The Religious Foundations of Leveller Democracy 9780231896986

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THE RELIGIOUS FOUNDATIONS OF LEVELLER DEMOCRACY

The

RELIGIOUS FOUNDATIONS OF LEVELLER DEMOCRACY D. B. %obertson

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To Bermce To DONALD AND BRUCE WHO ARE THEMSELVES LEVELLERS OF A

KIND

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To the members of the Joint Committee on Graduate Instruction, Columbia University, I wish to express my thanks for their guidance and help in this study of the Levellers and for accepting it as a Ph.D. dissertation in 1948; to Dr. William Haller, Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr, Dr. Horace Friess, Dr. John T. McNeill and Dr. John Bennett. Special thanks are due Dr. Niebuhr and Dr. Haller. Dr. Haller, by encouragement and fruitful suggestion, guided the study from beginning to end, and anyone who knows his books on Puritanism will see my heavy dependence on his significant scholarship. Dr. James Luther Adams of Chicago read the manuscript carefully and gave me valuable criticisms, and I wish to thank him for his lively interest in the subject. I am grateful to the members of the staff at Union Theological Seminary Library for their many kindnesses in making the McAlpin Collection and other materials available. It is a privilege to acknowledge the generous assistance of the National Council on Religion in Higher Education (Kent Fellowship) during two years of graduate study. I had the benefit, too, of a fellowship from the Rosenwald Fund. I am grateful to my wife for the many tasks she has performed in order to be helpful. I wish to thank the following organizations and individuals for permission to quote from copyrighted and uncopyrighted material: American Historical Association for quotations from T . C. Pease, The Leveller Movement; Benziger Brothers, Inc., for quotations from their edition of St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theological Cambridge University Press for permission to quote from John N. Figgis, From Gerson to Grotius, 1414-1625, The Journal of George Fox, G. P. Gooch, English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century; John

viii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Hall Wheelock of Charles Scribner's Sons, for quotations from T . C. Hall, The Religious Background of American Culture; Columbia University Press for quotations from William Haller, Tracts on Liberty in the Puritan Revolution and The Rise of Puritanism, William Haller and Godfrey Davies, The Leveller Tracts, 1647-1653; J. M. Dent & Sons (Canada), Limited, for quotations from A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty; E. P. Dutton & Co.. Inc., for quotation from Thomas Hobbes' The Leviathan, Everyman's Library Edition; Harvard University Press for quotation from C. H. McIlwain, The Political Works of James I; Harper & Brothers for quotation from Ernst Cassirer, Language and Myth; Henry Holt and Company, Inc., for quotation from George H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory; The Macmillan Company for quotations from Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (no copyright), Francis W. Coker, Readings in Political Philosophy, Ernst Troeltsch, Social Teaching of the Christian Churches (no copyright); Oxford University Press, Inc., for quotations from A. P. D'Entrèves, The Medieval Contribution to Political Thought, and G. P. Gooch, Political Thought in England from Bacon to Halifax; Jane Robinson, The Early Life of John Lilburne (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation at the University of California, 1946); The United Lutheran Publication House for quotation from Works of Martin Luther, Vol. II, used with permission of Muhlenberg Press; University of Toronto Press for quotation from Arthur Barker, Milton and the Puritan Dilemma, 1641-1660; Vanguard Press, Inc., for quotation from Ralph B. Perry, Puritanism and Democracy; The Westminster Press for quotation from John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion; Don M. Wolfe (and Thomas Nelson and Sons) for quotations from Leveller Manifestoes of the Puritan Revolution.

CONTENTS Introduction Leveller Orientation and "Left-Wing" Puritanism J O H N LILBURNES CONVERSION AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE LILBURNE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE AND DEMOCRACY CHURCH ORGANIZATION SCRIPTURALISM AND ANTI-INTELI.ECTUALISM RELIGION AND THE "COMMON MAN*' RELEVANCE OF APOCALYPTIC INTEREST

Law and Democracy BACKGROUND OF NATURAL LAW DOCTRINE ENGLISH SETTING FOR LEVELLER APPEAL TO NATURAL L A W WILLIAM

AMES

LEVELLER SECTARIANISM AND NATURAL LAW CHRISTOPHER ST. GERMAIN HENRY PARKER LEVELLER CONCEPTION OF LAW AND GOVERNMENT

CONTENTS NATURAL LAW

71

EQUALITY OF M E N

71

MAGISTRACY

73

AND CONSENT

T H E END OF L A W AND GOVERNMENT

74

RESISTANCE TO TYRANNY

76

PROPOSALS FOR REFORMATION

81

T H E LEVELLERS ON PROPERTY

85

Leveller Beliefs about God and Mail

90

DOCTRINE OF GOD

90

DOCTRINE OF M A N

93

RICHARD OVERTON

97

WILLIAM

98

WALWYN

Leveller Beliefs about Community and about History 105 T H E INDIVIDUAL AND T H E C O M M U N I T Y

IO5

CONCEPTION OF HISTORY

110

Conclusion

121

APPENDIX

I25

NOTES

133

BIBLIOGRAPHY

157

INDEX

173

CHAPTER

I

INTRODUCTION THE First Civil War in England came to an end in 1646, and resulted in the defeat of the "arbitrary" Charles I. But the victors, having overcome a common enemy, found themselves in conflict over the disposition of Charles's power and the settlement of the issue of religious liberty. It is possible to divide the victorious elements roughly into four main groups. 1 Three of the groups were motivated to a large extent by religious interests and may be called "Puritan." The fourth group, the Erastians, were secular and anticlerical and saw the problem of religious liberty only as a problem of political order. The Presbyterian group was the most conservative Puritan element. This group was not committed to the overthrow of the monarchy—only to the limitation of its power by Parliament. "The people" were not to be a decisive factor in the national settlement. The Presbyterians were opposed to democracy in politics and to freedom in religion. But the power of the Presbyterian party, considerable at first, was effectively undone by Cromwell and the "Independents." The Independents were not necessarily more democratic than the Presbyterians, but they became the party of religious toleration, toleration of the general types sought by the "Dissenting Brethren" of the Westminster Assembly. They sought to hedge the power of a restored king as the Presbyterians did, but they also demanded that the tyranny of Parliament (a Presbyterian Parliament, they feared) be guarded against in the future. Because of its stand against the Presbyterians, Independency attracted considerable support from the more radical groups, particularly those in the army. For a time at least, the Independents, led by Cromwell and his son-in-law, Henry Ireton, adopted some of the principles of the democratic "Level-

2

INTRODUCTION'

lcrs," but, expediency served, the Independents then condemned the Levellers and jailed their leaders. Included among the Puritan "Parties to the Left" were both religious and political groups. T h e political group with which we are here concerned was, as we shall see, largely motivated by the religious thinking of the sects. But generally speaking, the term "Leveller" as used in this study applies to the radical political party in the N e w Model A r m y and in and around London during the period between 1647 and 1649—those who, an enemy said, promoted "the dividing distructive agreement of the people." 2 N o absolute statement can be made with regard to the original use of the term "Leveller," but John Lilburne, the chief of the Levellers, apparently believed that it was first used in the latter part of October, 1647, in the course of the Putney Debates. 3 Lilburne designates the parties to the debate as follows: " T h e general Councell of the Army, and the other sorts of men, going then under the name of Levellers (so baptized by yourselves at Putney)." 4 It was at Putney that the Independents, led by Henry Ireton, revealed the limits to which they intended to carry the democratic revolution projected by their uneasy allies of the left, the Levellers. T h e occasion was the demand of the Levellers that the revolution be settled on the basis of their "Agreement of the People." 5 Cromwell and Ireton agreed to a debate on the proposals, so that the General Council of the A r m y met at Putney on October 28, 1647, to debate with the Leveller Agitators. T h e major center of contention was the question of the vote, and in the process of this heated argument the radical party was apparently designated "Levellers." T h e term "Leveller" was clearly invented by the enemies of the group. Members of the party disliked the name. John Lilburne says in The Second Part of Englands New-Chaines Discovered (1649) 8 that "the word Leveller was framed and cast upon all those in the A r m y (or elsewhere) who are against any kind of Tyranny, whether in King, Parliament, Army Councel

INTRODUCTION

3

of State, &c." Speaking of his group in 1647, Lilburne had said, "Here is their Annarchicall Levelling, (as you call it) that they (the Levellers) will indure tyranny, oppression and injustice no more in apostatised Cromwell and Ireton, and their formentioned confederates . . . but desire that all alike may be levelled to, and bound by the L a w : so far I ingeniously confesse I am with them a Leveller." 7 Lilburne and others often claimed that Cromwell and the other "tyrants" were the real Levellers; the tyrants levelled the law and the principles of justice down to their own selfish interests.8 Marchamont Nedham (in The Case of the Commonwealth) identified the Levellers in this manner: "because all persons have an equality of right to chuse and be chosen . . . the promoters of this way, are not improperly called Levellers." 9 One of the most choleric of Leveller enemies, Thomas Edwards, stated what he considered to be their argument in this w a y : Seeing all men are by nature the sons of Adam, and from him have legitimately derived a natural propriety, right, and freedom, therefore England and all other nations, and all particular persons in every nation, notwithstanding the difference of laws and governments, ranks and degrees, ought to be alike free and estated in their natural liberties, and to enjoy the just rights and prerogatives of mankind, whereunto they are heirs apparent; and thus the commoners by right, are equal with the lords. For by natural birth all men are equally and alike born to like propriety, liberty, and freedom; and as we are delivered of God by the hand of nature into this world, every one with a natural innate freedom, and propriety, even so are we to live, every one equally and alike to enjoy his birthright and privilege.10 Edwards is here referring particularly to Richard Overton's Remonstrance of Many Thousand Citizens (1646). T h e political ideals of the Levellers are obviously the basis of their claim to a place in history. In the annals of the struggle for freedom and democracy they merit more than the footnote which till recently was accorded them. But the politico-demo-

4

INTRODUCTION

cratic ideals of the Levellers are not really to be understood apart from their religious background and orientation. A n d most of their political ideals are better understood as a working out of certain of their religious principles. T h i s is not to deny, of course, that Leveller political thought also had other than religious foundations and motivations, such for instance, as economic and political interest. Professor Perry has aptly said that " T o acknowledge the dynamic importance of ideals does not imply the denial or the neglect of other causes." 1 1 Leveller religion as such was important as a part of the general historical evolution of the Church into denominations paralleling the development of the modern democratic state. In the Levellers, sectarian Christianity becomes relevant to the great social and political movements of their time—relevant in terms of freedom, justice and equality. T h e r e was little, if anything, in Leveller religion as such which was new and distinctive. In general their religion, particularly that of the chief Leveller, John Lilburne, was of the sectarian 1 2 type and not a systematic theology. But if the component parts of their faith were simple and fairly c o m m o n , their particular configuration of the Christian faith showed a new, dynamic force, a challenging relevance for English social and political life. T h e Levellers were those Puritans who did not so easily m a k e their peace with the world in which they lived as did many of the Baptists and later Quakers. A n d the Levellers did not forswear the world as did so many of the apocalyptists. T h e y sided with the Puritans in general against the bishops in the early part of the revolution, but when the bishops were reduced from their position of power, the Levellers went on, with sectarians in general, to a more radical religious liberty. More than that they went beyond the religious liberty of most sectarians of their day to comprehend liberty and justice and right in the state. It was the custom of the orthodox, from the early Puritan days through H o o k e r , Hall, and on to the heresy hunters of

INTRODUCTION

5

the Presbyterian heyday, to accuse those who tampered with the idea of order and state regulation in Church government with sedition, with traitorous intent, with the destruction of society itself. T h e bishops had thus fought the Presbyterians, and the Presbyterians in turn fought the Independents and "sectarians." T h e plea of conscience, they all feared with Hobbes, was one of those forces which "tends to the dissolution of the Commonwealth." 1 3 If one considers the intimate connection of Church with society and state which still largely existed in early seventeenth-century England, the fears of the "vested interests" are not incomprehensible. In fact, none of the Puritans, of whatever degree of revolutionary spirit, consciously sought to disturb or destroy society; the Presbyterians in their defense against prelatical attack argued that it was their kind of reformation alone—the Presbyterian system—which could put society on a sound and stable foundation. T h e sectarians, when they did not deny the revolutionary character of their tenets for society, maintained that only by permitting variety of religious expression in the state could a lasting peace and prosperity be instituted. John Lilburne's earliest pamphlets were concerned with Church matters only, or at least only unconsciously with any political issue. H e was concerned with toleration or separation and appealed to his Christian brethren for assistance "that we may hand in hand with violence tumble downe to the ground the tottering confused T o w e r of Babel." 1 4 And while he claims, against the bishops, to be speaking nothing but the "naked Truths of God"—nothing scandalous, seditious or factious—he is blasting at the very foundations of English society and of the political constitution. H e claims that he did not in the least meddle "with any temporall state matters, with which I have nothing to doe and say unto; And therefore they could neither be factious, nor seditious, unlesse the Booke of God be faction and sedition, which were blasphemy once to thinke." 1 5 Unless the Book of God be faction and sedition!

6

INTRODUCTION*

That was the difficulty. In the hands of the poor and restless in the population, the Book of God could indeed, in the eyes of those in power, be a potent arm of faction and sedition. A n d when Lilburne, like others, used Scripture as the authority to challenge law and magistracy, what other conclusions could the "conservative" draw? It was all very well for Lilburne to say, after Paul in Second Corinthians, "the Weapons of our warfare are not carnall, but mighty through God," 1 8 but such weapons were no comfort to his enemies. And such weapons could be used in many ways. At this early state in his career Lilburne not only professes no interest in "Temporall things"; but, following Luther, he held it "unlawfull for any of Gods people, in their greatest Oppression by the majestrate, to rebell or take up any Temporall armes against them, whether the Oppression be in Spiritual! or Temporall things, but only to pray and make use of Gods two edged Sword . . . and waite upon with patience for redresse and deliverance, and to seeke unto him for strength, that they may willingly and couragiously suffer any Terrours or Torments that they will inflict upon them, for standing close to God, and his naked Truth and cause . . . " 1 7 Before long Lilburne was to abandon this doctrine and make use of other weapons besides prayer and Scripture, namely political agitation and party organization. In 1649 he expresses quite the opposite position on resistance to oppression and tyranny, a position he had arrived at before going to war on the side of Parliament against Charles I. He calls such doctrine as he had previously held "the Bishops eld weapon" and "old Popish doctrine" and will not allow Attorney General Prideaux to best him in the name of religion. 18 William Walwyn, one of the Leveller leaders, had long since seen the devilish use which the politicians made of this article of faith. "The politicians of this world would have religious men to be fooles, not to resist . . . urging Gods holy Word, whilst they proceed to their damnable courses; but (beloved) they will finde that true

INTRODUCTION

7

Christians are of all men the most valiant defenders of the just liberties of their country . . . true Christianity hates and abhorres tyranny, oppression, perjury, cruelty, deceipt, and all kinde of filthinesse; and true Christians to be the most impartiall and most severe punishers thereof." 1 9 T h e process by which sectarian religious principles came to bear on social and political issues is never so easily delineated; it is not clearly and consciously laid out in Leveller thought, for theirs was no wooden, rationalistic approach to the question. It was a gradual procedure followed in the heat of controversy. T h e fact was that religious principles could not be separated from political life, even in the most "spiritual" religion, though the profession and the attempt may be made. "Dogma, brought into hourly relation with life, led men beyond dogma." If one approached religious liberty, professedly in the interest of religion only, he was forced by developing circumstances and by the authorities to see how the two could aggravate each other, whether he agreed with their conclusions or not. T h e sectarian was always brought to the point of defending his principles and himself against the charge of revolutionary intent. In fact, some of the wild charges of bishops and Presbyterians and politicians may first have suggested to the minds of some sectarians the possible relevance of their religious principles for social criticism. T h e repression exercised by Archbishop Laud and later threatened by the Presbyterians had much to do with maturing the thinking of religious people. T h e Presbyterian majority in the Long Parliament undoubtedly was the chief source of Lilburne's venture into an understanding of the foundation of Parliament's power. Through suffering at the hands of Church power established by law, Lilburne and his like came to see that national life was made of whole cloth—that religious interest could not ultimately or mediately be separated morally from social interest, though legally that may be the goal. T h e point was confirmed by the actions of the Presbyterians in Par-

8

INTRODUCTION

liament. In fact, at the very time when Lilburne's thought was beginning to be socially relevant in a much more positive way, he was writing to William Prynne that he was not even opposed to Parliament's establishment of a "State-Government for such a Church as they shall thinke fit . . . so that they leave my Conscience free to the Law and Will of my Lord and K i n g . " 2 0 Establishment per se was not the question. There might even be legal establishment provided the individual conscience be not oppressed. In the same manner Lilburne later insisted that he had not opposed the King "qua King," but only as the King had forsaken law and equity to oppress the citizens. 21 A consideration of the nature of the religious life and the magistrate's place in religious life is only half a step removed from thought about magistracy on a more comprehensible scale. A consideration of the moral aspects of religion (and one must not forget the Puritan insistence that the Christian's "actions" and "conversation" before men were the signs of grace) could not but engage the very foundations of an institution so immediately pressing as the state. Of course, the struggle of lawyers and law courts (Sir Edward Coke, et al.) with royal prerogative, and of Parliament with King, opened the discussion of the nature of government at the same time on another level, but the interest of sectarians like the Levellers, and particularly Lilburne, came concomitantly from faith. God was the God of all the earth; all were subject to Him; all were bound by His laws. It would be simple to say that Lilburne and the Levellers got interested in politics simply because of personal injuries, and that factor cannot be dismissed. But the important point is that their personal grievances contributed to an understanding of society and "commons" at large. There were thousands who stood cheated and mistreated as Lilburne and his friends were, but only these were "called." These spoke in the name of God and of God's laws against "arbitrariness" and tyranny wherever they saw it.

INTRODUCTION

9

A g a i n , by whatever procedure sectarian religion turned to an interest in social and political right, justice and equality, it w a s hardly a rationalistic procedure, and the t u r n i n g did not constitute in their minds simply a shift to "secular interests." A t any rate, such a characterization does not comprehend most of the facts. O n e need only compare the outlook of "Freeborn J o h n " ( L i l b u r n e ) to that of " C i t i z e n T o m Paine," or even to that of Locke, to see this. T o see in the Levellers, even Overton, the most "rationalistic" of the leaders (and at the same time the least important), any basic affinity w i t h "the heavenly city of the eighteenth century philosophers" or the naturalism of the nineteenth century, is to rob their thought of meaning. It is decidedly misleading to look upon the Levellers as w h o l l y secular, 2 2 for while they were a part of sectarian development w h i c h tended toward secularism, they nevertheless stand in the early part of this development w h e n the sect w a s still a powerful protest against the corrupt w o r l d . T h e y were "rationalistic" and "doctrinaire" to some degree, but again Lilburne, especially, merely suggests the later development toward autonomous reason and could not have arrived at the eighteenth-century conclusions. 2 3 T h e main purpose of this w o r k is to point out how the Levellers, especially Lilburne, maintained the witness of faith against the w o r l d , even w h i l e they discounted the C h u r c h and ecclesiastical authority in the Christian's battle against evil. T h e Leveller use of religious language was decidedly not a " f r o n t " or a "camouflage." 2 4 O n e writer, speaking of the Putney Debates of 1647, says that the Leveller Party "at times adopts the lang u a g e of religious e n t h u s i a s m . " 2 5 It was not a matter of " a d o p t i n g " the language at all. In fact, one should be surprised if they did not use religious language and concepts consistently. It w o u l d be just as nearly correct to say that at times they adopt the language of political democrats. T h e Levellers did not cease to believe that they were acting according to Christian faith. W h i l e their interests broadened

10

INTRODUCTION

f r o m the original issue of religious toleration, they felt compelled to follow the direction of their consciences; theirs was no "fugitive and cloistered virtue," to use Milton's phrase. L i k e Jefferson, and more intensely, they did not cease to believe while most fully engaged in political interests, that "Resistance to T y r a n n y is obedicnce to G o d , " and obedience to G o d was fundamental. Lilburne's whole life may be understood, in a very real sense, in terms of resistance to tyranny, on a limited scale at first, but gradually resistance to any tyranny whatsoever. H e could have agreed with Milton that "justice and religion are from the same G o d . " H e does not cease to believe that " t h e powers that be arc ordained of G o d , " but G o d has set limits to every earthly power, and he sins against G o d and his own nature w h o does not resist tyrannical and "unb o u n d e d " power. Leveller thought was sccular in the sense that the Church was no longer called upon "to mediate between even the humblest activity and the divine purpose." T h e r e was not the sacramental character about life familiar in the thought of the Middle Ages. But life was still conceived in the aspect of eternity. T h e moral law, God's law in society, was basic to Leveller thought. A n d " m o r a l law" for them bore all the combined power of the L a w of God and the L a w of N a t u r e , of both reason and revelation. T h e power or authority of A l m i g h t y G o d , in his natural and in his revealed will, was contrasted with the limited, finite, self-seeking interests of individual men and parties. Lilburne fights prelates, Star C h a m b e r , lords, Parliament, army council, grandees, not because they were Powers, but because they left and forsooke that declared and knowne Rule, by which they themselves were to bee ruled and guided, in the exercise of that power, for . . . I say no Power on earth is absolute but God alone, and all other Powers are dependents upon him, and those Principles of Reason and Righteousnesse that hee hath indowed man with, upon the true Basis of which all earthly Majestracy ought to be founded, and when the power or Majestracy degenerates from

INTRODUCTION

II

that Rule, by which it is to bee Ruled, and betakes it selfe to its crooked and innovating will; it is to bee no more a Power or Majestracy, but an obnoxious Tyranny to be resisted by all those that would not willingly have man to usurp the Soveraigntie of God to Rule by his will and pleasure.27 A n d when in 1649, following these principles, he stood before the House of Commons with a copy of his Englands New Chains Discovered, he could sincerely say, long before Patrick Henry's similar great statement: "I am sorry I have but one life to lose, in maintaining the Truth, Justice and Righteousness, of so gallant a piece." 2 8 Few, if any, of the intricate theological problems of social relevance were worked out. But the simplicity of sectarian religion, as Troeltsch has pointed out, 29 was part of the power of it. Its logic and intensity were the more pressing because life was simply understood in terms of over-all principles applying to everyone and to every situation, giving no one, in whatsoever position, the right to act in terms of his own interests alone. Certainly there was nothing so self-conscious and rationalistic about Leveller procedure as a "principle of segregation" and a "principle of analogy," which has been worked out so attractively. 30 Of course, analogy (from religion to the state) cannot be denied. One can quote to that effect. But it was generally the systematic thinkers, the theologians and philosophers, who thought in those terms. T h e practice of drawing "analogies" hardly represents anything like a logical procedure followed by the minds of early seventeenth-century English Christians in general w h o fought and wrote and wrangled for justice, equality and "rights." If there was thinking in terms of analogy, there was in the Levellers a profound sense of the direct bearing of faith upon life. Political content in religious formulae did not mean simple substitution, as it did not necessarily mean the end product of sustained thought. Cassirer's analysis of "mythic thinking" applies here if anywhere. " W h a t seems to

12

INTRODUCTION

our subsequent reflection as a sheer transcription is mythically conceived as a genuine and direct identification." 3 1 T h i s fact, as it relates to Leveller thought, will become clear in the following pages. In developing the religious nature and orientation of Leveller thought it is the intention first to note the original relationship of Leveller thought to the sects, or to "left-wing Puritanism." H e r e will be indicated the major features of sectarian thought which bore social and political relevance in the Levellers, consistently dealing primarily with the thought of John Lilburne. T h e third chapter will be devoted to the traditional doctrine of Natural L a w as it came down to the Levellers and as they employed it in English politics. Chapter four will indicate the Leveller doctrine of G o d and m a n expressed and implied in their writings and the relevance of these doctrines for political thought. Finally, the Leveller conception of society and of history will be stated and compared with that of some of their contemporaries.

CHAPTER

n

LEVELLER ORIENTATION AND "LEFT-WING" PURITANISM J O H N L I L B U R N E ' S CONVERSION AND RELIGIOUS

EXPERIENCE

the most important leader in the Leveller movement, came talking and writing. He came talking and writing like Puritans 1 of all shades of thought, and he was not in this respect the most modest in his generation. His titles are numbered by the score. Lilburne's first books, in 1638, reveal much of his religious position, much of his character, much of the whole tenor of his life and thought for the next eighteen years. The titles show him to be a child of his generation, using the language, fighting the fight of the Puritans against the prelates.2 The Christian Mans Triall portrays the Puritan type of struggle with evil, with the forces of darkness, now embodied in the bishops. His second book was A Wor^e of the Beast or a Relation of a Most Unchristian Censure, Executed upon John Lilburne (Now Prisoner of the Fleet) the 18 of April 1638.3 "The Beast" was the "anti-Christian" Laudian Church, and "the worke" and "unchristian censure" were the apprehending, jailing and making a public example of Lilburne for violating the censorship law. The people who read knew well what "The Beast" was, but for those who would understand more about the "misterie of iniquitie," Lilburne recommended the reading of Revelation.4 Lilburne's pamphlets, and more fully his earliest ones, sound what Bishop Hall accused the Puritan pamphleteers in general of sounding—"the Babylonish note . . . 'Down with it! down with it even to the ground!' " 8 JOHN L I L B U R N E ,

Lilburne's fight against political tyranny is understood in the light of his fight with the bishops, and his fight with the bishops is largely a result of his religious experience. It was "ex-

14

LEVELLER ORIENTATION AND " L E F T - W I N G "

PURITANISM

perience" first, or "enthusiasm," which made a sectarian a sectarian. "Experience" became the basis of the rejection of the Established Church and of the orthodox doctrine of election. 8 T h e soul set free through Christ, 7 the soul knowing a liberating joy in the presence of the Holy Spirit, that soul could not tolerate man-made curbs and tyrannies. It must soar in its own strength and light. Lilburne's experience of the presence of the "enlightening Spirit," and the results of his experience in social and political terms, symbolize in this period the relevance of sectarian religion. H e was converted and called while standing in the stocks in the public square. 8 He was called not to preach 9 but to be the voice and leader of "the contemptible ones of the world," and not the congregation but the nation would hear from him and be compelled to take him into account. Before this time, he says, he was "but a very Idiot in the right wayes of God, having muddy affections, but wanted inward principle, having fiery zeale, but it was without grounded spirituall knowledge; But now the Lord hath made known to me, by his spirit, the way wherin to serve and worship him." 1 0 H e says that the stripes inflicted upon him "purged out my ign o r a n c e . " 1 1 Standing upon the stocks before the people, Lilburne felt the power of the Holy Spirit upon him, and he was "exceedingly lifted up." 1 2 Lilburne's experience was so stirring and overwhelming that he could not utter it or write it down, 1 3 but he never showed much doubt as to what it meant for him in practical terms. A factor which struck Lilburnc as particularly important, and one which bore ample fruit later, was the presence of the Spirit in one so lowly as he. 1 4 T h e reason for God's appearing to the lowly, he says, is that "no flesh should glory in his presence." 1 6 Such "heavenly learning" as he has is a "gift of his Holy Spirit"—not based upon merit, learning or position. 1 6 T h i s experience for him levelled all people before God, levelled all criteria down to experience and the authority of God's Word, which was understood by the aid of the Spirit. This under-

LEVELLER ORIENTATION AND "LEFT-WING" PURITANISM

15

standing of the workings of the Holy Spirit has obvious democratic implications. T h e question of Lilburne's rejection of the Established Church we shall discuss later. The acceptance or rejection of the doctrine of predestination is pertinent at this point. It has been pointed out very clearly 1 7 that the Puritan preachers had been preaching for over three generations before Lilburne's time as if salvation could be general. At least many came to believe that to be the meaning of the Puritan sermons. " T h e teachings of the Puritan pulpit had brought to him (Lilburne), and to others like him, a great liberation of spirit. They felt themselves rather set free, than condemned, by the great doctrine of election." 1 8 William Walwyn, a Leveller and friend of Lilburne's, specifically stated his belief in "free justification by Christ alone." 1 0 While Lilburne does not state anywhere that he was an Arminian, or that he rejected Calvinistic predestination, his words and his experience clearly point toward a rejection of the strict Calvinistic doctrine. 20 Lilburne points out that the Gospel shines forth now to such an extent that none is left with an excuse for unfaithfulness before God. " T h e trueth of the everlasting Gospell is preached and Light is now brought into the world: so that now if after all this a man worship the Beast and his Image . . . the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God." 2 1 Elsewhere 2 2 he says he enters a "true Church" so that he may "become a witnesse bearer against the world, leaving them without the least excuse before God in the day of their great account." The implication certainly is that the people in general can find salvation in the "true church" if they will but seek it aright and not reject it. He was sure of his own salvation, and he held himself up to the people as an example of what God could do to any and all of the people. He proclaimed to the mob, that " T h e Lord hath promised his enlightening Spirit unto all his people that are laborous and studious to know him aright." 2 3 Underneath his portrait of 1641 2 4 these words appear:

16

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PURITANISM

Gaze not upon this shaddow that is vaine, But rather raise thy thoughts a higher straine, T o GOD (I meane) who set this young man free, And in like straits can eke deliver thee. Lilburne suggests elsewhere, without elaboration, that even pagans, who had only the light of nature to guide them, were led into the "wayes of God." 2 3 This comprehensive grace and the comprehensive law of nature he later united in the interest of political as well as religious liberty and rights. Christ and the "enlightening Spirit" were present and real and powerful in Lilburne's experience. Lilburne's Christ was not a far-off Christ. H e was there in England engaged in the controversies of the day, fortifying His instruments, such as Lilburne himself, to overthrow the power of the devil. Against the bishops, against the King, against Parliament and Cromwell, Lilburne felt the presence and the compelling direction of his Lord. Said he to those gathered at the pillory: "it belongs also to thee, or mee, or any other man, if thou beest a Souldier of Iesus Christ, whatsoever by place or Calling thy rancke or degree bee, bee it higher or lower, yet if hee call for thy service, thou art bound though others stand still, to maintaine his power and glory to the utmost of thy power and strength, yea to the shedding of the last drop of thy blood . . . Alas if men should hold their peace in such times as these, the Lord would cause the verie stones to speake to convince man of his cowardlie basenesse." 2 6 It is out of this compelling reality of the presence of Christ that Lilburne finds his boldness before the Star Chamber, 2 7 the strength and cheerfulness to suffer the penalty of the bishops, 28 the brazenness to challenge their authority and defy them to debate publicly, 29 the courage and stability to survive in prison, 30 the poise to speak before the courts. 31 Lilburne never ceased to believe that "if you are willing to have Christ, you must owne him and take him upon his own 32 tearmes, and know that Christ and the Crosse is inseparable." Lilburne never ceased to be, in his own eyes, a martyr, and the

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17

cause never ceased to be holy. H e compared his being beaten through the streets ( a m e m e n t o of L a u d i a n injustice) with Christ's being led to the cross, and w h e n his hands were tied at the tail of the cart to begin the ordeal, he remarked, "wellcome be the Crosse of Christ." H e was bold and cheerful in the faith that it was " G o d ' s cause" he suffered, and he could thus bear his punishment " w i t h a holy disdaine." 3 3 H i s prison—the Fleet — h e compared with " a delightsome and rejoycing Pallace and Castle, in which I stand Sentinell night and day, to defend Sion the City of the living from her enemies." 3 4 H i s enemies, who have put him in prison, have sent h i m to a "heaven on earth." 3 5 Lilburne actually glories in his imprisonment, a sentiment which begins to wane in his later pamphlets. Suffering now, as in the days of the martyrs, is a m a r k of the faith. 3 6 A s B u r t o n reportedly did before h i m when his ears were cropped, 3 7 Lilburne considered his day of punishment his wedding day, the day when he was married to Jesus C h r i s t . 3 8 W h i l e he persistently asserts his innocence of the charge of bringing seditious books (Bastwick's and others) f r o m Holland for distribut i o n , 3 9 and proclaims against the injustice of his situation, he nevertheless says that G o d delivered h i m into the enemy's hands for H i s own purposes: " T h a t there by I might be weaned f r o m the world, and see the vanitie and emptines of all things therein."40 H o w does Lilburne's religious experience relate to that of his generation? A n d what relation did this religious vitality have to the demands for democracy in Cromwell's E n g l a n d ? T h e s e and related questions will be discussed subsequently. As we shall see, in this chapter, it is the religious experience of men like Lilburne which lay at the basis of their doctrine of the "true church." Also, m e n and women w h o felt the immediate presence of the H o l y Spirit without any mediation, tended to belittle the pretensions of the learned and discount the place of learning in the order of grace. C o m m o n people, by reading the Scriptures and being open to the workings of the Spirit,

18

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AND " L E F T - W I N G "

PURITANISM

could c o m e by the "necessary truths" themselves, without mediation. Altogether these developments contributed toward

a

g r o w i n g self-consciousness of the c o m m o n man, the c l a i m i n g of a lost inheritance in religion and in society. T h e outpouring of the Spirit upon the people suggested to a great many Biblefilled

minds that G o d was beginning to fulfill His promises

here and n o w — i n history. LILBURNE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE

AND H I S

CONTEMPORARIES

AND DEMOCRACY

J o h n Lilburne's religious experience was not essentially different from that which Puritans had come to k n o w through the past two generations and more. H i s experience was undoubtedly dramatic beyond most, but the elements of it were familiar enough so that he did not speak a strange language to his generation. In L o n d o n during the time Lilburne was growing into m a n hood, there were many mystical influences, a number of which undoubtedly left their m a r k on him. W e have no knowledge of his association with any particular mystic or mystical group except, of course, the Baptists. T h e witness to intense religious experience, to what R u f u s Jones called the "mystical trait" or the vivid awareness of G o d ' s direct presence in a Pentecostal fashion, was prevalent a m o n g the sects and not unusual a m o n g the more orthodox Puritans. T h e r e is nothing in this type of mystical experience which suggests concern with a metaphysical problem, the problem of achieving unity of the soul with Absolute Reality or with G o d . G o d , in this latter type of mysticism, is far removed from the concrete and the finite. T h e soul that would take the "flight of the alone to the A l o n e " must rid itself of ordinary associations with emotions and deeds and follow the "mystic way" to peace. T h e traditional "grades" or levels the soul must mount are the "purgative," the "illuminative," and the "unitive." But the mys-

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19

tical cxpericnce which conccrns us in seventeenth-century England is quite different. God is not far removed; rather is He very near, and he invades or "ravishes" the soul. The religious experience does not involve a separation from emotion and deed. Love and the awakening of the moral consciousness result from the experience of God's presence. And there is no rigid "way" to find it or express it. There is great variety in the mystical experiences of this period, variety in terms of the types of people who have the experiences, the way they express themselves, variety in the degree of depth and inclusiveness. While mystical religious expression was no doubt to some extent indigenous to England, 11 a fact of some importance is that after 1600 English translations of older continental mystical writings began to appear rather extensively. There is no direct indication, for instance, that Lilburne and the other Levellers had read the Theologia Germanica, one of the continental mystical writings circulating around London in the early i6oo's, but Lilburne had read Luther. Luther indicated this work as one of the three books most influential on his life. The work contains ideas certainly not in contradiction to those in religious circles in early seventeenth-century London. It is difficult to gauge the influence of the Theologia Germanica upon the people at large. The work had undoubtedly been read by educated Englishmen before the beginning of the seventeenth century. It had been translated into Latin in 1557 by Sebastian Castellio. By 1628 John Everard was circulating an English translation in manuscript.42 The diligence of the bishops prevented the work from being published, according to Giles Randall, who finally had it printed in 1628.43 In Theologia Germanica the individualistic emphasis is strong. It represents, too, a mystical protest against corrupt institutions in the interest of righteousness and perfection and "inward religion," sentiments not foreign to the sects. It was in wide enough circulation to be picked out by the heresy hunters for special attention.44

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The dissemination of continental mysticism was furthered by other translations by John Everard as well as by his own preaching. In addition to the Theologia Germanica, Everard translated Sebastian Frank's The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil,45 Cusanus* The Vision of God, and selections from Hermes Trismegistus, Dionysius the Areopagite,40 Denck, and Tauler. 47 It was through Everard's preaching, however, that mystical teaching was most intensely and perhaps most widely disseminated in and around London in the decade of the 1630's. Everard came under the ire of the bishops and of the orthodox because of his sermons. Made to "dance attendance" often before Laud and the bishops, he protested, as others had done before him and as the Levellers and others were to do later, against being so abused when no charges were actually read against him. 48 Everard insisted that the concern for eternal bliss in heaven should not blind men to the real meaning of salvation here and now. "For heaven is Nothing else But Grace perfected, Tis of the same nature with that you enjoy Here; For He that is United and made O N E with Jesus Christ by Faith, Hath a True and R E A L , Glimpse of those Ravishing Glories and Delights, which he shall for ever Enjoy." 4 9 John Eaton, another mystic of Everard's type, held that it is necessary that "our will and affections may be ravished and carried after the goodnesse and excellency of the benefit." 6 0 Lilburne, probably without actually having heard the words of these men, testifies to the prevalence of a mystical emphasis of the Spirit's presence and its ability to "ravish our soules." 61 Again he says, "my soule is ravished with that fulnesse, sweetnesse, aimeablenesse, and beautifulnesse, that I find in my God; Oh that my soule were altogether with him . . ." He wrote to a woman friend: "my soul hath even been ravished and swallowed up with beholding the naked delight that is in Christ alone." 5 2 Something of the ecstasy he knew in his experience, too, is seen in his comparison of his day of suffering with his wedding day, a comparison already noted. It was as though he

LEVELLER ORIENTATION AND "LEFT-WING" PURITANISM

21

were joined with Christ Himself. The experience of the Spirit's presence was overwhelming and ineffable. 53 John Saltmarsh, a younger man than Everard or John Eaton, was one of the most remarkable mystical thinkers of the period. He became a popular preacher and served as a chaplain in the N e w Model Army, where Lilburne may have heard him preach. In any case, Saltmarsh was well-known among the higher officers of the Army, and Lilburne undoubtedly knew of him. When the Leveller agitators were debating the points of the Agreement with the Independents at Putney in 1647, Saltmarsh wrote to the Council, "now ye are met in council, the Lord make ye to hearken to one another from the highest to the meanest, that the voice of God, wheresoever it speaks, may not be despised." 5 4 Saltmarsh's mysticism developed along the lines of an attempt to achieve "unity of beleevers" of all kinds, to fill the souls of his "uncharitable and selfe loving age" with the light and spirit of Christ. Like William Walwyn, Lilburnc's associate after 1645, Saltmarsh sought to undercut the bigotry and intolerance of the period, though he, more notably than Walwyn, sought to do it by a more intensive personal experience of the Spirit. Saltmarsh's most often used symbols were the eye and the heart. The eye represented for him the fact of Christian wisdom, particularly the wisdom of understanding the word of the Scriptures. The heart symbolized Christian affection and motivation toward God and man. 55 Lilburne did not use such symbols, but he, like many in his day, very frequently referred in his early works to "eye" and "sight" when speaking of spiritual experience. "The Lord hath taken away the scales of ignorance and blindnesse that did hang upon my understanding, and hath annointed my eyes with true and spirituall eye-salve, so that I see very much clearer into the pure waies of God." 86 For Lilburne the eye includes also the function of the heart in Saltmarsh's thought, both the intellectual and the emotional aspects. He refers to "the eyes of spirituall understanding (which

22

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is to kjiow, see, and imbrace the naked Truths of God)." 8 T The symbol is undoubtedly taken from the Gospel story by the Bible-reading generation, the story of the healing of the blind man. Lilburne, like others, just as often uses the kindred concept of "light" for the new spiritual life. 58 The not uncommon occurrence of mystical experience among Lilburne's generation may be noted further in such men as the Scottish Presbyterian, Samuel Rutherford, and in Cromwell. Rutherford says, "Many a sweet, sweet, soft kisse, many perfumed well smelled kisses, and embracements, have I received of my royall Master: He and I have much love together." 89 Cromwell, writing to a cousin in 1638, said, "He it is that enlighteneth our blackness, our darkness. I dare not say, He hideth His face from me. He giveth me to see light in His light. One beam in a dark place hath exceeding much refreshment in it." 6 0 Lilburne's mysticism is always related to his sufferings. It is not that of the silent contemplator. Typically Puritan, his is an active faith. As it was for Rutherford 6 1 and others, so for Lilburne, mystical experience, the consciousness of a direct relationship with God, is most obviously the strength and courage and patience necessary to survive in the circumstances which have overtaken him. It became a source of power to challenge political tyranny, a vital impulse toward democracy. He had read the story of the persecution of God's children in the Bible. He had read Foxe's Boo\ of Martyrs?2 and he was not only sure that he suffered in the same fight which claimed the martyrs of the faith but that the measure of the Holy Spirit to sustain him was at least commensurate with theirs. Sometimes upon a religious, and sometimes upon a civil account, and very often upon both in one and the same persons; the most faithful servants of Christ in every country where they lived, being ever the greatest enemies to tyranny and oppression, and the most zealous maintainers of the known laws and liberties of their Country, as was John Hus in Bohemia, Jerom of Prague,

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23

John Wickliff in England, the Martyrs in Queen Maryes dayes, the Hugonots or Protestants in France, the Gues in the LowCountrys; all not only esteemed Hereticks by the Church, but rebels and traytors to their several States and Princes. . . . And truly, though I have not wherewith to compare with those glorious witnesses of God, that in the Apostles times sealed the testimony of Jesus with their bloods . . . yet I have the assurance of God in my own conscience, that in the day of the Lord I shall be found to have been faithful. 63 After Lilburne's experience in politics, he turned finally to the mysticism of the Quakers. 6 4 T h e r e had been already " 5 a hint of his repudiation of all existing Church organizations. T h e r e is contemptuous reference to "their ( C r o m w e l l ' s and Ireton's) champions in all their pretended churches of God, either Independent or Anabaptistical." Also, there was his emphasis that salvation is not dependent upon any church. But as w e shall see, he was in his earlier days typically sectarian in his doctrine of the church. Mysticism had been one of the factors in undermining the authority of the R o m a n Church before the Reformation. In E n g l a n d it became an instrument for repudiating the tyranny of Church power and all power which oppressed the lives of m e n . Mysticism further repudiated tradition, in so far as tradition and precedent were oppressive or limited the individual in his approach to G o d . Lilburne repudiated tradition not only in the Church but also in civic and political matters as well, in so far as tradition here separated a m a n f r o m the rights which G o d has provided for him. CHURCH ORGANIZATION

W h i l e considerable space in Lilburne's early pamphlets is devoted to telling the joy and reality of his Christian experience, he nevertheless spends most of the time, in typical sectarian manner, on controversial questions relating mainly to church organization and the problem of authority.

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The major features of Lilburne's conception of the "true church" were traditional with sectarians. The Anabaptists of the continent held similar ideas on the church and its organization. In England, Robert Browne (Reformation Without Tarrying for Anie) 8 6 laid down the standards for a "free," "congregational" church. But even before Browne there may have been suggestions in Wycliff's and the Lollards' attacks upon the "universal" Roman Church and upon the national Church. It is the view of T . C. Hall that "the real father of the congregational church is not the erratic Brown, nor even the brave and able Barrow, but John WyclifT and the early Lollards."" 7 Some of the English Baptists before and after Lilburne's time held "free Church" ideas. Common features were these: in matter, the Church does not consist of all those who have heard the Gospel preached, but of those "that declared the worke of Grace to be wrought in their hearts," and of such persons "who by their outward Conversation may be judged to be true Beleevers." 6 8 The form of a true church is equally important. Lilburne's idea is that of the earlier sectarians; it suggests the making of a covenant among members and with Christ. "The forme of a true Church is for a company of beleevers who are washed in the blood of Christ by a free and voluntary Consent or willingnesse to enter into that heavenly and holy State, City or Kingdome, which in the word of God is plentiouslly described, and by the power of Christ to become a constituted or Polytique Body or Corporation, or an inclosed or fenced Garden or Vinyard, and then by virtue of their combination uniting & joyning themselves together each to other & so unto the Lord, promising to walk in all his waies & to yield obedience to all his Lawes & commands, as he requires they should." 69 Browne had said that a true church consisted in those "true Christians united into a company, a number of believers who place themselves under the government of God and Christ." The first known Baptist Confession of faith refers to the

LEVELLER ORIENTATION AND "LEFT-WING" PURITANISM

25

church as "a company of faithfull people, separated from the world by the word and spirit of God, being knit unto the Lord, and one unto another, by baptism, upon their own confession of the faith, and sins." 7 0 A Baptist Confession of 1644 spoke of the Church as "a company of visible saints, called and separated from the world by the work and spirit of G o d . " 7 1 Christ, Lilburne says, left laws only for "free and independent bodies," and it is only in such bodies that Christ's laws can be exercised. 72 Lilburne claims not to know what the churches of the separation teach about these matters, 73 but the statement is hardly convincing when he proceeds promptly to state the sectarian doctrine of the church and of church membership, in distinction from the Laudian Church, a position going back in English Puritanism at least as far as Robert Browne. 74 Lilburne wrote at least two pamphlets expressly to prove that the Church of England was the false Church, the spiritual Babylon. 75 In common with Puritans since Cartwright, Lilburne sought a reformation of the Church—a "reformation of Reformation." Out of the church should be cast all "humane" traditions such as "Capping, Cringing and Duking," evidences to him of "wilworship." 7 0 He warns all Christians to flee the false Church "least God plague them for their staying there." 7 7 Browne had said, "whosoever are not gathered from all false churches, and from their false government, can neither be the Church of God, nor preachers in the same." 7 8 However, Lilburne believed that there was an elect group of Christ's followers within the false Church—had been through history—but that is no argument in favor of the Established Church and none in favor of remaining in it. 79 In fact, since "the way and meanes of salvation . . . is only and alone by faith in the Lord Christ," it is possible that salvation may be had not only in a false Church but "also in no Church." 80 He affirms that "the whole N e w Testament doth declare it, that it is possible for a man to be saved, though he be a member of no visible Church." 8 1

26

LEVELLER ORIENTATION AND "LEFT-WING*' PURITANISM

But the point was to separate from the false Church and to belong to the true Church. One must follow the prescriptions of the Bible, the L a w of God. Echoing the words of the Baptist preacher, John Canne (A Necessitie of Separation, 1634), Lilburne saw "the way to heaven (to be) narrow and straite, and Christs fold and flocke, but a small and little company in comparison of the world." 8 2 And while he says he is not a member of a church and has heard only one sermon from such a church, 83 he nevertheless argues rather elaborately for entrance into a true church. 84 Taking up the matter point by point, he says negatively, he would not join a true Church to be saved or to seek Christ, for these he has already. Neither does he enter in to live "securely and carelessly in sin & pleasure, loose nes of life and conversation." Affirmatively, one should enter into the true Church first because God commands it that "all his faithfull people . . . become Citizens of his City, and members of his visible church, there to worship him (in) Syon, the beauty of holynes, according to his owne Lawes and appoyntment." 8 5 Again, he enters the true church "to honour and glorifie God, who hath passed by so many thousands as he hath done, and left them in their sins, and yet hath chosen me freely before the foundations of the world was laid." 86 Thirdly, he enters the church that he may become a "witnesse bearer against the world," leaving those who live in sin no excuse when they stand before God on judgment day. Fourthly, the true Church is "a speciall place of shelter, and refuge," where God shields and defends his chosen ones. Those who remain in a false Church, though they may be saved, yet cannot enjoy the peace and comfort which the true church affords. Fifthly, he would enter a true church "there to find Gods especiall presence . . . and that I may grow & increase in grace." Finally, the entrance into the true church is made "that I might draw more to my God, and gaine more and more spirituall fellowship, and communion with him, and that 1 may make my election and salvation sure." In concluding his argument for entrance into a

LEVELLER ORIENTATION AND "LEFT-WING" PURITANISM

27

visible church he says, "Wherefore though God hath manifested his love and kindnes unto me in his son, yet I desire according to my duty to enter into a visible Church, as a Christian, there publikely in the eyes of his people to worship and serve him only according to his owne Lawes, without any mans inventions whatsoever." 87 If the Church of England is no true Church, certainly its ministry is not true, for the ministers have not the proper call. The ministers serve under the power of Satan; 88 their authority is "Jure Diabollico." 89 A tenet of Puritanism served here. Authority, to be legitimate, must be from the Scriptures. Lilburne reminds his antagonist that the ministers in the early Christian Church were elected and made by the Church itself, and not by other ministers, officers, bishops, etc.00 And "though that the Churches of the Separation want the Apostles in personall presence to lay hands upon their Officers which lawfully they chuse out from among themselves, yet have they their (the Apostles') Lawes, Rules and Direction in writing, which is their Office, and is of as great Authority as their personall presence." 91 Lilburne tells his enemy (in An Answer to Nine Arguments) that there is no such thing as Apostolic succession, which the prelates claim, for Paul and Barnabas called themselves the last of the Apostles. The Separation has not the authority of the succession, therefore, as no Church really has, but prescriptions in Scripture to go by.02 The Church of England, in seeking rules and laws to go by from councils, books of articles and "diabolical Traditions," "teach flat Rebellion, and High Treason against the Septer and Kingdome of the everlasting Son of God, who will have his church governed by his owne Lawes, which he instituted, and left recorded in his last Will and Testament, which he hath bequeathed to his church, commanding them, as they will answer it before his dreadfull appearing, to observe and keep them strictly without violation in the least; and also by his owne Officers therein expressed, who are only

28

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five, w h o are to be permanent, officiating in personall presence and Being for the freedome of his church; namely, Pastor, Teacher, Elder, Deacon, and W i d d o w . " 0 3 T h e multiplication of Church offices in Roman and Anglican communions was just one more mark of their corruption, of their falseness. Lilburne argued that not only should one separate from the Laudian Church and join a true, visible Church, but none should listen to the sermons of the "false ministers." " H e that heares the ministers (of the Established Church), heares the Prelates that made and sent them; A n d he that heares the Prelates, heares the Pope, that authorised and gave them their authority; A n d he that heares the Pope, heares the Devill, that gave him his power; So that I say we can not partake with them in hearing, or in any administrations of Gods sacred things, but we must of necessity partake of their calling and institution." 9 4 Later Lilburne accused the Presbyterian ministers of being just the latest limb of the devil, being derived immediately f r o m the bishops. A n d he asserts that every misery which has befallen the nation since the prelates were put down is traceable to the "present Clergy." 9 5 It is not easy to determine to what extent church experience in democratic procedure and organization was a causal factor in the development of political democracy. But it is safe to say that church experience was a causal factor in some of the democratic groups of seventeenth-century England. There were those w h o anticipated the invasion of Puritan doctrines into politics. Sir Thomas Aston foresaw (in 1641) that the power of congregations to censure and excommunicate, claimed even by the Smectymnuans, and particularly by the separatists, would have revolutionary political implications. "These, possessed with an opinion of an equal interest in the power of the keys of the church . . . , will much more plausibly embrace the suggestion of a parity in the sway of the state, as better suiting their ca-

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90

parities." H e correctly anticipated the arguments of the Levellers. One specific aspect of Puritan, and especially sectarian, Church government which found its counterpart in the democratic political theory was the covenant idea. Familiarity with the covenant relationship provided some common ground for the Independents, or Congregationalists, and sectarians like the Levellers. T h e Levellers' Agreement is the covenant idea in its most comprehensive form. SCRIPTURALISM AND

ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM

By the time the Leveller movement came to public view, there had been a long development within Puritanism toward popular Bible reading, popular expressions of the Spirit's workings, preaching by "mechanick" preachers. "The spirit bloweth where it listeth, and is not tied to the learned," said one. 97 "Given the popularization of the Bible and of the technique for extracting truth from the poetry with which that book is filled, given the belief in the supervening power of the individual mind to know God and of the individual conscience to voice his will, given the opportunities afforded by the loosely controlled pulpit and press, and Puritanism, though solidly respectable and firmly enough disciplined at its center, was certain to deploy in most varied and fantastic extravagance at its periphery." 6 8 Lilburne in general belonged to the "extravagance at (the) periphery" of Puritanism; that is, he exhibited in his works the attitude of the common man toward "school learning," toward the complicated, technical disputations engaged in by the more orthodox clergy and professional lawyers. He was as much a Scripturalist as any of his day, and it was for him the ability of the common man to take hold and use the truth in the Scriptures which made him bold to fling defiance into the faces of the mighty and the learned. The prelates, he says, are not "able to stand before the breath of Gods sacred truth, which his weake servants for their conquering weapons make use of, as I have

30

LEVELLER ORIENTATION AND " L E F T - W I N G " PURITANISM 99

already." Scripture for him is the unerring touchstone of all words and actions; it is "the intire & absolute rule of faith." 1 0 0 Truth, the province of all, is to be had from the English Bible. Lilburne could never have agreed with his contemporary, Sir Thomas Browne, that " E v e r y man is not a proper Champion for Truth, nor fit to take up the Gauntlet in the cause of veritie." 1 0 1 Certainly for Lilburne any w h o felt the power of Christ and looked deeply into the W o r d of G o d , however humble and unlearned, should be a "Champion for T r u t h . " " A l a s if men should hold their peace in such times as these," said Lilburne, "the Lord would cause the verie stones to speake to convince man of his cowardlie baseness." 1 0 2 Very early in the Reformation period "human reason" came in for considerable belittling. Luther himself warned Christians that reason is the "devil's harlot and can do nothing but slander and harm all that God says and does." Interestingly enough, official Roman Catholic emphasis in this period tended to be similar. T h e Catechism of the Council of Trent says: "he w h o is endued with this heavenly knowledge of faith, is free from an inquisitive curiosity. For when G o d commands us to believe, he does not propose to us to search into the divine judgments, or inquire into their reason and their cause, but commands an immutable faith, by the efficacy of which the mind reposes in the knowledge of eternal truth." 1 0 3 T h e emphasis took a crude form in many of the German Anabaptists. A n Anabaptist by the name of Hans Fessler went so far as to demand that all books be burned because they represented the vanity and devilish nature of mere human learning. 1 0 4 In England, long before the Reformation, John WyclifT, "the morning star of the Reformation," had belittled the place of learning in man's search for the knowledge of God. Wycliff and the early Lollards held "the naive faith that every unlettered man by the help of the Holy Spirit was in a position to understand and expound" the Bible. 1 0 5 Champlin Burrage records a deposition taken about 1550 from "henry harte," in which Harte supposedly said that

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his faith w a s not grounded on the w i s d o m of learned men, for all errors w e r e brought in by learned m e n . 1 0 8 In the early 1600's Everard and many others had preached to the c o m m o n people that learning, man's reason and understanding, are not only fruitless but ordinarily constituted a stumbling block. Everard had said that the church and the ministers w i t h their long disputations w e r e not necessary to salvation, and contrary to Lilburne and most other Puritans, he thought that not even Scripture was necessary. 1 0 7 " M a n s reason and understanding cannot reach truth," he says, and n o w it must be cast f r o m its pedestal. 1 0 8 A s l o n g as this kind of egotism lives, "Christ is whipt." 1 0 9 A s it is quite evident in the w o r l d of the present, self-wisdom leads to sin and intolerance and persecution. 1 1 0 Anti-intellectualism is not so m u c h evident in John Saltmarsh's writings, though it is obvious, as in Everard, that learni n g has n o t h i n g to do w i t h salvation. H e advocated on the one hand " n o despising for too m u c h learning or too little," 1 1 1 and on the other hand he said, "I allow L e a r n i n g its place any where in the k i n g d o m s of the w o r l d , but not in the K i n g d o m of G o d . " 1 1 2 F o r "our Reason is too short to make a perspective for seeing Jesus; it is but little of stature, grace must advance it higher." 1 1 3 T h u s the poor, c o m m o n people were just as important in the eyes of G o d as the wealthy and the mighty. " T h e poore is equally in his eye w i t h the rich." 1 1 4 H e condemned the Presbyterians for despising the people and their place in the g o v e r n m e n t of Church and S t a t e . 1 1 5 "Surely," he says, "it is not an University, a C a m b r i d g e or O x f o r d , a Pulpit and Black g o w n e or C l o a k , makes one a true Minister of Jesus Christ." 1 1 8 Both Everard and Saltmarsh were well-trained men, trained as Puritan ministers. W h i l e they saw the dangers of education, or " h u m a n e learning," their f e e l i n g toward it was not that of the " v u l g a r " man. H u m a n learning may stand in the w a y of salvation for some, and it did not contribute to the salvation of the soul, but it was not considered repulsive or disgusting as it came to be considered by many unlearned men. Y e t the

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preaching of E v e r a r d a n d Saltmarsh and many others like them, f a l l i n g u p o n uncultured minds, w a s certain to prompt quite different conclusions. J o h n L i l b u m e , while not as extreme as some, f r o m the v e r y first cited his lack of k n o w l e d g e of the classical l a n g u a g e s as a v i r t u e — w h e n it served his purposes. T o those w i t h o u t education, " h u m a n e - l e a r n i n g " became not merely irrelevant to salvation, but actually a part of the stronghold of B a b y l o n a n d an instrument of Anti-Christ, a n d w i t h these sentiments L i l b u r n e agreed. It w a s the simple, untainted m i n d w h i c h understood the Scriptures (the only necessary ability) a n d sensed the w o r k i n g s of the H o l y Spirit. S o m e w e n t so f a r as to present w h a t in a sense m a y be considered scholarly a r g u m e n t s to prove the point; L i l b u r n e himself showed that he understood the w o r k i n g s of the much-abused syllogism and could use it to his enemy's d e s t r u c t i o n . 1 1 7 Certainly all of this g r o u p marshalled Scripture, however questionably, to establish their convictions. W i l l i a m W a l w y n , a L e v e l l e r , w a s a man very well read but not trained in l a n g u a g e s a n d the university arts. W h i l e he d i d not despise learning in i t s e l f , 1 1 8 he nevertheless deplored the condition of it a n d the use of it in his day. T h e m e n w h o professed great learning, h o w could they expect the c o m m o n people not to despise it ( a n d t h e m ) w h e n it was employed f o r such diabolical purposes? as for learning, as learning goes now adaics, what can any judicious man make of it but as an Art to dcceive and abuse the understandings of men, and to mislead them to their ruine? if it be not so, whence comes it that the Universities, and University men throughout the Kingdome in great numbers are opposers of the welfare of the Common-wealth, and are pleaders for absurdities in government, arguers for tyranny, and corrupt the judgments of their neighbours? no man can be so simple as to imagine that they (the Anabaptists, Brownists, and Separatists) conceive it not lawfull, or not usefull for men to understand the Hebrew, Greeke, or Latine: but withall, if they conceive there is no more

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matter in one language than another, nor no cause why men should be so proud for understanding of languages, as therefore to challenge to themselves the sole dealing in all spirituall matters; who (I say) can blame them for this judgment? they desire that a mans ability of judgment should be proved by the clear expression of necessary truths, rather than by learning: and since the Scriptures are now in English, which at first were in Hebrew, Greeke, or Syriack, or what other language; why may not one that understands English onely, both understand and declare the true meaning of them as well as an English Hebrician, or Grecian, or Roman whatsoever? 118 T h e author of The Vanitie of the Present Churches 1 2 0 makes about the same point when he says that "necessary Doctrins are not at all hard to be understood, nor require long time to learne them." 1 2 1 Walwyn accuses the learned of commending learning not for its own sake but for the power it gives them over the people; it is by their monopoly on learning that they get their living. They exalt their great Diana, learning, for selfish purposes and profit, while all gifts should be for the common good. He chides the Churchmen and warns them that their goddess is about to be tumbled down from her pedestal. "Have a care therefore O yee Clergie, as you esteem your honour and preferment, your profit and observance, that you keep this Diana of yours high in the peoples esteem: Rouze up your selves, and imagine some new wayes to quicken the admiration of this your Goddesse; for I can assure you, mens eyes begin to open, they find that she is not so beautifull as she once seemed to be; that her lustre is not naturall, but painted and artificiall: Bestirre your selves or your Diana will downe." 1 2 2 Whether Walwyn expresses the whole attitude of the radical sects toward learning or not may be questioned. His scorn was more sophisticated. But the basic points are there. The important thing for them was, as he said, "the cleare expression of necessary truths, rather then . . . learning." The "necessary truths" were those needed for salvation, and those could be had from the Scriptures—in English. T h e

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Baptist, Thomas Helwys, indicates the "easy way," which is "to read the Scriptures acknowledging your ignorance and ask understanding of God. And this is a way whereby the most simplest soul that seeks the truth in sincerity may attain unto the knowledge of salvation contained in the Word of God." 1 2 3 The two outstanding early literary expressions of the crudest anti-intellectualism were from Samuel How and John Spencer, whose pamphlets were published at the end of the Laudian period. Both fall in the category of "mechanick" preachers (those who worked with their hands to make a living), such as the cobblers and tinkers, plowmen, confectioners, rabbit keepers, and tailors. These "lay preachers" flourished under cover during Laud's time and continued to be important among the common people to the end of the century, despite the predictions of the polite. 124 How's pamphlet betrays the simple thesis in the title: The Sufficiencie of the Spirits Teaching Without Human Learning: or, A Treatise Tending to Prove Humane Learning to be no Help to the Spirituall Understanding of the Word of God.1'-5 He asks the question, "if the spirit searcheth the deep things of God, and that discerns all things, what need we more?" Human learning, which is nothing more than "smoke of the bottomlesse pit," has never been essential to salvation. Those who have any regard for it work against the teaching and example of Jesus Christ himself. And it is blasphemy for anyone to say that Christ had human learning. Christ is the Christian's example here; not Plato and Aristotle. As might be expected, How, like Spencer and others, was censured for his extreme views. But he, like Lilburne, considered this censure a part of the sufferings which a true follower must endure for Christ and the truth. How's pamphlet went through several issues. William Kiffin, the outstanding Baptist leader and sometime friend of Lilburne's, wrote a postscript to an issue of 1655. 126 How himself was an extremely popular Baptist preacher, being the successor of John Canne in the Baptist Church which was for some time in Amsterdam but "settled

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about London." Crosby says of H o w : " H e served in this ministration about seven years, and died very much lamented. In his time they (the Baptists) were persecuted beyond measure by the clergy and bishops courts; and he dying under the sentence of excommunication, Christian burial, as it was termed, was denied him; and a constable's guard secured the parish ground at Shoreditch, to prevent his being buried there. At length he was buried at Agnes-la-cleer; and several of his members, according to their desire, were afterwards interred there also." 1 2 7 Lilburne may have known the Cobbler, for he refers to the Cobbler's burial in Finsbury Fields in a letter to the Wardens of the Fleet, October 4, 1640, indicating that How became a martyr among the poor and oppressed. Defying the Wardens to take away his own life, Lilburne tells them, "if the Priests will not suffer it (his body) to bee buried in the Church yard (as they call it) then would I have it laid beside the Cobblers; in Finsbury Fields." 1 2 8 Knowing how well-known How's sermon had become, Lilburne threatens to spread abroad his letter in like manner, "that so (if it be possible) it may be claimed up upon Posts, and made as publique as the Coblers Sermon." ' - 9 The same views were held by a contemporary, John Spencer, whom Thomas Edwards condemned as a horse-rubber. He was the author of A Short Treatise Concerning the Lawjullnesse of Every Mans Exercising His Gift as God Shall Call Him Thereunto. "The Scripturcs doth plainely affirme," Spencer said, "that the true understanding of scripture, comes not by humane learning, by arts and tongues, but by the spirit of God." 1 3 0 But he cites more than Scripture to prove his point. He quotes Calvin, Ursinus, Perkins and Bolton to prove the validity of variety in the Christian body and the necessity of expressing it. He goes on to say that "as every one hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another as faithful stewards of the manifold graces of God." 1 3 1

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every one ought to communicate of what God hath bestowed on them for the good of the whole body, the first reason is because God himselfe hath commanded it. The second reason is, because it was the very end of Gods bestowing these gifts upon us, for the edifying of the body of Christ. The third reason is from our neere union and communion one with another. The fourth reason is from our breathrens right to it, they have all right to our gifts and abilities. The fifth reason is this, it is the way to inlarge our owne gifts and abilities. The sixt reason is, Gods glory and the Saints example. The seven reason is because of our enemies wiles, and sathans malice, all calling for it at our hands. 132 There were hostile retorts to Spencer's effort. A Presbyterian "Well-wisher to the Reformation" wrote An Answer to an Impertinent Pamphlet . . . by John Spencer, in which he assured Spencer that "the sincere ministers of Jesus Christ are utterly against you in the universalitie of this your practise." 1 3 3 And he expressed the fears of the conservative Churchman of unbridled enthusiasm when he told Spencer, "you open wide the mouthes of the Anabaptists." 1 3 4 T h e author expresses the wish that Spenccr stood alone in his views and did not "so tumultuously draw such a number of people," fearing the consequences of such a development. 133 An anonymous pamphlet 1 3 6 tells of another Cobbler, one Vincent of Holborne, who defiantly took the pulpit at St. Georges Church in Southwarke and levelled everybody before God's judgment and the movings of the Holy Spirit, including the King. Vincent damned the Book of Common-Prayer, the Bishops, and "Romish priests." Those who "would not preach as Coblers, and Tinkers, were damned," as were those who "did not pray extempore." T h e writer says that Vincent "gave his assertions, and direct astipulation to hear rather a Cobler, Feltmaker, Tinker, Horserubber, as those reverend fathers Mr. Greene, Mr. Marler, Mr. Spencer, &c. then any other Choller (sic), who shall premeditate his Sermon." Vincent, like others, was apprehended for thus expressing such views, but

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the views were more widespread and attractive than the authorities suspected and could not be so easily eradicated. Lilburne's anti-intellectualism is not in its total effect as crude and extreme as that of How, Spencer, and Vincent. There is no doubt, however, that his position was directly opposed to those who despise the unlearned. He is definitely a part of the mystical, sectarian, "vulgar Puritan" movement. Knowledge, like Christian experience in general, is bound up with suffering and the willingness and ability to bear suffering for truth's sake. It is not knowledge or scholarship "which the world counts scholarship." 137 This knowledge, such as Christ's disciples had, is the only kind of knowledge which counts. 138 Lilburne claims to have more relevant knowledge from his six months in prison than all the learned and mighty have together. 139 It is knowledge in the inner man, confirmed by Scripture, the law of Christ. It is not dependent upon externals but upon inner conviction. This same quality of knowledge and conviction carries over into his political writings, too, and by its standard he can condemn the learned in the "externals" of the law, or the technical lawyers; he can condemn a coercive, tyrannical church or an arbitrary magistrate. Each individual man is able to "plead his own cause," therefore, whether in matters of religion or of the law of the state. 140 Perhaps his enemies may expect him to qualify himself by enumerating his scholastic accomplishments, but he qualifies himself before God and the world in a contrary manner. H e never studied "Philosophy, Logick, Rhetorick, nor ever was at any University, to learne any Lattin, Greeke, or Hebrew." 1 4 1 The important thing is that he has "obtayned mercie of the Lord to be faithfull." 1 4 2 And, echoing words like those of Spencer, he maintained that "the Spirit of God doth command every man that hath received a gift, to minister the same one to another, as good Stewards of the manifold grace of God." 1 4 3 By "faithfull Preaching" and "godly Discipline" godliness and "true religion" could be fostered in the Commonwealth. The

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Commonwealth would be benefited greatly, being relieved of the necessity of the traditional prelates and priests and of "many Lawyers." 1 4 4 There is a note here of the anti-professionalism, common in the sects, aimed at both ministers and lawyers. A n enlightened brother, be he ever so lowly, could explicate both Scripture and Law. The "necessary truths" in both were within his province. The common man had not only the wisdom of "the Spirit," the wisdom of a sense of justice and equity implanted by God; he had also the wisdom of hunger and fear and insecurity. By that wisdom he knew his own interests, and in the Leveller group, at least, he discovered those interests to be those of the Commonwealth. In A Copie of a Letter to Mr. William Prinne Esq., and in other places, 145 Lilburne defended the kind of knowledge which the people might have through the freedom of the press as the most likely instrument to destroy tyranny and establish the freedom of the people. Common men were accused by the learned and orthodox of rashness and "unbridleness" in their speech, but Lilburne would have it clear to his listeners at the stocks that such was not the case with himself. "I speake not the words of rashness or inconsideratenesse, but the words of sobernes, and mature deliberation, for I did consult with my God before I came hither." 1 4 6 For Lilburne, as for other Puritans, and even Anglicans, Scripture was the light and the authority; the question was who should be the interpreter. The naked truth of Christ is the light for all in Lilburne's view, logic and argumentation are darkness and the arts of men and the devil. But "Antichrists Owles" (the prelates) want darkness in the world, they deliberately thwart the purposes of God, and that is why they use logic and not Scripture. 147 He goes so far as to say that the devil is a better disputant than the prelates, for he quoted Scripture to Christ. "But Christ to reply to him, runnes not to Philosophicall Arguments." And the Apostles, including Paul, never resorted to such arts, either. The devil invented and instituted

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philosophy and logic, and with these instruments (and the help of the prelates) they have "mainly and principally . . . upheld and maintained their black, darke, and wicked Kingdome." 1 4 8 Lilburne's view of learning is summarized in a passage from Come Out of Her My People. In this passage he not only relates himself to those who believe that common men can know the truth through the Spirit in the Scriptures, but he also identifies himself with the needy and the oppressed among common men, the little ones of the earth. "The naked purity and Truth of the Gospell of Christ, is too homely a thing, for the great learned Doctors of the world, to embrace, stoope and submitt unto; for Christ hath said, that the professors of it shall be hated of all men, yea of their parents, kindred, and Friends, Luke 2i.16.17. Marke 13.12. and are accounted as Sheepe to the slaughter, all the day, ICor. 4. whose condition is to be afflicted and persecuted here by the men of the world, John 15.18.19 . . . for there must and will be to the end of the World enmity betweene the seede of the woman and the seede of the Serpent, Gen. 3.15." 1 4 9 Later when Lilburne appealed to natural law and reason and to the "basic English law," there was no presumption on his part that his understanding of it was unique. He appealed to laws applicable to all men, understandable by all men, regardless of education. While in prison he studied English history and law as he did the Bible and expounded them to the people. A further interesting development along this line in dissenting circles was the appearance of numerous women preachers around the time the Long Parliament met. There had apparently been women preachers among the Anabaptists of the continent. In England the practice seems to have been largely identified with, though not confined to, the "principal General Baptist Church in London." The Baptists in America permitted the practice at least as early as 1636. The women, of course, were also untrained, common people, in protest against the monopoly of the learned. "Come along with me," said one, " I

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will bring you a woman that preaches better Gospel than any of your black coats that have been at the University." 1 5 0 This democratic practice was later in evidence in the Leveller movement, taking the form of political activity. RELIGION AND THE " C O M M O N

MAN"

T h e Scripturism, the emphasis upon the "necessary truth" which might be had by any and all, the despising of university learning, and the apocalyptic temper which came to a head in the Commonwealth period—these were facets of a broader levelling tendency r u n n i n g back early in the Puritan movement. T h e original presumption that those who could understand the English Bible could lay hold of the "necessary truths," that those w h o heard the grace of God "preached up" might be beneficiaries of that grace—these and other developments tended to place the common man in a commensurable position with those spoken of in Calvinistic circles as the "elect." In the quarrel with the bishops ordinary people found themselves defying the mighty, and in the process of being defied in the name of religion, the high and the mighty lost some of the aura of sanctity which had previously rested upon them. Men were becoming self-conscious as sons of God, and as freeborn citizens. Lilburne said later of his experience of censure by the Star Chamber that through it "the Lord hath made knowne to me, by his spirit, the way wherein to serve and worship him." 1 5 1 H e was not called to preach. Nowhere in his writings does he indicate any feeling of compulsion to become a preacher. But the work which immediately engaged him does indicate what he considered the nature of his "call" to be. H e was called to declare and to embody the cause of the common man in the name of principles instituted by the God of all the earth and applicable to everyone, great and small alike, in and under the laws of England. Lilburne had read "the Bible, the Book of Martyrs, Luthers, Calvins, Bezas, Cartwrights, Perkins, Molins, Burtons, and Rogers W o r k s " 1 0 2 and had been fired with the

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zeal of a martyr. For Lilburne, as for other dissenters, "Sympathy for the persecuted, unbending resistance to the oppressor, was the creed which had passed into (his) blood." 1 5 3 It was God's purpose throughout his struggle which he consciously fostered. It was God's purpose that the common people be delivered from tyranny and oppression and need. T h e injustice and the tyranny he saw were against the law of God, the Law of Nature (which is hardly distinguishable from the law of God) and the fundamental law of the land—hence a sin against God Himself. It cannot be denied that in his earliest pamphlets Lilburne's most obvious bond to other men is that of Christian brother to Christian brother. He is concerned with the "elect," but even here there is a sense of common manhood among those who "confound the wise." One of his earliest pamphlets is to the "Apprentices of London." In it he reminds the apprentices of their obligation to themselves and to him (as one of them), to the nation and to future generations, not on the basis of common faith, but certainly on the basis of common interest. He looked upon himself and his group as the "remnant whom God will spare in his fearfull indignation" against the corruption of the great and mighty. Lilburne's earliest works show the typical sectarian belief, suggested earlier by less "vulgar" Puritans, that common men are more open to God's truth because they are not so likely to be "wise in their own conceits." 1 5 4 God is on the side of the poor. Lilburne, writing to his fellow Christians of the sectarian churches, threatens that if he cannot get justice from those whose duty it is to give it "the Lord will right the poore mans case." 1 5 5 He publishes below the tide (of The Poore Mans Cry) for the world to see, the Scripture verse (Proverbs 2 1 . 1 3 ) : "Who so stoppeth his eares at the cry of the poore, he also himselfe shall crye and not be heard." Here is "a poore, weake and young stripling" standing against the concentrated power of God's enemies. 156 He compares himself with little David doing battle with Goliath, 1 5 7 and in his

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fight with Prynne he likes to be cast in the role of the little shrub challenging the tall cedar. 158 He further pays tribute to the cause of the lowly by saying if he dies in prison "and if the Priests will not suffer it (his body) to be buried in the Church yard . . . then would I have it laid beside the Coblers; in Finsbury Fields." 1 5 9 The cobbler was a hero and martyr among the poor; Lilburne could think of no greater calling. Lilburne, a poor apprentice growing to manhood in London during the undercover excitement of Laudian days, undoubtedly heard many expressions of the faith that God would "right the poore mans case." Such thinking, as already noted, may have been prevalent among the Baptists associated with the names of Hanserd Knollys and William Kiffin, who wrote an "epistle" to an apocalyptic pamphlet published in 1640 (A Glimpse of Sions Glory) which expressed the faith of the poor and oppressed that the millennium was about to begin. The saints who were to rule with Christ for a thousand years were none other than the poor, for it was they who had been possessed by the spirit. The sovereignty of Christ is to come about by the instrumentality of the "multitude," the common people. "It is the voice of the Waters, the voice of Jesus Christ reigning in his Church, comes first from the Multitude, the common People, the voice is heard from them first, before it is heard from any others: God uses the common People and the Multitude to proclaime that the Lord God omnipotent rcigneth: As when Christ came at first, the poore receive the Gospel; not many Wise, not many Noble, not many Rich, but the Poore: so in the Reformation of Religion, after Anti-christ began to be discovered, it was the common People that first came to look after Christ . . . " 1 6 0 The "Bishops War," they hoped, was the signal that the time was near at hand, and the writer asks, Where began it? at the very Feet, at the very soles of the feet. You that are of the meaner rank, common People, be not discouraged; for God intends to make use of the Common People

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in the great Worke of proclaiming the Kingdome of his Sonne; the Lord God omnipotent reigneth: the Voice that will come of Christs reigning, is like to begin from those that are the Multitude, that are so contemptible, especially in the eyes and account of Antichrists spirits . . . and whensoever God sets up the Kingdome of his Sonne, in that glorious manner that hee doth intend, he wil not begin with the Priests and Levites, they will not bee so forward, but the People at the first are more forward. 1 6 1 Lilburne was imbued with these sentiments. Whether he was exposed to this particular type of expression of them or not it is impossible to say, though his association with Kiffin may have brought him in contact with it. One line of this pamphlet might almost be said to be his life theme or motto: " G o d uses the common People and the Multitude to proclaime that the L o r d G o d omnipotent reigneth." H e was one of the common people—boasted about it—and he was forever telling the powers, whether prelates, Parliament or army leaders, that only God was omnipotent, that G o d was reigning in the world and would bring judgment on any who presumed to usurp his place. In all their powers, usurpations, pretensions and tyrannies they assumed unto themselves the power and authority of God, and any Christian worthy of the name was bound by his conscience to oppose such. Lilburne tells Prideaux in 1649 that the "obnoxious T y r a n n y " of the army-made Commons is "to bee resisted by all those that would not willingly have men to usurp the Soveraigntie of God." 1 6 2 Henry Parker, denouncing Lilburne and the Levellers in 1650, said with regard to Lilburne's attitude toward the law courts: " T h e Judges because they are commonly Gentlemen by birth, and have had honorable education, are to be exposed to scorn: but the Jurors, because they be commonly Mechanicks, bred up illiterately to handy crafts, are to be placed at the helme." 1 6 3 Parker did not correctly represent Lilburne's whole view of law and justice, but Lilburne did believe that those who were "bred up illiterately to handy crafts" were capable

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of understanding w h a t W a l w y n called "necessary truths," both in religion and in law. A n d the Levellers became more and more critical of those w h o scorned the poor in their need. Richard O v e r t o n , chastizing the H o u s e of C o m m o n s in 1646 for betraying their trust, says, "yee are Rich, and abound in goods, and have need of nothing; but the afflictions of the poore; your hunger-starved brethren, ye have no compassion for . . . yee suffer poor Christians, for w h o m Christ died to kneel before you in the streets, aged, sick and cripled, begging your halfepenny Charities, and yee rustle by them in your Coaches and silkes daily, without regard." , C 4 In the mysticism of both Everard and Saltmarsh, in the free grace of John Eaton, in the "sufficiencie of the spirit" doctrine of H o w and Spencer, the effect had been to establish the claims of the multitude to be heard and to receive justice from those in power. Everard's mysticism, while mostly concerned w i t h the individual, was nevertheless a serious challenge to the established interests, both religious and secular. T h e Spirit of Christ, he taught, leads men to "charity and love towards all the creatures, be they never so base; for w e have all one Father & m a k e r , and G o d is in them . . . Therefore behold and look upon all the creatures as thy brethren." l u r ' John Saltmarsh said that "the multitude are such a crystall as wee may dresse our conversation and actions by." 1 G B T h e Levellers took this respect for the c o m m o n people into the political life of the nation. E d w a r d Sexby, a Leveller Agitator, could say at Putney in 1647 that those w h o fear to trust the poor to vote distrust Providence itself. For "the poor and meaner of this k i n g d o m . . . have been the means of the preservation of this kingdom." 187 R E L E V A N C E OF A P O C A L Y P T I C

INTEREST

B y the end of the L a u d i a n period there was a m o n g the comm o n people of the more extreme sects a powerful feeling that great things were impending. T h e A l m i g h t y seemed on the

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verge of vindicating them in the establishment of Christ's reign on earth. 1 6 8 This hope began to take definite form in many minds, and speculation was considerable about the possible year of the coming of Christ. However, there were those few, like Everard, who believed that Christ's reign was already present. So near is Christ and so near is heaven to the soul of the enlightened that it is foolish to look for Christ's return as many did and as many more were to do as the Fifth Monarchy movement grew at the beginning of the Commonwealth period. If men could see this, Everard said, "they would not so much trouble themselves about a personal Reign of Christ here upon earth, if they saw that the Chief and Real fulfilling of Scriptures were within them; And that whatever is externally done in the world, and expressed in the Scriptures, is but Typical and Representative, and points out, A more spiritual and saving salvation, and a more Divine fulfilling of t h e m . " 1 " 9 But the simple, Scripture-reading populace were literal minded. For them, what was "externally done" was of chief importance. If they had inherited the Kingdom or were to inherit it, it must come here on earth with the destruction of Babylon, with the undoing of the "Fourth-Monarchy" of the Pope. In Saltmarsh, too, was a marked belief in progressive revelation. H e , in keeping with his contemporaries, believed that his own time was a great age of the outpouring of the Spirit, in spite of the efforts of Babylon and Anti-Christ. H e was convinced that they of his own day who had eyes to see it and hearts to affirm it could have more religious light and power than their forefathers could have dreamed of. 1 7 0 This conception led him to a development of the doctrine of the three ages (not five, the more popular number), developed particularly in his Sparkles of Glory}11 God has revealed himself to men f r o m age to age as men have been able to grasp the manifestations. A n d "the administrations in which God hath appeared, and doth appear yet in some proportion," are three: "first (the) law

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of righteousness" was the outward law of Moses which touched not "the inward or holiest" part. And because this law was "weak through the flesh," it was administered by angels through visions and dreams, and likewise through priests, sacrifices, tabernacles, temples, and prophets. God, in the second age, revealed himself in an Emanuel, and while this was a higher ministration than the Mosaic one, it was nevertheless limited by the need for a fleshly presence, the testimony of miracles and forms. "The last, and more ful, and rich ministration, and most naked, is that of God by himself in Spirit to the sonnes of God." 1 7 2 But Saltmarsh's belief in the outpouring of the Spirit upon all who are willing did not mean that men were saved without repentance and faith, as his enemies thought. 173 The conception of the new age, however, was largely chiliastic, derived primarily from Daniel and Revelation, and was the possible property of all who could read the Bible or who stopped to hear the "ministrations" of the popular preachers. Some of the earliest written speculations about the new age were the works of learned men, including Thomas Brightman (Apocalypsis Apocalypseos—published in 1609, translated in 1616), Johann Heinrich Alsted (Diatribe De Mille Annis—1627), and William Mede (Claris Apocalyptica—1627)174 and David Pareus (Commentary Upon the Divine Revelation), translated into English in 1644. With the meeting of the Long Parliament the bars dropped, and less learned versions of the hope began to appear. John Archer, a friend of Thomas Goodwin's, published The Personall Raigne of Christ Upon Earth (1st ed., 1641), presenting a facile treatment of parts of Daniel (Chs. 6 and 7) and Revelation (Chs. 10, 12, 17). The "monarchicall State of Christ" was to be eternal and over the whole world, the type of the kingdom having been given by God in the government of Israel.175 In this kingdom the Saints will be made lords, and the wicked will become slaves.176 The date of the Kingdom's coming was fairly clear—about 1700, though the

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47

number 1666 apparently fascinated the author, and he foresaw "some conception or more remote beginning" at this date. 177 Archer's treatment, like so many, revealed little relevance for the great social and political currents of the time. Unlike Lilburne and other left-wing Puritans, his new heaven and new earth were other-worldly, and the spiritual expectancy of the time did not point to the intermediate achievements of toleration, of political freedom and equality. A much more likely link to Lilburne, et al., than the otherworldly millenarianism of men like Archer is the socially relevant work already referred to: A Glimpse of Sions Glory, published in 1641. 1 7 8 Not only does this author indicate a social consciousness among the poor people of his circle, but he shows a constructive interest in Parliament (admittedly because the Parliament is against the "Anti-Christian party") and believes that the leaders of the nation will soon realize that "the Saints of God gathered together in a Church, are the best Common-wealths m e n . " 1 7 9 They will come to see that the poor saints are "not seditious men, not factious, not disturbers of the State; but they are our strength in the Lord of Hosts, they are the strength of a Kingdome, and shall be countenanced by them as the strength of a Kingdome, as those that will bee most usefull in a Kingdome." The author goes on to say that "Religion shall be honoured in the World one day, and not only at the day of Judgment, but here," by which he means first, no doubt, that religious freedom will come. The author is concerned, too, with the date of the coming Kingdom, but the significant difference here from the Archer-type of thought is that the common people are the active agents of God's purpose, and a major political issue of the day is engaged. Lilburne never developed in detail any doctrine of the Second Coming of Christ, but his various references fit into the usual pattern. The whole tenor of his fight against Babylon and Anti-Christ is apocalyptic. He even does a bit of speculation on the meaning of the eleventh and twelfth chapters of Revela-

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tion. Lay preaching and popular Bible reading were essentially apocalyptic in implication for him, sincc at the coming of the new age the priestly class will disappear. Lilburne is convinced that the day is at hand when the great spiritual city of Babylon will be destroyed. 181 It is seen as the usually conceived Day of Judgment on Christ's enemies, ls - and it is the harbinger of the age of true worship. Like Everard, Saltmarsh, Spencer, the author of Sions Glory and others, Lilburne thinks his own age more fully preaches "the everlasting Gospell" than the forefathers did. 1 8 3 In later pamphlets when political interest is uppermost, Lilburne reveals a strong sense of expectancy of a new day or age. He believes in the ultimate triumph of justice and the ultimate defeat of the enemies of the common good. He could say in 1646 that "the dreadfull God of justice (for the injustice of the Rulers of the people) will in his wrath send deliverance unto the poore inslaved Prisoners, and bring an evill upon their adversaries and oppressors." 1 8 4 The great sense of expectancy evident in the sccts at the meeting of the Long Parliament was not lost on the Levellers. Their expectancy was not other-worldly in the Archerian sense; it was socially and politically relevant. From beginning to end Lilburne and his fellow-Leveller writers spoke of what the people had expected of Parliament, the army, and of Cromwell. If their thinking was not millenarian in the technical sense, it was apocalyptic in a socio-political sense.

CHAPTER

m

LAW AND DEMOCRACY The Law is that which puts a difference betwixt Good and Evil, betwixt Just and Unjust; if you take away the Law, all things will fall into Confusion, every man will become a Law to himself, which in the depraved condition of Human Nature, must needs produce many great Enormities; Lust will become a Law, and Envy will become a Law, Covetousness and Ambition will become Laws. JOHN PYM

Man is the free and voluntary Author, the Law is the Instrument, and Cod is the establisher of both. HENRY PARKER

The Vundamentall Law of the Land, is the Perfection of Reason, consisting of Lawfull and Reasonable Customes, received and approved of by the people: and of the old Constitutions, and modern Acts of Parliament made by the Estates of the Kingdome. But such only as are agreeable to the Law Eternall and Nattirail, and not contrary to the word of God: for whatsoever lawes, usages, and customes, not thus qualified; are not the law of the land: nor are to be observed and obeyed by the people, being contrary to their Birth-rights and Freedomes, which by the Law of God, and the great Charter of Priviledges, they ought not to be. JOHN LILBURNE

THE concept of law bccame of prevailing importance in Leveller literature as the political and social interest began to develop. Lilburne had, in his primarily religious tracts of the late thirties and early forties, talked considerably about the "golden Lawes of Christ" which condemned the bishops. He had pro-

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5«

tested to William Prynne in the name of Christ's laws against the Presbyterian intentions of "establishment" in 1645.1 In that same year (in Englands Birth-Right Justified) he begins his political protests and proposals in the name of the "law of God" and the "law of the Land" and mentions for the first time the "law of nature," which is subsequently so pronounced a part of his thought. The Law of God, the Law of Nature and the Law of the Land, sometimes spoken of separately, sometimes identified, but never clearly delineated, are the touchstones of his thought and that of other Leveller leaders. The "Law of Nature" develops as the chief point of departure in the criticism of existing institutions and practices, but it is never conceived, in Lilburne's thought at least, as a distinctly separate category from the "Law of God." The world stood in contradiction to both, and both impinged equally upon the conscience to engage in the fight for liberty and justice and "rights." "Natural Law" as the measure of the law of the land became in the hands of the Levellers as much a problem to political authority as the "law of God" had to the bishops. BACKGROUND OF N A T U R A L L A W

DOCTRINE

The peculiar force of law in Leveller thought had little to do with any knowledge they possessed of the long history of the formulations of kinds of law and systematic relationships. The Levellers drew their inspiration primarily from the more immediate scene of the Puritan struggle with a Church established by the law of the king and Parliament, and the Parliamentary struggle with the "arbitrariness" of Charles I. As Pease says,2 "The idea of limiting government by law was in the air." But there was a long history to legal formulation— and a history which is relevant as at least an ultimate source of Leveller concepts. The classic statement of types of law comes from St. Thomas Aquinas, though his dependence upon prior church thought

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51

is definite. Roman jurisprudence influenced Church thought, and the Romans in turn were indebted to the ancient Greeks. Aquinas conceived four types of law, which constituted four forms of a basic reason appearing in the cosmos at four different levels. T h e Eternal Law is the ultimate purpose of God for all things; by it all creation is ordered and the divine plan, partially comprehended by finite reason, may be dimly envisaged. T h e Law of Nature is God's imprint in His creature, man. By it all beings are inclined to avoid evil and seek good, to preserve themselves from destruction. Following Aristotle, Aquinas held that in the case of human beings, natural law implied a desire to live in such a manner that their rational natures may be realized. By his nature man is inclined to self-preservation, to live in society, to beget and educate children, to seek truth and understanding. And, as Sabine says, "Natural law enjoins all that is implied to give these human inclinations their widest scope." 3 T h e third kind of law, Divine Law (often referred to as the Law of G o d ) , is a gift of God's grace; it is not a product of reason, though not contradictory to reason. Divine L a w is most notably seen in the code of laws which God gave to the Jews and in the special moral prescriptions given in the Bible and the Church. Finally, Human Law is that law laid down by the community for its members, the authority of which is derived ultimately from God, through the Natural Law. 4 Human laws of all kinds—what are called "positive laws," "laws of nations," etc.—are derived from natural law and tested by its precepts. In the nature of man is found the justification for human regulation and coercion. Human Law, then, is largely a "corollary of Natural Law, which merely needs to be made definite and effective in order to provide for the exigencies of human life." 5 Aquinas, like other Churchmen, held what Troeltsch has called the concept of "relative" Natural Law. Human sin has not blotted out the image of God, the Natural Law. " B u t it is blotted out in the case of a particular action, in so far as reason is hindered from applying the general principle to a

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particular point of practice, on account of concupiscence or some other passion." 6 Natural Law was not, therefore, for Aquinas, nor for any other Churchman, a radical principle in society, but rather it was an integral part of an organic conception of the world. It did not constitute a moral basis for individual "rights," but rather was it a part of the rationalization of an hierarchical or "architectonic" structure of society. Such a view persisted in the Roman Church and in Protestant thought down to modern times.7 In England Richard Hooker stated for Englishmen the traditional doctrine in his famous polemic against Puritan Biblicism: The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1594). In the thought of the Reformers there is no basic departure from the medieval conception of natural law, 8 though it was not as integral a part of the thought of the Reformers as it was in the official Roman doctrine. The Reformers emphasized revelation and the Law of God. Luther held a very pessimistic view of man's reason, but in dealing with politics and public law, the Law of Nature written in the heart by God was given a positive role. There is in all the Reformers, however, essentially the Thomistic conception of the "relative" Law of Nature. They accepted, too, the Thomistic formulation of types of law and their relationship. The doctrine is no revolutionary instrument; rather it is used as a binder to obedience in society and the state. While the hierarchical conception of the world is shaken in terms of "spiritual" relationships (i.e., in doctrine of the "priesthood of all believers"), social and political relationships remain fixed, at least theoretically. Political rebellion is against the law of nature and equity. In Calvin a basis of resistance was laid in the inferior magistrates, though not as a corollary of natural law. But Englishmen in the Civil War spoke rebellion to the King in Calvin's name pleading Scripture and natural law at the same time. It should be noted, however, that Calvin's followers improved upon his words; that is, they carried his theories forward to a more democratic creed

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than Calvin himself developed. However, the so-called "transitional" writers, like Ponet, K n o x , Goodman and Buchanan were following the Calvinistic principle of "going forward each according to his station and employing faithfully for the maintenance of the republic whatever G o d has given them" (Calvin's farewell to the Genevan magistrates). E N G L I S H S E T T I N G FOR L E V E L L E R A P P E A L TO N A T U R A L

LAW

It has been pointed out that canon law was the chief vehicle of the Natural L a w concept in England. 0 This fact apparently to some degree resulted in the unpopularity of Natural L a w among laymen or jurists. Christopher St. Germain noted that up to his time, "It (natural law) is not used among them that be learned in the laws of England to reason what thing is commanded or prohibited by the law of nature, and what not." 1 0 But St. Germain and Sir E d w a r d Coke, both jurists, made influential use of the doctrine, being the chief and immediate sources of the doctrine in John Lilburne's thought, as we shall see later. A n d the thought of such men as John Major (History of Greater Britain, 1 5 2 1 ) and John Ponet (A Short Treatise of Politike Power, 1556) was to some extent influenced by natural law concepts. T h e classic statement of the doctrine in England, that of Richard Hooker, may have been indirectly influenced by Ponet's w o r k . 1 1 A m o n g Protestant Churchmen, and particularly Puritans, the appeal was more generally to the L a w of God written in the Scriptures rather than to the L a w of Nature written in the breast, though there are notable exceptions. This issue was at the root of Hooker's controversy with Puritanism. Continuity with medieval thought on this issue was provided in England primarily by Hooker, and to a lesser degree by Puritan thinkers like Perkins and Ames and by the Scottish Presbyterian, Rutherford. Hooker "provides the formal continuity of doctrines and ideas which were to become formidable weapons

L A W AND DEMOCRACY

in the hands of later writers and controversialists." 1 2 Hooker's influence on the Levellers came indirectly through Henry Parker. Richard Hooker, 1 3 in the controversy with the Puritans, undertook a reexamination of the whole problem of law (in Of the haws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Books I - I V , published in 1594, Book V , in 1597). H e began with the traditional definition of law, the controversial purpose being ultimately to defend the laws of the Church of England against Puritan infraction. L a w and reason are closely related; law is, after Aquinas, aliquid rationis. Reason becomes a part of the very nature of God, and in reason man is permitted to bridge the gap between his finity and God's infinity. Against a strict Scriptural appeal he maintained that "There are in men operations, some natural, some rational, some supernatural, some politic, some finally ecclesiastical: which if we measure not each by his own proper law, whereas the things themselves are so different, there will be in our understanding and judgment of them confusion." 1 4 Hooker followed Thomas Aquinas' formulation of types of laws, maintaining the medieval idea of an hierarchical order of the world expressed in the various types of laws. The dictates of reason work according to scale and rank in nature, for creation is "an admirable order, wherein God hath disposed all laws, each as in nature, so in degree, distinct from other." 1 5 Hooker therefore held the Thomistic notion of a basic harmony between the natural and the supernatural. Man is a reasonable creature, according to Hooker, but human depravity has limited the function of reason in social and political relationships. And herein lies the relevance of "human laws," "positive laws," or the "laws of the state." 1 8 For, as in the thought of the Schoolmen, so for Hooker, "human law" and the problem of political authority are equivalent. While "human laws" are "particular determinations" of the law of nature and therefore participate in the nature of divinity, nevertheless such laws concern only the outward man. 17 From this

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formulation H o o k e r could derive freedom of conscience in the C h u r c h but condemn it as opposed to the divine order when it was suggested in terms of religious freedom or toleration in the state. 1 8 N o question of conflict or opposition between " h u man l a w " and the higher laws of nature and G o d could dissolve the bonds of obedience of the individual to the h u m a n legislator, whether the question be religion or private property. T h i s argument, of course, had immediate pertinence to issues raised by the Puritans. Natural law did not become for H o o k e r even the possibility of an instrument of resistance and rebellion as it later did for some of the Parliamentary apologists, for H e n r y Parker and the Levellers. Political disobedience could not on any grounds be justified, for the things which the law of G o d and of nature "leaveth arbitrary and at liberty are all subject unto positive laws of m e n ; which laws, for the c o m m o n benefit, abridge particular men's liberty in such things as far as the rules of equity will suffer. T h i s we must either maintain, or else overturn the world and m a k e every man his own commander." 1 9 T h e Aristotelian doctrine of the natural inequality of men was rejected by H o o k e r , and he asserted rather that men are naturally equal and free. But his assertion implied no "natural rights" and nothing of the literal individualism as against the state which became an issue later. A n d while he, like Nicholas of Cusa, held "consent" to be the foundation of political authority, it was not so much an assertion of individual consent ( o r social contract in the Lockean sense) as that the original source of power is the community. T h e r e is no possibility of withdrawing consent from the powers that be, for they are ordained and maintained by G o d . WILLIAM

AMES

O n e might think f r o m Hooker's powerful polemic that the Puritan writers took no cognizance at all of the natural law doctrine, but that is not the case. W h i l e the doctrine hardly

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altered their basic Biblicism, which he attacked so vigorously, nevertheless among them there were statements of the doctrine which vary little from the traditional ones. Such a statement was that of William Ames, a Puritan Congregationalist, who presented his view in The Marrow of Sacred Divinity 2 0 and Conscience with the Power and Cases Thereof.21 According to Ames, God's law is of two kinds: natural and positive. Natural law comprehends the rules of conduct which may be either immediately apprehended or logically arrived at by reason, "the natural instinct or natural light." Natural law is the law of men, of rational creatures. It is the equivalent of "right practical reason." It is the same law which is usually termed "eternal," "But it is called eternal in relation to God, as it is from eternity in him. It is called natural as it is engrafted and imprinted in the nature of man by the God of nature." 2 2 What Ames calls "divine positive law" is that which is "added to the natural by some special revelation of God." God's positive law is distinguished from natural law in two ways: while it is received by reason, it cannot be arrived at by reason; and positive law is mutable, while natural law is immutable. Positive law is "mutable and various according to God's good pleasure; (for that which was hereto fore in the Judaical church is different from that which is in the Christian church)." 2 3 The precepts of the moral law, found in the law of Moses, are from the law of nature "except the determination of the sabbathday . . . which is from the positive law." The precepts of the Decalogue concern all men at all times, and every article "may be well enjoined from clear reason." 2 4 As this point implies, the "worshipping of God . . . is a principle of the law of nature." 2 5 Therefore natural law is a clearer and more inclusive concept than the common formulation of it: " T o live honestly; not to hurt another; to give every man his due." 2 6 The natural law and divine precept—"what you would have done to yourself, do that to another"—a precept so prevalent in Leveller

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thought, is likewise too limited to comprehend the whole of natural l a w . 2 7 A m e s discusses the " l a w of nations," a " l a w which is introduced by the c o m m o n consent and custom of all nations." T h e law of nations "participates a certain middle nature between the law natural and that positive law which is peculiar to this or that nation." a 8 It is related to natural law in that it is universally received without any "certain authority or promulgation," and violators are everywhere censured. In common with God's positive law it is mutable; "it may be changed or abrogated by the c o m m o n consent of them whom it may conc e r n . " 2 a T h u s property, or " a division of things," is by the law of nations, but "almost all possessions" may be in c o m m o n if such be desired "by common consent." 3 0 " C i v i l l a w " is enacted by men to fit the peculiar local and national needs of various groups and nations. As in the traditional thought, it is a "determination" of the law of nature, and "inasmuch as it is right is derived from the law of nature; for that is not law which is not just and right, and that in morality is called right which accords with right practical reason." 3 1 Civil law never fully embodies natural law because it relates only to "outward actions"; it neither suppresses all vices nor enjoins all virtues; it is principally concerned with m a k i n g good citizens and not good m e n ; it is subject to "addition, detraction, or correction." 3 2 T h e basic difficulty is that man himself is imperfect. T h e result of sin is that " i n conclusions as determinations, the reason of man can only imperfectly judge—nay, and is often therein cozened—hence it must needs follow that all h u m a n constitutions are of necessity liable to imperfection, error and injustice." 3 3 N a t u r a l law, therefore, is comprehended here as elsewhere in terms of human sin. T h e very promulgation of the moral law at Sinai was made necessary because "ever since the corruption of our nature, such is the blindness of our understanding and

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pcrverseness of our will and disorder of our affections, that there are only some relics of that law remaining in our hearts, like to some dim aged picture, and therefore by the voice and power of G o d it ought to be renewed as with a fresh pencil." 3 4 But fallen man is capable through natural reason of recognizing his inadequacy and the necessity of correction through the written law of G o d . Furthermore, "the remainders of God's image . . . appear both in the understanding and the will," and there persists in all who retain their faculties "a certain inclination unto good." There is, hence, in all men a "restraining power" which "pertaineth to the will together with the understanding, whereby excess of sin is restrained in most, so that even sinners abhor the committing of many gross sins." 3 5 Ames holds that as a result of sin "there is nowhere found any true right practical reason, pure and complete in all parts, but in the written law of G o d (Psalm 119.66)." 3 6 In this manner Ames can relate his Biblicism to the ancient natural law doctrine. T h e mutability of God's positive law permitted A m e s to reject the Old Testament pattern of church government and find basis for a congregational government; the identification of natural law with the Decalogue permitted him to present a law unabrogated by the Gospel. It is not yet a radical social doctrine, for conflict between natural law and civil law can be explained away in terms of human sin. Hence there is no basic challenge to current conditions and institutions. It is still the "relative" natural law which he sees. But Ames was one of those Puritans whose statement of the doctrine found further development and political relevance among the Parliamentary apologists and later among the radicals in Cromwell's army. L E V E L L E R S E C T A R I A N I S M AND N A T U R A L

LAW

Leveller emphasis upon law cannot be separated from the fact that they were Protestants—sectarian Protestants. Ernst Troeltsch 3 7 developed the idea that "sectarians," from before

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the time of the Reformation, held what he called a " D o c trine of the absolute L a w of N a t u r e . " It is on this basis, he says, that the sect made such a radical criticism of C h u r c h and State. T h e L a w of Christ and the L a w of N a t u r e were combined, however unconsciously, to b r i n g the moral demands of G o d directly to m a n k i n d and to all men alike. " G o d ' s B e i n g and W i l l constitute H i s Natural and Revealed L a w ; the Bible is the L a w - b o o k of revelation, identical with the L a w - b o o k of N a t u r e . . . T h u s in the theology of the sects the idea of L a w is substituted for the idea of the Church as the organ of G r a c e and R e d e m p t i o n . " 3 8

Sectarian emphasis upon an

"absolute

L a w of N a t u r e " is a factor impossible to document.

And

Troeltsch admits that " I n the literature of the sects there are no allusions to these things, yet this must have been the influence which caused the whole idea of the cosmic process of development to recede, in order to m a k e room for the sense of direct relation between G o d and the creature."

39

T h e important point

is the directness of the relationship between G o d and H i s creature. T h e moral demands of the Almightv, understood by the systematic theologians as deriving from N a t u r a l L a w , face the individual directly and absolutely without qualification. T h i s is true of the sects whether they were aware of its theological significance or not. In the Levellers and Diggers, both sectarian, the Natural L a w of equality is absolute. T h e doctrine of original sin is not permitted to qualify equality in social and political terms. T h e question may be raised, with regard to Troeltsch's interpretation, however, whether or not this tendency toward the absolute demands of God's supervening law is not more broadly speaking a "Protestant" doctrine rather than strictlv a "sectarian" one, although the consequences are more readily visible in the radical sects. T h e Reformers, as we have said, simply accepted and restated the traditional doctrine of natural law. B u t there were other factors which contributed to the development of the absolute demands of G o d in terms of law. L u t h e r ,

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for instance, stood on the rights of conscience at Worms against the state and the orthodox church. "Unless I am convicted by Scripture or by right reason . . . I neither can nor will recant anything since it is neither safe nor right to act against conscience." While Luther did not develop the radical implications of his stand in terms of religious liberty or of individual rights against the state, still there is indicated the immediacy of relationship of the individual to God and His demands over against any mediate authority. In England an absolute law in the breast, confirmed by Scripture, was generally appealed to by all the Reformers, in opposition to the external law of the Crown. The Puritans opposed the bishops in the name of conscience. Opposition to an external "bond of conscience" first appeared in the form of the "preaching order," the order of mendicant preachers, appealing before the people against the falsity of prelatism. Appeal was made to the absolute L a w of God, revealed in the Scripture, and made meaningful by the workings of the Holy Spirit upon the inner man. Against the wickedness and moral laxity of the religion of the prelates God's relentless moral law was "preached up" by the Puritan preachers. John Knox had boldly stated the necessity of the Scottish Queen's conformity with the absolute Moral Law. John Lilburne's first step in a revolutionary career was taken in sympathy with the popular Puritan sufferers at the hand of L a u d : Prynne, Burton and Bastwick. This "martyred" trio dramatized the Puritan moralists' creed and pleaded the cause of conscience as justification. For men who were not concerned with the theological subtleties and distinctions in God's revealed W i l l and His Natural Will, as Lilburne and others were not, Natural L a w seemed merely to say the same thing which God had said previously to them in Scripture and in religious experience. This was not, of course, the experience of a great many sectarians, for many of the groups around the fringe of Puritanism were satisfied with the knowledge thev trot from the Bible, the association

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6l

with fellow "saints" in the "gathered" Church, and the toleration of the state. But Lilburne went further. Not only did his reading go further than the Bible and the Protestant theologians, but his active nature and imagination carried him beyond the issue of bishops and priests and beyond the conventicle into the political fight against tyranny. Lilburne's pamphlets are full of "Biblical eloquence," but at the same time he made appropriate use of available histories and law books. 40 In Speed, Holinshed, Martin, Daniel, Raleigh and others, and in the historical portions of the Old Testament, Lilburne became convinced that "History was but the record of creation, revealing for man's direction the law written in his nature—a conception confirmed in Lilburne's mind by the lawbooks which also presently fell into his hands." 4 1 Probably the first of the lawbooks Lilburne read was St. Germain's Doctor and Student (published first in 1530-31), referred to specifically for the first time in his Innocency and Truth Justified (1646). CHRISTOPHER ST. GERMAIN

St. Germain's presentation of the Natural L a w doctrine, continuous as it was with earlier statements of the doctrine, filled a special need in the development of English law. Previously the concept of natural law had been effective in the Court of Chancery through the presiding Ecclesiastical chancellors. N o w the common lawyers were beginning to guide the development of English justice, and St. Germain's statement of principles made possible the continued effectiveness of concepts previously employed. Only now the vehicles were laymen, the men of the legal profession. 42 What St. Germain did now was not to make a secular doctrine of natural law, simply because it was now separated from Church sponsorship and authority, but to state in the vernacular the medieval conception of the universal law revealed by God through man's natural reason. It was the ancient theological

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doctrine propounded by a layman. T h e purpose of law and government is still moral—to punish evil and reward good. 4 8 His formulation, again, was traditional—was that of the Schoolmen—but it was related specifically to the law of England rather than to "civil law" or "positive" law in the abstract. T h e first of the four general categories of law is the "law eternall." T h e three other types are the eternal law appearing under different forms, for it is known after the manner in which it is made known to man. W h e n the law eternal (or "God's will," an equivalent term) is known to reasonable creatures by the "light of natural understanding" or "natural reason," it is called the "lawe of reason," or the "lawe of nature." It is the " L a w e of G o d " when it is shown to man through "heavenly revelation." And when man is shown the law eternal by the order of the magistrate "that hath power to set a lawe upon his subjects," it is called the "lawe of man, though originally it be made of G o d . " 4 4 Lilburne simply forgot St. Germain's distinctions when he came to employ natural law. T h e law of nature is first a law for rational creatures. Referring generally to all God's creatures, it is specifically a law only for those creatures created in the image of God. " T h i s lawe is alwayes good and righteous, stirring and inclining a man to good, and abhorring evill: and as to the ordering of the deeds of man it is preferred before the lawe of God, and it is written in the heart of every man teaching him what is to be done, and what is to be fled, and because it is written in the heart, therefore it may not be put away." 4 5 T h e law of nature is the ground of all laws, including the laws of God; it is unchangeable in time and place. While it is necessary for the good order of the people to have many things added to the law of reason by the Church and secular princes, "according to the manners of the countrie and people," any law, prescription, statute or custom which is contrary to it are "voide and against Justice." 4 6 In dealing with the law of reason as one of the grounds of English law, St. Germain states practically the whole

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o f the Decalogue, except the First C o m m a n d m e n t and the one establishing the Sabbath, and these two are comprehended under the second ground of English law, the " l a w of G o d . " H o w ever, he makes no specific reference to the Decalogue here. H e states that natural law teaches the Golden Rule, though he did not elaborate upon its shortcomings as Ames did. Since the law teaches self-preservation, it is therefore lawful to put away force with force and to defend one's person and goods against " u n l a w f u l power." T h e r e is no elaboration on the point of resistance to the "powers that be," though he says a man may defend himself against injustice "so he keep due circumstance," whatever that may m e a n . 4 7 C o m m o n property ownership is not according to the law of reason, for the law of reason never changes, and it is obvious that while necessity has produced c o m m o n ownership in some instances, this practice has been c h a n g e d . 4 8 B y the same token he cannot establish private property by natural l a w , 4 9 a difficulty not admitted by the Levellers in their argument with Ireton and N y e at Putney. S i r E d w a r d Coke, one of the chief sources of Lilburne's political thought, took St. G e r m a i n as one of his authorities. H e n r y P a r k e r , whose influence upon Lilburne was marked, undoubtedly had absorbed St. G e r m a i n ' s concepts in his study of law. St. G e r m a i n ' s treatment of the subject in its relationship to basic English law took it out of the realm of the abstract and gave it popular m e a n i n g . By these principles, upon which, a m o n g other things, English law was grounded, any m a n can understand justice and equity. W h i l e the formulation is traditional—it still has a theological reference—it is not a complicated, technical explanation, but short and clear. W h a t e v e r his intentions may have been with regard to speaking to " c o m m o n l a y m e n , " he found an apt student in John Lilburne and his like, w h o believed themselves as able to understand the basic law of E n g l a n d , the "necessary truths," as any professional man whatever. T h e law, like the Bible, was any man's province. A point of special importance for the development of po-

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litical ideals such as those of the Levellers is the fact that the natural law concept is here released from ccdcsiastical and hierarchical, as distinct from theological, dependence. W h i l e St. Germain was not a "sectarian" in Troeltsch's sense, his treatment of natural law is undoubtedly a link in the development toward the "absolute law of nature" which became so important for the Levellers and Diggers. T h e precepts of natural law arc no longer mediated through the offices of the Church, but laymen can understand and state them. Perhaps an even more important point in this direction is St. Germain's apparent neglect of the Fall as a factor in man's rational ability. H e states the case for all those who believed in the unimpaired rationality of m a n : When the first man Adam was crcatcd, lie received of God a double cie, that is to say, an outward eic, whereby he might sec visible things, and know his bodily enemies and cschew them. And an inward cie, that is the eie of reason, whereby he might see his spirituall enemies that fight against his soule and beware o£ them . . . Wherefore he goeth from the effect that he was made to when he taketh not heed to the trouth, or when he preferreth cvill before good . . . reason is the power of the soule, that discerneth betweene good and evill, and betwecne good and better, comparing the other: the which also shewest vertues, loveth good, and flieth vices. And reason is called righteous and good, for it is comformable to the will of GOD, and that the first thing, and the first rule that all things must be ruled by. And reason that is not righteous nor straight, but that is said culpable, is either because shee is deceived with the Errour that might be overcome, or els through her pride or sloughfulnes shee enquireth not for knowledge of the trouth that ought to be enquired. 50 HENRY PARKER

Henry Parker represents another step in the development of the natural law doctrine in England. B y 1641 the cry of " n o Bishops" was being heard at the doors of Parliament, and bishops were subsequently debarred from the House of Lords. But

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the q u a r r e l had in the meantime become a struggle between P a r l i a m e n t and K i n g , and n o w it w a s not a question, primarily, of whether bishops should rule the C h u r c h but w h e t h e r the people, in Parliament, might oppose the arbitrariness of Charles I. E a r l y in 1642 L i l b u r n e w e n t to w a r w i t h the Parliamentary forces, believing that it was not only a right but a duty to resist arbitrary p o w e r . B e f o r e the swords were actually d r a w n , there had been a tremendous exchange of opposing v i e w s in the press, a n d the e x c h a n g e g r e w w i t h the spilling of blood. " T h e revolt of the p a m p h l e t e e r s " comprehended not only the question of authority in the C h u r c h , but also "the efficient a n d finall causes" of p o w e r in K i n g and Parliament. H e n r y P a r k e r was a determinative influence in setting the tenor of the argument of those w h o sided with Parliament against the K i n g , a n d an influence in f u r t h e r Leveller development of political theory. P a r k e r recognized the fact that appeal to precedent and recorded l a w was n o longer sufficient in the situation confronti n g E n g l i s h m e n in 1642. " A n d , " he concluded, "if this satisfie not, w e must retire to the principles of N a t u r e . " 5 1 P a r k e r adapted the ancient doctrine of natural law to the support of Parliament against the K i n g ; he b r o u g h t the doctrine up to date, not simply relating it to E n g l i s h l a w and history past, as St. G e r m a i n and C o k e had, but a p p l y i n g it to the immediate issue. M a n was created in the image of G o d and is social by nature. Hut the F a l l made m a n so fractious and destructive that it w a s necessary f o r protection's sake to institute government, f o r m a n cannot live without society. T h e l a w of nature —the safety of the individual—required the institution of government, a n d man, even in his fallen condition, maintained sufficient clarity of reason to recognize the necessity of gove r n m e n t . 5 - T h e r e f o r e , agreement and consent w e r e at the basis of the original g o v e r n m e n t , and only the c o m m u n i t y , the people, can alter w h a t they have made. T h e K i n g is required to uphold the L a w and to institute n e w laws if necessary, if the

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basic end of the government and L a w , the safety of the people, requires i t . 5 3 Since "power is originally inherent in the people," 5 4 they are the "efficient and finall causes" ~'5 to be considered in the current struggle of Parliament with K i n g . N a t u r a l law, by which the people set up the state, limits the prerogative of rulers everywhere, regardless of what the constitutions of various countries may provide. 5 0 T h e r e is room for variation from place to place, however, and this is where "positive" law comes in. Positive law assigns the degrees of freedom in all countries. Also the degrees of prerogative are thus laid out. W i t h i n the requirements of the " C h a r t e r of N a t u r e " various monarchies are subject to different degrees of restriction, "yet there scarce is any Monarchy but is subject to some conditions." S 7 T h e " C h a r t e r " sets "one necessary condition, that the subject shall live both safe and free." r,!i Parker held it a right and a duty to resist arbitrary or "destructive" power. If the people will not resist to save themselves f r o m destruction, they are considered "felonious to themselves, and rebellious to nature." 5 9 H e is thinking here primarily of the right of the people to resist in and through the Parliament, not so much of an individual right to resist, though he concedes, without elaboration, that "single m e n " may resist "sometimes." 8 0 H e wants to make it clear that the implications of his doctrine are not anarchical, that it does not lead to libertarianism in politics. " L e t not all resistance to Princes be under one notion confounded, let the principles and ingredients of it be justly examined, and sometimes it will be held as pious and loyall to Princes themselves, as at other times it is destructive and impious." 6 1 Lilburne said he had resisted various powers, "not because they were powers," but because they had deserted the principles which should govern t h e m . 0 2 A g a i n , " i f the K i n g will not joyne with the people (in preventing public m i s c h i e f ) , " P a r k e r says, "the people may without disloyalty save themselves." 6 3 " T h e people" may save themselves through and by Parliament. If it is not possible for the people to save themselves,

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he concludes, they have a meaningless, stupid "dry right." ®4 O n e may note here the similarity of Parker's doctrine of resistance to that of Calvin. T h e r e are echoes of Calvin's concession of resistance to the "estates." Calvin says of the "three estates": " I am so far from prohibiting them, in the discharge of their duty, to oppose the violence or cruelty of kings, that I affirm, that if they connive at kings in their oppression of their people, such forbearance involves the most nefarious perfidy, because they fraudulently betray the liberty of the people, of which they know that they have been appointed protectors by the ordination of G o d . "

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must be within the framework of government, not by individual men. T h e Levellers did not stop with this step. Parker stopped with the statement that the people in Parliament are justified in their resistance to the K i n g , and he never could have agreed with the Levellers in stating the peoples right to resist Parliament itself. Parker was with the moderate parliamentarians like Pym, who remarked that Parliament stood " t o the body politic as the rational faculties of the soul to m a n . "

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as a mass to challenge Parliament would be like the hand challenging the head; such a challenge is unnatural. It was inconceivable to Parker that Parliament could stand in the place of K i n g and be tyrannous. " W e had a maxime, and it was grounded upon Nature, and never till this Parliament withstood, that a community can have no private ends to mislead it, and m a k e it injurious to itself, and no age will furnish us with one story of any Parliament freely elected, and held, that ever did injure a whole K i n g d o m e , or excrcise any tyranny, nor is there any possibility how it s h o u l d . " 6 7 Such a statement would have been inconceivable to the Levellers, but Parker held it not only a civic duty but also a religious one to support Parliament and not to resist it. " T h e r e can be nothing under H e a v e n , " he says, "next to renouncing G o d , which can be more perfidious and more pernitious in the people than t h i s . " 8 8 Elsewhere he says that " W h e n by such or such a L a w of common consent and

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agreement it (power) is derived into such and such hands, God confirmes that L a w : and so man is the free and voluntary Author, the L a w is the Instrument, and God is the establisher of both." 6 9 When Lilburne quoted the latter statement from Parker, he was not making a defense of Parliament either against K i n g or particular men, but he was thinking in terms of individual "rights." Parliament could be as tyrannical against individuals as the K i n g against Parliament. Every power must meet the requirements of God's law. T o Parker's assertion that "There can be nothing said against the Arbitrary supremacy of Parliaments," 7 0 the Levellers said much in reply. Overton, speaking for the Levellers in 1646, condemned the Parliament for not fulfilling its function and asserted the sovereign right of the people to repudiate any acts of Parliament which were not in accord with natural law. " Y e were chosen to work out deliverances and to estate us in natural and just libertie, agreeable to reason and common equity; for whatever our forefathers were, or whatever they did or suffered or were enforced to yield unto, we are the men of the present age, and ought to be absolutely free from all kinds of exorbitances, molestations, or arbitrary power." 7 1 A s is already indicated, Parker did not draw the extreme democratic conclusion from the belief that "power is originally inherent in the people." T o be sure, human beings were presumed to be "equal" in "nature" and "sin," but this did not imply individual "rights" in the state. L i k e Hooker he seems to have something of the idea of community in mind as the source of power, rather than a technical "Social Contract" such as later political writers conceived. "Power," he says, ". . . is nothing else but that might and vigour which such or such a societie of men containes in it s e l f e . " 7 2 Parker speaks of " m a n " rather than " m e n " as individuals. " M a n , " "the people" were comprehended in Parliament. It was, therefore, still largely a "relative" law of nature which Parker saw functioning in social and political relationships. Freedom has degrees not only in

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various countries, but the matter of degrees is important for England in the current situation. Precaution must be taken "to avoid the danger of unbounded prerogative on this hand, and too excessive liberty on the other." 7 4 Parliamentary government is for Parker, as for other Parliamentary apologists, the highest achievement of man in his imposition of checks on rulers by positive law. 7 5 It is the peak of the long struggle of man to attain order and protection f r o m tyranny. Since man's attempt at reconstruction after the Fall, various things have been tried; man often blindly moved f r o m one tyranny to another, till, as he said, some way was invented to regulate the motions of the peoples moliminous body, I think arbitrary rule was most safe for the world, but now since most Countries have found out an Art and peaceable Order for Publique Assemblies, Whereby the people may assume its ovvne power to do itselfe right without disturbance to it selfe, or injury to Princes, he is very unjust that will oppose this Art and order. That Princes may not be now beyond all limits and Lawes, nor yet left to be tried upon those limits and Lawes by any private parties, the whole community in its underived Majesty shall convene to do justice, and that this convention may not be without intelligence, certaine times and places and formes shall be appointed for its regliment, and that the vastnesse of its o w n e bulke may not breed confusion: by vertue of election and representation, a few shall act for many, the wise shall consent for the simple, the vertue of all shall redound to some, and the prudence of some shall redound to all . . . 7 8

In Parliament one finds the essence of the whole Kingdom, 7 7 "the Parliament is neither one nor few, it is indeed the State itself." 7 S But though the Parliament is supreme, it is not everything.- Parker believes in the harmony of powers in English government, and the people have "entrusted their protection into the Kings hands irrevocably." 7 9 Again, one is reminded of Hooker; there is something here of his notion that "corporations are immortal." It is not that Parker would de-

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privc the King of his prerogative; he would simply keep it in its proper position. He speaks in one place of "this purity of composition" 8 0 in reference to the English constitution, and says, "it is left unquestioned that the legislative power of this Kingdome is partly in the King, and Partly in the Kingdome." 8 1 L E V E L L E R C O N C E P T I O N OF L A W

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Mcllwain has correctly said that "Political doctrines have usually been put forward not in their own interest, but to bolster some cause." 8 2 The Leveller doctrine of law and government is, of course, no exception. At this point in English history the natural law concept did and could have political relevance in an "absolute" sense, or in the sense of making all men equal and politically competent. The Leveller leaders, were, as Haller says, "London tradesmen in varying states of distress." 8 3 They spoke the need and interest of their own social and economic group, and this interest comprehended not only religious freedom, which they sought in common with the sects in general, but free trade, freedom of the press, freedom from political power exercised contrary to the "spirit of the l a w " as well as the letter. And they sought not only "freedom from" various things, but they sought "birthrights," rights which God Himself bestowed upon man. Back of this new political factor was the new phenomenon of public opinion, the product of the Puritan and sectarian religious agitation, of the widespread reading in English of not only the Bible but of myriads of religious and political tracts and of humanistic literature in translation. Individualistic developments in religion had contributed their share toward developing political consciousness in the people. And never before had "reason" and "conscience" been so much a matter of public affairs. "Conscience," being first a matter of religion, now appeared as a new factor in politics, and it was just as disturbing in politics as it had been and continued to be in religion.

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NATURAL L A W

N a t u r a l L a w in the Levellers, even in "rationalistic" O v e r ton, is a theological concept. A s it was in medieval thought, it w a s here a part of a total v i e w o i the world, a world ruled by divine power. By N a t u r a l L a w , as by the Bible, the evil of the w o r l d is revealed and condemned. T h e 1640's in E n g l a n d w a s a time of intense exploration of the question of authority both in the realm of religion and of social and political relationships. A s the Bible, the spirit, and religious experience were the foundations of authority in matters of faith, so were the principles of reason, implanted by G o d , the measure of institutions in society. But faith and reason were closely related here. Lilburne d i d not m a k e the distinctions customarily made between the L a w of G o d and the L a w of N a t u r e ; God's will in nature and in revelation seemed the same to him. T h i s combination, while confused and unsystematic, yet gives some of the force of his political writings. Just as the intellectual problem was simplified in the sects in problems of faith, so here a more general theological problem was simplified. EQUALITY OF MEN

N a t u r a l L a w is implicitly a doctrine of equality, and equality in a radical absolute sense. F o r the Levellers, of course, it is explicitly such. G i e r k e 8 4 points out that the g u i d i n g thread in all speculation about N a t u r a l L a w was always, from the ancients to the present, individualism, and this individualism w a s steadily carried to its logical conclusion. O n e might recall the previous theological discussion of "equality." Luther's "priesthood of all believers" established spiritual equality amongst believers. Equality in the state is more closely related to doctrines of natural law, but the concept is strengthened by men w h o k n o w of the principle in the C h u r c h . Important for both areas of t h i n k i n g is the fact made m u c h of by the Levellers, that equality

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holds no relationship whatever to worldly rank or possessions. In both cases G o d looks only upon the inward man. Since G o d is the creator of all men, and the only unlimited sovereign, every man is equal in the sight of God, and hence should be treated accordingly by other men. In A d a m and E v e is the source of every "particular and individuall" man or w o m a n . Let politicians take note, then, that by nature all men are "equall and alike in power, dignity, authority, and majesty." Other Leveller leaders held the same notions of equality. Overton, speaking in somewhat more secular terms, said that " B y Naturall birth all men are equally and alike born of like propriety, liberty and freedom . . . every man by nature being a K i n g , Priest and Prophet in his owne naturall circuite and compasse." 8 5 A n d as evidence that this concept of equality is not merely theoretical or academic, he urges Marten that he " L e t not the greatest Peers in the L a n d , be more respected with you, then so many old Bellowesmenders, Broom men, Coblers, Tinkers or Chimney-sweepers, who are all equally Free borne, with the hudgest men, and loftiest Anakims in the L a n d . " 8 6 T h r o u g h these words, spoken upon the principles of Natural L a w , one can hear an echo of the tub preachers claiming their equal right with the university men to preach the W o r d , of the lowly claiming equal importance and right in the household of faith. Sir Thomas Aston's prophecy of 1641 regarding Puritan Church discipline is amply fulfilled: "These, possessed with an opinion of an equal interest in the power of the keys of the Church . . . , will much more plausibly embrace the suggestion of a parity in the sway of the state, as better suiting their capacities." 8 7 A "parity" had indeed arrived in the Levellers! It is their conviction that he sins against G o d who assumes arbitrary power or oppresses one of God's people. H e sins against God not only in that he usurps his brother's birthright, which is equal with his own, but in so denying by implication his own station of equality with his brethren, he seeks to achieve for himself a better and more excellent condition than G o d in-

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tended, and hence he tries to usurp that place which is proper for God alone. 88 Milton wrote in Paradise Lost80 that man over men He made not lord; such title to himself Reserving, human left from human free. The equality of men in the Levellers meant not only that political rights could not be taken away, but neither could they be given away. Any man who betrays his nature and his rights acts against his own reason, and hence denies God. T o betray his own birthright, Lilburnc held, was equal to obliterating "as much as in me lay, the Image that God created me in (and which Christ by communicating of himself to me; hath restored confirmed and inlarged)." 90 One of the ways the Levellers proposed to make equality practical in political and legal terms was to put the law into English, in understandable form, just like the Bible. The Leveller Agreements were spread to the masses even as the Scriptures had been. MAGISTRACY AND CONSENT

The equality of men in power and dignity means that consent must be the basis of magistracy, of government. Contrary to Hobbes' view, equality here results in consent in politics, results in democracy. "The only and sole legislative Law-making power," says Lilburne, "is originally inherent in the people, and derivatively in their Commissions chosen by themselves by common consent, and no other." Thus far Parker and the Parliamentarians could have agreed. And the Independents at Putney in 1647 would have conceded as much, but the conclusion of Lilburne's statement is the point at which the majority of the Puritans balked: " N o man can binde me but by my own consent." 9 1 It was this latter point, consent of individual men as men, which prompted Thomas Edwards to express the Hobbesian fear that these "sectaries," as he interestingly calls the Level-

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lers, may "set up an Utopian Anarchie of the promiscuous multitude." 92 T h e Levellers in debate over their Agreement of the People with the Independents (in 1647) expressed their point through Colonel Rainborough: "the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he . . . and . . . every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government." 9 3 Again he says that "every man born in England cannot, ought not, neither by the L a w of God nor the L a w of Nature, to be exempted from the choice of those who are to make laws for him to live under . . ." 94 The author of Regall Tyrannic 9 5 establishes the divine basis of consent in government in these words: "By God all mankind lives, moves, and have their being, yea, and raignes, and governs as much by God (in their inferior orbs of cityes, hundreds, wapentakes, and families) as well as Kings in their Kingdoms, yea, though God himselfe in an extraordinary, and immediate manner, chose and appointed Saul, David, and Solomon, to be Kings of Israel . . . yet . . . he would not impose them upon the people of Israel against their own wills . . T h e Levellers never thought in terms of the political dangers of this doctrine, as is evident at Putney, but that is the fear of the Independents, that the "consequence of this rule tends to anarchy." 06 But direct appeal to the people, based upon universal consent, was the Leveller intention, regardless of Cromwell's fear of anarchy. Another objection aimed at the doctrine of universal consent came from the millenarians, who held that the need was not a popularly-elected Parliament and a popularlyapproved constitution, but a few good, conscientious men should be entrusted to correct the abuses. THE END OF LAW AND GOVERNMENT

T h e parliamentarians had pleaded solus populi in acting without, and against, Charles I after 1640. In 1649 and following, the regicides, rationalizing their extra-legal procedures, resorted to the same principle. Lilburne and his followers based their even

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more radical political theories on similar arguments. God created man in His own image, to be free and equal, and it is man's interest which is comprehended in political and social institutions. The L a w of Nature dictates first of all that "the public and common benefit and good of the community of men" is the end and purpose of government. 97 As in the case of the argument against prelacy, the original purpose and institution of government are pleaded. The end of all law, divine and human, is from beginning to end the good of man. Even Hobbes would have agreed to that. Lilburne agreed with his contemporaries on the nature of the supposed original institution of government. Like Parker, Milton and the Presbyterians, he believed that after the Fall men saw in the prevailing violence and chaos a threat of destruction, and so, in Milton's words: "agreed by common league to bind each other from mutual injury." 9 8 Rutherford, the Scottish Presbyterian, said that "It is not in their free will to obey or not to obey the acts of the court of Nature, which is God's Courts, and this court enacteth that societies suffer not mankind to perish, which must necessarily follow if they appoint no government." 99 "By reason of mans corruption by the fall," Lilburne wrote, "he cannot live as a rationall Creature" without government. 100 William Walwyn stated the myth in words very similar to those Henry Parker used in his Observations,101 In a Manifestation (1649) the Leveller leaders state that they "know very well the pravity and corruption of mans heart if such that there could be no living without" government. 102 Government was set up among men to "restrain by force and punishment" the depraved tendencies of men. Even Overton, who appears usually to ignore the Fall, recognized the necessity of common protection against selfish interest. Since magistrates are caught in the same conditions as other men, therefore law must limit the power of authority. " I know of nothing that makes a man a magistrate over me but law," said Lilburne. 1 0 3 Elsewhere 1 0 4 he speaks of the people's "laws and liberties,

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which are the boundaries to keep out tyranny and oppression." T h e L a w of Nature, God's image, which is man's rational capacity, demands that government be by law, and that the intention of government and law be fulfilled. It is the responsibility of every individual, the Levellers proceeded, to see that magistracy is contained within its bounds; to do otherwise is to deny the God who created man, to commit felony against the neighbor, to be a murderer. "For the L a w taken abstract f r o m its originall reason and end, is made a shell without a kernell, a shadow without a substance, and a body without a soul. It is the execution of Laws according to their equity and reason, which (as I may say) is the spirit that gives life to Authority. T h e Letter kills." 1 0 5 T h e good of the people was the original purpose of government and the only reason for its continuance at present. RESISTANCE TO TYRANNY

"For bondage and slavery are not inferior to death." 1 0 8 If the people instituted magistracy for their own good and protection, what recourse did they have if the magistrate became tyrannical or did not fulfill his reason for being? At this point the Levellers stood ultimately in opposition to all their contemporaries. Hobbes held that sovereignty in the ruler must be absolute and irrevocable, otherwise chaos and primitive lawlessness is the only alternative. H e could conceive of no "lawful" resistance. 107 In part this was the position of Parker and the Presbyterians. As Parker put it, the aim must be to avoid the extremes of "unbounded prerogative" and of "excessive liberty," of a tyrannical king and the extremes of the "moliminous mass." Only through Parliament could the people hold their ruler accountable. T h e king had been entrusted to protect the people "irrevocably." H e could not "by any private persons" be resisted. This, of course, was good Calvinistic doctrine. 1 0 8 T h e people as such could not resist, directly; their only recourse was through the inferior magistrates.

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John Milton, perceiving the part the army played in the execution of the King, was led one step beyond Parker. H e conceded more to the people than the right to keep King and Parliament in balance. T h e purpose of government is the common good, and common good may upon occasion demand alteration of government. This, he thought, was the root of civil right. "Since the king or magistrate holds his authority of the people, both originally and naturally for their good in the first place and not his own, then may the people, as oft as they shall judge it for the best, either choose him or reject him, retain him or depose him . . . , merely by the liberty and right of free-born men to be governed as seems to them best." 1 0 0 But Milton was making an apology for military action, a defense of Cromwell and tyrannicide. T h e Levellers ultimately applied this principle of resistance to the Lords, to Parliament and to Cromwell's dictatorship and to the army. Resistance to tyranny in the K i n g the Levellers held right along with all the Parliamentarians. Resistance, however, was not limited to the King as such. Lilburne wrote Cromwell that "if tyranny be resistable, then it is resistable in a Parliament as well as a King." 1 1 0 "Every rationall honest Common-wealths man," wrote Overton, "is in duty bound even from the just principles of divinity, humanity, and reason, with all his strength and might, either by pollicy or by force, or by both, to endeavour the extirpation and removal of . . . usurpers and oppressors, from the seat and place of Government." 1 1 1 God did not simply establish the right and duty to oppose "arbitrary" kings. God established the civil power itself. T h e powers that be are ordained of God, but God has set limits to all earthly powers. Men are able and obligated to determine when those limits have been transgressed. Lilburne claimed never to have resisted powers, "because they are powers" but because they get out of their prescribed bounds. 1 1 2 Overton said, "Tyranny is no magistracie. Therefore the resistance of Tyrants is no resistance of magistrates, except it be of such (as are) so nominally." 1 1 3 Let not the members of

78

LAW AND DEMOCRACY

Parliament think that the people "pluck off the garments of royalty from oppression and tyranny, to dress up the same in Parliament-robes." 1 1 4 Were tyranny not resistable, a man might lawfully commit suicide or allow another to murder him. But both are unlawful by God's law in nature and in His word. 116 Tyranny, according to Lilburne, is against God in two ways: in that it is injurious to man, on the one hand, and in that it is a presumption on the part of man to usurp God's power and position, on the other. Only God is absolute. . . . unnatural, irrationall, sinfull, wicked, unjust, dcvelish, and tyrannicall it is, for any man whatsoever, spirituall or temporal], Clcargy-man or Lay man, to appropriate and assume unto himself, a power, authority and jurisdiction, to rule, govern, or raign over any sort of men in the world, without their free consent, and whosoever doth it, whether Cleargy-man, or any other whatsoever, doe thereby as much as in them lyes, endeavour to appropriate and assume unto themselves the Office and soveraignty of God (who alone doth, and is to rule by his will and pleasure) and to be like their Creator, which was the sinne of the Devils, who not being content with their first station, but would be like God, for which sin they were thrown down into hell, reserved in everlasting chaînes, under darknes, unto the judgement of the great day. lude ver. 6. And Adams sin it was, which brought the curse upon him and all his posterity, that he was not content with the station and condition that God created him in. 1 , 9

Another typical Lilburnian passage is found in his Strength Out of Weal^nesse: "I say no Power on earth is absolute but God alone, and all other Powers are dependents upon him, and those Principles of Reason and Righteousness that hee hath indowed man with, upon the true Bassis of which all earthly power or Majestracy ought to be founded, and when a power or majestracy degenerates from that Rule, by which it is to bee Ruled, and betakes it selfe to its crooked and innovating will; it is to bee no more a Power or Majestracy, but an obnoxious Tyranny to be resisted by all those that would not willingly have man to

LAW AND DEMOCRACY

79

usurp the Soveraigntic of God to Rule by his will and pleasure." 1 1 7 As has been indicated, the Levellers were originally uncritical followers of the Parliamentary cause. Lilburne had gone to war as a firm believer in the excellence of Parliament. Walwyn and Overton, too, supported Parliament. Just as Henry Parker had written before him, Walwyn wrote in July, 1644, that the English government was "of all others . . . the most excellent." The King and other magistrates, he said, are accountable to Parliament, "the only makers of law." 1 1 8 By October of 1645 Walwyn had taken in his thinking the direction of future Leveller thought. Now the emphasis was shifting from Parliament's power against the king to the people's power over Parliament. Parliament men appeared to think that they "have power over all our lives, estates and liberties, to dispose of them at their pleasure, whether for our good or hurt," without any bounds or rules. 118 Walwyn's title indicates the critical trend of Leveller thinking. Englands Lamentable Slaverie, Proceeding from the Arbitrarie Will, Severitie, and Injustnes of Kings, Negligence, Corruption, and Unfaithfulness of Parliaments, Coveteousness, Ambition, and Variablenesse of Priests, and Simplicitie, Carelesnesse, and Cowardlinesse of People. There was the same development in Lilburne's thought. 120 And Overton 1 2 1 proclaimed against Parliamentary conduct that "we are the men of the present age, and ought to be absolutely free from all kinds of exorbitances, molestations, or arbitrary power." The fears of Cromwell, Ireton, et al., that the Leveller Agreement meant anarchy, the fears of those, like Hobbes, who saw in resistance to the magistrate a reduction to the savagery of the state of nature, could be turned by the Levellers to their own use. Parliament, Lilburne held, had been guilty of reducing the kingdom "into the originall law of nature." They had done it by not fulfilling their commission from the people, indeed by breaking the contract with the people. The Parliament men were accusing the Levellers of reducing the Kingdom to chaos.

8o

LAW AND DEMOCRACY

Lilburne and Overton wrote f r o m prison that "it is not we but they themselves, that dissolve the legall frame and constitution of the civill policy and government of the Kingdome, by suffering will and lust, but not law to rule and governe us, and so reduce us into the originall L a w of nature, for every man to preserve and defend himselfe the best he can." 1 2 2 Failure to govern according to law and justice, defeating the purpose of government—that was the real reduction of government. Lilburne expressed the same conviction in 1649 1 2 3 because he was personally denied the benefit of the law. T o Attorney General Prideaux, Lilburne argued that "all Magistracy of England was broke by the A r m y (in intimidating Parliament), who had by their Swords reduced us into the Originall state or chaos or confusion, wherein every mans lusts becomes his L a w , and his depraved will and forcible Power his Judge and Controller." 1 2 4 It was on the basis of the concept of the reduction of government that Overton arrived at his "true definition of treason." Said he, "treason is no other than a destruction of human society, or actions . . . tending to the utter overthrow of public safety, cohabitation, and peace, or to the . . . thraldom of a people or 55» 56» 59A Preparative to a Hue and Cry (1649), pp. 1, 4. The Triall (1649), pp. 1 1 , 38, 138. The Engagement Vindicated (1650), p. 3. Apologeticall Narration (1652), pp. 65, 66. As You Were (1652), pp. 3, 12, 17, 18. Edward (Lilburne refers to Edward I, III, and VI, and particularly to the laws of good Edward III.) The Just Mans Justification (1646), p. 13 (reference to Edward as "St."). Londons Liberty (1646), pp. 4, 14, 15, 45, 66, 68. The Free-Mans Freedome Vindicated (1646), p. 6. The Juglers Discovered (1647), p. 6. The Triall (1649), pp. 7, 9 , 1 1 , 5 1 , 1 2 4 .

128

APPENDIX

Magna Charta Englands Birth-Right (1645), pp. 4, 5, 7, Postscript. Innocency and Truth (1645), pp. 12, 13, 14, 15, 19, 26, 28, 57, 6 i , 64, 72. /in Anatomy of the Lords Tyranny (1646), pp. 3, 10, 13. Liberty Vindicated against Slavery (1646), pp. 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 20, and in the letter at the end. The Just Mans Justification (1646), pp. 14, 15. Londons Liberty (1646), pp. 15, 23, 29, 40. The Oppressed Mans Oppression (1646), pp. 3, 27. The Free-Mans Freedome Vindicated (1646), pp. 4, 6, 9, 10. The Peoples Prerogative and Priviledges, Being a Collection of the Marrow and Soule of Magna Charta (1647) (references too numerous to note). Jonahs Cry (1647), p. 11. Regall Tyrannic (1647), pp. 25, 26, 28, 99. The Recantation of . . . Lilburne (1647), pp. 4, 5. Rash Oaths Unwarrantable (1647), pp. 5, 28, 48, 49. The Grand Plea (1647), pp. 2, 6, 9. The Out-Cryes of Oppressed Commons (1647), pp. 1, 2, 7, 12. A Whip for the Present House of Lords (1647), pp. 7, 10, 24. Two Letters Writ to Col. Henry Martin (1647), PP- 2> 3The Resolved Mans Resolution (1647), pp. 3, 9, 39. The Juglers Discovered (1647), p. 5. The Prisoners Plea (1648), pp. 5, 10. A Plea, or Protest (1648), pp. 3, 12, 13. To Every Individual Member of Honourable House of Commons (1648), p. 5. To His Honored Friend (1649), pp. 19, 48. The Triall (1649), pp. 6, 7, 8, 17, 63. The Innocent Mans First Proffer (1649), p. 146 of Triall. A Preparative to a Hue and Cry (1649), pp. 2, 17. The Engagement Vindicated (1650), p. 4. Apologetical Narration (1652), p. 6. As You Were (1652), p. 1. A Remonstrance (1652), p. 5. A Jury-Mans Judgment (1653), p. 13. The Just Defence of John Lilburn (1653), p. 4.

APPENDIX

129

Petition of Right A Wor\e of the Beast (1638), p. 25. En glands Birth-Right Justified (1645), pp. 5, 7, and Postscript. Innocency and Truth (1645), pp. 12, 19, 47. Londons Liberty (1646), pp. 15, 29. The Oppressed Mans Oppression (1646), p. 27. The Free-Mans Freedome Vindicated (1646), p. 6. Peoples Prerogative and Priviledges (1647) (innumerable references). The Grand Plea (1647), p. 9. The Out-Cryes of Oppressed Commons (1647), PP- '> 7Two Letters Writ to Col. Henry Martin (1647), P- 2 The fuglers Discovered (1647), p. 4. The Prisoners Plea (1648), pp. 3, 10. A Plea, or Protest (1648), pp. 3, 11. Picture of the Council of State (1649), p. 8. A Discourse (1649), p. 7. To His Honored Friend (1649), pp. 19, 47. The Triall (1649), pp. 6, 7, i i , 16, 17, 26, 63, 78, 79. The Innocent Mans First Proffer (1649), p. 156 of Triall. A Preparative to a Hue and Cry (1649), p. 2. The Engagement Vindicated (1650), p. 4. Apologetical Narration (1652), pp. 6, 17. Coke, Sir Edward Innocency and Truth (1645), p. 60 (reference to 4th part of the Institutes. Hereafter the number in parentheses following the page number will refer to the part of the Institutes Lilburne has referred to. Where no number follows the page reference, Lilburne most likely is referring to the second part of the Institutes or simply to Coke as a champion of ancient English rights.). An Anatomy of the Lords Tyranny (1646), p. 5 ( 2 ) . Liberty Vindicated against Slavery (1646), pp. 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 1 0 , 1 4 , 1 5 (reference to Proeme to 2d part), 15 (4), 16 (2), 20. The fust Mans Justification (1646), p. 14 ( 2 ) . Londons Liberty (1646), pp. 4 (2), 12 ( 1 ) , 14 (2 & 4), 29 (2), 31 (2), 41 (2), 49, 56, 66 (2), 68 (2), 69 (2), 70 ( 2 ) .

I30

APPENDIX The Oppressed Mans Oppression (1646), pp. 3 (2), 4 (2 & 4), 9 (2). 23Peoples Prerogative and Priviledges (1647) (references too numerous to note). Regall Tyrannic Discovered (1647), pp. 62 (2), 76, 77, 78, 97, 98 (4). The Grand Plea (1647), p. 10 (2). The Out-Cryes of Oppressed Commons (1647), pp. 2 (2), 8 (4), 12 (2 8c 4). A Whip for the Present House of Lords (1647), pp. 7, 10 ( 3 ) , 24 (2). Two Letters Writ to Col. Martin (1647), pp. 3 ( 2 ) , 4 ( 2 ) , 6 ( 4 ) . The Resolved Mans Resolution (1647), pp. 20 (4), 25 ( 1 ) , 39 The Juglers Discovered (1647), PThe Prisoners Plea (1648), pp. 2 (2), 3 (2), 5 (4), 10 (2 & 3), 11(2). A Plea, or Protest (1648), pp. 1 1 (3), 12 ( 1 & 2). To Every Individual Member (1648), p. 3. Picture of the Councel of State (1649), p. 8 (4). Legall Fundamentall

Liberties (1649), pp. 23 (4), 44 (4), 60

(3)A Discourse (1649), p. 4. An Impeachment (1649), p. 7 (4). To His Honored Friend (1649), pp. 3 ( 1 - 4 ) , 5, 6 (2), 18 (2), '9 (3 & 4). 47 ( 2 ) , 48 (i> 2. 3). 49 ( 1 & 2), 50 (2). The Triall (1649), pp. 4 (2 & 3), 5 (2 & 3 ) , 10 (3), 78 (3), 122, 123, 124, 124 (3), 135 (3), 140 (3). A Preparative to a Hue and Cry (1649), pp. 3 ( 2 ) , 7 (1 & 2). The Engagement Vindicated (1650), p. 3 (4). A Just Reproof ( 1 6 5 1 ) , p. 38. Apologetical Narration (1652), p. 66 (2 & 4). As You Were (1652), p. 17 (2 & 4). A Remonstrance (1652), p. 5. The Triall of Mr. John Lilburne (1653), pp. 1 (3), 2, 22 (2 & 3). A Jury-Mans Judgment (1653), pp. 13 (2), 14. Daniel, Samuel The Just Mans Justification (1646), pp. 13, 14.

APPENDIX

131

Liberty Against Slavery (1646), p. 10 (reference to Life of Henry the Third). The Peoples Prerogative and Priviledges (1647), Proeme reference to History. Regali Tyrannie Discovered (1647), pp. 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 26, 27, 28, 29, 86, 90, 91, 93 (references to History). Holinshed, Raphael Regali Tyrannie Discovered (1647), pp. 97, 98. The Out-Cryes of Oppressed Commons (1647), p. 3 (reference to Chronicles of Ireland). Horn, Andrew Londons Liberty (1646), p. 12. The Oppressed Mans Oppression (1646), p. 3. The Peoples Prerogative and Priviledges (1647), Proeme, pp. 36, 71. To Every Individuali Member of the House of Commons (1648), p. 3. An Impeachment (1649), p. 6. A Just Reproof to Haberdashers-Hall (1651), p. 22. Martyn, William The Just Mans Justification (1646), p. 13. Regali Tyrannie Discovered (1647), pp. 15, 17, 19, 30, 31, 54. An Impeachment (1649), p. 6. Pym, John Innocency and Truth (1645), pp. 50, 52, 53 (references to his speeches). Londons Liberty (1646), p. 57. Peoples Prerogative and Priviledges (1647), P- 4 Legali Fundamentall Liberties (1649), p. 40. An Impeachment (1649), p. 6. Raleigh, Sir Walter Legali Fundamentall Liberties (1649), p. 66 (reference to his History of the World). St. Germain, Christopher Innocency and Truth (1645), p. 62 (references to his Doctor and Student). Peoples Prerogative and Priviledges, p. 73.

132

APPENDIX

Rash Oaths Unwarrantable (1647), p. 28. Speed, John The Just Mans Justification (1646), p. 13 (references to his Chronicles). Regall Tyrannic {1647), pp. 14,17, 18,19, 21, 23, 30, 39, 53, 86, 90, 91» 92> 93The Prisoners Plea for a Habeas Corpus (1648), p. 1 1 . An Impeachment (1649), p. 6.

NOTES CHAPTER

I

INTRODUCTION

1. Following Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty, Introduction. It is recognized that the distinctions are not always rigid or very sharp. Each group at times joined forces with one or more of the others; some individuals agreed with part of one program and part of another. See Hexter, "The Problem of the Presbyterian Independents," American Historical Review, X L I V (1938), pp. 29-49, for development of the thesis that the Presbyterians and the Independents were not mutually exclusive groups. For purposes of discussion, however, the distinction is useful, and it does emphasize some real differences in the parties as a whole. 2. Lilburne, A Whip for the Present House of Lards, p. 3. The political democrats whom we are discussing are not to be confused with Gerrard Winstanley's "Diggers," sometimes called the "true Levellers." Simply put, Lilburne's Levellers were concerned with political democracy while Winstanley's group was primarily interested in what may be called economic reforms. See pp. 85 if. for a statement of the Leveller attitude toward property. 3. A True Relation of the Material Passages of Lieu. Col. John Lilburnes Sufferings, p. 69. The text of these debates is reprinted in Woodhouse, op. cit. 4. Legall Fundamentall Liberties, p. 36. See also Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War, Vol. Ill, p. 380. 5. See Ch. Ill, pp. 82 ff., for the provisions of the Agreement. 6. p. 7. Also in A True Relation of Material Passages, p. 69. 7. A Whip for the Present House of Lords, p. 3. 8. See, for instance, The Prisoners Plea for Habeas Corpus, p. 13. 9. Quoted in Haller & Davies, Leveller Tracts, Introduction, p. 2, n. 1. 10. Edwards, Gangraena, Part III, p. 17. 1 1 . Perry, Puritanism and Democracy, p. 33. 12. Using Troeltsch's distinction between church and sect. In his The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, Vol. II, p. 710, he refers to the Levellers simply as "radical Baptists," though that

NOTES: CHAPTER

134

II

designation docs not cover all the facts. Shaw, A History of the English Church during the Civil Wars and under the Commonwealth 1640-1660, Vol. II, p. 75, refers to Lilburne only once, and that is to point out the Leveller position on toleration. 13. Hobbes, Leviathan, Part II, Ch. X X I X . 14. Answer to Nine Arguments, p. 43. 15. Come Out of Her, p. 25. 16. Ibid., p. 28. 17. Ibid., pp. 1 4 - 1 5 . 18. Strength Out of Wea\nesse, p. 24. 19. The Power of Love, p. 41. 20. A Copie of a Letter to Mr. William Prinne Esq., 1645, p. 7. 21. Strength Out of Weaknesse, p. 12. 22. As Firth does, in Cromwell's Army. 23. See Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty; Barker, Milton and the Puritan Dilemma; Sabine, History of Political Theory. 24. Bernstein, Cromwell &r Communism; and Petegorsky, LeftWing Democracy in the English Civil War. 25. Woodhouse, op. at., p. ( 1 8 ) . 26. Milton, Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, Section V , p. 27; Barker, op. cit., p. 189. 27. Strength Out of Wea\nesse, pp. 21-22. 28. Englands New Chaines Discovered, Lilburne's speech before Commons, pages unnumbered, Haller & Davies, p. 169. 29. Troeltsch, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 344. 30. Woodhouse, op. cit., Introduction. 31. Cassirer, Language and Myth, p. 94. CHAPTER

II

L E V E L L E R O R I E N T A T I O N AND L E F T - W I N G

PURITANISM

1. Jane Robinson points out (in The Early Life of fohn Lilburne, 1946, an unpublished Ph.D. thesis at the University of California at Los Angeles, p. 42) the fact that Lilburne's father was a Puritan, that he engaged in lawsuits involving church property, that the home county was "palatine," or "a county in which local jurisdiction and representation in Parliament were vested in the bishop rather than in secular magistrates." Mrs. Robinson's is the most complete

notes: chapter ii

135

biographical treatment available of Lilburne's early life. The Dictionary of National Biography (referred to hereafter as DNB) has considerable material. There is much good material in Pease, The Leveller Movement ( 1 9 1 6 ) , and in Haller's books: The Rise of Puritanism and in the Introduction to The Leveller Tracts, 16471653, ed. by Haller and Davies. I have not had a chance to examine M. A. Gibb's Lilburne, published recendy in London. 2. He was in the company of William Prynne, Henry Burton and John Bastwick, and presently the great Milton was using his pen toward the destruction of Episcopacy. 3. Facsimile copy of A Worke of the Beast in Haller, Tracts on Liberty in the Puritan Revolution, 1638-1647, Vol. II, pp. 3 ft. 4. A Wor\e of the Beast, p. 18. Lilburne says elsewhere ( T h e Poore Mans Cry, p. 1 ) , "It is not without the special wisdome of God, to set forth the kingdome of Antichrist under the name and title of a Beast: For looke as Beasts do exercise all kinde of cruelty, and no favour is to be expected from them: so it is with the inhuman Prelates, their delight is only in the blood of the Saints: and as for Pittie, Compassion, Charritie, etc., there is no more in them than in Dogs." 5. A Defence of the Humble Remonstrance, Against the Frivolous and False Exceptions of Smectymnuus (London, 1641), p. 135; quoted in Barker, Milton and the Puritan Dilemma, p. 28. 6. See references, for instance, in Come Out of Her, pp. 5-6. 7. Come Out of Her, p. 6. 8. Coppy of a Letter Written by L.C.L. to One of His Special Friends When He Was in His Cruell Close Imprisonment, pp. 14, 16; printed with Innocency and Truth Justified (1646). Letter hereafter referred to as Coppy of a Letter. 9. Though he was accused later by John Bastwick Just Defence of John Bastwic\, p. 32, of being a divisive influence all over Lincolnshire by his preaching of separation. 10. Come Out of Her, p. 25. 1 1 . Ibid., p. 30. 12. A Wor\e of the Beast (1st ed., 1638), p. 4. 13. Come Out of Her, pp. 5, 6. 14. Ibid., p. 17. 15. Ibid., p. 19.

136

NOTES: CHAPTER II

16. Come Out of Her, p. 20. 17. By Haller, The Rise of Puritanism and The Leveller Tracts, ed. by Haller & Davies, Introduction by Haller, pp. 38 ff.

18. The Leveller Tracts, Introduction, p. 40.

19. Walwyns Just Defence (1649), p. 8. 20. Robinson, op. cit., p. 42, says that "it is impossible to tell from Lilburne's own writings whether he is a Calvinist or Arminian." This is probably too cautious an interpretation. She notes later, however, that Lilburne was "tinged with Arminianism," p. 64.

21. Answer to Nine Arguments, p. 34. 22. Ibid., p. 36. 23. A Wor/^e of the Beast, p. 19. 24. Frontispiece of The Christian Mans Triall ( 1 6 4 1 ) .

25. Come Out of Her, pp. 30, 31. 26. A Worke of the Beast, p. 23. 27. The Christian Mans Triall (1638).

28. A Worke of the Beast, pp. 6, 21, 24, passim. 29. Answer to Nine Arguments; also Come Out of Her, pp. 5, 7.30,32.34-35-

30. The Poore Mans Cry, p. 6, passim. 31. A Whip for the Present House of Lords, p. 1 1 ; also Triall . . . (1649).

32. 33. 34. 35.

A WorJ^e of the Beast, p. 21. Ibid., pp. 6-8. Answer to Nine Arguments, p. 43. Come Out of Her, p. 24.

36. Lilburne had read Fox's Boo\ of Martyrs; see Legall

Funda-

mentall Liberties, p. 21. 37. A Brief Relation of Certain Special and Most Material Passages . . . , p. 28; reference in Haller, The Rise of Puritanism, pp. 2

54-5538. A Wor\e

of the Beast, pp. 6, 10. Rutherford also used this

expression. See Joshua Redivivus; or, Mr. Rutherford's Letters, p. 65. 39. A Wor^e of the Beast, p. 10, passim. 40. Ibid., p. 10. 4 1 . There was always a new spiritual emphasis among dissenters in protest against the official woodenness and impersonal nature of the Established Church. In fact, the Reformation itself was partly

NOTES: CHAPTER

II

137

this kind of protest. English dissent, and hence the n e w spiritual emphasis, w e r e related more basically to w h a t has been called the "old nonconformity" in E n g l a n d , particularly around L o n d o n . See especially Burrage, The Early English Dissenters, V o l . I, Chs. 1 and 2; specific statement, p. 68. A l s o H a l l , The Religious Background of American Culture. 42. Jones, Spiritual Centuries, p. 243.

Reformers

in the Sixteenth

and

Seventeenth

43. T o the Reader, Randall's translation; noted in Haller, of Puritanism, p. 207. 44. Edwards, Gangraena,

Rise

Part 3.

45. See Everard's The Gospel-Treasury Opened ( 1 6 5 7 ) , Part I, pp. 376 ff. 46. Ibid., Part II, pp. 417 if. 47. Ibid., pp. 446 ff.; also Jones, op. cit., pp. 241-43; Haller, Rise of Puritanism, pp. 207-08. 48. The Gospel-Treasury Opened, T o the Reader. 49. Ibid., Part I, p. 376. 50. The Honey-Combe of Free Justification, Preface. 51. Come Out of Her, p. 20. 52. A Coppy of a Letter, p. 7. H a l l e r (in The Rise of Puritanism, p. 284) says that this expression of mystical experience deserves almost as high a place in the literature of personal religious confession as Bunyan's Grace Abounding. T h e idea of " r a v i s h i n g " or the irresistability of the spirit is carried over by Lilburne to his political thinking. T h e l a w of nature and the c o m m o n l a w of E n g l a n d have the same irresistable force upon " a n ingenious m a n . " T h e promises and intentions of the army-established Parliament regarding the establishment of a legitimate magistracy " w a s enough to ravish the heart of any ingenious m a n . " Strength Out of Wea\nesse, p. 4. 53. Come Out of Her, p. 5. 54. Letter of John Saltmarsh to the C o u n c i l of W a r ( O c t . 28, 1647), W o o d h o u s e , op. cit., p. 438. 55. Holy Discoveries

and Flames,

Dedication.

56. Come Out of Her, p. 30. 57. Ibid., p. r7. 58. See for instance, Answer Out of Her, p. 32, passim.

to Nine Arguments,

pp. 1, 22;

Come

NOTES: CHAPTER II

59. See Rutherford, Joshua Redivivus; or, Mr. Rutherford's Letters (of 1636-1637), p. 32; see also pp. 2, 3, 10, 20, 21, 32, passim. 60. Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, with elucidations by Thomas Carlyle, Vol. I, p. 97. 61. See Letters (of 1636), pp. 2, 20, 21. 62. The Poore Mans Cry, p. 5; see also Legall Fundamentall Liberties, p. 21. 63. The Just Defence of John Lilburne (1653), pp. 2, 3. Reprinted in Haller & Davies, op. cit., pp. 450 ff. 64. The Resurrection of John Lilburne (1656). 65. Legall Fundamentall Liberties (1649), p. 39; noted by Woodhouse, op. cit., p. (57), n. 1. 66. As Barker, op. cit., p. 21, says, "From Cartwright and Browne to Edwards and Burton, the Puritans had emphatically asserted that a particular government had been divinely instituted for the church of Christ no less than for the Jews, and that to disregard the institution was to ignore divine ordinance and establish Antichrist." The difference arose, of course, over what the Scripture prescribed, who was to do the interpreting, and how the prescription was to be carried out. 67. Hall, The Religious Background of American Culture, p. 89. 68. Answer to Nine Arguments, pp. 1 0 - 1 1 . 69. Ibid., p. 28; see also p. 24. 70. Underhill, Confessions of Faith and Other Public Documents Illustrative of the History of the Baptist Churches of England, p. 6. 7 1 . Ibid., Section 33, p. 39. 72. Answer to Nine Arguments, p. 38. 73. Ibid., p. 23; see also Innocency and Truth Justified, p. 16. 74. See Burrage, The Early English Dissenters; Barclay, The Inner Life of the Religious Societies; Miller, Orthodoxy in Massachusetts; Haller, The Rise of Puritanism. 75. Answer to Nine Arguments; Come Out of Her; for quarrel with the Presbyterian approach to church settlement, sec also A Copie of a Letter to William Prinne Esq. Valuable notes on Lilburne's earliest writings are given in Haller, Rise of Puritanism, pp. 432 fT. 76. Answer to Nine Arguments, p. 20. Bastwick, who influenced Lilburne in rejecting the practices and authority of the Established

notes: chapter ii

*39

Church poked fun and Scripture at the "humane inventions" of the church. Instead of the old "letany," he says, the people should be always "praying from plague, pestilence and famine, from Bishops, Priests and Deacons, good Lord deliver us." Letany (1637), Part I, p. 10. 77. Answer to Nine Arguments, p. 22; see also A \Vor\e of the Beast, pp. 19 ff. 78. Browne, quoted in Miller, op. cit., p. 60. 79. Answer to Nine Arguments, pp. 22, 26, 30, 31, 32; Come Out of Her, especially p. 35. 80. Answer to Nine Arguments, p. 30. 81. Ibid., p. 32. 82. Come Out of Her, p. 19. 83. Though he claims elsewhere (Come Out of Her, p. 23) to be a member of the "true church." 84. In 1649 in Legal! Fundamentall Liberties, p. 19, Lilburne speaks of Edmond Rozer, "teacher to the Congregation where I was a member," and refers to himself elsewhere (just Defence, p. 5) as "a noted Sectary." He was accused of being "the darling of the sectaries" by Samuel Sheppard, The Famers Fam'd (1646), pp. 10-11. 85. Answer to Nine Arguments, p. 35. 86. A Wor\e of the Beast, p. 4; Come Out of Her, p. 6; quotation from Answer to Nine Arguments, p. 36. 87. Answer to Nine Arguments, p. 37. 88. Ibid., pp. 12, 15. 89. A Wor^e of the Beast, p. 14; see also many references in Answer to Nine Arguments and Come Out of Her; also Englands Birth-Right Justified, pp. 12 ff. 90. Answer to Nine Arguments, p. 17. Lilburne's view of the Church was that of the more extreme Puritans, a view held by men like Milton (see Barker, op. cit., pp. 217 ff.) and William Dell. Dell, while holding a more spiritual view of the Church than many of the extremists, nevertheless expresses well the sectarian view here: "all Christians, through the baptism of the Spirit, are made priests alike unto God; and every one hath right and power alike to speak the Word; and so there is among them no clergy or laity, but the ministers are such who are chosen by Christians from among them-

140

notes: chapter ii

selves, to speak the Word to all in the name and right of all; and they have no right nor authority at all to this office but by the consent of the Church." The Way of True Peace and Unity, in selections printed in Woodhouse, op. cit., p. 312. 91. Answer to Nine Arguments, p. 18. 92. Ibid., p. 19. 93. Ibid., p. 21; see also Come Out of Her, p. 16. 94. Come Out of Her, pp. 8-9. 95. Londons Liberty in Chaines Discovered, p. 37. 96. A Remonstrance Against Presbitery (May, 1641), Section 13; quoted in Barker, op. cit., p. 140. 97. A Most Humble Supplication; Tracts on Liberty of Conscience, Hanserd Knollys Soc., p. 201. 98. Haller, The Rise of Puritanism, pp. 174-75. Bacon, as far back as 1589, had written prophetically regarding the Puritan appeal to Scripture: "they resort to naked examples, conceited inferences, and forced allusions, such as do bring ruin to all certainty in religion." In Barker, op. cit., p. 26. 99. Answer to Nine Arguments, pp. 24-25. 100. ¡bid., p. 2; see also Come Out of Her, p. 4. An important distinction should be noted between Lilburne's attitude toward Scripture and that of the moderates like Bastwick. Bastwick held that only in Scripture can we find the foundation of religion ( T h e Vanity and Mischiefe of the Old Letany, Part 4 of The Letany, 1637, p. 2). Lilburne, however, held that the Bible is the "only binder of conscience" (Answer to Nine Arguments, p. 6). On Bastwick's view a national church could be founded, but the individual is the most important factor underlying Lilburne's view, and this is relevant for developing democratic thought. 101. Religio Medici, Harvard Classics, Vol. Ill, p. 257. 102. A Worke of the Beast, p. 23. 103. The Cathechism of the Council of Trent, tr. by Theodore Alois Buckley (London, 1852), Ch. II, Q3, p. 15. 104. Bax, The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptists, p. 57. 105. Hall, op. cit., p. 88. 106. Burrage, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 2. 107. The Gospel-Treasury Opened, Part I, pp. 42-43, 89. 108. Ibid., Part I, pp. 3, 2 1 0 - 1 1 .

NOTES: CHAPTER

II

141

109. Ibid., p. 89. 1 io. Ibid., Part II, pp. 72-73. H I . Smo^e in the Temple, p. 5; in Drops from a Viall (1646). 112. An End to One Controversie, p. 115, in Drops from a Viall. 1 1 3 . Holy Discoveries, pp. 171-72, in Ibid. 114. Ibid., p. 137. 115. Smoke in the Temple, pp. 33, 34, in Drops from a Viall. 116. The Divine Right of Presbyterie, p. 114 of Drops from a Viall. 1 1 7 . See A Worbe of the Beast, p. 19; Answer to Nine Arguments, p. 3. 118. Walwyns Just Defence, p. 9. (Haller & Davies, op. cit., p. 363-) 119. The Power of Love, pp. 44-46; in Haller, Tracts on Liberty, Vol. II, pp. 300-01. 120. Who may have been Walwyn; see Haller & Davies, op. cit., p. 252 for attribution. 121. p. 21; Haller & Davies, op. cit., p. 262. 122. The Compassionate Samaritan, p. 38. 123. In Burgess, John Smith, the Se-Baptist, p. 2 1 1 . 124. Most complete treatment of this phase of the Puritan Revolution is presented in Tindall, John Bunyan, Mechanic\ Preacher. 125. It was a sermon preached to over a hundred people at Nagshead Taverne. The Coblers Threed is Cut, in Burrage, The Early English Dissenters, Vol. II, p. 328. 126. Haller, Rise of Puritanism, p. 287. 127. Crosby, The History of the English Baptists, Vol. I, p. 164. 128. Coppy of a Letter, p. 4. 129. Ibid., p. 8; additional contemporary references to How are to be found in The Coblers Threed is Cut, in Burrage, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 328 ff.; Taylor, Brownists Conventicle, p. 3, and a Swarme of Sectaries, pp. 8 - 1 3 ; see also Haller, Rise of Puritanism, pp. 267-68; and Tindall, op. cit., pp. 84 ff.; Barclay, The Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth, Ch. 7, pp. 118 ff. 130. A Short Treatise, p. 5. 1 3 1 . Ibid., p. 3. 132. Ibid., p. 3. 133. p. 8.

I42

NOTES: CHAPTER II

134. pp. 21, 26. 135. p. 27. 136. Printed in 1641 for "I.H." and called the Coblers End. 137. A Workc of the Beast, p. 19. 138. Come Out of Her, p. 20. 139. ibid., p. 24. 140. See Regali Tyrannic Discovered, p. 25. 141. Come Out of Her, p. 26. 142. A Wor\e of the Beast, p. 19. 143. Englands Birth-Right Justified, p. 9. 144. Ibid., pp. 37 if. 145. For instance, A Whip for the Present House of Lords, pp. 3-4. Freedom of the press was widely defended and demanded in Leveller literature. 146. A Wor](e of the Beast, p. 19. 147. Answer to Nine Arguments, p. 1. 148. Ibid., p. 2. 149. Come Out of Her, p. 18. See p. 61 for references to his reading. See also Appendix on Lilburne's references. 150. See Barclay, op. cit., pp. 155 ff. 151. Come Out of Her, p. 25. 152. Legall Fundamentall Liberties, p. 21. (Haller & Davies, op. cit., p. 404.) 153. William Hazlet, Hours in a Library (new ed., New York, 1904), II, p. 70; quoted in Robinson, op. cit., p. 8. 154. Come Out of Her, p. 17, passim. 155. The Poore Mans Cry, p. 12. 156. Come Out of Her, p. 29. 157. Answer to Nine Arguments, pp. 24-25. 158. A Copie of a Letter to Mr. William Prinne Esq., p. 4. 159. Coppy of a Letter to . . . James Ingram and Henry Hopkins, p. 4. 160. A Glimpse of Sions Glory, pp. 4-5; McAlpin ed., unnumbered pages. 161. Ibid., pp. 4-8. 162. Strength Out of Weakness?, p. 21. 163. A Letter of Due Censure and Redargution, p. 21. Since the time of Luther, work, the "calling," and hence the worker, were

NOTES: CHAPTER II

143

held up as pleasing to God. Luther used the doctrine against monasticism, and in the England of the Civil War period the same weapon was used against priests—the professionals—by the Levellers and others. Sec Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, Ch. IV. 164. A Remonstrance of Many Thousand Citizens, pp. 15-16; in Haller, Tracts on Liberty in the Puritan Revolution, Vol. Ill, pp. 351 ff. 165. The Gospel-Treasury Opened, Part II, pp. 56-58; see also Part I, p. 214. 166. Holy Discoveries, p. 185. 167. The Putney Debates, Woodhouse, op. at., p. 70. 168. Haller has shown how the Puritan preachers of the previous generation—Sibbes, Thomas Tayle, et al.—"had set forth the inevitable happy ending of the spiritual saga, the certainty of the saints' title to inherit heaven and sit at the right hand of God." The Rise of Puritanism, p. 269. Detailed treatment of this subject is to be found in Brown, The Political Activities of the Baptists and Fifth Monarchy Men. 169. The Gospel-Treasury Opened, I, p. 94. 170. Holy Discoveries, pp. 15 ff. 171. The doctrine of the three ages was not original with Saltmarsh. Joachim of Floris (1145?-! 202) developed this conception, speaking of the ages of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Bett, foachim of Flora, pp. 37-38. And before Joachim the doctrine had been elaborated by John Scotus Erigena. 172. Sparkles of Glory, pp. 56 ff. 173. Reasons for Unity, Peace and Love, in Drops from a Viali, p. 140; also discussed his "antinomianism" in End of one Controversie, Ibid., p. 116. 174. Used 1651 edition of McAlpin Collection. Fuller erroneously considered Mede the first of the Millenarians, in Worthies, Vol. I, p. 519, cited in Gooch, op. cit., p. 108, n. 1. See also Haller, The Rise of Puritanism, p. 269. 175. pp. 3, 11, 43-44. 176. p. 27. 177. The Personali Raigne of Christ Upon Earth, p. 53. 178. This anonymous pamphlet has been variously attributed to Hanserd Knollys, to William Kiffin and to Thomas Goodwin;

144

NOTES: CHAPTER III

Nathaniel Homes, in The Reserrection Revealed, 1654, p. 53, states that it is a sermon "Preached by Mr. Jeremiah Burroughs, but set forth by his friend." Haller thinks that the author was almost certainly Hanserd Knollys. See The Rise of Puritanism, p. 270; full note on p. 396. 179. A Glimpse of Sions Glory, p. 26. 180. Come Out of Her, pp. 16-17. 181. Answer to Nine Arguments, pp. 41 if. 182. A Copie of a Letter to Mr. William Prinne Esq., p. 5. 183. Answer to Nine Arguments, p. 34. 184. Liberty Vindicated Against Slavery, pp. 29-30. CHAPTER

III

L A W AND DEMOCRACY

1. A Copie of a Letter to Mr. William Prinne Esq. 2. Pease, The Leveller Movement, p. 194. 3. Sabine, A History of Political Theory, p. 253. 4. Good brief discussion of Roman Catholic doctrine of law—particularly Natural Law—found in Ryan and Boland, Catholic Principles of Politics, Ch. I. 5. Sabine, op. cit., p. 255. 6. Summa Theologica, Question 94, Art. 6, Vol. VIII, p. 52. 7. Gierke, Natural Law and the Theory of Society, Introduction by Ernst Barker. 8. McNeill, "Natural Law in the Teaching of the Reformers," Journal of Religion, Vol. X X V I , no. 3 (1946), p. 169. See Brunner, The Divine Imperative, p. 269, n. 8, for criticism of this type of interpretation of the Reformers as too simple. 9. D'Entreves, The Medieval Contribution to Political Thought, pp. 93 ff. 10. St. Germain, The Dialogue in English, betweene a Doctor of Divinitie, and a Student in the Lawes of England. Hereafter cited as Doctor and Student. Barker (Introduction to Gierke, Natural Law and the Theory of Society, p. xlvi) notes that in 1614 an English judge held that even a Parliamentary act is void if it is made against natural equity, for natural law is immutable. This dictum, however, "carried no weight" in England. But Barker ignores the

NOTES: CHAPTER III

MS

importance of the doctrine in the Civil W a r period, making no mention of the Levellers at all. His example might be considered further indication, though, that prior to the fight of Parliament with the K i n g the doctrine appears to have been relatively unimportant. 11. Hudson, John Ponet (i5'5?-i55(>), Advocate of Limited Monarchy, pp. 131 if., 206. 12. D'Entreves, op. cit., p. 116. 13. See D'Entreves, Chs. V - V I ; Sabine, op. cit., pp. 437 ff. 14. Hooker, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, in Wor^s, arranged by Keble, Bk. I, C h . xvi, p. 5. 15. Ibid., Bk. I, Ch. xvi, p. 7. 16. D'Entreves, op. cit., pp. 121 ff. 17. Hooker, op. cit., Bk. I, Ch. x, p. 1; Bk. V , Ch. lxvii, p. 7; Bk. I, C h . xii, p. 2. 18. Ibid., Bk. VIII, C h . vi, p. 5. 19. Ibid., Bk. V , C h . lxxi, p. 5. 20. First published in 1628 as Medulla Theologica and translated in 1642. 21. First published in 1631; partial reprint of 1639 edition in Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty, pp. 187-91. 22. Woodhouse, op. cit., p. 187. 23. Ibid., p. 187. 24. Ibid., p. 190. 25. Ibid., p. 188. 26. Ibid., p. 188. 27. Ibid., p. 189. 28. Ibid., p. 188. 29. Ibid., p. 188. 30. Ibid., p. 188. 31. Ibid., p. 189. 32. Ibid., pp. 189-90. 33. Ibid., p. 189. 34. Ibid., p. 190. 35. Ames, The Marrow of Sacred Divinity, pp. 72-3. 36. Woodhouse, op. cit., p. 190. 37. Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, Vol. I, pp. 340 ff.; see Brunner, op. cit., pp. 627 ff., for criticism of Troeltsch's doctrine of the absolute and the relative law of nature.

146 38. 39. 40. 41.

NOTES: CHAPTER III

Troeltsch, p. 247. Ibid., p. 346. Lilburne, Legall Fundamentall Liberties (2d ed., 1649), p. 23. Haller & Davies, Leveller Tracts, Introduction by Haller,

42. See Thorne, "St. Germain's Dr. and Student," The Library, 4th Series, X (March, 1930), pp. 421-26, for various editions of the work, indicating its popularity. 43. Doctor and Student, p. 22. 44. Ibid., p. 3. 45. Ibid., p. 4. 46. Ibid., p. 4. 47. Ibid., p. 9. 48. Ibid., p. 5. 49. Ibid., p. 16. 50. Ibid., p. 24. 51. Observations Upon Some of His Majesties Late Answers and Expresses, p. 44. 52. Ibid., p. 13. 53. Ibid., pp. 5, 3. 54. Ibid., p. 1. 55. Ibid., p. 1. 56. Ibid., p. 4. 57. Ibid., p. 8. 58. Ibid., p. 4. 59. Ibid., p. 8. 60. Ibid., p. 44. 61. Ibid., p. 29. 62. Strength out of Weaknessc, pp. 21, 22. 63. Observations, p. 16; see also p. 20. 64. Ibid., p. 44. 65. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (John Allen tr., Vol. II), Bk. IV, Ch. xx, p. 31. 66. Quoted in Barker, Milton and the Puritan Dilemma, p. 144. 67. Parker, op. cit., p. 22. 68. Ibid., p. 16. 69. Ibid., p. 1. 70. Ibid., p. 36.

NOTES: CHAPTER III

147

71. Overton, A Remonstrance (1646), pp. 4-5; Haller, Tracts on Liberty, Vol. Ill, pp. 354-55. 72. Parker, op. cit., p. 1. 73. Ibid., p. 4. 74. Ibid., p. 14. 75. Ibid., p. 24, passim. 76. Ibid., p. 14-15. 77. Ibid., p. 5. 78. Ibid., p. 34. 79. Ibid., p. 8. 80. Ibid., p. 23. 81. Ibid., p. 16. 82. The Political Worlds of James I, ed. with an introduction by Charles H. Mcllwain, p. xix. Grotius noted that philosophers, historians, poets, "are ordinarily writing to serve their sect, their argument, or their cause." However, he goes on to say that "when many, writing at different times and places, affirm the same thing as true, their unanimity must be referred to some universal cause, which, in the questions with which we are here concerned, can be no other than either a right deduction proceeding from principles of nature, or some common agreement. The former cause points to the law of nature, the latter to the law of nations." Dejure Belli ac Pads, Ch. I, p. 40, in reprinted selections by Coker, Readings in Political Philosophy, pp. 401-23. 83. Haller & Davies, Leveller Traces, Introduction, p. 37. The social and economic context of political thinking in this period is explored by Margaret James in her Social Problems and Policy during the Puritan Revolution, 1640-1660. 84. Gierke, op. cit., p. 96. 85. An Arrow Against all Tyrants (1646), pp. 3-4. 86. Ibid., pp. 19-20. 87. Barker, op. cit., p. 140. 88. Lilburne, Free-Mans Freedome Vindicated (1646), p. 1 1 ; Londons Liberty (1646), pp. 17-20; see also Vox Plebis, p. 4. 89. XII, pp. 69-71. 90. Lilburne, Londons Liberty, p. 20. 91. Ibid., p. 53. 92. Edwards, Gangraena, Part 3 (1646).

148

NOTES: CHAPTER HI

93. The Putney Debates, Woodhouse, op. cit., p. 53. 94. Ibid., p. 56. 95. Pease, op. cit., p. 108, n., assigns it to Lilburne. 96. Cromwell in Putney Debates, Woodhouse, op. cit., p. 59. 97. See John Goodwin, Right and Might Well Met (1648-1649), p. 2; quoted in Barker, op. cit., p. 144. 98. Milton, Tenure, p. 9; see also Parker, op. cit., pp. 1-2; Rutherford, Lex Rex, in Woodhouse, op. cit., pp. 202-3; Lilburne, FreeMan s Freedome Vindicated, pp. 1 1 - 1 2 , and The Engagement Vindicated, p. 6. 99. Lex Rex, in Woodhouse, op. cit., p. 202. 100. The Engagement Vindicated, p. 6. 101. Walwyn, The Compassionate Samaritan, p. 67. 102. p. 5. 103. The Prisoners Plea, p. 13. 104. Just Defence of John Lilburne, p. 5. 105. En glands Birth-Right Justified, p. 2. 106. Overton, An Appeale, in Woodhouse, op. cit., p. 330. 107. Leviathan, pp. 90-91, 96. 108. Parker, op. cit., pp. 8, 14. 109. Milton, Tenure, pp. 14,18. 110. Letter of March 25, 1647, in Jonahs Cry, p. 4. HI. An Appeale, reprinted in Wolfe, Leveller Manifestoes, p. 183. 112. Lilburne, Strength out of Wea/^nesse, pp. 21-22. 113. An Appeale, Woodhouse, op. cit., p. 331. 114. Ibid., p. 329. 115. Ibid., pp. 329-30. 116. Lilburne, Free-Mans Freedome Vindicated, pp. 1 1 - 1 2 . 117. pp. 21-22. 118. Walwyn, The Compassionate Samaritan, p. 68. 119. Walwyn, En glands Lamentable Slaverie, pp. 3-4. 120. Lilburne, En glands Birth-Right Justified, p. 3, passim. 121. Probable author of A Remonstrance of Many Thousand Citizens (1646), p. 5. 122. Overton 8c Lilburne, The Out-Cryes of Oppressed Commons (1647), p. 14. 123. Lilburne, Legall Fundamentall Liberties, p. 18. 124. Strength out of Weat^nesse, p. 5.

notes: chapter iii

149

125. Overton, An Appeale, Woodhouse, op. cit., p. 330. 126. Pease, op. cit., p. 193, uses these terms in reference to the Leveller idea, but he hardly represents their position. 127. Lilburne, Londons Liberty, p. 20. 128. See Pease, op. cit., p. 212. 129. Ibid., p. 132. 130. Lilburne, Londons Liberty, p. 41. 131. Of which there were three editions, in 1647, 1648, 1649. 132. Putney Debates, Woodhouse, op. cit., p. 70. 133. Ibid., p. 178. 134. Ibid., p. 177. 135. Reprinted in Haller & Davies, The Leveller Tracts, pp. 318 ff. 136. Ibid., p. 319. 137. Ibid., p. 321. 138. Ibid., p. 319. 139. Schenk, The Concern for Social Justice in the Puritan Revolution, p. 40, n. 48. 140. Putney Debates, Woodhouse, op. cit., p. 83. 141. Agreement, Haller 8c Davies, op. cit., p. 328. 142. Putney Debates, Woodhouse, op. cit., pp. 59, 80. 143. Ibid., p. 75. 144. Ibid., p. 69. 145. Ibid., p. 60. 146. Haller Sc Davies, op. cit., p. 327. 147. See The Wor\s of Gerrard Winstanley, ed. by George H. Sabine, especially the Introduction, for discussion of the distinctions. 148. See for instance The Discoverer (1649), particularly the first part, pp. 9, 12, passim. 149. A True Relation of the Material Passages, p. 71, passim. 150. A Whip for the Present House of Lords, p. 2. 151. A Manifestation, pp. 4, 5. 152. A True Relation of the Material Passages, p. 68. 153. Ibid., pp. 68-69. 154. See Schenk, " A Seventeenth-Century Radical," The Economic History Review, Vol. 14, Jan., 1944. Also the chapter on Walwyn in his The Concern for Social Justice in the Puritan Revolution. 155. In Walwyns Just Defence, p. 24. He also joined Lilburne,

150

NOTES: CHAPTER IV

Overton and Prince in signing the Agreement of 1649, wherein property levelling is specifically forbidden. 156. See Haller & Davies, op. cit., p. 276. 157. Though Walwyn's apologist, Humphrey Brooke, thinks that Walwyn has given "ample satisfaction" on this point in A Manifestation. See The Charity of Churchmen, p. 12. 158. The Discoverer (ist part), p. 12. 159. Walwyns fust Defence, p. 24. 160. Putney Debates, Woodhouse, op. cit., p. 59. 161. The Concern for Social Justice in the Puritan Revolution, Ch. 4. 162. Woodhouse, op. cit., p. 71. 163. The Worlds of Gerrard Winstanley, pp. 605-6. 164. Light Shining in Buckingham-Shire, or, A Discovery of the Main Grounds: Original Cause of all the Slavery in the World but Chiefly in England (1648). The second pamphlet was More Light Shining in Bucfyngham-Shire: Being a Declaration of the State and Condition that all men are in by Right (1649). Reprinted in Sabine. 165. Though they are not communistic in the Digger sense. CHAPTER

IV

L E V E L L E R B E L I E F S ABOUT G O D AND M A N

1. p. 6; Haller & Davies, Leveller Tracts, p. 281. 2. In Englands Miserie and Remedie (1645) is a brief statement of the central idea. See p. 3. Also Regall Tyrannic, p. 9; Legall Fundamentall Liberties, pp. 73-74, pp. 19-20. 3. pp. 1 1 - 1 2 . 4. Legall Fundamentall Liberties, p. 73. 5. Londons Liberty, p. 17. 6. Englands Birth-Right Justified, p. 3. 7. Overton, An Appeale (1647), in Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty, p. 324. 8. Woodhouse, p. (94). 9. Calvin, Institutes, Bk. II, Ch. II, p. 295. John Allen tr. 10. Englands Miserie and Remedie (1645), p. 3. 1 1 . Free-Mans Freedome Vindicated, p. 12.

NOTES: CHAPTER

12. nesse, 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

IV

Londons Liberty, pp. 17-18; see also Strength out of Weafip. 14. Paradise Lost, XII, p. 3. The Peoples Prerogative and Priviledges, Proeme. p. 6. Strength out of Weaknesse, p. 14. See for instance Englands Birth-Right Justified, p. 31. A Manifestation, p. 5. Woodhouse, op. cit., p. 324. An Appeale, Woodhouse, p. 332. Londons Liberty, p. 20; see also Free-Mans Freedome, p. 12. Picture of the Councel of State, p. 23. Vox Plebis, p. 4.

24. DNB, Vol. XIV, 1279; see Masson, Life of Milton, Vol. Ill, P-

l 6 425. It might be noted that Milton held similar views regarding immortality and resurrection. See Of the Christian Doctrine, Ch. XIV, p. 35; Ch. XV, pp. 39-41; pp. 17-27, 219, 263,307; also Barker, Milton and the Puritan Dilemma, pp. 318-19. 26. Picture of the Councel of State, p. 43. 27. Ibid., p. 44. 28. An Appeale, Woodhouse, op. cit., pp. 323-24. 29. But Overton could hardly be called a secular naturalist of the eighteenth-century variety. And it is probably not fair to say that he simply used orthodox Puritan terminology upon occasion for his own opposite purposes, as Woodhouse suggests, p. (55). 30. See DNB, Vol. XIV, pp. 1279-80. 31. Picture of the Councel of State, p. 28. 32. Walwyn, A Whisper, p. 5. 33. See Walwyns Wiles, reprinted in Halifr & Davies, op. cit., pp. 285 ff. 34. Ibid., p. 5. 35. A Whisper, p. 3; also The Fountain of Slaunder, p. 10. 36. The Fountain of Slaunder, pp. 15, 18; see Pease, The Leveller Movement, pp. 242 ff. 37. A Whisper, p. 3; Walwyns Just Defence, p. 8. 38. Haller & Davies, op. cit., p. 22.

I52

NOTES: CHAPTER V

39. Haller, Tracts on Liberty, Vol. I, p. 41. 40. The Fountain of Slaunder, p. 1. 41. The Power of Love, pp. 2-3. 42. Sec Haller, Tracts on Liberty, Vol. I, Ch. v; Pease, op. cit., pp. 242 ff.; Schenk, " A Seventeenth-Century Radical," The Economic History Review, Vol. 14, pp. 75-83, Jan., 1944; also article in DNB. 43. The fuglers Discovered (1647), p. 10. 44. A Whip for the Present House of Lords (1647), p. 17. 45. The Peoples Prerogative and Priviledge (1647), Proeme. 46. Cf. Wildman's supposed statement, in A Declaration of Some Proceedings, p. 16; Overton, An Appeale, pp. 187-88, in Wolfe reprints; and Overton's Hunting of the Foxes, Wolfe, op. cit., p. 362. 47. Hunting of the Foxes, Wolfe, p. 373. 48. A Manifestation, p. 7. 49. Pease, op. cit., p. 3 1 1 . 50. Haller & Davies, op. cit., p. 321. 5 1 . Pease makes much of the question of whether those who had not given assent were to be bound by the Agreement. See particularly p. 214. But Lilburne said more than once that it was his duty to prevent men from acting against their own interests. A drowning man must be saved whether he wants to be or not. 52. See Articles I X and X X I X . CHAPTER

V

L E V E L L E R BELIEFS ABOUT C O M M U N I T Y

AND ABOUT HISTORY

1. Putney Debates, Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty, p. 27. 2. See A Wor\e of the Beast (1638), Haller, Tracts on Liberty, Vol. II, pp. 1-34. 3. Woodhouse, op. cit., p. (69). 4. Whitehall Debates (1648), Woodhouse, op. cit., p. 139. 5. Haller & Davies, Leveller Tracts, p. 40. 6. Woodhouse, op. cit., p. (70). 7. A Manifestation, Haller & Davies, op. cit., pp. 276 fi. 8. Ibid., p. 5. 9. Putney Debates, Woodhouse, op. cit., p. 75. 10. Tke Discoverer, 1st part, Preface.

NOTES: CHAPTER V

*53

1 1 . Walwyn, Vanitie of the Present Churches (1649), pp. 43-44. Sec also The Fountain of Slaunder, p. 1; and A Whisper, p. 9. 12. A Commoners Complaint, p. 22. 13. Defiance Against all Arbitrary Usurpations, p. 5. What Overton says here is akin to Luther's conception of the priesthood. The rights of the community and the duty of the individual toward the community are the points of emphasis. Luther says: " A cobbler, a smith, a farmer, each has the work and office of his trade, and yet they are all alike consecrated priests and bishops, and every one by means of his own work or office must benefit and serve every other, that in this way many kinds of work may be done for the bodily and spiritual welfare of the community, even as all the members of the body serve one another." "The Three Walls of the Romanists," p. 69; see also "The Babylonian Captivity of the Church," in The Wor\s of Martin Luther, Vol. II, pp. 283 ff. 14. The Picture of the Councel of State, p. 44. 15. p. 1. 16. p. 1. 17. Just Defence, p. 5. 18. Book xii. 19. 504-14. 20. 546-51. See the Section in Ch. II on "The Relevance of Apocalyptic Interest" for a discussion of the theory of the three ages. 21. Fox, Journal (Penney ed.), Vol. I, p. 44. 22. Joshua Sprigge, in Whitehall Debates, Woodhouse, op. cit., p. 135. 23. Brown, Baptists and Fifth Monarchy Men, pp. 23, 35. 24. A Manifestation, p. 3. 25. Out-Cryes of Oppressed Commons, p. 7; Englands BirthRight Justified, pp. 36, 37, 40; Innocency and Truth, pp. 37-38; Liberty Vindicated Against Slavery, pp. 29-30; Plaine Truth, pp. 12-13. Also Vox Plebis, pp. 1-2. 26. There were strong critics of the view. See Bacon, Historical Discourse of the Uniformity of the Government of England (1647); also Ireton's strictures on the view at Putney, Woodhouse, op. cit., pp. 118-19. 27. See DNB, Vol. 43, p. 262. 28. Mirror of Justices, Vol. I, in Vox Plebis, p. 5.

154

NOTES: CHAPTER V

29. See Introduction to the Hughes translation, 1648, as The Booke Called the Mirrour of Justices. 30. Possibly written by Henry Marten; see Haller & Davies, op. cit., p. 47; and Pease, op. cit., p. 155. 31. Plaint? English; Anti-Normanisme; St. Edwards Ghost; Englands Proper and Onely Way. 32. Englands Proper and Onely Way, p. 7; see also the Preface. 33. See The Just Mans Justification, p. 16. 34. Ibid., p. 14. 35. Englands Birth-Right Justified, p. 12, passim. 36. Putney Debates, Woodhouse, op. cit., p. 96. 37. A Remonstrance to Many Thousand Citizens (1646), pp. 4, 5. 38. Putney Debates, Woodhouse, op. cit., pp. 118-19. 39. Journal (1901), Vol. II, p. 291. 40. Englands Lamentable Slaverie, p. 5. 41. Ibid., p. 4. 42. Ibid., pp. 3-4. 43. Ibid., p. 6. 44. A Remonstrance to Many Thousand Citizens, p. 15. 45. Putney Debates, Woodhouse, op. cit., p. 66. 46. Ibid., p. 55. 47. Londons Liberty (1646), p. 41; cf. very similar statement in Vox Plebis, pp. 20 if. 48. See Woodhouse, op. cit., pp. (41 ff.). 49. Ibid., p. (42). 50. Introduction, Kiffin, Remarkable Passages, pp. xii-xv. 51. Putney Debates, Woodhouse, op. cit., pp. 102, 104. 52. See Wildman's remarks in Putney Debates, pp. 107-8. 53. Ibid., pp. 101, 103. 54. Ibid., pp. 39-42. 55. Ibid., p. 40. 56. Londons Liberty, p. 59. 57. Putney Debates, Woodhouse, op. cit., p. 108. 58. Ibid., p. 177. 59. Ibid., p. 97. 60. Third Agreement, reprinted in Haller & Davies, op. cit., p. 320.

NOTES: CHAPTER VI

155 CHAPTER

VI

CONCLUSION

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. erty,

Figgis, From Gerson to Grotius, p. 6. In Chapter II. A Manifestation, p. 6. An Impeachment of High Treason, p. 24. Triall (1649), p. 114. Ibid., p. 138. Lindsay, in a Foreword to Woodhouse, Puritanism and Libp. (5).

BIBLIOGRAPHY M A J O R LEVELLER WRITINGS

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1638

A Worke of The Beast; Or, A Relation of a most unchristian Censure, M, H. 1639 Letter to the Apprentices of London, Haller's photostat of the Harvard University Copy. The Poore Mans Cry, Haller's photostat of British Museum copy. Come Out of Her My People. Also A Just Apologie for the way of Totall Separation, Haller's photostat of Guildhall copy. 1640 A Copy of a Letter to James Ingram and Henry Hopkins, Haller's photostat of Harvard copy. To the Honourable House of Commons . . . The Humble Petition of J. L., "Innocency and Truth Justified," M. 1641 The Christian Mans Triall (2d. ed.), M. 1645 A Copie of a Letter to Mr. William Prinne Esq., photostat in M,H. An Answer to Nine Arguments, photostat of British Museum copy in Haller's possession. The Copy of a Letter to a Friend, M. England's Miserie and Remedy, in a Judicious Letter, M. Englands Birth-Right Justified, M, H. 1646 Innocency and Truth Justified, M, and Huntington Library. The Just Mans Justification, M, and Huntington. The Free-Mans Freedome Vindicated, M, and Columbia University. A Copy of a Letter sent to Mr. Wollaston, M. Liberty Vindicated against Slavery, M, and Columbia. Londons Liberty in Chains Discovered, M, and Huntington.

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An Anatomy of the Lords Tyranny, M. The Charters of London, Huntington Library. A Remonstrance of the People of England, Columbia. 1647 Regall Tyrannie Discovered, M. The Oppressed Mans Oppressions Declared, M. The Out-Cryes of Oppressed Commons, M. The Case of the Armie, H and D. The Resolved Mans Resolution, M. The Recantation of . . . John Lilburne, M. Rash Oaths Unwarrantable, M. Jonahs Cry Out of the Whales belly, M. Two Letters Writ to Col. Henry Martin, M. The Juglers Discovered, M. The Grand Plea of Lilburne, M. The Additional Plea, M. Plaine Truth without Feare or Flattery, M. The Peoples Prerogative and Priviledges, M. 1648 A Declaration of Some Proceedings, H and D. A Defiance of Tyrants, M. A Whip for the Present House of Lords, M. The Bloody Project, H and D. A Plea, or Protest, Made by William Prynne, M. The Prisoners Plea for a Habeas Corpus, Photostat of Harvard copy owned by Dr. Haller. The Humble Petition, H and D. To Every individual Member of House of Commons, M. A Plea for Common Right and Freedom, excerpts in Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty, pp. 472 ff. 1649 Englands New Chains Discovered, M, H . The Second Part of Englands New-Chaines Discovered, M, H. The Picture of the Council of State, M, H and D (excerpts). A Discourse Betwixt Lieutenant Lilburn and Mr. HughPeter, M. 1649 The Legall Fundamental! Liberties of the People of England, 1st ed., M. The Legall Fundamentall Liberties, 2d ed., M, H and D (excerpts).

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T o His Honored Friend, Mr. Cornelius Holland, M. An Impeachment of High Treason against Oliver Cromwell, M. A Preparative T o An Hue and Cry After Sir Arthur Haslerig, M . Strength Out of Weaknesse, M. The Innocent Mans First Proffer (appended to Triall), M. The Innocent mans Second Proffer (appended to Triall), M. The Triall of . . . Lilburne (Clem Walker), M. The First Dayes Proceedings, at the Tryall of . . . ,M. The Second Part of the Triall of . . . Lilburn, M. 1650 The Engagement Vindicated and Explained, M. T o the Supreme Authority (attached as preface to The just Mans /unification), M. 1651 A Just Reproof to Haberdashers-Hall, M. 1652 True Relation of the Material Passage, M (in parallel columns of Dutch and English). Lieu' Colonel J. Lilburnes' Apologetisch, M. . . . Lilburne his Apologeticall Narration, M (written in parallel columns of Dutch and English). As You Were, M. A Remonstrance of . . . Lilburn, M. 1653 A Jury-Man's Judgment upon the Case of Lilburn, M. T o Every Individual Member of Parliament, M. Several Informations and Examinations Taken (in Overton's An Alarum To the House of Lords) M. The Triall of Mr. John Lilburn, M. The Exceptions of John Lilburne Gent, M. John Lilburne Anagram, photostat in Huntington Library. T h e Just Defence of John Lilburn, H and D. 1656 The Resurrection of John Lilburne, M. RICHARD OVERTON

1642 1644 1645

N e w Lambeth Fair newly Consecrated, M (microfilm). Articles of High Treason, M. Mans Mortallitie, M. T h e Araignement of Mr. Persecution, H, M. A Sacred Decretall, M.

i6o

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1649

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T h e Nativity of Sir John Presbyter, M. Martins Eccho, M . England's Miserie and Remedie, M. Divine Observations Upon the London-Ministers, M. A Remonstrance Of Many Thousand Citizens, H . A n Alarum T o the House of Lords, M . A Defiance against all Arbitrary Usurpations, M. A n Arrow against All Tyrants and Tyrany, M . T h e Commoners Complaint, H, M (photostat). A n Appeale from the Degenerate Representative Body, D . M. Wolfe, Leveller Manifestoes. T o the Supreme Authority, M. Overtons Defyance of the Act of Pardon, Columbia University. T h e Baiting of the Great Bull of Bashan unfolded, M (microfilm).

WILLIAM

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1646

1647

WALWYN

Some Considerations Tending to the undeceiving those, M. T h e Power of Love, H, M (photostat). T h e Compassionate Samaritan, H, M (photostat). A Helpe to the Right Understanding of a Discourse, H, M (photostat). Englands Lamentable Slaverie, H, M (photostat). A Whisper In T h e Eare of Mr. Thomas Edwards, H, M. A Word More to Mr. Thomas Edwards, M. A Word in Season, M. Toleration Justified, pub. by W . P . A . , San Francisco: California State Library, 1940. A Pearle in a Dounghill, M (microfilm). A Prediction of Mr. Edwards His Conversion, H, M (photostat). A Parable, M. Gold Tried in the Fire. Putney Projects; or, T h e Old Serpent, M. A Still and Soft Voice from the Scriptures, M. T o the Right Honourable and Supreme Authority of this Nation, H.

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INDEX Agreement of the People, An, 29, 74, 81-89, 95» i°3> iofi-07, 1 1 9 Aisted, Johann Heinrich, Diatribe De Mille Annis, 46 Ames, William, 55-58, 93 Answer to an impertinent Pamphlet . . . by John Spencer, An, 36 Answer to Nine Arguments, An (Lilburne), 27 Appeale, An (Overton), 96 Aquinas, St. Thomas, 50-52 Archer, John, Personall Raigne 0/ Christ Upon Earth, The, 46-47, i n Aston, Thomas, 28, 72 Baptists, 18, 24-25, 35, 39, 42, 107 Barker, Arthur, 144-4; Bastwick, John, 135, 138-39, 140 Brightman, Thomas, Apocalypsis Apocalypseos, 46 Browne, Robert, Reformation Without Tarrying for Anie, 24, 25 Browne, Sir Thomas, 30 Burrage, Champlin, 30, 137 Burroughs, Jeremiah, 144 Calvin, John, 52-53, 67, 93 Canne, John, Necessitie of Separation, A, 26, 88 Cassirer, Ernst, 1 1 Castcllio, Sebastian, 19 Christian Man* Triall, The (Lilburne), 13 Clarke, Captain, 8 ; Coke, Sir Edward, 53, 63, 1 1 2 , 1 1 3 Come Out of Her My People (Lilburne), 39 Conscience with the Power and Cases Thereof (Ames), 56

Copie of a Letter to Mr. William Prinne Esq., A (Lilburne), 38 Cromwell, Oliver, 3, 22, 102, 1 1 7 - 1 8 , 119 Dell, William, 139 Doctrine and Discipline of The (Milton), 97

Divorce,

Eaton, John, mysticism of, 20 Edwards, Thomas, 3, 73-74 Engagement Vindicated, The (Lilburne), 95 Englands Birth-Right Justified (Lilburne), 50, 1 1 4 Englands Lamentable Slaverie (Walwyn), 79 Englands New-Chains Discovered (Lilburne), n Equality, 71-73 Everard, John, 19; Christ's reign, 45; human learning, 3 1 ; mysticism, 4445; translations, 20 Fessler, Hans, 30 Fifth Monarchists, 1 1 9 Fox, George, 1 1 5 Foxe, John, Book of Martyrs, 22 Free-Mans Freedome Vindicated, (Lilburne), 90

The

Gierke, Otto, 7 1 Glimpse of Sions Glory, A (probably by Knollys), 42, 47 God, doctrine of, 90-93 Goffe, William, 118 Hall, Bishop Joseph, 13 Haller, William, 70, 106, 137, 143 Hare, John, 1 1 3

174 Harrison, Thomas, 82, 1 1 9 Helwys, Thomas, 34 History, Leveller conception of, 11020 Hobbes, Thomas, 76, 104 Holborne, Vincent, 36 Homes, Nathaniel, 144 Hooker, Richard, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, The, 52, 54-55 Horn, Andrew, 112-13 How, Samuel, Sufficiencie of the Spirits Teaching Without Human Learning, The, 34 Independents, 1, 74, 102, 105 Individual and community, Chapter 5 Innocency and Truth Justified (Lilburne), 61, 114 Institutes (Coke), 1 1 3 Ireton, Henry, 85-86, 104, 105, 1 1 5 Jones, Rufus, 18 lust Defence (Lilburne), 109 Kiffin, William, 34, 42, 43 Knollys, Hanserd, 42 Laud, William, 7 Law and government, 70-88 Leveller, origin of name, 2-3 Lilburne, Henry, 114 Lilburne, John, apocalyptic interest, 44-48; church organization, 23-39; "common man," 40-44; conversion and religious experience, Chapter 2; law and democracy, Chapter 3; Leveller party name, 2-3; references, appendix; scripturalism and anti-intellectualism, 29-40 Lindsay, A. D., 123 Luther, Martin, 19, 30, 59-60, 14243. 153 McAlpin Collection, 156 Magna Charta, 113-16 Major, John, History of Greater Britain, 53

INDEX Man, doctrine of, 93-104 Manifestation, A (probably by Walw y>>). 75. 86, 88, 90, 95-96, 102, 108 Mans Mortallitie (Overton), 97 Marrow of Sacred Divinity, The (Ames), 56 Marten, Henry, 96-97 Mede, William, Clavis Apocalyptica, 46, i n Milton, John, 73, 75, 77, 94, 97, 10506, n o , 151 Mirrour of Justices (Horn), 1 1 3 Montaigne, 100 Mysticism, and democracy, 18-23 Natural Law, Chapter 3; in England, 53-58; and Leveller sectarianism, 58-61 Nedham, Marchamont, Case of the Commonwealth, The, 3 Norman Conquest, i n - 1 3 Orme, William, 1 1 7 Overton, Richard, 44, 68, 72, 75-76, 77, 80, 91-92, 97-98, 108, 1 1 5 , 151 Pareus, David, Commentary Upon the Divine Revelation, 46 Parker, Henry, 43; natural law, 6470, 76 Parker, Matthew, 1 1 2 Pease, T. C., 50, 103, 152 Petty, Maximilian, 84 Ponet, John, Short Treatise of Politi^e Power, A, 53 Poore Mans Cry, The (Lilburne), 41 Presbyterians, 1, 5, 7, 28, 98, 99, 138 Property, 85-89 Prynne, William, 8, 50 Puritanism, "left-wing," Chapter 2 Putney Debates, 2, 44, 74, 84, 88, 89, 101, 1 1 9 Rainborough, Thomas, 74, 89, 1 1 6 Randall, Giles, 19

INDEX Remonstrance of Many Thousand Citizens, 3 Robinson, Jane, 134, 136 Rutherford, Samuel, 22, 75 St. Germain, Christopher, 53; Doctor and Student, 61 ; natural law, 61 -64 Saltmarsh, John, mysticism of, 2 1 ; on learning, 31 ; progressive revelation, 45 Schenk, Wilhelm, 88 Second Part of Englands New-Chaines Discovered, The (Lilburne), 2 Sexby, Edward, 43, 82, 107 Sparkles of Glory (Saltmarsh), 45 Spencer, John, Short Treatise, A, 35 Strength Out of Weaknesse (Lilburne), 78

175 Theologia Germanica, 1 9 Troeltsch, Ernst, 1 1 , 58-59, 1 3 3 Tyranny, resistance to, 76-81 Vanitie of the Present Churches, (Anonymous), 33 Vox PUbis (Marten), 1 1 3

The

Walwyn, William, 6; free justification, 1 5 ; magna charta, 1 1 5 ; on learning, 32, 79; on property, 8788; 98-100, 107 Wildman, John, 1 1 6 Winstanley, Gerrard, 86, 1 3 3 Woodhouse, A. S. P., 92, 105, 133, 151 Worfa of the Beast, A (Lilburne), 13 Wycliff, John, 24, 30