This intelligence, added to that of the advantages gained over Sir
William Waller in the west, revived the drooping hopes of the loyalists,
and terrified the enthusiastic Eustace with apprehensions lest the
contest should be decided before he could measure swords with one
round-head.
Dr. Beaumont took a more comprehensive view; he saw how little had been
done, and how much loyal blood had been shed. The King's cause was
supported by the death or ruin of his best friends, but his victories,
instead of intimidating, hardened his opponents. They were bound
together by a dread of danger, and a belief that they had sinned beyond
all hopes of pardon, and therefore must depend for safety entirely on
the success of the rebellion they had fomented.
To insure that success, the Parliament had long since employed the most
potent stimulant of human action, religion; and, by embodying their
favourite teachers under the title of the Assembly of Divines, contrived
to give that species of state-establishment to their own theological
scheme which they had objected to, as one of the crying sins of
episcopacy.
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