Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/155

 writers. In 1646 a moderate Independent like John Cook, who in his Vindication Of The Professors & Profession Of The Law insisted that the law must be in accord with reason, still clung to the idea that the High Court of Parliament and not the people was final interpreter of reason. Parker of course had been horrified at the idea of the “moliminous” mass of the people presuming to pass on the legality of Parliament’s actions. Writers like Hunton who wrote of the three co-ordinate estates, only grudgingly allowed the people to decide by the sword when king and House disagreed. But to Lilburne’s friends it appeared self-evident that the right of judging finally in an orderly way as to the application of the law of reason belonged to the people.

A quotation from Lilburne, the tediousness of which must be excused by the fact that the author undertook to pack a whole philosophy into a single sentence, will reveal still other departures from the orthodox parliamentary position.

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, who made the world, and all things therein, for his own glory, and who by his own will and pleasure, gave man (his meer creature) the sover-