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! Which is so hard to be of man's making, that we may see, even in the guidance of a vil state to worldly happiness, it is not for every

learned, or every wise man, though many of them consult in common, to invent or frame a discipline; but if it be at all the work of man, it must be of such a one as is a true knower of himself, and in whom contemplation and practice, wit, prudence, fortitude, and eloquence, must be rarely met, both to comprehend the hidden causes of things, and span in his thoughts all the various effects that passion or complexion can work in man's nature; and hereto must his hand be at defiance with gain, and his heart in all virtues heroic; so far is it from the ken of these wretched projectors of ours that bescrawl their pamphlets every day with new forms of government for our church. And therefore all the ancient lawgivers were either truly inspired, as Moses, or were such men as with authority enough might give it out to be so, as Minos, Lycurgus, Numa, because they wisely forethought that men would never quietly submit to such a discipline as had not more of God's hand in it than man's. To come within the narrowness of household government, observation will show us many deep counsellors of state, and judges, to demean themselves incorruptibly in the settled course of affairs, and many worthy preachers upright in their lives, powerful in their audience: but look upon either of these men, where they are left to their own disciplining at home, and you shall soon perceive, for all their single knowledge and uprightness, how deficient they are in the

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regulating of their own family; not only in what may concern the virtuous and decent composure of their minds in their several places, but that which is a lower and easier performance, the right possessing of the outward vessel, their body, in health or sickness, rest or labour, diet or abstinence, whereby to render it more pliant to the soul, and useful to the commonwealth which if men were but as good to discipline themselves as some are to tutor their horses and hawks, it could not be so gross in most households."

Here let us pause a moment to notice how truly Milton describes his own case, though perhaps without intending it. He knew well how to discipline himself, but was utterly incapable of governing his own household. Great as a statesman, great in managing the public affairs, great as Cromwell's secretary and adviser, great in his various plans and suggestions for the better government of church and state, in domestic life he miserably failed, both as a husband and father. How unhappy and wretched were his hearth and home is evident from the following extract from his last will and testament: "The portion due to me from Mr. Powell, my former wife's father, I leave to the unkind children I had by her, having received no part of it but my meaning is, they shall have no other benefit of my estate than the said portion, and what I have besides done for them, they having been very undutiful to me. All the residue of my estate

I leave to the disposal of Elizabeth, my loving wife." This Elizabeth was his third wife, whom he married in his fifty-fourth year, being blind and infirm, and requiring a nurse. She, we are told, was a termagant, and used frequently to tease him for his carelessness or ignorance about money matters, but on the whole treated him with kindness and tenderness. His three daughters by his first wife-the only children he ever had, fortunately, perhaps-Mary, Deborah, and Anne, contested this will, and gained their The documents relating to this trial are given by Warton, and incidentally reveal curious and interesting circumstances of Milton's domestic life, but full of melancholy and wretchedness. But to return from this digression.

cause.

"If then it appear so hard, and so little known how to govern a house well, which is thought of so easy discharge, and for every man's undertaking, what skill of man, what wisdom, what parts can be sufficient to give laws and ordinances to the elect household of God? If we could imagine that He had left it at random without His provident and gracious ordering, who is he so arrogant, so presumptuous, that durst dispose and guide the living ark of the Holy Ghost, though he should find it wandering in the field of Bethshemesh, without the conscious warrant of some high calling? Certainly, if God be the father of his family the church, wherein could He

express that name more than in training it up under His own all-wise and dear economy, not turning it loose to the havoc of strangers and wolves? Again, if Christ be the church's husband, expecting her to be presented before Him a pure unspotted virgin, in what could He shew His tender love to her more than in prescribing His own ways, which He best knew would be to the improvement of her health and beauty? For of any age or sex, most unfitly may a virgin be left to an uncertain and arbitrary education. Yea, though she be well instructed, yet is she still under a more strait tuition, especially if betrothed. In like manner the church, bearing the same resemblance, it were not reason to think she should be left destitute of that care which is as necessary and proper to her as instruction. For public preaching, indeed, is the gift of the Spirit, working as best seems to His secret will; but discipline is the practic work of preaching directed and applied, as is most requisite, to particular duty; without which it were all one to the benefit of souls, as it would be to the cure of bodies, if all the physicians in London should get into the several pulpits of the city, and assembling all the diseased in every parish, should begin a learned lecture of pleurisies, palsies, lethargies, to which, perhaps, none there present were inclined; and So, without so much as feeling one pulse, or giving the least order to any skilful apothecary,