The private soldiers, seized with the same spirit, employed their vacant hours in prayer, in perusing the Holy Scriptures, in ghostly conferences where they compared the progress of their in grace, and mutually stimulated each other to further advances in the great work of their salvation.

When they were marching to battle, the whole field resounded, as well with psalms and spiritual songs adapted to the occasion, as with the instruments of military music:[*] and every man endeavored to drown the sense of present danger in the prospect of that crown of glory which was set before him.

In so holy a cause, wounds were esteemed meritorious; death, martyrdom; and the hurry and dangers of action, instead of banishing their pious visions, rather served to impress their minds more strongly with them.
The royalists were desirous of throwing a ridicule on this fanaticism of the parliamentary armies, without being sensible how much reason they had to apprehend its dangerous consequences.

The forces assembled by the king at Oxford, in the west, and in other places, were equal, if not superior in number to their adversaries; but actuated by a very different spirit.

That license which had been introduced by want of pay, had risen to a great height among them, and rendered them more formidable to their friends than to their enemies.