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derstanding, animated by a fervent, steady, and laudable desire to enlighten mankind, and to render them more virtuous and happy.

In the year 1640, when Milton returned to England, the current of popular opinion ran with great vehemence against episcopacy. He was prepared to catch the spirit of the time, and to become an advocate for ecclesiastical reformation, by having peculiar and domestic grounds of complaint against religious oppression. His favorite preceptor had been reduced to exile, and his father disinherited, by intolerance and superstition. He wrote, therefore, with the indignant enthusiasm of a man resenting the injuries of those, who are most entitled to his love and veneration. The ardour of his affections conspired with the warmth of his fancy to enflame him with that puritanical zeal, which blazes so intensely in his controversial productions: no less than four of these were published within two years after his return; and he thus speaks of the mo

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tives, that led him to this species of con sition, in his Second Defence.

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* Ut primum loquendi saltem cæpta est libertas cedi, omnia in episcopos aperiri ora; alii de ips vitiis, alii de ipsius ordinis vitio conqueri-A sane experrectus, cum veram affectari viam ad li tem cernerem, ab his initiis, his passibus, ad libera servitute vitam omnem mortalium rectissime proce ab religione disciplina orta, ad mores & instituta r licæ emanaret, cum etiam me ita ab adolescent rassem, ut quid divini, quid humani esset juris, omnia possem non ignorare, meque consuluissem quando ullins usus essem futurus, si nunc patriæ, vero ecclesiæ totque fratribus evangelii causa per sese objicientibus deessem, statui, etsi tunc alia qua meditabar, huc omne ingenium, omnes industriæ transferre. Primum itaque de reformanda ecclesi glicana, duos ad amicum quendam libros conso deinde, cum duo præ cæteris magni nominis ep suum jus contra ministros quosdam primarios asser ratus de iis rebus, quas amore solo veritatis, & ex christiani ratione didiceram, haud pejus me dict quam qui de sui quæstu & injustissimo dominatu tendebant, ad hunc libris duobus, quorum unus De copatu Prælatico, alter De Ratione Disciplinæ E siasticæ, inscrib itur, ad illum scriptis quibusdan

outcry against the bishops, as 1 perceived that men were taking the true road to liberty, and might proceed with the utmost rectitude from these beginnings to deliver hu man life from all base subjection, if their discipline, drawing its source from religion proceeded to morals and political institutions; as I had been trained from my youth to the particular knowledge of what belonged to divine, and what to human jurisdiction; and as I thought I should deserve to forfeit the power of being useful to mankind, if I now failed to assist my country and the church, and so many brethren, who for the sake of the gospel, were exposing themselves to peril, I resolved, though my thoughts had been pre-engaged by other designs, to transfer to this object, all my talents and all my application: first, therefore, I wrote of reformation in England, two

madversionibus, & mox Apologia respondi, et ministris facundiam hominis, ut ferebatur ægre sustinentibus, suppetias tuli, & ab eo tempore, si quid postea responderent, interfui.

books addressed to a friend: afterwards, when two bishops of eminence had asserted their cause against the leading ministers of the opposite party, as I conceived that I could argue, from a love of truth and a sense of christian duty, not less forcibly than my antagonists, (who contended for lucre and their own unjust dominion) I answered one of them in two books with the following titles, Of Prelatical Episcopacy, Of Church Government: and the other, first in Animadversions upon the Remonstrants Defence against Smectymnuus, and secondly, in my Apology. As the ministers were thought hardly equal to their opponent in eloquence I lent them my aid, and from that time, if they made any farther reply, I was a party concerned."

I have inserted this passage at full length, because it gives us a clear insight into the motives of Milton on his first engaging in controversy, and discovers the high opinion which he entertained, both of the christian purity and the argumentative powers of his own cultivated mind; the two

bishops to whom he alludes, were, Hall bishop of Norwich, famous as our first satirist, and the learned Usher, primate of Ireland. Hall published, in 1640, “An humble Remonstrance to the High Court of Parliament in Behalf of Episcopacy”—an answer to this appeared written by six ministers, under the title of Smectymnuus, a word casually formed from the initial letters of their respective names. This little band of religious writers included Thomas Young, the beloved preceptor of Milton; so that personal attachment conspired with public enthusiasm to make our author vehement in his reply to the two bishops, who failed not to encounter the confederate antagonists of their order. He probably recollected the sufferings of his favorite instructor, when he exclaimed in his treatise of reformation, "What numbers of faithful and free born Englishmen and good christians have been constrained to forsake their dearest home, their friends and kindred, whom nothing but the wide ocean, or the savage deserts

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