degenerated into deism (§ 164, 3). § 162.3. Out of the religious commotion prevailing in England before, during, and after the Revolution there sprang up a voluminous =devotional literature=, intended to give guidance and directions for holy living. Its influence was felt in foreign lands, especially in the Reformed churches of the continent, and even German Lutheran Pietism was not unaffected by it (§ 159, 3). That this movement was not confined to the Puritans, among whom it had its origin, is seen from the fact that during the seventeenth century many such treatises were issued from the University Press of Cambridge. =Lewis Bayly=, Bishop of Bangor A.D. 1616-1632, wrote one of the most popular books of this kind, “The Practice of Piety,” which was in A.D. 1635 in its thirty-second and in A.D. 1741 in its fifty-first edition, and was also widely circulated in Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, and Polish translations.--Out of the vast number of important personages of the Revolution period we name the following three: 1. In =John Milton=, the highly gifted poet as well as eloquent and powerful politician, born A.D. 1608, died A.D. 1674, we find, on the basis of a liberal classical training received in youth, all the motive powers of Independency, from the original Puritan zeal for the faith and Reformation to the politico-social radicalism of the Levellers, combined in full and vigorous operation. From Italy, the beloved land of classical science and artistic culture, he was called back to England in A.D. 1640 at the first outburst of freedom-loving enthusiasm (§ 155, 1), and made the thunder of his controversial treatises ring over the battlefield of parties. He fought against the narrowness of Presbyterian control of conscience not less energetically than against the hierarchism of the Episcopal church; vindicates the permissibility of divorce (in view, no doubt, of his own first unhappy marriage); advanced in his “_Areopagitica_” of A.D. 1644 a plea for the unrestricted liberty of the press; pulverized in his “_Iconoclastes_” of A.D. 1649 the Εἰκὼν βασιλική, ascribed to Charles I.; in several tracts, “_Defensio pro Populo Anglicano_,” etc., justified the execution of the king against Salmasius’s “_Defensio Regia pro Carolo I._;” and, even after he had in A.D. 1652 become incurably blind, he continued unweariedly his polemics till silenced by the Restoration. The “_Iconoclastes_” and “_Defensio_” were burned by the hangman, but he himself was left unmolested. He now devoted himself to poetry. “Paradise Lost” appeared in A.D. 1665, and “Paradise Regained” in A.D. 1671. To this period, when he had probably turned his back on all existing religious parties, belongs the composition of his “_De