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Berens, Lewis Henry

"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"

The first, probably from the pen of Robert Coster, entitled "The
Diggers Christmasse Caroll," contains some twenty-eight verses of six
lines each. The view and hopes of the Diggers, as well as references to
recent public events, are amusingly related, and in conclusion the
reader is reminded that--"Freedom is not won, neither by sword nor gun,"
and therefore entreated to discard his faith in the efficacy of force,
of Money and the Sword, and to share their belief in the power of Love,
Righteousness, and Co-operative Labour, for the satisfaction of the
needs and desires of all.
The second piece, which we suspect to be from Winstanley's pen, is
headed:
"A hint of that Freedom which shall come,
When the Father shall reign alone in His Son,"
and the first two verses seem to us worthy of being given in full. They
run as follows:
"The Father He is God alone,
nothing besides Him is;
All things are folded in that one,
by Him all things subsist.
He is our Light, our Life, our Peace,
whereby we our being have;
From Him all things have their increase,
the Tyrant and the Slave."
It was probably also about this time that Winstanley composed the
following much more lively piece, which is to be found in the _Clarke
Papers_,[130:1] and which may here find a fitting place:
"THE DIGGERS SONG.
"You noble Diggers all, stand up now, stand up now,
You noble Diggers all, stand up now,
The waste land to maintain, seeing Cavaliers by name
Your digging do disdain and persons all defame.


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