the Commonwealth since his Pro Se Defensio against Morus in 1655, and nothing directly bearing thereon since his Defensio Secunda of 1654.  And so, if we conclude this inquiry by saying that, at the time of Richard’s accession and the meeting of his Parliament, Milton was still a Cromwellian, but a Cromwellian with the old Miltonic reserves, and these strengthened of late rather than weakened, we shall be about right.  To the public, however, in the present controversy between the Protectoratists and the pure Republicans, he was distinctly a Protectoratist, a Cromwellian, one of the Court-party, an official of Richard and his Council.

Since Cromwell’s death, we have now to add, Milton had been re-mustering his reserves.  Under a new Protector, and from the new Parliament of that new Protector, might he not have a hearing on points on which he had for some time been silent?  On this chance, he had interrupted even his Paradise Lost, in order to prepare an address to the new Parliament.  As might be expected, it was on the subject of the relations of Church and State.  Meditating on this subject, and how it might be best treated practically at such a time, Milton, had concluded that it might be broken into two parts.  “Two things there be which have been ever found working much mischief to the Church of God and the advancement of Faith,—­Force on the one side restraining, and Hire on the other side corrupting, the Teachers thereof.”  He would, therefore, write one tract on the effects of Compulsion or State-restraint in matters of Religion and Speculation, and another on the effects of Hire or State-endowments in the same.  The two would be interconnected, and would in fact melt into each other; but they might appear separately, and it might be well to begin with the first, as the least irritating.  Accordingly, before the meeting of the Parliament he had prepared, and after it had met there was published, in the form of a very tiny octavo, a tract with this title-page:  “A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes:  Shewing that it is not lawfull for any power on Earth to compell in matters of Religion.  The author J.M.  London, Printed by Tho.  Newcomb, Anno 1659.”  The tract consists of an address “To the Parlament of the Commonwealth of England with the Dominions thereof,” occupying ten of the small pages, and signed “John Milton” in full, and then of eighty-three pages of text.[1]

[Footnote 1:  The little book was duly registered at Stationers’ Hall, under date Feb. 16, 1658-9, thus:  “Mr. Tho.  Newcomb entered for his copy (under the hand of Mr. Pulleyn, warden) a book called A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes by John Milton.”]