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English and Scotch Puritans of his time, united by a "solemn league and covenant" to pursue the contest for liberty in church and state, and thus apostrophizes them: "Go on both, hand in hand, Oh nations never to be disunited. Be the praise and heroic song of all posterity. Merit this; but seek only virtue, not to extend your limits; for what need you 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 you; 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 you; for lordship and victory are but the passes of justice and virtue. Commit securely to true wisdom the vanquishing and unusing of craft and subtlety, which are but her two renegades. Join your invincible might to do worthy and godlike deeds; and then he that wishes to break your union, a cleaving curse be his inheritance to all generations."

In 1641, the same year in which Milton's

"Treatise on the Reformation" appeared, a number of Presbyterian ministers published, under the title of "Smectymnus," consisting of the initial letters of their names, a treatise against prelacy. This treatise provoked indignant replies, which again drew from Milton three several reviews, in one of which, Toland says, "Milton shows the insufficiency, inconveniency, and impiety " of attempting to establish any part of Christianity from patristical lore, "and blames those persons who cannot think any doubt resolved or any doctrine confirmed unless they run to that undigested heap and fry of authors which they call antiquity." 'Whatsoever either time or the blind hand of chance,' he says, 'has drawn down to this present, in her huge drag-net, whether fish or sea-weed, shells or shrubs, unpicked, unchosen, these are the fathers."" And so he chides these writers "for divulging useless treatises, stuffed with the specious names of IGNATIUS and POLYCARPUS, with fragments of old martyrologies and legends, to distract

* This was a quarto work, written by Stephen Marshall, Edward Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcomen, and William Spurstow.

and stagger the multitude of credulous readers."

To one of those writers who insinuated that Milton's habit of early rising was for sensual pursuits, he made this response: "My morning haunts are where they should be, at home; not sleeping, or concocting the surfeits of an irregular feast, but up and stirring: in winter, often before any bell awakens men to labor or devotion; in summer, as apt as the bird that first rouses, or not much tardier, to read good authors, or cause them to be read till the attention is weary, or the memory have its full fraught. Then with useful and generous labor preserving the body's health and hardiness, to render a lightsome, clear, and not lumpish obedience of the mind for the cause of religion and our country's liberty, when it shall require firm hearts in sound bodies to stand and cover their stations, rather than see the ruin of our Protestation, and the enforcement of a slavish life.

"These means, together with a certain niceness of nature, an honest haughtiness and self-esteem, either of what I was or what I

might be, (which let envy call pride,) and lastly, a burning modesty, all uniting their natural aid together, kept me still above those low descents of mind, beneath which he must plunge himself that can agree to saleable and unlawful prostitution.

"If I should tell you what I learnt of chastity and love, (I mean that which is truly so,) whose charming cup is only virtue, which she bears in her hand to those who are worthythe rest are cheated with a thick, intoxicating potion, which a certain sorceress, the abuser of love's name, carries about—and if I were to tell you how the first and chiefest office of love begins and ends in the soul, producing those happy twins of the divine generation, knowledge and virtue, with such abstracted sublimities as these, it might be worth your listening, readers."

It will be observed that Milton's objections to the assumptions of his opponents were of a twofold nature: objections founded upon thè dissenting arguments of the sufficiency of the Scriptures alone, and the right of private judgment, rejecting the authority of the creeds of

the first four general councils; and objections founded on an earnest opposition to the clearly antichristian principle, then a cardinal point in the prelatical belief, of the right of the civil magistrate to adopt rites and ceremonies, and enforce them by civil pains and penalties upon the observance of those whose consciences would not allow them to obey any thing in religion but what was taught them in the oracles of God.

One of Milton's biographers* remarks very truly, that though the blunt and caustic style of Milton's writings, and the gorgeous eloquence with which he attacked the bishops, must have been highly diverting to those Puritans both in church and state who had begun to throw off their prelatical chains, yet the sentiments would be often very far from meeting their approval; because, though the Puritans were opposed to episcopacy, yet they had no'objection to the principle of an establishment, nor to what was, above all, exposed and objected to by Milton, the right of the established sect to withhold toleration, and to pun

* Ivimey, p. 50.

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