ever doctrines he chose without the fear of censure or reproach. The want of an adequate and legal provision, would drive from the ministerial office all that is respectable for rank or talent, to make room for the hypocrite and the enthusiast. Learning would be soon scared away, when even the lowest of the rabble might presume to become teachers; and ignorance and fanaticism would then be left undisturbed to hatch their wild brood of heterogeneous opinions. Instead of being all of one mind, and speaking the same thing, the Christian world would become a very Babel of noisy and discordant tongues. If under such a state of things the Church could exist at all, she would exist shorn of her beams, lacerated by endless dissensions, without rewards to remunerate merit or to stimulate abilities, with no outward splendour to adorn her, no harmony, no order, no discipline.

We will not undergo the useless trouble of refuting a scheme more vain and visionary, more pregnant with things "abortive, monstrous, and unkindly mixed" than his own limbo of vanity. We will not contrast it with the beautiful and evangelical fabric of the Anglican Church, unrivalled for her pure faith and tolerant principles. With a distinction of ranks to excite the hopes of emulous youth, with wealth sufficient to reward talent, but not to encourage indolence, she invites to her service those who by knowledge and active piety are best fitted to diffuse the truths of religion. Her claim to veneration and respect rests upon the high and exalted ground of her being a faithful depository of revealed truth, a pure branch of the apostolical Church of Christ. By the excellence of her formularies, the soundness of her doctrines, and the well directed zeal of her ministry, she' is the head and glory of the Reformation; subject to trials as militant here on earth, but destined hereafter to reign triumph-' ant in heaven. That she is built upon the rock of ages, and that her episcopal form of ecclesiastical polity is of divine institution, has been demonstrated by numbers who have proteeted and adorned the Church of England. It is not required of us to go over the same ground; and we have not the presumption to imagine that our feeble hands are needed for the safety of our Zion, defended as it has been, and still is, by hosts of champions whose prowess has borne down all opposition in the! field of controversy.

-It can be nothing wonderful that he whose ideas of Church government are so crude and undigested, should entertain con-' ceptions equally false of the external services of religion. Milton lays but little stress upon the public offices of worship, and the outward ministration of the word. With regard to the place

of prayer, all are in his opinion equally suitable; (pp. 567, 600.) as to public instruction any believer is competent to preach the Gospel; (p. 463.) the law of the Sabbath is repealed, and no particular day of worship has been appointed in its place; (p. 605.) "the Lord's prayer was intended rather as a model of supplication, than as a form to be repeated verbatim by the Apostles, or by Christian Churches at the present day. Hence the superfluousness of set forms of worship; seeing that, with Christ for our master, and the Holy Spirit for our assistance in prayer, we can have no need of any human aid in either respect." (p. 562.)

That our Saviour intended the Lord's prayer as a form to be repeated by Christians, is evident from the expressions recorded by St. Luke, "When ye pray, say, Our Father, which art in heaven," &c. (xi. 2.) and in St. Matthew's Gospel Christ's words imply the same thing, After this manner therefore outws ovv, pray ye, Our Father, &c. (vi. 9.) Milton was too good a Greek scholar not to have drawn the same conclusion, had not his undestanding been perverted by puritanical zeal and prejudice. If set forms of worship are superfluous, it is surely not unreasonable to infer that the extemporaneous prayers of ministers are equally unnecessary to guide the devotions of religious assemblies. In the light of addresses to the Deity it is the same thing to the worshipper whether they are precomposed or extemporary; they are both.forms which he has to follow: and no reason can be given why the Holy Spirit should not be alike influential in the one case as in the other. To reject altogether set forms in public worship is impossible, the unpremeditated prayer of an individual minister being a set form to the rest of the congregation,—and it would be unwise were it possible. In our present imperfect state it would be giving admission to absurd, inconsistent, and unhallowed addresses to a God of infinite purity and perfections. It would open a door to all the excesses of fanatic and self-conceited ignorance, to the exclusion of calm and rational devotion, the consequence of which would be that the thinking and sober part of mankind would either turn away from public worship in disgust, or give way to that mystic Pictism, to which Milton, as may be inferred both from his personal conduct and the treatise before us, was too much inclined in the latter period of his life.

The advantages of liturgical offices of devotion so far preponderate over spontaneous prayer, that it is surprising they should appear in a different light to the keen intellect of our great poet. In reference to his anti-Trinitarian notions, Dr. Sumner regrets "that the mighty mind of Milton, in its conscientious, though

mistaken search after truth, had not an opportunity of examining those masterly refutations of the Arian scheme, for which Christianity is indebted to the labours of those distinguished ornaments of the English Church," namely, Bishop Bull and Dr. Waterland (p. xxxv.). But his understanding, warped by prejudice, and elated by self-confidence, would probably have resisted the arguments of these celebrated divines, as it did the arguments of a Hooker and a Hammond. He could not be unacquainted with the incomparable work of the former on Ecclesiastical Polity, and we cannot suppose him ignorant of the "View of the New Directory and Vindication of the Ancient Liturgy," by the judicious Hammond*; a treatise which, if we may judge from its effect upon ourselves, brings conviction to the mind with irresistible force. The prejudices which Lord Bacon, in his " Novum Organum," by a bold but appropriate image, calls the idols of the understanding, are able to wrest the judgment even of men who with honest intentions, and in the sobriety of age, devote themselves to the investigation of the truth. A mind formed in such a mould as Milton's, fervent in its affections, bold and daring, with the power and the ambition to surmount whatever is arduous, and spurred on by the indomitable ardour of genius, became an easy prey to the contagion of the unhappy period in which he lived. Yet in an age phrenzied with fanaticism to a degree scarcely to be paralleled in the history of human folly, there were not a few men of commanding intellect and learning, raised up, as we believe, by the especial interposition of Providence, who stedfastly adhered to the Church in her fallen fortunes, and, calm amidst the storms, steered the consecrated ark safely through the rocks and shoals which endangered it, into a haven of peace and security.

With regard to the time of worship, Milton thus sums up the result of his researches; "first, that under the Gospel no one day is appointed for Divine worship in preference to another, except such as the Church may set apart of its own authority for the voluntary assembling of its members; and secondly, that this may conveniently take place once every seven days, and particularly on the first day of the week; provided always that it be observed in compliance with the authority of the Church, and not in obedience to the edicts of the magistrate and likewise that a snare be not laid for the conscience by the allegation of the Divine commandment, borrowed from the Decalogue."

* Hammond's Treatise, as appears from the Life by Fell, prefixed to his, works in 4 vols. fol., was published in 1645, and Milton died in 1674. He could hardly have overlooked, during all this intermediate time the work of so distinguished a man as Dr. Hammond.

(P: 610.) The observance of different days in the week would interfere with the necessary occupations of men in civil society; but how one particular day could be set apart in any community by the authority of the Church, where any body of Christians, numerous or few, or one individual, may constitute a Church, we are at a loss to discover. It is the doctrine of most Unitarians, and of many in other respects orthodox, that our Saviour has abolished all distinction of days; and the Romanists: ground the obligation of a weekly festival on the authority of the Church. Without entering into the question of the divine origin of the sabbatical institution (though the arguments for the affirmative are in our judgment too strong to admit of doubt,) we shall merely observe that it is dangerous to rob it of a divine sanction, considering how indispensable it is to the maintenance of true religion. Abolish the observation of a sabbath, and piety will soon vanish from the earth. Impiety, and the dese cration of this festival, must, in the nature of things, have a mutual relationship. Hence it is a fact verified by all experience and all ecclesiastical history, that according to the manner in which the sabbath has been kept in all ages, religion has been found to flourish or decay..

1. We had intended to point out for reprehension some other: opinions which are deemed erroneous by the best divines; as for instance, that the world was not created out of nothing; (p. 178,) that the soul is subject to death, and consequently that there is no intermediate state, (l. i. c. 13); that the moral law of Moses is abolished, (l. i. c. 27); that infant baptism is improper, (1. i. c. 28); that the Decalogue is not binding upon Christians, (1. ii. c. 1). We might also have noticed the author's strange remarks on the nature of the Deity (l. i. c. 2), his low and unscriptural explanation of the sacraments, (l. i. c. 28); and his absurd definition of marriage, (l. i. c. 10); together with some contradictions, and many false interpretations, and mistaken applications of scripture texts; but we withdraw from the ungrateful task, and shall conclude with one or two general obser

vations.

We are told by his biographers that Milton was master of Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, as well as of the modern languages, French, Italian, and Spanish. That he was an universal scholar is evinced by his writings; but that his biblical knowledge was either extensive or profound cannot be so easily granted. It would be ridiculous to compare him to the giants of those days, to a Walton, a Castell, a Pococke, a Beveridge, a Pearson, a Hammond, a Barrow, a Bramhall, a Taylor, a Lightfoot, or an Usher. As a theologian he must be allowed

to be inferior to his non-conformist brethren, Baxter, Howe, and Owen; nor is it certain whether he can be ranked above his Puritanical contemporaries,the mystical Smectymnus*. Be this as it may, but little evidence appears of extensive learning in the "Christian Doctrine." It exhibits no traces of deep re search; nor does his mode of treating the several topics, evince a mind enriched with the ample stores of theological literature. He seldom refers to other authors; and there is nothing to show that he was well read in the remains of the ancient Fathers. This, it is true, may be in some degree accounted for, partly by the confidence in his own abilities which led him to disdain all borrowed assistance, and partly by his design to found his system of divinity on the Bible alone; but his citations of Scripture, and the way in which they are applied, indicate neither learning nor judgment; He not unfrequently strings : together texts without regard to their applicability, as it were with a view to parade, in a manner which no judicious interpreter can approve. He seldom attempts: critical explications, and when he does, they are for the most part trite and superficial. It was an age, it is readily granted, when, biblical criticism and hermeneutic theology were only beginning to be cultivated, at least in this country; but it does not appear that he was much conversant with these branches of knowledge without, which no one should presume to expound the sacred Scriptures.c

This was probably one cause of the erroneous view which he took of some principal and doctrinal texts; and another unques tionably was his disdain of all authority in religious matters. He seems to have considered every surrender of individual opis nion_as inconsistent with Christian liberty, and every deference to the judgment or authority of authors as an infringement of the natural rights of man. Every believer, he avers, has a right to interpret the Scriptures for himself, and the exposition of public teachers can be of no use to him, except so far as it is confirmed by his own conscience, Hence he believes that any acquiescence in human authority, in human traditions, in the opinions of our forefathers or of antiquity, is to impose a yoke upon believers contrary to the freedom which we enjoy under the Gospel (1. i. c. 30.) With him the Scriptures alone are the rule and canon of faith, and a more reverential homage cannot

Bishop Hall's Humble Remonstrance in favour of Episcopacy was answered by five ministers under the name of Smectymnuus, viz., Stephen Mar shall, Edward Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcomen, and William Spurstow, the initial letters of whose names produce the word." This," says Mr. Todd, "is to be enumerated among the few playful tricks of fanaticism.” Life of Milton, p. 45.