The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 998 pages of information about The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660.

The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 998 pages of information about The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660.
rate of their blood and treasure, they never shall be able to regain what they now have purchased and may enjoy, or to free themselves from any yoke imposed upon them.  Nor will they dare to go about it,—­utterly disheartened for the future, if these their highest attempts prove unsuccessful:  which will be the triumph of all Tyrants hereafter over any People that shall resist oppression; and their song will then be to others How sped the Rebellious English?, to our posterity How sped the Rebels your fathers?....  Yet neither shall we obtain or buy at an easy rate this new gilded yoke which thus transports us.  A new Royal Revenue must be found, a new Episcopal,—­for those are individual:  both which, being wholly dissipated or bought by private persons, or assigned for service done, and especially to the Army, cannot be recovered without a general detriment and confusion to men’s estates, or a heavy imposition on all men’s purses,—­benefit to none but to the worst and ignoblest sort of men, whose hope is to be either the ministers of Court riot and excess or the gainers by it.  But, not to speak more of losses and extraordinary levies on our estates, what will then be the revenges and offences remembered and returned, not only by the Chief Person, but by all his adherents:  accounts and reparations that will be required, suits, indictments, inquiries, discoveries, complaints, informations,—­who knows against whom or how many, though perhaps neuters,—­if not to utmost infliction, yet to imprisonment, fines, banishment, or molestation.  If not these, yet disfavour, discountenance, disregard, and contempt on all but the known Royalist, or whom he favours, will be plenteous.  Nor let the new-royalized Presbyterians persuade themselves that their old doings, though, now recanted, will be forgotten, whatever conditions be contrived or trusted on.  Will they not believe this, nor remember the Pacification how it was kept to the Scots, how other solemn promises many a time to us?  Let them but now read the diabolical forerunning libels, the faces, the gestures, that now appear foremost and briskest in all public places as the harbingers of those that are in expectation to reign over us; let them but hear the insolencies, the menaces, the insultings of our newly animated common enemies, crept lately out of their holes, their Hell I might say, by the language of their infernal pamphlets, the spew of every drunkard, every ribald:  nameless, yet not for want of licence, but for very shame of their own vile persons; not daring to name themselves while they traduce others by name, and give us to foresee that they intend to second their wicked words, if ever they have power, with more wicked deeds.  Let our zealous backsliders [the Presbyterians] forethink now with themselves how their necks, yoked with these tigers of Bacchus,—­these new fanatics of not the preaching but the sweating tub, inspired with nothing holier than the venereal pox,—­can draw one way, under Monarchy,
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The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.