CHAPTER II.

First Section.

MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH RICHARD'S PROTECTORATE: SEPT. 1658-MAY 1659.

MILTON AND MARVELL STILL IN THE LATIN SECRETARYSHIP: MILTON'S FIRST FIVE STATE-LETTERS FOR RICHARD (NOS. CXXXIII.-CXXXVII.): NEW EDITION OF MILTON'S _DEFENSIO PRIMA_: REMARKABLE POSTSRCIPT TO THAT EDITION: SIX MORE STATE-LETTERS FOR RICHARD (NOS. CXXXVIII.-CXLIII.): MILTON'S RELATIONS TO THE CONFLICT OF PARTIES ROUND RICHARD AND IN RICHARD'S PARLIAMENT: HIS PROBABLE CAREER BUT FOR HIS BLINDNESS: HIS CONTINUED CROMWELLIANISM IN POLITICS, BUT WITH STRONGER PRIVATE RESERVES, ESPECIALLY ON THE QUESTION OF AN ESTABLISHED CHURCH: HIS REPUTATION THAT OF A MAN OF THE COURT-PARTY AMONG THE PROTECTORATISTS: HIS _TREATISE OF CIVIL POWER IN ECCLESIASTICAL CAUSES_: ACCOUNT OF THE TREATISE, WITH EXTRACTS: THE TREATISE MORE THAN A PLEA FOR RELIGIOUS TOLERATION: CHURCH-DISESTABLISHMENT THE FUNDAMENTAL IDEA: THE TREATISE ADDRESSED TO RICHARD'S PARLIAMENT, AND CHIEFLY TO VANE AND THE REPUBLICANS THERE: NO EFFECT FROM IT: MILTON'S FOUR LAST STATE-LETTERS FOR RICHARD (NOS. CXLIV.-CXLVII.): HIS PRIVATE EPISTLE TO JEAN LABADIE, WITH ACCOUNT OF THAT PERSON: MILTON IN THE MONTH BETWEEN RICHARD'S DISSOLUTION OF HIS PARLIAMENT AND HIS FORMAL ABDICATION: HIS TWO STATE-LETTERS FOR THE RESTORED RUMP (NOS. CXLVIII.-CXLIX.).

Milton and Marvell continued together In the Latin Secretaryship through the Protectorate of Richard Cromwell, The following were the first Letters of Milton for Richard:--

(CXXXIII.) To Louis XIV. OF FRANCE, _Sept._ 5, 1658:--"Most serene and most potent King, Friend and Confederate: As my most serene Father, of glorious memory, Oliver, Protector of the Commonwealth of England, such being the will of Almighty God, has been, removed by death on the 3rd of September, I, his lawfully declared successor in this Government, though in the depth of sadness and grief, cannot but on the very first opportunity inform your Majesty by letter of so important a fact, assured that, as you have been a most cordial friend to my Father and this Commonwealth, the sudden intelligence will be no matter of joy to you either. It is my business now to request your Majesty to think of me as one who has nothing more resolvedly at heart than to cultivate with all fidelity and constancy the alliance and friendship that existed between my most glorious parent and your Majesty, and to keep and hold as valid, with the same diligence and goodwill as himself, the treaties, counsels, and arrangements, of common interest, which he established with you. To which intent I desire that our Ambassador at your Court [Lockhart] shall be invested with the same powers as formerly; and I beg that, whatever he may transact with you in our name, you will receive it as if done by myself. Finally, I wish your Majesty all prosperity.--From our Court at Westminster."

(CXXXIV.) To Cardinal Mazarin, _Sept._ [5], 1658:--Dispatched with the last, and to the same effect. Knowing the reciprocal esteem between his late Father and his Eminence, Richard cannot but write to his Eminence as well as to the King.

(CXXXV.) To Charles Gustavus, King of Sweden. _October_ 1658:--"Most serene and most potent King, Friend and Confederate: As I think I cannot sufficiently imitate my father's excellence unless I cultivate and desire to retain the same friendships which he sought, and acquired by his worth, and regarded in his singular judgment as most deserving to be cultivated and retained, there is no reason for your Majesty to doubt that it will be my duty to conduct myself towards your Majesty with the same attentiveness and goodwill which my Father, of most serene memory, made his rule in his relations to you. Wherefore, although in this beginning of my Government and dignity I do not find our affairs in such a position that I can at present reply to certain heads which your agents have propounded for negotiation, yet the idea of continuing, and even more closely knitting, the treaty established with your Majesty by my Father is exceedingly agreeable to me; and, as soon as I shall have more fully understood the state of affairs on both sides, I shall indeed be always most ready, as far as I am concerned, for such arrangements as shall be thought most advantageous for the interests of both Commonwealths. Meanwhile may God long preserve your Majesty, to His own glory and for the guardianship and defence of the Orthodox Church."--The peculiar state of the relations between the Swedish King and the English Government is here to be remembered. The heroic Swede, by his sudden recommencement of war with Denmark, had brought a host of enemies again around him; and the question, just before Oliver's death, was whether Oliver would consider himself disobliged by the rupture of the Peace with Denmark, which had been mainly of his own making, or whether he would stand by his brother of Sweden and think him still in the right. That the second would have been Oliver's course there can be little doubt. The question had now descended to Richard and his Council. They were anxious to adhere to the foreign policy of the late Protector in the Swedish as in all other matters; but there were difficulties.

(CXXXVI. AND CXXXVII.) To CHARLES GUSTAVUS OF SWEDEN, _Oct._ 1659:--Two more letters to his Swedish Majesty, following close on the last:--(1) In the first, dated "Oct. 13," Richard acknowledges a letter received from the King of Sweden through his envoy in London, and also a letter from the King to Philip Meadows, the English Resident at the Swedish Court, which Meadows has transmitted. He is deeply sensible of his Swedish Majesty's kind expressions, both of sorrowing regard for his great father's memory, and of goodwill towards himself. There could not be a greater honour to him, or a greater encouragement in the beginning of his government, than the congratulations of such a King. "As respects the relations entered into between your Majesty and Us concerning the common cause of Protestants, I would have your Majesty believe that, since I succeeded to this government, though our Affairs are in such a state as to require the extreme of diligence, care, and vigilance, chiefly at home, yet I have had and still have nothing more sacredly or more deliberately in my mind than not to be wanting, to the utmost of my power, to the Treaty made by my father with your Majesty. I have therefore arranged for sending a fleet into the Baltic Sea, with those commands which our Internuncio [Meadows], whom we have most amply instructed for this whole business, will communicate to your Majesty." This was the fleet of Admiral Lawson, which did not actually put to sea till the following month, and was then wind-bound off the English coast. See ante p. 428; where it is also explained that Sir George Ayscough was to go out with Lawson, to enter the Swedish service as a volunteer.--(2) The other letter to Charles Gustavus, though dated "Oct." merely in the extant copies, was probably written on the same day as the foregoing, and was to introduce this Ayscough. "I send to your Majesty (and cannot send a present of greater worth or excellence) the truly distinguished and truly noble man, George Ayscough, Knight, not only famous and esteemed for his knowledge of war, especially naval war, as proved by his frequent and many brave performances, but also gifted with probity, modesty, ingenuity, and learning, dear to all for the sweetness of his manners, and, what is now the sum of all, eager to serve under the banners of your Majesty, so renowned over the whole world by your warlike prowess." A favourable reception is bespoken for Ayscough, who is to bring certain communications to his Majesty, and who, in any matters that may arise out of these, is to be taken as speaking for Richard himself. It was not till the beginning of the following year that Ayscough did arrive in the Baltic.

These five letters were undoubtedly the most important diplomatic dispatches of the beginning of Richard's Protectorate. They refer to the two most momentous foreign interests bequeathed from Oliver: viz. the French Alliance against Spain, and the entanglement in Northern Europe round the King of Sweden. Milton, as having written all the previous state-letters on these great subjects, was naturally required to be himself the writer of the five in which Richard announced to France and Sweden his resolution to continue the policy of his father. Marvell's pen may have been used, then and afterwards, for minor dispatches.

To the month of October 1658, the month after that of Oliver's death, belongs also a new edition of Milton's _Defensio Prima_. It was in octavo size, in close and clear type, and bore this title: "_Joannis Miltonii, Angli, Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio contra Claudii Anonymi, alias Salmasii, Defensionem Regiam. Editio correctior et auctior, ab Autore denuo recognita. Londini, Typis Newcombianis, Anno Dom. 1658_" (John Milton's Defence, &c. "_Corrected and Enlarged Edition, newly revised by the Author_" London: from Newcome's press, &c.).[1] This edition seems to have escaped the notice to which it is entitled. As far as my examination has gone, the differences from the original edition through the body of the work can be but slight. There is, however, a very important postscript of two pages, which I shall here translate:--

[Footnote 1: Thomason copy in British Museum, with the date "_Octob._" (no day) written on the title-page.]

"Having published this book, some years ago now [April 1651], in the hurried manner then required by the interests of the Commonwealth, but with the notion that, if ever I should have leisure to take it into my hands again, I might, as is customary, afterwards polish up something in it, or perchance cancel or add something, this I fancy I have now accomplished, though with fewer changes than I thought: a monument, as I see, whosoever has contrived it, not easily to perish. If there shall be found some one who will defend civil liberty more freely than here, yet certainly it will hardly be in a greater or more illustrious example; and truly, if the belief is that a deed of such arduous and famous example was not attempted and so prosperously finished without divine inspiration, there may be reason to think that the celebration and defence of the same with such applauses was also by the same aid and impulse,--an opinion I would much rather see entertained by all than have any other happiness of genius, judgment, or diligence, attributed to myself. Only this:--Just as that Roman Consul, laying down his magistracy, swore in public that the Commonwealth and that City were safe by his sole exertion, so I, now placing my last hand on this work, would dare assert, calling God and men to witness, that I have demonstrated in this book, and brought publicly forward out of the highest authors of divine and human wisdom, those very things by which I am confident that the English People have been sufficiently defended in this cause for their everlasting fame with posterity, and confident also that the generality of mankind, formerly deceived by foul ignorance of their own rights and a false semblance of Religion, have been, unless in as far as they may prefer and deserve slavery, sufficiently emancipated. And, as the universal Roman People, itself sworn in that public assembly, approved with one voice and consent that Consul's so great and so special oath, so I have for some time understood that not only all the best of my own countrymen, but all the best also of foreign men, sanction and approve this persuasion of mine by no silent vote over the whole world. Which highest fruit of my labours proposed for myself in this life I both gratefully enjoy and at the same time make it my chief thought how I may be best able to assure not only my own country, for which I have already done my utmost, but also the men of all nations whatever, and especially all of the Christian name, that the accomplishment of yet greater things, if I have the power--and I _shall_ have the power, if God be gracious,--is meanwhile for their sakes my desire and meditation."

Perhaps one begins to be a little tired of this high-strained exultation for ever and ever on the subject of his success in the Salmasian controversy. The recurrence at this point, however, is not uninstructive. At the beginning of Richard's Protectorate, we can see Milton's defences of the English Republic were still regarded as the unparalleled literary achievements of the age, and Milton's European celebrity on account of them had not waned in the least. It was something for the blind man, seated by himself in his small home in Westminster, and sending his thoughts out over the world from which for six years now he had been so helplessly shut in, to know this fact, and to be able to imagine the continued recollection of him as still alive among the myriads moving in that vast darkness. This fruit of his past labours, he says, he would "gratefully enjoy," but with no vulgar satisfaction. He would not confess it even to be with any lingering in him now of the last infirmity of a noble mind. In his fiftieth year, and in his present state, he could feel himself superior to that, and could describe his consciousness as something higher. If he had done a great work already, as he himself believed, and as the voice of all the best of mankind acknowledged, had it not been because God had chosen and inspired him for the same, and might he not in that faith send out a message to the world that perhaps God had not yet done with him, and they might expect from him, blind and desolate though he was, something greater and better still? The closing sentence is exactly such a message, and one can suppose that Milton was there thinking of his progress in _Paradise Lost_.

Whatever was the amount of Marvell's exertion in the secretaryship, Milton was not wholly exempted from the duty of writing even the more ordinary letters for Richard and his Council. There is a vacant interval of three months, indeed, after the five last registered and the next; but in January 1658-9 the series is resumed, and there are six more letters of Milton for Richard between the end of that month and the end of February. Richard's Parliament, it is to be remembered, met on the 27th of January.

(CXXXVIII.) To CHARLES GUSTAVUS, KING OF SWEDEN, _Jan._ 27, 1658-9 (i.e. the day of the meeting of the Parliament):--Samuel Piggott, merchant of London, has complained to the Protector that two ships of his--the _Post_, Tiddy Jacob master, and the _Water-dog_, Garbrand Peters master--are detained somewhere in the Baltic by his Majesty's forces. They had sailed from London to France; thence to Amsterdam, where one had taken in ballast only, but the other a cargo of herrings, belonging in part to one Peter Heinsberg, a Dutchman; and, so laden, they had been bound for his Majesty's port of Stettin. Probably the Dutch ownership of part of the herring cargo was the cause of the detention of the ships; but Piggott was the lawful owner of the ships themselves and of the rest of the goods. His Majesty is prayed to restore them, and so save the poor man from ruin.

(CXXXIX.) To THE HIGH AND MIGHTY, THE STATES OF WEST FRIESLAND, _Jan._ 27, 1658-9:--A widow, named Mary Grinder, complains that Thomas Killigrew, a commander in the service of the States, has for eighteen years owed her a considerable sum of money, the compulsory payment of which he is trying now to evade by petitioning their Highnesses not to allow any suit against him in their Courts for debts due in England. "If I only mention to your Highnesses that she, whom this man tries to deprive of nearly all her fortunes, is a widow, that she is poor, the mother of many little children, I will not do you the injustice of supposing that with you, to whom I am confident the divine commandments, and especially those about not oppressing widows and the fatherless, are well known, any more serious argument will be needed against your granting this privilege of fraud to the man's petition."--The Thomas Killigrew here concerned may have been one of several well-known Killigrews, then refugee Royalists. Hence perhaps the earnestness of the letter.

(CXL.) To LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE, _Feb._ 18, 1658-9:--"We have heard, and not without grief, that some Protestant churches in Provence were so scandalously interrupted by a certain ill-tempered bigot that the matter was thought worthy of severe notice by the magistrates of Grenoble, to whom the cognisance of the case belonged by law; but that a convention of the clergy, held shortly afterwards in, those parts, has obtained your Majesty's order that the whole affair shall be brought before your Royal Council in Paris, and that meanwhile, there being no decision there hitherto, these churches, and especially that of Aix, are prohibited from meeting for the worship of God." His Majesty is asked to remove this prohibition, and to see the author of the mischief properly censured. Such a missive proves that Richard and his Council kept to Oliver's rule of interference whenever there was persecution of Protestants, and also that they did not doubt their influence with Louis and Mazarin.

(CXLI.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN, _Feb._ 19, 1658-9:[1]--The Duchess-Dowager of Richmond, with her son, the young duke, is going into France, and means to reside there for some time. His Eminence is requested to show all possible attention to the illustrious lady and her son.

[Footnote 1: So dated in the Skinner Transcript, but "29 Feb." in Printed Collection and Phillips.]

(CXLII.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN, _Feb._ 22, 1658-9:[1]--About eight months ago the case of Peter Pett, "a man of singular probity, and of the highest utility to us and the Commonwealth by his remarkable skill in naval affairs," was brought before his Eminence by a letter of the late Lord Protector (not among Milton's letters). It was to request that his Eminence would see to the execution of a decree of his French Majesty's Council, as far back as Nov. 4, 1647, that compensation should be made to Pett for the seizure and sale of a ship of his, called the _Edward_, by one Bascon, in the preceding year. His Eminence has doubtless attended to the request; but there is still some impediment. Will his Eminence see where it lies and remove it?--Since the time of Queen Mary there had been three Peter Petts in succession, ship-builders and masters of the Royal Dockyard at Deptford; and the present Peter was the father of the more celebrated Sir Peter Pett, who was fellow of the Royal Society after the Restoration.

[Footnote 1: So dated in Printed Collection and in the Skinner Transcript; misdated "Feb. 25" in Phillips.]

(CXLIII.) To ALFONSO V., KING OF PORTUGAL, _Feb._ 23, 1658-9:[1]--Congratulations to his Portuguese Majesty upon a victory he had recently obtained over "our common enemy the Spaniard," with acknowledgment of his Majesty's handsome behaviour, through his Commissioners in London, in the matter of satisfaction, according to an article in the League between Portugal and the English Commonwealth, to those English merchants who had let out their vessels to the Brazil Company. But there is still one such merchant unpaid--a certain Alexander Bence, whose ship, _The Three Brothers_, John Wilks master, had made two voyages for the Company. They refuse to pay him, though they have fully paid others who had made but one voyage; and "why this is done I do not understand, unless it be that in their estimation a person is more worthy of his hire who has earned it once than one who has earned it twice." Will his Majesty see that Bence receives his due?

[Footnote 1: In the Printed Collection and Phillips, and also, I think, in the Skinner Transcript, the king's name is given as "John"; but John IV. of Portugal had died in 1656 and been succeeded by Alfonso.]

These six letters belong to the first month of Richard's Parliament, with its very large and freely elected House of Commons representing England, Scotland, and Ireland, and its anomalous addition or excrescence of another or Upper House, consisting of the two or three scores of recently-created Cromwellian "Lords." The battle between the Republicans and the Protectoratists had begun in the Commons, Thurloe ably leading there for the Protectoratists; the Republicans had been beaten on the first great question by the recognition of the Single-Person principle and of Richard's title to the Protectorship; and the House had gone on to the question of the continued existence and functions of the other House, with every prospect that the Cromwillians would beat the Republicans on that question too. From January to April, not only in the Parliament, but also over the country at large, the all-engrossing interest, as we know, was this controversy between pure old Republicanism, desiring neither single sovereignty nor aristocracy, and that more conservative form of Commonwealth which had been set up by the Oliverian constitution. Over the country, no less than in the Parliament, the conservative policy was in favour, and the Cromwellians or Protectoratists, among whom the Presbyterians now ranked themselves, were far more numerous than the old Republicans. Royalism, or at least Stuart Royalism, was at its lowest ebb. Many that had been Royalists heretofore had accepted the constitutionalized Protectorate as the best substitute for Royalty that circumstances allowed, and saw no course left them but to cooperate with the majority of their countrymen in confirming Richard's rule.

How Milton stood related to this controversy is a matter rather of inference than of direct information. Having been a faithful adherent and official of Oliver through his whole Protectorate, and still holding his official place under Richard's Government, there is little doubt that, if he had been obliged to post himself publicly on either of the two sides, he would have gone among the Cromwellians. Nay, if he had been obliged to choose between the two subdivisions of this body, known as the _Court Party_ (supporting Richard absolutely) and the _Wallingford-House Party_ (supporting Richard's civil Protectorate, but wanting to transfer the military power to the Army-chiefs), there can be little doubt that he would have gone with the former. Had he been in the House of Commons, like his colleague Andrew Marvell, his duty there, like Marvell's, would have been that of a ministerial member, assisting Thurloe and voting with him in all the divisions. But for his blindness, we may here say, the chances are that he _would_ long ere now have been a known Parliamentary man, and that, after having been a Cromwellian leader in Oliver's second Parliament, he might have been now in Thurloe's exact place in Richard's present Parliament, or beside Thurloe as a strangely different chief. This, or that other alternative of a foreign ambassadorship or residency, which must have suggested itself again and again to the reader in the course of our narrative, might have been the natural career of Milton through the rule of the Cromwells, had not blindness disabled him. For, if Meadows, his former mere assistant in the Foreign Secretaryship, had been for some time in the one career with increasing distinction, and if an opening had been easily found for Marvell in the other, why may not imagination trace either career, or a combination of the two, had physical infirmity not prevented, for the greater Cromwellian of whom these were but satellites? It is imagination only, and would not be worth while, were it not for one important biographical question which it brings forward. Had Milton remained capable of any such practical career under the Cromwells, would he have retained, to the same extent as he had done through his blindness, the necessary qualification of being an Oliverian or Cromwellian? How far was his present Cromwellianism the actual consequence of his blindness, the mere submissiveness of a blind man to what he had no power to disturb? It is partly an answer to this question to remember again his _Defensio Secunda_ of 1654, with its great panegyric on Cromwell. Milton had been but two years blind when that was published, and had not lost aught of the vehemence of his Republican convictions. Not without deliberation, therefore, had he given up the first form of the Commonwealth, consisting in a single supreme House of Parliament and an annual Council of State chosen by the same, and accepted the later or Protectoral form, with Cromwell for its head, a permanent Council of State round Cromwell, and Parliaments on occasion. But, underneath this general adhesion to the Protectorate, there had been even then certain Miltonic reserves, and especially the reserve of a protest against the continuance of a State Church. Now, had Milton been in a condition to act the part of a practical statesman through Oliver's Protectorate, might not some extraordinary development have been given to those reserves? With his boundless courage and the non-conforming habits of his genius, would he ever have been the Parliamentary servant of a Government from which he differed at all,--from which he differed so vitally on the question of Church Establishment? Probably in nothing else had Cromwell wholly disappointed him. Through the Protectorate there had been all the toleration of religious differences that could be desired, or what shortcoming there had been had hardly been by Cromwell's own fault; the other interferences with liberty had hardly perhaps, in Milton's estimation, gone beyond the necessities of police; and in Cromwell's foreign policy, with its magnificent championship of Protestantism abroad, what man in England was more ardently at one with him than the draftsman of his great foreign despatches? At the time of the proposal of Cromwell's Kingship, and generally at the time of the transition out of his first Protectorate into his second, with the resuscitation then of so many aristocratic forms and the attempt to reinstitute a house of peers, there may have been, as we have already hinted, an uprising in Milton's mind of democratic objections, and the effect may have been that Milton before the end of Oliver's Protectorate was less of an Oliverian than he had been at the beginning. Still, precluded from any active concern in those constitutional changes, he may have reconciled himself to them easily enough, and also to the transmission of the Protectorship from Oliver to Richard. The one insuperable stumbling-block, I believe, had been and was Cromwell's Established Church. Even in his blindness he could theorize on that, and stiffen himself more and more in his intense Religious Voluntaryism, Conscious of his irreconcileable dissent from Cromwell's policy in this great matter, and knowing that Cromwell was aware of the fact, it may have been a satisfaction to him that he was not called upon to act a Parliamentary part, in which proclamation of the dissent and consequent rupture with Cromwell on the ecclesiastical question would have been inevitable. It may have been some satisfaction to him that he could go on faithfully and honestly as a servant of Cromwell in the special business of the Latin Secretaryship, and for the rest be a lonely thinker and take refuge in silence. It is worth observing, indeed, that nothing of a political kind had come from Milton's pen during the last three or four years of Oliver's Protectorate,--nothing even indirectly bearing on the internal politics of the Commonwealth since his _Pro Se Defensio_ against Morus in 1655, and nothing directly bearing thereon since his _Defensio Secunda_ of 1654. And so, if we conclude this inquiry by saying that, at the time of Richard's accession and the meeting of his Parliament, Milton was still a Cromwellian, but a Cromwellian with the old Miltonic reserves, and these strengthened of late rather than weakened, we shall be about right. To the public, however, in the present controversy between the Protectoratists and the pure Republicans, he was distinctly a Protectoratist, a Cromwellian, one of the Court-party, an official of Richard and his Council.

Since Cromwell's death, we have now to add, Milton had been re-mustering his reserves. Under a new Protector, and from the new Parliament of that new Protector, might he not have a hearing on points on which he had for some time been silent? On this chance, he had interrupted even his _Paradise Lost_, in order to prepare an address to the new Parliament. As might be expected, it was on the subject of the relations of Church and State. Meditating on this subject, and how it might be best treated practically at such a time, Milton, had concluded that it might be broken into two parts. "Two things there be which have been ever found working much mischief to the Church of God and the advancement of Faith,--Force on the one side restraining, and Hire on the other side corrupting, the Teachers thereof." He would, therefore, write one tract on the effects of Compulsion or State-restraint in matters of Religion and Speculation, and another on the effects of Hire or State-endowments in the same. The two would be interconnected, and would in fact melt into each other; but they might appear separately, and it might be well to begin with the first, as the least irritating. Accordingly, before the meeting of the Parliament he had prepared, and after it had met there was published, in the form of a very tiny octavo, a tract with this title-page: "_A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes: Shewing that it is not lawfull for any power on Earth to compell in matters of Religion. The author J.M. London, Printed by Tho. Newcomb, Anno_ 1659." The tract consists of an address "To the Parlament of the Commonwealth of England with the Dominions thereof," occupying ten of the small pages, and signed "John Milton" in full, and then of eighty-three pages of text.[1]

[Footnote 1: The little book was duly registered at Stationers' Hall, under date Feb. 16, 1658-9, thus: "Mr. Tho. Newcomb entered for his copy (under the hand of Mr. Pulleyn, warden) a book called A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes by John Milton."]

After intimating that this was but the first of two tracts and that the other would follow, and also that his argument is to be wholly and exclusively from Scripture, Milton propounds the argument itself under four successive heads or propositions.--The first is that, there being, by the fundamental principle of Protestantism, "no other divine rule or authority from without us, warrantable to one another as a common ground, but the Holy Scripture, and no other within us but the illumination of the Holy Spirit so interpreting that Scripture as warrantable only to ourselves and to such whose consciences we can so persuade," it follows that "no man or body of men in these times can be the infallible judges or determiners in matters of religion to any other men's consciences but their own." Having reasoned this at some length by quotations of Scripture texts and explanations of the same, he proceeds to "yet another reason why it is unlawful for the civil magistrate to use force in matters of Religion: which is, because to judge 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 Christ, first for the woman's word, but next and much rather for his own, so we the Scripture first on the Church's word, but afterwards and much more for its own as the word of God."]

_Blasphemy._--"But some are ready to cry out 'What shall then be done to Blasphemy?' Them I would first exhort not thus to terrify and pose the people with a Greek word, but to teach them better what it is: being a most usual and common word in that language to signify any slander, any malicious or evil speaking, whether against God or man or anything to good belonging."

_Heresy and Heretic_:--"Another Greek apparition stands in our way, 'Heresy and Heretic': in like manner also railed at to the people, as in a tongue unknown. They should first interpret to them that Heresy, by what it signifies in that language, is no word of evil note; meaning only the choice or following of any opinion, good or bad, in religion or any other learning."

_A Wrested Text of Scripture_:--"It hath now twice befallen me to assert, through God's assistance, this most wrested and vexed place of Scripture [_Romans_ XIII, 'Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers,' &c.]: heretofore against Salmasius and regal tyranny over the State; now against Erastus and State-tyranny over the Church."

_Are Popery and Idolatry to be Tolerated?_--"But, as for Popery and Idolatry, why they also may not hence plead to be tolerated, I have much less to say. Their Religion, the more considered, the less can be acknowledged a Religion, but a Roman Principality rather, endeavouring to keep up her old universal dominion under a new name and mere shadow of a Catholic Religion; being indeed more rightly named a Catholic Heresy against the Scripture; supported mainly by a civil, and, except in Rome, by a foreign, power: justly therefore to be suspected, not tolerated, by the magistrate of another country. Besides, of an implicit faith, which they profess, the conscience also becomes implicit, and so, by voluntary servitude to man's law, forfeits her Christian liberty. Who, then, can plead for such a conscience as, being implicitly enthralled to man instead of God, almost becomes no conscience, as the will not free becomes no will? Nevertheless, if they ought not to be tolerated, it is for just reason of State more than of Religion; which they who force, though professing to be Protestants, deserve as little to be tolerated themselves, being no less guilty of Popery in the most Popish point. Lastly, for Idolatry, who knows it not to be evidently against all Scripture, both of the Old and New Testament, and therefore a true heresy, or rather an impiety; wherein a right conscience can have naught to do, and the works thereof so manifest that a magistrate can hardly err in prohibiting and quite removing at least the public and scandalous use thereof."

_Christ's unique act of Compulsion_:--"We read not that Christ ever exercised force but once; and that was to drive profane ones out of his Temple, not to force them in."

_Concluding Recommendation to Statesmen and Ministers_:--"As to those magistrates who think it their work to settle Religion, and those ministers or others who so oft call upon them to do so, I trust that, having well considered what hath been here argued, neither _they_ will continue in that intention, nor _these_ in that expectation from them, when they shall find that the settlement of Religion belongs only to each particular church by persuasive and spiritual means within itself, and that the defence only of the Church belongs to the magistrate. Had he once learnt not further to concern himself with Church affairs, half his labour might be spared and the Commonwealth better tended."

* * * * *

In this last extract there is a distinct outbreak of the intention which is rather covert through the rest of the tract. To a hasty reader the tract might seem only a plea for the amplest toleration, of religious dissent, a plea for full liberty, outside of the Established Church, not merely to Baptists, but also to Quakers, Anti-Trinitarians, and all other sects professing in any way to be Christians and believers in the Bible, Papists alone excepted, and they but partially and reluctantly. There would be no censure on Cromwell's policy, if that were all. But an acute reader of the tract would have detected that more was intended in it than a plea for Toleration, that the very existence of any Established Church whatever was condemned. In the passage last quoted it is clearly seen that this is the ultimate scope. It is a reflection on Cromwell, almost by name, for not having freed himself from the notion that the settlement of Religion is an affair of the Civil Magistrate, but on the contrary having made such a supposed settlement of Religion one of the passions of his Protectorate. It is a reflection on him, and on Owen, Thomas Goodwin, and all his ecclesiastical advisers and assessors, Independent or Presbyterian, for having busied themselves in maintaining and re-shaping any State-Church, on however broad a basis, and so having perpetuated the old distinction between Establishment and Dissent, Orthodoxy and Heresy, instead of abolishing that distinction utterly, and leaving all varieties of Christianity, equally unstamped and unfavoured, to organize themselves as they best could on the principle of voluntary association. For the future, statesmen and ministers are invited to cease from persevering in this delusion of the great and good Cromwell.

The tract was addressed, as we have said, to the Parliament of Cromwell's son. The preface, signed with Milton's name in full, is a recommendation of the doctrine to that body in particular. "I have prepared, Supreme Council, against the much expected time of your sitting," Milton there says, "this treatise; which, though to all Christian Magistrates equally belonging, and therefore to have been written in the common language of Christendom, natural duty and affection hath confined and dedicated first to my own nation, and in a season wherein the timely reading thereof, to the easier accomplishment of your great work, may save you much labour and interruption." Then, after having stated the main doctrine, he continues:--"One advantage I make no doubt of, that I shall write to many eminent persons of your number already perfect and resolved in this important article of Christianity: some of whom I remember to have heard often, for several years, at a Council next in authority to your own, so well joining religion with civil prudence, and yet so well distinguishing the different power of either, and this not only voting but frequently reasoning why it should be so, that, if any there present had been before of an opinion contrary, he might doubtless have departed thence a convert in that point, and have confessed that then both Commonwealth and Religion will at length, if ever, flourish, in Christendom, when either they who govern discern between Civil and Religious, or they only who so discern shall be admitted to govern." In other words, Milton's hopes of a favourable hearing for his doctrine in Richard's Parliament were founded (1) on the general ground that many members of the Parliament were old Commonwealth's men, of the kind that would have carried the abolition of Tithes and of a State-Church in the Barebones Parliament of 1653, had not Rous broken up that Parliament and resurrendered the power to Cromwell, and (2) on the special fact that some of them were men whom Milton had himself heard with admiration, in the Councils of State of the Commonwealth, when he first sat there as Foreign Secretary in attendance, avowing and expounding the principle of Voluntaryism in Religion, in its fullest possible extent. Among these last Milton must have had in view chiefly such members of the Commons House in Richard's Parliament as Vane, Bradshaw, Harrison, Neville, Ludlow, and Scott, all of whom had been members of one, or several, or all, of the Councils of State of the old Commonwealth; but he may have had in view also such members of the present Upper House as Fleetwood, St. John, and Viscount Lisle. Above all, Vane must have been in his mind,--Vane, on whom half of his eulogy in 1652 had been.

"To know Both spiritual power and civil, what each means, What severs each, _thou_, hast learned; which few have done. The bounds of either sword to _thee_ we owe."

Might not Vane and his fellows move in the present Parliament for a reconsideration of that part of the policy of the Protectorate which concerned Religion? Might they not induce the Parliament to revert, in the matters of Tithes, a State Ministry, and Endowments of Religion, to the temper and determinations of the much-abused, but really wise and deep-minded, Barebones Parliament? Nothing less than this is the ultimate purport of Milton's appeal; and little wonder that he prefixed an intimation that he wrote now only as a private man, and without any official authority whatever. "Of Civil Liberty," he says in the conclusion of his preface, "I have written heretofore by the appointment, and not without the approbation, of Civil Power: of Christian Liberty I write now,--which others long since having done with all freedom under Heathen Emperors, I should do wrong to suspect that now I shall with less under Christian Governors, and such especially as profess openly their defence of Christian liberty, although I write this not otherwise appointed and induced than by an inward persuasion of the Christian duty which I may usefully discharge herein to the common Lord and Master of us all." The words imply just a shade of doubt whether he, a salaried servant of the Government, might not be called to account for having been so bold.

Altogether, Milton's _Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes_ can be construed no otherwise than as an effort on his part, Protectoratist and Court-official though he was, to renew his relations with the old Republican party in the Parliament in the special interest of his extreme views on the religious question. Merely as a pleading against Religious Persecution, the treatise might have had some effect on the Parliament generally, where it was in fact much needed, in consequence of the presence of so much of the Presbyterian element, and the likelihood therefore of increased stringency against Quakers, Socinians, and other Non-Conformists. The treatise would have found many in the Parliament, besides the Republicans, quite willing to listen to its advices so far. But only or chiefly among the old Republicans can there have been any hope of an acceptance of its extreme definition of Christian Liberty, as involving Disestablishment and entire separation of Church and State.

The Treatise, so far as we can see, produced no effect whatever. So far as the Religious Question did appear in the Parliament, it was evident that the preservation of Cromwell's Church-Establishment, its perpetuation as an integral part of Richard's Protectorate, was a foregone conclusion in the minds of the vast majority. Any Disestablishment proposal, emanating from the Republican party, or from any individual member like Vane, would have been tramped out by the united strength of the Presbyterians, the Cromwellians of the Court, and the Wallingford-House Cromwellians. The danger even was that there might be a retrogression in the matter of mere Toleration, and that the presence and pressure of so many Presbyterians among the supporters of Richard might compel Richard's Government, against his own will and that of his Cromwellian Councillors, to a severer Church-discipline than had characterized the late Protectorate. But, indeed, it was not on the Religious Question in any form that the Republicans found time or need to try their strength. Their battles in the Parliament were on the two main constitutional questions:--first, the question of the Protectorate itself or Single-Person Government; and, next, the question of the Other House or House of Lords. On the first they were definitively beaten in February; and on the second they were beaten, no less definitively, and with more distressing incidents of defeat, before the end of March (ante pp. 432-435). Then, feeling themselves powerless as an independent party, they changed their tactics. No sooner had the Protectoratists or Cromwellians triumphed collectively under Thurloe's leadership than there had begun among them that fatal straggle between the two divisions of their body of which the beaten Republicans could not fail to take advantage. The _Court party_ of the Cromwellians, still led by Thurloe in the Commons, desired to preserve the Protectorate unbroken and with full powers, reducing the Army, as in an orderly and well-constituted State, to its proper place and dimensions as the instrument of the civil authority; the _Army Party_, or _Wallingford-House Party_, represented by Fleetwood and Desborough in chief, wanted to leave Richard only the civil Protectorship, and to set up a co-ordinate military power. The differences between the two parties had been smouldering since Richard's accession, and had been too visible since the first meeting of the Parliament; but it was in April 1659, after their joint victory over the Republicans, that they turned against each other in deadly strife, the Republicans looking on. Through that month the ominous spectacle was that of two rival Parliaments in Westminster--Richard's regular Parliament, and the irregular Wallingford-House Parliament of Army officers--watching each other and interchanging threats and denunciations. It was on the 18th of the month that the regular Parliament passed their two courageous resolutions asserting their supreme authority. They were that the Wallingford Council of officers should be immediately dissolved and no more such meetings of officers permitted, and that all officers of the Army and Navy should take an engagement not to interrupt the established power (ante pp. 440-441). Then it was evident there would be a crash, but in what form was still unknown.

Precisely at this crisis in Richard's Protectorship comes the last batch of Milton's official letters for him. The letters are four in number:[1]--

[Footnote 1: These Letters do not appear in the ordinary Printed Collection, or in Phillips; but they are in the Skinner Transcript, and have been printed thence by Mr. Hamilton in his _Milton Papers_, pp. 12-14.]

(CXLIV. and CXLV.) To FERDINAND, GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY, _April_ 19, 1659:--Two Letters to this Prince on the same day. (1) Sir John Dethicke, James Gold, John Limbery, and other London merchants, are owners of a ship called _The Happy Entrance_, which they sent out with merchandise for trade in the Mediterranean, under the command of a John Marvin. They can get no account from him, and have reason to fear he means to play the rogue with the ship and cargo and never return. It is believed that within two months he may put in at Leghorn; and the Protector requests the Grand Duke to give the merchants, in that case, facilities for the recovery of their property. (2) A James Modiford, merchant, complains to the Protector that certain goods of his, taken to Leghorn about 1652 by another English trader, Humphrey Sidney, were there seized by some Italian creditors of Sidney. Modiford has been unable to obtain redress; and the Grand Duke is now prayed to see his goods restored and any claims Sidney may have upon him referred to the English Courts.

(CXLVI.) To ALFONSO V., KING OF PORTUGAL, _April_ 1659:[1]--A Francis Hurdidge of London complains that a ship of his, called _The Mary and John_, cargo valued at 70,000 crowns, employed in the Brazil trade in 1649 and 1650, was seized by the Portuguese. The ship was afterwards taken from the Portuguese by the Dutch. The Treaty between the English Commonwealth and Portugal provides for such cases; and his Portuguese Majesty is requested to make compensation to Hurdidge to the extent of 25,000 crowns. The man is in great straits.

[Footnote 1: "_Joanni Portugallioe Regi_" is the heading in Mr. Hamilton's copy from the Skinner Transcript; but this is a mistake (see ante p. 576, note).]

(CXLVII.) To CHARLES GUSTAVUS, KING OF SWEDEN, _April_ 1659:--David Fithy, merchant, informs the Protector that, about a month ago, he contracted to supply to the Navy 150 sacks of hemp. He has the hemp now at Riga, and a ship ready to bring it thence for the use of the fleet--"part of which," the Protector skilfully adds, "has just sailed for the Baltic for your protection" (i.e. Montague's fleet, despatched this very month: see ante p. 435). It appears, however, that his Swedish Majesty has forbidden the exportation of hemp from his port of Riga without special permission. His Majesty is requested to give Fithy this permission, that he may be able to fulfil his contract. The Protector will consider himself much obliged by the kindness.

No more letters was poor Richard to write to crowned heads. On the very day on which the two first of the foregoing were written, he appeared in Wallingford House, and ordered the dissolution of the Council of Officers according to the edict of the Parliament. Next day it was known through all London that the question was between a dissolution of this Council of officers and a dissolution of the Parliament itself. The day after, Thursday, April 21, there was the famous double rendezvous of the two masses of soldiery round Whitehall to try the question, the rendezvous for Richard and the Parliament utterly failing, while that for Fleetwood, Desborough, and the other rebel chiefs, flooded the streets and St. James's Park. That night, quailing before the rough threats of Desborough, Richard and his Council yielded; and on Friday, the 22nd, the indignant Parliament knew itself to be dissolved, and Richard's Protectorate virtually at an end. Nominally, it dragged on for a month more.

On Thursday, April 21, the day of the dreadful double rendezvous, and of Desborough's stormy interview with Richard in Whitehall to compel the dissolution of the Parliament, Milton, in his house in Petty France, on the very edge of the uproar, was quietly dictating a private letter. It is that numbered 28 among his _Epistoloe Familiares_, and headed "_Joanni Badioeo, Pastori Arausionensi_," i.e. "To John Badiaeus, Pastor of Orange." With some trouble, I have identified this "Badiaeus" with a certain French JEAN LABADIE, who is characterized by Bayle as a "schismatic minister, followed like an apostle," and by another authority as "one of the most dangerous fanatics of the seventeenth century." The facts of his life, to the moment of our present concern with him, are given in the accepted French authorities thus:--Born in 1610 at Bourg-en-Guyenne, the son of a soldier who had risen to be lieutenant, he had received a Jesuit education at Bordeaux, had entered the Jesuit order at an early age, and had become a priest. For fifteen years he had remained in the order, preaching, and also teaching rhetoric and philosophy, reputed "a prodigy of talent and piety," but also a mystic and enthusiast, with fancies that he must found a new religious sect. While preaching orthodox Catholicism in public, he had been indoctrinating disciples in private with his peculiarities; and, when they were numerous enough, he wanted to leave the Jesuits. By reasonings and kindness, they managed to retain him for a while; but he grew more odd and visionary, fasting often, eating only herbs, and having divine revelations. After a dangerous illness, which brought him to death's door, he did obtain his dismissal from the Jesuit order in April 1639, and went over France propagandizing. The Bishop of Amiens, caught by his eloquence, made him prebendary of a collegiate church in that town; in connexion with which, and with the Bishop's approval, he founded a religious association of young women, called St. Mary Magdalene. All seemed to go well for a time; but at length there was a scandal about him and a girl in Abbeville, with a burst of similar scandals about his abuse of the confessional for vicious purposes. To avoid arrest, he absconded to Paris in August 1644, and thence to Bazas, where he lived under a feigned name. But the Bishop of Bazas took him up; he cleared himself to the Bishop and others, and defied his calumniators. Only for a time; for again there were scandals, and he was expelled the diocese. Going then to Toulouse, he gained the confidence of the Archbishop there, who gave him charge of a convent of nuns. In this post he developed more systematically his notions of the religious life, described as a compound of Quietism and Antinomianism, after the fashion of sects already known in France and Germany, but with sexual extravangances which, when divulged, raised an indignant storm. In November 1649, he had to abscond from Toulouse; and, after various wanderings, in which he called himself "Jean de Jesus Christ" and obtained popularity as a prophet, he came to Montauban, and there publicly abjured Roman Catholicism in October 1650. Elected minister of the Protestant church of that town in 1652, he lived there for some years in great esteem among the Protestants, but in deadly feud with the Roman Catholics. The schism was such that at last the magistrates had to banish him from the town as a disturber of the peace. Then he had found refuge in Orange; and he was in some kind of temporary Protestant pastorship in that town of south-east France when there was this communication between him and Milton.[1]

[Footnote 1: Article LABADIE in _Nouvelle Biographie Générale_ (1859), with additional information from Article on him in the _Biographie Universelle_ (edit. 1819), and from _La Vie du Sieur Jean Labadie_ by Bolsec (Lyon, 1664), and some passages in Bayle's Dictionary (e.g. in Article _Mamillaires_). It is from the additional authorities that I learn the fact of the removal of Labadie from Montauban to Orange; the Article in the _N. Biog. Gen._ omits it.--I have seen two publications of Labadie at Montauban--one of 1650, entitled _Declaration de Jean de L'Abadie, cydevant prestre_, giving his reasons for quitting the Church of Rome; the other of 1651, entitled _Lettre de J. de L'Abadie à ses amis de la Communion Romaine touchant sa Declaration_.]

TO JEAN LABADIE, MINISTER OF ORANGE.

"If I answer you rather late, distinguished and reverend Sir, our common friend Durie, I believe, will not refuse to let me transfer the blame of the late answer from myself to him. For, now that he has communicated to me that paper which you wished read to me, on the subject of your doings and sufferings in behalf of the Gospel, I have not deferred preparing this letter for you, to be given to the first carrier, being really anxious as to the interpretation you may put upon my long silence. I owe very great thanks meanwhile to your Du Moulin of Nismes [not far from Orange], who, by his speeches and most friendly talk concerning me, has procured me the goodwill of so many good men in those parts. And truly, though I am not ignorant that, whether from the fact that I did not, when publicly commissioned, decline the contest with an adversary of such name [Salmasius], or on account of the celebrity of the subject, or, finally, on account of my style of writing, I have become sufficiently known far and wide, yet my feeling is that I have real fame only in proportion to the good esteem I have among good men. That you also are of this way of thinking I see plainly--you who, kindled by the regard and love of Christian Truth, have borne so many labours, sustained the attacks of so many enemies, and who bravely do such actions every day as prove that, so far from seeking any fame from the bad, you do not fear rousing against you their most certain hatred and maledictions. O happy man thou! whom God, from among so many thousands, otherwise knowing and learned, has snatched singly from the very gates and jaws of Hell, and called to such an illustrious and intrepid profession of his Gospel! And at this moment I have cause for thinking that it has happened by the singular providence of God that I did not reply to you sooner. For, when I understood from your letter that, assailed and besieged as you are on all hands by bitter enemies, you were looking round, and no wonder, to see where you might, in the last extremity, should it come to that, find a suitable refuge, and that England was most to your mind, I rejoiced on more accounts than one that you had come to this conclusion,--one reason being the hope of having you here, and another the delight that you should have so high an opinion of my country; but the joy was counterbalanced by the regret that I did not then see any prospect of a becoming provision for you among us here, especially as you do not know English. Now, however, it has happened most opportunely that a certain French minister here, of great age, died a few days ago. The persons of most influence in the congregation, understanding that you are by no means safe where you are at present, are very desirous (I report this not from vague rumour, but on information from themselves) to have you chosen to the place of that minister: in fact, they invite you; they have resolved to pay the expenses of your journey; they promise that you shall have an income equal to the best of any French minister here, and that nothing shall be wanting that can contribute to your pleasant discharge of the pastoral duty among them. Wherefore, take my advice, Reverend Sir, and fly hither as soon as possible, to people who are anxious to have you, and where you will reap a harvest, not perhaps so rich in the goods of this world, but, as men like you most desire, numerous, I hope, in souls; and be assured that you will be most welcome here to all good men, and the sooner the better. Farewell.

"Westminster: April 21, 1659."

It is clear from this letter that Milton had never heard of the scandals against M. Labadie's moral character, or, if he had, utterly disbelieved them, and regarded him simply as a convert from Roman Catholicism whose passionate and aggressive Protestant fervour had brought intolerable and unjust persecution upon him in France. Durie was his informant; and, for all we can now know, Milton's judgment about Labadie may have been the right one, and the traditional French account of him to this day may be wrong. It is certainly strange, however, to find Milton befriending with so much readiness and zeal this French Protestant minister, against whom there were exactly such scandals abroad as those which he had himself believed and blazoned about Morus, for the murder of Morus's reputation over Europe, and his ruin in the French Protestant Church in particular. Nor does the reported sequel of Labadie's life, in the ordinary accounts of him, lessen the wonder.--Labadie did not come to London, as Milton had hoped. When he received Milton's letter, he was on the wing for Geneva, where he arrived in June 1659, and where he continued his preaching. Here, in the very city where Morus had once been, there still were commotions round him; and, after new wanderings in Germany, we find him at Middleburg in Holland in 1666, thus again by chance in a town where Morus had been before him. At Middleburg he seems to have attained his widest celebrity, gathering a body of admirers and important adherents, the chief of whom was "Mademoiselle Schurmann, so versed in the learned languages." At length a quarrel with M. de Wolzogue, minister of the Walloon church at Utrecht, brought Labadie into difficulties with the Walloon Synod and with the State authorities, and he migrated to Erfurt, and thence to Altona, where he died in 1674, "in the arms of Mademoiselle Schurmann," who had followed him to the last. He left a sect called _The Labadists_, who were strong for a time, and are perhaps not yet extinct. Among the beliefs they inherited from him are said to have been these:--(1) That God may and does deceive man; (2) That Scripture is not necessary to salvation, the immediate action of the Spirit on souls being sufficient; (3) That there ought to be no Baptism of Infants; (4) That truly spiritual believers are not bound by law and ceremonies; (5) That Sabbath-observance is unnecessary, all days being alike; (6) That the ordinary Christian Church is degenerate and decrepit. One sees here something like a French Quakerism, but with ingredients from older Anabaptism. Had Milton's letter had the intended effect, the sect might have had its home in London.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Nouvelle Biographie Générale_, as before.--It is to be remembered that Milton himself authorized the publication of his letter to Badiaeus with his other Latin Familiar Epistles in 1674 (see Vol. I. p. 239). By that time he must have known the whole subsequent career of Labadie and all the reports about him; and he cannot even then have thought ill of him or of Mad'lle Schurmann. To the end, he liked all bold schismatics and sectaries, if they took a forward direction.]

Virtually at an end on the 22nd of April by the enforced dissolution of the Parliament, Richard's Protectorate was more visibly at an end on the 7th of May, when the Wallingford-House chiefs agreed with the Republicans in restoring the Rump. Eight days after that event Milton was called on to write two letters for the new Republican authorities. They were as follows:--

(CXLVIII.) TO CHARLES GUSTAVUS, KING OF SWEDEN, _May_ 15, 1659:--"Most serene and most potent King, and very dear Friend: As it has pleased God, the best and all-powerful, with whom alone are all changes of Kingdoms and Commonwealths, to restore Us to our pristine authority and the supreme administration of English affairs, we have thought it good in the first place to inform your Majesty of the fact, and moreover to signify to you both our high regard for your Majesty, as a most potent Protestant prince, and also our desire to promote to the utmost of our power such a peace between you and the King of Denmark, himself likewise a very potent Protestant prince, as may not be brought about without our exertions and most willing good offices. Our pleasure therefore is that our internuncio extraordinary, Philip Meadows, be continued in our name in exactly the same employment which he has hitherto discharged with your Majesty for this Commonwealth; and to that end we, by these presents, give him the same power of making proposals and of treating and dealing with your Majesty which he had by his last commendatory letters. Whatever shall be transacted and concluded by him in our name, the same we pledge our promise, with God's good help, to confirm and ratify. May God long preserve your Majesty as a pillar and defence of the Protestant cause.--WILLIAM LENTHALL, _Speaker of the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England_."

(CXLIX) To FREDERICK III., KING OF DENMARK, _May_ 15, 1659:--The counterpart of the foregoing. His Danish Majesty, addressed as "most serene King and very dear Friend" is informed by Lenthall of the change in English affairs, and of the sympathy the present English Government feels with him in his adversity. They will do their utmost to secure a peace between him and the King of Sweden; and Philip Meadows, their Envoy Extraordinary to the King of Sweden, has full powers to treat with his Danish Majesty too for that end. "God grant to your Majesty, as soon as possible, a happy and joyful outcome from all those difficulties of your affairs in which you behave so bravely and magnanimously!"

On the 25th of May Richard sent in his reluctant abdication, leaving the Rump, which had already assumed the supreme authority, to exercise that authority without further challenge or opposition on his part. Most of the public officials remained in their posts, and Milton remained In his. After five years and five months of Secretaryship under a Single-Person Government, he found himself again Secretary under exactly such a Republican Government as he had served originally, consisting now of the small Parliament of the Restored Rumpers and of a Council of State appointed by that Parliament. In this Council of State were Bradshaw, Vane, Sir James Harrington, St. John, Hasilrig, Scott, Walton, and Whitlocke, who had been members of all the first five Councils of the Commonwealth, from that which had invited Milton to the Secretaryship in 1649 to that which Cromwell forcibly dissolved in 1653, besides Fairfax, Fleetwood, Ludlow, John Jones, Wallop, Challoner, Neville, Dixwell, Downes, Morley, Thompson, and Algernon Sidney, whom Milton had known as members of one or more of those five Councils, and Lambert and Desborough, who had not been in any of them, but were among his later acquaintances.