The five pamphlets in which Milton enunciated his views on Church Government fall into two well-marked chronological divisions.  Three—­“Of Reformation touching Church Discipline in England,” “Of Prelatical Episcopacy,” “Animadversions upon the Remonstrant’s Defence against Smectymnuus”—­which appeared almost simultaneously, belong to the middle of 1641, when the question of episcopacy was fiercely agitated.  Two—­“The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelacy,” and “The Apology for Smectymnuus,"[1] belong to the early part of 1642, when the bishops had just been excluded from the House of Lords.  To be just to Milton we must put ourselves in his position.  At the present day forms of church government are usually debated on the ground of expediency, and even those to whom they seem important cannot regard them as they were regarded by Milton’s contemporaries.  Many may protest against Episcopacy receiving especial recognition from the State, but no one dreams of abolishing it, or of endowing another form of ecclesiastical administration in its room.  It is no longer contended that the national religion should be changed, the contention is that no religion should be national, but that all should be placed on an impartial footing.  But Milton at this time desired a theocracy, and nothing doubted that he could produce a pattern agreeable in every respect to the Divine will if only Prelacy could be hurled after Popery.  The controversy, therefore, assumed far grander proportions than would be possible in our day, when it is three-fourths a protest against the airs of superiority which the alleged successors of the Apostles think it becoming to assume towards teachers whose education and circumstances approach more closely than their own to the Apostolic model.  What would seem exaggerated now was then perfectly in place.  Milton, in his own estimation, had a theme for which the cloven tongues of Pentecost were none too fiery, or the tongues of angels too melodious.  As bursts of impassioned prose-poetry the finest passages in these writings have never been surpassed, nor ever will be equalled so long as short sentences prevail, and the interminable period must not unfold itself in heights and hollows like the incoming tide of ocean, nor peal forth melodious thunder like a mighty organ.  But, considered as argumentative compositions, they are exceedingly weak.  No masculine head could be affected by them; but a manly heart may easily imbibe the generous contagion of their noble enthusiastic idealism.  No man with a single fibre of ideality or enthusiasm can help confessing that Milton has risen to a transcendent height, and he may imagine that it has been attained by the ladder of reason rather than the pinion of poetry.  Such an one may easily find reasons for agreeing with Milton in many inspired outbursts of eloquence simulating the logic that is in fact lacking to them.  The following splendid passage, for instance, and there are very many like it, merely proves that a seat in the House of Lords is not essential to the episcopal office, which no one ever denied.  It would have considerable force if the question involved the nineteenth century one of the Pope’s temporal sovereignty:—­