traditions of men, and additions to the word of God. Whence also it follows clearly that of all known sects or pretended religions at this day in Christendom Popery is the only or the greatest heresy; and he who is so forward to brand all others for heretics, the obstinate Papist, is the only heretic. Hence one of their own famous writers found just cause to style the Romish Church "Mother of Errour-School of Heresy!" And whereas the Papist boasts himself to be a Roman Catholic! It is a mere contradiction, one of the Pope's bulls; as if he should say, universal particular, a Catholic schismatic. For Catholic in Greek signifies universal: and the Christian Church was so called as consisting of all nations to whom the Gospel was to be preached, in contradistinction to the Jewish Church, which consisted for the most part of Jews only." On the most bitterly controverted point of that age, as well as the present, our poet's judgment is expressed in the most decisive terms: L "Let us now enquire whether Popery be tolerable or no? Popery is a double thing to deal with, and claims a twofold power, ecclesiastical and political, both usurped, and the one supporting the other. But ecclesiastical is ever pretended to political. The Pope, by this mixed faculty, pretends right to kingdoms and states and especially to this of England, thrones and unthrones kings, and absolves the people from their obedience to them; sometimes interdicts to whole nations the public worship of God, shutting up their churches and was wont to drain away greatest part of the wealth of this then miserable land, as part of his patrimony, to maintain the pride and luxury of his court and prelates; and now, since, through the infinite mercy and favour of God, we have shaken off his Babylonish yoke, hath not ceased by his spies and agents, bulls and emissaries, once to destroy both King and Parliament; perpetually to seduce, corrupt, and pervert as many as they can of the people. Whether, therefore, it be fit or reasonable to tolerate men thus principled in religion towards the State, I submit it to the consideration of all magistrates, who are best able to provide for their own and the public safety. As for tolerating the exercise of their religion, supposing their State-activities not to be dangerous, I answer, that toleration is either public or private; and the exercise of their religion, as far as it is idolatrous, can be tolerated neither way: not publicly, without grievous and unsufferable scandal given to all conscientious beholders; not privately, without great offence to God, declared against all kind of idolatry, though secret." Milton elsewhere declares that he only is a real citizen of a State who takes the oath of supremacy as well as allegiance to the reigning power, whether King or Parliament. Future events will prove whether, by tolerating or rather encouraging a religion such as that of Rome, opposed in its essential nature to the ends of civil government, we are not guilty of the folly of those who should seek to domesticate vipers or to tame hyænas. Milton further intended to compose a Latin dictionary, and a synopsis of scriptural theology; but it seems he never accomplished either intention. That his latter days were passed in cessation from the strife of politics is evident from his being accused by Titus Oates as a frequenter of a Popish club! In 1823, Mr. Lemon discovered in the State Paper-office a work bearing Milton's name, with the envelope addressed to Mr. Skinner, merchant. George IV. ordered C. R. Sumner, at that time his chaplain and since raised to the see of Winchester, to translate it into English from the original Latin. Sumner rather takes for granted that the work is Milton's than proves it; and its false claims to be the poet's off spring were quickly exposed by Bishop Burgess. It is not known who the Skinner in question was, for Cyriack Skinner he could not be. How the work passed to Skinner's hands is also involved in obscurity, and not one link in the chain of external evidence adduced is in any way complete. It has been argued from a comparison of the hand-writing of the latter part with that of Milton's daughter Deborah, that the work of which she was amanuensis must have been her father's; but even the resemblance of the hand-writing is a point under dispute. Internal evidence, from the Arian tenets inculcated, contrary to Milton's expressed theological opinions in all his known productions, and from the sanction it contains that Popery should be tolerated, which is at variance with his repeatedly avowed sentiments, is strongly opposed to the poet being the author. Whilst the vanity of passing off on the public a spurious production as Milton's is in harmony with notorious facts, such as the Rowley "Poems," Ireland's "Shakespeare Forgeries," and Macpherson's "Ossian:" what more likely than that an ardent Arian should seize with avidity on an illustrious name to gild his own dissertation, "De Doctrina Christiana?" Burgess was a competent critic, and he pronounces the style to be quite unlike Milton's. Milton died Nov. 8th, 1674. A monument was erected to him in Westminster Abbey in 1737. His last days were spent in a house in Jewin-street, and his bones rest in the adjoining church of St. Giles, Cripplegate. His bust stands over a plain slab fixed to a central column on the north side of the church, which simply records his name and his grand achievement, "Paradise Lost." The features of the bust are turned slightly towards the reading desk and pulpit. If Archdeacon Hale, the incumbent of the living, is of sensitive organisation, it is impossible he can ever officiate without congratulating himself that it is only the poet's face in marble which is inclined to; wards him; for the living Milton abhorred pluralism and never spared pluralists. The character of our poet exemplifies in the most forcible manner the natural alliance between the highest intellectual endowments and the most valuable moral virtues. His deep sense of religion, and his sincere love of truth, the only secret, as he maintained, of eloquence, were the handmaids that fed with fresh oil the pure but vigorous flame of his prose and verse. He thoroughly detested all sensual vice. He preferred" Queen Truth to King Charles," and adversity could not induce him to swerve one tittle from that political creed which had commended itself to his enquiring mind, and received the sanction of his conscience. He was as little swayed by avarice as by fear. That he wrote with keen virulence, and persecuted an antago nist with withering sarcasm, is an accusation only too well founded; but this was the result of his ardent temperament; and, although hatred might seem to drop from his pen, we much doubt whether there was a speck of it upon his heart. He was certainly, in an uncommon degree, magnanimous and forgiving. The onesidedness of his political views must be attributed partly to the fault of the times he lived in, so fraught with abuses of those in power, partly to the defect, to which even he was subject, of not checking theory by those limitations, which a closer acquaintance with the principles of government, and a practical knowledge of the insane violence and various movements of the human passions, would have shown him to be necessary. As in his notions of a Republic, and an united Church of Christ, he soared above the possibilities of this earth, so he was never so great as when he could give loose rein to his exalted conceptions, and pass beyond the limits of this world to build his immortal poem. Yet, though he saw "The living throne, the sapphire blaze, Where angels tremble while they gaze," he could descend with modesty from empyreal scenes to take his share in the common-place duties of life, and aid the cause of education by writing rudimentary works. This contrast Wordsworth has finely depicted : "Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea, Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free; So didst thou travel on life's common way, In combination with the vastest pative powers it is surprising to find industry that could quell all difficulties; and it is re freshing to observe the great-hearted poet, when the present scorned him, already in anticipation grasping the future, with faith looking forward to a "resurrection of reputations" as surely as of "dead bodies," and seeking above all the praise of God as the end of life's toil. Milton's life has been written by Symmons, Hayley, Johnson, Birch, Todd, and Toland. Lauder endeavoured to pluck some feathers from the wing of his poetic fame, or rather to show that some of his plumage was borrowed; and Johnson only compensated for abetting this attempt by writing the prologue to the "Mask of Comus" when it was brought on the stage for the benefit of Milton's grand-daughter. The doctor's portrait of Milton in domestic life, as a kind of second tyrant Dionysius waited on by his daughters, is now ascertained to have been the falsification of bigoted antipathy. The poet's glory grows brighter and brighter in the lapse of time, and spreads with the enlarging circle of the English language. Rejoiced as we are that the prose writings of our greatest fellow-countryman are now purchased in a compact and cheap form, we could wish that the "Introductory Review" had been penned by a more competent person than the editor of this volume. Mr. Robert Fletcher is an out-and-out Dissenter, not merely as regards his sentiments, which, in a literary point of view, is a matter of less consequence, but as regards the mode of stating and embellishing them, which is always highflown, reminding us of the horticultural taste which dots a parterre with a profusion of sunflowers and marigolds. ART. IX. The Elements of the Gospel Harmony: with a Catena on Inspiration, from the Writings of the AnteNicene Fathers. By BROOKE FOSS WESTCOTT, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Cambridge: Macmillan. 1851. THIS is a reprint in an enlarged form of the "Norrisian Prize Essay for 1850," the subject proposed being "the plenary inspiration of the four Gospels not invalidated by the alleged discrepancies which are objected against them;" and we are induced to notice it, not only on account of the importance of its proper subject, which is a question necessary to be rightly understood at all times, but because the same principles apply in an especial and very striking manner to the great doctrinal questions which are now agitating the Church to its very foun dations, and with so much of the old leaven of malice and wickedness manifested in the strife as to threaten the utter disruption of the Church, not only from its connection with the State, but as the temple of God, and to leave not one stone upon another which shall not be thrown down. If we were looking only to an arm of flesh, and judging only by outward appearances, we should be tempted to despond-so much of an unchristian spirit is manifested by those who stand as overseers and guides to the flock and who ought to be an example to the Church; and this intemperance is of so suicidal a nature, and accompanied with so much blindness to the real questions at issue, as well as to the interests of the universal Church, as to increase our tendency to despair. For, if the blind lead the blind, shall they not both fall into the ditch? But we are not trusting in an arm of flesh; we are trusting in the promises of God; and we know that all things shall work together for good to them that put their trust in him. The unity in doctrine which men are professing to seek, and which some are endeavouring to exact from others with such rigid intolerance, may be in the abstract a conceivable thing. For its realization, however, it would require beings very differently constituted from the present race of mankind-beings very different from the men we read of in the history of past times, or are ever likely to meet with in the future, as long as the present constitution of the world shall continue. We may expect and require such an unity as a belief of the three Catholic creeds involves; because these contain nothing more than those broad fundamental Articles of the faith without believing which a man would not be a Christian. But if the quod semper, ubique, ab omnibus receptum, be pressed further than the doctrines of the creeds-if Catholic unity be so drawn out and defined as to require all men in the Church to think alike, and feel alike, and express themselves alike-or, in other words, to agree in all the minutiae of doctrine and of ritual-this we assert to be a species of unity which never has been attained at any one time, not even in the apostolic age, and never will be brought about while the world lasts, for it is contrary to the nature of man. Every individual possesses a character of his own, distinct in some respect or other from all other men; and in this distinctness it is that personal identity consists. This natural diversity of character is not annihilated by Christianity it is only consecrated by these various gifts being devoted to the service of God. We see it manifested in the apostles, each of whom, after he received the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost, continued to evince the same kind of character as before. |