pline; and, in toiling to repair their wasted fortunes,
they manifested the same heroic fortitude and self-denial which in war
had made them such formidable and efficient "Soldiers of the Lord." With
few exceptions, they remained steadfast in their uncompromising non-
conformity, abhorring Prelacy and Popery, and entertaining no very
orthodox notions with respect to the divine right of Kings. From them
the Quakers drew their most zealous champions; men who, in renouncing the
"carnal weapons" of their old service, found employment for habitual
combativeness in hot and wordy sectarian warfare. To this day the
vocabulary of Quakerism abounds in the military phrases and figures which
were in use in the Commonwealth's time. Their old force and significance
are now in a great measure lost; but one can well imagine that, in the
assemblies of the primitive Quakers, such stirring battle-cries and
warlike tropes, even when employed in enforcing or illustrating the
doctrines of peace, must have made many a stout heart' to beat quicker,
tinder its drab coloring, with recollections of Naseby and Preston;
transporting many a listener from the benches of his place of worship to
the ranks of Ireton and Lambert, and causing him to hear, in the place of
the solemn and nasal tones of the preacher, the blast of Rupert's bugles,
and the answering shout of Cromwell's pikemen: "Let God arise, and let
his enemies be scattered!"

Of this class was John Roberts. He threw off his knapsack, and went back
to his small homestead, contented with the privilege of supporting
himself and family by daily toil, and grumbling in concert with his old
campaign brothers at the new order of things in Church and State. To his
apprehension, the Golden Days of England ended with the parade on
Blackheath to receive the restored King. He manifested no reverence for
Bishops and Lords, for he felt none. For the Presbyterians he had no
good will; they had brought in the King, and they denied the liberty of
prophesying. John Milton has expressed the feeling of the Independents
and Anabaptists towards this latter class, in that famous line in which
he defines Presbyter as "old priest writ large." Roberts was by no means
a gloomy fanatic; he had a great deal of shrewdness and humor, loved a
quiet joke; and every gambling priest and swearing magistrate in the
neighborhood stood in fear of his sharp wit. It was quite in course for
such a man to fall in with the Q