dge in those things, though we
should grant him able, which is proved he is not, yet as a civil
magistrate he hath no right." Under this second head, and also by
means of Scripture quotations, there is an exposition of Milton's
favourite idea of the purely spiritual nature of Christ's kingdom and
of the instrumentalities it permits. The third proposition advances
the argument by maintaining that not only is the civil magistrate
unable, from the nature of the case, to determine in matters of
Religion, and not only has he no right to try, but he also does
positive wrong by trying. In arguing this, still Scripturally, Milton
dilates on the meaning of the "Christian liberty" of the true
believer, with the heights and depths which it implies in the renewed
spirit, the superiority to "the bondage of ceremonies" and "the weak
and beggarly rudiments." The fourth and last reason pleaded, still
from Scripture, against the compulsion of the magistrate in Religion,
is that he must fail signally in the very ends he proposes to
himself; "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." Far from attaining either of
these ends, he can but dishonour God and promote profanity and
hypocrisy.--"On these four Scriptural reasons as on a firm square."
says Milton at the close, "this truth, the right of Christian and
Evangelic Liberty, will stand immoveable against all those pretended
consequences of license and confusion which, for the most part, men
most licentious and confused themselves, or such as whose severity
would be wiser than divine wisdom, are ever aptest to object against
the ways of God."

Such is the plan of the little treatise, the literary texture of
which is plain and homely, rather than rich, learned, or rhetorical.
"Pomp and ostentation of reading," he expressly says, "is admired
among the vulgar; but doubtless in matters of Religion he is
learnedest who is plainest." It was, we may remember, his first
considerable English dictation for the press since his blindness, and
what one chiefly notices in the style is the strong grasp he still
retains of his old characteristic syntax.[1] The following are a few
of the more interesting individual passages or expressions:--

[Footnote 1: I have noted in the Tract one occurrence at least of the
very un-Miltonic word _its_, as follows:--"As the Samaritans
believed