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work of Prelatical Episcopacy. "In this work," says Toland, "he proves against the famous USHER, (for he would not readily engage a meaner adversary,) that Diocesan Episcopacy, or a superior order to the common ministry, cannot be deduced from the Apostolical times, by the force of such testimonies as are alleged to that purpose. Now, Usher's chief talents lying in much reading, and being a great editor, and admirer of old writings, MILTON shows the insufficiency, inconveniency, and impiety of this method, to establish any part of Christianity; and blames those persons, who cannot think any doubt resolved, or any doctrine confirmed, unless they run to that indigested heap and fry of authors, which they call antiquity." “Whatsoever either time," he says, "or

the heedless hand of blind chance has drawn down to this present, in her huge drag-net, whether fish or seaweed, shells or shrubs, unpicked, unchosen-these are the fathers." And so he chides the good bishop USHER, "for divulging useless treatises, stuffed with the specious names of IGNATIUS and POLYCARPUS, with fragments of old martyrologies and legends, to distract and stagger the multitude of credulous readers."

His next performance on the same subject, and chiefly directed against Usher's "Origin of Episcopacy," was entitled, "The reason of Church-government urged against Prelacy, in two books." "The eloquence is masculine," says Toland, "the method is natural, and the sentiments are free."

Another eminent Bishop, Dr. Joseph Hall, of Norwich, having written against Smectymnuus, MILTON published “Animadversions" on his book. In a very unceremonious manner, he thus attacks his respectable opponent: "We know where the shoe wrings you; you fret, and are galled at the quick; and oh ! what a death to the prelates

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to be thus unvizarded; to have your periwigs plucked off, that cover your baldness; your inside nakedness thrown open to public view. The Romans had a time every year, when their slaves might speak their minds; 'twere hard if the free-born people of England, with whom the voice of truth, for these many years, even against the proverb, hath not been heard but in corners, after all your monkish prohibitions, and expurgatorious indexes your gags, and sniffles, your proud. Imprimaturs, not to be obtained but with the shallow services, but not shallow hand of some mercenary, narrow-souled, and illiterate chaplain; when liberty of speaking, than which nothing is more sweet to man, was girded and straight-laced, aimost to a broken-winded Tizzick; if now, at a good time, our time of Parliament, the very Jubilee and resurrection of the state,-if now the corrected, the aggrieved, and long persecuted truth could not be suffered [to] speak; and though she burst out with some efficacy of words, could not be excused, after such an injurious strangle of silence, nor void the censure of libelling, 'twere hard, 'twere something pinching, in a kingdom of free spirits."

The "Remonstrant” had said, “If in time you shall see wooden chalices and wooden priests, thank yourselves." MILTON answers, "It had been happy for this land, if your priests had been but only wooden: all England knows they have been to this island not wood, but wormwood, that have infected the third part of our waters, like the apostate starrre in the revelation, that many souls have died of their bitternesse ; and if you mean by wooden, illiterate or contemptible, there was no want of that sort among you, and their number increasing daily, as their laziness, their tavern-hunting, their neglect of all sound

fiterature, and their liking of doltish and monastical schoolmen daily increast."

To the reasons which are alleged by Episcopalians, for the liturgy being founded upon the acts of councils; and in order to give his opinion of free, or extempore prayer, he thus expresses himself:-" Let the grave conncils put their books upon their shelves again, and string them hard, lest their various and jangling opinions put their leaves into a flutter. I do not intend, this hot season, to lead you a course through the wide and dusty champain of the councils; but I shall take counsel of that which counselled them-reason! And though I know there is an obsolete reprehension now at your tongue's end, yet I shall be bold to say, that reason is the gift of God in one man as well as a thousand. By that which we have tasted already of their cisterns, we may find that reason was the only thing, and not any divine command, that moved them to enjoin the set forms of a liturgy. First, lest any thing in general might be missed in their public prayers, through ignorance or want of care, contrary to the faith;—and next, lest the Arians and Pelagians, in particular, should infect the people by their hymns and forms of prayer. But, by the good leave of these ancient fathers, this was no solid prevention of spreading heresy, to debar the ministers of God of their noblest talentprayer in their congregations; unless they had forbid the use of all sermons and lectures too, but such as was ready made to their hands, like our homilies: or else, he that was heretically disposed, had as fair an opportunity of infecting in his discourse as in his prayer or hymn. As insufficiently, and to say truth, as imprudently did they provide, by their contrived liturgies, lest any thing should be prayed through ignorance or want of care in the ministers; for if they were careless and ignorant in their

prayers, certainly they would be more careless in watch. ing over their flock; and what prescription could reach to bound them in both these? What if reason now illus. trated by the word of God, shall be able to produce a better preventive than these councils have left us against heresy, ignorance, or want of care in the ministry, to wit, that such wisdom and diligence be used in the education of those that would be ministers, and such a spirit and serious examination to be undergone before their admission, as St. Paul to Timothy sets down at large; and then they need not carry such an unworthy suspicion over the preachers of God's word, as to tutor their unsoundness with the a, b, c, of a liturgy, or to diet their ignorance and want of care with the limited draught of a matin and evening-song drink."

He gives another hard hit at the contents of the liturgy: "To contend that it is fantastical, if not senseless, in some places, were a copious argument, especially in the responses. For such alternatives as are there used, must be by several persons; but the minister and the people cannot so sever their interests as to sustain several persons, he being the only mouth of the whole body which he represents. And if the people pray, he being silent, or they ask one thing, and he another, it either changes the property, making the priest the people, and the people the priest by turns, or else makes two persons representative where there should be but one; which, if there were nothing else, must be a strange quaintness in ordinary prayer. It has, indeed, been pretended to be more ancient than the mass, but so little proved, that whereas other corrupt liturgies have had such a seeming antiquity that their publishers have ventured to ascribe them either to ST. PETER, ST. JAMES, ST. MARK, or at least to CHRYSOSTOME Or BASIL, ours has never been able to find

either age or author allowable, on whom to father those things which therein is least offensive, except the two creeds."

Considering that Constantine corrupted religion, he says:-"Of his Arianism we heard; and for the rest, a pretty scantling of his knowledge may be taken, by hist deferring to be baptized so many years, a thing not unusual, and repugnant to the tenor of Scripture, Philip knowing nothing that should hinder the Eunuch to be baptized [immediately] after the profession of his belief." He quotes Dante, in his 19th Canto of Inferna, to prove that even men professing the Roman faith, had charged Constantine with having marred every thing in the church :

"Ah! Constantine, of how much ill the cause,

Not thy conversion, but those rich domains,

That the first wealthy Pope secured of thee."—p. 27.

He published another work in this year, entitled "Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty;" which he commences by proving, that "the Church Government is prescribed in the Gospel, and that to say otherwise is unsound." He takes up the hackneyed argument of churchmen, who contend that church discipline is not platformed in the Bible, but is left to the discretion of men." To the first of these statements he answers: "If we could imagine that he [Christ] left it at random, without his providence and gracious ordering, who is he so arrogant, so presumptuous, that durst dispose and guide the living ark of the Holy Ghost, though he should find it wandering in the fields of Bethshemish, without the constant warrant of some high calling? But no profane insolence can parallel that which our prelates dare avouch, to drive outrageously, and shelter the holy ark of the

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