it, not in robes of pure innocency, but of pure linen, with other deformed and fantastic dresses, in palls and mitres, gold and gewgaws fetched from Aaron’s old wardrobe, or the flamins vestry: then was the priest set to con his motions and his postures, his liturgies and his lurries, till the soul by this means of overbodying herself, given up justly to fleshly delights, bated her wing apace downward: and finding the ease she had from her visible and sensuous colleague the body, in performance of religious duties, her pinions now broken, and flagging, shifted off from herself the labor of high soaring any more, forgot her heavenly flight, and left the dull and droiling carcase to plod in the old road, and drudging trade of outward conformity.[130] With reference to accommodation, let us attend to the scope of this sentence. It contains nothing less than a history of Christianity from the Protestant reformer’s point of view. Four stages are given in this history: the early revelation of true Christianity; its later misinterpretation through the “grossness and blindness” of its followers; the growth of institutionalism; and finally the atrophy of true religion produced by undue attention to outward circumstance. It is, as we see, a complete narration, dressed out with many illuminating details. We shall discover that Milton habitually prolongs a sentence thus until it has covered the unit of its subject. He feels no compulsion to close the period out of regard for some established norm, since he has his eye on a different criterion of completeness. In line with the same practice, some of his sentences are so fitted that they contain complete arguments, or even an argument preceded by its expository narration. As an example of the sentence containing a unit of argument, we may note the following from _The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_.