ng themselves
a Clergy--was it not because Cromwell from first to last had pursued
a contrary policy--that it remained for Milton now, seven years after
the date of that sonnet, to have to offer, as a private thinker, and
on mere printed paper, his own poor _Considerations touching the
likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church?_ It was not
in a pamphlet on that subject, wherever else, that Milton could say
his best for the memory of Cromwell.

After some preliminary observations connecting the present treatise
with its forerunner; Milton opens his subject thus:--

"Hire of itself is neither a thing unlawful, nor a word of any evil
note, signifying no more than a due recompense or reward, as when
our Saviour saith, 'The labourer is worthy of his hire.' That which
makes it so dangerous in the Church, and properly makes HIRELING a
word always of evil signification, is either the excess thereof or
the undue manner of giving and taking it. What harm the excess
thereof brought to the Church perhaps was not found by experience
till the days of Constantine; who, out of his zeal, thinking he
could be never too liberally a nursing father of the Church, might
be not unfitly said to have either overlaid it or choked it in the
nursing. Which was foretold, as is recorded in Ecclesiastical
traditions, by a voice heard from Heaven, on the very day that
those great donations of Church-revenues were given, crying aloud,
_'This day is poison poured into the Church'_ [Note the
adoption of the anecdote from Mr. Wall's letter]. Which the event
soon after verified, as appears by another no less ancient
observation, that 'Religion brought forth wealth, and the Daughter
devoured the Mother.' But, long ere _wealth_ came into the
Church, so soon as any _gain_ appeared in Religion, HIRELINGS
were apparent, drawn in long before by the very scent thereof
[References to Judas as the first hireling, to Simon Magus as the
second, and to various texts in the Acts and Epistles proving that
among the early preachers of Christianity there were men who
preached 'for filthy lucre's sake,' or made a mere trade of the
Gospel] .... Thus we see that not only the excess of Hire in
wealthiest times, but also the undue and vicious taking or giving
it, though but small or mean, as in the primitive times, gave to
hirelings occasion, though not intended yet sufficient, to creep at
first into the