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honorable ever to receive her again after

such a repulse.

Milton had too tender and too elevated a spirit not to feel this affront with double poignancy, as it affected both his happiness and his dignity; but it was one of his noble characteristics to find his mental powers rather invigorated than enfeebled by injury and affliction; he thought it the prerogative of wisdom to find remedies against every evil, however unexpected, by which vice or infirmity can embitter life. In reflecting on his immediate domestic trouble, he conceived the generous design of making it subservient to the public. He found that in discordant marriage there is misery, for which he thought there existed a very easy remedy, and perfectly consistent both with reason and religion: with these ideas he published, in 1644, the Doctrine of Divorce. He addresses the work to the parliament, with great spirit and eloquence, and after asserting the purity of his precepts, and the beneficence of his design, he says, with patriotic exultation, "let not England for

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get her precedence of teaching nations to live."

Sanguine as Milton was in the ho promoting the virtue and happiness of vate life by this publication, the Pr terian clergy, notwithstanding their obligations to the author, endeavour persecute him for the novelty and fre of his sentiments. "The assembly of di sitting at Westminster, impatient,' Anthony Wood, "of having the cle jurisdiction, as they reckoned it, inv did, instead of answering or disproving those books had asserted, cause him summoned before the House of Lords that house, whether approving the doc or not favoring his accusers, did soon miss him."

Milton, whom no opposition coul timidate when he believed himself eng in the cause of truth and justice, e voured to support his doctrine by s quent publications; first, "The Judg of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce ;' also he addresses to the parliament,

says, with his usual spirit, "God, it seems, intended to prove me, whether I durst alone take up a rightful cause against a world of disesteem, and found I durst. My name I did not publish, as not willing it should sway the reader either for me or against me; but when I was told that the stile (which what it ails to be so soon distinguishable I cannot tell) was known by most men, and that some of the clergy began to inveigh and exclaim on what I was credibly informed they had not read, I took it then for my proper season, both to shew them a name that could easily contemn such an indiscreet kind of censure, and to reinforce the question with a more accurate diligence; that if any of them would be so good as to leave railing, and to let us hear so much of his learning and Christian wisdom, as will be strictly demanded of him in his answering to this problem, care was had he should not spend his preparations against a nameless pamphlet."

These expressions displayed the frankness and fortitude of a noble mind, perfectly

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conscious of its own integrity, in discu a very delicate point, that materially a the comfort of human life. This inte he had indeed protested very solem his former Address to the Parliament,v after asserting that the subject conce them chiefly as redressers of grievance proceeds thus, "Me it concerns next, h with much labour and faithful dilig first found out, or at least with a fe communicative candour first publishe the manifest good of christendom, which, calling to witness every thing m and immortal, I believe unfeignedly true." The solemnity of this protesta confirmed as it was by the singular re rity of his morals, and the sincerity of zeal as a christian, could not secure him censures of every kind, which veheme they were, he seems to have despised. ideas were derided by libertines, and cal niated by hypocrites and bigots; but perior to ridicule and to slander, he ceeded resolutely in what he thought duty, by shewing how completely his

trine was consonant, in his own opinion to that gospel, which he had sedulously made not only the favorite study, but the constant guide of his life. With this view he published, in 1645, his Tetrachordon, expositions upon the four chief places of scripture, which speak of marriage. He introduces this work by a third Address to the Parliament, and, speaking of their justice. and candour in disdaining to think of persecuting him for his doctrine, according to the instigation of his enemies, he expresses his gratitude in the following animated terms: "For which uprightness and incorrupt refusal of what ye were incensed to, lords and commons (though it were done to justice, not to me, and was a peculiar demonstration how far your ways are different from the rash vulgar) besides those allegiances of oath and duty, which are my public debt to your public labors, I have yet a store of gratitude laid up, which cannot be exhausted, and such thanks, perhaps they may live to be, as shall more than whisper to the next ages." This sentence is remarkable in va-^

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