His life had drifted from its accustomed moorings; his troubles were greater than he could bear; and when he turned to Religion for guidance and consolation, alas! he found that the teachings he had imbibed in his childhood, and never questioned in his manhood, now failed him in his hour of need.  Foiled, though not beaten, he turned to the pages of the Holy Scriptures themselves for guidance and information, for consolation and revelation.  In these inspired writings, if anywhere, there surely must be found some expression, some revelation, of God’s intentions towards His children, some indication of His holy will, which, if men would wholly follow, would lead them down the path of righteousness to happiness and peace.  And it was from these pages that Winstanley derived those religious and political convictions that find such eloquent and forcible expression in his writings, and which he made such heroic efforts to proclaim by word and deed to his fellow-men.

What seems to us to give a special charm to the study of Winstanley’s writings is that they reveal the gradual development of his acute and powerful mind.  His earlier pamphlets betray the influence of the mysticism so prevalent in his days; his last utterance on theological questions, as we shall see, might have been penned by an advanced thinker of the present day, imbued with modern scientific views, and recognising the necessary relation and co-ordination of all the physical and psychical phenomena of the universe, “of the several bodies of the stars and planets in the heavens above, and the several bodies of the earth below, as plants, grass, fishes, beasts, birds, and mankind.”

As to how far Winstanley owes the views that find expression in his earlier pamphlets—­which deal exclusively with cosmological or theological speculations—­to others, or to the writings of earlier mystics, we have no means of knowing.[43:1] From them we gather, however, that he had learned or had come to regard the whole Biblical narrative as an allegory, of which he gives a most poetical interpretation.  The Creation is mankind.  The Garden of Eden is the mind of man, which he describes as originally filled with herbs and pleasant plants, “as love, joy, peace, humility, delight, and purity of life.”  The serpent he holds to be self-love, the forbidden fruit to be “selfishness,” following the promptings of which “the whole garden becomes a stinking dunghill of weeds, and brings forth nothing but pride, envy, discontent, disobedience, and the whole actings of the spirit and power of darkness.”  And he argues that—­“If the creature should be honored in this condition, then God would be dishonored, because his command would be broken....  And if the creature were utterly lost ... then likewise God would suffer dishonor, because his work would be spoiled.”  Hence he maintains that “the curse that was declared to Adam was temporary,” and that eventually the whole creation, the whole of mankind, shall be saved, and “the work of God shall be restored from this lost, dead, weedy and enslaved condition."[44:1]