It is not murmuring against the wisdom or justice of Providence to admit, that in a probationary state the most perfect characters are they who have been purified by "much tribulation, and through faith and patience inherit the promises." The instrument used in this ordeal is generally our brother-man. Yet, while with hope and confidence, we look forward to a glorious issue of temporal affliction in eternal glory, let us beware of unfitting ourselves for the future recompence by extreme resentment against those who are the agents that Almighty Wisdom uses to improve us. Let us not attribute to malice and cruelty what may be referred to less criminal motives. Do we not often afflict others undesignedly, and, from mere carelessness, neglect to relieve distress? Our own concerns, interests, and wishes engross our thoughts. Nothing is so important to us as forwarding our own aims; and our fellow-creatures are too often but inconvenient lumber if they stand in our way, or merely useful implements if they forward our designs. It is from a want of attention to the feelings of others, from a neglect of the golden rule of putting ourselves in their place, and not from innate malice or a diabolical delight in giving pain, that the sorrows caused by domestic tyrants and puny oppressors chiefly proceed. Were self-love reduced within proper bounds, earth would resemble heaven. Let those, then, who deeply feel those "wrongs which patient merit of the unworthy takes," temper their aspirations after a state where universal good-will is the source and cement of bliss, by cultivating that excellent preparative for its fruition, a spirit of active, enlarged, and considerate benevolence.
These reflections will not unaptly precede the return of Lady Bellingham from her northern expedition. It never was the practice of Cromwell to render any one disrespect while his services could be useful, or till he was prepared to prevent the effects of his enmity. While the success of the King remained doubtful, he wished not to make himself any more enemies; and at the same time that he restrained and mulcted the Presbyterians, he endeavoured to persuade them to make common cause with the fanatics. He received Lady Bellingham (who was the avowed patroness of the latter) with much apparent respect, and at the same time he wrote kindly to her Lord, promising that his party should be admitted to a share in the government as soon as he could let the dove out of the ark to fetch the olive branch, which could not be the case as long as the floods of ungodliness covered the earth. He styled himself the servant of the Commonwealth, and the assured friend of Lord Bellingham; but nothing was further from Cromwell's heart than an intention of realizing these promises. His only aim was to pacify and amuse his opponents till he gained leisure to play his own game. He loaded Lady Bellingham with flattering expressions, selected her to stand by his side, when, as he called it, he rose in the congregation of the saints to give the word of exhortation, and appealed to her as the judge and expounder of his spiritual gifts. These, he observed, were all the refreshing attentions which the necessity of pursuing the host of Sisera allowed him to pay to the Deborah of the English Israel, except permitting her to reside in Bellingham-Castle, and to plead his friendship and protection.
The victory at Worcester was of that decided nature, which enabled Cromwell to throw off the mask, to dissolve that pantomime of a Parliament in whose name he had hitherto governed, and to assume the title of "Protector of the liberties of England." He now exercised a more despotic tyranny than this nation suffered either from her Danish or Norman conquerors. He confined the elective franchise to himself, creating what he called Parliaments for the sole purpose of making them ridiculous, and then turning out his mock-legislators with contempt. He alternately punished and provoked every party; even his own agents and creatures could not escape his apprehensive suspicions, which, by indulgence, engendered an insatiable thirst of blood. Yet, combining great qualities with the meanest vices—the policy of an Augustus and the enterprize of a Trajan with the dissimulation of Tiberius and the cruelty of Domitian, he at once awed and dazzled surrounding nations, and while he subjugated, exalted his own. Never was England more respected than when unlimited power, undaunted courage, and persevering activity placed all her resources in the hands of a man who, scarcely ranked by birth in the patrician order, could make every European sovereign tremble on his throne. Yet still, like the mystical sun in the Apocalypse, tormenting others while he was himself tormented, the era of his assuming power was the consummation of his extreme misery. He waded through seas of blood; he broke every divine and human obligation; he made the name of liberty a terror, and that of religion contemptible, to become himself a more pitiable object than the veriest wretches whom he inhumed in his prisons. They had some who sympathized in their sufferings, some who wished them God speed; but though the civilized world trembled at the name of Cromwell, he knew he had spies, creatures, and parasites, but not one friend.
Yet amidst this secret wretchedness and universal odium, the distant reflex of his name and authority was respected by all. Lady Bellingham found her reception very different, as the Protector's friend, in her return through England, than when she fled to Scotland an alarmed fugitive. Conscious of former remissness, Morgan met her at Lancaster, and earnestly entreated she would repose some days at Saint's-Rest after the fatigue of her journey. The alarm and mortification she had endured in that neighbourhood made her recollect the village with disgust; but there were some mysteries which she wished him to explain. Nursery tales affirm, that Puss, when converted into a fine lady, retained her old propensity of catching mice; and though Lady Bellingham was transformed from a fine lady into a devotee, the renovating spirit of true religion had not altered her temper or inclinations; there was the same waywardness in the former, the same cold selfishness in the latter. While she raved at formal and legal Christians, she was herself the true formalist, presuming on superior merit from the length of her devotional exercises, her rigid austerities, and the sums she expended in spreading her peculiar notions. But she came out of her closet to make her inmates and dependants wretched; her fasting-days were unsanctified through moroseness, and beside that, her gifts were too much confined to party-purposes to be entitled to the praise of charity; ostentation blew the trumpet before her alms, and she had the reward she sought, in the praise of men.
To return from the description to the illustration of this not uncommon character. It happened one evening, as the Countess was anticipating the joys of Heaven, by an analogy drawn from the delights which Bellingham-Castle afforded, and which she supposed would there be increased in an infinite ratio, that her humble companion ventured to recall her imagination to this world, by producing what she thought a very pretty poem on the subject of love, which she found in their chamber at the miserable old delinquent's at Ribblesdale. Lady Bellingham shook her head at the name of love, commanded Mrs. Abigail to avoid the sinful subject, and to expiate the offence by reading fifty pages of "a popular fanatical treatise."
As the waiting-gentlewoman retired to perform the penance, Lady Bellingham commanded her to leave the paper that she might destroy it. But though the word Love was dangerous to a tyro in Antinomianism, the situation of the initiated is very different; to the former all things are sinful, but the latter being free from the law, and above ordinances, have a large licence. Valuing herself now only on her spiritual graces, Lady Bellingham opened the profane legend, which, she expected, described personal attractions; and to her astonishment recognized the writing of her son, of whom she had heard no certain tidings since the battle of Preston, but who was supposed, both by Cromwell and herself, to be in the north of Ireland, where an officer of the same name had gained celebrity. The date proved that he had been a resident in Dr. Beaumont's family; no name was prefixed, but the lines breathed a permanent attachment, to which, after some resistance, he had entirely surrendered his heart.
O place thy breast against a turbid stream,
Beat with strong arm the flood, and tread the wave,
Or toil incessant 'neath the burning beam,
When, like a giant woke from wassail-dream,