This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1909 edition. Excerpt: ...aiming at their own.----' self-interest; and so those now free with your Lordship in never so much love, may run the greater hazard. My Lord, neither my life, estate, nor relations were ever anything to me in comparison of the public, nor yet is; yet I would not be prodigal of them or your Highness's favour. My freedom proceeds from a large proportion of love and no bye-ends.'1 This was the consideration which made Cromwell hesitate--not fear of the loud pulpits denouncing the wrath of God against him, nor parrot-cries of 'apostate, ' but the sense that many who had loved and followed him were beginning to sorrow over him as a lost leader and as one who had brought shame upon their creed and cause.2 His case was hard. There was the necessity of agreeing with Parliament if he wished to found anything that would endure, and it might be long before he found another Parliament in so complying a mood, and so eager to give the nation a settled government.3 There was much in the proposed constitution which was good in itself, and seemed better calculated to secure the ends he desired than anything which the soldiers or statesmen of the age had yet devised. April 3' j must needs bear testimony for you, ' he told the committee of the Parliament when he met them again, 'that you have been zealous of the two greatest concernments that God has in the world. One is that of religion and the preservation of the professors thereof, to give them all due and just liberty, and to assert the truths of God. The other is that of the civil liberty and interest of the nations, which although 1 Nickolls, Original Letters, p. 141. 3 John Forster'a Life of Cromwell, published in 1839, is a modern embodiment of this feeling. s Cf. Thurloe, vi. 243. CROMWELL'S DILEMMA.

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