English Prose Writings of John Milton (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: this, if nothing else, plainly accuses them to be Do lawful members j of the House, if they thus perpetually mutiny against their own I body. And though they pretend, like Solomon's harlot, that they 1 have right thereto, by the same judgment that Solomon gave, it cannot belong to them, whenas it is not only their assent but their endeavour continually to divide Parliaments in twain; and jnot only by dividing, but by all other means to abolish and destroy / the free use of them to all posterity. For the which, and for all their former misdeeds, whereof this book and many volumes more cannot contain the moiety, I shall move ye, Lords, in the behalf I dare say of many thousand good Christians, to let your justice and speedy sentence pass against this great malefactor, prclaty. And yet in the midst of rigour I would beseech ye to think of mercy; and such a mercy (I fear I shall overshoot with a desire to save this falling prelaty), such a mercy (if I may venture to say it) as may exceed that which for only ten righteous persons would have saved Sodom. Not that I dare advise ye to contend with God, whether he or you shall be more merciful, but in your wise esteems to balance the offences of those peccant cities with these enormous riots of ungodly misrule that prelaty hath wrought both in the Church of Christ, and in the State of this Kingdom. And if ye think ye may with a pious presumption strive to go beyond God in mercy, I shall not be one now that would dissuade ye. Though God for less than ten just persons would not spare Sodom, yet if you can find, after due search, but only one good thing in prelaty, cither to religion or civil government, to king or parliament, to prince or people, to law, liberty, wealth, or learning, spare her, let her live, let her spread among ye, t...