would not hear, for funeral sermons we must have away, with the rest. The Parliament has ordered to pay his debt, and to build him, in the chapel of Henry VII., a most stately monument. ... All our company, praise to God, are in good health and cheerfulness. I must break off: for I must preach to-morrow, as also my other colleagues. MILTON ON LIBERTY (1644). =Source.=--Milton, _Prose Works_. Ed. Bohn. Vol. ii., p. 90. _Areopagitica_, 1644. Lords and commons of England, consider what nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governors: a nation not slow and dull, but of a quick ingenious and piercing spirit; acute to invent, subtile and sinewy to discourse not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to.... Now once again by all concurrence of signs and by the general instinct of holy and devout men, as they daily and solemnly express their thoughts, God is decreeing to begin some new and great period in His church; even to the reformation of reformation itself; what does He then but reveal Himself to His servants, and as His manner is, first to His Englishmen? I say, as His manner is, first to us, though we mark not the method of His counsels, and are unworthy. Behold now this vast city; a city of refuge, the mansion-house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with His protection: the shop of war hath not there more anvils and hammers working, to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed justice in defence of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching Reformation; others as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement. What could a man require more from a nation so pliant and so prone to seek after knowledge? What wants there to such a toward and pregnant soil but wise and faithful labourers, to make a knowing people a nation of prophets, of sages, and of worthies? We reckon more than five months yet to harvest: there need not be five weeks; had we but eyes to lift up, the fields are white already. Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making. Under these fantastic terrors of sect and schism, we wrong the earnest and zealous thirst after knowledge and understanding which God hath stirred up in this city. What some lament, we rather should rejoice at, should rather praise this pious forwardness among men, to reassure the ill-deputed care of their religion into their own hands again. A little generous prudence, a little forbearance of one another, and some grain of charity, might win all these diligences to join and unite into one general and brotherly search after truth; could we but forego this prelatical