Both one of the few people in the 17th century who embraced the idea of separation of Church and State
Wait, what?
I’m not a Cromwell expert, obviously, but my understanding as that Cromwell was absolutely committed to using the power of the state to crush Catholicism both in Great Britain and Ireland. That doesn’t sound like the action of someone who embraces the idea of the separation of Church and State to me, as using state power for explicitly sectarian means is usually seen as not being religiously neutral even if the government, itself, is not functioning explicitly as an arm of any one specific church.
Or am I entirely misinformed? I am wrong a lot.
This is what makes this period so difficult to understand to us moderns; Cromwell was at one and the same time “absolutely committed to using the power of the state to crush Catholicism” but also a fierce opponent of using the power of the state to establish Presbyterianism or Episcopalianism, and in his first address to the Protectorate Parliament in 1654, he stated as one of his four “fundamentals” of government:
A profoundly strange character.
Both one of the few people in the 17th century who embraced the idea of separation of Church and State and a man who genuinely believed that he was God’s own general placed on earth to do His Will.
Both a man who ran the New Model Army on strict grounds of merit against fierce opposition from those who believed that noblemen should lead and the man who crushed the Levellers in the name of property rights.
Both a man committed to republicanism to the extent of turning down a crown and a man who engineered legislative purges again and again, but also a man who tried repeatedly to hold elections and write constitutions that would create a legimitate and effective government – trying to force a country to be the Republic he wanted versus the one they wanted.
If not for him, Charles I might never have died “with the crown on,” but because of him the English Commonwealth would not survive his death.
“is not liberty of conscience in religion a fundamental? So long as there is liberty of conscience for the Supreme Magistrate to exercise his consicence in eeretign what form of church-government he is satisfied he should set up…why should not he give it, “the like liberty,” to others? Liberty of conscience is a natural right; and he that would have it, ought to give it…Every sect saith “Oh, give me liberty!” But give him it, and to his power he will not yield it to anybody else….Liberty of consicence – truly that’s a thing ought to be very reciprocal….all the money of this nation would not have tempted men to fight upon such an account as they have here been engaged in, if they had not hopes of liberty of conscience better than they had from Episopacy, or than would been afforded them from a Scottish Presbytery – or an English either…”
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