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noble passage on discipline:* "And certainly discipline is not only the removal of disorder; but if any visible shape can be given to divine things, the very visible shape and image of virtue, whereby she is not only seen in the regular gestures and motions of her heavenly paces as she walks, but also makes the harmony of her voice audible to mortal ears. Yea, the angels themselves, in whom no disorder is feared, as the apostle that saw them in his rapture describes, are distinguished and quaternioned into their celestial princedoms and satrapies, according as God himself has writ his imperial decrees through the great provinces of heaven. The state also of the blessed in paradise, though never so perfect, is not therefore left without discipline, whose golden surveying reed marks out and measures every quarter and circuit of New Jerusalem. Yet is it not to be conceived, that those eternal effluences of sanctity and love in the glorified saints should by this means be confined and cloyed with repetition of that which is prescribed, but that our happiness may orb itself into a thousand vagancies of glory and delight, and with a kind of eccentrical equation, be, as it were, an invariable planet of joy and felicity; how much less can we believe that God would leave his frail and feeble, though not less beloved, church here below, to the perpetual stumble of conjecture and disturbance in this our dark voyage, without the card and compass of discipline? "+

And here, it may be allowable to notice, in passing, an objection brought against our author by one of his greatest admirers, and certainly the most acute and judicious editor * Prose Works, vol. ii. p. 442.

+ This language will remind the reader of Hooker's much-admired passage on law, which for the sake of comparison I shall subjoin without comment :-"The seat of law is the bosom of God; her voice the harmony of the world: all things in heaven and earth do her homage; the very least as feeling her care, the greatest as not exempt from her power-both angels and men, and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy."-Ecclesias tical Polity, Book I. ad finem.

says,

since

of his prose writings, Mr. St. John. "It is surprising," he "Milton should have taken this view of the matter, every section of the Christian church has a different form of government. To contend for uniformity in this matter, would be to re-establish the papacy; for without the infallibility of the pope there is obviously no deciding what form of church government is prescribed in the gospel. Simply, in my opinion, because no form of church govern. ment is there prescribed." This reasoning, I think, fairly admits of two replies. First, if no form of church government at all is prescribed in the Scriptures, then all objection to the papacy itself, as a system of church government, falls to the ground; and, secondly, although many particulars of ecclesiastical discipline are left to Christian liberty and discretion, to be regulated, in many instances, by the necessity of the case, yet negatively so much is taught as to leave little to be desired by the greatest lover of uniformity. The omission of prelatical distinctions in the church would of itself be tantamount to a prohibition, even if we were not abundantly supplied with general principles applicable to nearly every variety of circumstance. Let any one, for example, compare the words of the apostle-" Call no man master on earth: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren"-with the system of prelatical domination in every phase it has exhibited throughout its long and disastrous history, and he will not need to search further for the decision of Scripture.

The appeals of the supporters of prelacy to the Old Testament, which had recently been re-produced by the primate of Armagh, Milton thus deals with: "The primate, in his discourse about the original of episcopacy newly revised, begins thus: The ground of episcopacy is fetched partly from the pattern prescribed by God in the Old Testament, and partly from the imitation thereof brought in by the apostles.' Herein I must entreat to be excused of the desire I have to be satisfied how, for example, the ground of

episcopacy is fetched partly from example of the Old Testament, by whom next, and by whose authority. Secondly, how the church government under the gospel can be rightly called an imitation of that in the Old Testament; for that the gospel is the end and fulfilling of the law, our liberty also from the bondage of the law, I plainly read. How then the ripe age of the gospel should be put to school again, and learn to govern herself from the infancy of the law, the stronger to imitate the weaker, the freeman to follow the captive, the learned to be lessoned by the rude, will be a hard undertaking to evince from any of those principles which either art or inspiration hath written."*

Milton next addresses himself to the most cherished dogma of his opponents-that the system of prelacy secures uniformity of opinion, and represses the sin of schism." The passages which are necessary to put the reader in full possession of Milton's argument, though long, must be introduced, as an example of the overwhelming momentum of his controversial eloquence :—“ Do they keep away schism? If to bring a numb and chill stupidity of soul, an unactive blindness of mind, upon the people by their leaden doctrine, or no doctrine at all; if to persecute all knowing and zealous Christians by the violence of their courts, be to keep away schism, they keep schism away indeed: and by this kind of discipline all Italy and Spain is as purely and politically kept from schism as England hath been by them. With as good a plea might the dead-palsy boast to a man, It is I that free you from stitches and pains, and the troublesome feeling of cold and heat, of wounds and strokes: if I were gone, all these would molest you. The winter might as well vaunt itself against the spring, I destroy all noisome and rank weeds, I keep down all pestilent vapours; yes, and all wholesome herbs, and all fresh dews, by your violent and hide-bound frost: but when the gentle west winds shall open the fruitful bosom of the earth, thus overgirded by * Prose Works, vol. ii. p. 450.

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your imprisonment, then the flowers put forth and spring, and then the sun shall scatter the mists, and the manuring hand of the tiller shall root up all that burdens the soil without thank to your bondage. But far worse than any frozen captivity is the bondage of prelates; for that other, if it keep down anything which is good within the earth, so doth it likewise that which is ill; but these let out freely the ill, and keep down the good, or else keep down the lesser ill, and let out the greatest. Be ashamed at last to tell the parliament, ye curb schismatics whenas they know ye cherish and side with papists, and are now as it were one party with them, and it is said they help to petition for ye. Can we believe that your government strains in good earnest at the petty gnats of schism, whenas we see it makes nothing to swallow the camel heresy of Rome, but that indeed your throats are of the right pharisaical strain. . . . . If we go down, say you, (as if Adrian's wall were broken,) a flood of sects will rush in. What sects? What are their opinions?

....

Give us the inventory. It will appear both by your former prosecutions and your present instances, that they are only such to speak of, as are offended with your lawless government, your ceremonies, your liturgy, an extract from the mass-book translated. But that they should be contemners of public prayer, and churches used without superstition, I trust God will manifest it ere long to be as false a slander as your former slanders against the Scots. Noise it till ye be hoarse, that a rabble of sects will come in; it will be answered ye, No rabble, sir priest; but an unanimous multitude of good protestants will then join to the church, which now, because of you, stand separated. This will be the dreadful consequence of your removal. As for those terrible names of sectaries and schismatics, which ye have got together, we know your manner of fight: when the quiver of your arguments, which is ever thin and weakly stored, after the first brunt is quite empty, your course is to betake ye to your other quiver of slander, wherein lies your best archery. And

whom you could not move by sophistical arguing, them you think to confute by scandalous misnaming; thereby inciting the blinder sort of people to mislike and deride sound doctrine and good Christianity, under two or three vile and hateful terms. But if we could easily endure and dissolve your doughtiest reasons in argument, we shall more easily bear the worst of your unreasonableness in calumny and false report: especially being foretold by Christ, that if he our master was by your predecessors called Samaritan and Beelzebub, we must not think it strange if his best disciples in the reformation, as at first by those of your tribe they were called Lollards and Hussites, so now by you be termed Puritans and Brownists. But my hope is, that the people of England will not suffer themselves to be juggled thus out of their faith and religion by a mist of names cast before their eyes, but will search wisely by the Scriptures, and look quite through this fraudulent aspersion of a disgraceful name into the things themselves: knowing that the primitive Christians in their times were accounted such as are now called Familists and Adamites, or worse. And many

on the prelatic side, like the church of Sardis, have a name to live, and yet are dead; to be protestants, and are indeed papists in most of their principles. Thus persuaded, this your old fallacy we shall soon unmask, and quickly apprehend how you prevent schism, and who are your schismatics. But what if we prevent and hinder all good means of preventing schism? That way which the apostles used, was to call a council: from which, by anything that can be learned from the fifteenth of the Acts, no faithful Christian was debarred, to whom knowledge and piety might give entrance. Of such a council as this every parochial consistory is a right homogeneous and constituting part, being in itself, as it were, a little synod, and towards a general assembly moving upon her own basis in an even and firm progression, as those smaller squares in battle unite in one great cube, the main phalanx, an emblem of truth and stedfastness.

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