with any denomination of Proteftants: we know rather what he was not, than what he was. He was not of the church

of Rome; he was not of the church of England.

To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are diftant, and which is animated only by Faith and Hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind, unless it be invigorated and reimpreffed by external ordinances, by ftated calls to worship, and the falutary influence of example. Milton, who appears to have had full conviction of the truth of Chriftianity, and to have regarded the Holy Scriptures with the profoundest veneration, to have been untainted by any heretical pecu

liarity

Harity of opinion, and to have lived in a confirmed belief of the immediaté and occafional agency of Providence, yet grew old without any vifible worship. In the diftribution of his hours, there was no hour of prayer, either folitary, or with his household; omitting publick prayers, he omitted all.

Of this omiffion the reafon has been fought, upon a fuppofition which ought never to be made, that men live with their own approbation, and juftify their conduct to themfelves. Prayer certainly was not thought fuperfluous by him, who reprefents our firft parents as praying acceptably in the ftate of innocence, and effiaciously after their fall. That he lived without prayer can hardly be af

firmed;

firmed; his ftudies and meditations were an habitual prayer. The neglect of it in his family was probably a fault for which he condemned himself, and which he intended to correct, but that death, as too often happens, intercepted his reformation.

His political notions were those of an acrimonious and furly republican, for which it is not known that he

gave any better reason than that a popular govern ment was the most frugal; for the trappings of a monarchy would fet up an ordi nary commonwealth. It is furely very fhallow policy, that fuppofes money to be the chief good; and even this, without confidering that the fupport and expence of a Court is, for the mot

part,

part, only a particular kind of traffick by which money is circulated, without any national impoverishment.

Milton's republicanifin was, I an afraid, founded in an envious hatred of greatnefs, and a fullen defire of inde pendence; in petulance, impatient of controul, and pride difdainful of fuperiority. He hated monarchs in the ftate, and prelates in the church; for he hated all whom he was required to obey. It is to be fufpected that his predominant defire was to destroy rather than establish, and that he felt not fo much the love of liberty as repugnance to authority.

It has been obferved, that they who most loudly clamour for liberty do not

moft liberally grant it. What we know of Milton's character, in domeftick relations, is, that he was fevere and arbitrary. His family confifted of women; and there appears in his books fomething like a Turkish contempt of females, as fubordinate and inferiour beings. That his own daughters might not break the ranks, he fuffered them to be depreffed by a mean and penurious education. He thought woman made only for obedience, and man only for rebellion.

Of his family fome account may be expected. His fifter, first married to Mr. Philips, afterwards married Mr. Agar,

a friend of her firft husband, who fuc

ceeded him in the Crown-office.

She

had