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pleasure and pomp of power;-these are exertions compared with which the labour of war is mere pastime; which will require every energy and employ every faculty that you possess; which demand a man supported from above, and almost instructed by immediate inspiration. These, and more than these are, no doubt, the objects which occupy your attention and engross your soul; as well as the means by which you may accomplish these important ends, and render our liberty at once more ample and more secure. And this you can, in my opinion, in no other way so readily effect, as by associating in your councils the companions of your dangers and your toils; men of exemplary modesty, integrity, and courage; whose hearts have not been hardened in cruelty and rendered insensible to pity by the sight of so much ravage and so much death, but whom it has rather inspired with the love of justice, with a respect for religion, and with the feeling of compassion, and who are more zealously interested in the preservation of liberty, in proportion as they have encountered more perils in its defence. They are not strangers or foreigners, a hireling rout scraped together from the dregs of the people; but, for the most part, men of the better conditions in life, of families not disgraced if not ennobled, of fortunes either ample or moderate. And what if some among them are recommended by their poverty? for it was not the lust of ravage which brought them into the field; it was the calamitous aspect of the times, which, in the most critical circumstances, and often amid the most disastrous turn of fortune, roused them to attempt the deliverance of their country from the fangs of despotism. They were men prepared, not only to debate, but to fight; not only to argue in the senate, but to engage the enemy in the field. But unless we will continually cherish indefinite and illusory expectations, I see not in whom we can place any confidence, if not in these men and such as these. We have the surest and most indubitable pledge of their fidelity in this, that they have already ex

posed themselves to death in the service of their country; of their piety in this, that they have been always wont to ascribe the whole glory of their successes to the favour of the Deity, whose help they have so suppliantly implored, and so conspicuously obtained; of their justice in this, that they even brought the king to trial, and when his guilt was proved, refused to save his life; of their moderation in our own uniform experience of its effects, and because, if by any outrage they should disturb the peace which they have procured, they themselves will be the first to feel the miseries which it will occasion, the first to meet the havoc of the sword, and the first again to risk their lives for all those comforts and distinctions which they have so happily acquired; and lastly, of their fortitude in this, that there is no instance of any people who ever recovered their liberty with so much courage and success; and therefore, let us not suppose, that there can be any persons who will be more zealous in preserving it."*

He then commemorates the merits of the distinguished persons who, in the past contest, which was at once religious and political, had sustained the general by their counsels and their arms. "To these men," he says, "whose talents are so splendid, and whose worth has been so thoroughly tried, you would without doubt do right to trust the protection of our liberties; nor would it be easy to say to whom they might more safely be entrusted. Then, if you leave the church to its own government, and relieve yourself and the other public functionaries from a charge so onerous, and so incompatible with your functions; and will no longer suffer two powers, so different as the civil and the ecclesiastical, to commit fornication together, and by their mutual and delusive aids in appearance to strengthen, but in reality to weaken and finally to subvert, each other; if you shall remove all power of persecution out of the church, (but persecution will never cease, so long as men are bribed * Prose Works, vol. i. pp. 289–291.

to preach the gospel by a mercenary salary, which is forcibly extorted, rather than gratuitously bestowed, which serves only to poison religion and to strangle truth,) you will then effectually have cast those money-changers out of the temple, who do not merely truckle with doves, but with the Dove itself, with the Spirit of the Most High."

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After a noble address to the British people, urging them to carry out the principles and support the government of Cromwell, he closes the "Second Defence of the People of England" with the following words :-"I have delivered my testimony, I would almost say, have erected a monument, that will not readily be destroyed, to the reality of those singular and mighty achievements which were above all praise. As the epic poet, who adheres at all to the rules of that species of composition, does not profess to describe the whole life of the hero whom he celebrates, but only some particular action of his life, as the resentment of Achilles at Troy, the return of Ulysses, or the coming of Æneas into Italy; so it will be sufficient, either for my justification or apology, that I have heroically celebrated at least one exploit of my countrymen. I pass by the rest, for who could recite the achievements of a whole people? If, after such a display of courage and of vigour, you basely relinquish the path of virtue, if you do anything unworthy of yourselves, posterity will sit in judgment on your conduct. They will see that the foundations were well laid; that the beginning (nay, it was more than a beginning) was glorious; but with deep emotions of concern will they regret, that those were wanting who might have completed the structure. They will lament that perseverance was not conjoined with such exertions and such virtues. They will see that there was a rich harvest of glory, and an opportunity afforded for the greatest achievements, but that men only were wanting for the execution; while they were not wanting who could

* Prose Works, vol. i. p. 293.

rightly counsel, exhort, inspire, and bind an unfading wreath of praise round the brows of the illustrious actors in so glorious a scene.'

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The "Second Defence of the People of England" is in many respects the most valuable of Milton's prose writings. It is the chief repository from which we draw our information as to his personal history. It yields to none of his treatises in sustained grandeur of style. It is rich in the noblest sentiments of patriotism and freedom, both civil and religious; and by the perusal of those eloquent panegyrics in which he embalms the reputation of his eminent fellowworkers, we are impressed at once with the candour and generosity of Milton, and the blind prejudice of the biographer who could affirm, that no man who had written so much had praised so few.

* Prose Works, vol. i. pp. 299, 300.

CHAPTER XV.

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CONSEQUENCES OF THE DEATH OF CROMWELL-MILTON PUBLISHES THE 66 TREATISE OF THE CIVIL POWER IN ECCLESIASTICAL CAUSES ANALYSIS OF THE WORK-PUBLISHES THE CONSIDERATIONS TOUCHING THE LIKELIEST MEANS TO REMOVE HIRELINGS OUT OF THE CHURCH"-ANALYSIS OF THE WORK.

THE political aspect of this country was never more distressing to the friends, and portentous to the cause, of freedom, than at the period to which this narrative has now been conducted. The vigorous administration of Cromwell alone preserved the external tranquillity of the empire, and, under that government, the rights of the subject, and especially the claims of religious freedom, were habitually respected; but all the elements of disorder and devastation existed, in unseen activity, beneath the surface of society. The presbyterians, deprived of political power, cherished all their old intolerance, exacerbated by vindictiveness. The royalists were not slow to perceive, that they hated independency-which, in this instance, may be taken as the exponent of religious freedom,-with even more bitterness than they had ever testified against prelacy in the palmy days of its reign of terror. Hence they reckoned, and rightly as the event proved, upon the speedy co-operation of that faction. The army, on the contrary, was chiefly composed of independents-men whose devotion to freedom was the second table of their law-the secular phase of an enthu siastic religion. The death of Cromwell was the removal

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