UCSB LIBRARY TREASURES THE PROSE WRITINGS OF JOHN MILTON. "Hath he not always treasures, always friends, The good, great man?" COLBRIDGB. BOSTON : TICKNOR AND FIELDS. 1866. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by TICKNOR AND FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. UNIVERSITY PRESS : WELCH, BIGELOW, & Co., CAMBRIDGE. To JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, THIS EDITION OF TREASURES FROM MILTON'S PROSE WRITINGS IS DEDICATED BY THE PUBLISHERS. PREFACE. HE Prose Writings of Milton, inspired by the stirring events amid which they were written, form his contribution to the literature of freedom. To them were given the matured powers of a mind en- riched by varied studies, and ripened by medita- tion. They form the labors of his life, grand in thought and expression, as the poetic recreations of his earlier and later years are sublime and beautiful. In them his opinions, character, mo- tives and conduct are portrayed with singular fidelity. It is the aim of this volume to present a se- lection from Milton's Prose Writings, comprising some of the author's best thoughts, and setting forth as clearly as possible Milton himself, show- ing impartially his merits and faults as a writer vi PREFACE. and as a man. It will not have been prepared in vain, if it shall serve to make more widely known the Treasures of truth and beauty in these Prose Writings, and the true greatness of soul in their much abused author. And may the principles of civil and religious free- dom, here so eloquently defended, triumph every- where. FAYETTE KURD. July 12, 1865. CONTENTS. PAGE FEOM THE TREATISE OP REFORMATION IN ENGLAND . . 1 FROM THE TREATISE OF PRELATICAL EPISCOPACY . . 25 FROM THE REASON OF CHURCH GOVERNMENT URGED AGAINST PRELATY 28 FROM ANIMADVERSIONS UPON THE REMONSTRANT'S DEFENCE AGAINST SMECTYMNUUS 63 FROM AN APOLOGY FOR SMECTYMNUUS .... 77 FROM THE TRACTATE ON EDUCATION iOO FROM AREOPAGITICA 107 FROM THE DOCTRINE AND DISCD?LINE OF DIVORCE . . 132 FROM TETRACHORDON 161 FROM THE TENURE OF KINGS AND MAGISTRATES . . 170 FROM OBSERVATIONS ON THE ARTICLES OF PEACE, &c. . 189 FROM ElKONOKiASTES 193 FROM A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND . . 255 FROM THE SECOND DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND 296 FROM A TREATISE OF CIVIL POWER IN ECCLESIASTICAL CAUSES 355 FROM CONSIDERATIONS TOUCHING THE LONELIEST MEANS TO REMOVE HIRELINGS OUT OF THE CHURCH . . 362 FROM THE READY AND EASY WAY TO ESTABLISH A FREE COMMONWEALTH 376 yiii CONTENTS. FROM THE HISTORY OF BRITAIN 889 FROM THE TREATISE OF TRUE RELIGION, HERESY, SCHISM, TOLERATION 401 FROM THE FAMILIAR LETTERS 406 FROM THE LETTERS OF STATE 417 FROM THE TREATISE ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE . . 430 A LIST OF MILTON'S PROSE WORKS 467 INDEX 473 .FROM THE TREATISE OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. r MIDST those deep and retired thoughts, which, with every man Christianly in- structed, ought to be most frequent of God, and of his miraculous ways and works amongst men, and of our religion and works, to be performed to him ; after the story of our Saviour Christ, suffering to the lowest bent of weakness in the flesh, and presently triumph- ing to the highest pitch of glory in the spirit, which drew up his body also ; till we in both be united to him in the revelation of his kingdom, I do not know of anything more worthy to take up the whole passion of pity on the one side, and joy on the other, than to consider first the foul and sudden corruption, and then, after many a tedious age, the long-deferred, but much more wonderful and happy reformation of the Church in th,ese latter days. Sad it is to think how that doctrine of the Gospel, planted by teachers divinely in- spired, and by them winnowed and sifted from the 2 FROM THE TREATISE chaff of overdated ceremonies, and refined to such a spiritual height and temper of purity, and knowl- edge of the Creator, that the body, with all the circumstances of time and place, were purified by the affections of the regenerate soul, and nothing left impure but sin; faith needing not the weak and fallible office of the senses, to be either the ushers or interpreters of heavenly mysteries, save where our Lord himself in his sacraments or- dained; that such a doctrine should, through the grossness and blindness of her professors, and the fraud of deceivable traditions, drag so downwards, as to backslide one way into the Jewish beggary of old cast rudiments, and stumble forward another way into the new-vomited paganism of sensual idolatry, attributing purity or impurity to things indifferent, that they might bring the inward acts of the spirit to the outward and customary eye- service of the body, as if they could make God -earthly and fleshly, because they could not make themselves heavenly and spiritual ; they began to draw down all the divine intercourse betwixt God and the soul, yea, the very shape of God himself, into an exterior and bodily form, urgently pretend- ing a necessity and obligement of joining the body in a formal reverence and worship circumscribed ; they hallowed it, they fumed up, they sprinkled it, they bedecked it, not in robes of pure innocency, but of pure linen, with other deformed and fan- tastic dresses, in palls and mitres, gold, and gew- OF REFORMA TION IN ENGLAND. 3 gaws fetched from Aaron's old wardrobe, or the flarains vestry : then was the priest set to con his motions and his postures, his liturgies and his lur- ries, till the soul, by this means of overbodying herself, given up justly to fleshly delights, bated her wing apace downward : and finding the ease she had from her visible and sensuous colleague, the body, in performance of religious duties, her pinions now broken, and flagging, shifted off from herself the labor of high-soaring any more, forgot her heavenly flight, and left the dull and droiling carcass to plod on in the old road, and drudging trade of outward conformity. And here, out of question, from her perverse conceiting of God and holy things, she had fallen to believe no God at all, had not custom and the worm of conscience nipped her incredulity : hence to all the duties of evangelical grace, instead of the adoptive and cheerful boldness which our new alliance with God requires, came servile and thrallike fear : for in very deed, the superstitious man, by his good- will, is an atheist ; but being scared from thence by the pangs and gripes of a boiling conscience, all in a pudder shuffles up to himself such a God and such a worship as is most agreeable to remedy his fear ; which fear of his, as also is his hope, fixed only upon the flesh, renders likewise the whole faculty of his apprehension carnal ; and all the inward acts of worship, issuing from the native strength of the soul, run out lavishly to the upper 4 FROM THE TREATISE skin, and there harden into a crust of formality. Hence men came to scan the Scriptures by the let- ter, and in the covenant of our redemption, mag- nified the external signs more than the quickening power of the Spirit ; and yet, looking on them through their own guiltiness with a servile fear, and finding as little comfort, or rather terror, from them again, they knew not how to hide their slavish approach to God's behests, by them not understood, nor worthily received, but by cloak- ing their servile crouching to all religious pre- sentments, sometimes lawful, sometimes idola- trous, under the name of humility, and terming the piebald frippery and ostentation of ceremonies decency. BUT, to dwell no longer in characterizing the depravities of the Church, and how they sprung, and how they took increase, when I recall to mind at last, after so many dark ages, wherein the huge overshadowing train of error had almost swept all the stars out of the firmament of the Church ; how the bright and blissful Reformation (by Divine power) struck through the black and settled night of ignorance and antichristian tyranny, methinks a sovereign and reviving joy must needs rush into the bosom of him that reads or hears ; and the sweet odor of the returning gospel imbathe his soul with the fragrancy of heaven. Then was the sacred Bible sought out of the dusty corners where OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. 5 profane falsehood and neglect had thrown it, the schools opened, divine and human learning raked out of the embers of forgotten tongues, the princes and cities trooping apace to the new erected ban- ner of salvation ; the martyrs, with the unresist- able might of weakness shaking the powers of darkness, and scorning the fiery rage of the old red dragon. HE that, enabled with gifts from God, and the lawful and primitive choice of the Church assem- bled in convenient number, faithfully from that time forward feeds his parochial flock, has his co- equal and compresbyterial power to ordain minis- ters 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 heav- enly embassage, then he degrades, then he un- bishops himself; he that makes him bishop, makes him no bishop. THUS then did the spirit of unity and meekness inspire and animate every joint and sinew of the mystical body : but now the gravest and worthiest minister, a true bishop of his fold, shall be reviled 6 FROM THE TREATISE and ruffled by an insulting and only canon-wise prelate, as if he were some slight, paltry com- panion: and the people of God, redeemed and washed with Christ's blood, and dignified with so many glorious titles of saints and sons in the Gos- pel, are now no better reputed than impure ethnics and lay dogs; stones, and pillars, and crucifixes have now the honor and the alms due to Christ's living members ; the table of communion, now become a table of separation, stands like an ex- alted platform upon the brow of the quire, forti- fied with bulwark and barricado, to keep off the profane touch of the laics, whilst the obscene and surfeited priest scruples not to paw and mam- moc the sacramental bread, as familiarly as his tavern biscuit. And thus the people, vilified and rejected by them, give over the earnest study of virtue and godliness, as a thing of greater purity than they need, and the search of divine knowl- edge as a mystery too high for their capacities, and only for churchmen to meddle with ; which is what the prelates desire, that when they have brought us back to popish blindness, we might commit to their dispose the whole managing of our salvation ; for they think it was never fair world with them since that time. I AM not of opinion to think the Church a vine in this respect, because, as they take it, she can- OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. 1 not subsist without clasping about the elm of worldly strength and felicity, as if the heavenly city could not support itself without the props and buttresses of secular authority. How should then the dim taper of this Emper- or's * age, that had such need of snuffing, extend any beam to our times, wherewith we might hope to be better lighted, than by those luminaries that God hath set up to shine to us far nearer hand ? And what reformation he wrought for his own time, it will not be amiss to consider. He ap- pointed certain times for fasts and feasts, built stately churches, gave large immunities to the clergy, great riches and promotions to bishops, gave and ministered occasion to bring in a deluge of ceremonies, thereby either to draw in the hea- then by a resemblance of their rites, or to set a gloss upon the simplicity and plainness of Chris- tianity ; which, to the gorgeous solemnities of paganism, and the sense of the world's children, seemed but a homely and yeomanly religion ; for the beauty of inward sanctity was not within their prospect. BUT it will be replied, The Scriptures are diffi- cult to be understood, and therefore require the explanation of the fathers. It is true, there be * Constantino's. 8 FROM THE TREATISE some books, and especially some places in these books, that remain clouded ; yet ever that which is most necessary to be known is most easy ; and that which is most difficult, so far expounds itself ever, as to tell us how little it imports our saving knowledge. Hence, to infer a general obscurity over all the text, is a mere suggestion of the devil to dissuade men from reading it, and casts an as- persion of dishonor both upon the mercy, truth, and wisdom of God. We count it no gentleness or fair dealing in a man of power amongst us, to require strict and punctual obedience, and yet give out all his commands ambiguous and ob- scure : we should think he had a plot upon us ; certainly such commands were no commands, but snares. The very essence of truth is plainness and brightness; the darkness and crookedness is our own. The wisdom of God created under- standing, fit and proportionable to truth, the ob- ject and end of it, as the eye to the thing visible. If our understanding have a film of ignorance over it, or be blear with gazing on other false glis- terings, what is that to truth? If we will but purge with sovereign eye-salve that intellectual ray which God hath planted in us, then we would believe the Scriptures protesting their own plain- ness and perspicuity, calling to them to be in- structed, not only the wise and learned, but the simple, the poor, the babes, foretelling an extraor- dinary effusion of God's Spirit upon every age OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. 9 and sex, attributing to all men, and requiring from them the ability of searching, trying, examining all things, and by the Spirit discerning that which is good ; and as the Scriptures themselves pronounce their own plainness, so do the fathers testify of them But let the Scriptures be hard ; are they more hard, more crabbed, more abstruse, than the fathers? He that cannot understand the sober, plain, and unaffected style of the Scriptures, will be ten times more puzzled with the knotty Afri- canisms, the pampered metaphors, the intricate and involved sentences of the fathers, besides the fantastic and declamatory flashes, the gross-jin- gling periods, which cannot but disturb and come thwart a settled devotion, worse than the din of bells and rattles. IT is a work good and prudent to be able to guide one man ; of larger extended virtue to order well one house ; but to govern a nation piously and justly, which only is to say happily, is for a spirit of the greatest size, and divinest mettle. And certainly of no less a mind, nor of less excellence in another way, were they who, by writing, laid the solid and true foundations of this science, which being of greatest importance to the life of man, yet there is no art that hath been more cankered in her principles, more soiled and slubbered with aphorisming pedantry than the art 1* 10 FROM THE TREATISE of policy; and that most, where a man would think should least be, in Christian commonwealths. They teach not, that to govern well, is to train up a nation in true wisdom and virtue, and that which springs from thence, magnanimity (take heed of that), and that which is our beginning, regenera- tion, and happiest end, likeness to God, which in one word we call godliness ; and that this is the true flourishing of a land, other things follow as the shadow does the substance : to teach thus were mere pulpitry to them. This is the masterpiece of a modern politician, how to qualify and mould the sufferance and subjection of the people to the length of that foot that is to tread on their necks ; how rapine may serve itself with the fair and hon- orable pretences of public good; how the puny law may be brought under the wardship and con- trol of lust and will ; in which attempt, if they fall short, then must a superficial color of reputation, by all means, direct or indirect, be gotten to wash over the unsightly bruise of honor. To make men governable in this manner, their precepts mainly tend to break a national spirit and courage, by countenancing open riot, luxury, and igno- rance, till, having thus disfigured and made men beneath men, as Juno in the fable of lo, they deliver up the poor transformed heifer of the com- monwealth to be stung and vexed with the breeze and goad of oppression, under the custody of some Argus with a hundred eyes of jealousy. To be OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. 11 plainer, sir, how to solder, how to stop a leak, how to keep up the floating carcass of a crazy and dis- eased monarchy or state, betwixt wind and water, swimming still upon her own dead lees, that now is the deep design of a politician. A COMMONWEALTH ought to be but as one huge Christian personage, one mighty growth and stat- ure of an honest man, as big and compact in virtue as in body ; for look what the grounds and causes are of single happiness to one man, the same ye shall find them to a whole state, as Aristotle, both in his Ethics and Politics, from the principles of reason, lays down : by consequence, therefore, that which is good and agreeable to monarchy will appear soonest to be so, by being good and agree- able to the true welfare of every Christian ; and that which can be justly proved hurtful and offen- sive to every true Christian will be evinced to be alike hurtful to monarchy : for God forbid that we should separate and distinguish the end and good of a monarch from the end and good of the mon- archy, or of that from Christianity Seeing that the churchman's office is only to teach men the Christian faith, to exhort all, to encourage the good, to admonish the bad, pri- vately the less offender, publicly the scandalous and stubborn ; to censure and separate, from the com- munion of Christ's flock, the contagious and incor- 12 FROM THE TREATISE rigible, to receive with joy and fatherly compas- sion the penitent: all this must be done, and more than this is beyond any church-authority. What is all this, either here or there, to the tem- poral regiment of weal public, whether it be pop- ular, princely, or monarchical? Where doth it entrench upon the temporal governor ? where does it come in his walk ? where doth it make inroad upon his jurisdiction ? Indeed, if the minister's part be rightly discharged, it renders him the people more conscionable, quiet, and easy to be governed ; if otherwise, his life and doctrine will declare him. If, therefore, the constitution of the Church be already set down by divine prescript, as all sides confess, then can she not be a hand- maid to wait on civil commodities and respects ; and if the nature and limits of church-discipline be such as are either helpful to all political estates indifferently, or have no particular relation to any, then is there no necessity, nor indeed possibility, of linking the one with the other in a special con- formation Well knows every wise nation that their liberty consists in manly and honest labors, in sobriety and rigorous honor to the marriage-bed, which in both sexes should be bred up from chaste hopes to loyal enjoyments; and when the people slacken, and fall to looseness and riot, then do they as much as if they laid down their necks for some wild tyrant to get up and ride. Thus learnt Cy- OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. 13 rus to tame the Lydians, whom by arms he could not whilst they kept themselves from luxury; with one easy proclamation to set up stews, dancing, feasting, and dicing, he made them soon his slaves. I know not what drift the prelates had, whose brokers they were to prepare, and supple us either for a foreign invasion or domestic oppression : but this I am sure, they took the ready way to despoil us both of manhood and grace at once, and that in the shamefullest and ungodliest manner, upon that day which God's law, and even our own rea- son, hath consecrated, that we might have one day at least of seven set apart wherein to examine and increase our knowledge of God, to meditate and commune of our faith, our hope, our eternal city in heaven, and to quicken withal the study and exercise of charity ; at such a time that men should be plucked from their soberest and saddest thoughts, and by bishops, the pretended fathers of the Church, instigated, by public edict, and with earnest endeavor pushed forward to gaming, jig- ging, wassailing, and mixed dancing, is a horror to think! Thus did the reprobate hireling priest Balaam seek to subdue the Israelites to Moab, if not by force, then by this devilish policy, to draw them from the sanctuary of God to the luxurious and ribald feasts of Baal-peor. Thus have they trespassed not only against the monarchy of Eng- land, but of Heaven also, as others, I doubt not, can prosecute against them. 14 FROM THE TREATISE THE emulation that under the old law was in the king towards the priest is now so come about in the gospel, that all the danger is to be feared from the priest to the king. Whilst the priest's office in the law was set out with an exterior lus- tre of pomp and glory, kings were ambitious to be priests; now priests, not perceiving the heaven- ly brightness and inward splendor of their more glorious evangelic ministry, with as great ambition affect to be kings, as in all their courses is easy to be observed. Their eyes ever eminent upon worldly matters, their desires ever thirsting after worldly employments, instead of diligent and fer- vent study in the Bible, they covet to be expert in canons and decretals, which may enable them to judge and interpose in temporal causes, how- ever pretended ecclesiastical. Do they not hoard up pelf, seek to be potent in secular strength, in state affairs, in lands, lordships, and domains, to sway and carry all before them in high courts and privy-councils, to bring into their grasp the high and principal offices of the kingdom ? . . . . But ever blessed be He, and ever glorified, that from his high watch-tower in the heavens, discern- ing the crooked ways of perverse and cruel men, hath hitherto maimed and infatuated all their dam- nable inventions, and deluded their great wizards with a delusion fit for fools and children : had God been so minded, he could have sent a spirit of mu- tiny amongst us, as he did between Abimelech and OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. 15 the Sechemites, to have made our funerals, and slain heaps more in number than the miserable surviving remnant; but he, when we least de- served, sent out a gentle gale and message of peace from the wings of those his cherubims that fan his mercy-seat. Nor shall the wisdom, the moderation, the Christian piety, the constancy, of our nobility and commons of England, be ever forgotten, whose calm and temperate connivance could sit still and smile out the stormy bluster of men more audacious and precipitant than of solid and deep reach, until their own fury had run it- self out of breath, assailing by rash and heady approaches the impregnable situation of our liber- ty and safety, that laughed such weak enginery to scorn, such poor drifts to make a national war of a surplice brabble, a tippet scuffle, and engage the untainted honor of English knighthood to unfurl the streaming red cross, or to rear the horrid standard of those fatal guly dragons, for so un- worthy a purpose. as to force upon their fellow- subjects that which themselves are weary of, the skeleton of a mass-book. Nor must the patience, the fortitude, the firm obedience, of the nobles and people of Scotland, striving against manifold prov- ocations, nor must their sincere and moderate proceedings hitherto, be unremembered, to the shameful conviction of all their detractors. Go on both hand in hand, O nations, never to be disunited; be the praise and the heroic song 16 FROM THE TREATISE 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 them- selves before ye ; envy shall sink to hell, craft and malice be confounded, whether it be homebred mischief or outlandish cunning: yea, other na- tions 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 Thus then we see that our ecclesiastical and political choices may consent and sort as well together without any rupture in the state, as Christians and freeholders. But as for honor, that ought indeed to be different and distinct, as either office looks a several way ; the minister whose calling and end is spiritual ought to be hon- ored as a father and physician to the soul (if he be found to be so), with a son-like and disciple-like reverence, which is indeed the dearest and most affectionate honor, most to be desired by a wise man, and such as will easily command a free and plentiful provision of outward necessaries, without his further care of this world. OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. 17 The magistrate, whose charge is to see to our persons and estates, is to be honored with a more elaborate and personal courtship, with large sala- ries and stipends, that he himself may abound in those things whereof his legal justice and watchful care give us the quiet enjoyment. And this dis- tinction of honor will bring forth a seemly and graceful uniformity over all the kingdom. Then shall the nobles possess all the dignities and offices of temporal honor to themselves, sole lords without the improper mixture of scholastic and pusillanimous upstarts; the Parliament shall void her upper house of the same annoyances ; the common and civil laws shall be both set free, the former from the control, the other from the mere vassalage and copyhold of the clergy. And whereas temporal laws rather punish men when they have transgressed than form them to be such as should transgress seldomest, we may conceive great hopes, through the showers of di- vine benediction watering the unmolested and watchful pains of the ministry, that the whole in- heritance of God will grow up so straight and blameless, that the civil magistrate may with far less toil and difficulty, and far more ease and de- light, steer the tall and goodly vessel of the com- monwealth through all the gusts and tides of the world's mutability. We must not run, they say, into sudden ex- tremes. This is a fallacious rule, unless under- 18 FROM THE TREATISE stood only of the actions of virtue about things indifferent : for if it be found that those two ex- tremes be vice and virtue, falsehood and truth, the greater extremity of virtue and superlative truth we run into, the more virtuous and the more wise we become ; and he that, flying from degenerate and traditional corruption, fears to shoot himself too far into the meeting embrace of a divinely warranted reformation, had better not have run at all Let us not dally with God when he offers us a full blessing, to take as much of it as we think will serve our ends, and turn him back the rest upon his hands, lest in his anger he snatch all from us again But in the evangelical and reformed use of this sacred censure,* no such prostitution, no such Is- cariotical drifts, are to be doubted, as that spiritual doom and sentence should invade worldly posses- sion, which is the rightful lot and portion even of the wickedest men, as frankly bestowed upon them by the all-dispensing bounty as rain and sunshine. No, no, it seeks not to bereave or destroy the body ; it seeks to save the soul by humbling the body, not by imprisonment, or pecuniary mulct, much less by stripes, or bonds, or disinheritance, but by fatherly admonishment and Christian re- buke, to cast it into godly sorrow, whose end is joy, and ingenuous bashfulness to sin : if that can- * Excommunication. OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. 19 not be wrought, then as a tender mother takes her child and holds it over the pit with scaring words, that it may learn to fear where danger is ; so doth excommunication as dearly and as freely, without money, use her wholesome and saving terrors: she is instant, she beseeches, by all the dear and sweet promises of salvation she entices and wooes ; by all the threatenings and thunders of the law, and rejected gospel, she charges and adjures : this is all her armory, her munition, her artillery; then she awaits with long-sufferance, and yet ar- dent zeal. In brief, there is no act in all the errand of God's ministers to mankind wherein passes more lover-like contestation between Christ and the soul of a regenerate man lapsing, than be- fore, and in, and after the sentence of excommuni- cation. As for the fogging proctorage of money, with such an eye as struck Gehazi with leprosy and Simon Magus with a curse, so does she look, and so threaten her fiery whip against that bank- ing den of thieves that dare thus baffle, and buy and sell the awful and majestic wrinkles of her brow. He that is rightly and apostolically sped with her invisible arrow, if he can be at peace in his soul, and not smell within him the brimstone of hell, may have fair leave to tell all his bags over undiminished of the least farthing, may eat his dainties, drink his wine, use his delights, enjoy his lands and liberties, not the least skin raised, not the least hair misplaced, for all that excom- 20 FROM THE TREATISE munication has done: much more may a king enjoy his rights and prerogatives undeflowered, untouched, and be as absolute and complete a king as all his royalties and revenues can make him O sir, I do now feel myself inwrapped on the sudden into those mazes and labyrinths of dread- ful and hideous thoughts, that which way to get out, or which way to end, I know not, unless I turn mine eyes, and with your help lift up my hands to that eternal and propitious throne, where nothing is readier than grace and refuge to the distresses of mortal suppliants : and it were a shame to leave these serious thoughts less piously than the heathen were wont to conclude their graver discourses. Thou, therefore, that sittest in light and glory- unapproachable, Parent of angels and men ! next, thee I implore, Omnipotent King, Redeemer of that lost remnant, whose nature thou didst as- sume, ineffable and everlasting Love! and thou, the third subsistence of Divine infinitude, illumin- ing Spirit, the joy and solace of created things ! one Tripersonal Godhead ! look upon this thy poor and almost spent and expiring Church, leave her not thus a prey to these importunate wolves that wait and think long till they devour thy tender flock; these wild boars that have broke into thy vineyard, and left the print of their polluting hoofs on the souls of thy servants. O, let them not OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. 21 bring about their damned designs, that stand now at the entrance of the bottomless pit, expecting the watchword to open and let out those dread- ful locusts and scorpions, to reinvolve us in that pitchy cloud of infernal darkness, where we shall never more see the sun of thy truth again, never hope for the cheerful dawn, never more hear the bird of morning sing ! Be moved with pity at the afflicted state of this our shaken monarchy, that now lies laboring under her throes and struggling against the grudges of more dreaded calamities. O thou, that, after the impetuous rage of five bloody inundations, and the succeeding sword of intestine war, soaking the land in her own gore, didst pity the sad and ceaseless revolution of our swift and thick-coming sorrows ; when we were quite breathless, of thy free grace didst motion peace and terms of covenant with us ; and, having first wellnigh freed us from Antichristian thraldom, didst build up this Britannic empire to a glorious and enviable height, with all her daughter-islands about her; stay us in this felicity, let not the obstinacy of our half-obedience and will-worship bring forth that viper of sedition, that for these fourscore years hath been breeding to eat through the entrails of our peace ; but let her cast her abortive spawn without the danger of this travail- ing and throbbing kingdom : that we may still re- member, in our solemn thanksgivings, how for us the Northern Ocean even to the frozen Thule was 22 FROM THE TREATISE scattered with the proud shipwrecks of the Span- ish Armada, and the very maw of hell ransacked, and made to give up her concealed destruction, ere she could vent it in that horrible and damned blast. O, how much more glorious will those former deliverances appear, when we shall know them not only to have saved us from greatest miseries past, but to have reserved us for greatest hap- piness to come ! Hitherto thou hast but freed us, and that not fully, from the unjust and tyrannous claim of thy foes ; now unite us entirely, and appropriate us to thyself; tie us -everlastingly in willing homage to the prerogative of thy eternal throne. And now we know, O thou our most certain hope and defence, that thine enemies have been consulting all the sorceries of the great whore, and have joined their plots with that sad intelli- gencing tyrant that mischiefs the world with his mines of Ophir, and lies thirsting to revenge his naval ruins that have larded our seas: but let them all take counsel together, and let it come to naught; let them decree, and do thou cancel it ; let them gather themselves, and be scattered ; let them embattle themselves, and be broken ; let them embattle, and be broken, for thou art with us. Then, amidst the hymns and hallelujahs of saints, some one may perhaps be heard offering OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. 23 at high strains in new and lofty measure to sing and celebrate thy divine mercies and marvellous judgments in this land throughout all ages ; whereby this great and warlike nation, instructed and inured to the fervent and continual practice of truth and righteousness, and casting far from her the rags of her whole vices, may press on hard to that high and happy emulation to be found the soberest, wisest, and most Christian peo- ple at that day when thou, the eternal and shortly expected King, shalt open the clouds to judge the several kingdoms of the world, and, distributing national honors and rewards to religious and just commonwealths, shalt put an end to all earthly tyrannies, proclaiming thy universal and mild monarchy through heaven and earth, where they undoubtedly, that by their labors, counsels, and prayers have been earnest for the common good of religion and their country, shall receive, above the inferior orders of the blessed, the regal addition of principalities, legions, and thrones into their glorious titles, and in supereminence of beatific vision, progressing the dateless and irrevoluble circle of eternity, shall clasp inseparable hands with, joy and bliss, in overmeasure forever. But they contrary, that by the impairing and diminution of the true faith, the distresses and servitude of their country, aspire to high dignity, rule, and promotion here, after a shameful end in this life (which God grant them) shall be thrown 24 OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. down eternally into the darkest and deepest gulf of hell, where, under the despiteful control, the trample and spurn of all the other damned, that in the anguish of their torture shall have no other ease than to exercise a raving and hestial tyranny over them as their slaves and negroes, they shall remain in -that plight forever, the basest, the low- ermost, the most dejected, most underfoot, and down-trodden vassals of perdition. FROM THE TREATISE OF PRELATICAL EPISCOPACY. t F it be of divine constitution, to satisfy us folly 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 fur- nish 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 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 them- selves teachers, and as if the Divine Scripture want- ed 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 pres- 2 26 FROM THE TREATISE ent, in her huge drag-net, whether fish or sea- weed, shells or shrubs, unpicked, unchosen, those are the fathers How can they bring satisfaction from such an author, to whose every essence the reader must be fain to contribute his own understanding? Had God ever intended that we should have sought any part of useful instruction from Ignatius, doubt- less he would not have so ill provided for our knowledge as to send him to our hands in this broken and disjointed plight ; and if he intended no such thing, we do injuriously in thinking to taste better the pure evangelic manna, by season- ing our mouths with the tainted scraps and frag- ments of an unknown table, and searching among the verminous and polluted rags dropped over- worn 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 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 consent- ing 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 OF PRELATICAL EPISCOPACY. 27 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 cull 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 to- wards them, and whatsoever we find written by them, we both forsake our own grounds and rea- sons which led us at first to part from Rome, that is, to hold to the Scriptures against all antiquity ; we remove our cause into our adversaries' own court, and take up there those cast principles which will soon cause us to solder up with them again ; inasmuch as, believing antiquity for itself in any one point, we bring an engagement upon our- selves of assenting to all that it charges upon us. FROM THE REASON OF CHURCH GOVERNMENT URGED AGAINST PRELATY. N the publishing of human laws, which for the most part aim not beyond the good of civil society, to set them barely forth to the people without reason or preface, like a physical prescript, or only with threatenings, as it were a lordly command, in the judgment of Plato was thought to be done neither generously nor wisely. His advice was, seeing that persuasion certainly is a more win- ning and more manlike way to keep men in obe- dience than fear, that to such laws as were of principal moment, there should be used as an in- duction some well-tempered discourse, showing how good, how gainful, how happy it must needs be to live according to honesty and justice ; which being uttered with those native colors and graces of speech, as true eloquence, the daughter of vir- tue, can best bestow upon her mother's praises, would so incite, and in a manner charm, the mul- REASON OF CHURCH GOVERNMENT. 29 titude into the love of that which is really good, as to embrace it ever after, not of custom and awe, which most men do, but of choice and pur- pose, with true and constant delight. But this practice we may learn from a better and more ancient authority than any heathen writer hath to give us; and, indeed, being a point of so high wis- dom and worth, how could it be but we should find it in that book within whose sacred context all wisdom is unfolded? Moses, therefore, the only lawgiver that we can believe to have been visibly taught of God, knowing how vain it was to write laws to men whose hearts were not first seasoned with the knowledge of God and of his works, began from the book of Genesis, as a pro- logue to his laws ; which Josephus right well hath noted: that the nation of the Jews, reading there- in the universal goodness of God to all creatures in the creation, and his peculiar favor to them in his election of Abraham, their ancestor, from whom they could derive so many blessings upon themselves, might be moved to obey sincerely, by knowing so good a reason of their obedience. If, then, in the administration of civil justice, and under the obscurity of ceremonial rites, such care was had by the wisest of the heathen, and by Moses among the Jews, to instruct them at least in a general reason of that government to which their subjection was required, how much more ought the members of the Church, under the 30 REASON OF CHURCH GOVERNMENT Gospel, seek to inform their understanding in the reason of that government which the Church claims to have over them! Especially for that Church hath in her immediate cure those inner parts and affections of the mind, where the seat of reason is having power to examine our spiritual knowledge, and to demand from us, in God's he- half, a service entirely reasonable. THERE is not that thing in the world of more grave and urgent importance throughout the whole life of man than is discipline. What need I instance ! He that hath read with judgment of nations and commonwealths, of cities and camps, of peace and war, sea and land, will readily agree that the flourishing and decaying of all civil so- cieties, all the moments and turnings of human occasions, are moved to and fro as upon the axle of discipline. So that whatsoever power or sway in mortal things weaker men have attributed to fortune, I durst with more confidence (the honor of Divine Providence ever saved) ascribe either to the vigor or the slackness of discipline. Nor is there any sociable perfection in this life, civil or sa- cred, that can be above discipline ; but she is that which with her musical cords preserves and holds all the parts thereof together. Hence in those perfect armies of Cyrus in Xenophon, and Scipio in the Roman stories, the excellence of military URGED AGAINST PRELATY. 31 skill was esteemed, not by the not needing, but by the readiest submitting to the edicts of their com- mander. And certainly discipline is not only the removal of disorder ; but if any visible shape can be given to divine things, the very visible shape and image of virtue, whereby she is not only seen in the regular gestures and motions of her heaven- ly paces as she walks, but also makes the harmony of her voice audible to mortal ears. Yea, the angels themselves, in whom no disorder is feared, as the apostle that saw them in his rapture de- scribes, are distinguished and quaternioned into their celestial princedoms and satrapies, according as God himself has writ his imperial decrees through the great provinces of heaven. The state also of the blessed in paradise, though never so perfect, is not therefore left without discipline, whose golden surveying-reed marks out and meas- ures every quarter and circuit of New Jerusalem. Yet is it not to be conceived that those eternal effluences of sanctity and love in the glorified saints should by this means be confined and cloyed with repetition of that which is prescribed, but that our happiness may orb itself into a thousand vagancies of glory and delight, and with a kind of eccentrical equation be, as it were, an invariable planet of joy and felicity ; how much less can we believe that God would leave his frail and feeble, though not less beloved Church here below, to the perpetual stumble of conjecture and disturbance 32 REASON OF CHURCH GOVERNMENT in this our dark voyage, without the card and compass of discipline ? Which is so hard to be of man's making, that we may see even in the guid- ance of a civil state to worldly happiness, it is not for every learned or every wise man, though many of them consult in common, to invent or frame a discipline : but if it be at all the work of man, it must be of such a one as is a true knower of himself, and in whom contemplation and prac- tice, wit, prudence, fortitude, and eloquence, must be rarely met, both to comprehend the hidden causes of things, and span in his thoughts all the various effects that passion or complexion can work in man's nature ; and hereto must his hand be at defiance with gain, and his heart in all vir- tues heroic ; so far is it from the ken of these wretched projectors of ours, that bescrawl their pamphlets every day with new forms of govern- ment for our Church. And therefore all the ancient lawgivers were either truly inspired, as Moses, or were such men as with authority enough might give it out to be' so, as Minos, Lycurgus, Numa, because they wisely forethought that men would never quietly submit to such a discipline as had not more of God's hand in it than man's. . . . Public preaching indeed is the gift of the Spirit, working as best seems to his secret will ; but dis- cipline is the practic work of preaching directed and applied, as is most requisite, to particular duty ; without which it were all one to the benefit URGED AGAINST PRELATY. 33 of souls, as it would be to the cure of bodies, if all the physicians in London should get into the sev- eral pulpits of the city, and, assembling all the diseased in every parish, should begin a learned lecture of pleurisies, palsies, lethargies, to which perhaps none there present were inclined ; and so, without so much as feeling one pulse, or giving the least order to any skilful apothecary, should dismiss them from time to time, some groaning, some languishing, some expiring, with this only charge, to look well to themselves, and do as they hear Did God take such delight in measuring out the pillars, arches, and doors of a material temple ? Was he so punctual and circumspect in lavers, altars, and sacrifices soon after to be abrogated, lest any of these should have been made contrary to his mind? Is not a far more perfect work more agreeable to his perfections in the most per- fect state of the Church Militant, the new alliance of God to man ? Should not he rather now by his own prescribed discipline have cast his line and level upon the soul of man, which is his rational temple, and, by the divine square and compass thereof, form and regenerate in us the lovely shapes of virtues and graces, the sooner to edify and accomplish that immortal stature of Christ's body, which is his Church, in all her glori- ous lineaments and proportions? And that this indeed God hath done for us in the Gospel we 2* c 34 REASON OF CHURCH GOVERNMENT shall see with open eyes, not under a veil. We may pass over the history of the Acts and other places, turning only to those epistles of St. Paul to Timothy and Titus ; where the spiritual eye may discern more goodly and gracefully erected, than all the magnificence of temple or tabernacle, such a heavenly structure of evangelical discipline, so diffusive of knowledge and charity to the pros- perous increase and growth of the Church, that it cannot be wondered if that elegant and artful symmetry of the promised new temple in Ezekiel, and all those sumptuous things under the law, were made to signify the inward beauty and splen- dor of the Christian Church thus governed And therefore, if God afterward gave or per- mitted this insurrection of episcopacy, it is to be feared he did it in his wrath, as he gave the Israelites a king. With so good a will doth he use to alter his own chosen government once es- tablished. For mark whether this rare device of man's brain, thus preferred before the ordinance of God, had better success than fleshly wisdom, not counselling with God, is wont to have. So far was it from removing schism, that, if schism parted the congregations before, now it rent and mangled, now it raged. Heresy begat heresy with a certain monstrous haste of pregnancy in her birth, at once born and bringing forth. Con- tentions, before brotherly, were now hostile. Men went to choose their bishop as they went to a URGED AGAINST PRELATY. 35 pitched field, and the day of his election was, like the sacking of a city, sometimes ended with the blood of thousands. Nor this among heretics only, but men of the same belief, yea, confessors ; and that with such odious ambition, that Eusebius, in his eighth book, testifies he abhorred to write. And the reason is not obscure, for the poor dig- nity, or rather burden, of a parochial presbyter could not engage any great party, nor that to any deadly feud : but prelaty was a power of that extent and sway, that, if her election were popu- lar, it was seldom not the cause of some faction or broil in the church. But if her dignity came by favor of some prince, she was from that time his creature, and obnoxious to comply with his ends in state, were they right or wrong. So that, instead of finding prelaty an impeacher of schism or faction, the more I search, the more I grow into all persuasion to think rather that faction and she, as with a spousal ring, are wedded together, never to be divorced Do they keep away schism ? If to bring a numb and chill stupidity of soul, an unactive blindness of mind, upon the people by their leaden doctrine, or no doctrine at all, if to persecute all knowing and zealous Christians by the violence of their courts, be to keep away schism, they keep schism away indeed; and by this kind of disci- pline all Italy and Spain is as purely and politicly kept from schism as England hath been by them. 36 REASON OF CHURCH GOVERNMENT With as good a plea might the dead-palsy boast to a man, It is I that free you from stitches and pains, and the troublesome feeling of cold and heat, of wounds and strokes : if I were gone, all these would molest you. The winter might as well vaunt itself against the spring, I destroy all noisome and rank weeds, I keep down all pesti- lent vapors ; yes, and all wholesome herbs, and all fresh dews, by your violent and hide-bound frost : but when the gentle west winds shall open the fruitful bosom of the earth, thus overgirded by your imprisonment, then the flowers put forth and spring, and then the sun shall scatter the mists, and the manuring hand of the tiller shall root up all that burdens the soil without thank to your bondage It may suffice us to be taught by St. Paul, that there must be sects for the manifesting of those that are sound-hearted. These are but winds and flaws to try the floating vessel of our faith, whether it be stanch and sail well, whether our ballast be just, our anchorage and cable strong. By this is seen who lives by faith and certain knowledge, and who by credulity and the prevailing opinion of the age ; whose virtue is of an unchangeable grain, and whose of a slight wash. If God come to try our constancy, we ought not to shrink or stand the less firmly for that, but pass on with more stead- fast resolution to establish the truth, though it were through a lane of sects and heresies on each URGED AGAINST PRELATY. 37 side. Other things men do to the glory of God : but sects and errors, it seems, God suffers to be for the glory of good men, that the world may know and reverence their true fortitude and un- daunted constancy in the truth. Let us not therefore make these things an incumbrance, or an excuse of our delay in reforming, which God sends as us an incitement to proceed with more honor and alacrity : for if there were no opposi- tion, where were the trial of an unfeigned good- ness and magnanimity ? Virtue that wavers is not virtue, but vice revolted from itself, and after a while returning. The actions of just and pious men do not darken in their middle course ; but Solomon tells us, they are as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day. But if we shall suffer the trifling doubts and jeal- ousies of future sects to overcloud the fair begin- nings of purposed reformation, let us rather fear that another proverb of the same wise man be not upbraided to us, that " the way of the wicked is as darkness ; they stumble at they know not what." If sects and schisms be turbulent in the unsettled estate of a church, while it lies under the amend- ing hand, it best beseems our Christian courage to think they are but as the throes and pangs that go before the birth of reformation, and that the work itself is now in doing. For if we look but on the nature of elemental and mixed things, we know O ' they cannot suffer any change of one kind or 38 REASON OF CHURCH GOVERNMENT quality into another, without the struggle of con- trarieties. And in things artificial, seldom any. elegance is wrought without a superfluous waste and refuse in the transaction. No marble statue can be politely carved, no fair edifice built, with- out almost as much rubbish and sweeping. Inso- much that even in the spiritual conflict' of St. Paul's conversion, there fell scales from his eyes, that were not perceived before. No wonder, then, in the reforming of a church, which is never brought to effect without the fierce encounter of O truth and falsehood together, if, as it were, the splinters and shards of so violent a jousting, there fall from between the shock many fond errors and fanatic opinions, which, when truth has the upper hand, and the reformation shall be perfected, will easily be rid out of the way, or kept so low, as that they shall be only the exercise of our knowledge, not the disturbance or interruption of our faith In state many things at first are crude and hard to digest, which only time and deliberation can supple and concoct. But in religion, wherein is no immaturity, nothing out of season, it goes far otherwise. The door of grace turns upon smooth hinges, wide opening to send out, but soon shut- ting to recall the precious offers of mercy to a na- tion : which, unless watchfulness and zeal, two quicksighted and ready-handed virgins, be there in our behalf to receive, we lose ; and still the oftener we lose, the straiter the door opens, and URGED AGAINST PRELATY. 39 the less is offered. This is all we get by demur- ring in God's service. How happy were it for this frail, and as it may be called mortal life of man, since all earthly things which have the name of good and conven- ient in our daily use, are withal so cumbersome and full of trouble, if knowledge, yet which is the best and lightsomest possession of the mind, were, as the common saying is, no burden ; and that what it wanted of being a load to any part of the body, it did not with a heavy advantage overlay upon the spirit ! For not to speak of that knowl- edge that rests in the contemplation of natural causes and dimensions, which must needs be a lower wisdom, as the object is low, certain it is, that he who hath obtained in more than the scan- tiest measure to know anything distinctly of God, and of his true worship, and what is infallibly good and happy in the state of man's life, what in itself evil and miserable, though vulgarly not so es- teemed, he that hath obtained to know this, the only high valuable wisdom indeed, remembering also that God, even to a strictness, requires the im- provement of those his intrusted gifts, cannot but sustain a sorer burden of mind, and more pressing than any supportable toil or weight which the body can labor under, how and in what manner he shall dispose and employ these sums of knowledge and 40 REASON OF CHURCH GOVERNMENT illumination, which God hath sent him into this world to trade with. And that which aggravates the burden more is, that, having received amongst his allotted parcels certain precious truths, of such an orient lustre as no diamond can equal, which nevertheless he has in charge to put off at any cheap rate, yea, for nothing to them that will, the great merchants of this world, fearing that this course would soon discover and disgrace the false glitter of their deceitful wares, wherewith they abuse the people, like poor Indians with beads and glasses, practise by all means how they may sup- press the vending of such rarities, and at such a cheapness as would undo them, and turn their trash upon their hands. Therefore, by gratifying the corrupt desires of men in fleshly doctrines, they stir them up to persecute with hatred and con- tempt all those that seek to bear themselves up- rightly in this their spiritual factory : which they foreseeing, though they cannot but testify of truth, and the excellency of that heavenly traffic which they bring, against what opposition or danger so- ever, yet needs must it sit heavily upon their spir- its, that being, in God's prime intention and their own, selected heralds of peace, and dispensers of treasure inestimable, without price, to them that have no peace, they find in the discharge of their commission that they are made the greatest vari- ance and offence, a very sword and fire, both in house and city, over the whole earth. This URGED AGAINST PRELATY. 41 is that which the sad prophet Jeremiah laments : " Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife and contention ! " And al- though divine inspiration must certainly have been sweet to those ancient prophets, yet the irksome- ness of that truth .which they brought was so unpleasant unto them, that everywhere they call it a burden. Yea, that mysterious book of revela- tion which the great Evangelist was bid to eat, as it had been some eye-brightening electuary of knowledge and foresight, though it were sweet in his mouth, and in the learning, it was bitter in his belly, bitter in the denouncing. Nor was this hid from the wise poet Sophocles, who in that place of his tragedy where Tiresias is called to resolve King QEdipus in a matter which he knew would be grievous, brings him in bemoaning his lot, that he knew more than other men. For surely to e very- good and peaceable man it must in nature needs be a hateful thing to be the displeaser and molest- er of thousands; much better would it like him doubtless to be the messenger of gladness and con- tentment which is his chief intended business to all mankind, but that they resist and oppose their own true happiness. But when God commands to take the trumpet, and blow a dolorous or a jarring blast, it lies not in man's will, what he shall say, or what he shall conceal. If he shall think to be silent as Jeremiah did, because of the reproach and derision he met with daily, "And all his 42 REASON OF CHURCH GOVERNMENT familiar friends watched for his halting," to be re- venged on him for speaking the truth, he would be forced to confess as he confessed : " His word was in my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones ; I was weary with forbearing, and could not stay." Which might teach these times not suddenly to condemn all things that are sharply spoken or vehemently written as proceeding out of stomach, virulence, or ill-nature, but to consid- er rather, that, if the prelates have leave to say the worst that can be said, or do the worst that can be done, while they strive to keep to them- selves, to their great pleasure and commodity, those things which they ought to render up, no man can be justly offended with him that shall endeavor to impart and bestow, without any gain to himself, those sharp but saving words which would be a terror and a torment in him to keep back. For me, I have determined to lay up as the best treasure and solace of a good old age, if God vouchsafe it me, the honest liberty of free speech from my youth, where I shall think it available in so dear a concernment as the Church's good. For if I be, either by disposition or what other cause, too inquisitive, or suspicious of myself and mine own doings, who can help it ? But this I foresee, that should the Church be brought under heavy op- pression, and God have given me ability the while to reason against that man that should be the author URGED AGAINST PRELATY. 43 of so foul a deed, or should she, by blessing from above on the industry and courage of faithful men, change this her distracted estate into better days without the least furtherance or contribution of those few talents which God at that present had lent me, I foresee what stories I should hear within myself, all my life after, of discourage and reproach. Timorous and ungrateful, the Church of God is now again at the foot of her insulting enemies, and thou bewailest. What matters it for thee, or thy bewailing? When time was, thou couldst not find a syllable of all that thou hast read, or studied, to utter in her behalf. Yet ease and leisure was given thee for thy retired thoughts, out of the sweat of other men. Thou hast the dil- igence, the parts, the language of a man, if a vain subject were to be adorned or beautified ; but when the cause of God and his Church was to be pleaded, for which purpose that tongue was given thee which thou hast, God listened if he could hear thy voice among his zealous servants, but thou wert dumb as a beast ; from henceforward be that which thine own brutish silence hath made thee. Or else I should have heard on the other ear : Slothful, and ever to be set light by, the Church hath now overcome her late distresses after the unwearied labors of many her true ser- vants that stood up in her defence ; thou also wouldst take upon thee to share amongst them of their joy: but wherefore thou? Where canst 44 REASON OF CHURCH GOVERNMENT thou show any word or deed of thine which might have hastened her peace ? Whatever thou dost now talk, or write, or look, is the alms of other men's active prudence and zeal. Dare not now to say or do anything better than thy former sloth and infancy ; or if thou darest, thou dost impudent- ly to make a thrifty purchase of boldness to thyself, out of the painful merits of other men ; what be- fore was thy sin is now thy duty, to be abject and worthless. These, and such like lessons as these, I know would have been my matins duly and my even-song. But now, by this little diligence, mark what a privilege I have gained with good men and saints to claim my right of lamenting the tribula- tions of the Church, if she should suffer when others, that have ventured nothing for her sake, have not the honor to be admitted mourners. But if she lift up her drooping head and pros- per, among those that have something more than wished her welfare, I have my charter and free- hold of rejoicing to me and my heirs. Concern- ing, therefore, this wayward subject, against prel- aty, the touching whereof is so distasteful and dis- quietous to a number of men, as by what hath been said I may deserve of charitable readers to be credited, that neither envy nor gall hath en- tered me upon this controversy, but the enforce- ment of conscience only, and a preventive fear lest the omitting of this duty should be against me, when I would store up to myself the good provis- URGED AGAINST PRELATY. 45 ion of peaceful hours : so, lest it should be still im- puted to me, as I have found it hath been, that some self-pleasing humor of vainglory hath incited me to contest with men of high estimation, now while green years are upon my head, from this needless surmisal I shall hope to dissuade the intel- ligent and equal auditor, if I can but say success- fully that which in this exigent behoves me ; al- though I would be heard only, if it might be, by the elegant and learned reader, to whom principally for a while I shall beg leave I may address myself. To him it will be no new thing, though I tell him that if I hunted after praise, by the ostentation of wit and learning, I should not write thus out of mine own season, when I have neither yet com- pleted to my mind the full circle of my private studies, although I complain not of any insufficien- cy to the matter in hand ; or were I ready to my wishes, it were a folly to commit anything elabo- rately composed to the careless and interrupted listening of these tumultuous times. Next, if I were wise only to my own ends, I would certainly take such a subject as of itself might catch ap- plause, whereas this hath all the disadvantages on the contrary, and such a subject as the publishing whereof might be delayed at pleasure, and time enough to pencil it over with all the curious touches of art, even to the perfection of a fault- less picture ; whereas in this argument the not de- ferring is of great moment to the good speeding, 46 REASON OF CHURCH GOVERNMENT that if solidity have leisure to do her office, art cannot have much. Lastly, I should not choose this manner of writing, wherein knowing myself inferior to myself, led by the genial power of na- ture to another task, I have the use, as I may ac- count, but of my left hand. And though I shall be foolish in saying more to this purpose, yet, since it will be such a folly as wisest men go about to com- mit, having only confessed and so committed, I may trust with more reason, because with more folly, to have courteous pardon. For although a poet, soar- ing in the high reason of his fancies, with his gar- land and singing-robes about him, might, without apology, speak more of himself than I mean to do ; yet for me, sitting here below in the cool element of prose, a mortal thing among many readers of no empyreal conceit, to venture and divulge unusual things of myself, I shall petition to the gentler sort, it may not be envy to me. I must say, therefore, that after I had for my first years, by the ceaseless diligence and care of my father, (whom God recom- pense !) been exercised to the tongues, and some sciences, as my age would suffer, by sundry mas- ters and teachers, both at home and at the schools, it was found that whether aught was imposed me by them that had the overlooking, or betaken to of mine own choice in English, or other tongue, prosing or versing, but chiefly by this latter, the style, by certain vital signs it had, was likely to live. But much latelier in the private academies URGED AGAINST PRELATY. 47 of Italy, whither I was favored to resort, perceiv- ing that some trifles which I had in memory, com- posed at under twenty or thereabout, (for the manner is, that every one must give some proof of his wit and reading there,) met with acceptance above what was looked for; and other things, which I had shifted in scarcity of books and con- veniences to patch up amongst them, were re- ceived with written encomiums, which the Italian is not forward to bestow on men of this side the Alps ; I began thus far to assent both to them and divers of my friends here at home, and not less to an inward prompting which now grew daily upon me, that by labor and intense study, (which I take to be my portion in this life,) joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to after-times, as they should not willingly let it die. These thoughts at once possessed me, and these other ; that if I were cer- tain to write as men buy leases, for three lives and downward, there ought no regard be sooner had than to God's glory by the honor and instruction of my country. For which cause, and not only for that I knew it would be hard to arrive at the second rank among the Latins, I applied myself to that resolution, which Ariosto followed against the persuasions of Bembo, to fix all the industry and art I could unite to the adorning of my native tongue ; not to make verbal curiosities the end, (that were a toilsome vanity,) but to be an inter- 48 REASON OF CHURCH GOVERNMENT preter and relater of the best and sagest things among mine own citizens throughout this island in the mother dialect. That what the greatest and choicest wits of Athens, Rome, or modern Italy, and those Hebrews of old did for their country, I, in my proportion, with this over and above of being a Christian, might do for mine ; not caring to be once named abroad, though perhaps I could attain to that, but content with these British isl- ands as my world ; whose fortune hath hitherto been, that if the Athenians, as some say, made their small deeds great and renowned by their elo- quent writers, England hath had her noble achieve- ments made small by the unskilful handling of monks and mechanics. Time serves not now, and perhaps I might seem too profuse to give any certain account of what the mind at home, in the spacious circuits of her musing, hath liberty to propose to herself, though of highest hope and hardest attempting ; whether that epic form whereof the two poems of Homer, and those other two of Virgil and Tasso, are a diffuse, and the book of Job a brief model : or whether the rules of Aristotle herein are strictly to be kept, or nature to be followed, which in them that know art, and use judgment, is no trans- gression, but an enriching of art : and, lastly, what king or knight before the Conquest might be cho- sen in whom to lay the pattern of a Christian hero. And as Tasso gave to a prince of Italy his choice URGED AGAINST PRELATY. 49 whether he would command him to write of God- frey's expedition against the Infidels, or Belisa- rius against the Goths, or Charlemain against the Lombards ; if to the instinct of nature and the emboldening of art aught may be trusted, and that there be nothing adverse in our climate, or the fate of this age, it haply would be no rashness, from an equal diligence and inclination, to present the like offer in our own ancient stories ; or whether those dramatic constitutions, wherein Sophocles and Eu- ripides reign, shall be found more doctrinal and exemplary to a nation. The Scripture also af- fords us a divine pastoral drama in the Song of Solomon, consisting of two persons, and a double chorus, as Origen rightly judges. And the Apoc- alypse of St. John is the majestic image of a high and stately tragedy, shutting up and intermin- gling her solemn scenes and acts with a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies : and this my opinion the grave authority of Pare- us, commenting that book, is sufficient to confirm. Or if occasion shall lead, to imitate those magnific odes and hymns, wherein Pindarus and Callima- chus are in most things worthy, some others in their frame judicious, in their matter most an end faulty. But those frequent songs throughout the law and prophets beyond all these, not in their di- vine argument alone, but in the very critical art of composition, may be easily made appear over all the kinds of lyric poesy to be incomparable. 50 REASON OF CHURCH GOVERNMENT These abilities, wheresoever they be found, are the inspired gift of God, rarely bestowed, but yet to some (though most abuse) in every nation ; and are of power, beside the office of a pulpit, to imbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and public civility, to allay the perturba- tions of the mind, and set the affections in right tune ; to celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns the throne and equipage of God's almightiness, and what he works, and what he suffers to be wrought 7 o with high providence in his Church ; to sing vic- torious agonies of martyrs and saints, the deeds and triumphs of just and pious nations, doing val- iantly through faith against the enemies of Christ ; to deplore the general relapses of kingdoms and states from justice and God's true worship. Last- ly, whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable or grave, whatsoever hath passion