The Independents, whose first station
Was in the rear of reformation:
A mongrel kind of church dragoons,
That served for horse and foot at once,
And in the saddle of one steed,
The Saracen and Christian rid,
Were free of every spiritual order,
To preach, and fight, and pray, and murder.
It is well known, that these sectaries obtained the final ascendancy in the civil wars. Cromwell, their chief, was highly gifted as a preacher as well as a warrior; witness his "learned, devout, and conscientious exercise, held at Sir Peter Temple's, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, upon Romans xiii. 1."