xxxvi PREFIX TO THE PRESENT EDITION. chance to meet him and inform him. We have no news; therefore, with my best wishes, I rest Your very affectionate Please to present my humble duty to my Lord Bishop of Ely. Feb. 13, 1676-7. I suppose you sometimes see Mr. Dove; when you doe, I pray give him my hearty love and service; and tell him that I shall not, I think, be at London untill my waiting time in April. (Addressed,) For my Reverend friend, at Ely House, in Holborn, (The enclosure referred to.) SIR, By order of a Meeting you are injoined immediately, without delay, upon receiving this, to repair hither to ye College; no further allowance to discontinue being granted to you. This you are to do upon penalty of ye Statute, which is Expulsion from ye College, if you disobey. We doe also warn you that if you shall publish any Writing mischievous to ye Church and State, you will thence incurre a forfeiture of your interest here. I hope God will give you ye wisedome and grace to take warning. Trin. Coll. Feby. 13, 1676-7. For Mr. DANIEL SKINNER. State Paper Office, So I rest, December 2, 1825. A few months later a yet more interesting document was discovered, which is thus described in a letter from Mr. Lemon to the Translator :- "I avail myself of the earliest opportunity of communi cating to you a circumstance which I flatter myself will be gratifying to you, as it is to me. This afternoon, Mr. Lechmere, a gentleman in this Office, (who is engaged in examining and arranging an immense collection of old miscellaneous papers) brought up to me a document which he had just accidentally found amongst them. It is an original letter from Daniel Elzevir to Sir Joseph Williamson, dated at Amsterdam in November 1676, in which he acquaints Sir Joseph that, about a year before, Mr. Skinner put into his hands a Collection of Letters, and a Treatise on Theology written by the deceased Milton, with directions to print them; but on examining the works, he (Elzevir) found many things in them which, in his opinion, had better be suppressed than divulged;—that he, in consequence, declined printing them, and that Mr. Skinner had lately been at Amsterdam, and expressed himself highly gratified that Elzevir had not commenced the printing of them—and then took away the manuscripts. "It is not less singular than gratifying, that the discovery of this letter so completely confirms the conjectures we had previously formed respecting the Doctrina Christiana; and I think you will agree with me in opinion, that this is the only link wanting in the chain of evidence to prove the authenticity of this work, and that Milton was the undoubted author of it. The letter of Elzevir, above alluded to, is unquestionably an original, as I have carefully collated it with another letter of Elzevir's, which I fortunately have in my possession; and the writing of the two letters is perfect identity. "State Paper Office, March 22, 1826." This interesting discovery sets entirely at rest all doubt, if, notwithstanding the internal evidence, any could yet have existed, as to the authenticity of the manuscript translated in the following pages. FARNHAM CASTLE, Dec. 1852. . JOHN MILTON, TO ALL THE CHURCHES OF CHRIST, AND TO ALL WHO PROFESS THE CHRISTIAN FAITH THROUGHOUT THE WOrld, PEACE, AND THE RECOGNITION OF THE TRUTH, AND ETERNAL SALVATION IN GOD THE FATHER, AND IN OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST. SINCE the commencement of the last century, when religion began to be restored from the corruptions of more than thirteen hundred years to something of its original purity, many treatises of theology have been published, conducted according to sounder principles, wherein the chief heads of Christian doctrine are set forth sometimes briefly, sometimes in a more enlarged and methodical order. I think myself obliged, therefore, to declare in the first instance why, if any works have already appeared as perfect as the nature of the subject will admit, I have not remained contented with them—or, if all my predecessors have treated it unsuccessfully, why their failure has not deterred me from attempting an undertaking of a similar kind. If I were to say that I had devoted myself to the study of the Christian religion because nothing else can so effectually rescue the lives and minds of men from those two detestable curses, slavery and superstition,' I should seem to have acted rather from a regard to my highest earthly comforts, than from a religious motive. But since it is only to the individual faith of each that the Deity has opened the way of eternal salvation, and as he requires that he who would be saved should have a personal belief of his own,' I resolved not to repose on the faith or judgement of others in matters relating to God; but on the one hand, having taken the grounds of my faith from divine revelation alone, and on the other, having neglected nothing which depended on my own industry, I thought fit to scrutinize and ascertain for myself the several points of my religious belief, by the most careful perusal and meditation of the Holy Scriptures themselves. If therefore I mention what has proved beneficial in my own practice, it is in the hope that others, who have a similar wish of improving themselves, may be thereby invited to pursue the same method. I entered upon an assiduous course of study in my youth, beginning with the books of the Old and New Tes tament in their original languages, and going diligently through Our victory at once against two, the most prevailing usurpers over mankind, superstition and tyranny.' A Ready and easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth. Milton's Prose Works, II. p. 113. • When you laboured under more sorts of oppression than one, you betook yourselves to God for refuge, and he was graciously pleased to hear your most earnest prayer and desires. He has gloriously delivered you, the first of nations, from the two greatest mischiefs of this life, and most pernicious to virtue, tyranny and superstition.' Defence of the People of England. Prose Works, I. p. 212. His living temples, built by faith to stand, Their own faith, not another's? Paradise Lost, XII. 526. |