of their fellow-creatures? Were these things
due to natural causes, to the inscrutable workings of a Divine
Providence; or were they but the necessary though unforeseen fruits of
mere man-made laws and institutions the existing generation had
inherited from a by-gone and ignorant past? Such were the questions
which vaguely and indistinctly may have passed, and, as we shall see,
did pass, through the active, original, philosophic and deeply religious
mind of Winstanley in the quiet solitude of his country life.

His life had drifted from its accustomed moorings; his troubles were
greater than he could bear; and when he turned to Religion for guidance
and consolation, alas! he found that the teachings he had imbibed in his
childhood, and never questioned in his manhood, now failed him in his
hour of need. Foiled, though not beaten, he turned to the pages of the
Holy Scriptures themselves for guidance and information, for consolation
and revelation. In these inspired writings, if anywhere, there surely
must be found some expression, some revelation, of God's intentions
towards His children, some indication of His holy will, which, if men
would wholly follow, would lead them down the path of righteousness to
happiness and peace. And it was from these pages that Winstanley derived
those religious and political convictions that find such eloquent and
forcible expression in his writings, and which he made such heroic
efforts to proclaim by word and deed to his fellow-men.

What seems to us to give a special charm to the study of Winstanley's
writings is that they reveal the gradual development of his acute and
powerful mind. His earlier pamphlets betray the influence of the
mysticism so prevalent in his days; his last utterance on theological
questions, as we shall see, might have been penned by an advanced
thinker of the present day, imbued with modern scientific views, and
recognising the necessary relation and co-ordination of all the physical
and psychical phenomena of the universe, "of the several bodies of the
stars and planets in the heavens above, and the several bodies of the
earth below, as plants, grass, fishes, beasts, birds, and mankind."

As to how far Winstanley owes the views that find expression in his
earlier pamphlets--which deal exclusively with cosmological or
theological speculations--to others, or to the writings of earlier
mystics, we have no means of knowing.[43:1] From them we gather,
however, that