ould be said to him:

"Timorous and ungrateful, the Church of God is now again at the
foot of her insulting enemies, and thou bewailest, What matters it
for thee or thy bewailing? When time was, thou would'st not find a
syllable of all that thou hast read or studied to utter on her
behalf. Yet ease and leisure was given thee for thy retired
thoughts, but of the sweat of other men. Thou hast the diligence,
the parts, the language of a man, if a vain subject were to be
adorned or beautified; but when the cause of God and His Church
was to be pleaded, for which purpose that tongue was given thee
which thou hast, God listened if He could hear thy voice among His
zealous servants, but thou wert dumb as a beast; from henceforward
be that which thine own brutish silence hath made thee."

A man with "Paradise Lost" in him must needs so think and act, and, much
as it would have been to have had another "Comus" or "Lycidas," were not
even such well exchanged for a hymn like this, the high-water mark of
English impassioned prose ere Milton's mantle fell upon Ruskin?

"Thou, therefore, that sittest in light and glory unapproachable.
Parent of angels and men! next, Thee I implore, Omnipotent King,
Redeemer of that lost remnant whose nature Thou didst assume,
ineffable and everlasting Love! And Thou, the third subsistence of
Divine Infinitude, illuminating Spirit, the joy and solace of
created things! one Tri-personal godhead! look upon this Thy poor
and almost spent and expiring Church, leave her not thus a prey to
these importunate wolves, that wait and think long till they
devour Thy tender flock; these wild boars that have broke into Thy
vineyard, and left the print of their polluting hoofs on the souls
of Thy servants. O let them not bring about their damned designs
that stand now at the entrance of the bottomless pit, expecting
the watchword to open and let out those dreadful locusts and
scorpions to reinvolve us in that pitchy cloud of infernal
darkness, where we shall never more see the sun of Thy truth
again, never hope for the cheerful dawn, never more hear the bird
of morning sing. Be moved with pity at the afflicted state of this
our shaken monarchy, that now lies labouring under her throes, and
struggling against the grudges of more drea