The British Churches Under Cromwell [pp. 629-655]

638 TIte B4tisI~ C/turc~es under ()rornwell. [Oc~o~~~
tion. The rest of the campaign was little more than a
triumphant march through the country. Everywhere nonresistants were spared. The men who had commenced hostilities, and conducted them, as long as un~pposed by an adequate
force, with the most atrocious brutalities upon multitudes of
the unoffending, had provoked a retaliation, which, had their
enemy been like themselves, would have been tenfold what
they sufibred. Cromwell's spirit was not cruelty. It was
stern, unrelenting, but wise; and in the end proved to be, as
we learn from himself at the time, it was intended to be, the most
humane.
No other great general ever took less interest in war for its
own sake. llis object was always to have done with fighting
as quick as possible, and to spare the effusion of blood. But
he knew what was needed to that end; not only to cow the
hearts of cowards, but what it takes to show brave men the
unreasonableness of resisting. In a few months he subdued
Ireland more completely than any of his predecessors had ever
done, and with less blood than had often been shed in a futile
insurrection.
In the neighbourhood of a man's strength lies il~e region of
his weakness. Deeply impressed with the conviction that he
was specially called by God to the execution of that work
which in the order of events he found put into his hands,
Cromwell neither felt free to decline the trust, nor questioned
his own capacity or success in complying. In his eyes, it was
not his own cause, but the cause of God which he served. No
doubt seems to have ever subtracted from the energy of his
purpose on that point. But although his clear practical sense
precluded the dreamy weakness of fanaticism, it did not prevent
him from sometimes taking his own cherished plans and earnest
desires for the will of God. Ambition, excluded from his mind
at every other avenue, entered by this, but without obtaining
recognition. To some men ambition is a source of strength,
when they fully admit it, and make the attainment of its ends
their aim. Alexander and Napoleon openly professed ambition, and yielded all their energies in its promptings without
reserve; and it answered the purpose of concentrating their
efforts To Cromwell it was weakness. For when he gave