Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 06.djvu/89

 appears to have believed in God, not as a figure of speech, but as a very fact, very awful to the heart of the English Squire. ‘He wore his Bible-doctrine round him,’ says one, ‘as our Squire wears his shot-belt; went abroad with it, nothing doubting.’ King Charles was going on his father’s course, only with frightful acceleration: he and his respectable Traditions and Notions, clothed in old sheepskin and respectable Church-tippets, were all pulling one way; England and the Eternal Laws pulling another;—the rent fast widening till no man could heal it.

This was the celebrated Parliament which framed the Petition of Right, and set London all astir with ‘bells and bonfires’ at the passing thereof; and did other feats not to be particularised here. Across the murkiest element in which any great Entity was ever shown to human creatures, it still rises, after much consideration, to the modern man, in a dim but undeniable manner, as a most brave and noble Parliament. The like of which were worth its weight in diamonds even now;—but has grown very unattainable now, next door to incredible now. We have to say that this Parliament chastised sycophant Priests, Mainwaring, Sibthorp, and other Arminian sycophants, a disgrace to God’s Church; that it had an eye to other still more elevated Church-Sycophants, as the mainspring of all; but was cautious to give offence by naming them. That it carefully ‘abstained from naming the Duke of Buckingham.’ That it decided on giving ample subsidies, but not till there were reasonable discussion of grievances. That in manner it was most gentle, soft-spoken, cautious, reverential; and in substance most resolute and valiant. Truly with valiant patient energy, in a slow stedfast English manner, it carried, across infinite confused opposition and discouragement, its Petition of Right, and what else it had to carry. Four hundred brave men,—brave men and true, after their sort! One laments to find such a Parliament smothered under Dryasdust’s shot-rubbish. The memory of it, could any real memory of it rise upon honourable gentlemen and us,