free to worship, if he can feel his freedom-if he can see Jesus--if to him God is a spirit, and present in this mountain, or in Jerusalem, he will be able to lift up his heart, and to adore. It is only, of course, where men, and minds, and books, are free, that sects can greatly increase; and the absence of division, -the tame, cold uniformity, which is the boast of some creedsmen, is in truth their disgrace. Mind is enfeebled and stunted-the priest holds the key to every discussion-it is, therefore, a significant hint of the prevalence of opinion, which is liberty, where temples of varied architecture, and creeds of varied fashion rise over the land; but it is not too much to hope, that the vestments of the Church will at last be woven without seam; the threads may differ in the colour and the shade; perhaps some may be of coarser texture than others, but the increase of truth will be the increase of charity. The spirit of all believers will walk forth in the enlarged dignity of their devout Christian manhood; and we would fain hope, that manhood, and earnestness, the beauty, and rectitude, and love, breathed in the Areopagitica may be exhibited in myriads of lives.

124

CHAPTER X.

EIKONOCLASTES.

SOON after the death of Charles I., was published a book, purporting to be a posthumous document written by the royal martyr, entitled "Eikon Basilike," the Image of a King, "A Portraiture of his sacred Majesty in his Solitude and his Sufferings." Milton was ordered by the Council to answer this book, which was exciting no little degree of attention in England, where forty-eight thousand five hundred copies are said to have been sold; the genuineness of the book has long been set at rest. It is satisfactorily proved to be the production of Dr. Gauden, Bishop of Exeter. Milton's answer was written in English, and became speedily known over the Continent; it was one of those books condemned to be burnt by the hangman on the Restoration. If any one would obtain an accurate knowledge of the

66

times, especially if it is desirable to see the shallow sophistries of the Royalists put to flight or crushed, let this work be diligently read and studied; it is a noble masterpiece of literary architecture; one knows not whether to admire most the intimate knowledge of all the events and details of the Civil War, or the swift, logical vehemency with which they fall upon the piles of cant and twaddle abounding in the “ Eikon.” The sentences swell and heave, like bellying sails, with the majesty and grandeur of the great sentiments of humanity and piety; sometimes, and frequently, smart aphorisms meet us--truth distilled, and condensed into a line or two; sometimes, the words roll, like waves, beneath the fierce wind of a noble, declamatory scorn; it contains some of the noblest truths of theology and religion,-of morals and politics: a few illustrative passages may be cited, indicating the varieties of style:

"He had rather wear a crown of thorns with our Saviour.' Many would be all one with our Saviour, whom our Saviour will not know. They who govern ill those kingdoms which they had a right to, have to our Saviour's crown of thorns no right at all. Thorns they may find enow of their own gathering, and their own twisting; for thorns and snares, saith

Solomon, are in the way of the froward; but to wear them as our Saviour wore them, is not given to them that suffer by their own demerits. Nor is a crown of gold his due who cannot first wear a crown of lead."*

6

"But what needed that? They knew his chiefest arms left him were those only which the ancient Christians were wont to use against their persecutors, prayers and tears. O sacred reverence of God! respect and shame of men! whither were ye fled when these hypocrisies were uttered? Was the kingdom then at all that cost of blood to remove from him none but prayers and tears? What were those thousands of blaspheming cavaliers about him, whose mouths let fly oaths and curses by the volley: were those the prayers; and those carouses drunk to the confusion of all things good or holy, did those minister the tears? Were they prayers and tears that were listed at York, mustered on Heworth Moor, and laid siege to Hull for the guard of his person? Were prayers and tears at so high a rate in Holland, that nothing could purchase them but the crown jewels? Yet they in Holland (such word was sent us,) sold them for guns, carabines, mortar

* Eikon, chap. vi., 3.

pieces, cannons, and other deadly instruments of war; which, when they came to York, were all, no doubt by the merit of some great saint, suddenly transformed into prayers and tears: and, being divided into regiments and brigades, were the only arms that mischiefed us in all those battles and encounters."*

"He tells us that what he wants in the hands of power, he has in the wings of faith and prayer; but they who made no reckoning of those wings while they had that power in their hands, may easily mistake the wings of faith for the wings of presumption, and so fall headlong."+

"Of secular honours added to the dignity of prelates, since the subject of that question is now removed, we need not spend time: but this perhaps will never be unseasonable to bear. in mind out of Chrysostom, that when ministers came to have lands, houses, farms, coaches, horses, and the like lumber, then religion brought forth riches in the church, and the daughter devoured the mother."‡

Upon the king's complaint of the denying him the attendance of his chaplains, he remarks, "A chaplain is a thing so diminutive and Eikon, chap. x., 164. Eikon, chap. xxvii., 271.

*

Eikon, chap. x., 162.