It was a day when authority was questioned,
a day for "extending the area of freedom," but he went too far even for
emancipated England; and the mysterious power of the marriage tie has
always been reverenced as one of the main bulwarks of that righteousness
which exalteth a nation.
His apology for Smectymnuus is one of his pamphlets against Episcopacy,
and receives its title from the initial letters of the names of five
Puritan ministers, who also engaged in controversy: they were Stephen
Marshall, Edward Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcome, William Spenston.
The Church of England never had a more intelligent and relentless enemy
than John Milton.
OTHER PROSE WORKS.--Milton's prose works are almost all of them of an
historical character. Appointed Latin Secretary to the Council, he wrote
foreign dispatches and treatises upon the persons and events of the day.
In 1644 he published his _Areopagitica_, a noble paper in favor of
_Unlicensed Printing_, and boldly directed against the Presbyterian party,
then in power, which had continued and even increased the restraints upon
the press.
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