We understand that the Law of God's Gospel, to which He through us has
given the victory, shall establish itself, or try to establish itself, in
this land!

For three years, Cromwell says, this question had been sounded in the ears
of the Parliament. They could make no answer; nothing but talk, talk.
Perhaps it lies in the nature of parliamentary bodies; perhaps no
Parliament could in such case make any answer but even that of talk, talk!
Nevertheless the question must and shall be answered. You sixty men there,
becoming fast odious, even despicable, to the whole nation, whom the nation
already calls Rump Parliament, you cannot continue to sit there: who or
what then is to follow? "Free Parliament," right of Election,
Constitutional Formulas of one sort or the other,--the thing is a hungry
Fact coming on us, which we must answer or be devoured by it! And who are
you that prate of Constitutional Formulas, rights of Parliament? You have
had to kill your King, to make Pride's Purges, to expel and banish by the
law of the stronger whosoever would not let your Cause prosper: there are
but fifty or threescore of you left there, debating in these days. Tell us
what we shall do; not in the way of Formula, but of practicable Fact!

How they did finally answer, remains obscure to this day. The diligent
Godwin himself admits that he cannot make it out. The likeliest is, that
this poor Parliament still would not, and indeed could not dissolve and
disperse; that when it came to the point of actually dispersing, they
again, for the tenth or twentieth time, adjourned it,--and Cromwell's
patience failed him. But we will take the favorablest hypothesis ever
started for the Parliament; the favorablest, though I believe it is not the
true one, but too favorable.

According to this version: At the uttermost crisis, when Cromwell and his