“It is easy,” replied Cromwell, “to object to the glorious actings of God, if we look too much upon instruments. Be not offended at the manner; perhaps there was no other way left. What if God accepted their zeal as he did that of Phineas, whom reason might have called before a jury?” But above all, “what if the Lord have witnessed His approbation and acceptance to this also—not only by signal outward acts, but to the heart too?”
To Cromwell this union of the outward sign with the inward conviction was something far above argument. The logic of events was the only convincing logic. It was the answer that he had given to Hammond’s doubts in 1648. “Fleshly reasonings ensnare us”; let us see what the purpose of God is, as it is made manifest in events. For as nothing happened but because God willed it should happen, so what men termed events were to the Christian “dispensations,” “manifestations,” “providences,” “appearances of God.” There was no such thing as fate—“that were too paganish a word.” There was no such thing as chance. Every battle was “an appeal to God”—Cromwell often uses that phrase as a synonym for fighting. Victory or defeat was not an accident; it was the working of “the Providence of God in that which is falsely called the chance of war.” Therefore each successive triumph of his cause was a fresh proof of its righteousness. His victories in Ireland became a justification of the Republic. “These,” he told the Speaker, “are the seals of God’s approbation of your great change of government.”
That there was something fatalistic in this belief cannot be denied. Cromwell himself once owns that he was inclined to make too much of “outward dispensations.” But the confidence in his cause which this creed gave was the source of his power over his followers.
“In the high places of the field,” said one of them, “as at Dunbar, Worcester and elsewhere, when he carried his life in his hand, did not his faith then work at a more than ordinary rate? Insomuch that success and victory was in his eye, when fears and despondencies did oppress the hearts of others, and some good men too.”
Whatever happened to himself, the Cause could not fail. “The Cause is of God, and it must prosper.” It was not for the sake of the Cause, but for the sake of his doubting friends that he strove to persuade them. “The Lord hath no need of you,” he tells one. “The work needs you not, but you it,” he tells another. The fear in his mind was only this: “what if my friend should withdraw his shoulder from the Lord’s work through false, mistaken reasonings?” To serve in that work in any station was “more honour than the world can give or show.” “How great is it,” he cries, “to be the Lord’s servant in any drudgery!” How little, then, it matters whether a man is called an apostate or a tyrant, or what reproaches that service brings, what estrangements, what vigils, or what labours. “Let us all be not careful what men will make of these actings. They, will they, nill they, shall fulfill the good pleasure of God, and we shall serve our generations. Our rest we expect elsewhere: that will be durable.”
Therefore, when others faltered and fell behind, Cromwell (in Marvell’s phrase) “marched indefatigably on.” Fortunate was the Republic that in its hour of need it had such a servant. More fortunate would it have been had its rulers realised that the Cause which Cromwell served was not a form of government, but ideal ends compatible with any form. He had sought to find religious and civil liberty in a monarchy; he sought it now in a republic; he was to seek it hereafter in a government which was neither. At present it seemed to him inseparable from the life of the Republic.
CHAPTER XIII
IRELAND
1649–1650
The Second Civil War had its counterpart in Ireland, where in May, 1648, Lord Inchiquin and the Munster Protestants threw off obedience to the Parliament and hoisted the royal standard. Ormond returned again to Ireland in September, 1648, and by January, 1649, he succeeded in uniting Anglo-Irish Royalists and Confederated Catholics in a league against the adherents of the Parliament. In vain Rinuccini, the Papal Nuncio, opposed the league. The freedom and equality promised to the Catholic religion, the independence promised to the Irish Parliament, allured many even of the clergy to Ormond’s support. They called on the Irish soldiers to fight for God and Cæsar under his banners, and engaged to supply him with an army of twenty thousand men. In February, 1649, Rinuccini left Ireland.