, at once growing and dying. Under the green foliage and blossoming fruit-trees of Today, there lie, rotting slower or faster, the forests of all other Years and Days. Some have rotted fast, plants of annual growth, and are long since quite gone to inorganic mould ”

“ We know, and shall know, only this, for certain here, That Oliver farmed part or whole of these SlepeHall Lands, over which the human feet can still walk with assurance; past which the River Ouse still slumberously rolls, towards Earith Bulwark and the Fen-country. Here of a certainty Oliver did walk and look about him habitually, during those five years from 1631 to 1636; a man studious of many temporal and many eternal things. His cattle grazed here, his ploughs tilled here, the heavenly skies and infernal abysses overarched and underarched him here. ”

“ Given a divine Heroism, to smother it well in human Dulness, to touch it with the mace of Death, so that no human soul shall henceforth recognise it for a Heroism, but all souls shall fly from it as from a chaotic Torpor, an Insanity and Horror,—I will back our English genius against the world in such a problem! ”

“ We know it not, this atrocity of the English Regicides; shall never know it. I reckon it perhaps the most daring action any Body of Men to be met with in History ever, with clear consciousness, deliberately set themselves to do. Dread Phantoms, glaring supernal on you,—when once they are quelled and their light snuffed out, none knows the terror of the Phantom! The Phantom is a poor paper-lantern with a candle-end in it, which any whipster dare now beard. ”

“ This is not ‘Freeborn John,’ the Sectarian Lieutenant-Colonel once in my Lord of Manchester’s Army; the Lilburn whom Cromwell spoke for, when Sir Philip Warwick took note of him; the John Lilburn ‘who could not live without a quarrel; who if he were left alone in the world would have to divide himself in two, and set the John to fight with Lilburn, and the Lilburn with John’! ”

“ Surely it is far enough from probable that these Letters of Cromwell, written originally for quite other objects, and selected not by the Genius of History, but by blind Accident which has saved them hitherto and destroyed the rest,—can illuminate for a modern man this Period of our Annals, which for all moderns, we may say, has become a gulf of bottomless darkness! ”

“ A Bill signed in order that the City might lend him money on good Security of Parliament; money being most pressingly wanted, for our couple of hungry Armies Scotch and English, and other necessary occasions. A Bill which seemed of no great consequence except financial; but which, to a People reverent of Law, and never, in the wildest clash of battle-swords, giving up its religious respect for the constable’s baton, proved of infinite consequence. His Majesty’s hands are tied; he cannot dismiss this Parliament, as he has done the others,—no, not without its own consent. ”

“ Gentlemen,—No man desires more to present you with encouragement than myself, because of the forwardness I find in you,—to your honour be it spoken,—to promote this great Cause. And truly God follows us with encouragements, who is the God of blessings:—and I beseech you let Him not lose His blessings upon us! ”

“ Such unhappy Ages, too numerous here below, the Genius of Mankind indignantly seizes, as disgraceful to the Family, and with Rhadamanthine ruthlessness—annihilates; tumbles large masses of them swiftly into Eternal Night. These are the Unheroic Ages; which cannot serve, on the general field of Existence, except as dust, as inorganic manure. The memory of such Ages fades away for ever out of the minds of all men. ”

“ Sir, this is a quarrelsome age; and the anger seems to me to be the worse, where the ground is difference of opinion;—which to cure, to hurt men in their names, persons or estates, will not be found an apt remedy. Sir, it will not repent you to protect those poor men of Hapton from injury and oppression: which that you would is the effect of this Letter. ”

“ Robin, I have done. Ask we our hearts, Whether we think that, after all, these dispensations, the like to which many generations cannot afford,—should end in so corrupt reasonings of good men; and should so hit the designings of bad? Thinkest thou, in thy heart, that the glorious dispensations of God point out to this? ”

“ There is, in these Letters, as I have said above, a silence still more significant of Oliver to us than any speech they have. Dimly we discover features of an Intelligence, and Soul of a Man, greater than any speech. The Intelligence that can, with full satisfaction to itself, come out in eloquent speaking, in musical singing, is, after all, a small Intelligence. He that works and does some Poem, not he that merely says one, is worthy of the name of Poet. ”

“ How good has God been to dispose all to mercy! And although it was trouble for the present, yet glory has come out of it; for which we praise the Lord with thee and for thee. And truly thy carriage has been such as occasions much honour to the name of God and to religion. Go on in the strength of the Lord ”

“ And give us leave to say, as before the Lord, who knows the secrets of all hearts, That, as we think one especial end of Providence in permitting the enemies of God and Goodness in both Kingdoms to rise to that height, and exercise such tyranny over His people, was to show the necessity of Unity amongst those of both Nations, so we hope and pray that the late glorious dispensation, in giving so happy success against your and our Enemies in our victories, may be the foundation of Union of the People of God in love and amity. ”

“ The King and his Party prepare accordingly to ruin all; by sudden Insurrections in most parts of the Nation: the Scot, concurring with the same designs, comes in with a potent Army under Duke Hamilton. We in the Army, in a low, weak, divided, perplexed condition in all respects, as aforesaid:—some of us judging it a duty to lay-down our arms, to quit our stations, and put ourselves into the capacities of private men,—since what we had done, and what was yet in our hearts to do, tending, as we judged, to the good of these poor Nations, was not accepted by them. ”

“ You see God is not weary in doing you good: I confess, Sir, His favour to you is as visible, when He comes by His power upon the hearts of your enemies, making them quit places of strength to you, as when He gives courage to your soldiers to attempt hard things. ”

“ We come not to do any act to prejudice the being of Parliaments, or to the hurt of this “Parliament” in order to the present Settlement of the Kingdom. We seek the good of all. And we shall wait here, or remove to a farther distance to abide there, if once we be assured that a speedy Settlement of things is in hand,—until it be accomplished. Which done, we shall be most ready, either all of us, or so many of the Army as the Parliament shall think fit,—to disband, or to go for Ireland. ”

“ Truly no poor creature hath more cause to put himself Forth in the cause of his God than I. I have had plentiful wages beforehand; and I am sure I shall never earn the least mite. The Lord accept me in His Son, and give me to walk in the light,—and give us to walk in the light, as He is the light! He it is that enlighteneth our blackness, our darkness. ”

“ The abysses where the thunders and the splendours are bred,—the reader sees them again laid bare; and black Madness lying close to the Wisdom which is brightest and highest:—and owls and godless men who hate the lightning and the light, and love the mephitic dusk and darkness, are no judges of the actions of heroes! ”

“ There, all vanquished, overwhelmed under such waste lumber-mountains, the wreck and dead ashes of some six unbelieving generations, does the Age of Cromwell and his Puritans lie hidden from us. This is what we, for our share, have been able to accomplish towards keeping our Heroic Ones in memory. By way of sacred poet they have found voluminous Dryasdust, and his Collections and Philosophical Histories. ”

“ In the drama of Modern History one knows not any graver, more noteworthy scene;—earnest as very Death and Judgment. They have decided to have Justice, these men; to see God’s Justice done, and His judgments executed on this Earth. ”

“ And when they have fought for you, and endured some other difficulties of war which your ‘honester’ men will hardly bear, I pray you then let them go for honest men! I protest unto you, many of those men which are of your Country’s choosing, under Captain Johnson, are so far from serving you, that,—were it not that I have honest Troops to master them,—although they be well paid, yet they are so mutinous that I may justly fear they would cut my throat!—Gentlemen, it may be it provokes some spirits to see such plan men made Captains of Horse. ”

“ A VERY DELICATE POINT INDEED;—WHEN LIEUTENANT-GENERAL CROMWELL STOOD UP, AND SPAKE SHORTLY TO THIS EFFECT: ‘It is now a time to speak, or for ever hold the tongue. The important occasion now, is no less than To save a Nation, out of a bleeding, nay almost dying condition: which the long continuance of this War hath already brought it into; so that without a more speedy, vigorous and effectual prosecution of the War,—casting off all lingering proceedings like “those of” soldiers-of-fortune beyond sea, to spin out a war,—we shall make the kingdom weary of us, and hate the name of a Parliament. ”

“ We never charged but we routed the enemy. The Left Wing, which I commanded, being our own horse, saving a few Scots in our rear, beat all the Prince’s horse. God made them as stubble to our swords. We charged their regiments of foot with our horse, and routed all we charged. ”

“ The last glimpse of the Godlike vanishing from this England; conviction and veracity giving place to hollow cant and formulism,—antique ‘Reign of God,’ which all true men in their several dialects and modes have always striven for, giving place to modern Reign of the No-God, whom men name Devil: this, in its multitudinous meanings and results, is a sight to create reflections in the earnest man! ”

“ Nor did we seek to open a way for licentious liberty, under pretence of obtaining ease for tender consciences. We profess, as ever in these things, When once the State has made a Settlement, we have nothing to say but to submit or suffer. Only we could wish that every good citizen, and every man who walks peaceably in a blameless conversation, and is beneficial to the Commonwealth, might have liberty and encouragement; this being according to the true policy of all States, and even to justice itself. ”