l title to
demand payment. The appearance of a minister of the Gospel in a
law-court to sue for money supposed to be due to him for his
ministerial services, even by promise or agreement, is spoken of with
disgust. Were it the understood rule that there could be no recovery
by a minister even of his promised salary, would not that also tend
in some degree to keep Hirelings out of the Church?

The pamphlet, it will be seen, is more outspoken and thoroughgoing
than its forerunner. It contains also more of those individual
passages that represent Milton in his rough mood of sarcastic
strength, though none of such beauty or eloquence as are to be found
in his earlier pamphlets. The following are characteristic:--

_Mr. Prynne's Defences of Tithes_:--"To heap such unconvincing
citations as these in Religion, whereof the Scripture only is our
rule, argues not much learning nor judgment, but the lost labour
of much unprofitable reading. And yet a late hot Querist for
Tithes, whom ye may know, by his wits lying ever beside him in the
margin, to be ever beside his wits in the text,--a fierce Reformer
once, now rankled with a contrary heat,--would send us back, very
reformedly indeed, to learn Reformation from Tyndarus and Rebuffas,
two Canonical Promoters."[1]

[Footnote 1: The reference is to Prynne's _Ten Considerable
Queries concerning Tithes, &c., against the Petitioners and Petitions
for their Total Abolition_: 1659.]

_Marriages and Clerical Concern in the same_:--"As for
Marriages, that ministers should meddle with them, as not
sanctioned or legitimate without their celebration, I find no
ground in Scripture either of precept or example. Likeliest it is
(which our Selden hath well observed _I. II. c. 28. Ux. Heb._)
that in imitation of heathen priests, who were wont at nuptials to
use many rites and ceremonies, and especially judging it would be
profitable and the increase of their authority not to be spectators
only in business of such concernment to the life of man, they
insinuated that marriage was not holy without their benediction,
and for the better colour made it a Sacrament; being of itself a
Civil Ordinance, a household contract, a thing indifferent and free
to the whole race of mankind, not as religious, but as men. Best,
indeed, undertaken to religious ends, as the Apostle saith (1 Cor.
VII. '_In the Lord_'); yet not therefore invalid or unholy
without a m