We have only glanced at the contents of this volume. Of itself it is more than sufficient to enable us to form a correct estimate of the literary, political, and religious character of John Milton. Taken in connexion with his poetical works, it will be impossible to produce an author entitled to superior veneration and renown. Equally resplendent in the annals of liberty and of song, the name of the author of these writings is a sufficient guarantee for their interest to the scholar, their value to the politician, and their utility to every patriotic Christian. They are now cast into a proper shape for circulation, and wherever carried, they will administer not less to the delight and profit, than to the intellectual and moral wants and necessities, of the age. In them will be found nothing dangerous or anarchical-dishonourable or polluting. The monarch will not here find any thing to derogate from his just authority. His nobles will here learn true magnanimity—his people be built up in love to their country and to himself, and in "willing homage to the prerogative of the Eternal Throne." The man of taste will be refreshed--the protestant will rejoice in the paramount allegiance of the poet to the great principles of the Reformation. The least will find that he may be useful—the greatest, that he may be worthless ;-the most ignorant will here find an "eye-brightening electuary of knowledge and foresight"-the most learned, that his superior condescended to be most plain. These are the authorized works of a man, who never quailed before a tyrant, or bowed before a mob; but, after exerting the greatest abilities in the greatest of causes, in fortitude, and meekness, and patience possessed his spirit, and became, in adversity and prosperity, an exemplar for a nation of "heroes, of sages, and of worthies." England is invested with supremacy in literature. She is not indebted for her imperial precedency to many of her sons. Great as is the number of her gigantic minds, two men she has reared and ripened, Milton and Shakspeare, whose achievements alone have raised her to a towering pre-eminence among the nations. Neither the ancients nor the moderns can match these Englishmen. Make the selection from any age, from the bright eras of the past, from the Greek or Roman constellations, to the later luminaries, and theirs will be found to be the brightest names that old Time wears in his gorgeous belt.. To them an Englishman points, and by them settles the supremacy of his country. Without them we might claim equality with other kingdoms; with them we are entitled to superiority. When you think of England, you think of Shakspeare-you think of Milton-they are England. Other nations have heroes, and philosophers, and critics, and scholars, and divines, equal to our own, but they have not Shakspeare and Milton :-we have, and surpass them. Nature gave them to England, and no reverse of fortune can rob us of them. Their works are landmarks, pillars of truth, on these the high places of the earth—and they will be identified with our soil, when our institutions may have been swept from it, and when our political supremacy may have passed away. But, with their works in our hands, and with our Bible, read, and believed, and revered, and upheld, in cottage and in palace, we need not fear the loss of our heritage-the luxury that enfeebles-the vice that enslaves-the wealth that corrupts the anarchy that overwhelms :-intelligence and piety, wisdom, and religion, and power, will be cherished and perpetuated for generations ;-and with those who love these things, and bear the ark of British freedom, we leave, for their guidance and delight, this Book. FOUR DE LYON 1892 VILLE The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce restored to the good of both Sexes, from the Bondage of Canon Law, and other Mistakes, to the true Meaning of Scripture in the Law and Gospel compared, &c. The Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce: written to Ed- ward the Sixth, in his second Book of the Kingdom of Christ, &c. . 159 TETRACHORDON: Expositions upon the four chief Places in Scripture which treat of Marriage, or Nullities in Marriage, &c. COLASTERION: A Reply to a nameless Answer against the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce: wherein the trivial Author of that An- swer is discovered, the Licenser conferred with, and the Opinion, A Declaration, or Letters Patents for the Election of John the Third, King of Poland, elected on the 22nd of May, Anno Dom. 1674, con- taining the Reasons of this Election, the great Virtues and Merits of the said serene Elect, his eminent Services in War, especially in his last great Victory against the Turks and Tartars; whereof many Letters of State to most of the Sovereign Princes and Republics of 583 587 Letters written in the Name of the Parliament . ibid. 175 220 The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates; proving, that it is lawful, and hath been held so through all Ages, for any, who have the Power, to call to account a Tyrant, or wicked King, and, after due Convic- tion, to depose, and put him to Death, if the ordinary Magistrate have neglected, or denied to do it, &c. . Observations on the Articles of Peace between James Earl of Or- mond, for King Charles the First, on the one hand, and the Irish Rebels and Papists on the other hand: and on a Letter sent by Ormond to Colonel Jones, Governor of Dublin: and a Representa- tion of the Scots Presbytery at Belfast in Ireland. To which the said Articles, Letter, with Colonel Jones's Answer to it, and Repre- EIKONOCLASTES; in answer to a Book, entitled, Eikon Basilike, the A DEFENCE of the People of England, in answer to Salmasius's De- Defensio Secunda pro Populo Anglicano contra infamem Libellum anonymum cui titulus," Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Cœlum, adver- 245 Authoris pro se Defensio contra Alexandrum Morum Ecclesiasten, 733 755 763 777 Literæ Oliverii Protectoris nomine scriptæ 792 272 AMIDST those deep and retired thoughts, which, with another way into the new-vomited paganism of senevery man christianly instructed, ought to be most fre- sual idolatry, attributing purity or impurity to things quent of God, and of his miraculous ways and works indifferent, that they might bring the inward acts of amongst men, and of our religion and works, to be the spirit to the outward and customary eye-service performed to him; after the story of our Saviour Christ, of the body, as if they could make God earthly and suffering to the lowest bent of weakness in the flesh, fleshly, because they could not make themselves heaand presently triumphing to the highest pitch of glory venly and spiritual; they began to draw down all the in the spirit, which drew up his body also; till we in divine intercourse betwixt God and the soul, yea, the both be united to him in the revelation of his kingdom, very shape of God himself, into an exterior and bodily I do not know of any thing more worthy to take up form, urgently pretending a necessity and obligement the whole passion of pity on the one side, and joy on of joining the body in a formal reverence, and worship the other, than to consider first the foul and sudden circumscribed; they hallowed it, they fumed it, they corruption, and then, after many a tedious age, the sprinkled it, they bedecked it, not in robes of pure inlong deferred, but much more wonderful and happy nocency, but of pure linen, with other deformed and reformation of the church in these latter days. Sad it fantastic dresses, in palls and mitres, gold, and gewis to think how that doctrine of the gospel, planted by gaws fetched from Aaron's old wardrobe, or the flamins teachers divinely inspired, and by them winnowed and vestry: then was the priest set to con his motions and sifted from the chaff of overdated ceremonies, and re- his postures, his liturgies and his lurries, till the soul fined to such a spiritual height and temper of purity, by this means of overbodying herself, given up justly and knowledge of the Creator, that the body, with all to fleshly delights, bated her wing apace downward: the circumstances of time and place, were purified by and finding the ease she had from her visible and senthe affections of the regenerate soul, and nothing left suous colleague the body, in performance of religious impure but sin; faith needing not the weak and fal- duties, her pinions now broken, and flagging, shifted lible office of the senses, to be either the ushers or in-off from herself the labour of high soaring any more, terpreters of heavenly mysteries, save where our Lord forgot her heavenly flight, and left the dull and droilhimself in his sacraments ordained; that such a doc-ing carcase to plod on in the old road, and drudging trine should, through the grossness and blindness of her professors, and the fraud of deceivable traditions, drag so downwards, as to backslide into the Jewish beggary of old cast rudiments, and stumble forward 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 skin, and there harden into a crust of formality. Hence men came to scan the Scriptures by the letter, and in the covenant of our redemption, magnified 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 terrour 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 cloaking their servile crouching to all religious presentments, sometimes lawful, sometimes idolatrous, under the name of humility, and terming the piebald frippery and ostentation of ceremonies, decency. Then was baptism, changed into a kind of exorcism and water, sanctified by Christ's institute, thought little enough to wash off the original spot, without the scratch or cross impression of a priest's forefinger: and that feast of free grace and adoption to which Christ invited his disciples to sit as brethren, and coheirs of the happy covenant, which at that table was to be sealed to them, even that feast of love and heavenlyadmitted fellowship, the seal of filial grace, became the subject of horror, and glouting adoration, pageanted about like a dreadful idol; which sometimes deceives well-meaning men, and beguiles them of their reward, by their voluntary humility; which indeed is fleshly pride, preferring a foolish sacrifice, and the rudiments of the world, as Saint Paul to the Colossians explaineth, before a savoury obedience to Christ's example. Such was Peter's unseasonable humility, as then his knowledge was small, when Christ came to wash his feet; who at an impertinent time would needs strain courtesy with his master, and falling troublesomely upon the lowly, all-wise, and unexaminable intention of Christ, in what he went with resolution to do, so provoked by his interruption the meek Lord, that he threatened to exclude him from his heavenly portion, unless he could be content to be less arrogant and stiffnecked in his humility. 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 odour of the returning gospel imbathe his soul with the fragrancy of heaven. Then was the sacred Bible sought out of the dusty corners where 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 banner of salvation; the martyrs, with the unresistible might of weakness, shaking the powers of darkness, and scorning the fiery rage of the old red dragon. The pleasing pursuit of these thoughts hath ofttimes led me into a serious question and debatement with myself, how it should come to pass that England (having had this grace and honour from God, to be the first that should set up a standard for the recovery of lost truth, and blow the first evangelic trumpet to the nations, holding up, as from a hill, the new lamp of saving light to all christendom) should now be last, and most unsettled in the enjoyment of that peace, whereof she taught the way to others; although indeed our Wickliffe's preaching, at which all the succeeding reformers more effectually lighted their tapers, was to his countrymen but a short blaze, soon damped and stifled by the pope and prelates for six or seven kings' reigns; yet methinks the precedency which God gave this island, to be first restorer of buried truth, should have been followed with more happy success, and sooner attained perfection; in which as yet we are amongst the last : for, albeit in purity of doctrine we agree with our brethren; yet in discipline, which is the execution and applying of doctrine home, and laying the salve to the very orifice of the wound, yea, tenting and searching to the core, without which pulpit preaching is but shooting at rovers; in this we are no better than a schism from all the reformation, and a sore scandal to them: for while we hold ordination to belong only to bishops, as our prelates do, we must of necessity hold also their ministers to be no ministers, and shortly after their church to be no church. Not to speak of those senseless ceremonies which we only retain, as a dangerous earnest of sliding back to Rome, and serving merely, either as a mist to cover nakedness where true grace is extinguished, or as an interlude to set out the pomp of prelatism. Certainly it would be worth the while therefore, and the pains, to inquire more particularly, what, and how many the chief causes have been, that have still hindered our uniform consent to the rest of the churches abroad, at this time especially when the kingdom is in a good propensity thereto, and all men in prayers, in hopes, or in disputes, either for or against it. Yet I will not insist on that which may seem to be the cause on God's part; as his judgment on our sins, the trial of his own, the unmasking of hypocrites: nor shall I stay to speak of the continual eagerness and extreme diligence of the pope and papists to stop the furtherance of reformation, which know they have no hold or hope of England their lost darling, longer than the government of bishops bolsters them out; and therefore plot all they can to uphold them, as may be seen by the book of Santa Clara, the popish priest, in defence of bishops, which came out piping hot much | be followers of this world; for when the protector's about the time that one of our own prelates, out of an brother, Lord Sudley, the admiral, through private ominous fear, had writ on the same argument; as if malice and malengine was to lose his life, no man they had joined their forces, like good confederates, to could be found fitter than bishop Latimer (like another support one falling Babel. Dr. Shaw) to divulge in his sermon the forged accusations laid to his charge, thereby to defame him with the people, who else it was thought would take ill the innocent man's death, unless the reverend bishop could warrant them there was no foul play. What could be more impious than to debar the children of the king from their right to the crown? To comply with the ambitious usurpation of a traitor, and to make void the last will of Henry VIII, to which the breakers had sworn observance? Yet bishop Cranmer, one of the executors, and the other bishops, none refusing, (lest they should resist the duke of Northumberland,) could find in their consciences to set their hands to the disenabling and defeating not only of Princess Mary the papist, but of Elizabeth the protestant, and (by the bishops' judgment) the lawful issue of King Henry, But I shall chiefly endeavour to declare those causes that hinder the forwarding of true discipline, which are among ourselves. Orderly proceeding will divide our inquiry into our forefathers' days, and into our times. Henry VIII was the first that rent this kingdom from the pope's subjection totally; but his quarrel being more about supremacy, than other faultiness in religion that he regarded, it is no marvel if he stuck where he did. The next default was in the bishops, who though they had renounced the pope, they still hugged the popedom, and shared the authority among themselves, by their six bloody articles, persecuting the protestants no slacker than the pope would have done. And doubtless, whenever the pope shall fall, if his ruin be not like the sudden downcome of a tower, the bishops, when they see him tottering, will leave him, and fall to scrambling, catch who may, he a patriarchdom, and another what comes next hand; as the French cardinal of late and the see of Canterbury hath plainly affected. In Edward the Sixth's days, why a complete reformation was not effected, to any considerate man may appear. First, he no sooner entered into his kingdom, but into a war with Scotland; from whence the protector returning with victory, had but newly put his hand to repeal the six articles, and throw the images out of churches, but rebellions on all sides, stirred up by obdurate papists, and other tumults, with a plain war in Norfolk, holding tack against two of the king's generals, made them of force content themselves with what they had already done. Hereupon followed ambitious contentions among the peers, which ceased not but with the protector's death, who was the most zealous in this point: and then Northumberland was he that could do most in England, who little minding | religion, (as his apostasy well showed at his death,) bent all his wit how to bring the right of the crown into his own line. And for the bishops, they were so far from any such worthy attempts, as that they suffered themselves to be the common stales, to countenance with their prostituted gravities every politic fetch that was then on foot, as oft as the potent statists pleased to employ them. Never do we read that they made use of their authority and high place of access, to bring the jarring nobility to christian peace, or to withstand their disloyal projects: but if a toleration for mass were to be begged of the king for his sister Mary, lest Charles the Fifth should be angry; who but the grave prelates, Cranmer and Ridley, must be sent to extort it from the young king? But out of the mouth of that godly and royal child, Christ himself returned such an awful repulse to those halting and timeserving prelates, that after much bold importunity, they went their way not without shame and tears. Nor was this the first time that they discovered to • It appears from this and other passages, that the author in his younger years was orthodox, as it is called: but he afterwards altered his sentiB Who then can think (though these prelates had sought a further reformation) that the least wry face of a politician would not have hushed them? But it will be said, these men were martyrs: what then? though every true Christian will be a martyr when he is called to it, not presently does it follow, that every one suffering for religion is, without exception. Saint Paul writes, that " a man may give his body to be burnt, (meaning for religion,) and yet not have charity:" he is not therefore above all possibility of erring, because he burns for some points of truth. Witness the* Arians and Pelagians, which were slain by the heathen for Christ's sake, yet we take both these for no true friends of Christ. If the martyrs (saith Cyprian in his 30th epistle) decree one thing, and the gospel another, either the martyrs must lose their crown by not observing the gospel for which they are martyrs, or the majesty of the gospel must be broken and lie flat, if it can be overtopped by the novelty of any other decree. And here withal I invoke the Immortal Deity, revealer and judge of secrets, that wherever I have in this book plainly and roundly (though worthily and truly) laid open the faults and blemishes of fathers, martyrs, or christian emperors, or have otherwise inveighed against errour and superstition with vehement expressions; I have done it neither out of malice, nor list to speak evil, nor any vain glory, but of mere necessity to vindicate the spotless truth from an ignominious bondage, whose native worth is now become of such a low esteem, that she is like to find small credit with us for what she can say, unless she can bring a ticket from Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley; or prove herself a retainer to Constantine, and wear his badge. More tolerable it were for the church of God, that all these names were utterly abolished like the brazen serpent, than that men's fond opinion should thus idolize them, and the heavenly truth be thus captivated. ments as is plain from his tract on "True Religion, Heresy, Schism, and Toleration," which was the last work he published. |