without constant exercise and methodical repetition), may
teach and govern the rest: and, so exhorted to continue faithful and
stedfast, they may securely be committed to the providence of God and
the guidance of his Holy Spirit till God may offer some opportunity
to visit them again and to confirm them." The only concession Milton
will make is that, in cases of urgent necessity, application may be
made to magistrates or other trustees of charitable funds for aid in
these temporary and itinerant missions. For the rest, it will be
seen, it is with difficulty that he allows the existence of a
permanent pastorate anywhere. If there is to be a body of men in the
community making a business of preaching, and if in towns and
populous neighbourhoods congregations choose to retain the services,
for life or for an indefinite period, of particular ministerial
persons selected from this body, and to erect handsome buildings
convenient for such services, well and good, or rather it cannot be
helped; but the picture most to Milton's fancy is that of an England
generally, or at all events of a rural England, without any fixed or
regular parish pastors or parish-churches, but each little local
cluster of believers meeting on Sundays or other days in chapel or
barn for mutual edification, or to be instructed by such simple
teaching elders as may easily, from time to time, be produced within
itself. Add the itinerant agency of more practiced and professional
preachers, circulating periodically among the local clusters, to
rouse them or keep them alive; and nothing more would be needed.
There would be plenty of preaching, and good preaching, everywhere;
but, as most of it would be spontaneous by hard-handed men known
among their neighbours, and working, like their neighbours, for their
ordinary subsistence, the preaching profession, as a means of income,
would be reduced to a minimum. In a Church so constituted there would
still be hirelings, especially in large towns and where there were
wealthy congregations; but the number of such would be greatly
reduced. III. Under the third head of the "manner" of the recompense
to ministers, where there is any recompense at all, the substance of
Milton's remarks is that the purely voluntary character of the
recompense must be studiously maintained. It must be purely an alms,
an oblation of benevolence. Hence it should never take the form of a
life-endowment, or even of a contract conferring a lega