Cromwell, as he rode into the same city a conqueror, found the clergy had left the churches. He sent a trumpet to the castle, to assure the Governor that the clergy might return in peace, that he would not hinder the preaching of the Gospel; only preachers must remember not to rail at their superiors and "overtop the civil power." In reply to the complaint that the pulpit had been opened to sectaries and laymen, the victorious Independent put another question:--"Are you troubled that Christ is preached? Is preaching so exclusively your function? Doth it scandalize the reformed kirks and Scotland in particular? Is it against the Covenant? Away with the Covenant if this be so! I thought the Covenant and 'these professors of it' could have been willing that any should speak good of the name of Christ; if not, it is no Covenant of God's approving; nor are these kirks you mention in so much the spouse of Christ. Where do you find in the Scripture a ground to warrant such an assertion, that preaching is exclusively your function? Though an approbation from men hath order in it, and may do well, yet he that hath no better warrant than that, hath none at all. I hope He that ascended up on high may give His gifts to whom He pleases, and if those gifts be the seal of mission, be not 'you' envious though Eldad and Medad prophesy."[34] In this rather uncouth phraseology may be discerned a certain soldierly instinct, not very different from what is so noticeable in the despatches of a modern general of a far different school. Cromwell, like Wellington, could use words, even as the soldiers at Waterloo and in the civil wars could use swords, cleaving a subject asunder down to the very heart, at a single stroke.
Presbyterian Scotland, honest to the core, stood faithful to what as it believed was God's own cause. Shall our glorious Covenant--not of earth, but of heaven--be crushed by this Independent captain, brave though he be; shall it be buried on the field of this Dunbar fight? No, no! Looking thus at the subject, the leaders, clerical as well as lay, in spite of tormenting divisions in the nation and in the kirk, soon busied themselves with preparations for another trial of arms. "All of us in pulpit," writes Robert Baillie, "myself as much as others, did promove the work. In a very short time three thousand five hundred horse are gotten together, with hopes by volunteers, to make them above five thousand."[35] But all went not on smoothly. Hopes were soon blasted. Hot controversy arose as to whether the lawfulness of a war against Cromwell could be justified by the Covenant. Some went so far as to say: "That the commission of the Kirk would approve nothing that was right; that a hypocrite ought not to reign over us--that we ought to treat with Cromwell, and give him security not to trouble England with a king--and who marred this treaty, the blood of the slain in this quarrel be on their head!"