may suffice to teach them who will attend and learn all the points of Religion necessary to salvation:  then, sorting them into several congregations of a moderate number, out of the ablest and zealousest of them to create elders, who, exercising and requiring from themselves what they have learnt (for no learning is retained without constant exercise and methodical repetition), may teach and govern the rest:  and, so exhorted to continue faithful and stedfast, they may securely be committed to the providence of God and the guidance of his Holy Spirit till God may offer some opportunity to visit them again and to confirm them.”  The only concession Milton will make is that, in cases of urgent necessity, application may be made to magistrates or other trustees of charitable funds for aid in these temporary and itinerant missions.  For the rest, it will be seen, it is with difficulty that he allows the existence of a permanent pastorate anywhere.  If there is to be a body of men in the community making a business of preaching, and if in towns and populous neighbourhoods congregations choose to retain the services, for life or for an indefinite period, of particular ministerial persons selected from this body, and to erect handsome buildings convenient for such services, well and good, or rather it cannot be helped; but the picture most to Milton’s fancy is that of an England generally, or at all events of a rural England, without any fixed or regular parish pastors or parish-churches, but each little local cluster of believers meeting on Sundays or other days in chapel or barn for mutual edification, or to be instructed by such simple teaching elders as may easily, from time to time, be produced within itself.  Add the itinerant agency of more practiced and professional preachers, circulating periodically among the local clusters, to rouse them or keep them alive; and nothing more would be needed.  There would be plenty of preaching, and good preaching, everywhere; but, as most of it would be spontaneous by hard-handed men known among their neighbours, and working, like their neighbours, for their ordinary subsistence, the preaching profession, as a means of income, would be reduced to a minimum.  In a Church so constituted there would still be hirelings, especially in large towns and where there were wealthy congregations; but the number of such would be greatly reduced.  III.  Under the third head of the “manner” of the recompense to ministers, where there is any recompense at all, the substance of Milton’s remarks is that the purely voluntary character of the recompense must be studiously maintained.  It must be purely an alms, an oblation of benevolence.  Hence it should never take the form of a life-endowment, or even of a contract conferring a legal title to demand payment.  The appearance of a minister of the Gospel in a law-court to sue for money supposed to be due to him for his ministerial services, even by promise or agreement, is spoken of with disgust.  Were it the understood rule that there could be no recovery by a minister even of his promised salary, would not that also tend in some degree to keep Hirelings out of the Church?