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irresistible might of weakness, shaking the powers of darkness, and scorning the fiery rage of the old red dragon."

From hence he descends, as has been seen from the foregoing analysis, to the grand obstacles of the Reformation; and after noticing the conduct of Henry VIII. as a mere struggle for an unhallowed supremacy, and the political obstructions which impeded the great work in the reign of Edward VI., he continues, with reference to the bishops of that age:- "It was not episcopacy that wrought in them the heavenly fortitude of martyrdom, as little is it that martyrdom can make good episcopacy; but it was episcopacy that led the good and holy men, through the temptation of the enemy, and the snare of this present world, to many blameworthy and opprobrious actions. And it is still episcopacy that before all our eyes worsens and slugs the most learned and seeming religious of our ministers, who no sooner advanced to it, but, like a seething pot set to cool, sensibly exhale and reek out the greatest part of that zeal and those gifts which were formerly in them, settling in a skinny congealment of ease and sloth at the top: and if they keep their learning by some potent sway of nature, it is a rare chance; but their devotion most commonly comes to that queazy temper of lukewarmness, that gives a vomit to God himself.

"But why do we suffer mis-shapen and enormous prelatism as we do, thus to blanch and varnish her deformities with the fair colours, as before of martyrdom, so now of episcopacy? They are not bishops, God and all good men know they are not, that have filled this land with late confusion and violence; but a tyrannical crew and corporation of impostors, that have blinded and abused the world so long under that name. He that, enabled with gifts from God, and the lawful and primitive choice of the church assembled, in convenient number, faithfully from that time forward feeds his parochial flock, has his co-equal and compresbyterial power to ordain ministers and deacons by public prayer and vote of Christ's congregation, in like sort as he

himself was ordained, and is a true apostolic bishop. But when he steps up into the chair of pontifical pride, and changes a moderate and exemplary house for a misgoverned and haughty palace, spiritual dignity for carnal precedence, and secular high office and employment for the high negotiations of his heavenly embassage, then he degrades, then he unbishops himself; he that makes him bishop, makes him no bishop."

Milton next comments on a subject to which recent events have given a special interest,—the revision of the liturgy, a task committed to a number of moderate Divines, properly so called, as he intimates, being "neither hot nor cold," the result of which, under such a queen (Elizabeth) and at such a time, was naturally but the reproduction of "the sour crudities of yesterday's popery." The locus pœnitentiæ thus afforded to those of the clergy who were still imbued with the spirit of popery, while for obvious reasons they refused allegiance to its power, did not escape the simple-minded sagacity of Milton. It is remarkable, however, that this capital defect in the constitution of the Anglican church, has to a great extent been smothered and concealed by its members, until these latter days when the increased strength of non-conformity on the one hand, and the leavening influence of religion on a portion of the clergy, has excited an opposition which has openly revealed it. After proving from ancient church history the rightful authority of the christian laity in the appointment of their bishops or pastors, and pointing out the mischiefs occasioned in the first instance by the acts of Constantine in linking the Christian church with the State, and by the spirit of Constantine, in so far as it has influenced every succeeding generation, he thus mournfully applies his remarks to the persecutions which in his own day rankly germinated from this root of bitterness.

“O, Sir, if we could but see the shape of our dear mother England as poets are wont to give a personal form to what they please, how would she appear, think ye, but in a

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mourning weed, with ashes upon her head, and tears abundantly flowing from her eyes, to behold so many of her children exposed at once, and thrust from things of dearest necessity, because their conscience could not assent to things which the bishops thought indifferent? What more binding than conscience? What more free than indifferency? Cruel, then, must that indifferency needs be that shall violate the strict necessity of conscience; merciless and inhuman that free choice and liberty that shall break asunder the bonds of religion! Let the astrologer be dismayed at the portentous blaze of comets, and impressions in the air, as foretelling troubles and changes to states: I shall believe there cannot be a more ill-boding sign to a nation (God turn the omen from us!) than when the inhabitants, to avoid insufferable grievances at home, are enforced by heaps to forsake their native country."

He next proceeds to show the evils of a purely political kind resulting to any country from the rival power-the imperium in imperio-of a privileged hierarchy. He demonstrates that it is incompatible with a well-regulated monarchical constitution—that it soils and degrades the sanctity of ecclesiastical discipline—that it drains the national wealth, not for the purposes of secular education and religious teaching, but for aggrandizing the plethoric state of prelates and dignitaries; while it leaves the working clergy in penury and neglect, distributing, to use his own words, "a moderate maintenance to every painful minister, that now scarce sustains his family with bread, while the prelates revel like Belshazzar, with their full carouses in goblets, and vessels of gold snatched from God's temple." In this respect it may be observed, in passing, the Anglican, like the Roman, church, may boast its immutability. In our own day, we have heard a similar complaint from a dignitary of the church, as unlike to Milton in his motives, sentiments, and style, as he was in his official position. The late Rev. Sydney Smith, in his well-known letter to Archdeacon

Singleton, exclaims-" Why is the Church of England to be only an assemblage of beggars and bishops? The Right Reverend Dives in the palace, and Lazarus in orders at his gate, doctored by dogs, and comforted with crumbs."

For the remedy of these multiplied evils, he looks to the Reformation commenced in England, and more happily prosecuted in Scotland; and after indignantly referring to the Royal policy to embroil them in "a war fit for Cain to be the leader of—an abhorred, a cursed, a fraternal war”—he breaks out into the following animated apostrophe:

"Go on both hand in hand, O nations! never to be disunited; be the praise and the heroic song of all posterity; merit this, but seek only virtue, not to extend your limits; (for what needs to win a fading triumphant laurel out of the tears of wretched men?) but to settle the pure worship of God in his church, and justice in the state: then shall the hardest difficulties smooth out themselves before ye; envy shall sink to hell, craft and malice be confounded, whether it be homebred mischief or outlandish cunning; yea, other nations will then covet to serve ye, for lordship and victory are but the pages of justice and virtue. Commit securely to true wisdom the vanquishing and uncasing of craft and subtlety, which are but her two runagates: join your invincible might to do worthy and godlike deeds; and then he that seeks to break your union, a cleaving curse be his inheritance to all generations!"

Milton next commends the representative element in the British constitution, which he compares to the apostolic mode of election in the church, and derives from it an argument in favour of the appointment of all spiritual functionaries by the collective suffrage of the members of churches, and the total dissociation of every religious body from all secular authority, whether legislative or executive. He shows that no objections against running into extremes should withhold the Parliament from making this separation absolute and complete; urging that this avoidance of ex

tremes is only justifiable in matters which are morally indifferent; but that in such a case as this, involving the most sound considerations, "we ought to hie us from evil like a torrent, and rid ourselves of corrupt discipline, as we would shake fire out of our bosoms." He traces the multiplied evils which prelacy had produced in England for nearly twelve hundred years, and shows that in proportion to the political power possessed by the priesthood, have ever been the corruption and decay of religion, the demoralization of the age, and the perpetration of every species of cruelty. After a majestic description of the terrors of legitimate spiritual discipline, he thus contrasts them with the coarse and unauthorized powers clamoured for by the sordid selfishness of the bishops:

"Sir, would you know what the remonstrance of these men would have, what their petition implies? They entreat us that we would not be weary of those insupportable grievances that our shoulders have hitherto cracked under; they beseech us that we would think them fit to be our justices of peace, our lords, our highest officers of state, though they come furnished with no more experience than they learnt between the cook and the manciple, or more profoundly at the college audit, or the regent house, or, to come to their deepest insight, at their patron's table; they would request us to endure still the rustling of their silken cassocks, and that we would burst our midriffs, rather than laugh to see them under sail in all their lawn and sarcenet, their shrouds and tackle, with a geometrical rhomboides upon their heads; they would bear us in hand that we must of duty still appear before them once a year in Jerusalem, like good circumcised males and females, to be taxed by the poll, to be sconced our head-money, our twopences, in their chanderly shop-book of Easter. They pray us that it would please us to let them still hale us, and worry us with their ban dogs and pursuivants; and that it would please the parliament that they may yet have the whipping, fleecing, and flaying of us in

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