he question of episcopacy was fiercely agitated.
Two--"The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelacy," and "The
Apology for Smectymnuus,"[1] belong to the early part of 1642, when the
bishops had just been excluded from the House of Lords. To be just to
Milton we must put ourselves in his position. At the present day forms
of church government are usually debated on the ground of expediency,
and even those to whom they seem important cannot regard them as they
were regarded by Milton's contemporaries. Many may protest against
Episcopacy receiving especial recognition from the State, but no one
dreams of abolishing it, or of endowing another form of ecclesiastical
administration in its room. It is no longer contended that the national
religion should be changed, the contention is that no religion should be
national, but that all should be placed on an impartial footing. But
Milton at this time desired a theocracy, and nothing doubted that he
could produce a pattern agreeable in every respect to the Divine will if
only Prelacy could be hurled after Popery. The controversy, therefore,
assumed far grander proportions than would be possible in our day, when
it is three-fourths a protest against the airs of superiority which the
alleged successors of the Apostles think it becoming to assume towards
teachers whose education and circumstances approach more closely than
their own to the Apostolic model. What would seem exaggerated now was
then perfectly in place. Milton, in his own estimation, had a theme for
which the cloven tongues of Pentecost were none too fiery, or the
tongues of angels too melodious. As bursts of impassioned prose-poetry
the finest passages in these writings have never been surpassed, nor
ever will be equalled so long as short sentences prevail, and the
interminable period must not unfold itself in heights and hollows like
the incoming tide of ocean, nor peal forth melodious thunder like a
mighty organ. But, considered as argumentative compositions, they are
exceedingly weak. No masculine head could be affected by them; but a
manly heart may easily imbibe the generous contagion of their noble
enthusiastic idealism. No man with a single fibre of ideality or
enthusiasm can help confessing that Milton has risen to a transcendent
height, and he may imagine that it has been attained by the ladder of
reason rather than the pinion of poetry. Such an one may easily find
reasons for agreeing with Milton in ma