phrases and abound in metaphor. "There is . . . perpetual iteration of Christ's kisses, wooing, 'love-embracements', of marriage with Him, even of being dandled on His knee, of the smell of His breath and of His garments." Thus in a Letter to the Countess of Kenmure in 1630 he says:

For this is the house of wine, where ye meet with your Well-Beloved. Here it is where He kisseth you with the kisses of His mouth, and where ye feel the smell of His garments; and they have indeed most fragrant and glorious smell. Ye must, I say, wait upon Him, and be often communing with Him, whose lips are as lilies, dropping sweet-smelling myrrh, and by the moving thereof He will assuage your grief; for the Christ that saveth you is a speaking Christ; and the Church knoweth Him by His voice, and can discern His tongue amongst a thousand.

RUTHERFORD plunged into ecclesiastical controversy with the zest of a "very gladiator." His Peaceable and Temperate Plea for Paul's Presbyterie in Scotland, 1642, with its sequel, The Due Right of Presbyteries, 1644, roused the wrath of MILTON who counted their author among the New Forcers of Conscience. In 1644 RUTHERFORD issued his masterly Lex Rex, a Dispute for the Just Prerogative of King and People. This was intended as a reply to the advocates of an absolute monarchy. It did much to popularise the principle of the liberty of subjects. After the Restoration in 1661 it was burned by the common hangman in London. RUTHERFORD followed it up with The Divine Right of Church Government and Persecution, 1646, and with A Free Disputation against Pretended Liberty of Conscience, 1648, a work which Bishop Heber calls "perhaps the most elaborate defence of persecution which has ever appeared in a Protestant country."

RUTHERFORD was profoundly pious as The Trial and

Triumph of Faith, 1645, and Christ Dying and Drawing Sinners to Himself, 1647, clearly prove, but he was also rashly controversial. In reply to JEREMY TAYLOR'S Liberty of Prophesying he wrote a Treatise, 1648, denying the thesis of that landmark of religious freedom. In 1651 he wrote Divine Providence, to refute the doctrinal views of Jesuits, Socinians, and Arminians. RICHARD BAXTER, characterised this pamphlet as "the worst piece he had ever read." RUTHERFORD's last work, Influences of the Life of Grace, appeared in 1659.

GEORGE GILLESPIE, 1610-1648, one of the most outstanding of the 'Westminster divines', had an important share in drafting the Westminster Confession of Faith, and the Shorter Catechism. His original and masterly work entitled Aaron's Rod Blossoming, 1646, states the high Presbyterian claim for spiritual independence.

This controversy reacheth up to the heavens, and the top of it is above the clouds. It doth highly concern Jesus Christ himself, in his glory, royal prerogative, and kingdom, which he hath and exerciseth as Mediator and Head of his Church. The crown of Jesus Christ, or any part, privilege, or pendicle thereof, must needs be a noble and excellent subject. This truth. that Jesus Christ is a king, and hath a kingdom and government in his Church distinct from the kingdom of this world and from the civil government, hath this commendation and character above all other truths, that Christ himself suffered to the death for it, and sealed it with his blood.

JAMES GUTHRIE, 1612-1661, drew up a shrewd little work on Elders and Deacons, and shared in the production of The Causes of God's Wrath against Scotland, 1651, a work, which, together with other labours, led to his martyrdom. WILLIAM GUTHRIE, 1620-1665, a "great melancholian",

published a "spiritual day-book of all the passages between the Spirit of God and the soul in its work of regeneration," entitled The Christian's Great Interest, 1659. ROBERT LEIGHTON, 1611-1684, towered above most of his contemporaries in intellect and piety. During his Presbyterian period, 1641-1661, he wrote Devout Exercises, and preached the sermons afterwards published in his remarkable and still valuable Commentary on I Peter.

The bitterness and wrath of reformation were also displayed in the literature. ROBERT CALDER, 1650-1723, wrote a scurrilous satire The Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence, or the Foolishness of their Teaching Discovered from their Books, Sermons, and Prayers, 1692, which pilloried the weaknesses and foibles of its victims in an exuberance of mockery. The 'Cameronian' sect said good-bye to meekness and gentleness in their Apologetical Declaration, 1684, and the distressing records of The Cloud of Witnesses, 1714, showed the disastrous results of their appeal to force. In 1685, Claverhouse and the Royalists took up the challenge, and the bloody consequences are variously described in The Informatory Vindication, 1687, The Hind Let Loose, 1688, and in DANIEL DEFOE'S, 1659-1731, Memoirs of the Church of Scotland, 1717.

The supreme and immortal masterpiece of Puritan literature was the work of JOHN MILTON, 1608-1674, whose "soul was like a star and dwelt apart." He linked the culture of the Renaissance with the tremendous moral earnestness of the Puritan faith. He wrote sublimely because he dwelt among sublime things.

During his college days he began the poem On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, and wrote the first draft of it on Christmas Day, 1629. His unfortunate experiences of marriage led him to write The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, Restored to the Good of both Sexes from the Bondage of Canon Law and other Mistakes, 1643, and another work

on the same theme the Tetrachordon: Expositions upon the Four Chief Places of Scripture which speak of Marriage, 1644.

While King Charles I awaited the death penalty, there appeared the Eikon Basilike (the King's Image), describing his virtues and piety. This book moved MILTON to produce a written reply entitled Eikonoklastes, (the ImageBreaker), 1649. He justified the Puritan cause for compassing the King's execution in a work on The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, 1649, and in spite of failing eye-sight he issued a magnificent Defence of the Anglican People, 1652, one of the most splendid works in English controversial literature.

MILTON'S magistral poetry was the fruit of his blind years. Paradise Lost, 1667, a colossal epic of the human race and the most honoured poem in the whole range of English literature, cost him seven years of toil. The sequel entitled Paradise Regained, was published in 1671, and in the same year MILTON also issued the Samson Agonistes, a pure tragedy, in some respects the most convincing of his works. That these greater works were in his mind years before they were written is shown by his words in the Reason of Church Government urged against Prelatry, 1641:

Neither do I think it shame to covenant with any knowing reader that, for some years yet I may go on trust with him toward the payment of what I am now indebted, as being a work not to be raised from the heat of youth or the vapours of wine but by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge

In 1673 he sent out A Treatise of True Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration, and the Best Means to Prevent the Growth of Popery; but a Treatise of Christian Doctrine that he left unpublished shows that his views changed from

puritan orthodoxy to an essentially unitarian theory, and from a strict Calvinism to the Arminian doctrine of freewill, although he did not give up the evangelical doctrines of Sin and Atonement.

The temporary purpose and the controversial character of his prose writings have tended to obscure them, so that their noble passages are not well known. The Areopagitica, a Speech of Mr. J. M. for the liberty of Unlicensed Printing, to the Parliament of England, 1644, is probably the most widely read. It has been called "the noblest plea for liberty of thought in the English language"; through it MILTON gave the death blow to the licensing and censorship of the press.

unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. . . . . We should be wary, therefore, what persecution we raise against the living labours of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored up in books.