good men may enjoy the freedom which they merit, and the bad the curb which they need. But to do this, and to know these exquisite proportions, the heroic wisdom which is required, surmounted far the principles of these narrow politicians: what wonder then if they sunk as those unfortunate Britons before them, entangled and oppressed with things too hard and generous above their strain and temper? For Britain, to speak a truth not often spoken, as it is a land fruitful enough of men stout and courageous in war, so it is naturally not over-fertile of men able to govern justly and prudently in peace, trusting only in their motherwit; who consider not justly, that civility, prudence, love of the public good, more than of money or vain honour, are to this soil in a manner outlandish; grow not here, but in minds well implanted with solid and elaborate breeding, too impolitic else and rude, if not headstrong and intractable to the industry and virtue either of executing or understanding true civil government. Valiant indeed, and prosperous to win a field; but to know the end and reason of winning, unjudicious and unwise: in good, or bad success, alike unteachable. For the sun, which we want, ripens wits as well as fruits; and as wine and oil are imported to us from abroad, so must ripe understanding, and many civil virtues, be imported into our minds from foreign writings, and examples of best ages; we shall else miscarry still, and come short in the attempts of any great enterprise. Hence did their victories prove as fruitless, as their losses dangerous; and left them still conquering under the same grievances that men suffer conquered; which was indeed unlikely to go otherwise, unless men more than vulgar, bred up, as few of them were, in the knowledge of ancient and illustrious deeds, invincible against many and vain titles, impartial to friendships and relations, had conducted their affairs: but then from the chapman to the retailer, many whose ignorance was more audacious than the rest, were admitted with all their sordid rudiments to bear no mean sway among

THE NATION RUINED BY ITS IGNORANCE AND VICES. 241

them, both in Church and State. From the confluence of all their errors and misdemeanors, what could be expected, but what befel those ancient inhabitants, whom they so much resembled—confusion in the end?

THE NATION RUINED BY ITS IGNORANCE AND VICES.

Thus the English, while they agreed not about the choice of their native king, were constrained to take the yoke of an outlandish conqueror. With what minds and by what course of life they had fitted themselves for this servitude, William of Malmsbury spares not to lay open. Not a few years before the Normans came, the clergy, though in Edward the Confessor's days, had lost all good literature and religion, scarce able to read and understand their Latin service; he was a miracle to others who knew his grammar. The monks went clad in fine stuffs, and made no difference what they eat; which though in itself no fault, yet to their consciences was irreligious. The great men, given to gluttony and dissolute life, made a prey of the common people, abusing their daughters whom they had in service, then turning them off to the stews; the meaner sort tippling together night and day, spent all they had in drunkenness, attended with other vices which effeminate men's minds. Whence it came to pass, that carried on with fury and rashness more than any true fortitude or skill of war, they gave to William, their conqueror, so easy a conquest. Not but that some few of all sorts were much better among them; but such was the generality. And as the longsuffering of God permits bad men to enjoy prosperous days with the good, so His severity ofttimes exempts not good men from their share in evil times with the bad.

If these were the causes of such misery and thraldom to those our ancestors, with what better close can be concluded, than here in fit season to remember this age in the midst of her security, to fear from like vices, without amendment, the revolution of like calamities?

R

ON

NATIONAL ESTABLISHMENTS OF

RELIGION.

A TREATISE OF CIVIL POWER IN ECCLESIASTICAL CAUSES.

CONSIDERATIONS TOUCHING THE LIKELIEST MEANS TO REMOVE HIRELINGS OUT OF THE CHURCH; WHEREIN IS ALSO DISCOURSED OF TITHES, CHURCH FEES, AND CHURCH REVENUES, AND WHETHER THE MAINTENANCE OF MINISTERS CAN BE SETTLED BY LAW.

*

[MILTON'S hostility to national establishments of religion may be gathered from innumerable passages in his works. There is scarcely one of his controversial treatises in which it is not either expressed or implied. But his references to this question had, up to the year 1659, been merely incidental. He had alluded to it only as bearing upon some other matter in hand. But he now addressed himself to a searching investigation of the problem, whether the Civil Magistrate, as such, has any right to interfere in ecclesiastical affairs. The discussion divides itself into two parts :-Has the magistrate a right to use compulsion or force to restrain men in matters of religion? Has he right to use honours and rewards to bribe them? This opens up the whole question of church establishments, and Milton decides both in the negative. He replies to the first question :-"That for belief or practice in religion, no man ought to be punished or molested by any outward force on earth whatsoever." To the second: "That the maintenance of church ministers is a thing not properly belonging to the magistrate." He therefore calls upon the parliament "to remove these grievances and set religion free,”—in other words, to liberate religion from State patronage and control.

The thoughtful reader of these two pamphlets will not fail to observe, that Milton, writing two hundred years ago, anticipates both the principles and the conclusions of those who now agitate for

*First published in 1659.

NO MAN TO BE PUNISHED FOR HIS RELIGION.

243

the dis-establishment of religion. The Liberation Society, in so far as it discusses the question on Scriptural grounds, can add little to the arguments which he then adduced. Those who charge us with introducing novelties unknown to our Puritan ancestors, when we plead for the Separation of Church and State, need only to be referred to the writings of Milton for their confutation. The republication of these treatises, which were written only three years before the ejection of the Two Thousand on Bartholomew's Day, has a special propriety in this Bicentenary year. The very fact that modern readers will find little of novelty either in the arguments urged or the inferences deduced, in this point of view, only enhances their value.

The first of the treatises on Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes, deals with the question of force; the second, on the Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings out of the Church, with that of State endowments and compulsory exactions. We give them almost in extenso, with only such curtailment as want of space renders necessary, adding foot-notes to indicate the subject of the more important passages omitted.]

CIVIL POWER IN ECCLESIASTICAL CAUSES.

Two things there be, which have been ever found working much mischief to the church of God, and the advancement of truth; force on one side restraining, and hire on the other side corrupting, the teachers thereof. Few ages have been since the ascension of our Saviour, wherein the one of these two, or both together, have not prevailed. It can be at no time, therefore, unseasonable to speak of these things; since by them the church is either in continual detriment and oppression, or in continual danger. The former shall be at this time my argument; the latter as I shall find God disposing me, and opportunity inviting. What I argue, shall be drawn from the Scripture only; and therein from true fundamental principles of the Gospel, to all knowing Christians undeniable. . . That for belief or practice in religion, according to this conscientious persuasion, no man ought to be punished or molested by any outward force on earth whatsoever, I distrust not, through God's implored assistance, to make plain by the following arguments.

First, it cannot be denied, being the main foundation of our Protestant religion, that we of these ages, having no other Divine rule or authority from without us but the Holy Scripture, and no other within us but the illumination of the Holy Spirit so interpreting that Scripture, can have no other ground in matters of religion but only from the Scriptures. And these being not possible to be understood without this Divine illumination, which no man can know at all times to be in himself, much less to be any time for certain in any other, it follows clearly, that no man or body of men in these times can be the infallible judges or determiners in matters of religion to any other men's consciences but their own. And therefore those Bereans are commended (Acts xvii. 11), who, after the preaching even of St. Paul, "searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so." Nor did they more than what God Himself in many places commands us by the same apostle, to search, to try, to judge of these things ourselves and gives us reason also (Gal. vi. 4, 5) : "Let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another: for every man shall bear his own burden." If then we count it so ignorant and irreligious in the Papist, to think himself discharged in God's account, believing only as the church believes, how much greater condemnation will it be to the Protestant, his condemner, to think himself justified, believing only as the state believes? With good cause, therefore, it is the general consent of all sound Protestant writers, that neither traditions, councils, nor canons of any visible church, much less edicts of any magistrate or civil session, but the Scripture only, can be the final judge or rule in matters of religion, and that only in the conscience of every Christian to himself. Which protestation made by the first public reformers of our religion against the imperial edicts of Charles V., imposing church-traditions, without Scripture, gave first beginning to the name of Protestant; and with that name hath ever been received this doctrine, which pre