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A Selection From the English Prose Works of John Milton
A Selection From the English Prose Works of John Milton Author:John Milton Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3Law, and other Mistakes whatsoever ; and the unsound Principles of the Author are examined and fully confuted by Authority of Holy Scripture, the Laws of this Land, and sound Reason. Lond.... more » 1644.' This piece was licensed, with extraordinary commendations attached to the Imprimatur, by Mr Joseph Caryl, a presbyterian divine, and the author of a voluminous commentary upon Job. Milton, in his reply, gives both author and licenser a rough handling, asserting the one to be a ' serving man turned solicitor,' assisted by « a stripling divine or two,' and charging the other with ignorance the most unpardonable. ' One thing more,' he says, ' I observed, a singular note of his stupidity, and that his [the author's] trade is not to meddle with books, much less with confutations; whenas the " Doctrine of Divorce," had now a whole year been published the second time, with many arguments added, and the former ones bettered and confirmed, this idle pamphlet comes reeling forth against the first edition only.'* He had before given a few words to what he terms ' a jolly slander, called " Divorce at Pleasure ;"' but of the many attempts to throw ridicule upon his ' Doctrine,' I do not find that he has taken any particular notice. Of his three last publications on this subject, the reader will find no more in these volumes than the few extracts I have just made. The treatment Milton received from the presbyteri- ans, on account of these writings, is thought to have done much to alienate him from their cause. But what chiefly and finally resolved him to renounce their Ibid. p. 243. textit{d interests, was their disposition to abridge that liberty of conscience which he prized above all liberties. His Areopagitica, the most powerful defence of the freedom of the press the world has ever seen, and which no prose composition...« less