NOTE. BELIEVING, as the Editor does, in the Divine right of Bishops-that Episcopacy is a Divine institution, "platformed in the Bible," and deducible from Apostolical times, he would gladly ignore, as much as possible in the following Extracts, Milton's hatred of Prelacy, which is easily accounted for. His sledge-hammer blows fall harmlessly, and beside the mark, on those well versed in History, and the original Greek of the New Testament. His arguments are inconclusive and oftentimes suicidal, and directed against individuals of the Order, such as Bishop Mountain and Archbishop Laud, rather than against the Order itself. Bishops are not infallible, but Episcopacy is not to be abandoned because we do not approve of some particular act of some individual Bishop. Those of his day had but lately shaken off that "worst of superstitions, and the heaviest of all God's judgments-Popery ;" and there is an evident confusion in Milton's mind of Papistical and Reformed Bishops. He was his own Bishop and Pope, and went wrong because he considered his own opinion orthodox and everybody else's heterodox. Ipse dixit-nay, ipsissimus-not only the avròs eon of the Pythagorean school, but autóтaTOS. I John Milton have said it. The Reader is once for all apprised that any passage savouring of disrespect and dislike to Episcopacy has been inserted for special reasons, since to eliminate such altogether from our Selections would be like acting Hamlet' with the part of Hamlet left out. He is further requested to observe that the quotations from Milton are marked by two inverted commas, from all other authors by one. Footnotes are abandoned, as it is thought that such information as is usually given in them might with advantage be incorporated in the text. The profits of the First Edition will be devoted to the Restoration of Much Cowarne Parish Church. |