"would have them tame and patient drudges. In "short, you must treat them every way like Pack"horses or Mules, not excepting the bells about "their necks, which by their perpetual jingling,

may be of use to drown their cares." Now this is plain dealing, and consistent Politicks. But to talk of Liberty and free Government, publick Good and rational Happiness, as requiring limitations on the Press, and Licensers of Books, is as absurd, as to speak of Liberty in a dungeon, with chains on every limb. Hobbes too was consistent with himself, and advises those, who aim at absolute dominion, to destroy all the antient Greek and Latin Authours; because if those are read, principles of

• Hobbes too was consistent with himself, and advises those who aim at absolute dominion, to destroy all the antient Greek and Latin Authors; &c.] Subtle as this Metaphysician was he may on this head be "confronted with self comparisons." Both the Authour of Oceana and Dryden have preserved his well-founded apophthegm, that "a Man was always against Reason, if "Reason was against him." And when Hobbes (p. 140. Works; fol. 1651.) doubts not " but if it had been a thing con"trary to any Man's right of Dominion, or to the interest of "men that have Dominion, that the three Angles of a Triangle "should be equal to two Angles of a Square; that Doctrine "should have been, if not disputed, yet by the burning of all "books of Geometry, suppressed, as far as he whom it concerned "was able:"-he incautiously discloses why he breathed a

Liberty, and just sentiments of the Dignity and Rights of Mankind must be imbib'd. But can there be more glaring bare-faced nonsense than to

wish for the extermination of antient Learning. Præpandere lumina Mentis is a Motto which never could be borne by the Writer of the Leviathan.

Had MILTON not deviated from the established opinions in Church and State, should we not ere now have seen the hue and lineaments of his character drawn in contrast with those of his celebrated Contemporary? The fervent Piety which distinguished by far the most sublime of Christian Poets, was directly opposite to the skepticism of Hobbes. Their contrariety in many other features was not less striking in their lives and in their opinions they were as unlike as Boyle to Bolingbroke.

When the rising troubles at home prognosticated the approach of civil War, MILTON then travelling over classic ground, and bending his course toward Greece with all her strong attractions for a Scholar and a Poet, abruptly hastened back to England, thinking no sacrifice too great for the support of his Country's Liberty: "In Siciliam quoque et Græciam trajicere volentem Ime, tristis ex Angliâ belli civilis nuntius revocavit : Turpe " enim existimabam, dum mei cives domi de Libertate dimica"rent, me animi causâ otiosè peregrinari." Pr. W. II. 332. ed. 1738. And he laid out the better part of his Life in vindicating it.

The Philosopher of Malmesbury deserted his country and fled to Paris that he might live in safety. "His whole Life "(as his Biographer relates) was governed by his fears;" of the Clergy more especially, whom the latitude of his specula tions had raised up against him. MILTON's manly spirit

say, "That the very support of a free Constitution

requires the extinction of the Press;" that is, the extinction of the only means of knowing what we

set him above all such apprehensions. Having given offence while at Rome by his open profession of the Protestant Faith, though warned that the English Jesuits were plotting against him in case he should return to that City, yet not at all daunted, he went thither the second time with a determination not to begin any discourse about Religion; at the same time, when attacked he defended his own at the Papal See as freely as before. "I never (says he) shrunk from the "avowal of my tenets." ibid. p. 332. Hobbes must have laughed at such inflexible Probity; for he inculcated that every one should profess the religion of the Magistrate. Not so MILTON who refused to enter into the Church because it was his belief that "he who took Orders must subscribe "Slave." ibid. I. 62.

Again; MILTON in office under Cromwell gave him open and uncourtly counsel, and after the Protector had engrossed the powers of the State, he exhorted him never to desert the principles which he had professed, laying before him the aggravated enormity of his crime, if he should become a Tyrant, and betray the cause he had defended in Parliament and in the field; (see the close of the 2nd Def.). But Hobbes, like Spinoza, as if there was no distinction between Force and Justice, accounted Right to be the consequence of Power, and held that whatever a man can do, it is lawful for him to do. Hobbes at Paris therefore wrote in support of Cromwell's usurpation.

This hardened advocate for despotism and Pensioner of Charles II. strove to degrade Mankind in their very nature to a

are as Men and Christians: what our Natures are capable of: what is our just happiness, and how we ought to be treated by our Governours: that is, by those whom we have entrusted with the management of our interests and concerns.

I hope it will never be this Nation's misfortune to fall into the hands of an Administration, that do not from their Souls abhor any thing that has but the remotest tendency toward the erection of a new and arbitrary jurisdiction over the Press: or

level with the beasts of the field: for no other reason (said Clarendon truly) than that they might be fit to wear the chains he had provided for them. How repugnant this to MILTON'S Doctrine; who makes the Angel Raphaël say authoritatively to Adam,

"Accuse not Nature, she hath done her part;
"Do thou but thine, and be not diffident

"Of Wisdom, she deserts thee not, if thou
"Dismiss not her.

P. L. VIII. 561.

And who after the Restoration, filled with indignant sorrow, lamented, that "when God hath decreed Servitude on a sinful

Nation, fitted by their own vices for no condition but ser"vile, all estates of Government are alike unable to avoid "it." (Hist. of Britain. b. v. c. 1.)

In a word, MILTON's name was a horrour at the Court of Charles II. and the portrait of Hobbes was in his cabinet.

can otherwise look upon any attempt that way, than as the greatest impiety, the cruellest, the wickedest, the most irreligious thing that can be imagined. Would it not be sacrilegiously robbing GOD of the only worship he delights in, the worship of the Heart and Understanding? Can there be Religion or Virtue without Reason, Thought, and Choice? Or can Reason, Thinking, Knowlege and Choice, subsist without the only conceivable means of making Men wise and understanding, rational, and virtuous? What is the Kingdom of Christ? Doth not our Saviour delight in calling it Light, and a Kingdom of Light? And what did he come to destroy but the Kingdom of Darkness? And can there be a Kingdom of Light, without the Liberty, the unconstrained Liberty of diffusing Light and Knowlege? What is the Reformation, or what does it mean but the Liberty, the absolute and perfect Liberty, of correcting and refuting errors, and of undeceiving Mankind? What is it that we call PROTESTANTISM, but a resolution stedfastly and undauntedly to oppose all encroachments upon rational Liberty, the Liberty of the Judgment and Understanding; and to maintain it as our most valuable