of the keystone of the uncemented arch, and the result was the subsidence of the whole fabric into irreparable ruin. The weight and value of Cromwell can only be truly estimated from the effects produced by his decease; and the observations of Mr. Macaulay on this point are as admirable for their truth as they are for their force and beauty. He says, "At the time of which we speak, the violence of religious and political enemies rendered a stable and happy settlement next to impossible. The choice lay, not between Cromwell and liberty, but between Cromwell and the Stuarts. That Milton chose well, no man can doubt who fairly compares the events of the protectorate with those of the thirty years which succeeded it—the darkest and most disgraceful in the English annals. Cromwell was evidently laying, though in an irregular manner, the foundations of an admirable system. Never before had religious liberty and the freedom of discussion been enjoyed in a greater degree. Never had the national honour been better upheld abroad, or the seat of justice better filled at home. And it was rarely that any opposition, which stopped short of open rebellion, provoked the resentment of the liberal and magnanimous usurper. The institutions which he had established, as set down in the "Instrument of Government," and the "Humble Petition and Advice," were excellent. His practice, it is true, too often departed from the theory of these institutions. But, had he lived a few years longer, it is probable that his institutions would have survived him, and that his arbitrary practice would have died with him. His power had not been consecrated by ancient prejudices. It was upheld only by his great personal qualities. Little, therefore, was to be dreaded from a second protector, unless he were also a second Oliver Cromwell. The events which followed his decease are the most complete vindication of those who exerted themselves to uphold his authority; for his death dissolved the whole frame of society." * Edin. Review, vol, xlii. p. 336. Milton saw with the deepest anxiety the perils which threatened that cause to which he had devoted his life, and for which he was calmly prepared to lay it down. He augured at once the religious intolerance which would grow with the growth of presbyterian influence, and sought to stay its effects by the publication of three treatises, all of which appeared in 1659, and within about twelve months after the death of the protector. The first of these is entitled, "A Treatise of the Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes." In the commencement of this latter treatise, he evidently refers to the former also, as equally forming part of his design. "Two things there be," he says, "which have been ever found working much mischief to the church of God and the advancement of truth-force on one side restraining, and hire on the other side corrupting, the teachers thereof. Few ages have been, since the ascension of our Saviour, wherein the one of these two, or both together, have not prevailed. It can be at no time, therefore, unseasonable to speak of these things, since by them the church is either in continual detriment and oppression, or in continual danger. The former shall be at this time my argument; the latter as I shall find God disposing me, and opportunity inviting." He next proceeds to lay down the general proposition to be proved, "That for belief or practice in religion, according to this conscientious persuasion, no man ought to be punished or molested by any outward force on earth whatsoever, I distrust not, through God's implored assistance, to make plain by these following arguments :-First, it cannot be denied, being the main foundation of our protestant religion, that we of these ages, having no other Divine rule or authority from without us, warrantable to one another as a common ground, but the Holy Scripture, and no other within us but the illumination of the Holy Spirit, so interpreting that scripture * Prose Works, vol. ii. p. 522. as warrantable only to ourselves, and to such whose consciences we can so persuade, can have no other ground in matters of religion but only from the Scriptures. And these being not possible to be understood without this Divine illumination, which no man can know at all times to be in himself, much less to be at any time for certain in any other, it follows clearly, that no man or body of men in these times can be the infallible judges or determiners in matters of religion to any other men's consciences but their own.' After demonstrating this position by a variety of scriptural arguments, he says, with reference to the apostles and à fortiori to ordinary ministers, "Having no dominion over the faith or conscience of the flock whom they are to feed, not by constraint, neither as being lords over God's heritage;” ‡ and then adds, "But some will object, that this overthrows all church discipline, all censure of errors, if no man can determine. My answer is, that what they hear is plain scripture, which forbids not church sentence or determining, but as it ends in violence upon the conscience unconvinced. Let whoso will interpret or determine, so it be according to true church discipline, which is exercised on them only who have willingly joined themselves in that covenant of union, and proceeds only to a separation from the rest, proceeds never to any corporal enforcement or forfeiture of money, which in all spiritual things are the two arms of Antichrist, not of the true church; the one being an inquisition, the other no better than a temporal indulgence of sin for money, whether by the church exacted or by the magistrate; both the one and the other a temporal satisfaction for what Christ hath satisfied eternally; a popish commuting of penalty, corporal for spiritual; a satisfaction to man, especially to the magistrate, for what and to whom we owe none: these and more are the injustices of force and fining in religion, be+ 2 Cor. i. 24. * Prose Works, vol. ii. p. 523. sides what I most insist on, the violation of God's express commandment in the gospel, as hath been shown. Thus then, if church governors cannot use force in religion, though but for this reason, because they cannot infallibly determine to the conscience without convincement, much less have civil magistrates authority to use force where they can much less judge; unless they mean only to be the civil executioners of them who have no civil power to give them such commission, no, nor yet ecclesiastical, to any force or violence in religion. To sum up all in brief, if we must believe as the magistrate appoints, why not rather as the church? If not as either without convincement, how can force be lawful?" His second argument is thus stated:-"From the riddance of these objections, I proceed yet to another reason why it is unlawful for the civil magistrate to use force in matters of religion; which is, because to judge in those things, though we should grant him able, which is proved he is not, yet as a civil magistrate he hath no right. Christ hath a government of his own, sufficient of itself to all his ends and purposes in governing his church, but much different from that of the civil magistrate. And the difference in this very thing principally consists, that it governs not by outward force, and that for two reasons: first, because it deals only with the inward man and his actions, which are all spiritual, and to outward force not liable; secondly, to show us the divine excellence of his spiritual kingdom, able without worldly force to subdue all the powers and kingdoms of this world, which are upheld by outward force only.”† This, again, he substantiates, as he proposed at the outset, by arguments drawn from Scripture only, and proceeds: "I have shown that the civil power hath neither right nor can do right by forcing religious things; I will now show the wrong it doth, by violating the fundamental privilege of the gospel, the new birthright of every true believer-Christian liberty: 2 Cor. iii. 17, 'Where the Spirit of the Lord is, * Prose Works, vol. ii. p. 526. + Ibid. p. 533. there is liberty;' Gal. iv. 26, 'Jerusalem, which is above, is free, which is the mother of us all;' and ver. 31, 'We are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.' It will be sufficient in this place to say no more of Christian liberty than that it sets us free, not only from the bondage of those ceremonies, but also from the forcible imposition of those circumstances, place, and time in the worship of God, which, though by him commanded in the old law, yet in respect of that verity and freedom which is evangelical, St. Paul comprehends both kinds alike: that is to say, both ceremony and circumstance, under one and the same contemptuous name of 'weak and beggarly rudiments.' His concluding argument is as follows:— "A fourth reason why the magistrate ought not to use force in religion, I bring from the consideration of all those ends which he can likely pretend to the interposing of his force therein; and those hardly can be other than first the glory of God; next, either the spiritual good of them whom he forces, or the temporal punishment of their scandal to others. As for the promoting of God's glory, none, I think, will say that his glory ought to be promoted in religious things by unwarrantable means, much less by means contrary to what he hath commanded. That outward force is such, and that God's glory in the whole administration of the gospel according to his own will and counsel ought to be fulfilled by weakness, at least so refuted, not by force; or if by force, inward and spiritual, not outward and corporeal, is already proved at large. That outward force cannot tend to the good of him who is forced in religion, is unquestionable. For, in religion, whatever we do under the gospel, we ought to be thereof persuaded without scruple; and are justified by the faith we have, not by the work we do: Rom. xiv. 5, 'Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." + He says, in conclusion : * Prose Works, vol. ii. p. 539. + Ibid. p. 542. |