was meet in any passage of that book, which yet I do not yield, I might use therein the patronage of no worse an author than Gregory Nyssen, who mentioning his sharpness against Eunomius in the defence of his brother Basil, holds himself irreprovable in that "it was not for himself, but in the cause of his brother; and in such cases," saith he, "perhaps it is worthier pardon to be angry than to be cooler."

And whereas this confuter taxes the whole discourse of levity, I shall show ye, readers, wheresoever it shall be objected in particular, that I have answered with as little lightness as the Remonstrant hath given example. I have not been so light as the palm of a bishop, which is the lightest thing in the world when he brings out his book of ordination: for then, contrary to that which is wont in releasing out of prison, any one that will pay his fees is laid hands on. Another reason, it would not be amiss though the Remonstrant were told, wherefore he was in that unusual manner beleaguered; and this was it, to pluck out of the heads of his admirers the conceit that all who are not prelatical, are gross-headed, thick-witted, illiterate, shallow. Can nothing then but episcopacy teach men to speak good English, to pick and order a set of words judiciously? Must we learn from canons and quaint sermonings, interlined with barbarous Latin, to illumine a period, to wreathe an enthymema with masterous dexterity? I rather incline, as I have heard it observed, that a Jesuit's Italian, when he writes, is ever naught, though he be born and bred a Florentine, so to think, that from like causes we may go near to observe the same in the style of a prelate.

For doubtless that indeed according to art is most elv quent, which turns and approaches nearest to nature, from whence it came; and they express nature best, who in their lives least wander from her safe leading, which may be called regenerate reason. So that how he should be truly eloquent who is not withal a good man, I see not.* Nevertheless, as

* Milton here alludes to the question, much debated among rhetoricians, whether an orator can attain to the highest reaches of his art without vir tue; and he decides it in the negative. Aristotle, who saw what men of imperfect moral habits had, both at Athens and elsewhere, been able to effect by mere force of art, seems to admit a different conclusion; but at the same time maintains that the appearance of virtue carries along with it great weight, even when simply put on for the occasion, like the dress of a trage

oft as is to be dealt with men who pride themselves in their supposed art, to leave them inexcusable wherein they will not be bettered ; there be of those that esteem prelacy a figment, who yet can pipe if they can dance, nor will be unfurnished to shew, that what the prelates admire and have not, others have and admire not. The knowledge whereof, and not of that only, but of what the scripture teacheth us how we ought to withstand the perverters of the gospel, were those other motives which gave the Animadversions no leave to remit a continual vehemence throughout the book. For as in teaching doubtless the spirit of meekness is most powerful, so are the meek only fit persons to be taught: as for the proud, the obstinate, and false doctors of men's devices, be taught they will not, but discovered and laid open they must be.

For how can they admit of teaching, who have the condemnation of God already upon them for refusing divine instruction? That is, to be filled with their own devices, as in the Proverbs we may read: therefore we may safely imitate the method that God uses, "with the froward to be froward, and to throw scorn upon the scorner," whom if any thing, nothing else will heal. And if the "righteous shall laugh at the destruction of the ungodly," they may also laugh at the pertinacious and incurable obstinacy, and at the same time be moved with detestation of their seducing malice, who employ all their wits to defend a prelacy usurped, and to deprave that just government which pride and ambition, partly by fine fetches and pretences, partly by force, hath shouldered out of the church. And against such kind of deceivers openly and earnestly to protest, lest any one should be inquisitive wherefore this or that man is forwarder than others, let him know that this office goes not by age or youth, but to whomsoever God shall give apparently the will, the spirit, and the utterance.* Ye have heard the reason for which I thought

dian. This is yielding all that is demanded. For, if to give due force to their arguments even the vicious find it necessary to mimic virtue, he who in uttering noble sentiments has nothing but his heart to consult, who finds his habitual preferences marshalled on the side of what is good and honourable, will unquestionably, all other things being equal, possess a great advantage over the man who derives from others whatever he knows of great and heroic feelings.-ED.

The Puritans 'Milton's age appear, in many instances, to have laid

not myself exempted from associating with good men in thei labours towards the church's welfare; to which if any one brought opposition, I brought my best resistance. If in requital of this, and for that I have not been negligent toward the reputation of my friends, I have gained a name bestuck, or as I may say, bedecked with the reproaches and reviles of this modest confuter; it shall be to me neither strange nor unwelcome, as that which could not come in a better time.

Having rendered an account what induced me to write those Animadversions in that manner as I writ them, I come now to see what the Confutation hath to say against them; but so as the confuter shall hear first what I have to say against his Confutation. And because he pretends to be a great conjector at other men by their writings, I will not fail to giv ye, readers, a present taste of him from his title, hung out like a tolling sign-post to call passengers, not simply a confutation, but "a Modest Confutation," with a laudatory of itself obtruded in the very first word. Whereas a modest title should only inform the buyer what the book contains without further insinuation; this officious epithet so hastily assuming the modesty which others are to judge of by reading, not the author to anticipate to himself by forestalling, is a strong presumption that his modesty, set there to sale in the frontispiece, is not much addicted to blush. A surer sign of his lost shame he could not have given, than seeking thus unseasonably to prepossess men of his modesty. And seeing claim to immediate inspiration; but it is difficult to discover with clearness the nature of their ideas on the subject. Baxter, an eloquent and philosophical writer, observes :--" There is a great difference between that light which sheweth us the thing itself, and that artificial skill by which we have right notions, names, definitions, and formed arguments and answers to objections. This artificial, logical, organical kind of knowledge is good and useful in its kind, if right, like speech itself; but he that hath much of this may have little of the former; and unlearned persons, that have little of this, may have more of the former; and may have those inward perceptions of the verity of the promises and rewards of God, which they cannot bring forth into artificial reasonings to themselves or others; who are taught of God by the effective sort of teaching which reacheth the heart or will, as well as the understanding, and is a giving of what is taught, and a making us such as we are told we must be. And who findeth not need to pray hard for this effective teaching of God when he hath got all organical knowledge; and words and arguments in themselves most apt at his fingers' ends, as we say?"-Dying Thoughts, in Sacred Classics, vol. vi. p. 24, 25.-Ed.

he hath neither kept his word in the sequel, nor omitted ar kind of boldness in slandering, it is manifest his purpose was only to rub the forehead of his title with this word Modest, that he might not want colour to be the more impudent throughout his whole Confutation.

Next, what can equally savour of injustice and plain arrogance, as to prejudice and forecondemn his adversary in the title for "slanderous and scurrilous," and as the Remonstrant's fashion is, for frivolous, tedious, and false, not staying till the reader can hear him proved so in the following discourse? Which is one cause of a suspicion that in setting forth this pamphlet the Remonstrant was not unconsulted with.* Thus his first address was, " An humble Remonstrance by a dutiful Son of the Church," almost as if he had said, her Whiteboy. His next was 66 a Defence" (a wonder how it escaped some praising adjunct) " against the frivolous and false Exceptions of Smectymnuus," sitting in the chair of his title-page upon his poor cast adversaries both as a judge and party, and that before the jury of readers can be impannelled. His last was "A short Answer to a tedious Vindication;" so little can he suffer a man to measure, either with his eye or judgment, what is short or what tedious, without his preoccupying direction: and from hence is begotten this "Modest Confutation against a slanderous and scurrilous Libel."

I conceive, readers, much may be guessed at the man and his book, what depth there is, by the framing of his title; which being in this Remonstrant so rash and unadvised as ye see, I conceit him to be near akin to him who set forth a passion sermon with a formal dedicatory in great letters to our Saviour. Although I know that all we do ought to begin

• Here his suspicions glance at Bisliop Hall himself, whom he evidently supposes to have aided his son in concocting the "Modest Confutation." Dr. Symmons imagines that, "had this work been published with the author's name, its motives would probably have atoned with Milton for its virulence; and his own filial piety, affected by the spectacle of a generous youth rushing to present his bosom to the wound intended for his father's would have spared the enemy." &c.-Life of Milton, p. 239. On the contrary, his contemptuous severity would more probably have been augmented by beholding the father encouraging his son to defend him by heaping, what Dr. Symmons acknowledges to have been " enormous falsehoods," on the head of his adversary.-ED.

✦ The man who did this was no other than Bishop Hall; and the dis

and end in his praise and glory, yet to inscribe him in a void place with flourishes, as a man in compliment uses to trick up the name of some esquire, gentleman, or lord paramount at common law, to be his book-patron, with the appendant form of a ceremonious presentment, will ever appear among the judicious to be but an insulse and frigid affectation. As no less was that before his book against the Brownists, to write a etter to a Prosopopoeia, a certain rhetorized woman whom he calls mother, and complains of some that laid whoredom to her charge; and certainly had he folded his epistle with a superscription to be delivered to that female figure by any post or carrier, who were not an ubiquitary, it had been a most miraculous greeting. We find the primitive doctors, as oft as they wrote to churches, speaking to them as to a number of faithful brethren and sons; and not to make a cloudy transmigration of sexes in such a familiar way of writing as an epistle ought to be, leaving the tract of common address, to run up, and tread the air in metaphorical compellations, and many fond utterances better let alone.

To

But I step again to this emblazoner of his title-page, (whether it be the same man or no, I leave it in the midst,) and here I find him pronouncing without reprieve those Animadversions to be a slanderous and scurrilous libel. which I, readers, that they are neither slanderous, nor scurrilous, will answer in what place of his book he shall be found with reason, and not ink only, in his mouth. Nor can it be a libel more than his own, which is both nameless and full of slanders; and if in this that it freely speaks of things amiss in religion, but established by act of state, I see not how Wickliffe* and Luther, with all the first martyrs and reformers, course, with this extraordinary dedication, still occupies a place in his works. Though not printed till the year 1642, it was " preached at Paul's Cross on Good Friday, April 14, 1609." The dedication is conceived in the following words: To the only honour and glory of God, my dear and blessed Saviour, (which hath done and suffered all these things for my soul,) his weak and unworthy servant humbly desires to consecrate himself and his poor labours: beseeching him to accept and bless them to the public good, and to the praise of his own glorious name.' -ED.

* Wickliffe was regarded by Milton with particular veneration. He speaks of him in his various writings again and again, and always as the Prince of Reformers. In his first controversial work,-" Reformation in England," he describes Wickliffe's preaching as the flame "at which all the succeeding reformers more effectually lighted their tapers." Again, in