God's Instruments: Political Conduct in the England of Oliver Cromwell

• Published in: Bunyan studies no. 18; p. 148
• Main Author: Mahlberg, Gaby
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Newcastle Upon Tyne Northumbria University, Department of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences 01.01.2014
• Subjects: British & Irish literature; Bunyan, John (1628-1688); English literature; Politics
• ISSN: 0954-0970

Chapter 6 on 'Cromwell and the Protectorate' continues on this theme, focusing on the 'persistent ambiguity' (p. 233) that overshadowed the rule of a man who was a king and not a king, who adhered to republican forms, while slowly adopting a royal style, and who was hated not just by royalists, but most intensely 'among his former allies' (p. 231). Overall, Worden's emphasis on the 'force of religious conviction in political decision-making' (p. 6) chimes with a number of recent works that take religion seriously as a political force and is part of his continuing attempt to dispel the notion that 'religion was the seventeenth century's way of talking about something else' (p. 2). God's Instruments follows a fashion to make easily accessible the defining works of well-established scholars and build on the success of their previous output, as was the case with Quentin Skinner's Visions of Politics (3 vols, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); and Oxford University Press has certainly produced a handsome volume bound to sell many copies.