SOURCE: "Cromwell's Religion," in The Greatness of Oliver Cromwell, Hodder and Stoughton, 1657, pp. 39-56.

In the following excerpt, Ashley characterizes Cromwell as a man who felt moved by Providence to reestablish the correct balance between Church and State in England.

Puritanism reached its zenith in the middle of the seventeenth century, and when the dissenters were expelled from the Church of England in the reign of King Charles II, non-conformity became part of the British way of life, indelible and unforgettable. Because Oliver Cromwell was so eminent a figure and a champion of the Puritan cause, it is easy to imagine that he was the creator rather than the creation of that extraordinary force in British history. But when Cromwell died in 1658, the Puritan movement was already over a hundred years old—for the Reformation itself had been the mother of dissent.

At first the Puritans were little...