Historical and Political Notes on the Life of Oliver Cromwell

The rest which the author mentions about the victory at Dunbar original: "Dumbaracensi", the rout of the army of the Scots, the oppression of the vindicating royalist soldier's son, I would classify among brave deeds if the cause had been more just and the purpose of protecting liberty more sincere. But after he saw that every hope of favor was cut off for him by the King's death, he decided to carry out the dominion he had long since premeditated. What wonder then if he acted the play that was at hand as best he could, lest it degenerate for him into a bloody Tragedy? Especially since it was most convenient to Cromwell’s proverb. For in familiar conversation, he was accustomed to say often that a sword once drawn by a servant against his Lord must immediately discard its scabbard, for (indicating the perpetuity of arms) no age would thereafter be of any use. But perhaps the author feared a more disturbed bile from the preceding, had he not found a lid worthy of the pot. Providence, surely, or what he calls predestination below in §. VIII. I wonder indeed why anyone in the past, in the explanation of the cause of wars, in excusing rebellion, in the oppression of liberty, in the slaughter of illustrious citizens, and whatever else a soul boiling with vengeance or blind with the ardor of ruling and set outside itself has admitted more shamefully, has anxiously hesitated: when that [doctrine of] predestination, to which you can no more resist than if you were carried down from a steep cliff in a headlong course, you were to attempt to restrain it at will, does not at least excuse it, but imposes necessity even upon the unwilling. Perhaps the Neronian ages are flourishing again, for he, as often as he had committed some notable crime, offered vows to the Gods with great display, as if he were preserved by their help and command in committing the disgrace: thus, the author does not blush to drag GOD into a partnership of crimes, so that all things might be more excusable.

I do not deny that the powers above claim the outcomes of beginnings for themselves and Divine Nemesis looks down upon all earthly things from a certain hidden eternity. This, as Queen of causes and arbiter of things, tempers the urn of lots and alternates the turns of those approaching. And there is a certain wheel of Empires, which is not moved by intelligences, but by the right hand of the Omnipotent; and since the glory of the one depends on the ruins of the other's empire, each must necessarily have its own revolution and vicissitude of magnitude and happiness.