Faith of our fathers

Submitted by Ross Reeves (United States), Aug 9, 2007 at 08:38

As promised, here is Thomas Carlysle reflecting in 1845 on the true English Reformation under Cromwell:

"The Age of the Puritans is not extinct only and gone away from us, but it is as if fallen beyond the capabilities of Memory herself; it is grown uinintelligible, what we may call incredible. its earnest Purport awakens now no resonance in our frivilous hearts. We understand not even in imaginination, one of a thousand of us, what it ever could have meant. It seems delirious, delusive; the sound of it has become tedious as a tale of past stupidities. Not the body of heroic Puritanism only, which was bound to die, but the soul of it also, which was and should have been, and yet shall be [,] immortal, has for the present passed away."

How many of Luther's theses can your colleagues name? I can guess at three or four.

Thomas Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell, vol. 1p. 8 (1845), as printed in 3d ed. 1894

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