or to hold discussions on grace, predestination, free-will, and foreknowledge absolute.  His favorite doctrine was the second coming of Christ and the reign of the saints, the elect,—­to whom of course he belonged.  He had visions and rhapsodies, and believed in special divine illumination.  Cromwell was not a Presbyterian, but an Independent; and the Independents were the most advanced party of his day, both in politics and religion.  The progressive man of that age was a Calvinist, in all the grandeur and in all the narrowness of that unfashionable and misunderstood creed.  The time had not come for “advanced thinkers” to repudiate a personal God and supernatural agencies.  Then an atheist, or even a deist, and indeed a materialist of the school of Democritus and Lucretius, was unknown.  John Milton was one of the representative men of the Puritans of the seventeenth century,—­men who colonized New England, and planted the germs of institutions which have spread to the Rocky Mountains,

Cromwell on his farm, one of the landed gentry, had a Cambridge education, and was early an influential man.  His sagacity, his intelligence, his honesty, and his lofty religious life marked him out as a fit person to represent his county in parliament.  He at once became the associate of such men as Hampden and Pym.  He did not make very graceful speeches, and he had an ungainly person; but he was eloquent in a rude way, since he had strong convictions and good sense.  He was probably violent, for he hated the abuses of the times, and he hated Rome and the prelacy.  He represented the extreme left; that is, he was a radical, and preferred revolution to tyranny.  Yet even he would probably have accepted reform if reform had been possible without violence.  But Cromwell had no faith in the King or his ministers, and was inclined to summary measures.  He afterwards showed this tendency of character in his military career.  He was one of those earnest and practical people who could not be fooled with.  So he became a leader of those who were most violent against the Government During the Long Parliament, Cromwell sat for Cambridge; which fact shows that he was then a marked man, far from being unimportant.  This was the Parliament, assembled in 1640, which impeached Strafford and Laud, which abolished the Star Chamber, and inaugurated the civil war, that began when Charles left Whitehall, January, 1642, for York.  The Parliament solicited contributions, called out the militia, and appointed to the command of the forces the Earl of Essex, a Presbyterian, who established his headquarters at Northampton, while Charles unfurled the royal standard at Nottingham.