error was that they attended more to the near tradition of what they heard the apostles sometimes did, than to what they had left written, not considering that many things which they did were by the apostles themselves professed to be done only for the present, and of mere indulgence to some scrupulous converts of the circumcision; but what they writ was of firm decree to all future ages.'

In contrast with Milton's opinion of the Apostolical Fathers, we may cite the opinion of Archbishop Wake, of Dr. Waterland, and of the present Bishop of Lincoln, Dr. Wordsworth.

1. They were contemporary with the Apostles, and instructed by them. They were men not only of a perfect piety, but of great courage and constancy. Their writings were approved by the Church in those days, which could not be mistaken in its approbation of them.'

2. The ancient Fathers are useful for fixing the sense of Scripture in controverted texts. Those that lived in or near the Apostolical times might retain in memory what the Apostles themselves, or their immediate successors, said upon such and such points. The charismata, the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit, were then frequent, and visibly rested in and upon the Church, and there only. The Fathers of the third and fourth centuries had the advantage of many

written accounts of the doctrine of the former ages, which have since been lost.'

3. The Ancient Interpreters are never flippant and familiar, they are never self-conceited and vainglorious-they are never scornful and profane. They handle Scripture with reverence; their tone is high and holy, produced by careful study of Scripture, with humble prayer for light to the Divine Author of Scripture. They reflect some of that light, and raise and spiritualize the thoughts of the reader, and do not depress them into the lower and more obscure regions of clouds, which hang over the minds of those who approach Scripture with presumption and irreverence, and which disable them from seeing its light, and, much more, from displaying it to others.'

"I am not of opinion to think the Church a vine in this respect, because, as they take it, she cannot subsist without clasping about the elm of worldly strength and felicity, as if the heavenly city could not support itself without the props and buttresses of secular authority.

"The very essence of truth is plainness and brightness; the darkness and crookedness is our own. The wisdom of God created understanding, fit and proportionable to truth, the object and end of it, as the eye to the thing visible.

"2. Libertines.-It will not be requisite to answer

these men, but only to discover them; for reason they have none, but lust and licentiousness, and therefore answer can have none. It is not any discipline they could live under-it is the corruption and remission of discipline that they seek. It is only the merry friar in Chaucer can disple (disciple) them.

"Full sweetly heard he confession,

And pleasant was his absolution,

He was an easy man to give penance."

And so I leave them, and refer the political discourse of episcopacy to a second book."

THE SECOND BOOK.

govern well is to train up a nation in true. wisdom and virtue, and that which springs from thence, magnanimity, and that which is our beginning, regeneration, and happiest end, likeness to God, which in one word we call godliness; this is the true flourishing of a land-other things follow as the shadow does the substance. A commonwealth ought to be but as one huge Christian personage, one mighty growth and stature of an honest man, as big and compact in virtue as in body; for look what the grounds and causes are of single happiness to one man, the same ye shall find them to a whole state."

On the quotation which follows from Chaucer's Ploughman, we may observe that Tyrwhitt does not admit that tale into his edition. He says, 'I cannot understand that there is the least ground of evidence, either external or internal, for believing it to be a work of Chaucer's.' It has not the least resemblance to Chaucer's manner either of writing or thinking, in his other works. It is not at all probable that a Roman Catholic would be likely to rail and inveigh against the whole government of the Church in the style of this Ploughman's Tale. Nevertheless, we here see

Milton pressing him into the service of Protestantism.

We must not omit the Fable of the Wen, an imitation of the well-known Fable of the Stomach and the Members, with which "pretty tale" Menenius Agrippa pacified the insurrection of the Roman plebeians against the patricians, and obtained the appointment of the tribunes of the people, as beautifully related in Shakespeare's Coriolanus, act i., scene i.; also in Camden's Remains.

"Upon a time the body summoned all the members to meet in the guild, for the common good: the head by right takes the first seat, and next to it a huge and monstrous wen, little less than the head itself, growing to it by a narrower excrescency. The members, amazed, began to ask one another what he was that took place next their chief? None could resolve. Whereat the wen, though unwieldly, with much ado gets up, and bespeaks the assembly to this purpose: "That as in place he was second to the head, so by due of merit, that he was to it an ornament, and strength, and of special near relation; and that if the head should fail, none were fitter than himself to step into his place: therefore he thought it for the honour of the body that such dignities and rich endowments should be decreed him, as did adorn and set out the noblest members." To this was answered, that it should be consulted.

Then was a wise and