ROBERT CROMWELL,

Father of Oliver Cromwell.

From the Painting by Robert Walker, in the collection of the Earl of Sandwich, at Hinchingbrooke.

Cromwell was censured for "his deeds," whatever they may have been, in 1621, and that he voluntarily acknowledged his offence-the wording of the forged entry gives some countenance to this deduction-there would at least be a coincidence of date between that of this second entry and that of one in the diary of Sir Theodore Mayerne-the fashionable physician of the day-who notes that Oliver Cromwell, who visited him in September of that year, was valde melancholicus. Even if no heed whatever is to be paid to the St. John's register, Mayerne's statement enables us approximately to date that time of mental struggle which he passed through at some time in these years, and which was at last brought to an end when the contemplation of his own unworthiness yielded to the assurance of his Saviour's love. Whoever yet," he wrote long afterwards to his daughter Bridget,

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"tasted that the Lord It was

is gracious, without some sense of self, vanity and badness?"

a crisis in his life which, if he had been born in the Roman communion, would probably have sent him as it sent Luther into a monastery. Being what he was, a Puritan Englishman, it left him with strong resolution to do his work in this world strenuously, and to help others in things temporal, as he himself had been helped in things spiritual.

English Puritanism, like other widely-spread influences, was complex in its nature, leading to different results in different men. Intellectually it was based on the Calvinistic theology, and many were led on by it to the fiercest intolerance of all systems of thought and practice which were unconformable thereto. Cromwell's nature was too large, and his character too strong, to allow him long to associate himself with the bigots of his age. His Puritanism-if not as universally sympathetic as modern philosopher might wish-was moral rather than intellectual. doubt it rendered him impatient of the outward forms in which the religious devotion of such contemporaries as George Herbert and Crashaw found appropriate sustenance, but at the same time it held him back from bowing down to the idol of the men of his own party-the

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