Events which shortsighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes,
had been ordained on his account. For his sake empires had risen,
and flourished, and decayed. For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed
his will by the pen of the Evangelist, and the harp of the prophet.
He had been wrested by no common deliverer from the grasp of no common
foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony,
by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him that the sun had
been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had risen,
that all nature had shuddered at the suffering of her expiring God.
Thus the Puritans were made up of two different men, the one all
self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion, the other proud, calm,
inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before his
Maker: but he set his foot on the neck of his king. In his devotional
retirement, he prayed with convulsions, and groans, and tears.
He was half maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He heard the
lyres of angels or the tempting whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam
of the Beatific Vision, or woke screaming from dreams of everlasting
fire.
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