But these men, it may be said, were only deep thinkers, and lived in their closets, unaccustomed to the traffic of the world, and to the laws which practically regulate mankind. Gentlemen, in the place where we now sit to administer the justice of this great country, the never-to-be-forgotten Sir Mathew Hale presided; whose faith in Christianity is an exalted commentary upon its truth and reason, and whose life was a glorious example of its fruits; whose justice, drawn, from the pure fountain of the Christian dispensation, will be, in all ages, a subject of the highest reverence and admiration. But it is said by the author, that the Christian fable is but the tale of the more ancient superstitions of the world, and may be easily detected by a proper understanding of the mythologies of the heathens. Did Milton understand those mythologies? Was he less versed than Mr. Paine in the superstitions of the world? No; they were the subject of his immortal song; and, though shut out from all recurrence to them, he poured them forth from the stores of a memory rich with all that man ever knew, and laid them in their order as the illustration of real and exalted faith, the unquestionable source of that fervid genius which has cast a kind of shade upon most of the other works of man: “He pass’d the flaming bounds of place and time: The living throne, the sapphire blaze, Where angels tremble while they gaze, He saw, but blasted with excess of light, Closed his eyes in endless night.” But it was the light of the body only that was extinguished: “The celestial light shone inward, and enabled him to justify the ways of God to man.” The result of his thinking was, nevertheless, not quite the same as the author’s before us. The mysterious incarnation of our blessed Saviour, which this work blasphemes in words so wholly unfit for the mouth of a Christian, or for the ear of a court of justice, that I dare not, and will not, give them utterance. Milton made the grand conclusion of his “Paradise Lost,” the rest from his finished labors, and the ultimate hope, expectation, and glory of the world. “A virgin is his mother, but his sire, The power of the Most High; he shall ascend The throne hereditary, and bound his reign With earth’s wide bounds, his glory with the heavens.” The immortal poet having thus put into the mouth of the angel the prophecy of man’s redemption, follows it with that solemn and beautiful admonition, addressed in the poem to our great first parent, but intended as an address to his posterity through all generations: