The Prose Works of John Milton

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Editor's Preliminary Remarks. Duniwo 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 et 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 fulf.iled 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. LETTER TO A FRIEND CONCBBBmG TBB RUPTURES OF THE COMMONWEALTH. Sir, ?Upon the sad and serious discourse which we fell into last night, concerning these dangerous ruptures of the commonwealth, scarce yet in her infancy, which cannot be without some inward flaw in her bowels, I began to consider more '...