Milton moved forward, not
because Cromwell and the rest advanced, but with Cromwell and the
rest. We may perhaps describe the motive force as a passionate
attachment to personal liberty, liberty of thought and action. This
ideal force working in the minds of a few, "those worthies which
are the soul of that enterprise" (_Tenure of Kings_), had been the
mainspring of the whole revolution. The Levellers, Quakers, Fifth
Monarchy men, and the wilder Anabaptist sects, only showed the
workings of the same idea in men, whose intellects had not been
disciplined by education or experience. The idea of liberty,
formulated into a doctrine, and bowed down to as a holy creed, made
some of its best disciples, such as Harrison and Overton, useless at
the most critical juncture. The party of anti-Oliverian republicans,
the Intransigentes, became one of the greatest difficulties of the
Government. Milton, with his idealism, his thoroughness, and obstinate
persistence, was not unlikely to have shipwrecked upon the same rock.
He was saved by his constancy to the principle of religious liberty,
which was found with the party that had destroyed the King because he
would not be ruled by a Parliament, while in 1655 it supported the
Protector in governing without a Parliament.
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