OF SUPERSTITION.

It were better to have no opinion of God at all, than such an opinion as is unworthy of him; for the one is unbelief, the other is contumely; and certainly superstition is the reproach of the Deity. Plutarch saith well to that purpose: "Surely," saith he, “I had rather a great deal men should say there was no such a man at all as Plutarch, than that they should say there was one Plutarch that would eat his children as soon as they were born," as the poets speak of Saturn; and as the contumely is greater towards God, so the danger is greater towards men. Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation, all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy in the minds of men: therefore atheism did never perturb states; for it makes men wary of themselves, as looking no further; and we see the times inclined to atheism, as the time of Augustus Cæsar, were civil times; but superstition hath been the confusion of many states, and bringeth in a new "primum mobile” (first motive cause), that ravisheth all the spheres of government. The master of superstition is the people, and in all superstition wise men follow fools; and arguments are fitted to practice in a reversed order. It was gravely said by some of the prelates in the Council of Trent, where the doctrine of the schoolmen bare great sway, that the schoolmen were like astronomers, which did feign eccentrics and epicycles, and such engines of orbs, to save the phenomena, though they knew there were no such things; and, in like manner, that the schoolmen had framed a number of subtile and intricate axioms and theorems, to save the practice of the church. The causes of superstition are pleasing and sensual rites and ceremonies; excess of outward and physical holiness; over-great reverence of traditions, which cannot but load the church; the strategems of prelates for their own ambition and lucre; the favoring too much of good intentions,

which openeth the gate to conceits and novelties; the taking an aim at divine matters by human, which cannot but breed mixture of imaginations; and, lastly, barbarous times, especially joined with calamities and disasters. Superstition, without a veil, is a deformed thing; for as it addeth deformity to an ape to be so like a man, so the similitude of superstition to religion makes it the more deformed; and as wholesome meat corrupteth to little worms, so good forms and orders corrupt into a number of petty observances. There is a superstition in avoiding superstition, when men think to do best if they go furthest from the superstition formerly received; therefore care should be had that (as it fareth in ill purgings) the good be not taken away with the bad, which commonly is done when the people is the reformer.

PLEA FOR A FREE PRESS AND FREE THOUGHT.

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* Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discovered, that those confused seeds which were imposed upon Psyche as an incessant labor to cull out and sort asunder, were not more intermixed. It was from out the rind of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into, of having good and evil, that is to say, of knowing good by evil. As, therefore, the state of man now is, what knowledge can there be to choose, what continence to forbear, without the knowledge of evil? He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain and distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring Christian.

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary,

but slinks out of the race, where the immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.

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That virtue, therefore, which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; her whiteness is but an excremental whiteness; which was the reason why our sage and serious poet, Spencer, describing true temperance under the person of Guion, brings him in, with his palmer, through the cave of Mammon, and the bower of earthly bliss, that he might see and know, and yet abstain.

Since, therefore, the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely and with less danger scout into the regions of sin and falsity, than by reading all manner of tractates, and hearing all manner of reason?

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Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties. And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to mis-doubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter? He who hears what praying there is for light and clear knowledge to be sent down among us, would think of other matters to be constituted beyond the discipline of Geneva, framed and fabriced already to our hands. Yet when the new light which we beg for shines in upon us, there be those who envy and oppose, if it come not in first at their casement.

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For who knows not that truth is strong next to the Almighty; she needs no policies or stratagems to make her victorious; those are but the shifts that error uses against her power. What great purchase is this Christian liberty which Paul so often boasts of? His doctrine is, that he who eats or

eats not, regards a day or regards it not, may do either to the Lord. How many other things might be tolerated in peace, and left to conscience, had we but charity, and were it not the chief stronghold of our hypocrisy to be ever judging one another? I fear yet this iron yoke of outward conformity hath left a slavish print upon our necks.

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And what do they tell us vainly of new opinions, when this very opinion of theirs, that none must be heard but whom they like, is the worst and newest opinion of all others; and is the chief cause why sects and schisms so much abound, and true knowledge is kept at distance from us; besides yet a greater danger which is in it. For when God shakes a kingdom, with strong and healthful commotions, to a general reforming, it is not untrue that many sectaries and false teachers are then busiest in seducing; but yet more true is it, that God raises to his own work men of rare abilities, and more than common industry, not only to look back and revise what hath heretofore been taught, but to gain further, and to go on some new enlightened steps in the discovery of truth.-John Milton A. D. 1641.

THOUGHTS FROM THE ARCADIA.

Longer I would not wish to draw breath than I may keep myself unspotted of any heinous crime.

In the clear mind of virtue treason can find no hiding-place. The hero's soul may be separated from his body, but never alienated from the remembrance of virtue.

life.

Doing good is the only certainly happy action of a man's

The journey of high honor lies not in smooth ways. Remember that in all miseries lamenting becomes fools, and action the wise.

In a brave bosom honor cannot be rocked asleep by affection.

Prefer truth before the maintaining of an opinion.

Joyful is woe for a noble cause, and welcome all its miseries.

A just man hateth the evil, but not the evil-doer.

It is folly to believe that he can faithfully love, who does not love faithfulness.

Everything that is mine, even to my life, is hers I love, but the secret of my friend is not mine.

A man of true honor thinks himself greater in being subject to his own word, than in being lord of a principality. They are never alone that are accompanied with noble thoughts.-Sir Philip Sidney.

NO CROSS, NO CROWN.

The cross of Christ is a figurative speech borrowed from the outward tree or wooden cross on which Christ submitted to the will of God, in permitting him to suffer death at the hands of evil men. The cross mystical is that divine grace and power which crosses the carnal wills of men, gives a contradiction to their corrupt affections, and constantly opposeth itself to the inordinate and fleshly appetites of their minds; and so may be justly termed the instrument of man's holy dying to the world, and being made conformable to the will of God.

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Nor is a recluse life, the boasted righteousness of some, much more commendable, or one whit nearer the nature of the true cross; for if it be not unlawful as other things are, it is unnatural, which true religion teaches not. The Christian convent and monastery are within, where the soul is encloistered from sin. And this religious house the true followers of Christ carry about with them, who exempt not themselves from the conversation of the world, though they keep themselves from the evil of the world in their conversation.

That is a lazy, rusty, unprofitable self-denial, burdensome to others to feed their idleness; religious bedlams, where people are kept up, lest they should do mischief abroad; patience