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the Protestant profession," Morland assures us in his history of that tragic episode.

By their spirited and efficacious intervention, both Cromwell and Milton wove for themselves garlands of imperishable honor; while liberty stands by approvingly through the mist of ages, and shouts, "Amen. Well done, good

"Amen.

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NOTE. Those who may choose to study this intercession at large, together with Milton's letters to the Continental powers, will find the necessary data in Milton's state papers, mentioned in the above chapter, or in Ivimey's Life of Milton, or in the singularly complete life of the Latin Secretary lately written by David Masson, and published in Boston in 1859.

CHAPTER XVI.

IN September of 1658, after a reign of singular firmness and ability, during which the English Commonwealth had led and shaped European politics, the remarkable, checkered, yet, upon the whole, beneficent career of Oliver Cromwell, the mighty Lord Protector, was closed by his sickness and death.

Instantly the heterogeneous elements which had been moulded into apparent homogeneity by the strategic and powerful hand of Cromwell, began to ferment; and the nation soon learned to regret the loss of one whose vigorous authority had repressed those fatal confusions to which they now fell a prey.

Richard Cromwell, the son of the Protector, who had assumed the Protectorate upon the death of his father, appalled by the stormy atmosphere of the time, and keenly aware of his inability to control the hour, after an inefficient reign of nine months, laid down his sceptre, and retired into that obscurity which he was best fitted to adorn.

Meantime the anarchy into which the nation had lapsed continued to increase. The council of officers, headed by Desborough and Fleetwood, upon the abdication of Richard Cromwell, summoned the relics of the famous Long Parliament, which still legally existed, having never been prorogued by a competent authority, to reassume the guidance of the Commonwealth.

The Parliament convened upon this invitation, and displaying its old-time energy and executive talent, speedily excited the jealousy of the tyrannical army, which erelong once more forcibly ended its sittings.

The Presbyterians, discontented since the triumph of the Independents, instead of attempting to smother the flames of confusion, fanned the fire, and openly united themselves with the Royalists.

It was at this alarming crisis that Milton, drawn once more from his retirement by the voice of patriotism, addressed to the Parliament two treatises, one called "A Treatise of the Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Matters," which he wrote because of his apprehension of re

turning intolerance from the increasing influence of the Presbyterians; the other was of somewhat similar scope and purpose, "Considerations Touching the Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings out of the Church," in which he argued with masterly and incontrovertible power for the complete separation and independence of church and state.

His definition of evangelical religion in the first of these treatises is terse and admirable: "What evangelical religion is, is told in two words, faith and charity, or belief and practice, and that both of these flow either the one from the understanding, the other from the will, or both jointly from both; once indeed naturally free, but now only as they are regenerate and wrought on by Divine grace, is in part evident to common sense and principles unquestioned; the rest by Scripture."

The treatise on the "Removal of Hirelings out of the Church," and urging that to each congregation be left the support of its own pastor, instead of maintaining the expensive and aristocratic ecclesiastical establishment

then kept up by the collection of tithes, thus concludes:

"Of which hireling crew, together with all the mischiefs, dissensions, troubles, wars, merely of their own kindling, Christendom might soon rid herself and be happy, if Christians would but know their own dignity, their liberty, their adoption, and let it not be wondered if I say their own spiritual priesthood, whereby they have all equal access to any ministerial functions whenever called by their own abilities to the church, though they never came near commencements or university.

"But while Protestants, to avoid the due labors of understanding their own religion, are content to lodge it in their books or in the breast of a state clergyman, and to take it thence by scraps and mammocks, as he dispenses it in his Sunday dole, they will be always learning and never knowing; always infants; always either his vassals, as lay papists are to their priests, or at odds with him, as reformed principles give them some light to be not wholly conformable; whence infinite disturbances in the state, as they do, must needs follow.

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