whole land; with as much assurance as can be of human things, that they shall so continue (if God favour us, and our wilful sins provoke him not) even to the coming of our true and rightful, and only to be expected King, only worthy as he is our only Saviour, the Messiah, the Christ, the only heir of his eternal Father, the only by him annointed and ordained, since the work of our redemption finished, universal Lord of all mankind.

The way propounded is plain, easy, and open before us; without intricacies, without the introducement of new or absolute forms or terms, or exotic models; ideas that would effect nothing; but with a number of new injunctions to manacle the native liberty of mankind; turning all virtue into prescription, servitude, and necessity, to the great impairing and frustrating of Christian liberty. I say again, this way lies free and smooth before us; is not tangled with inconveniencies; invents no new incumbrances; requires no perilous, no injurious alteration or circumscription of men's lands and properties; secure, that in this commonwealth, temporal and spiritual lords removed, no man or number of men can attain to such wealth or vast possession, as will need the hedge of an agrarian law (never successful, but the cause rather of sedition, save only where it began seasonably with first possession) to confine them from endangering our public liberty. To conclude, it can have no considerable objection made against it, that it is not practicable; lest it be said hereafter, that we gave up our liberty for want of a ready way or distinct form proposed of a free commonwealth. And this facility we shall have above our next neighbouring commonwealth (if we can keep us from the fond conceit of something like a duke of Venice, put lately into many men's hands, by some one or other subtly driving on under that notion his own ambitious ends to lurch a crown), that our liberty shall not be hampered or hovered over by any engagement to such a potent family as the house of Nassau, of whom to stand in perpetual doubt and suspicion, but we shall live the clearest and absolutest free nation in the world.

On the contrary, if there be a king, which the inconsiderate multitude are now so mad upon, mark how far short we are like to come of all those happinesses which in a free state we shall immediately be possessed of. First, the grand council, which, as I showed before, should sit perpetually (unless their leisure give them now and then some intermissions or vacations, easily

manageable by the council of state left sitting), shall be called, by the king's good will and utmost endeavour, as seldom as may be. For it is only the king's right, he will say, to call a parliament; and this he will do most commonly about his own affairs rather than the kingdom's, as will appear plainly so soon as they are called. For what will their business then be, and the chief expenses of their time, but an endless tugging between petition of right and royal prerogative, especially about the negative voice, militia, or subsidies, demanded and ofttimes extorted without reasonable cause appearing to the commons, who are the only true representatives of the people and their liberty, but will be then mingled with a court-faction; besides which, within their own walls, the sincere part of them who stand faithful to the people will again have to deal with two troublesome counter-working adversaries from without, mere creatures of the king, spiritual, and the greater part, as is likeliest of temporal lords, nothing concerned with the people's liberty.

If these prevail not in what they please, though never so much against the people's interest, the parliament shall be soon dissolved, or sit and do nothing; not suffered to remedy the least grievance, or enact aught advantageous to the people. Next, the council of state shall not be chosen by the parliament, but by the king, still his own creatures, courtiers, and favourers; who will be sure in all their counsels to set their master's grandeur and absolute power, in what they are able, far above the people's liberty. I deny not but that there may be such a king, who may regard the common good before his own, may have no vicious favourite, may hearken only to the wisest and incorruptest of his parliament: but this rarely happens in a monarchy not elective; and it behoves not a wise nation to commit the sum of their well-being, the whole state of their safety to fortune. What need they? and how absurd would it be, whenas they themselves, to whom his chief virtue will be but to hearken, may with much better management and dispatch, with much more commendation of their own worth and magnanimity, govern without a master? Can the folly be paralleled, to adore and be slaves of a single person, for doing that which it is ten thousand to one whether he can or will do, and we without him might do more easily, more effectually, more laudably ourselves? Shall we never grow old enough to be wise, to make seasonable use of gravest authorities,

experiences, examples? Is it such an unspeakable joy to serve, such felicity to wear a yoke? to clink our shackles, locked on by pretended law of subjection, more intolerable and hopeless to be ever shaken off, than those which are knocked on by illegal injury and violence?

(From The Ready Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth.)

ROBERT LEIGHTON

[Robert Leighton was born in 1611. He was the son of Alexander Leighton, author of Zion's Plea against the Prelacy, whose tortures for his faith are famous in the annals of Scotch Presbyterianism. He was educated at Edinburgh, where he graduated in 1631. He travelled in France, visited Douay, and was much influenced by the Jansenists. In 1641 he returned to Scotland, took orders, and became a minister at Newbattle. Here most of his sermons and expositions were written. In 1653 he was chosen Principal and Divinity Professor at Edinburgh. He accepted Episcopacy, at its establishment in 1661, and became successively Bishop of Dunblane in that year, and Archbishop of Glasgow in 1669. Here all his efforts were directed to the promotion of peace between the factions in the Church. Finding this impossible, he resigned his episcopate in 1674 and retired, first to college rooms at Edinburgh, then to Horsted Keynes in Sussex. He died in 1684.

Leighton's chief English works are Commentaries on The First Epistle of St. Peter, the first nine chapters of The Gospel according to St. Matthew, and other parts of the Bible, a tract entitled Rules and Instructions for a Holy Life, and a number of Sermons. He also wrote in Latin a series of addresses to university students. These writings were mostly published by Dr. Fall between 1692-1708. Among later editions are those of Doddridge (1748); Jerment (1805-8); Pearson (1825); Aikman (1831). All these editors commit the unpardonable crime of tampering with the original text. More satisfactory in this respect is the recent edition by Dr. West (1869-75, still unfinished). A volume of Selections from Leighton was published by Dr. Blair in 1884.]

ROBERT LEIGHTON is as a March swallow among Protestant theologians. Able controversialists, finished scholars, eloquent pulpiters, these the churches of England and Scotland can boast in plenty; seldom do you find among their borders, more seldom still in their high places, a Pascal or a Thomas à Kempis. Not that such do not exist, but rather that they are inarticulate, bearing their witness by life instead of speech to the truth that is in them. Leighton is a remarkable exception; above all things a spiritual divine, he has yet the gift of tongues to put his wisdom before the world in decent and profitable shape. It is but a lax prose, not

ordered into periods and paragraphs, but ebbing and flowing comment-wise, as the exigencies of a text require it. The phrase is strong and sweet, a little careless perhaps, as of one disregarding the conventions of deliberate art. But at its best it rises into passages of extraordinary height, glowing with the rich fire of jewels, ringing with the harmonies of restrained music. Nor do such passages affect one as conscious rhetoric; they are not merely purple patches; every elevation of style corresponds directly to some moment of intensity or ecstasy in the course of the preacher's thought. Only Leighton lived in an age when sermons might still be literature; before the eighteenth century had ruled that colour and imagination were out of place in the pulpit. In him, as in Jeremy Taylor or in Donne, dignity of speech is not the first consideration; they are not so far removed, Latinised though they be, from the nervous homespun of Latimer.

Yet if Leighton is an artist, he is so, like Plato, in spite of himself; for of all his teaching, the first and last word is renunciation. The resemblance to Plato is no surface one; Plato is the father of all mystics, of all who, in their detachment from the world, confound its good and its ill in one condemnation, while they follow unceasingly the beatific vision. Such an one was Leighton, always aspiring, always ascetic, extravagant sometimes in his rejection of all mundane things, until with Guinevere, one often feels it impossible to

"Breathe in that fine air, That pure severity of perfect light."

And with the character thus impressed upon his writing, the testimony of his contemporaries agrees. Burnet tells us, "I never knew him say an idle word, or one that had not a direct tendency to edification, and I never once saw him in any other temper but that which I wished to be in in the last minute of my life. The same spirit explains his indifference to the ecclesiastical disputes of his day. To be a peacemaker was his only part in them. He was asked once, so the story goes, "Whether he preached to the times." “Surely," he said, "you might permit a poor brother to preach Jesus Christ and eternity." It is the note of Leighton, both in his life and his writing, to have all the graces; but one misses some of the humanities. Burnet never saw him laugh, and very seldom even smile. So that his gospel is a little