JOHN AITLTON. 521 



The " Treatise of Prelatical Episcopacy" is less artificially com- 

 posed than the preceding. The metaphors are not so mixed and far- 

 sought ; the periods not so stately, capacious, and echoing, nor are 

 they inlaid so gaudily and minutely as to present, like some others, 

 an appearance of rhetorical mosaic work. It was no doubt written 

 on the spur of the occasion, and is the better for the lack of burnish. 

 It was an answer to a production of Archbishop Usher, " Concerning 

 Prelatical Episcopacy," and bears weighty evidence of the superiority 

 of Milton's mind over that of his antagonist. The insufficiency, in- 

 conveniency, and impiety of quoting the fathers and excluding the 

 apostles the method adopted by the episcopalians (as formerly by 

 the papists) to establish any part of Christianity is plainly, strongly, 

 and fully shewn. " Whatsoever," says our author, " either time or the 

 heedless hand of blind chance has drawn down to this present in her 

 huge drag-net, whether fish or sea-weed, shells or shrubs, impelled 

 and unchosen, those are the fathers." And so he chides the good 

 prelate for divulging useless treatises, stuffed with the specious names 

 of Ignatius and Polycarpus, with fragments of old martyrologers, to 

 distract and stagger the multitude of credulous readers. The piece 

 is highly worthy of perusal, as an exposure of the claims of tradition. 



The "Reason of Church Government" urged against prelates, is the 

 most finished of Milton's writings on church affairs : it contains mys- 

 tical passages, but it displays all his learning, with less than his usual 

 pedantry. The flowers of his diction and imagination blossom up at 

 every step; and some sweeps of a sublime and pathetic eloquence 

 recal into no unequal comparison the orators of antiquity. 



The forms of church government are four ; independency, pres- 

 bytery, episcopacy, popery. When a preacher or writer first pub- 

 lishes opinions which are to found a sect, they are immediately em- 

 braced only by the contiguous public. By degrees the doctrines 

 spread ; a few are converted in several congregations, and, at length, 

 a majority in one or two. The converted church or churches, if a 

 reform is to be introduced, must assert a right of private judgment to 

 belong to each church, a congregational power to decree articles and 

 ceremonies for itself. A nascent sect cannot justify its own conduct 

 without defending independency. When a considerable number of 

 congregations has received the leading principles of a sect, the priests 

 and more eminent laymen of such congregations are led by a natural 

 sympathy to associate ; their opinions become amalgamated ; in little 

 things each yields a little to his neighbour ; and the cohesion is 

 strengthened by voluntary discipline, tending to superinduce uni- 

 formity. The ministers whose talent and learning, the laymen whose 

 opulence and benificence, fit them for the superintendence of the 

 spiritual and charitable concerns of the embodied interest, gradually 

 become a permanent committee, and call in the aid of the most vene- 

 rable pastor, to lend sanction and authority to the general will ; and 

 thus every adolescent sect comes to be governed by a practical pres- 

 bytery. So soon as a sect becomes sufficiently important to make its 

 alliance valuable to political parties, it begins to listen to such parties 

 in the election of its superintendent, or episcopal presbyter. The 

 election is still from below, but the conge d'elire from above. From 



