In the age which directly followed that of the Puritans, their cause or
themselves were little likely to have justice done them. Charles Second
and his Rochesters were not the kind of men you would set to judge what the
worth or meaning of such men might have been. That there could be any
faith or truth in the life of a man, was what these poor Rochesters, and
the age they ushered in, had forgotten. Puritanism was hung on
gibbets,--like the bones of the leading Puritans. Its work nevertheless
went on accomplishing itself. All true work of a man, hang the author of
it on what gibbet you like, must and will accomplish itself. We have our
_Habeas-Corpus_, our free Representation of the People; acknowledgment,
wide as the world, that all men are, or else must, shall, and will become,
what we call _free_ men;--men with their life grounded on reality and
justice, not on tradition, which has become unjust and a chimera! This in
part, and much besides this, was the work of the Puritans.
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