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damned to the pit of Hell. Christ delivered all men from bondage, and you endeavour to enslave all mankind. Never question, since you have been such a villain to God himself, his church, and all mankind in general, but that the same fate attends you that befel your equal, out of despair rather than repentance, to be weary of your life, and hang yourself, and burst asunder as he did; and to send before-hand that faithless and treacherous conscience of yours, that railing conscience at good and holy men, to that place of torment that is prepared for you. And now I think, through God's assistance, I have finished the work I undertook, to wit, the defence of the noble actions of my countrymen at home and abroad, against the raging and envious madness of this distracted sophister; and the asserting of the common rights of the people against the unjust domination of kings, not out of any hatred to kings, but tyrants: nor have I purposely left unanswered any one argument alleged by my adversary, nor any one example or authority quoted by him, that seemed to have any force in it, or the least colour of an argument. Perhaps I have been guilty rather of the other extreme, of replying to some of his fooleries and trifles, as if they were solid arguments, and thereby may seem to have attributed more to them than they deserved. One thing yet remains to be done, which perhaps is of the greatest concern of all, and that is, That you, my countrymen, refute this adversary of yours yourselves, which I do not see any other means of your effecting, than by a constant endeavour to outdo all men's bad words by your own good deeds. When you laboured under more sorts of oppression than one, you betook yourselves to God for refuge, and he was graciously pleased to hear your most earnest prayer and desires. He has gloriously

delivered you, the first of nations, from the two greatest mischiefs of this life, and most pernicious to virtue, tyranny and superstition; he has endued you with greatness of mind to be the first of mankind, who after having conquered their own king, and having had him delivered into their hands, have not scrupled to condemn him judicially, and pursuant to that sentence of condemnation, to put him to death. After the performing so glorious an action as this, you ought to do nothing that is mean and little, not so much as to think of, much less to do any thing but what is great and sublime. Which to attain to this is your only way; as you have subdued your enemies in the field, so to make appear, that unarmed, and in the highest outward peace and tranquillity, you of all mankind are best able to subdue ambition, avarice, the love of riches, and can best avoid the corruptions that prosperity is apt to introduce, (which generally subdue and triumph over other nations,) to show as great justice, temperance, and moderation in the maintaining your liberty, as you have shown courage in freeing yourselves from slavery. These are the only arguments, by which you will be able to evince, that you are not such persons as this fellow represents you, Traitors, Robbers, Murderers, Parricides, Madmen ; that you did not put your king to death out of any ambitious design, or a desire of invading the rights of others; not out of any seditious principles or sinister ends; that it was not an act of fury or madness; but that it was wholly out of love to your liberty, your religion, to justice, virtue, and your country, that you punished a tyrant. But if it should fall out otherwise, (which God forbid) if as you have been valiant in war, you should grow debauched in peace, you that have had such visible demonstrations of the goodness of God to

yourselves, and his wrath against your enemies; and that you should not have learned by so eminent, so remarkable an example before your eyes, to fear God, and work righteousness; for my part, I shall easily grant and confess (for I cannot deny it) whatever ill men may speak or think of you, to be very true. And you will find in a little time, that God's displeasure against you will be greater than it has been against your adversaries, greater than his grace and favour has been to yourselves, which you have had larger experience of, than any other nation under Heaven.

AN ANSWER

TO A

MOST PUERILE APOLOGY

FOR THE

KING AND PEOPLE OF ENGLAND, By some anonymous Lurker;

BY JOHN PHILLIPS,

AN ENGLISHMAN.

TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL LATIN BY THE EDITOR.

THERE has lately appeared a defence of his country, by John Milton, an Englishman, in answer to the famous anonymous libel, in which the senate and people of England have been abused by the vilest slanders, and which is now commonly known to have been the infamous production of Salmasius the grammarian. This defence is a work which has obtained the high approbation of the learned of all nations. An answer was therefore expected either from Salmasius bimself, or from some other man of letters. And, doubtless, it much concerned that faction to pitch upon some able person to prop up their tottering cause; when lo! from those mountains of rumours, which report industriously brought to our ears, at length creeps out this insignificant mouse, which, with its miserable squeak, sets

to nibbling, and that is all; or to speak more truly, harrasses his teeth in idly seizing upon a few petty morsels, without the slightest injury to the author, and without ever reaching the force and acuteness of his arguments.

First I wondered who he might be: for conscious surely of his insignificance, he conceals his ignoble name. But having read his little book (I know not whether an index of his lean and starveling wit) I forthwith beheld in it the man, as in a glass. What sort of personage he is, we shall see hereafter. This, however, is already sufficiently plain-that he is a man altogether obscure, and worthless; who (trusting to his arrogance and his lies) that he might seem to reanimate a little the dying and almost departed cause of his king, that he might stir up and exasperate anew the minds of men, now tranquilized and ready to acquiesce in the judgments of God, has dared to oppose himself to the will of the Almighty and to his sovereign justice, (which he intends should be made known to all, by his exhibiting such signal and stupendous examples of his wrath against the king and his abettors) and to accuse and to defame, with the most infamous calumnies, the supreme magistracies of our commonwealth. Yet so dull is he, so witless, a dormouse so singularly drowsy, that he presents an infallible omen of his languid and perishing cause: for that cause must of necessity be most weak and iniquitous, in the defence of which its advocates show their inferiority not only in arms, but in reason and argument.

Such being the character of the man, he was, by Milton himself, deservedly neglected and despised; since it was thought, by all, unbecoming the dignity and choice eloquence of that polished and learned author, to

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