Christian Doctrine, however, set the question at rest. He here argues at great length, and with much earnestness, for the baptism of believers only, and for the administration of the rite by immersion. The arguments adduced for the reception of infants, as partakers in the ordinance, he rejects as utterly futile; and dismisses with sarcasm rather than argument "those who have introduced the practice of affusion in baptism, instead of immersion, alleging that to dip and to sprinkle mean the same thing." The passage on the subject will be found quoted at length towards the close of the present volume. That Milton was actually in membership with any Baptist church cannot be proved;* but his language in the extract which we quote would imply that he was so. He speaks of the opposers of the Baptism of Believers as "they;" of its advocates as "us:" thus, at page 300, "Again, they remind us that of such is the kingdom of heaven."" Further, having maintained that Christian baptism consists in the immersion of believers only, he proceeds to argue that "the baptism of John was * In connection with Milton's ecclesiastical position, we may remark that his third wife and widow was a Baptist, which confirms the probability that he himself was so. She survived him for many years. In the year 1688 she took up her abode at Nantwich, in Cheshire, in the neighbourhood of which place she was born, residing there till August, 1727, when she died after a few days' illness, in her eighty-eighth year. She was buried in the Baptist chapel. Tradition still points out her tombstone, the inscription on which, however, has been for many years obliterated. She appointed as one of her executors "her loving friend, Samuel Creton," who was then pastor of the Baptist church at Nantwich. There were but few worldly goods to be disposed of,-her whole property (including 178. in ready money) being valued at less than £40. The items included "Two books of Paradise," "Mr. Milton's Pictures" (doubtless his two portraits), and his coat of arms. essentially the same as the baptism of Christ;" urging in proof, that "if it had not been really the same, it would follow that we had not undergone the same baptism as Christ, that our baptism had not been sanctified by the person of Christ." We should consider this as quite decisive of the fact that Milton was a Baptist both in practice and by conviction, had he not, in the concluding paragraph, left it an open question, to be decided by the conscience of each believer, whether, having been baptised in infancy, he should be re-baptised on his conversion. His advocacy of our distinctive doctrinal peculiarities, however, is so full and precise that we need only refer our readers to it, as a sufficient justification of our publication of Selections from the Works of Milton in the BUNYAN LIBRARY. SELECTIONS. OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND, AND THE CAUSES THAT HITHERTO HAVE HINDERED IT. In Two Books.-Written to a Friend.* [THE treatise on the Reformation in England was the earliest of Milton's prose works. It was published a little more than a year after his return from Italy, and formed the first-fruits of his determination to devote all his powers to the service of his country. How reluctantly he left the more congenial pursuits of poetry, to plunge into the thorny brakes of political controversy, he himself tells us in another treatise, published in the same year (The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty, p. 42):—' "But when God commands to take the trumpet, and blow a dolorous and jarring blast, it lies not in man's will what he say or what he shall conceal." He, therefore, resolved that he would at once take part in the conflict raging around him; so that, if the cause of truth triumphed, he might share in the victory; or, if defeated, he might at least have the sad consolation of a right to bewail her fall, having done what he could to avert the calamity. He had already, in his Lycidas (published 1637), given no dubious indication of the party to which he would attach himself when the time came. He had there denounced the clergy who, "For their bellies' sake, Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold; *First published in 1641. B Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook, or have learn'd ought else the least That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs! What recks it them? What need they? They are sped!* Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw; The treatise on the Reformation in England, though often rugged and uncouth in expression, yet abounds in passages which, for stately eloquence, richness of imagery, and fiery force, have never been surpassed. He commences by pointing out the causes which hindered or arrested the progress of the Reformation in England during and subsequent to the reign of Henry VIII. Rejecting various alleged causes, he fixes upon two principal ones,--(1), the retention of much of the popish ritual and ceremonies which should have been rejected; and (2), the conferring prerogatives upon the prelates which by right belonged to the people. Of the former he says,- Our ceremonies are senseless in themselves, and serve for nothing but either to facilitate our return to Popery, or to hide the defects of better knowledge, or to set off the pomp of prelacy." Of the latter he affirms that the bishops, “though they had removed the Pope, hugged the popedom, and shared the authority among themselves." Having established these points by a very vigorous and graphic sketch of English ecclesiastical history, he comes to his own times, in which he distinguishes the hinderers of Reformation into three sorts:-"1. Antiquitarians (for so I had rather call them than antiquaries, whose labours are useful and laudable); 2. Libertines; 3. Politicians." To the votaries of antiquity, who endeavour to defend episcopacy by the usages of former ages, he replies,-"First, that if they will conform our bishops to the purer times, they must mew‡ their feathers and their pounces,§ and make but curtailed bishops of them; and we know they hate to be docked and clipped as much as to be put down outright." In other words, that episcopacy must cease as a separate order in the church, and prelates become simple presbyters. Secondly, that those purer times to which antiquitarians appeal were corrupt, and their books were corrupted soon after. Thirdly, that the best of those that then wrote disclaim that any man should repose on them, and send all to the Scriptures." Having proved against the antiquarian prelatists that modern episcopacy is a corruption of its primitive form, that even the purer ages of the church to which they appeal were already corrupt, that the records which remain to us of + Harsh and shrieking. * Their fortune is made. S Claws. 66 |