It will be agreed, I feel, that the following features require a more than ordinary effort of attention and memory: (1) The rhetorical interruptions, whereby _which_ is separated from its verb _ought to be_, and _thoughts_ is separated from its prepositional modifier _of God and of his miraculous works and ways among men_.—(2) The progressive particularization of _our Saviour Christ_, wherein the substantive is modified by two participial constructions, _suffering to the lowest bent of weakness in the flesh_ and _triumphing to the highest pitch of glory in the spirit_; wherein again the substantive _spirit_ takes a modifier in the clause _which drew up his body also_, and the verb _drew up_ of the clause is qualified by the adverbial clause _till we in both be united to him in the revelation of his kingdom_. This is a type of elaboration in which, as the account unfolds, each detail seems to require a gloss, which is offered in a construction of some weight or length.—(3) The extensive parallelism of the last part, beginning with _the whole passion of pity on the one side_.—(4) The suspended structure which withholds the topic phrase of the tract, _happy reformation of the church_, until almost the end of the sentence. All of these qualities of length, scope, and complexity made the Miltonic sentence a formidable construction, and we are curious to know why he was able to use it with public success. The first circumstance we must take into account is that he lived in a tough-minded period of Western culture. It was a time when the foundations of the state were being searched out; when the relationship between religion and political authority was being re-defined, to the disregard of old customs; and when sermons were powerful arguments, beginning with first principles and moving down through a long chain of deductions. It was a time in which every thinking man virtually had to be either a revolutionary or a counter-revolutionary; and there is something in such intellectual climate which scorns prettification and mincing measure. The public therefore met Milton’s impassioned interest with an equal passion. But by public we do not mean here the half-educated masses of today; Milton’s public was rather a sternly educated minority, which had been taught to recognize an argument when it saw one, and even to analyze its source.