LAUD, THE LEVELLERS, AND THE VIRTUOSI 



in history not unlike the first or second christian century, the Renais- 

 sance, or the seventeenth century in England. The transition from 

 an individualist to a collectivist state of society is at hand. In scientific 

 words, the time has come for the atomistic, inorganic, chaotic com- 

 munity to give way to the organised, living, planned, community. 



"hora novissima, tempora pessima sunt, vigilemus 



ecce minaciter, imminet arbiter, ille supremus." 



I 



The times are very evil, the judge is at the gate;^ it is the duty of 

 the christian to join his forces with all who are seeking to bring in 

 the new world order, the Kingdom on earth, Regnum Dei. As for the 

 scientific worker, he can acquiesce no longer in the frustration of 

 science, and must work with the rest for the overthrow of the capitalist 

 system. 



This change is hardly more likely to be achieved without tumult 

 and civil commotion than it was likely that the middle class could 

 peacefully overthrow the paternal-feudal system existing before 1600. 



"Comrades, my tongue can speak 

 No comfortable words. 

 Calls to a forlorn hope, 

 Gives work and not rewards. 



O keep the sickle sharp 

 And follow still the plough; 

 Others may reap, though some 

 See not the winter through." 



(C. Day Lewis.) 



But the harshness of the days that lie before us is somewhat 

 mitigated for the reflective mind by a clear picture of the course that 

 history has taken. These troubles did not begin in our time; others 

 before us have perished that the Kingdom might come. In the fore- 

 going series of short pictures of seventeenth-century England, I 

 have tried to show some of the forces at work. 



First, the Laudian Churchmen, quite apart from the literary aspects 

 of their brilliant scholarship and writings, were economically repre- 

 sentative of the collectivism of the past. In the Preces Privatae of 



"^ From the De Contemptu Mundi of Bernard of Cluny, 1145 (ed. Hoskier, H. C, 

 London, 1929). 



89 



