RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Cretonl CromweU
though he may be a " clergyman of any Reformed Church other than Presbyterian," and may not be reappointed. The first lecturer, in 1875-76, was John Tulloch, and his subject was The Christian Doctrine of Sin (Edinburgh, 1877). A full list of lecturers and their subjects is given in L. H. Jordan, Comparative Religion, p. 568, New York, 1905.
CROCIUS, JOHANNES : Reformed theologian; b. at Laasphe (36 m. s.s.e. of Arnsberg), in the county of Wittgenstein, Germany, July 28, 1590; d. at Marburg July 1, 1659. After studying at Herborn and Marburg, he became, in 1612, court preacher to the Landgrave Maurice in Cassel and obtained the degree of doctor of theology 1613. With the permission of his prince he entered for two years the service of the elector John Sigismund of Brandenburg, who in 1617 appointed him professor of theology at the University of Marburg. In 1624 he was obhged to return to Cassel, in consequence of the closing of the imiversity. During this period he played a great part in the Hessian Church, which had gone over to the Reformed confession, and in the time of the Thirty Years' War he wrote in support of the political demands of the Reformed party in Germany. His chief work was a polemic against Roman Catholic attacks: Anti- Becanus i.e. controversiarum communium, quas M. Becanus in manuali movit examen ex S. S. et antiquitate institutum (Cassel, 1643). In 1631 he took part in the religious conference at Leipsic between Lutheran and Reformed theologians. At the reopening of the Reformed university in Marburg in 1653 he returned thither, and became its first rector. He had a great share in the church order published by Landgrave Louis VI. in 1657.
Gael Mirbt. Bibliography: F. C. Claus, Johannes Crocius, Marburg,
1857; F. W. Strieder, Heteische Gelehrtengeschichte, ii.
397 sqq., Gottingen, 1782; H. Heppe, Geschichte der theo-
hgischen Fakultat zu Marburg, Marburg, 1873.
CROMWELL, OLIVER: Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England; b. at Huntingdon (17 m. n.w. of Cambridge), Huntingdonshire, Apr. 25, 1599; d. in London Sept. 3, 1658. He entered Cambridge University in 1616, but left it a year later to care for his mother and sisters on his father's death. In 1628 he was elected to Parliament from Huntingdon, from which town he removed to Ely in 1636. In 1640 he was again eent to the House of Commons, this time from Cambridge, and in the Long Parliament he soon took his stand in opposition to the royal prerogative. In 1642 he moved the appointment of a committee to put the kingdom in a posture of defense, and, when Essex received the commission to raise a parliamentary army, raised a troop of arquebusiers, sixty Godfearing men who fought first at Edgehill.
Early in his career, when the modern idea of religious liberty was in its infancy, he took a decided stand in its favor, with the Defense of younger Vane but against the great
Religious majority of those who fought on his
Liberty, side. In defense of his Independent principles, he had to contend not only against the attempt of the Scotch to force their rigid Presbyterianism upon England, but with the
English Presbyterians who had a majority in the House of Commons, and hampered and weakened the army because it was not in sympathy with their narrow views. Their action forced Cromwell into open opposition to Parliament, in favor of the liberty proclaimed in Milton's Areopagitica (1644) and Jeremy Taylor's Liberty of Prophesying (1647).
In July, 1647, Cromwell and his son-in-law Ireton submitted to the king the treaty known as the " Heads of the Proposals," which if carried into effect would have been the settlement of 1689 with a larger flavor of democracy and Puritanism, and left all forms of worship, including the Prayerbook, to the free choice of the worshipers. In all his efforts Cromwell's aim had been to strengthen toleration by intertwining it with the old constitutional pillars of king and parhament; but he found out by degrees that nothing was to be hoped for from the king, and ultimately sat as a member of the High Court of Justice which tried and executed him, contributing more than any other member to the result.
In the following August he was made lordlieutenant and commander in chief in Ireland, and put down opposition with a strong Rise to hand. Appointed captain-general of Power. all the forces of the Commonwealth (June 26, 1650), he marched into Scotland, and won the successive victories of Dunbar, Edinburgh, and Perth. The battle of Worcester (Sept. 3, 1651) ended the war, and Cromwell returned to London. In April, 1653, he dissolved the " Rump " Parliament and formed a council of state. After the " Little " or " Barebones " Parliament had sat from July to December, he was installed at Westminster (Dec. 16) as Lord Protector under the conditions of the " Instrument of Government " drawn up by the military power.
One of the early important measures of the Protectorate was the establishment of a new scheme of church government. The minister presented to a living was to have a certificate of fitness from three persons of known godliness and integrity, one of them being a settled minister. After this had been passed by commissioners known as Triers, he became an incumbent, liable to expulsion by a local body of Ejectors for immorality, blasphemy, or atheism; but whUe he remained he might uphold any Puritan system he chose, and organize his con- Policy of gregation on the Presbyterian, Inde- Protect- pendent, or Baptist system, if they orate. would follow him. Any who objected to the system adopted in their parish might form separate congregations at their own discretion. Later on, toward the close of 1655, the Jews, who had been exiled from England since the reign of Edward I., were allowed to return. But ultimately the position held by the Prayerbook as a symbol of attachment to royalty drove Cromwell to proscribe its use as thoroughly as that of the mass; yet the persecution along this line was sharp only for a time, and on the other hand he stood forth before all Europe as the champion of religious liberty by his espousal of the cause of the Vaudois Protestants against the duke of Savoy, and his foreign poUcy looked toward the establish-
Cromwell
Cross and Its TTse