Page:The reason of church-governement urg'd against prelaty - Milton (1641).djvu/31

 keep away schisme? if to bring a num and chil stupidity of soul, an unactive blindnesse of minde upon the people by their leaden doctrine, or no doctrine at all, if to persecute all knowing and zealous Christians by the violence of their courts, be to keep away schisme, they keep away schisme indeed; and by this kind of discipline all Italy and Spaine is as purely and politickly kept from schisme as England hath beene by them. With as good a plea might the dead palsie boast to a man, tis I that free you from stitches and paines, and the troublesome feeling of cold & heat, of wounds and stroke; if I were gone, all these would molest you. The Winter might as well vaunt it selfe against the Spring, I destroy all noysome and rank weeds, I keepe downe all pestilent vapours. Yes and all wholesome herbs, and all fresh dews, by your violent & hidebound frost; but when the gentle west winds shall open the fruitfull bosome of the earth thus over-girded by your imprisonment, then the flowers put forth and spring, and then the Sunne shall scatter the mists, and the manuring hand of the Tiller shall root up all that burdens the soile without thank to your bondage. But farre worse then any frozen captivity is the bondage of Prelates, for that other, if it keep down any thing which is good, within the earth, so doth it likewise that which is ill, but these let out freely the ill, and keep down the good, or else keepe downe the lesser ill, and let out the greatest. Be asham'd at last to tell the Parlament ye curbe Schismaticks, when as they know ye cherish and side with Papists, and are now as it were one party with them, and tis said they helpe to petition for ye. Can we believe that your government strains in good earnest at the petty gnats of schisme, when as we see it makes nothing to swallow the Camel heresie of Rome; but that indeed your throats are of the right Pharisaical straine. Where are those schismaticks with whom the Prelats hold such hot skirmish? shew us your acts, those glorious annals which your Courts of loathed memory lately deceas'd have left us? those schismaticks I doubt me wil be found the most of them such as whose only schisme was to have spoke the truth against your high abominations and cruelties in the Church; this is the schisme ye hate most, the removall of your criminous Hierarchy. A politick government of yours, and of a pleasant conceit, set up to remove those as a pretended schisme, that would remove you as a palpable heresie in government. If the schisme would pardon ye that, she might go jagg'd in as many cuts and slashes as she pleas'd for you. As for the rending of the Church, we have ny