Imatges de pàgina
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should dismiss them from time to time, some groaning, some languishing, some expiring, with this only charge, to look well to themselves, and do as they hear. Of what excellence and necessity, then, church discipline is how beyond the faculty of man to frame, and how dangerous to be left to man's invention, who would be every foot turning it to sinister ends; how properly, also, it is the work of God as Father, and of Christ as Husband of the church, we have by this much heard." So also says the Episcopalian.

The remaining chapters of this first book are uninteresting, and will not detain us long.

"One of these two, prelaty or presbytery, and none other, is of God's ordaining; and if it be, that ordinance must be evident in the gospel." Observe here that Milton differs from those who hold that no form of church government is prescribed in Scripture, that as much is to be said for one form as another; which is Dean Alford's erroneous opinion, as expressed lately in "Good Words."

"With as good a plea (as that prelaty prevents schism) 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 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."

Milton's prose works are interesting, as containing many words which since his day have altogether changed their meaning; as, for instance, the two words "noisome" and "manuring" in the last quoted passage. The former word we now use in the sense of offensive, causing disgust; but the old meaning here, and wherever it occurs in the authorised translation of the Bible, is that of noxious or actually hurtful; it is used again a little further on, "And thus they are so far from hindering dissensions, that they have made unprofitable, and even noisome, the chiefest remedy we have to keep Christendom at one, which is by councils." The second word, "manuring," is now confined to one branch of agriculture, in Milton's time it was applied to the whole art of cultivating the soil, and meant any work with the hand, being derived from the French 'manœuvre.' It occurs in this old sense in the Paradise Lost,

"branches overgrown

That mock our scant manuring."

In the preface to the second book of this treatise

he digresses to explain the right he had to meddle in these matters, how he had relinquished and interrupted his own more favourite studies at the call of his country and of duty, but yet had not for ever abandoned them, as he purposed in happier times writing an epic poem. Thus at the age of thirty-three the idea of his Paradise Lost, though not in that or in any definite form, was floating before his mind; and twenty-five long years elapsed ere the aspirations so dearly cherished throughout his life were realized. The whole of this preface is far too valuable, too eloquent, and too interesting to be curtailed.

"How happy were it for this frail, and, as it may be called, mortal life of man, since all earthly things which have the name of good and convenient in our daily use, are withal so cumbersome and full of trouble, if knowledge, yet which is the best and lightsomest possession of the mind, were, as the common saying is, no burden; and that what it wanted of being a load to any part of the body, it did not with a heavy advantage overlay upon the spirit! For not to speak of that knowledge that rests in the contemplation of natural causes and dimensions, which must needs be a lower wisdom, as the object is low, certain it is that he who hath obtained in more than the scantiest measure to know anything distinctly of God, and of His true worship, and what is infallibly good and happy in the state of man's life, what is in itself evil and miser

able, though vulgarly not so esteemed; he that hath obtained to know this, the only high valuable wisdom indeed, remembering also that God, even to a strictness, requires the improvement of these His entrusted gifts, cannot but sustain a sorer burden of mind, and more pressing than any supportable toil or weight which the body can labour under, how and in what manner he shall dispose and employ those sums of knowledge and illumination, which God hath sent him into this world to trade with. And that which aggravates the burden more, is, that having received amongst his allotted parcels certain precious truths, of such an orient lustre as no diamond can equal, which nevertheless he has in charge to put off at any cheap rate, yea, for nothing, to them that will, the great merchants of this world, fearing that this course would soon discover and disgrace the false glitter of their deceitful wares, wherewith they abuse the people, like poor Indians with beads and glasses, practise by all means how they may suppress the vending of such rarities, and at such a cheapness as would undo them, and turn their trash upon their hands. Therefore, by gratifying the corrupt desires of men in fleshly doctrines, they stir them up to persecute with hatred and contempt all those that seek to bear themselves uprightly in this their spiritual factory: which they, foreseeing, though they cannot but testify of truth, and the excellency of that heavenly traffic which they

bring, against what opposition or danger soever, yet needs must it sit heavily upon their spirits, that being, in God's prime intention and their own, selected heralds of peace, and dispensers of treasure inestimable, without price, to them that have no peace, they find in the discharge of their commission, that they are made the greatest variance and offence-a very sword and fire both in house and city over the whole earth. This is that which the sad prophet Jeremiah laments, "Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me, a man of strife and contention!" And although divine inspiration must certainly have been sweet to those ancient prophets, yet the irksomeness of that truth which they brought was so unpleasant unto them, that everywhere they call it a burden. Yea, that mysterious book of revelation, which the great evangelist was bid to eat, as it had been some eye-brightening electuary of knowledge and foresight, though it were sweet in his mouth, and in the learning, it was bitter in his belly, bitter in the denouncing. Nor was this hid from the wise poet Sophocles, who in that place of his tragedy where Tiresias is called to resolve King Edipus in a matter which he knew would be grievous, brings him in bemoaning his lot, that he knew more than other men. For surely to every good and peaceable man, it must in nature needs be a hateful thing to be the displeaser and molester of thousands: much better

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