Note 2 — Chapter I · TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO—1640–1665.

And yet, perhaps this is hardly true. A most pitiful picture might be drawn of the clergymen who, twenty years previously, had been expelled from the same churches by the ipse dixit of Oliver Cromwell, whom Bishop Hackett represents as regarding neither parliaments nor patents—neither canons nor scriptures—“in comparison of some new light shining in the lantern of his own head.” Men of learning and religion were in many instances succeeded by “mere rhapsodists and ramblers,” “cried up as rare soul-saving preachers.” Not a few venerable and worthy ministers, expelled by the rough hand of violence, “lingered out their lives, laden and almost oppressed, worried, and worn out with fears, anxieties, necessities, rude affronts, and remediless afflictions.” A great deal may be said on both sides of the question.