The Reason of Church-governement Urg'd against Prelaty/Book 2 Conclusion

by John Milton

The Conclusion

The mischiefe that Prelaty does in the State.

I Adde one thing more to those great ones that are so fond of Prelaty, this is certain that the Gospell being the hidden might of Christ, as hath been heard, hath ever a victorious power joyn'd with it, like him in the Revelation that went forth on the white Horse with his bow and his crown conquering, and to conquer. If we let the Angell of the Gospell ride on his own way, he does his proper businesse conquering the high thoughts, and the proud reasonings of the flesh, and brings them under to give obedience to Christ with the salvation of many souls. But if ye turn him out of his rode, and in a manner force him to expresse his irresistible power by a doctrine of carnall might, as Prelaty is, he will use that fleshly strength which ye put into his hands to subdue your spirits by a servile and blind superstition, and that againe shall hold such dominion over your captive minds, as returning with an insatiat greedinesse and force upon your worldly wealth and power wherewith to deck and magnifie her self, and her false worships, she shall spoil and havock your estates, disturbe your ease, diminish your honour, inthraul your liberty under the swelling mood of a proud Clergy, who will not serve or feed your soules with spirituall food, look not for it, they have not wherewithall, or if they had, it is not in their purpose. But when they have glutted their ingratefull bodies, at least if it be possible that those open sepulchers should ever be glutted, and when they have stufft their Idolish temples with the wastefull pillage of your estates, will they yet have any compassion upon you, and that poore pittance which they have left you, will they be but so good to you as that ravisher was to his sister, when he had us'd her at his pleasure, will they but only hate ye and so turne ye loose? no: they will not, Lords and Commons, they will not favour ye so much. What will they do then in the name of God and Saints, what will these man-haters yet with more despight and mischiefe do? Ile tell ye, or at least remember ye, for most of ye know it already. That they may want nothing to make them true merchants of Babylon, as they have done to your souls, they will sell your bodies, your wives, your children, your liberties, your Parlaments, all these things, and if there be ought else dearer then these, they will sell at an out-cry in their Pulpits to the arbitrary and illegall dispose of any one that may hereafter be call'd a King, whose mind shall serve him to listen to their bargain. And by their corrupt and servile doctrines boring our eares to an everlasting slavery, as they have done hitherto, so will they yet do their best to repeal and erase every line and clause of both our great charters. Nor is this only what they will doe, but what they hold as the maine reason and mystery of their advancement that they must do; be the Prince never so just and equall to his subjects; yet such are their malicious and depraved eyes, that they so look on him, & so understand him, as if he requir'd no other gratitude, or piece of service from them then this. And indeed they stand so opportunly for the disturbing or the destroying of a state, being a knot of creatures whose dignities, means, and preferments have no foundation in the Gospel, as they themselves acknowledge, but only in the Princes favour, & to continue so long to them, as by pleasing him they shall deserve, whence it must needs be they should bend all their intentions, and services to no other ends but to his, that if it should happen that a tyrant (God turn such a scourge from us to our enemies) should come to grasp the Scepter, here were his speare men and his lances, here were his firelocks ready, he should need no other pretorian band nor pensionry then these, if they could once with their perfidious preachments aw the people. For although the Prelats in time of popery were sometimes friendly anough to magnacharta, it was because they stood upon their own bottom, without their main dependance on the royal nod: but now being well acquainted that the protestant religion, if she will reform her self rightly by the Scriptures, must undresse them of all their guilded vanities, and reduce them as they were at first, to the lowly and equall order of Presbyters, they know it concerns them neerly to study the times more then the text, and to lift up their eyes to the hils of the Court, from whence only comes their help; but if their pride grow weary of this crouching and observance, as ere long it would, and that yet their minds clime still to a higher ascent of worldly honour, this only refuge can remain to them, that they must of necessity contrive to bring themselves and us back again to the Popes supremacy, and this we see they had by fair degrees of late been doing. These be the two fair supporters between which the strength of Prelaty is born up, either of inducing tyranny, or of reducing popery. Hence also we may judge that Prelaty is meer falshood. For the property of Truth is, where she is publickly taught, to unyoke & set free the minds and spirits of a Nation first from the thraldom of sin and superstition, after which all honest and legal freedom of civil life cannot be long absent; but Prelaty whom the tyrant custom begot a natural tyrant in religion, & in state the agent & minister of tyranny, seems to have had this fatal guift in her nativity like another Midas that whatsoever she should touch or come neer either in ecclesial or political government, it should turn, not to gold, though she for her part could wish it, but to the drosse and scum of slavery breeding and setling both in the bodies and the souls of all such as doe not in time with the sovran treacle of sound doctrine provide to fortifie their hearts against her Hierarchy. The service of God who is Truth, her Liturgy confesses to be perfect freedom, but her works and her opinions declare that the service of Prelaty is perfect slavery, and by consequence perfect falshood. Which makes me wonder much that many of the Gentry, studious men, as I heare should engage themselves to write, and speak publickly in her defence, but that I beleeve their honest and ingenuous natures comming to the Universities to store themselves with good and solid learning, and there unfortunately fed with nothing else, but the scragged and thorny lectures of monkish and miserable sophistry, were sent home again with such a scholastical burre in their throats, as hath stopt and hinderd all true and generous philosophy from entring, crackt their voices for ever with metaphysical gargarisms, and hath made them admire a sort of formal outside men prelatically addicted, whose unchast'nd and unwrought minds never yet initiated or subdu'd under the true lore of religion or moral vertuee, which two are the best and greatest points ot learning, but either slightly train'd up in a kind of hypocritical and hackny cours of literature to get their living by, and dazle the ignorant, or els fondly overstudied in uselesse controversies, except those which they use with all the specious and delusive suttlety they are able, to defend their prelatical Sparta, having a Gospel and Church-government set before their eyes, as a fair field wherin they might exercise the greatest vertu's, and the greatest deeds of Christian autority in mean fortunes and little furniture of this world, which even the sage heathen writers and those old Fabritii, and Curii well knew to be a manner of working, then which nothing could lik'n a mortal man more to God, who delights most to worke from within himself, and not by the heavy luggage of corporeal instrument, they understand it not, & think no such matter, but admire & dote upon worldly riches, & honours, with an easie & intemperat life, to the bane of Christianity: yea they and their Seminaries shame not to professe, to petition and never lin pealing our eares that unlesse we fat them like boores, and cramme them as they list with wealth, with Deaneries, and pluralities, with Baronies and stately preferments, all learning and religion will goe underfoot. Which is such a shamelesse, such a bestial plea, and of that odious impudence in Church-men, who should be to us a pattern of temperance and frugal mediocrity, who should teach us to contemn this world, and the gaudy things thereof, according to the promise which they themselves require from us in baptisme, that should the Scripture stand by and be mute, there is not that sect of Philosophers among the heathen so dissolute, no not Epicurus, nor Aristippus with all his Cyrenaick rout, but would shut his school dores against such greasy sophisters: not any College of Mountebanks, but would think scorn to discover in themselves with such a brazen forehead the outrageous desire of filthy lucre. Which the Prelats make so little conscience of, that they are ready to fight, and if it lay in their power, to massacre all good Christians under the names of horrible schismaticks for only finding fault with their temporal dignities, their unconscionable wealth and revenues, their cruell autority over their brethren that labour in the word, while they snore in their luxurious excesse. Openly proclaming themselvs now in the sight of all men to be those which for a while they sought to cover under sheeps cloathing, ravenous and savage wolves threatning inrodes and bloody incursions upon the flock of Christ, which they took upon them to feed, but now clame to devour as their prey. More like that huge dragon of Egypt breathing out wast, and desolation to the land, unlesse he were daily fatn'd with virgins blood. Him our old patron Saint George by his matchlesse valour slew, as the Prelat of the Garter that reads his Collect can tell. And if our Princes and Knights will imitate the fame of that old champion, as by their order of Knighthood solemnly taken, they vow, farre be it that they should uphold and side with this English Dragon; but rather to doe as indeed their oath binds them, they should make it their Knightly adventure to pursue & vanquish this mighty sailewing'd monster that menaces to swallow up the Land, unlesse her bottomlesse gorge may be satisfi'd with the blood of the Kings daughter the Church; and may, as she was wont, fill her dark and infamous den with the bones of the Saints. Nor will any one have reason to think this as too incredible or too tragical to be spok'n of Prelaty, if he consider well from what a masse of slime and mud, the sloathful, the covetous and ambitious hopes of Church-promotions and fat Bishopricks she is bred up and nuzzl'd in, like a great Python from her youth, to prove the general poyson both of doctrine and good discipline in the Land. For certainly such hopes and such principles of earth as these wherein she welters from a yong one, are the immediat generation both of a slavish and tyrannous life to follow, and a pestiferous contagion to the whole Kingdom, till like that fenborn serpent she be shot to death with the darts of the sun, the pure and powerful beams of Gods word. And this may serve to describe to us in part, what Prelaty hath bin and what, if she stand, she is like to be toward the whole body of people in England. Now that it may appeare how she is not such a kind of evil, as hath any good, or use in it, which many evils have, but a distill'd quintessence, a pure elixar of mischief, pestilent alike to all, I shal shew briefly, ere I conclude, that the Prelats, as they are to the subjects a calamity, so are they the greatest underminers and betrayers of the Monarch, to whom they seem to be most favourable. I cannot better liken the state and person of a King then to that mighty Nazarite Samson; who being disciplin'd from his birth in the precepts and the practice of Temperance and Sobriety, without the strong drink of injurious and excessive desires, grows up to a noble strength and perfection with those his illustrious and sunny locks the laws waving and curling about his god like shoulders. And while he keeps them about him undiminisht and unshorn, he may with the jaw-bone of an Asse, that is, with the word of his meanest officer suppresse and put to confusion thousands of those that rise against his just power. But laying down his head among the strumpet flatteries of Prelats, while he sleeps and thinks no harme, they wickedly shaving off an those bright and waighty tresses of his laws, and just prerogatives which were his ornament and strength, deliver him over to indirect and violent councels, which as those Philistims put out the fair, and farre-sighted eyes of his natural discerning, and make him grinde in the prison house of their sinister ends and practices upon him. Till he knowing this prelatical rasor to have bereft him of his wonted might, nourish again his puissant halr, the golden beames of Law and Right; and they sternly shook, thunder with ruin upon the heads of those his evil counsellors, but not without great affliction to himselfe. This is the sum of their loyal service to Kings; yet these are the men that stil cry the King, the King, the Lords Anointed. We grant it, and wonder how they came to light upon any thing so true; and wonder more, if Kings be the Lords Anointed, how they dare thus oyle over and besmeare so holy an unction with the corrupt and putrid oyntment of their base flatteries; which while they smooth the skin, strike inward and envenom the life blood. What fidelity Kings can expect from Prelats both examples past, and our present experience of their doings at this day, whereon is grounded all that hath bin said, may sufffice to inform us. And if they be such clippers of regal power and shavers of the Laws, how they stand affected to the law giving Parlament, your selves, worthy Peeres and Commons, can best testifie; the current of whose glorious and immortal actions hath bin only oppos'd by the obscure and pernicious designes of the Prelats: until their insolence broke out to such a bold affront, as hath justly immur'd their haughty looks within strong wals. Nor have they done any thing of late with more diligence, then to hinder or break the happy assembling of Parlaments, however needfull to repaire the shatter'd and disjoynted frame of the Common-wealth, or if they cannot do this, to crosse, to disinable, and traduce all Parlamentary proceedings. And this, if nothing else, plainly accuses them to be no lawful members of the house, if they thus perpetually mutine against their own body. And though they pretend like Salomons harlot, that they have right thereto, by the same judgement that Salomon gave, it cannot belong to them, whenas it is not onely their assent, but their endeavour continually to divide Parlaments in twain; and not only by dividing, but by all other means to abolish and destroy the free use of them to all posterity. For the which and for all their former misdeeds, wherof this book and many volumes more cannot contain the moytie, I shal move yee Lords in the behalf I dare say of many thousand good Christians, to let your justice and speedy sentence passe against this great malefactor Prelaty. And yet in the midst of rigor I would beseech ye to think of mercy; and such a mercy, I feare I shal overshoot with a desire to save this falling Prelaty, such a mercy (if I may venture to say it) as may exceed that which for only ten righteous persons would have sav'd Sodom. Not that I dare advise ye to contend with God whether he or you shal be more merciful, but in your wise esteems to ballance the offences of those peccant Citties with these enormous riots of ungodly mis-rule that Prelaty hath wrought both in the Church of Christ, and in the state of this Kingdome. And if ye think ye may with a pious presumption strive to goe beyond God in mercy, I shall not be one now that would dissuade ye. Though God for lesse then ten just persons would not spare Sodom, yet if you can finde after due search but only one good thing in prelaty either to religion, or civil goverment, to King or Parlament, to Prince or people, to law, liberty, wealth or learning, spare her, let her live, let her spread among ye, till with her shadow, all your dignities and honours, and all the glory of the land be darken'd and obscurd. But on the contrary if she be found to be malignant, hostile, destructive to all these, as nothing can be surer, then let your severe and impartial doom imitate the divine vengeance; rain down your punishing force upon this godlesse and oppressing government: and bring such a dead Sea of subversion upon her, that she may never in this Land rise more to afflict the holy reformed Church, and the elect people of God.⁠The end.