and fortitude, that so nobly vindicated our liberty, our victory at once against two the most prevailing usurpers over mankind, superstition and tyranny, unpraised or uncelebrated in a written monument, likely to outlive detraction, as it hath hitherto convinced or silenced not a few of our detractors, especially in parts abroad. (3)

7. After our liberty and religion thus prosperously fought for, gained, and many years possessed, except in those unhappy interruptions, which God hath removed; now that nothing remains, but in all reason the certain hopes of a speedy and immediate settlement for ever in a firm and free commonwealth, for this extolled and magnified nation, regardless both of honour won, or deliverances vouchsafed from heaven, to fall back, or rather to creep back so poorly, as it seems the multitude would, to their once abjured and detested thraldom of kingship, to be ourselves the slanderers of our own just and religious deeds, though done by some to covetous and ambitious ends, yet not therefore to be stained with their infamy, or they to asperse the integrity of others; and yet these now by revolting from the conscience of deeds well done, both in church and state, to throw away and forsake, or rather to betray, a just and noble cause for the mixture of bad men who have ill-managed and abused

(5) He here makes manifest with what satisfaction he looked back upon his own achievements, in defending the people of England against their foreign defamers, and the advocates of prelacy at home.

it, (which had our fathers done heretofore, and on the same pretence deserted true religion, what had long ere this become of our gospel, and all Protestant reformation so much intermixed with the avarice and ambition of some reformers ?) and by thus relapsing, to verify all the bitter predictions of our triumphing enemies, who will now think they wisely discerned and justly censured both us and all our actions as rash, rebellious, hypocritical, and impious; not only argues a strange, degenerate contagion suddenly spread among us, fitted and prepared for new slavery, but will render us a scorn and derision to all our neighbours.

8. And what will they at best say of us, and of the whole English name, but scoffingly, as of that foolish builder mentioned by our Saviour, who began to build a tower, and was not able to finish it? Where is this goodly tower of a commonwealth, which the English boasted they would build to overshadow kings, and be another Rome in the west? The foundation indeed they lay gallantly, but fell into a worse confusion, not of tongues, but of factions, than those at the tower of Babel; and have left no memorial of their work behind them remaining but in the common laughter of Europe! Which must needs redound the more to our shame, if we but look on our neighbours the United Provinces, to us inferior in all outward advantages; who notwithstanding, in the midst of greater difficulties, courageously, wisely, constantly went through with the same work, and are settled in all

the happy enjoyments of a potent and flourishing republic to this day.

9. Besides this, if we return to kingship, and soon repent, (as undoubtedly we shall, when we begin to find the old encroachments coming on by little and little upon our consciences, which must necessarily proceed from king and bishop united inseparably in one interest,) we may be forced perhaps to fight over again all that we have fought, and spend over again all that we have spent, but are never like to attain thus far as we are now advanced (°) to the recovery of our freedom, never to have it in possession as we now have it, never to be vouchsafed hereafter the like mercies and signal assistances from Heaven in our cause, if by our ingrateful backsliding we make these fruitless; flying now to regal concessions from his divine condescensions and gracious answers to our once importuning prayers against the tyranny which we then groaned under; making vain and viler than dirt the blood of so many thousand faithful and valiant English

(6) Nearly two hundred years have elapsed, and he has not yet been proved a false prophet. We have in our own day, indeed, witnessed great reforms, and others are even now in progress. But we have still a house filled with hereditary legislators, with men, who, without understanding the question under debate, without even hearing the reasons urged for or against a measure, send their blind votes from beyond the seas, or commission another man to oppose, in their names, the interests of their country; and in that same house all the out-of-date prejudices, all the feudal notions of our ignorant ancestors, with many others, worse than they ever entertained, are by grea numbers fostered, openly professed, gloried in, to the shame of

our age.

men, who left us in this liberty, bought with their lives; losing by a strange after-game of folly all the battles we have won, together with all Scotland as to our conquest, hereby lost, which never any of our kings could conquer, all the treasure we have spent, not that corruptible treasure only, but that far more precious of all our late miraculous deliverances; treading back again with lost labour all our happy steps in the progress of reformation, and most pitifully depriving ourselves the instant fruition of that free government, which we have so dearly purchased, a free commonwealth, not only held by wisest men in all ages the noblest, the manliest, the equallest, the justest government, the most agreeable to all due liberty and proportioned equality, both human, civil, and Christian, most cherishing to virtue and true religion, but also (I may say it with greatest probability) plainly commended, or rather enjoined by our Saviour himself, to all Christians, not without remarkable disallowance, and the brand of Gentilism upon kingship.

10. God in much displeasure gave a king to the Israelites, and imputed it a sin to them that they sought one but Christ apparently forbids his disciples to admit of any such heathenish government: "The kings of the Gentiles," saith he, "exercise lordship over them ;" and they that" exercise authority upon them are called benefactors: but ye shall not be so; but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that serveth." The occasion of these his words was the ambitious desire of Zebe

dee's two sons, to be exalted above their brethren in his kingdom, which they thought was to be ere long upon earth. That he speaks of civil government, is manifest by the former part of the comparison, which infers the other part to be always in the same kind. And what government comes nearer to this precept of Christ, than a free commonwealth; wherein they who are the greatest, are perpetual servants and drudges to the public at their own cost and charges, neglect their own affairs, yet are not elevated above their brethren; live soberly in their families, walk the street as other men, may be spoken to freely, familiarly, friendly, without adoration? (7) Whereas a king must be adored like a demigod, with a dissolute and haughty

(7) Dr. Gillies, many years ago, translated the Politics of Aristotle for the purpose,-which Johnson might, perhaps, had he been a reformer, have termed "fantastical,"-of combating the popular predilection in favour of liberal institutions: and, with this view, he endeavoured, both in his notes, and the peculiar phraseology he adopted in rendering the text, to misrepresent the sense of the original, which, as Hobbes clearly perceived, is hostile to monarchy. Nevertheless, in this elegant but faithless translation, the reader will find the following passage, among many others which show the conformity of Aritotle's and Milton's opinions. "Were one portion of the community as far distinguished above the rest, as we believe the gods and heroes to be exalted above men, or, as Scylax says, that the kings of India are superior to their subjects, in the virtues of mind and body," (a glance at the doctrine of castes,)" it would be proper that these dignified races or families should be invested with hereditary and unalterable authority; and, for this purpose, trained and educated in a manner peculiar to themselves, and relative to that preeminent rank which they were for ever destined to hold. But, since such races or families are nowhere to be found in these parts of the world, JUSTICE concurs with GOOD POLICY, in requiring