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of Popery, he says, "Will be to read duly and diligently the Holy Scriptures, which, as St. Paul saith to Timothy, From a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus;' and to the church at Colosse, (chap. iii. 16,) 'Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom,' &c." He adds, "The papal anti-christian Church permits not the laity to read the BIBLE in her own tongue: our Protestant Church, on the contrary, hath proposed it to all men, and to this end translated it into English, with profitable notes to what is met with obscure: though what is most necessary to be known is still plainest, that all sorts and degrees of men, not understanding it in the original, may read it in their mother tongue."

"Another means," he says, "to abate Popery, arises from the constant reading of Scripture, wherein believers who agree in the main, are every where exhorted to mutual forbearance and charity towards one another, though dissenting in some opinions. It is written that the coat of our Saviour was without seam; whence some would infer, that there should be no division in the church of Christ. It should be so indeed; yet seams in the same cloth neither hurt the garment, nor misbecome it; and not only seams but schisms will be, while men are fallible. But if

they dissent in matters not essential to belief, while the common adversary is in the field, and shall stand jarring and pelting at one another, they will be soon routed and subdued."

"It is human frailty to err," says he, "and no man is infallible here on earth. But so long as the Lutherans, Calvinists, Anabaptists, Socinians, and Arminians, profess to set the Word of God only before them as the rule of their faith and obedience; and use all diligence and sincerity of heart, by reading, by learning, by study, by prayer for illumination of the Holy Spirit, to understand this rule and obey it, they have don whatever man can do. God will assuredly pardon them, as he did the friends of Job, good and pious men, tho' much mistaken (as there it appears) in som points of doctrin. But som will say, with Christians it is otherwise, whom God has promis'd by his Spirit to teach all things. True, all things absolutely necessary to salvation: but the hottest disputes among Protestants, calmly and charitably examin'd, will be found less than such. The Lutheran holds Consubstantiation; an error indeed, but not mortal. The Calvinist is tax'd with Predestination, and to make God the author of sin; not with any dishonorable thoughts of God, but, it may be, overzealously asserting his absolute power, not without plea from Scripture. The Anabaptist is accus'd

of denying Infants their right to Baptism; they say again, that they deny nothing but what the Scripture denys them. The Arian and Socinian are charg'd to dispute against the Trinity; yet they affirm to believe the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, according to Scripture and the Apostolic Creed. As for the terms of Trinity, Triunity, Coessentiality, Tripersonality, and the like, they reject them as scholastic notions, not to be found in Scripture, which, by a general Protestant maxim, is plain and perspicuous abundantly to explain its own meaning in the properest words belonging to so high a matter, and so necessary to be known; a mystery indeed in their sophistic subtilties, but in Scripture a plain doctrin. The Arminian, lastly, is condemn'd for setting up Free Will against Free Grace; but that imputation he disclaims in all his writings, and grounds himself largely upon Scripture only. It cannot be deny'd that the authors or late revivers of all these sects or opinions, were learned, worthy, zealous, and religious men, as appears by their lives written, and the fame of their many eminent and learned followers, perfect and powerful in the Scriptures, holy and unblamable in their actions: and it cannot be imagin'd that God would desert such painful and zealous labourers in his Church, and ofttimes great sufferers for their conscience, to damnable errors and a reprobat sense,

who had so often implor'd the assistance of his Spirit; but rather, having made no man infallible, that he has pardon'd their errors, and accepts their pious endeavors, sincerely searching all things according to the rule of Scripture, with such guidance and direction as they can obtain of God by prayer. What Protestant then, who himself maintains the same principles, and disavows all implicit faith, would persecute, and not rather tolerat such men as these, unless he means to abjure the principles of his own religion? If it be ask'd, how far they should be tolerated? I answer, doubtless equally, as being all Protestants; that is, on all occasions to be permitted to give an account of their faith, either by arguing, preaching in their several assemblies, by public writing, and the freedom of printing."

I quote Toland's statement as regards MILTON's sentiments in relation to whether Papists should be also tolerated: "In the last place, MILTON Shews that Popery (not as it is a religion, but a tyrannical faction, oppressing all others) is INTOLERABLE; and that the best method of keeping it from ever increasing in this nation, is by the toleration of all sorts of Protestants, or any others, whose principles do not necessarily lead them to sedition and vice."

After having urged, as another mean to prevent the growth of Popery, the necessity of Pro

testants "amending their lives," and reforming their conduct, he thus concludes: "Let us therefore, using this last mean, last here spoken of, but first to be done, amend our lives with all speed; least, through impenitency, we run into that stupidly, which we now seek by all means warily to avoid, THE WORST OF SUPERSTITIONS, and the HEAVIEST OF ALL GOD'S JUDGMENTS, POPERY!"

It is probable that it was this his last work, that, on account of its Protestant zeal, called forth the spleen of the Rev. Dr. Parker, afterwards the archbishop of James II., who had virulently attacked MILTON in 1673. The celebrated ANDREW MARVEL, who had been associated with MILTON in 1657, as secretary to the Lord Protector, drew his pen in defence of his aged and calumniated friend, and in his "Rehearsal Transposed," addressed to Parker, he thus writes: "You do three times, at least, in your Reproof, and in your Transposer Rehearsed, well nigh half the book through, run upon an author, J. M. which does not a little offend me. For why should any other man's reputation suffer in a contest between you and me? But it is because you resolved to suspect that he had a hand in my former book, [the first part of the Rehearsal, published in 1672,] wherein, whether you deceive yourself or no, you deceive others extreamly.

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