Training
supplied by
study of
earlier
history.
Two parties
in the read-
ing of later
history.
Political
dishonesty.
638 Coustitiitioual IIlstori/. [chap.
or our sentiments incline. We bring to the reading of their
acts a judgment which has been trained through the Refor-
mation history to see rights and wrongs on both sides, some-
times to see the balance of wrong on that side which we believe,
which we know, to be the right. We come to the Reformation
history from the reading of the gloomy period to which the
present volume has been devoted ; a worn-out helpless age,
that calls for pity without sympathy, and yet balances weari-
ness with something like regrets. Modern thought is a little
prone to eclecticism in history : it can sympathise with puri-
tanism as an effort after freedom, and put out of sight the fact
that puritanism was itself a grinding social tyranny, that
wrought out its ends by unscrupulous detraction and by the
profane handling of things which should have been sacred even
to the fanatic if he really believed in the cause for which he
raged. There is little real sympathy with the great object, the
peculiar creed that was oppressed ; as a struggle for liberty the
Quarrel of Puritanism takes its stand besides the Quarrel on
the Investitures ; yet like every other struggle for liberty, it
ended in being a struggle for supremacy. On the other hand,
the system of Laud and of Charles seems to many minds to con-
tain so much that is good and sacred, that the means by which
it was maintained fall into the background. We would not judge
between the two theories which have been nursed by the preju-
dices of ten generations. To one side liberty, to the other law,
will continue to outweigh all other considerations of disputed and
detailed right or wrong : it is enough for each to look at them as
the actors themselves looked at them, or as men look at party
questions of their own day, when much of private conviction
and personal feeling must be sacrificed to save those broader
principles for which only great parties can be made to strive.
The historian looks with actual pain upon many of these
things. Especially in quarrels where religion is concerned,- the
hollowness of the pretension to political honesty becomes a
stumblingblock in the way of fair judgment. We know that
no other causes have ever created so great and bitter struggles,
have brought into the field, whether of war or controversy,
XXi.] Lessons of Histor//. 639
greater and more united armies. Yet no truth is more certain
than this, that the real motives of religious action do not work
on men in masses ; and that the enthusiasm which creates
Crusaders, Inquisitors, Hussites, Puritans, is not the result of
conviction, hut of passion provoked by oppression or resistance,
maintained by selfwill, or stimulated by the mere desire of
victory. And this is a lesson for all time, and for practical
life as well as historical judgment. And on the other hand it
is impossible to regard this as an adequate solution of the
problem : there must be something, even if it be not religion or
liberty, for which men will make so great sacrifices.
The best aspect of an age of controversy must be sought in The lives of
, nιι ° J , . the best ιuen
the lives of the best men, whose honesty carries conviction illustrate the
to the understanding, whilst their zeal kindles the zeal of the of history,
many. A study of the lives of such men will lead to the con-
clusion that, in spite of internecine hostility in act, the real and
true leaders had far more in common than they knew of; they
struggled, in the dark or in the twilight, against the evil which
was there, and which they hated with equal sincerity ; they
fought for the good which was there, and which really was
strengthened by the issue of the strife. Their blows fell at
random : men perished in arms against one another whose hearts
were set on the same end and aim ; and that good end and aim
which neither of them had seen clearly was the inheritance they
left to their children, made possible and realised not so much by
the victory of one as by the truth and self-sacrifice of both.
At the close of so long a book, the author may be suffered to
moralise. His end will have been gained if he has succeeded
in helping to train the judgment of his readers to discern the
balance of truth and reality, and, whether they go on to further
reading with the aspirations of the advocate or the calmness of
the critic, to rest content with nothing less than the attainable
maximum of truth, to base their arguments on nothing less
sacred than that highest justice which is found in the deepest
sympathy with erring and straying men.