vehement reproof, as he hath known hitherto how to deserve them both. But lest some may haply think, or thus expostulate with me after this debatement, who made you the busy almoner to deal about this dole of laughter and reprehension, which no man thanks your bounty for? To the urbanity of that man I should answer much after this sort that I, friend objector, having read of heathen philosophers, some to have taught, that whosoever would but use his ear to listen, might hear the voice of his guiding genius ever before him, calling, and as it were pointing to that way which is his part to follow; others, as the stoics, to account reason, which they call the Hegemonicon (35), to be the common Mercury conducting without errour those that give themselves obediently to be led accordingly. Having read this, I could not esteem so poorly of the faith which I profess, that God had left nothing to those who had forsaken all other doctrines for his, to be an inward witness and warrant of what they have to do, as that they should need to measure themselves by (35) What Milton here intends may be learned from a passage of Nemesius "De Animâ." "Zeno Stoicus, inquit, octonarum partium animam esse censet, partiens eam in principem facultatem,-rò nyεμоviкòv,-in quinque sensus, et vocis mittendæ, procreandique vim. Panatius philosophus edendæ vocis facultatem, motionis ejus quâ per se animalia cientur, partem esse vult: et quidem rectissimè. Procreatricem verò, non animæ, sed naturæ partem." "Duas e ergo docto tollit, sex relinquit;" says Lipsius. Physiol. Stoic. 1. iii. Diss. xvii. Opera, t. iv, p. 1002, Stobæus observes to the same purpose : τὸ ἡγεμονικὸν ἄρχοντος χώραν ἔχειν. τὰ δε ἄλλα μέρη εν ὑπηρέτου τάξει ἀπεδίδοσαν. other men's measures, how to give scope or limit to their proper actions; for that were to make us the most at a stand, the most uncertain and accidental wanderers in our doings, of all religions in the world. So that the question ere while moved, who is he that spends thus the benevolence of laughter and reproof so liberally upon such men as the prelates, may return with a more just demand, who he is not of place and knowledge never so mean, under whose contempt and jerk these men are not deservedly fallen? Neither can religion receive any wound by disgrace thrown upon the prelates, since religion and they surely were never in such amity. They rather are the men who have wounded religion, and their stripes must heal her. I might also tell them, what Electra in Sophocles, a wise virgin, answered her wicked mother, who thought herself too violently reproved by her the daughter: 'Tis you that say it, not I; you do the deeds, 42. If therefore the Remonstrant complain of libels, it is because he feels them to be right aimed. For I ask again, as before in the Animadversions, how long is it since he hath disrelished libels? We never heard the least mutter of his voice against them while they flew abroad without control or check, defaming the Scots and Puritans (36). And (36) The libels against the Puritans previous to the Great Revolution were milk and honey compared with those published after the Restoration. Among these Butler's ingenious poem must be reckoned; and the fanatical notes of Dr. Grey con yet he can remember of none but Lysimachus Nicanor, and " that he misliked and censured." No more but of one can the Remonstrant remember? What if I put him in mind of one more? What if of one more whereof the Remonstrant in many likelihoods may be thought the author? Did he never see a pamphlet intitled after his own fashion," A Survey of that foolish, seditious, scandalous, prophane Libel, the Protestation protested?" The child doth not more expressly refigure the visage of his father, than that book resembles the style of the Remonstrant, in those idioms of speech, wherein he seems most to delight: and in the seventeenth page three lines together are taken out of the Remonstrance word for word, not as a citation, but as an author borrows from himself. Whoever it be, he may as justly be said to have libelled, as he against whom he writes: there ye shall find another man than is here made show of, there he bites as fast as this whines. 66 Vinegar in the ink" is there "the antidote of vipers." Laughing in a religious controversy is there" a thrifty physic to expel his melancholy." 43. In the meantime the testimony of Sir Francis Bacon was not misalleged, complaining that libels on the bishops' part were uttered openly; and if he hoped the prelates had no intelligence with the libellers, he delivers it but as his favour tain the cream of innumerable other libels. Scarcely is the character of those religious people yet understood. Sir Walter Scott, in spite of his hostility, has still been instrumental in directing the attention of the public to their history. G I able opinion. But had he contradicted himself, how could I assoil him here, more than a little before, where I know not how, by entangling himself, he leaves an aspersion upon Job, which by any else I never heard laid to his charge? For having affirmed that "there is no greater confusion than the confounding of jest and earnest," presently he brings the example of Job, "glancing at conceits of mirth, when he sat among the people with the gravity of a judge upon him." If jest and earnest be such a confusion, then were the people much wiser than Job, for "he smiled, and they believed him not." To defend libels, which is that whereof I am next accused, was far from my purpose. had not so little share in good name, as to give another that advantage against myself. The sum of what I said was, that a more free permission of writing at some times might be profitable, in such a question especially wherein the magistrates are not fully resolved; and both sides have equal liberty to write, as now they have. Not as when the prelates bore sway, in whose time the books of some men were confuted, when they who should have answered were in close prison, denied the use of pen or paper. (37) And the divine right of episcopacy was then valiantly asserted, when he who would have been respondent must have bethought himself withal how he could refute the Clink or (37) Hume, no friend to the Puritans, thus explains the origin of this method of confuting: "The same principles of priestly government continuing, after Christianity became the established religion, they have engendered a spirit of persecution, which has the Gatehouse. (38) If now therefore they be pursued with bad words, who persecuted others with bad deeds, it is a way to lessen tumult rather than to increase it; whenas anger thus freely vented spends itself ere it break out into action, though Machiavel, whom he cites, or any other Machiavelian priest, think the contrary. 44. Now, readers, I bring ye to his third section; wherein very cautiously and no more than needs, lest I should take him for some chaplain at hand, some squire of the body to his prelate, one that serves not at the altar only, but at the court cupboard, he will bestow on us a pretty model of himself; and sobs me out half a dozen phthisical mottoes, wherever he had them, hopping short in the measure of convulsion-fits; in which labour the agony of his wit having escaped narrowly, instead of well-sized periods, he greets us with a quantity of thumb-ring posies. "He has a fortune therefore good, because he is content with it." This is a piece of sapience not worth the brain of a fruit-trencher; as if content were the measure of what is good or bad in the gift of fortune: for by this rule a bad man may have a good fortune, because he may be ofttimes content with it for many reasons which have no affinity with virtue, as love ever since been the poison of human society, and the source of the most inveterate factions in every government."-Essay on Parties in General, 4to. p. 40. Even Stillingfleet, when worsted in argument by Locke, seemed to regret that recourse could not be had to physical syllogisms. (38) The Newgate and Cold-bath Fields of those days. |
