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At that day Cromwell’s position in this matter was, at its worst, merely that of the enormous majority of earnest men of all sects. Each sect believed that it was the special repository of the wisdom and virtue of the Most High: and the most zealous of its members believed it to be their duty to the Most High to make all other men worship Him according to what they conceived to be His wishes. This was the mediæval attitude, and represented the mediæval side in Puritanism; a side which was particularly prominent at the time, and which, so far as it existed, marred the splendor of Puritan achievement. The nobleness of the effort to bring about the reign of God on earth, the inspiration that such an effort was to those engaged in it, must be acknowledged by all; but, in practice, we must remember that, as religious obligation was then commonly construed, it inevitably led to the Inquisition in Spain; to the sack of Drogheda in Ireland; to the merciless persecution of heretics by each sect, according to its power, and the effort to stifle freedom of thought and stamp out freedom of action. It is right, and greatly to be desired, that men should come together to search after the truth: to try to find out the true will of God; but in Cromwell’s time they were only beginning to see that each body of seekers must be left to work out its own beliefs without molestation, so long as it does not strive to interfere with the beliefs of others.