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 travailing and throbbing kingdom: that we may still remember in our solemn thanksgivings, how for us, the northern ocean even to the frozen Thule was scattered with the proud shipwrecks of the Spanish 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 happiness 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 intelligencing 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 nought; 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 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 people 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 honours 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 labours, 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 for ever.

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 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 bestial tyranny over them as their slaves and negroes, they shall remain in that plight for ever, the basest, the lowermost, the most dejected, most underfoot, and downtrodden vassals of perdition.

OF PRELATICAL EPISCOPACY,

AND WHETHER IT MAY BE Deduced from THE APOSTOLICAL TIMES, BY VIRTUE OF THOSE TESTIMONIES WHICH ARE ALLEGED TO THAT PURPOSE IN SOME LATE TREATISES; ONE WHEREOF GOES UNDER THE NAME OF JAMES, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH.

EDITOR'S PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

DR. SYMMONS, whose liberal opinions in politics and ecclesiastical affairs render him an impartial judge, speaks thus of Milton's work on Episcopacy : Having observed that Bishop Hall had published in favour of his order a work entitled "An humble Remonstrance to the High Court of Parliament," and Archbishop Usher another treatise, called "The Apostolical Institution of Episcopacy," he goes on to observe, in answer to these "powerful and learned works: Milton wrote two pieces in the same year, the first of which he called, 'Of Prelatical Episcopacy,' and the second, The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelacy.' These, like his former controversial productions, are distinguished by force, acuteness, and erudition; but their language, though bearing a greater appearance of artifice and labour, is still evidently that of a man more conversant with the authors of Greece and Rome, than with those of his own country, and seems to be formed with out sufficient attention to the genius of his native tongue. This observation will apply with very diminished force to some of his succeeding compositions: but in all of them there is an occasional recurrence of foreign idioms and of a classic inversion of phrase, not properly admissible in a language in which prepositions supply the place and office of inflexions.

"The point at issue between those polemics was the divine or the human origin of episcopacy, as a peculiar order in the church, distinct in kind and pre-eminent in degree. That an officer with the title of Episcopus, or Overseer, (corrupted at first by our ancestors into bigcop, and afterwards softened into bishop,) had existed in the church from its first construction by the apostles, was a fact which could not be denied: but while this officer was asserted by one party to have been nothing more than the president of the elders, he was affirmed by the other to have been elevated above these elders or presbyters by essential privileges, by a separate as well as by a superior jurisdiction. The temporal possessions and right of the prelacy could not properly constitute any part of the controversy. As a portion of the political system of the country, and tracing their pedigree no higher than to the civil establishment of the church, these adventitious circumstances were to be debated on the ground of expediency alone; and to blend them with the immediate and distinct object in question seems to have been an unfair practice of the puritan disputants, for the purpose of increasing the unpopularity of their adversaries. Till the church was adopted by the government, under Constantine, its officers could not be invested with civil rank or with corporate property, but the subsequent accession of political importance would not supersede their spiritual jurisdiction, and could not be denounced as incompatible, because it was not coëval with their original appointment."

421

OF PRELATICAL EPISCOPACY.

EPISCOPACY, as it is taken for an order in the church above a presbyter, or, as we commonly name him, the minister of a congregation, is either of divine constitution or of human. If only of human, we have the same human privilege that all men have ever had since Adam, being born free, and in the mistress island of all the British, to retain this episcopacy, or to remove it,* consulting with our own occasions and conveniences, and for the prevention of our own dangers and disquiets, in what best manner we can devise, without running at a loss, as we must needs in those 'stale and useless records of either uncertain or unsound antiquity; which, if we hold fast to the grounds of the reformed church, can neither skill of us, nor we of it, so oft as it 'would lead us to the broken reed of tradition. 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 allsufficiency 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 (whom our prelates claim to imitate only in the controlling part of their office) had rather the vicegerency of an apostleship committed to them, than the ordinary charge of a bishopric, as being men of an extraordinary calling; yet to verify that which St.

* This opinion is now so generally entertained, that Milton will not be thought to advance anything startling in this passage. Christianity itself, is of divine institution, but the government of the church, like the government of the state, has been left to be regulated by human prudence. Milton was hostile to episcopacy because he saw it arrayed against liberty. In our own day, many of the bishops are among the most strenuous advocates of popular rights, and our history supplies numerous examples of persons of this order who have been ready to become martyrs to the cause of freedom. The reason of Milton's animosity must be sought for in temporary causes, though even now we occasionally behold examples of individuals on the episcopal bench whose political creed would have excited wiser men's indignation.-ED.

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. Seeing, therefore, some men, deeply conversant in books, have had so little care of late to give the world a better account of their reading, than by divulging needless tractates stuffed with specious names of Ignatius and Polycarpus; with fragments of old martyrologies and legends, to distract and stagger the multitude of credulous readers, and mislead them from their strong guards and places of safety, under the tuition of holy writ; 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. And in performing this, I shall not strive to be more exact in method, than as their citations lead me.

First, therefore, concerning Ignatius shall be treated fully, when the author shall come to insist upon some places in his epistles. Next, to prove a succession of twenty-seven bishops from Timothy, he cites one Leontius, bishop of Magnesia, out of the 11th act of the Chalcedonian council: this is but an obscure and single witness, and for his faithful dealing who shall commend him to us, with this his catalogue of bishops? What know we further of him, but that he might be as factious and false a bishop as Leontius of Antioch, that was a hundred years his predecessor? For neither the praise of his wisdom or his virtue hath left him memorable to posterity, but only this doubtful relation,