The Early English Baptists (V.2) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1864 edition. Excerpt: ...with the cause, is manifest from another fact. "On the day of the king's execution, and even below the scaffold, had been sold the earliest copies of a work admirably fitted to shake the new Government. Fifty thousand copies, it is asserted, were sold within one year; and posthumous power was thus given to the king's name by one little book, which exceeds in alarm to his enemies all that his armies could accomplish in his lifetime." We will only add, that the Episcopal party, smarting under their deep humiliation, lauded the monarch, and elevated him to the rank of the martyrs. De Quincey's Works, vol. x., p. 89. The reader who wishes to investigate the authorship of "Eikon Basilike," may consult the works of Wordsworth and Todd. The latter writer, we think, has shown, beyond all doubt, that the work was from the pen of Dr. Gauden. Greater in power and influence, if not in numbers, than the Episcopalians, were the Presbyterians. In England they had ruled with an iron hand, and the forces of Scotland had sustained them. They had moulded the ecclesiastical platform of the nation. They had secured the vacant churches and the revenues of the ejected clergy. Their hatred to Episcopacy was intense. They had used every means to crush the various sects, and the Solemn League and Covenant they had forced upon the nation. Though the leaders, at first, if not the chief instigators of the war, they had opposed the execution of Charles.t Love to Charles had only a modicum of influence in their councils. They had higher aims. Crushed politically by men of opposite religious views, they would have gained their lost supremacy by making terms with the sovereign. Again and again they tried the experiment. Their projects were defeated. Under a Commonwealth...