s
religion, Milton declares, had been all hypocrisy. He had
resorted to "ignoble shifts to seem holy, and to get a saintship
among the ignorant and wretched people." The prayer he had given
as a relic to the bishop at his execution had been stolen from
Sidney's _Arcadia_. In outward devotion he had not at all
exceeded some of the worst kings in history. But in spite of
Milton, the _Eikon Basilike_ sold rapidly, and contributed
greatly to the reaction; and the Secretary of the Council of
State had just reason to complain of the perverseness of his
generation, "who, having first cried to God to be delivered from
their king, now murmur against God for having heard their prayer,
and cry as loud for their king against those that delivered
them."

The next year (1650) Milton had to take up his pen again in the
same cause against the _Defence of Charles I. to Charles II._ by
the learned Salmasius. Milton was not sparing in terms of abuse.
He calls Salmasius "a rogue," "a foreign insignificant
professor," "a slug," "a silly loggerhead," "a superlative fool."
Even a _Times_ leader of to-day would fall short of Milton in
vituperative terms. It is not for this we still reverence the
_Defensio_; but for its political force, and its occasional
splendid passages. Two samples must suffice:--

"Be this right of kings whatever it will, the right of the people
is as much from God as it. And whenever any people, without some
visible designation from God Himself, appoint a king over them,
they have the same right to pull him down as they had to set him
up at first. And certainly it is a more Godlike action to depose
a tyrant than to set one up; and there appears much more of God
in the people when they depose an unjust prince than in a king
that oppresses an innocent people. . . . So that there is but
little reason for that wicked and foolish opinion that kings, who
commonly are the worst of men, should be so high in God's account
as that He should have put the world under them, to be at their
beck and be governed according to their humour; and that for
their sakes alone He should have reduced all mankind, whom He
made after His own image, into the same condition as brutes."

The conclusion of Milton's _Defensio_ is not more remarkable for
its eloquence than it is for its closing paragraph. Addressing
his countrymen in an exhortation that reminds one of the speeches
of Pericles to the Athenians, he proceeds:--

"God has graciously