The pamphlet, it will be seen, is more outspoken and thoroughgoing than its forerunner.  It contains also more of those individual passages that represent Milton in his rough mood of sarcastic strength, though none of such beauty or eloquence as are to be found in his earlier pamphlets.  The following are characteristic:—­

Mr. Prynne’s Defences of Tithes:—­“To heap such unconvincing citations as these in Religion, whereof the Scripture only is our rule, argues not much learning nor judgment, but the lost labour of much unprofitable reading.  And yet a late hot Querist for Tithes, whom ye may know, by his wits lying ever beside him in the margin, to be ever beside his wits in the text,—­a fierce Reformer once, now rankled with a contrary heat,—­would send us back, very reformedly indeed, to learn Reformation from Tyndarus and Rebuffas, two Canonical Promoters."[1]

[Footnote 1:  The reference is to Prynne’s Ten Considerable Queries concerning Tithes, &c., against the Petitioners and Petitions for their Total Abolition:  1659.]

Marriages and Clerical Concern in the same:—­“As for Marriages, that ministers should meddle with them, as not sanctioned or legitimate without their celebration, I find no ground in Scripture either of precept or example.  Likeliest it is (which our Selden hath well observed I.  II. c. 28.  Ux.  Heb.) that in imitation of heathen priests, who were wont at nuptials to use many rites and ceremonies, and especially judging it would be profitable and the increase of their authority not to be spectators only in business of such concernment to the life of man, they insinuated that marriage was not holy without their benediction, and for the better colour made it a Sacrament; being of itself a Civil Ordinance, a household contract, a thing indifferent and free to the whole race of mankind, not as religious, but as men.  Best, indeed, undertaken to religious ends, as the Apostle saith (1 Cor.  VII. ’In the Lord’); yet not therefore invalid or unholy without a minister and his pretended necessary hallowing, more than any other act, enterprise, or contract, of civil life,—­which ought all to be done also in the Lord and to his glory,—­all which, no less than marriage, were by the cunning of priests heretofore, as material to their profit, transacted at the altar.  Our Divines deny it to be a Sacrament; yet retained the celebration, till prudently a late Parliament recovered the civil liberty of marriage from their encroachment, and transferred the ratifying and registering thereof from their Canonical Shop to the proper cognisance of Civil Magistrates” [The Marriages Act of the Barebones Parliament; in accordance with which had been Milton’s own second marriage:  see ante p. 281, and Vol.  IV. p. 511].

Sitting under a Stated Minister:—­“If men be not all their lifetime under a teacher to learn Logic, Natural Philosophy, Ethics, or Mathematics,