"There is another thing which is not within human reason, which is that this Commonwealth should stand without a master set over the Parliament."
"How may one do that?" demanded the lawyer sharply, "when the Parliament is itself the authority from which we derive ours?"
"That is a formal difficulty," replied Cromwell impatiently. "Do you think I should be stopped by nice points of law?"
Whitelocke marked the pronoun the soldier had used.
"Would you withstand the Parliament?" he asked keenly. "They are your masters."
"They are no man's masters; they are means to an end," replied Cromwell. "I am a poor thing, but the Lord hath made some use of me these ten years past—yea, a little use. He hath been pleased to appoint me to do a few things for Him, some little work, and I will do it, despite Parliament as I did and despite a king. I say we will have righteousness and justice; if need be these men can be put down as the tyrant was put down, and the poor and simple be cared for and the groans of the needy heard."
"These are stern words," said Whitelocke; "and how will you justify them?"
"God will justify them," replied the Lord-General, "as He hath hitherto upheld what I have said in His name. What was I? What did I know of armies or of the battalion? Yet the Lord said, 'Be thou ruler, even among Mine enemies,' and sent me forth to conquer kings and princes. And we were but a handful and they gentlemen. Yet we did it. 'With His own right hand and with His holy arm hath He gotten Himself the victory!' And now I am bidden to labour still in His cause and to go forward—and do you think that poor remnant sitting at Westminster shall hinder me?"
The Lord Whitelocke was silent; he was rather startled at what he took to be the kernel of Cromwell's speech—his enmity to the Parliament—and he was not deceived by the gentleness and self-effacement of the Lord-General, who, he knew, was indeed capable of doing away with the Parliament as he and his had done away with the King. And there was now, as always, the great fact to be remembered and reckoned with that Cromwell had behind him the army of his own creation, that fierce military whose enthusiasm was not much curbed or checked by regard for mere formal institutions and laws of men's framing.