The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660: Narrated in Connexion with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of His TimeMasson, David
History
The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660: Narrated in Connexion with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of His Time
Masson, David
Milton, John, 1608-1674; Poets, English -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- Biography
sun, and dust, and field of battle, to exert real brawn, shake real
arms, seek a real foe. The Suffeni and Sophists of the past, on the
one hand, the Pharisees and Simons and Hymenæi and Alexanders of
the past on the other, we go at with many a weapon: those of the
present day, and come to life again in the Church, we praise with
studied eulogies, we honour with professorships, and stipends, and
chairs, the incomparable men that they are, the highly-learned and
saintly. If it comes to the censuring of one of them, if the mask
and specious skin of one of them are dragged off, if he is shown to
be base within, or even publicly and openly criminal, there are
some who, for what purpose or through what timidity I know not,
would have him publicly defended by testimonies in his favour
rather than marked with due animadversion. My principle, I confess,
and as the fact has several times proved, is far enough apart from
theirs, inasmuch as, if I have made any profit when young in the
literary leisure I then had, whether by the instructions of learned
men or by my own lucubrations, I would employ the whole of it to
the advantage of life and of the human race, could I range so far,
to the utmost of my weak ability. And, if sometimes even out of
private enmities public delinquencies come to be exposed and
corrected, and I have now, impelled by all possible reasons,
prosecuted with most just invective, nor yet without proper result,
not an adversary of my own merely, but one who is the common
adversary of almost all, a nefarious man, a disgrace to the
Reformed Religion and to the sacred order especially, a dishonour
to learning, a most pernicious teacher of youth, an unclean
ecclesiastic, it will be seen, I hope, by those who are chiefly
interested in making an example of him (for why should I not so
trust?), that herein I have performed an action neither displeasing
to God, nor unwholesome to the Church, nor unuseful to the State."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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