Because you have thrown of your Prelate Lord,
And with stiff vows renounc'd his Liturgy,
To seise the widow'd whore
From them whose sin ye envi'd, not abhorr'd,
Dare ye for this adjure the civill
To force our consciences that Christ set free,
And ride us with a classic
Taught ye by meer A.
S. and Rotherford?
Men whose Life,
Learning,
Faith and pure
Would have been held in high esteem with Paul,
Must now he nam'd and printed
By shallow Edwards and Scotch what d'ye call:
But we do hope to find out all your tricks,
Your plots and packing worse then those of Trent, That so the
May with their wholesome and preventive
Clip your phylacteries, though bauk your ears, And succour our just fears,
When they shall read this clearly in your charge,
New Presbyter is but Old Priest writ large.'This copy of verses also was first added in the second edition of the author's poems in 1673, and I suppose was made, when the Directory was establish'd, and disputes ran high between the Presbyterians and Independents in the year 1645, the latter pleading for a toleration, and the former against it.
And in the Manuscript it is not in Milton's own hand, but in another, the same that wrote (out) some of the Sonnets.(line 7: --- with a classic hierarchy):
In the Presbyterian form of government there were congregational, classical, provincial, and national assemblies.
See what the author says in his Observations on the Irish peace, p. 356.
Vol. 1.
Edit. 1738.--"Their next impeachment is, 'that we oppose the Prebyterial government, the hedge and bulwark of religion.' Which all the land knows to be a most impudent falshood, having establish'd it with all freedom, wherever it hath been desir'd.
Nevertheless, as we perceive it aspiring to be a compulsive power upon all without exception in parochial, classical, and provincial hierarchies, or to require the fleshly arm of magistracy in the execution of a spiritual disciplin, to punish and amerce by any corporal infliction those whose consciences cannot be edify'd by what authority they are compell'd, we hold it no more to be 'the hedge and bulwark of religion,' than the Popish and Prelatical courts, or the Spanish Inquisition."(line 8: --- by mere A.
S. and Rotherford?):
I know not who is meant by A.
S.
Some book might have been publish'd sign'd by those letters, and perhaps an equivoque might also be intended.
Sam.
Rotherford was one of the commissioners of the church of Scotland.(line 12:
By shallow Edwards...&c):
In the Manuscript it was at first "hare-brain'd Edwards." He wrote the 'Gangraena,' a book in which the errors, heresies, blasphemies, and lewd practice, which broke out in the last four years (1642, 1643, 1644, 1645,) are recited:
See Collier's Ecclesiastical History,
Vol. 2. p. 855. Mr.
Thyer gives this account of it, that it was publish'd in 1646, and dedicated to the Parlament by Thomas Edwards minister of the Gospel, and was intitled, "Gangraema, or a Catalogue and Discovery of many of the errors, heresies, blasphemies, and pernicious practices of the Sectaries of this time, vented and acted in England in these four last years."'Scotch what d'ye call' might be perhaps the famous Alexander Henderson, or as that expression implies some hard name,
George Gillespie, a Scotch minister and commissioner at Westminster, called Galaspe in Whitlock, and Galasp in one of our author's Sonnets: and nothing could be express'd with greater contempt.(line 17:
Clip your phylacteries, though bauk your ears...):
So we read as it is corrected in the table of Errata in the edition of 1673: in all the editions it is falsly printed "bank your ears." This line in the Manuscript was thus at first,"Crop ye as close as marginal P---s ears."He means Prynne who had been sentenc'd to lose his ears, and afterwards was sentenc'd to lose the remainder of them, so that he was 'cropt close' indeed: and the reason of his calling them "marginal" is express'd in his treatise of the 'likeliest means to remove hirelings out of the church.'--"And yet a late hot Querist for tithes, whom ye may know by his wit's 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,"&c.
Vol. 1. p. 569.
Edit. 1738.(line 20:
New Presbyter is but Old Priest...):
He expresses the same sentiment in other parts of his works. "Bishops and Presbyters are the same to us both name and thing" &c.
See his Speech for the liberty of unlicenc'd printing.
Vol. 1. p. 153. and the conclusion of his treatise intitled The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates.'~ Th.
Newton,
Milton's Works, 2nd edition, 1753.
