tifice and labour, is still evidently that of a man, more conversant with the authors of Greece and Rome than with those of his own country; and seems to be formed without sufficient attention to the genius of his native tongue. This observation will apply with very diminished force to some of his succeeding compositions; but in all of them there is an occasional recurrence of foreign idioms, and of a classic inversion of phrase, not properly admissible in a language, in which prepositions supply the place and office of inflexions.

The point, at issue between these polemics, was the divine or the human origin of episcopacy, as a peculiar order in the church, invested with spiritual rights and powers, distinct in kind and preeminent in degree. That an officer with the title of episcopus, or overseer, (corrupted at first by our Saxon progenitors into bigcop, and afterwards softened into bishop,) had existed in the Church from its first construction by the Apostles, was a fact, which could not be denied: but while this officer was asserted by one party to have been nothing more than the president of the assembly of elders, he was affirmed by the other to have been elevated above these elders, or presbyters by

essential privileges, by a separate as well as by a superior jurisdiction. The temporal possessions and rights of the prelacy could not properly constitute any part of the controversy. As a portion of the political system of the country, and tracing their pedigree no higher than the civil establishment of the Church, these adventitious circumstances were to be debated on the ground of expediency alone; and to blend them, with the immediate and distinct object in question, seems to have been an unfair practice of the puritan disputants, for the purpose of increasing the unpopularity of their adversaries. Till the Church was adopted by the government, under Constantine, its officers could not be invested with civil rank or with corporate property but the subsequent accession of political importance would not supersede their spiritual jurisdiction, and could not be denounced as incompatible, because it was not coeval with their original appointment.

As a specimen of our author's manner and spirit in these pieces, I will cite the following passage respecting the puerile and superstitious Papias, whom Usher had adduced as the link, which connected episcopacy with the apostolical age. "And this may be a

Of Prelatical Episco. P.W. vol. i. 69.

sufficient reason to us, why we need no longer muse at the spreading of many idle traditions so soon after the Apostles, whilst such as this Papias had the throwing about, and the inconsiderate zeal of the next age, that heeded more the person than the doctrine, had the gathering them up. Wherever a man, who had been in any way conversant with the Apostles, was to be found, thither flew all the inquisitive ears, although the exercise of right instructing was changed into the curiosity of impertinent fabling. Where the mind was to be edified with solid doctrine, there the fancy was soothed with solemn fables: with less fervency was studied what St. Paul or St. John had written, than was listened to one that could say, 'here he taught; here he stood; this was his stature, and thus he went habited:' and, 'O happy house that harboured him, and that cold stone whereon he rested; this village, wherein he wrought such a miracle, and that pavement bedewed with the warm effusion of his last blood, that sprouted up into eternal roses to crown his martyrdom!"-From the last of these works, "The reason of Church Government, &c." we have already cited some fine passages, respecting the writer and his poetic contemplations; and with these

we shall content ourselves as sufficient specimens of the composition.

These productions of Milton's were unquestionably the most learned and able on the puritan side of the controversy. But the piece, which seems most to have attracted the public attention, was a pamphlet, written by the united powers of five of the presbyterian divines, under the appellation of Smectymnuus, a word formed with the initial letters of the names of the authors, Stephen Marshal, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcomen, and William Spurstow.

To this publication bishop Hall replied in "A Defence of the Remonstrance;" and Milton's formidable pen, drawn again in angry opposition to the prelate, produced "Animadversions on the Remonstrant's Defence." This work is thrown into the form of a dialogue between the remonstrant and his answerer, that passages from the prelate's pages, being assigned to the mouth of the former, may be confounded, in their detached and helpless state, by the remarks of the latter. Why" this close and succinct manner," says our author," was rather to be chosen, this was the reason, chiefly that the

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a P.W. vol. i. 154.

ingenuous reader, without further amusing himself in the labyrinth of controversial antiquity, may come to the speediest way to see the truth vindicated and sophistry taken short at the first false bound." The replies of the animadverter are always severe, and frequently jocose; and there prevails throughout the piece a grim smile, which sharpens and aggravates the offence.

When we contemplate these works as the productions of one year, and of a man occupied with the fatiguing duties of an instructor of boys, we must necessarily wonder at that unwearied industry, that ready application of various knowledge, and that exuberant fertility of ardent mind, which their composition so manifestly discovers. These five pieces were written in 1641, when their author was thirty-three years of

age.

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In the beginning of 1642, his “ Animadversions," which unquestionably were personal and rude, excited a reply from the pen, as it was imagined, of a son of the insulted bishop; and this connexion of the youthful writer might extenuate the violence, if it could not justify the calumnies of his "Modest confutation," as he was pleased to call it, "against a slanderous, and scurrilous libel." If this reply, indeed, had been pub