After their devotions, Bellingham assured Cromwell that the wishes of
his party went but little further than what he proposed to do.
Considering the established forms of Geneva and Scotland as the most
scriptural, it was their intention to adopt the same discipline in
spiritual affairs. As to temporal rule, they thought a body of wise men,
elected by a free people, the likeliest way of rendering England
respectable among foreign nations, and happy in itself. He quoted the
examples of Greece and Rome in ancient times, and of the Italian
republic in modern, to illustrate his sentiments. Cromwell listened with
apparent conviction, professed that he had not studied these things,
being only in himself an ignorant sinful man, though chosen by
Providence to be a mighty instrument to level thrones and pull down the
ungodly. He then lamented that so able a counsellor as Bellingham should
hang like a bucket upon a peg, instead of being employed to draw water
from a cistern; and, promising to endeavour to set him again high among
the people, he took his leave.
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