to remove it. If it be of divine constitution, to satisfy us fully in that the Scripture only is able, it being the only book left us of divine authority, not in anything more divine than in the all-sufficiency it hath to furnish us, as with all other spiritual knowledge, so with this in particular, setting out to us a perfect man of God, accomplished to all the good works of his charge : through all which book can be nowhere, either by plain text or solid reasoning, found any difference between a bishop and a presbyter, save that they be two names to signify the same order. Notwithstanding this clearness, and that by all evidence of argument, Timothy and Titus had rather the vicegerency of an apostleship committed to them, than the ordinary charge of a bishopric, as being men of extraordinary calling; yet to verify that which St. Paul foretold of succeeding times, when men began to have itching ears, then not contented with the plentiful and wholesome fountains of the gospel, they began after their own lusts to heap to themselves teachers, and as if the divine Scripture wanted a supplement, and were to be eked out, they cannot think any doubt resolved, and any doctrine confirmed; unless they run to that indigested heap and fry of authors which they call antiquity. Whatsoever time, or the heedless hand of blind chance, hath drawn down from of old to this present, in her huge drag-net, whether fish or seaweed, shells or shrubs, unpicked, unchosen, those are the fathers."

Here we have much reckless assertion, and little solid reasoning; in fact, Milton begs the question, and may be confuted from his own words. He allows the very thing for which Prelatical Episcopalians contend, and their doctrine could not be better expressed than he has done it, namely, that "Timothy and Titus had the vicegerency of an apostleship committed to them, as being men of extraordinary calling." What can this mean but that they held an office as representatives of the Apostles, distinct, and apart from, and superior to that exercised by those who were indifferently designated bishops or presbyters? But our object is not to expose and refute the errors which Milton entertained, but rather to cover them with a reverential and loving hand, and to search for those "sentences of a venturous edge, uttered in the height of zeal"-zeal, however, mistaken and misdirected, which astonish and enchant us with their matchless beauty and marvellous rhythm, and sublime and nervous rhetoric and elegance. 'Godgifted organ-voice of England, O mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies,' in prose as well as verse! who would not sit at thy feet, and listen to the melody and music of thy words, blind to thy faults, the product not of thine own mighty, honest, and truth-loving soul, but of those unhappy times in which thy lot was cast! O O golden-mouthed prophet and lover of truth, thy very errors are almost sacred, be

cause of thy sincerity and honesty of intention, because of thine own pure and blameless life-we love thee too well to scan them severely. His honesty of purpose appears in this very attack on Prelatical Episcopacy. "It came into my thoughts to persuade myself, setting all distances and nice respects aside, that I could do religion and my country no better service for the time than doing my utmost endeavour to recall the people of God from this vain foraging after straw, and to reduce them to their firm stations under the standard of the gospel, by making appear to them, first the insufficiency, next the inconveniency, and lastly the impiety of these gay testimonies, that their great doctors would bring them to dote on.

"We do injuriously in searching among the verminous and polluted rags dropped overworn from the toiling shoulders of time, with these deformedly to quilt and interlace the entire, the spotless, and undecaying robe of truth, the daughter, not of time, but of Heaven, only bred up here below in Christian hearts, between two grave and holy nurses, the doctrine and discipline of the Gospel."

"Wherever a man, who had been anyway conversant with the Apostles, was to be found, thither flew all the inquisitive ears, although the exercise of right instructing was changed into the curiosity of impertinent fabling where the mind was to be edified with solid doctrine, there the fancy was soothed with

solemn stories: with less fervency was studied what St. Paul or St. John had written, than was listened to one that could say, Here he taught, here he stood, this was his stature, and thus he went habited; and, O happy this house that harboured him, and that cold stone whereon he rested, this village wherein he wrought such a miracle, and that pavement bedewed with the warm effusion of his last blood, that sprouted up into eternal roses to crown his martyrdom. Thus, while all their thoughts were poured out upon circumstances, and the gazing after such men as had sat at table with the Apostles (many of which Christ hath professed, yea, though they had cast out devils in His name, He will not know at the last day), by this means they lost their time, and truanted in the fundamental grounds of saving knowledge, as was seen shortly by their writings."

The same beautifully-expressed thought occurs in Paradise Lost, chap. xi. :

"Here I could frequent

With worship place by place where He vouchsaf'd
Presence Divine; and to my sons relate,

On this mount He appear'd; under this tree
Stood visible; among these pines his voice

I heard; here with Him at this fountain talk'd."

"It will next behove us to consider the inconvenience we fall into, by using ourselves to be guided by these kind of episcopal testimonies. He that thinks it the part of a well-learned man to have read diligently the ancient stories of the church, and to be no

stranger in the volumes of the fathers, shall have all judicious men consenting with him; not hereby to control and new-fangle the Scripture-God forbid !— but to mark how corruption and apostasy crept in by degrees, and to gather up wherever we find the remaining sparks of original truth, wherewith to stop the mouths of our adversaries, and to bridle them with their own curb, who willingly pass by that which is orthodoxal in them, and studiously call out that which is commentitious, and best for their turns, not weighing the fathers in the balance of scripture, but scripture in the balance of the fathers. If we, therefore, making first the gospel our rule and oracle, shall take the good which we light on in the fathers, and set it to oppose the evil which other men seek from them, in this way of skirmish we shall easily master all superstition and false doctrine; but if we turn this our discreet and wary usage of them into a blind devotion towards them, and whatsoever we find written by them; we forsake our own grounds and reasons which led us at first to part from Rome, that is, to hold to the scriptures against all antiquity, and must be constrained to take upon ourselves a thousand superstitions and falsities."

We heartily concur in these admirable sentiments, and wish our author had always borne them in mind, and acted upon them.

66

Lastly, I do not know, it being undeniable that