Sermon XVI. Human power defeated. Dr Owen, according to Whitelocke in his “Memorials,” p. 391, preached before the House of Commons on June 7, 1649. The following sermon was the one which he delivered on the occasion. It was a day of public thanksgiving for the defeat of the Levellers at Burford on May 18 of the same year. In times of political change and commotion, wild notions are frequently set afloat, incompatible with the restraints of law and the rights of property. A species of communism had sprung up in the Parliamentary forces. In Cromwell was obliged to resort to vigorous measures in order to restore discipline and subordination. The ringleaders were seized at a review of the troops, — tried by a court-martial on the spot, and condemned to be shot. The sentence was executed against one of them immediately, and the danger seemed to be gone; but disaffection was still cherished in the minds of many of the soldiers, and in 1649 broke out afresh in a more formidable shape. Many causes tended to foster this spirit of discontent. Some officers had taken offence at the way in which military honours had been distributed, and hence “the murmuring for pre-eminence” to which Owen in his sermon alludes. Evil principles, moreover, had been spread among the common soldiers. A party of them disturbed the worship of a congregation in the parish church of Walton-upon-Thames, and harangued the people in the churchyard on the necessity of abolishing the Sabbath, tithes, the ministry of the gospel, magistracy, and the Bible itself! Sympathy with these levelling views was evinced out of the army. At Cobham, one Everard, a disbanded soldier, gave himself out to be a prophet, and professed to have had a vision, in which he and his followers were commanded to arise and dig and plough the earth. Whitelocke (p. 384) supplies the interpretation of the vision. “They threaten,” says he, “to pull down park pales, and to lay all open.” Owen, too, in the course of his sermon, has a significant allusion to men, “heady, high-minded, throwing up all bounds and fences.” It was, accordingly, both a mutiny and an insurrection, and spread over several counties, — Surrey, Oxford, Gloucester, Northampton, and so far north as Lancashire and the town of Newcastle. A small party of these Levellers came into contact with a detachment of the Parliamentary troops at Banbury, and were dispersed. The suppression of the whole movement, however, was intrusted to Cromwell, who accomplished the task with his characteristic energy. After an unsuccessful attempt on Oxford, the Levellers had taken up their position at Burford. Cromwell, by a rapid march of nearly fifty miles, took them by surprise during the night. Has the text of Owen’s sermon any reference to the fact of this surprise? The poor Levellers, completely disconcerted by the vigour of their opponent, at once yielded when quarter was conceded to them, The mutiny was at an end; and, from the apparent ease and the rapidity with which it was suppressed, it is difficult now to understand the reason for all the alarm which it excited. Not a few of these Levellers, however, as Owen intimates in the sermon, and as their conduct showed, were brave and desperate men. Some of them, on being tried, confessed that one of their objects was the restoration of Prince Charles; and one passage in the sermon is evidently based on the belief in some such strange conjunction of interests. But for the activity of Cromwell, the movement might have been the beginning of disastrous anarchy throughout England. An extract from Whitelocke will show what estimate was formed by the Parliament of the threatened danger, the sense entertained of Cromwell’s services on the occasion, and the importance attached to the event in regard to which Owen was called at this time to preach before the House of Commons. “Report by Lieutenant-General Cromwell of the suppressing of the Levellers: The House gave him their hearty thanks for that great service, and ordered one of their members to attend the General with the hearty thanks of the House for his great service in that business; and ordered a general day of thanksgiving for that great mercy,” p. 389. The sermon of Owen is altogether remarkable for the skill and tact with which he suits himself to the occasion. — Ed.