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tance from us; besides yet a greater danger which is in it. For when GOD shakes a Kingdome with strong and healthfull commotions to a generall reforming, 'tis not untrue that many sectaries and false teachers are then busiest in seducing: but yet more true it is, that GOD then raises to his own work men of rare abilities, and more then common industry, not only to look back and revise what hath bin taught heretofore, but to gain furder and goe on, some new enlighten'd steps in the discovery of Truth. For such is the order of GODS enlightning his Church, to dispense and deal out by degrees his beam, so as our earthly eyes may best sustain it. Neither is GOD appointed and confin'd', where and out of what place these his chosen shall be first heard to speak; for he sees not as man sees, chooses not as man chooses, lest we should devote our selves again to set places, and Assemblies, and outward callings of men; planting our faith one while in

"Neither is GOD appointed and confin'd, &c.] In a preceding annotation (p. 60) I have shown that to appoint was to direct. It now expresses the same; as it does in Whitelock: “ some of "the Scots commissioners themselves, encouraged, if not ap"pointed, the printing of this Book."-Memorials; p. 201. edit. 1732. And in Samson Agonistes; v. 373.

"Appoint not heav'nly disposition, Father;

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Nothing of all these evils hath befall'n me "But justly."

Though Warburton's explanation in this latter instance is to arraign, summon to answer. But he was unprepared with any example to justify this assertion. He probably minuted this gloss down on the margin without much consideration.

the old Convocation House, and another while in the Chappell at Westminster; when all the Faith and Religion that shall be there canoniz'd3, is not sufficient without plain convincement, and the charity of patient instruction, to supple the least bruise of Conscience, to edifie the meanest Christian, who desires to walk in the Spirit, and not in the letter of human trust, for all the number of voices that can be there made; no, though Harry the 7. himself there, with all his leige tombs about him, should lend them voices from the dead, to swell

8 Planting our Faith one while in the old Convocation-House, and another while in the Chappell at Westminster; when all the Faith and Religion that shall be there canoniz'd, &c.] The Assembly of Divines nominated by the Members of the Parliament for the settlement of a new scheme of Church-worship, was holden in the Chapter-House belonging to Westminster Abbey. They were now met. Some Laymen sate with them: among others, Charles's Nephew, the Count Palatine, and Selden, Maynard, and Whitelock. Our Authour, in one of his Tracts, mentions his having attended their discussions. In an age like this, teeming with disputative Theology and Fanaticism, their deliberations attracted no small share of the public attention, and were, I doubt not, deemed by numbers of an importance not at all subordinate to the Debates in the neighbouring Houses of Parliament. After some of the Presbyterian Preachers had been loud in their censures of his first work on Divorce, MILTON to his next on that vexatious difficulty in Legislation prefixed an appeal to this Assembly conjointly with the Parliament, in a strain of energetic eloquence.

By canoniz'd, he meant decreed as sound Doctrine; from the barbaro - Greek Verb KANONIZEIN, "Sancire, Canones vel Leges Ecclesiasticas edere." Du Fresne; Gloss. ad Script. med. & infim. Græc. fol. Lugd. 1688. in v.

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their number. And if the men be erroneous who appear to be the leading schismaticks, what witholds us but our sloth, our self-will, and distrust in the right cause, that we doe not give them gentle meetings and gentle dismissions, that we debate not and examin the matter throughly with liberall and frequent audience; if not for their sakes, yet for our own? seeing no man who hath tasted Learning, but will confesse the many waies of profiting by those who not contented with stale receits are able to manage, and set forth new positions to the world. And were they but as the dust and cinders of our feet, so long as in that notion they may yet serve to polish and brighten the armoury of Truth, even for that respect they were not utterly to be cast away. But if they be of those whom GOD hath fitted for the speciall use of these times with eminent and ample gifts, and those perhaps neither among the Priests, nor among the Pharisees, and we in the hast of a precipitant zeal shall make no distinction, but resolve to stop their mouths, because we fear they come with new and dangerous opinions, as we commonly forejudge them ere we understand them; no lesse then woe to us, while thinking thus to defend the Gospel, we are found the persecutors!

There have bin not a few since the beginning of this Parlament, both of the Presbytery and

9 Parlament-] Then so spelt by many Writers; either as more consonant to the Pronunciation, generally the rule with

others, who by their unlicenc't Books to the contempt of an Imprimatur first broke that triple ice

our Authour and with others of that day, or in conformity to the derivation, to which Sir Edward Coke gave his sanction, "because every Member of that Court should sincerely and "discreetly parler la ment.” 1 Inst. 110. a.-It is seldom that Coke's Etymologies are rational. Chief Baron Atkins however applied himself to show that he had not erred in this particular instance; Parliamentary and Political Tracts; p. 33. 8vo. 1734. I must add to little purpose. Perhaps the best excuse for Coke on this occasion would be what we may suppose to have been his covert motive;-that he favoured it with an intent to fortify the Freedom of Speech in Parliament. A Privilege to which James I. bore such hostility, that in Council he tore with his own hand from the Journals of the Commons' House their Protestation which Coke conjointly with Noy, Selden, and Glanville had drawn up in assertion of this rightful claim.

Without question Etymology is often the safest guide to the true signification of a word. But Coke, Whitelock and others among the earlier writers on the Laws of England etymologized, like some of the Greek Philosophers, to bring a term to the sense they wanted it to bear, rather than to trace out its real root. A late very acute Philologer gave into an opposite perversion, and pushed it to an extreme which led me, and others, to suspect that he sometimes was practising on the credulity of his hearers. The Authour of the Diversions of Purley, after a signification had been fixed by consent and custom, would wrench it in construction from its received and actual acceptation back to its strict and etymological meaning: yet surely the jus et norma loquendi ought always to govern. Mr. Horne Tooke would have done well to have borne in mind the observation of an Authour whom he always praised highly: "Words having naturally none of their own, carry that signification to the "hearer that he is used to put upon them; whatever be the sense of him that uses them."-Locke; the Conduct of the Understanding. Sect. 35.

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clung about our hearts', and taught the People to see day: I hope that none of those were the perswaders to renew upon us this bondage which they themselves have wrought so much good by contemning. But if neither the check that Moses gave to young Joshua, nor the countermand which our Saviour gave to young John, who was so ready to prohibit those whom he thought unlicenc't, be not anough to admonish our Elders how unacceptable to GOD their testy mood of prohibiting is; if neither their own remembrance what evill hath abounded in the Church by this lett of Licencing, and what good they themselves have begun by transgressing it, be not anough, but that they will perswade, and execute the most Dominican part of the Inquisition over us, and are already with one foot in the stirrup so active at suppressing, it would be no unequall distribution in the first place to suppresse the suppressors themselves; whom the change of their condition hath puft up, more then their late experience of harder times hath made wise.

1 Broke that triple ice clung about our hearts.] Horace dictated this in part—

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MILTON has, I think, more frequent recollections of that Poet than of Virgil. Doubtless he felt the charm of Virgil's numbers, but he was not content to take Homer at second hand; to copy a copier; to be the shadow of a shade.

Anough-] See ILLUSTRATION, R.

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