Page:The reason of church-governement urg'd against prelaty - Milton (1641).djvu/68

 power by a doctrine of carnall might, as Prelaty is, he will use that fleshly strength which ye put into his hands to subdue your spirits by a servile and blind superstition, and that againe shall hold such dominion over your captive minds, as returning with an insatiat greedinesse and force upon your worldly wealth and power wherewith to deck and magnifie her self, and her false worships, she shall spoil and havock your estates, disturbe your ease, diminish your honour, inthraul your liberty under the swelling mood of a proud Clergy, who will not serve or feed your soules with spirituall food, look not for it, they have not wherewithall, or if they had, it is not in their purpose. But when they have glutted their ingratefull bodies, at least if it be possible that those open sepulchers should ever be glutted, and when they have stufft their Idolish temples with the wastefull pillage of your estates, will they yet have any compassion upon you, and that poore pittance which they have left you, will they be but so good to you as that ravisher was to his sister, when he had us'd her at his pleasure, will they but only hate ye and so turne ye loose? no: they will not, Lords and Commons, they will not favour ye so much. What will they do then in the name of God and Saints, what will these man-haters yet with more despight and mischiefe do? Ile tell ye, or at least remember ye, for most of ye know it already. That they may want nothing to make them true merchants of Babylon, as they have done to your souls, they will sell your bodies, your wives, your children, your liberties, your Parlaments, all these things, and if there be ought else dearer then these, they will sell at an out-cry in their Pulpits to the arbitrary and illegall dispose of any one that may hereafter be call'd a King, whose mind shall serve him to listen to their bargain. And by their corrupt and servile doctrines boring our eares to an everlasting slavery, as they have done hitherto, so will they yet do their best to repeal and erase every line and clause of both our great charters. Nor is this only what they will doe, but what they hold as the maine reason and mystery of their advancement that they must do; be the Prince never so just and equall to his subjects; yet such are their malicious and depraved eyes, that they so look on him, & so understand him, as if he requir'd no other gratitude, or piece of service from them then this. And indeed they stand so opportunly for the disturbing or the destroying of a state, being a knot of creatures whose dignities, means, and preferments have no foundation in the Gospel, as they themselves acknowledge, but only in the Princes favour, & to continue