Balfour,
240.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. Oct. 4.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. Oct. 5.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1650. Oct. 6.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1650. Oct. 10.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1650. Oct. 12.]
[Sidenote f: A.D. 1650. Nov. 4.]
In the mean while Cromwell in his quarters at Edinburgh laboured to unite
the character of the saint with that of the conqueror; and, surrounded as
he was with the splendour of victory, to surprise the world by a display
of modesty and self-abasement. To his friends and flatterers, who fed
his vanity by warning him to be on his guard against its suggestions,
he replied, that he "had been a dry bone, and was still an unprofitable
servant," a mere instrument in the hands of Almighty power; if God had
risen in his wrath, if he had bared his arm and avenged his cause, to
him, and to him alone, belonged the glory.[1] Assuming the office of a
missionary, he exhorted his officers in daily sermons to love one another,
to repent from dead works, and to pray and mourn for the blindness of their
Scottish adversaries; and, pretending to avail himself of his present
leisure, he provoked a theological controversy with the ministers in
the castle of Edinburgh, reproaching them with pride in arrogating to
themselves the right of expounding the true sense of the solemn league and
covenant; vindicating the claim of laymen to preach the gospel and
exhibit their spiritual gifts for the edification of their brethren; and
maintaining that, after the solemn fasts observed by both nations, after
their many and earnest appeals to the God of armies, the victory gained
at Dunbar must be admitted an evident manifestation of the divine will in
favour of the English commonwealth.
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