Principles of western civilisation

ix THE GREAT ANTINOMY: SECOND STAGE 323

come to be now understood, was in their opinion associated with quite other conceptions of civil government.

Later yet we see neither the civil authority for the time being nor Presbyterianism itself, after it had reached the notable position of influence which it occupied in England at the period of the Westminster Assembly, finding any firm principle in the alliance between the ideals represented by the two. And still later we see Cromwell, in the remarkable passage already quoted, ever striving and yet ever failing, even under the forms of freedom as under the principles of despotism, to secure through the Puritan ascendency in England the same alliance between the civil power of the State and a particular interpretation of religious doctrine. Again and again, through a hundred channels of authority in England, the doctrine had been preached of the deadly sinfulness of resistance to the ruling civil authority. But in the midst of the vast transition in progress it happened, as has been said, that ‘‘ doctrines concerning the sinfulness of rebellion which were urged with the most dogmatic certainty and supported by the most terrific threats, swayed to and fro with each vicissitude of fortune.” * They changed with the passing ascendency of every interest of the time.

And so the inevitable development of the cosmic drama continued in history. It had been supposed that the authority of the Church had passed to the king. But with the close of the Puritan Revolution in England the great end which had been attained—that end by the accomplishment of which, as has been rightly insisted, the restoration

1 History of Rationalism in Europe, vol. ii. pp. 198-99.