that the only alternative for the nation was Cromwell or confusion-the Reign of a Protector or a Reign of Terror. Had Cromwell been a coward, or a man absorbed in seeking his own interests, he would have shrunk from the uneasy and perilous dignity which was forced upon him. He would have allowed the nation to embroil itself in a new strife; he would have suffered the energies of the people to expend themselves in the tumult of parties; and he would have kept himself at ease until an opportunity was afforded him either to escape from the desolated realm, or to tread to a secure and easy throne over the necks of a prostrate and panting nation. It was precisely because Cromwell was neither a coward nor a self-seeker that he acted as he did. He saw his country in danger. He knew he could save his country, though at the expense of ease, and the risk of safety to himself. And, therefore, like a true and bold patriot as he was, he threw himself into the breach, and by his single arm sustained the cause, and secured the deliverance of his country. This is the defence which in the judgment of all well-informed and candid men in the present day suffices for Cromwell. We claim it as covering Milton no less. The necessity which constrained the superior virtually to ascend the throne, made it equally imperative on the inferior not to desert his bureau.

Moreover, it should ever be borne in mind in judging of Milton's conduct in this instance, that the republic of his aspirations was not a democracy. He had little sympathy with and no confidence in the unlettered crowd-what he calls the blockish vulgar.' He could talk of addressing them as—

The 'people' in his vocabulary meant not the 'rude multitude,' but only properly qualified persons.'t In his model of a Free Commonwealth, he expressly excludes the masses from any share in the conduct of affairs. In feeling and in principle he was essentially an aristocrat; meaning by that, not one who would have had the country ruled by a hereditary nobility, but one who would have had all power in the hands of the best men. His scheme embraced the election, by a select portion of the community, of a chamber which he hoped would comprise all the ablest men in the country, and which, once elected, was

* Sonnet on Tetrachordon.

† Ready way to establish a Free Commonwealth, passim.

to be perpetual. His maxim was that 'the ground and basis ' of every just and free government is a general council of ablest 'men; in which must the sovereignty, not transferred, but 'delegated only, and as it were deposited, reside."* He held also that when the people would not elect such a council, it was the duty of any man who had the power to benefit his country, by declaring this to be his mind, and calling in the aid of the army to assist in the prosecution thereof. With such views, we do not see how he could have felt any very great scruple, under any circumstances, in continuing to adhere to the service of Cromwell after he became Protector. There can be no doubt that he regarded Oliver as the best man of his age. In his sonnet to the Protector, he expressly styles him, 'Cromwell, our chief of men;' and in the apostrophe addressed to him in the 'Defensio Secunda,' he tells him, speaking of his elevation as Protector, 'such power is thy due, thou liberator of thy country, author of her freedom, her guardian also and conservator.' Why, then, should not he who desired to see England governed by her best men, consent to the supremacy of one whose superiority to all others was in his view unquestionable-of one whose services to his country threw those of all others into the shade-of one who had alone showed himself competent to guide the vessel of the state through the storms and breakers amidst which it had been cast?

In ecclesiastical matters, Milton was wholly at one with the predominant party in the Commonwealth. He was the strenuous advocate of liberty of conscience. He desired to see all sects upon a footing of perfect equality, so far as relation to the civil power was concerned. He opposed the endowment of religion by the state as unscriptural and impolitic; as the fruitful source of corruption to the church, and of disquiet and misrule to the community. He claimed equal liberty of profession and of worship for all Christians, with the one exception of the Romanists, whom he regarded as politically unsafe, as contemners of the sole authority in religious matters-the Bible, and as idolators. Of episcopacy, in all its forms, and through all its grades, he had an implacable hatred. His dislike to presbytery was hardly less bitter; he maintained that 'New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large;' and he bestows upon the presbyterian party in his own day names not much more savoury than those which he had always at hand for the bishops. To forms of prayer, and especially to the Liturgy of *Ready way to establish a Free Commonwealth, vol. ii. p. 121. † See Letter to General Monk, vol. ii. p. 108. Comp. First Defence, vol. i.

p. 143.

the Church of England, he had a strong aversion; thinking that by such forms the spirit of true devotion is stinted, that the imposition of them is a tyranny that would have longer hands than those giants who threatened bondage to heaven,** and that the Book of Common Prayer was 'an Englished massbook, composed, for aught we know, by men neither learned nor godly.'t Indeed, to forms of all sorts he had a disinclination, which so grew upon him, that he ended by neglecting every kind of social or apparent worship, and by standing aloof from all religious parties. He is commonly classed among the Independents, and a Baptist minister wrote a book some years ago, professedly on Milton's Life and Times, but really for the purpose of proving him to have been a Baptist. But with the Independents as a religious body, whether Baptist or Pædobaptist, he was never identified. In many of his opinions he more approximated the Quakers than any other denomination of Christians.

It would be interesting to know in what light Milton was regarded by the great and good men whose names have come down to us as the religious leaders of that time. One would like to know what Owen thought of him; or Baxter; or Howe; or Goodwin; all of whom must have known him, and been in the habit of meeting him at Whitehall. One can easily believe that with some of these men he had little sympathy; but between such a mind as that of Howe and such a mind as that of Milton, there must have been much that was congenial. But no trace remains of the intercourse of any of these parties with him; no indication of their judgment of him. It would be impossible, we think, to infer from any portion of their or his published writings either that they had read any of Milton's books, or that he had read any of theirs. The distance between him and them is to all appearance as great as if they and he had lived in different ages, and written in different tongues.

It is not easy to account for this. Perhaps Milton, in his fierce dislike of priests, was not disposed to have intercourse with any who sustained, however meekly and holily, the sacred profession. Perhaps his open neglect of forms of worship and the public institutions of religion, led those good men to regard him with suspicion, to shun his society, and to neglect his books. Perhaps they hardly deemed him altogether of sound mind, and thought the less they had to do with him and his

* Eiconoclastes, c. 16. Works, vol. i. p. 431.

† Ibid., p. 433.

John Milton: his Life and Times, Religious and Political Opinions, &c. By Joseph Ivimey. Lond. 1833. 8vo.

crotchets the better. And it may be that Milton was really what of late it has been confidently asserted he was, in heart an Arian; in which case, men such as those we have named would have shrunk from him with horror.

We state this latter suggestion as resting on an assumption which, at the best, is doubtful. The only direct evidence that Milton was imbued with the sentiments of the Arians, is supplied by his long-lost System of Divinity, recently brought to light, and published, with a translation, by the Bishop of Winchester. But this evidence is greatly invalidated by the following circumstances:-1. Whilst in some passages of this work Milton speaks like an Arian, in others he uses language entirely incompatible with the Arian system. 2. There is no evidence to show that this work was the production of Milton's maturer years; so that, for aught that appears, it may contain only the crude conceptions of his earlier years. 3. There is no evidence to show that Milton ever wrote this work as one continuous composition at any time. 4. There is abundant evidence to show that he was in the habit, during the course of his life, of compiling opinions on theology from the writings of foreign divines, whose words he quoted; so that, for aught we can tell, this treatise may be merely a compilation of opinions, many of which are naturally discordant, and which Milton may have cited for various reasons, and not always because he held the views expressed; and 5. The MS. of this work is obviously incomplete, in many places it is interlined, and many slips containing additional matter, are pasted on the margin; so that what it would have become, had Milton prepared it for the press, we cannot say. It seems, therefore, hardly fair to the memory of the poet, to build on such a work any very serious charge against his orthodoxy; more especially as that charge is contradicted by express declarations contained in the works he himself published during his lifetime.* At any rate, we may reasonably doubt whether it was to this he owed his manifest estrangement from the great evangelical sectaries of his day.

But whatever may have been the defects or errors of Milton's theological creed, it is impossible to refuse him the honour due to a life of the sincerest piety and the most dignified virtue. No man ever lived under a more abiding sense of responsibility. No man ever strove more faithfully to use time and talent' as ever in the great Taskmaster's eye. No man so richly endowed was ever less ready to trust in his own powers, or more prompt

*In the Iconoclastes, he speaks of "the infections of Arian and Palagian heresies!' (W. i. 433.) Comp. Par. Lost, iii. 138; Ode on Christ's Nativity; Of Reformation in England, book ii. (Works, voi. ii. p. 417,) &c.

to own his dependence on that eternal and propitial throne, 'where nothing is readier than grace and refuge to the distresses ' of mortal suppliants.' His morality was of the loftiest order. He possessed a self-control which in one susceptible of such vehement emotions was marvellous. No one ever saw him indulging those propensities which overcloud the mind and pollute the heart. No youthful excesses, no revelries or debaucheries of maturer years, treasured up for him a suffering and remorseful old age. From his youth up, he was temperate in all things, as became one who had consecrated himself to a life-struggle against vice, and error, and darkness in all its forms. He had started with the conviction that he who would 'not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable 'things, ought himself to be a true poem; that is, a composition ' and pattern of the best and honourablest things;' and from this he never swerved. His life was indeed a true poem; or it might be compared to an anthem on his own favourite organhigh-toned, solemn, and majestic. We may regret that with all this stately elevation and severe purity of character, there was not mingled more of the sweetness and gentleness that ought to mark the Christian. But perfection was not the privilege of Milton, any more than of other men. It is enough for his eulogy to say, that with a genius such as has never been surpassed, and with attainments which have seldom been equalled, he combined the loftiest devotion, the most inflexible integrity, and the most severe self-command. He stands before us as the type of PURITANISM, in its noblest development, retaining all its stern virtue and passionate devotion, but without its coarseness, its intolerance, or its stoicism.