secure. The Puritans could not exist in safety side by side with
a church whose principle was that there was no church without the
apostolic succession. The abolition of episcopacy and the substitution
of the Presbyterian platform was, so it then seemed, a bare measure
of necessary precaution, and not merely the extravagant demand of
dissatisfied spirits. Add to this, that it was well understood by
those near enough to the principal actors in the drama, that the
concessions made by the Court had been easily made, because they could
be taken back, when the time should come, with equal ease. Even the
most moderate men, who were satisfied with the amount of reform
already obtained, must have trembled at its insecurity. The Puritan
leaders must have viewed with dismay the tendency in the nation
towards a reaction in favour of things as they were.

It was upon this condition of the public mind that Milton persistently
poured pamphlet after pamphlet, successive vials of apocalyptic wrath.
He exhausts all the resources of rhetoric, and plays upon every note
in the gamut of public feeling; that he may rouse the apathetic,
confirm the wavering, dumbfound the malignant; where there was zeal,
to fan it into flame; where there was opposition, to sow and browbeat
it by indignant scorn and terrific denunciation. The first of these
manifestoes was (1) _Of Reformation touching Church Discipline_, of
which I have already spoken. This was immediately followed by (2)
_Of Prelaticall Episcopacy_. This tract was a reply, in form, to a
publication of Archbishop Usher. It was about the end of May, 1641,
that Usher had come forward on the breach with his _Judgment of Dr.
Rainolds touching the Original of Episcopacy_, Rainolds, who had been
President of Corpus (1598-1607), had belonged to the Puritan party in
his day, had refused a bishopric, and was known, like Usher himself,
to be little favourable to the exclusive claims of the high