with their tongues; for their heart was not right with him." And there was one, who in the time of his affliction trespassed more against God. This was that King Ahaz.

392. He glories much in the forgiveness of his enemies; so did his grandmother at her death. Wise men would sooner have believed him, had he not so often told us so. But he hopes to erect "the trophies of his charity over us." And trophies of charity no doubt will be as glorious as trumpets before the alms of hypocrites; and more especially the trophies of such an aspiring charity, as offers in his prayer to share victory with God's compassion, which is over all his works. Such prayers as these may haply catch the people, as was intended: but how they please God is to be much doubted, though prayed in secret, much less written to be divulged. Which perhaps may gain him after death a short, contemptible, and soon fading reward; not what he aims at, to stir the constancy and solid firmness of any wise man, or to unsettle the conscience of any knowing Christian, (if he could ever aim at a thing so hopeless, and above the genius of his cleric elocution,) but to catch the worthless approbation of an inconstant, irrational, and image-doting rabble; that like a credulous and hapless herd, begotten to servility, and enchanted with these popular institutes of tyranny, subscribed with a new device of the king's picture at his prayers, hold out both their ears with such delight and ravishment to be stigmatized and bored through, in witness of their

own voluntary and beloved baseness. The rest, whom perhaps ignorance without malice, or some error, less than fatal, hath for the time misled, on this side sorcery or obduration, may find the grace and good guidance, to bethink themselves and

recover.

DIVISIONS

OF THE

COMMONWEALTH.

BRIEF DELINEATION

OF A

FREE COMMONWEALTH.

MODE OF ESTABLISHING

A

COMMONWEALTH.

་

DURING the confusion and disorders of the year 1659, when, after the death of Cromwell, notwithstanding a republican majority in the parliament, the partisans of the Stuarts, in conjunction with the dregs of the populace, clamoured for the restoration of the exiled family, Milton, inspired with shame and indignation by the relapse of his countrymen, or a large portion of them at least, into their old passion for servitude, composed the following pieces, in which he warns the nation against their fatal error, foretells the evils they would inevitably bring upon themselves, and to which they should see no end, but by undoing what they were now so eager to accomplish. His prophecy was fulfilled to the letter; and, after a disgraceful interval of twenty-eight years, the Stuarts, together with the doctrines of the divine right of kings, and passive obedience, were finally banished together from these realms in 1688. The first of these tracts, Dr. Symmons observes, "was first published by Toland, and is well-worthy of the reader's attention. After an interval of a few months, he inscribed to Monk, who now seemed to command the issue of things, his Mode of Establishing a Commonwealth;' a piece intended rather to expose the evils necessarily consequent to the nation's relapse into its old vassalage under kings, and to demonstrate the preference of a republican to a monarchical government, than to propose any just model of a popular constitution."*

*Life of Milton, p. 477.

VOL. II.

Y