Butler thus describes the Independents:
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he Independents, whose first stationWas in the rear of reformation:A mongrel kind of church dragoons,That served for horse and foot at once,And in the saddle of one steed,The Saracen and Christian rid,Were free of every spiritual order,To preach, and fight, and pray, and murder. It is well known, that these sectaries obtained the final ascendancy inthe civil wars. Cromwell, their chief, was highly gifted as a preacheras well as a warrior; witness his "learned, devout, and conscientiousexercise, held at Sir Peter Temple's, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, uponRomans xiii. 1."
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