To develop this a little, in the C17th there was a huge array of characters and groups, the Presbyterians, Royalists, Muggletonians, Socinians, Ranters, Quakers, Fifth Monarchists etc. Don't ask me what they all believed. https://twitter.com/GJShearer/status/1347303068107476994

What I've learned is that its basically impossible to pick one hero or group and watch them ride to the finish line without falling off the horse. You like Cromwell? What about Ireland? You like John Owen? He was Cromwell's chaplain in Ireland. (Worth reading @GribbenC's bio)

You like Reformed Anglicans? What about godly dissenting ministers dying in prison because they wouldn't breach their conscience to keep the Clarendon code. You're Scottish? Don't get me started on the Scots!

And everyone keeps switching sides..1 minute it's the King vs the Scots then it's the King vs the Scots&Parliament, then it's the King & Scots vs Parliament then it's the Independents vs the Presbyterians in Prlmt, later on you get the King and the Dissenters vs an Anglican Prmlt

and then the Bishops and the Kings Daughter vs the King. Do I understand it all? No. And I have a near 400 year advantage over those that lived through it. We can debate the details (and we do) but no one who has any moment of real power and influence emerges with clean hands.

And this is a time where basically everyone agreed that Jesus is Lord and the Bible is true. But then, as now, the foundations of society were being debated + settled and it was v,v, messy. Bad things happened + bad things were done, but who the bad people were was harder to see.

I don't know how people will look back in 400 years on our time. I pity the research who picks Twitter as the topic of their PhD, but looking back at the C17th should perhaps make us a little slower to condemn the political judgements others make (I know I am one of the quickest)

and a little more patient in trying to work out why people think their sincerely held principles are best pursued with a particular set of alliances and actions. Who knows how things are going to shake out?

In the end, God was merciful in giving England (and later the UK) a constitutional order that survived for 307 years, give or take. But it took a lot of chaos, and a daughter turning agt her father for it emerge. What will emerge from this upheaval? I don't know.

I suspect we will all do well to reflect on our principles deeply, hold our alliances lightly and make our judgements slowly. (Unless they're about William Laud, he was a wrong'un from the start).