beyond the banks of Tweed and the Norman Isles. It would not be the first nor the second time, since our ancient Druids, by whom this Island as the cathedral of philosophy to France, left off their Pagan rites, that England hath had this honour vouchsafed from Heaven--to give out reformation to the world. Who was it but our English Constantine that baptized the Roman Empire? Who but the Northumbrian Willibrod and Winifrid of Devon, with their followers, were the first Apostles of Germany? Who but Alcuin and Wicklif, our countrymen, opened the eyes of Europe, the one in Arts, the other in Religion? Let not England forget her precedence of teaching nations how to live.... Milton's idea of the greatness of his enterprise, it will be seen from these passages, had grown and grown the more he had brooded on it. What if in this Doctrine of Divorce he were to be the discoverer or restorer of a new liberty, not for England alone, but actually for all Christendom? Meanwhile what opposition he would have to face, what storms of scurrilous jest and severer calumny! Might it not have been better to have written his treatise in Latin? This thought had occurred to him. "It might perhaps more fitly have been written in another tongue; and I had done so, but that the esteem I have for my country's judgment, and the love I bear to my native language, to seive it first with what I endeavour, made me speak it thus ere I assay the verdict of outlandish readers." Yet there might have been a propriety, he feels, in addressing such an argument in the first place only to the learned.