With the Restoration, the burning of certain obnoxious books formed one of the first episodes of that Royalist war of revenge of which the most disgraceful expression was the exhumation and hanging at Tyburn of the bones of Cromwell and Ireton. And had Goodwin and Milton not absconded, it is probable that the revenge which had to content itself with their books would have extended to their persons.
John Goodwin, distinguished as a minister and a prolific writer on the people's side, had dedicated in 1649 to the House of Commons his _Obstructours of Justice_, in which he defended the execution of Charles I. He based his case, indeed, after the fashion of those days, too completely on Biblical texts to suit our modern taste; but his book is far from being the "very weak and inconclusive performance" of which Neal speaks in his history of the Puritans. The sentiments follow exactly those of Rutherford's _Lex Rex_; as, for example, "The Crown is but the kingdom's or people's livery. . . . The king bears the relation of a political servant or vassal to that state, kingdom, or people over which he is set to govern." But the commonplaces of to-day were rank heresy in a chaplain to Cromwell.
There seems to be no evidence to support Bishop Burnet's assertion that Goodwin was the head of the Fifth-Monarchy fanatics; and his story is simply that of a fearless, sensible, and conscientious minister, who took a strong interest in the political drama of his time, and advocated liberty of conscience before even Milton or Locke. But his chief distinction is to have been marked out for revenge in company with Milton by the miserable Restoration Parliament.
Milton's _Eikonoklastes_ and _Defensio Populi Anglicani_ rank, of course, among the masterpieces of English prose, and ought to be read, where they never will be, in every Board and public school of England. In the first the picture of Charles I., as painted in the _Eikon Basilike_, was unmercifully torn to pieces. Charles's religion, Milton declares, had been all hypocrisy. He had resorted to "ignoble shifts to seem holy, and to get a saintship among the ignorant and wretched people." The prayer he had given as a relic to the bishop at his execution had been stolen from Sidney's _Arcadia_. In outward devotion he had not at all exceeded some of the worst kings in history. But in spite of Milton, the _Eikon Basilike_ sold rapidly, and contributed greatly to the reaction; and the Secretary of the Council of State had just reason to complain of the perverseness of his generation, "who, having first cried to God to be delivered from their king, now murmur against God for having heard their prayer, and cry as loud for their king against those that delivered them."