II.

PROSE.

OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND, AND THE CAUSES THAT HITHERTO HAVE HINDERED IT.

THIS, the earliest of Milton's prose works, is addressed to a friend, and divided into two books. He commences by expressing his grief at the great and astonishing corruption of the pure doctrine taught by our Lord and his disciples, and then draws a picture of the sensuous material system which had usurped its place. He dwells on the pomp of vestments, "fetched from Aaron's old wardrobe or the Flamen's vestry," on baptism's being made a kind of exorcism, and on "that feast of free grace and adoption, to which Christ invited his disciples to sit as brethren and coheirs of the happy covenant," becoming "the subject of horror and gloating adoration, pageanted about like a dreadful idol." He then passes to the consideration of what he terms "the bright and blissful Reformation;" at the thoughts of which, he exclaims,

Methinks a sovereign and reviving joy must needs rush into the mind of him that reads or hears, and the sweet odour of the returning Gospel imbathe his soul with the fragrancy of heaven. Then was the sacred Bible sought out of the dusty corners where prophane falsehood and neglect had thrown it, the schools opened, divine and human learning raked out of the embers of forgotten

tongues, the princes and cities trooping to the new-erected banner of salvation, the martyrs with the unresistible might of weakness shaking the powers of darkness and scorning the fiery rage of the old red dragon.

He next proceeds to consider how it was that England, which, he says, had in Wickliffe been the first to "set up a standard for the recovery of lost truth, and blow the first evangelic trumpet to the nations," should have fallen from her eminence; and, while in purity of doctrine we agree with our brethren, yet in discipline "we are no better than a schism from the Reformation." This he ascribes to the holding of the principle, that ordination belongs only to bishops, and to the retention of "senseless ceremonies."

In order to prove this, he gives a brief sketch of the progress of the Reformation in England, commencing with Henry VIII., whose only quarrel with the Papacy, he says, was about supremacy; while the bishops, "though they had renounced the Pope, still hugged the popedom, and shared the authority among themselves." In the time of Edward VI. the Reformation was impeded by rebellions, and by quarrels among the peers; while the bishops "suffered themselves to be the common stales to countenance with their prostituted gravities every politic fetch that was then on foot." He gives as instances, Cranmer and Ridley being employed to extort from the young King a toleration for the use of the Mass by his sister Mary; Latimer's assertion of the truth of the charges against Lord Seymour of Sudley, and Cranmer and the other bishops joining in the attempt to deprive the two princesses of their right to the crown.* To

*On these matters see our History of England, where we shall be found to differ somewhat from Milton's views.

the excuse that these men were martyrs, he replies, that this is no proof of their being incapable of error; and he instances the Arians and Pelagians, "which were slain by the heathen for Christ's sake, yet we take both of these for no true friends of Christ."

And here withall I invoke the Immortal Deity, revealer and judge of secrets, that wherever I have in this book plainly and roundly, though worthily and truly, laid open the faults and blemishes of Fathers, martyrs, or Christian emperors, or have otherwise inveighed against error and superstition with vehement expressions, I have done it neither out of malice nor list [inclination] to speak evil, nor any vain glory; but of mere necessity, to vindicate the spotless truth from an ignominious bondage, whose native worth is now become of such a low esteem that she is like to find small credit with us for what she can say, unless she can bring a ticket from Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley, or prove herself a retainer to Constantine and wear his badge. More tolerable it were for the Church of God that all these names were utterly abolished, like the Brazen Serpent, than that men's fond opinion should thus idolize them, and the heavenly truth be thus captivated.

The time of Edward VI., from its unsettled nature, was no time for forming a perfect constitution, and those to whom it was committed had different ends in view. We are not therefore to argue in favour of episcopacy from its being then continued. Episcopacy is to be judged from its effects, and it actually, he thinks, “worsens and slugs the most learned and seeming religious of our ministers."

But what [for what] do we suffer misshapen and enormous prelatism,* as we do, thus to blanch and varnish her deformities with the fair colours, as before of martyrdom, so now of episcopacy? They are not bishops, God and all good men know they are not, that have filled this land with late confusion and violence,

* We are to observe that Milton throughout distinguishes prelates from bishops.

but a tyrannical crew and corporation of impostors, that have blinded the world so long under that name. He that, enabled with gifts from God, and the lawful and primitive choice of the Church, assembled in convenient number, faithfully from that time forward feeds his parochial flock, has his coequal and compresbyterial power to ordain ministers and deacons, by public prayer and vote of Christ's congregation, in like sort as he himself was ordained, and is a true apostolic bishop. But when he steps up into the chair of pontifical pride, and changes a moderate and exemplary house, for a misgoverned and haughty palace, spiritual dignity for carnal precedence, and secular high office and employment for the high negociations of his heavenly embassage, then he degrades, then he unbishops himself. He that makes him a bishop, makes him no bishop.

He gives as an instance St. Martin, who complained to Sulpitius Severus, that since he had been a bishop, he felt a sensible decay of the gifts and graces that God had previously given him, though Sulpitius says there was no change in his manners or habits.

The same impediments, he proceeds to say, prevailed in Elizabeth's reign, and the crude constitutions made in the time of Edward were established for good and all, though they had not satisfied even those who made them; and their impugners were branded with the name of Puritans and persecuted, while the Queen was made to believe that she would endanger her prerogative if she consented to do away with bishops. He then comes to his own times, and he divides the hinderers of Reformation into three classes, Antiquitarians (“for so I had rather call them than Antiquaries, whose labours are useful and laudable "), Libertines, and Politicians.

In answer to the first, he undertakes to show that, if "they will conform our bishops to the purer times, they must mew their feathers and their pounces,* and make Mew is the same as moult; pounce is scent or perfume.

but curtailed bishops of them;" secondly, that "those purer times were corrupt, and their books corrupted soon after;" thirdly, that the best writers of those times disclaim all authority and send men to the Scriptures.

He first shows, by the testimony of Ignatius, that bishops must be elected by the hands of the whole Church ; and, from him and Camden, that previous to the year 268 bishops had no fixed dioceses, but exercised their authority wherever they came. He further proves from Cyprian, that bishops could not lawfully be appointed without the consent of the people, and shows from an epistle of the Council of Nicæa, and the example of St. Martin, that such was the practice down to the end of the fourth century, and apparently to the end of the ninth. From Ignatius and Cyprian he shows, that bishops were only the first among their compresbyters, and could do nothing without their counsel and consent; a glimpse of which, he says, remains at Rome, where the Pope" performeth all ecclesiastical jurisdiction, as in consistory among his cardinals, which were originally but the parish-priests of Rome."

Thus then did the spirit of unity and meekness inspire and animate every joint and sinew of the mystical body. But now the gravest and worthiest minister, a true bishop of his fold, shall be reviled and ruffled by an insulting and only canon-wise prelate, as if he were some slight paltry companion [fellow]; and the people of God, redeemed and washed with Christ's blood, and dignified with so many glorious titles of Saints and Sons in the Gospel, are now no better respected than impure Ethnics and lay dogs. Stones and pillars and crucifixes have now the honour and the alms due to Christ's living members; the table of communion, now become a table of separation, stands like an exalted platform upon the brow of the quire, fortified with bulwark and barricade to keep off the profane touch of the laics; while the obscene and surfeited priest scruples not to paw and mammoc the sacramental bread as