Category: History - Other

The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth As Revealed in the Writings of Gerrard Winstanley, the Digger, Mystic and Rationalist, Communist and Social Reformer

"Whatever the prejudices of some may suggest, it will be admitted by all unbiassed judges, that the Protestant Reformation was neither more nor less than an open rebellion. Indeed, the mere mention of private judgment, on which it was avowedly based, is enough to substantiate...

Chapters

18. CHAPTER XVII

"While God gave to man a capacity to labour, He also gave him a right to the object (the earth) on which that labour must be employed to produce the necessaries of life. This gi...

16. CHAPTER XV

"Look on yonder earth: The golden harvests spring; the unfailing sun Sheds light and life; the fruits, the flowers, the trees, Arise in due succession; all things speak Peace, h...

17. CHAPTER XVI

"Day unto day utters speech-- Be wise, O ye Nations! and hear What yesterday telleth to-day, What to-day to the morrow will preach. A change cometh over our sphere, And the old...

12. CHAPTER XI

"All men have stood for Freedom; thou hast kept fasting-days and prayed in the morning exercises for Freedom; thou hast given thanks for victories because hopes of Freedom; plen...

14. CHAPTER XIII

"There is but one way to remove an evil--and that is to remove its cause. Poverty deepens as wealth increases, and wages are forced down while productive power grows, because la...

15. CHAPTER XIV

"And when reason's voice, Loud as the voice of nature, shall have waked The nations; and mankind perceives that vice Is discord, war and misery; that virtue Is peace, and happin...

7. CHAPTER VI

"There is nothing more sweet and satisfactory to a man than this, to know and feel that spiritual power of righteousness to rule in him which he calls God.... Wait upon the Lord...

13. CHAPTER XII

"Hear, O thou Righteous Spirit of the Whole Creation, and judge, who is the thief, he who takes away the Freedom of the Common Earth from me, which is my Creation Right; Or I, w...

11. CHAPTER X

"For you must either establish Commonwealth's Freedom in power, making provision for everyone's peace, which is Righteousness, or else you must set up Monarchy again. Monarchy i...

3. CHAPTER III

"The lawful power of making laws to command whole politic societies of men, belongeth so properly to the same entire societies, that for any prince or potentate of what kind soe...

8. CHAPTER VII

"The great Lawgiver in Commonwealth's Government is the Spirit of Universal Righteousness dwelling in mankind, now rising up to teach everyone to do to another as he would have...

9. CHAPTER VIII

"O England, England! wouldst thou have thy government sound and healthful? Then cast about and see and search diligently to find out all those burthens that came in by Kings, an...

2. CHAPTER II

"It was in the name of faith and religious liberty that, in the sixteenth century, commenced the movement which, from that epoch, suspended at times but ever renewed, has been a...

1. CHAPTER I

"Whatever the prejudices of some may suggest, it will be admitted by all unbiassed judges, that the Protestant Reformation was neither more nor less than an open rebellion. Inde...

5. CHAPTER V

"Your word-divinity darkens knowledge. You talk of a body of Divinity, and of Anatomysing Divinity. O fine language! But when it comes to trial, it is but a husk without the ker...

10. CHAPTER IX

"Take notice, That England is not a Free People till the Poor that have no land have a free allowance to dig and labor the Commons, and so live as comfortably as the Land Lords...

4. CHAPTER IV

"The way to cast out Kingly Power is not to cast it out by the Sword; for this doth but set him in more power, and removes him from a weaker to a stronger hand. The only way to...

6. book vii. chap. iv.

[49:1] The Rev. Thos. Bennet, on p. 4 of _An Answer to the Dissenters' Pleas for Separation_, published in 1711, referring to the origin of the various sorts of dissenters, spea...