[In the following essay, Robertson examines the religious views collectively expressed by the Leveller leaders in the 1649 pamphlet A Manifestation, and the relationship between religious and political beliefs of the Levellers. Robertson also studies the way in which their individual views differ, especially on such topics as the idea of original sin.]

Doctrine of God

The Levellers, it is clear, had the sectarian distrust of finespun rationalizations, of complex theological formulations. One cannot, therefore, expect to find an elaborate systematic statement of their religious beliefs. But this does not mean, of course, that there are no theological statements. There are some elemental statements of doctrine in their writings, though most of the indications are scattered and often implicit rather than explicit. They are important, however, not as any special contribution to Christian thought, as such, for they shared their beliefs, traditional as most of them were, with many of their day. The important aspect is in Leveller application of these beliefs to state and society.

Lilburne and the other Leveller leaders usually stated their religious beliefs as a reply to enemies who accused them of atheism and anti-Scripturalism. Thus in A Manifestation (1649) the four imprisoned leaders wrote in self-defense: "we beleeve there is one etemall and omnipotent God, the Author and Preserver of all things in the world. To whose will and directions, written first in our hearts, and afterwards in his blessed Word, we ought to square our actions and conversations."' Lilburne, particularly, stated his beliefs about God in opposition to the "arbitrary" actions of men. For instance, tyrants, he said, were imitators of God.

Lilburne made his most complete statement of his doctrine of God in a postscript to The Free-Mans Freedome Vindicated (1646), and thereafter stated the same general belief a number of times.² "God, the absolute Soveraign Lord and King, of all things in heaven and earth, the originall fountain, and cause of all causes, who is circumscribed, governed, and limited by no rules, but doth all things meerly and onely by his soveraign will, and unlimited good pleasure, gave man (his meer creature) the soveraignty (under himselfe) over all the rest of his Creatures, Gen. 1.26.28.29."³ He conceives his fight against tyranny as a religious duty to curb the tyranny of rulers on the one hand and to uphold the sovereignty of God on the other. His "just and righteous quarrel" with Cromwell and his faction is the championing of "The liberties of the land of my nativities against the apostacies and tyrannies of her most perfidious and treacherous professed friends," and also "the holding out of Gods Soveraignty amongst the sons of men, as being that one, single, individual ALONE (either in heaven or earth) that is to raign, rule, govern, and give a law by his will and pleasure to the sons of men."⁴

God alone is absolute. God alone acts by will—may take "arbitrary" action. This is, of course, good Calvinistic doctrine. How does this concept relate to the Leveller concept of natural law, of the importance of reason in state and society? Man was made in the image of God, "which principally consisted in his reason and understanding."⁵ Logically speaking, this implies a rational God, bound by the same rules of reason which govern men, for the Creator's nature is revealed in his creation. Lilburne held, on the human level, that laws made by Parliament were conceived upon rational grounds "to be binding to the very Parliament themselves as well as others."⁶ But the same reasoning does not follow through to the Divine Being. Overton, a more careful and consistent thinker, and also more secular in his thinking, conceived the world in more rationalistic terms. Speaking of "right reason" he said,

Several are its degrees, but its perfection and fulness is only in God. And its several branches and degrees are only communicable and derivated from him, as several beams and degrees of heat from the body of the sun—yet all heat. So in reason there are different degrees, as from morality to divinity, and under those two heads several subordinate degrees, all derivated and conveyed from the Creator (the original fountain) to the creature, yet all one and the same in nature—the difference only lying in the degree of the thing … And so the gifts and graces of God are one radically, yet different in their species, and all from one and the same Spirit, which can act nothing contrary to its own nature. And God is not a God of irrationality and madness, or tyranny. Therefore all his communications are reasonable and just, and what is so is of God.⁷

Overton's point seems clear, but what is the meaning of Lilburne's statement? Woodhouse8 sees it as an achievement of the "principle of segregation," whereby the rationalist standard is maintained in the "natural order," while in the "order of grace" the view of God is "purely voluntarist." In effect this may be the case. The fact of the matter is, however, that Lilburne probably had not thought the point through. Actually he is concerned with asserting the sovereignty of God—the absolute sovereignty of God—and at the same time establishing the equality of men. In insisting upon the absolute, unqualified, uncircumscribed sovereignty of God, he is simply following Calvin, but the use he made of it in political terms would not have met with Calvin's approval. Lilburne was always fighting "will" in human beings as a corrupted element in human nature, as a symptom of personal, private interest—as "unnatural" and "arbitrary." Only in Almighty God, not in sinful man, is there a possibility of arbitrariness and will-acting. God is not bound by rational and moral standards—man is. Tyranny is the sin of usurping the place of God. It was such pride which brought the curse upon Adam and all his kind. Arbitrary action, the will of the King, Council, Parliament, Cromwell, etc., were very much a part of the life of England in the first half of the seventeenth century. As unclear, and logically inconsistent as Lilburne's doctrine of God is, it is as though he feels it necessary to make an ultimate concession to this most obvious element (will) in his world, so that no mediate concessions are possible. Or is his view perhaps the reflection of a basic contempt for the rationalism which the law of nature implied in certain features of his thought?

Doctrine of Man

The Puritans in general accepted the traditional Christian doctrine of the Fall of Adam and the consequent corruption of all mankind. Book II of Calvin's Institutes was spread over the pages of their writings. In varying degrees, according to the writer, it was conceived that original sin left untouched the reason of man to the extent that he could know good from evil and maintain some degree of dignity and order in society. Even Calvin, conscious as he was of human debility—aware that the human mind "halts and staggers even when it appears to follow the right way"—nevertheless conceded that "some seeds of political order are sown in the minds of all." He went on to say that "this is a powerful argument, that in the constitution of this life no man is destitute of the light of reason."⁹ It was generally believed that those who had never heard of Christ, or those before Christ, were to some degree aware of the presence of God's image in them. But man's will to deliver what conscience and reason demanded in the sight of God was another matter. Ames was not representative in his belief that the will of man survived the Fall partially competent to do the good which reason and conscience perceived. It was generally believed, after Calvin, that whatever good man was able to do was to the glory of God and not of man. Even "common grace" was a witness to God's spirit, for it was the mark of the Creator.

There are indications in the writings of the Leveller leaders that they accepted the usual view of man's fall and incompetence, though in Overton and Walwyn the awareness of it is often faint. The view is more evident in Lilburne than in the other leaders, that the doctrine of original sin is necessary to the understanding of the world in which he lived. Lilburne, arguing against "uncircumscribed authority" and the necessity of government by law, recognized as the basis of this necessity the fact that "man is naturally ambitious and apt to encroach and usurpe upon the liberty" of others.¹⁰ It is certainly a tacit recognition of the fact, apparent in all Leveller writings, that man is not any longer in Adam's state and cannot therefore live without precept. All the Leveller writers believed in the implications of the Fall, for paramount precept or law, applicable to all men alike, was the be-all of their endeavours. But Lilburne does state the orthodox position more exactly, always with Augustinian emphasis upon pride and ambition as the chief basis of the Fall. "And Adams sin it was, which brought the curse upon him and all his posterity, that he was not content with the station and condition that God created him in, but did aspire unto a better, and more excellent (namely to be like his Creator), which proved his ruin, yea, and indeed had been the everlasting ruin and destruction of him and all his, had not God been the more mercifull unto him in the promised Messiah."" The part of reason which survived the Fall, according to Lilburne, was what we call the "Golden Rule." After the Fall, Lilburne said, almost using Parker's words, man became "tyrannical and beastly in his principles and actions." Where before there had been unity and amity, now there was a "devouring temper of spirit." But for the measure of God's mercy toward man, man would be no different from the beasts. But in His mercy, God "institutes a perpetuall, morall, unchangeable, and everlasting law; that is to say, That whosoever he was, that would be so beastly, bearish, and Woolvish, as to fall upon his neighbour, brother, or friend, and do unto him that, which he would not he should do to him by taking away his life and blood from him; God ordaines, and expressly saith he shall lose his life without mercy or compassion for so doing."¹² Thus man stood, in Milton's words, "Betwixt the world destroyed and world restored."¹³

The Leveller writers all traced the necessity of government itself to the corrupted will of man. Lilburne quotes with approval the Leveller "large Petition" to the effect that "whosoever meanes to settle good lawes, must proceed in them with a sinister opinion of all mankind, and suppose that whosoever is not wicked, it is for want only of opportunitie."¹⁴ In his The Engagement Vindicated,'s Lilburne says, "for my part I say Government it self is from God, or the prime Lawes of nature, without which by reason of mans corruption by the fall, he cannot live as a rationall Creature." Indicating the relationship of reason and will in man's corrupted state (cf. Parker, Rutherford, and Hobbes), Lilburne says, answering Prideaux's question of "who shall be judge?", that "man being a reasonable creature, is Judge for himself." He goes on to say, however, that "by reason of his present corrupted estate, and want of perfection, he is something partial in his own case, and therefore wherein many are concerned, Reason tels him, Commissioners chosen out and tyed to such rational Instructions as the Chusers give them, are the most proper and equallest Judges."¹⁶ Liburne was persistently concerned that men in government not be allowed a position where partiality in their "own case" encroached upon the common good.¹⁷ Defending themselves against the charge of anarchy, of desiring no government, the four leaders (Lilburne, Overton, Walwyn and Prince) proclaimed that "we know very well the pravity and corruption of mans heart is such that there could be no living without (government)."¹⁸ Yet, as is clear in the Leveller writings, the reason of man is conceived to be sufficiently intact so that the people could be trusted to lead to a right and just solution of any political problem. Here the interests of most men were recognized as identical. And the leaders devised means, in their Agreement, whereby the reason of the people might express in an orderly and peaceful manner their requirements and at the same time provide protection against selfish tendencies.

One cannot, however, fail to detect in Overton and Walwyn, particularly, a weakening of the idea of original sin. It is true that they at times recognized the defect. They, for instance, signed with Lilburne and Prince the statement in A Manifestation quoted above. Overton gave acknowledgement to it in his An Appeale,'9 where he says, "for if right reason be not the only being and bounder of the Law over the corrupt nature of man (that what is rationall, the which injustice and tyranny cannot be, may only and at all times be legall …)." He recognizes as valid the Pauline dictum that "magistracy is for the praise of them that do well, and for the punishment of those that do evil."²⁰ Overton and Walwyn, with their generation, claimed to be "Biblical" in their interpretation of life and the world, and hence to accept the Biblical truths, but, of course, the Bible served all appeals. Adam's fall seemed always to be slipping their minds. Even Lilburne, in his enthusiasm for freedom and justice appears often to forget the material with which he must work and thinks in terms of Christ's restoration of the Image of God. One might say that in Overton and Walwyn are visible the workings of what developed so clearly in the rationalists of the eighteenth century: "primitivism," while in Lilburne there is a suggestion of sectarian "perfectibilitarianism." Lilburne seems quite confident that the image of God in the Christian is "restored, confirmed, and inlarged."2' And he claims personal "righteousness" in Christ.²² In how far beyond the golden rule every man was conceived to be in harmony with God's purposes is not clear. Certainly the possibility of a general restoration was envisaged. There were those, like Henry Marten, who boldly affirmed general restoration and lost no time in exploiting the political implications of it. Said Marten, "As God created every man free in Adam: so by nature are all alike freemen born; and since made free in grace by Christ: no guilt of the parent being of sufficiency to deprive the child of this freedome. And although there was that wicked and unchristian-like custome of villany introduced by the Norman Conqueror; yet was it but a violent usurpation upon the Law of our Creation, Nature, and the ancient Lawes of this Kingdome: and is now, since the clearer light of the Gospel hath shined forth, by a necessary harmony of humane society; quite abolished, as a thing odious both to God and man in this our Christian Commonwealth."23

Richard Overton

Richard Overton was associated with "heresy" more than once in his lifetime. In 1644 he was connected with Milton in a Parliamentary order, saying that "the authors, printers, and publishers of pamphlets against immortality of the soul and concerning divorce should be diligently inquired for."²⁴ The order was the result of Milton's publication, The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643) and of Overton's Mans Mortallitie; or, A Treatise Wherein 'tis Proved, Both Theologically and Phylosophically, that Whole Man (as a Rationall Creature), is a Compound Wholly Mortal, Contrary to that Common Distinction of Soule and Body (Jan. 19, 1644). Overton holds that the soul and body are one, that "whole Man" comes into being, grows, and dies. Christ subjected Himself to these laws of life. By nature all men, therefore, share in his resurrection of the soul and body—unless they deliberately reject Christ's atonement for sin.²⁵ It is evident that Overton based his whole theory of death and resurrection on the Hebrew-Christian doctrine of the fall.

Upon occasion, Overton could confess that he was "a man full of Sin, and personal Infirmities,"²⁶ and that his life was "hid in Christ," but these feelings were apparently not basic and seemed to affect his total outlook very little. Reason told him that the real issue was "not how great a sinner I am, but how faithfull and reall to the Commonwealth; that's the matter concerneth my neighbour, and whereof my neighbour is only in this publick Controversie to take notice."²⁷ While he may have agreed with Calvin to some degree that man's reason "halts and staggers," he nevertheless did not attribute this difficulty, as Calvin did, to any congenital defect. Whatever account he took of human weakness, and there is considerable concern with it, it seemed to him in the historic fight of the moment to be largely the accumulated evil in customs and institutions. Like Walwyn, he placed broad confidence in man's reasonableness, his sociableness, his brotherhood. What is reasonable is divine;²⁸ what is unreasonable is devilish, and man is able to distinguish the two and choose between them.²⁹ In his beliefs about man and the world he certainly suggests the beginnings of secular naturalism and rationalism, but his independence from "dogma" is not complete, though in him it is probably as nearly achieved as in any of the Leveller leaders. He does recognize the practical necessity of taking a somewhat "sinister opinion of all mankind" in his agreement with Leveller proposals in general. And his is an attempt to have reason confirm rather than replace "God's Word" as the basis of understanding life.³⁰

In 1649 when Overton was arrested by the Council of State, along with Lilburne, Walwyn and Prince, the soldiers who ransacked his house, he says, took away "certain papers which were my former Meditations upon the works of Creation, intituled, Gods Word Confirmed by His Works: wherein I endeavoured the probation of a God, a Creation, a State of Innocencie, a Fall, a Resurrection, a Restorer, a Day of Judgment, &c. barely from the consideration of things visible and created."3' Thus he proposed to state the whole predicament of man without revelation, or to confirm revelation by reason, as he put it. It is evident, then, that while Overton thought in terms of Christian categories, he was capable of exploring rational, philosophical interpretations. He apparently never thought through the relationship between revelation and reason. He appealed to both to support liberty and justice.

William Walwyn

William Walwyn was one of the most interesting characters of his time. A merchant by trade, he joined the Parliament in its fight with the King; and he turned his searching mind against the intolerance of the Presbyterians. He never left his parish church, as most of his associates did, to join any sectarian group.³² He followed the practice of defending the right of all men of all groups to follow their own light. But his habit of trying to find out the reason of men's faith made him hated and feared by Presbyterians and sectarians alike. Like Socrates, Walwyn went about asking men questions about their faith, and he was just as firmly condemned by the "religious" people as a corrupter of men's minds.³³ Walwyn himself claimed his whole aim was "to understand how men are setled in their faith, and to help them therein."³⁴ He seemed firmly to believe that reason could defeat every superstition, ignorance or evil intention. Walwyn typifies the Leveller conviction that discussion and argument will lead, if men are serious, to the right answer and the right action. "Powers and principalities" seemed not so important, for he says that "All the war I have made, hath been to get victory on the understandings of men."" He believed persistently that the Levellers' ideal settlement of the national constitution could be made by argumentation, by convincing men's minds. "The giving, and hearing, and debating of reason," he held, is the most certain way of securing peace and harmony on all levels of society, whether family or nation.³⁶ And he felt bound by conscience to lead men to live according to their natures as rational beings. Walwyn found peace in anti-nomianism himself,37 and he went about telling men they could be saved unless they rejected Christ and his atonement. He was indeed "a striking example of Protestant humanism on the vernacular level."³⁸ The Bible had been first in his reading, but he had also been "accustomed to the reading of humane authors" for many years. Seneca, Lucian and Montaigne were the chief ones. And he developed a spirit of charitableness and reasonableness not common in his day. From Montaigne and the other humanistic writers "he could have derived the ideal of society as a union of men with equal rights to well-being, working together peacefully in rational pursuit of the common good."³⁹ In the sects he apparently thought he saw the same spirit, the spirit which animated Christ's first followers. Walwyn thus effected a combination of Christian primitivism with the golden age of the "humane writers." His doctrine of man must, therefore, be looked at in these terms.

The state of innocency was conceived in terms of Montaigne's island of cannibals. It was a state of nature, a state wherein God had shown man his love even as he had shown it in the revelation in the Scriptures. It was a state of happiness, of peace and plenty. One might ask, as Walwyn did, why such a gift from God was not "sufficient to keep mankind in order and the world in quiet."⁴⁰ The answer was that man had fallen from this state. But "the fall" was hardly the Christian Fall of Man. The fall is retrievable, according to Walwyn, for it is largely a result of ignorance and the seeking after human "inventions." Man lost his righteousness and his rationality when he set out to improve upon nature, to seek out "inventions of superfluous subtilities and artificiall things, which have beene multiplied with the ages of the world, every age still producing new."⁴¹ Presumably, therefore, man's basic rationality and goodness are still intact; if enough people will conscientiously seek to reinstate the spirit, as Walwyn says he has always tried to do, who knows but there may yet be hope for the world? Ignorance, intolerance, poverty, tyranny and human vanity, all remedial, are thus the evil to be fought in the world.⁴²

Walwyn's belief in man's continuing rationality, or perhaps better, Walwyn's disbelief in the crippling effects of "the Fall," is related to his doctrine of the law of nature. The demands of the law are absolute; man is able to live rationally, equal and free in society. Sin cannot be pleaded in defense of oppressive and suppressive government. For Lilburne, sin was a more serious factor to engage in man, but its seriousness did not incapacitate man to live in a society "of the people, by the people, for the people." There is, then, in all the Levellers, a qualified doctrine of sin. For Augustine the doctrine justified slavery. For Aquinas, for Luther and for Calvin it justified strong government. But the emphasis of the sects and the Levellers upon an original perfection produced in the Levellers, as they came to understand man's sinful nature, the concomitant emphasis upon limited government. Democratic principles may grow out of a belief that all men are equal in that they are sinful as well as out of the belief that all men are good. There were shades of difference among the Levellers and other sectarians on the degree to which sin must be a factor in politics.

The Leveller leaders, in varying degrees, were able to learn from experience. "Experience" was, of course, not new in Puritan thought as a source of knowledge, for the religious literature of the period is full of the expression, "experiential." History taught the Levellers what reason denied, taught them perhaps even to a final disillusionment, that man's corruptness is more than ignorance and is not so easily contained by law and rational argument. Greater provision must be made for human nature in the structure of government itself. In how far they thought through systematically the implications of what experience taught them is another matter.

The year 1647 was an especially educational one for the Levellers. That was the year of the Putney Debates, the debates on the Leveller Agreement between the Independent leaders and the Leveller Agitators. It became clear that rational argument was not to be effective against entrenched interests, against the property-conscious Independents. Men of property and men of religion, too, stood squarely against what seemed to the Leveller leaders the clear demands of both the first and second tables of law. It became difficult, the Levellers thought, to tell friend from foe, and Lilburne cautioned the soldiers not even to trust their own representatives, the Agitators, too far. "Suffer not one sort of men too long to remaine adjetators, least they be corrupted."⁴³ Coming out against the House of Lords, Lilburne's reasoning is that legislative power is arbitrary to begin with, and if you place arbitrary power in the hands of a group for life, as is the case with the House of Lords, you simply invite slavery—"considering the corruption and deceitfulnesse of mans heart, yea the best of men."⁴⁴ It was his own experience with the Lords which prompted this statement. Cromwell, too, was instrumental in the education of Lilburne and his fellows. Lilburne had had great hopes that Cromwell would carry through the revolution to its conclusion, and he professed to trust Cromwell completely. But it became evident at Putney and afterwards that Cromwell and the Independents wanted to contain the revolution where it was, that they would not practice the democratic principles, the Christian principles, which they had professed. Lilburne says that

after the grand and superlative Apostacie of so tall a Caedar as Lieut. Gen. Cromwell pretended to be, for the liberties and freedomes of the people of this nation: I shall never hereafter in state affaires, (for his sake) trust either my father, brother, or any other relations I have in the world, but shall always to all I converse with, inculcate the remembrance of that deare experiented truth or maxime, recorded in the margent of our … large Petition, which is, 'That it hath been a maxime amongst the wisest Legislators that whosoever meanes to settle good Lawes, must proceed in them with a sinister opinion of all mankind, and suppose that whosoever is not wicked, it is for want only of the opportun-itie.'⁴⁵

Other leaders express similar sentiments.⁴⁶ From the same experience Overton remarked that "God hath in some measure opened our eyes…the burnt child dreads the fire."47

By 1649 the "realism" in Leveller documents is even more definite. The four leaders wrote from the tower (in A Manifestation) that whereas their enemies had said that if the Levellers themselves were to get power they would be just as tyrannical as any, they (the Leveller leaders) had learned to provide even against their own selfishness. They confess that the "experimentall defections" of so many who have come into authority have made them "even mistrust our own hearts, and hardly beleeve our own Resolutions of the contrary." And so they have proposed an instrument which will not depend for the public good upon the goodness of men's hearts, a goodness which is more and more questionable. "And therefore we have proposed such an Establishment, as supposing men to be too flexible and yeelding to worldly Temptations, they should not yet have a means or opportunity either to injure particulars, or prejudice the Publick, without extreme hazard, and apparent danger to themselves."⁴⁸ Their final Agreement, as Pease says, represented their "reluctant modification of their ideals in recognition of the depravity of human nature."⁴⁹

The final Agreement represents a more realistic view of human nature and of the nature of political life. In it the Levellers contrived a greater limitation on power than they had thought necessary before. The Preamble contains the statements that "We the free People of England, to whom God hath given hearts, means and opportunity to effect the same, do with submission to his wisdom, in his name, and desiring the equity thereof may be to his praise and glory; Agree to ascertain our Government, to abolish all arbitrary Power, and to set bounds and limits both to our Supreme, and all Subordinate Authority …"⁵⁰ The new foundation of government, as ever, was to be an "agreement" of the people, not a command of parliament. The army officers proposed to get their version approved by the Rump Parliament, but the Levellers knew that such an agreement could be undone by a later Parliament if it chose. They proposed that the basic rights of the individual be placed beyond the power of "interests" to touch. But it is questionable whether the Leveller leaders were finally willing to trust to the reasonableness of the agreement alone to get the people to accept it. They appeared willing to function behind the power of the Army, where they tried frantically to maintain influence, to get acceptance of their Agreement. And, the Agreement was apparently to be binding even upon those who had not assented to it.⁵¹

The contents of the Agreement itself had been decided upon by "wofull experience" and "sad experience," as they said.⁵² Human frailty was noted in the provision that a representative, popularly elected, was to sit for only one year and not be eligible for reelection till one term had elapsed. Representatives were not to hold other offices, so that none should be allowed to "maintain corrupt interests." The basic rights of the people were to be placed beyond the touch of elected representatives. It is through and through an attempt to cabin and confine power, to prevent men from getting into a position to molest their neighbors. Ireton had insisted in the Army Debates that the burden of the revolution had been the settlement of power. The Levellers then put the chief emphasis on the revolution as a crusade to get justice and rights, but now a more "sinister opinion of all mankind" made them take the danger of power more seriously in terms of political organization. The consciousness of human depravity led rightwing Puritans to accept the authoritative rendering of the divine commands by the Assembly of Divines and to distrust the implications of individual judgment in both religion and politics. It could lead to the totalitarianism of Hobbes. It could on the other hand strengthen the democracy of the last Agreement, wherein man is given credit enough to know his best interests and the interest of the nation but is not trusted to preserve, without compulsion, the general interest.

Notes

¹ p. 6; Haller & Davies, Leveller Tracts, p. 281.

² In Englands Miserie and Remedie (1645) is a brief statement of the central idea. See p. 3. Also Regall Tyrannie, p. 9; Legall Fundamentall Liberties, pp. 73-74, pp. 19-20.

³ pp. 11-12.

⁴Legall Fundamentall Liberties, p. 73.

⁵Londons Liberty, p. 17.

⁶Englands Birth-Right Justified, p. 3.

⁷ Overton, An Appeale (1647), in Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty, p. 324.

⁸ Woodhouse, p. (94).

⁹ Calvin, Institutes, Bk. II, Ch. II, p. 295. John Allen tr.

¹⁰Englands Miserie and Remedie (1645), p. 3.

¹¹Free-Mans Freedome Vindicated, p. 12.

¹²Londons Liberty, pp. 17-18; see also Strength out of Weaknesse, p. 14.

¹³Paradise Lost, XII, p. 3.

¹⁴The Peoples Prerogative and Priviledges, Proeme.

¹⁵ p. 6.

¹⁶Strength out of Weaknesse, p. 14.

¹⁷ See for instance Englands Birth-Right Justified, p. 31.

¹⁸A Manifestation, p. 5.

¹⁹ Woodhouse, op. cit., p. 324.

²⁰An Appeale, Woodhouse, p. 332.

²¹Londons Liberty, p. 20; see also Free-Mans Freedome, p. 12.

²²Picture of the Councel of State, p. 23.

²³Vox Plebis, p. 4.

²⁴DNB, Vol. XIV, 1279; see Masson, Life of Milton, Vol. III, p. 164.

²⁵ It might be noted that Milton held similar views regarding immortality and resurrection. See Of the Christian Doctrine, Ch. XIV, p. 35; Ch. XV, pp. 39-41; pp. 17-27, 219, 263, 307; also Barker, Milton and the Puritan Dilemma, pp. 318-19.

²⁶Picture of the Councel of State, p. 43.

²⁷Ibid., p. 44.

²⁸An Appeale, Woodhouse, op. cit., pp. 323-24.

²⁹ But Overton could hardly be called a secular naturalist of the eighteenth-century variety. And it is probably not fair to say that he simply used orthodox Puritan terminology upon occasion for his own opposite purposes, as Woodhouse suggests, p. (55).

³⁰ See DNB, Vol. XIV, pp. 1279-80.

³¹Picture of the Councel of State, p. 28.

³² Walwyn, A Whisper, p. 5.

³³ See Walwyns Wiles, reprinted in Haller & Davies, op. cit., pp. 285 ff.

³⁴Ibid., p. 5.

³⁵A Whisper, p. 3; also The Fountain of Slaunder, p. 10.

³⁶The Fountain of Slaunder, pp. 15, 18; see Pease, The Leveller Movement, pp. 242 ff.

³⁷A Whisper, p. 3; Walwyns Just Defence, p. 8.

³⁸ Haller & Davies, op. cit., p. 22.

³⁹ Haller, Tracts on Liberty, Vol. I, p. 41.

⁴⁰The Fountain of Slaunder, p. 1.

⁴¹The Power of Love, pp. 2-3.

⁴² See Haller, Tracts on Liberty, Vol. I, Ch. v; Pease, op. cit., pp. 242 ff.; Schenk, "A Seventeenth-Century Radical," The Economic History Review, Vol. 14, pp. 75-83, Jan., 1944; also article in DNB.

⁴³The Juglers Discovered (1647), p. 10.

⁴⁴A Whip for the Present House of Lords (1647), p. 17.

⁴⁵The Peoples Prerogative and Priviledge (1647), Proeme.

⁴⁶ Cf. Wildman's supposed statement, in A Declaration of Some Proceedings, p. 16; Overton, An Appeale, pp. 187-88, in Wolfe reprints; and Overton's Hunting of the Foxes, Wolfe, op. cit., p. 362.

⁴⁷Hunting of the Foxes, Wolfe, p. 373.

⁴⁸A Manifestation, p. 7.

⁴⁹ Pease, op. cit., p. 311.

⁵⁰ Haller & Davies, op. cit., p. 321.

⁵¹ Pease makes much of the question of whether those who had not given assent were to be bound by the Agreement. See particularly p. 214. But Liburne said more than once that it was his duty to prevent men from acting against their own interests. A drowning man must be saved whether he wants to be or not.

⁵² See Articles IX and XXIX.