Wherever there are natures free, ingenuous, magnanimous, either they are prudently concealed or openly profeffed. Some favour in filence, others give their fuffrages in public. Some hasten to receive me with shouts of applause, others, in fine, vanquished by truth, furrender themselves captive. Encompassed by such countless multitudes, it seems to me, that from the columns of Hercules, to the farthest borders of India, that, throughout this vaft expanse, I am bringing back, bringing home to every nation liberty, fo long driven out, fo long an exile; and, as is recorded of Triptolemus of old, that I am importing fruits for the nations from my own city, but of a far nobler kind than those fruits of Ceres. That I am spreading abroad among the cities, the kingdoms, and nations, the restored culture of civility and freedom of life.'

He had been reproached by his adverfaries with his blindness; and his answer to the charge can be read by no one without high admiration of the magnanimity of his mind, and the strength of his piety. To be blind, he fays, is not miserable, but not to be able to bear blindness, that is miferable indeed. He calls God to witness, the fearcher of the inmoft fpirit, and of every thought, that he is unconscious of any thing, (though he has visited all the receffes of his heart) of any crime, the heinousness of which could have justly called down this calamity upon him above others. That he has written nothing which he was not perfuaded at the time, and is still perfuaded, was right and true and pleafing to God. And this, without being moved by ambition, by lucre, or by glory, but folely by a sense of duty, of grace, and of devotion to his country. Then let the flanderers (he fays) of the judgments of God cease their revilings. Let them defift from their dreamy forgeries concerning me. Let them know that I neither repine at, nor repent me of my lot: that I remain fixed, immoveable in my opinion: that I neither believe,

nor have found that God is angry: nay, that in things of the greatest moment, I have experienced, and acknowledge his mercy, and his paternal goodness towards me. That above all, in regard of this calamity, I acquiefce in his divine will, for it is he himself who comforts and upholds my spirit, being ever more mindful of what he shall bestow upon me, than of what he shall deny me. Befides how many things are there which I fhould choose not to fee? How many which I might be unwilling to fee; and how few remaining things are there which I should defire to fee. Neither am I concerned at being claffed, though you think this a miferable thing, with the blind, with the afflicted, with the miserable, with the weak. Since there is a hope that, on this account, I have a nearer claim to the mercy and protection of the fovereign father. There is a way, and the Apostle is my authority, through weakness to the greatest strength. May I be one of the weakeft, provided only in my weakness, that immortal and better vigour be put forth with greater effect: provided only in my darkness the light of the divine countenance does but more brightly fhine; for then I fhall at once be the weakest and most mighty; fhall be at once blind, and of the most piercing fight. Thus, through this infirmity should I be confummated, perfected. Thus, through this darkness should I be enrobed with light. And, in truth, we who are blind, are not the last regarded by the providence of God; who, as we are incapable to difcern any thing but himself, beholds us with the greater clemency and benignity. Woe be to him who injures us; he deserves to be devoted to the public curfe. The divine law, the divine favour has made us not merely fecure, but, as it were, facred from the injuries of men; nor would have feemed to have brought the darkness upon us, fo much by inducing a dimness of the eyes, as by the overshadowing of heavenly wings. Befides, as I am not

grown torpid by indolence, fince my eyes have deferted me, but am still active, ftill ready to advance among the foremost to the most arduous ftruggles for liberty; I am not therefore deferted by men even of the first rank in the state. Thus, while I can derive confolation in my blindness both from God and man, let no one be troubled that I have loft my eyes in an honourable cause and far be it from me to be troubled at it; far be it from me to poffefs fo little spirit as not to be able without difficulty to despise the revilers of my blindness, or fo little placability as not to be able with still less difficulty to forgive them.' The treatise, after a fucceffion of paffages of great eloquence and animation, ends with an earnest and folemn address to the people of England to prove themselves worthy of the victory they have gained, and the pofition they have fecured. He warns

As

them to derive their liberty not from arms, but from piety, juftice, temperance; in fine, from real virtue, not to make war alone their virtue, or highest glory, or to neglect the arts of peace. To banish avarice, ambition, luxury, and all excefs from their thoughts; fuch is the warfare of peace. Victories hard, it is true, but blameless, more glorious far than the warlike or the bloody. for myself,' he fays (fpeaking with fomething of a prophetic forrow), 'to whatever state things may return, I have performed, and certainly with good will, I hope not in vain, the service which I thought would be of most use to the commonwealth. It is not before our doors alone that I have borne my arms in defence of liberty. I have wielded them in a field fo wide that the justice and reason of those which are no vulgar deeds, fhall be explained and vindicated alike to foreign natures and our own countrymen. If after achievements fo magnanimous, ye bafely fall from your duty, if ye are guilty of any thing unworthy of you, be affured, pofterity will speak, and

thus pronounce its judgment. The foundation was ftrongly laid. The beginning, nay, more than the beginning, was excellent, but it will be inquired, not without a difturbed emotion, who raised the superstructure, who completed the fabric? To undertakings fo grand, to virtues fo noble, it will be a fubject of grief that perseverance was wanting. It will be feen that the harvest of glory was abundant; but that men were not to be found for the work. Yet that there was not wanting one who could give good counsel, who could exhort, encourage: who could adorn and celebrate in immortal praises the transcendent deeds, and those who performed them.' Another piece in which he defends himself personally against More, and repeats his accufations, is all which is neceffary to notice, p. 459.

41

That the once celebrated controversy with Salmafius has ceased to be of public interest, may be inferred, from its feldom or ever being alluded to in those works which profeffedly discuss the great constitutional questions of that time. Hobbes faid of these treatifes, "They are very good Latine both, and hardly to be judged which is better; and both very ill reafoning, and hardly to be judged which is worst. Like the declamations, pro and con, for exercise only, in a rhetorical school by one and the fame man: fo like is a Prefbyterian to an Independent." In fact, each champion placed himself on the extreme limits or edge of the position he maintained; Salmafius maintained the indefeasible right, the unlimited power, and the irresponsible nature of the kingly office.

41 In noticing Milton's mistake in the ufe of the word ' 'Vapulandus,' Johnson has observed that Ker, and fome one before him had remarked it. This perfon was Vavaffor. de Epig. cxxii. p. 154. See Creni Animad. Philolog. 12mo. p. 77. Illud mirum pariter et feftivum quod is quo loco et quibus plane verbis attribuit Salmafio folæcismos, iisdem ipfe folæcifmum, aut folæcifmo flagitium non minus admittat.'

More than half of his bulky and laborious treatise is taken up with the difcuffion of the abstract question of the jus divinum of kings; and it is only in the eighth chapter that he confiders his ground fufficiently prepared for applying his arguments to the English Monarchy. If we look at this treatise of the Leyden Profeffor with the philosophical spirit of modern history, it can only be confidered as a little more diftinguished by the celebrity of its author and his antagonist, and by the greatness of the occafion that called it forth, than others written on party queftions in those days, and which attempted to settle the complicated questions of law and prerogative in modern times, on the paradoxes of ancient philosophers, on the Jewish theocracy, on the apoftolical commands, on the opinions of the fathers, on the authorities of councils, and all the learned and obfolete lumber of pedantic acquireBut it would not be fair to expect that Salmafius fhould have anticipated the knowledge which it took another century to mature. Treatifes on the fame fubject, and in the fame language as that which he used, had appeared before his time; and the Vindicia contra Tyrannos of Languet, and the work De jure Regni apud Scotos of Buchanan, are in the same style of argument, though advocating principles the oppofite to his; and fubfequently the reafonings of Salmafius were again revived in the elaborate difquifitions of Filmer and Mackenzie. The Philofopher of Malmsbury alone pursued another fyftem; and, putting afide the affiftance of obfolete authority, which he might confider as useless when opposed to the unalienable rights of juftice and liberty; he laid down certain general principles for the focial co

ment.

42

42 Buchanan, fays Gibbon, is the earliest, or at leaft the moft celebrated of the Reformers who has justified the theory of Refistance. See Rom. Hift. vol. ii.

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