More than two years had elapsed since Milton's last letters to Oldenburg and young Ranelagh (ante pp. 366-367). They were then at Sáumur in France, where they remained till March 1658; but since that time they had been travelling about, and from May 1659, if not earlier, they had been boarding in Paris. There are glimpses of them in letters from Oldenburg to Robert Boyle, and also in letters of Hartlib to Boyle, in which he quotes passages from letters he has received both from Oldenburg and from young Ranelagh. Thus, in a letter of Hartlib's to Boyle of April 12, 1659, there is this from Oldenburg's last: "I have had some discourse with an able but somewhat close physician here, that spoke to me of a way, though without particularizing all, to draw a liquor of the beams of the sun; which peradventure some person that is knowing and experienced (as noble Mr. Boyle) may better beat out than we can who want experience in these matters." Young Ranelagh seems to have fully acquired by this time the tastes for physical and experimental science which characterized his tutor; and his uncle Boyle may have read with a smile this from Hartlib of date October 22, 1659:—"This week Mr. Jones hath saluted me with a very kind letter, containing a very singular observation in these words: 'Concerning the generation of pearls I am of opinion that they are engendered in the cockle-fishes (I pray, Sir, give me the Latin word for it in your next) of the same manner as the stone in our body,—which I endeavour fully to show in a discourse of mine about the generation of pearls; which, when I shall have done it, shall wait upon you for my part in revenge of your observations. I heard lately a very remarkable story about margarites from a person of quality and honour in this town, which you will be glad, I believe, to hear. A certain German baron of about twenty-four years old, being in prison here at Paris, in the same chamber with a Frenchman (who told this, as having been eyewitness of it, to him that told it me), they having both need of money, the baron sent his man to a goldsmith to buy seven or eight ordinary pearls, of about twenty pence a piece, which he put a-dissolving in a glass of vinegar; and, being well dissolved, he took the paste and put it together with a powder (which I should be glad to know) into a golden mould, which he had in his pocket, and so put it a-warming for some time upon the fire; after which, opening the mould, they found a very great and lovely oriental pearl in it, which they sold for about two hundred crowns, although it was a great deal more worth. The same baron, throwing a little powder he had with him into a pitcher of water, and letting it stand about four hours, made the best wine that a man can drink.' Thus far the truly hopeful young gentleman, whereby he hath hugely obliged me. I wish he had the forementioned powder, that we might try whether we could make the like pearls and wine." From a subsequent letter of Hartlib's, dated Nov. 29, 1659, it appears that Oldenburg and Jones were both much interested in the optical instruments of a certain Bressieux, then in Paris, who had for two years been chief workman in that line for Descartes. They were anxious to make him a present of some good glass from London, because he was rather secretive about his workmanship, and such a present would go a great way towards mollifying him.1
1: Letters of Oldenburg and Hartlib to Boyle in Boyle's Works (1744), V. 280-296 and 300-302.
Very possibly with this last letter of Oldenburg's to Hartlib there had been enclosed a letter from Oldenburg, and another from young Ranelagh, to Milton. Two such letters, at all events, Milton had received, and undoubtedly through Hartlib, who was still the universal foreign postman for his friends. We can guess the substance of the two letters. Young Ranelagh does not seem to have troubled Milton with his speculations on the generation of pearls, or his story of the German baron and his alchemic powders, but only to have sent his dutiful regards, with excuses for long neglect of correspondence. Oldenburg had also sent his excuses for the same, but with certain pieces of news from abroad, and certain references to the state of affairs at home. Among the pieces of news were two of some personal interest to Milton. One was that the unfinished reply to his Defensio Prima, which Salmasius had left in manuscript at his death six years ago, was about to appear as a posthumous publication. The other was that there was to be a great Synod of the French Protestant Church, at which the case of Morus was to be again discussed. For, though it was more than two years since Morus had received his call to the collegiate pastorship of the Protestant Church of Paris or Charenton, the question of his admissibility to the charge had hung all that while between the Walloon Synods of the United Provinces and the French Protestant Church Courts, the latter on the whole favouring him, the former more and more bent on disgracing him. In April of the present year a Walloon Synod at Tergou had actually passed on him a sentence of suspension from the ministerial office and from the holy communion "until by a sincere repentance of his sins he shall have repaired so many scandals he has brought upon us." In spite of this, a French Provincial Synod, held at Ai in Champagne in the following month, had ordered his admission to be carried into effect, and the Parisian consistory had obeyed this order, though two members of it protested. There had since then been another Walloon Synod, held at Nimeguen in September, in which the former sentence of the Tergou Synod was confirmed, but, for the sake of peace between the Walloon Church and their brethren of the French Protestant Church, it was agreed to waive all farther jurisdiction over Morus in Holland and to "remit the whole cause unto the prudence, discretion, and charity of the National Assembly of the French churches to meet at Loudun." This was the Synod of whose approaching meeting Oldenburg had informed Milton—the Synod of Loudun in Anjou (Nov. 10, 1659—Jan. 10, 1660). It was to be a very important assembly indeed,—no mere Provincial Synod, but a national one, expressly allowed by Louis XIV., and to consist of deputies, clerical and lay, from all the Protestant churches of France, empowered to transact all business relating to those churches under certain royal regulations and restrictions, and in the presence of a royal Commissioner. As there had been no such National Protestant Synod in France for fifteen years, there was an accumulation of business for it, the case of Morus included. They were to examine that case de novo, and to pronounce finally whether Morus was guilty or not guilty, whether he should remain a minister of the French Church or not.1
1: Bayle, Art. Morus, and Bruce's Life of Morus, 204-226.
Milton's replies to the two letters will now be intelligible. He writes, it will be observed, in a gloomy mood, on the very day on which Whitlocke, for different reasons, was in a gloomy mood too and "wishing himself out of these daily hazards":—
TO HENRY OLDENBURG.
"That forgiveness which you ask for your silence you will give rather to mine; for, if I remember rightly, it was my turn to write to you. By no means has it been any diminution of my regard for you (of this I would have you fully persuaded) that has been the impediment, but only my employments or domestic cares; or perhaps it is mere sluggishness to the act of writing that makes me guilty of the intermitted duty. As you desire to be informed, I am, by God's mercy, as well as usual. Of any such work as compiling the history of our political troubles, which you seem to advise, I have no thought whatever [longe absum]: they are worthier of silence than of commemoration. What is needed is not one to compile a good history of our troubles, but one who can happily end the troubles themselves; for, with you, I fear lest, amid these our civil discords, or rather sheer madnesses, we shall seem to the lately confederated enemies of Liberty and Religion a too fit object of attack, though in truth they have not yet inflicted a severer wound on Religion than we ourselves have been long doing by our crimes. But God, as I hope, on His own account, and for His own glory, now in question, will not allow the counsels and onsets of the enemy to succeed as they themselves wish, whatever convulsions Kings and Cardinals meditate and design. Meanwhile, for the Protestant Synod of Loudun, which you tell me is so soon to meet [Milton does not seem to know that it had been sitting already for six weeks] I pray—what has never happened to any Synod yet—a happy issue, not of the Nazianzenian sort,1 and am of opinion that the issue of this one will be happy enough if, should they decree nothing else, they should decree the expulsion of Morus. Of my posthumous adversary, as soon as he makes his appearance, be good enough to give me the earliest information. Farewell.
"Westminster: December 20, 1659."
1: The allusion seems to be to the great OEcumenical Council of Constantinople in 381, which confirmed Gregory Nazianzen in the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and in which Gregory presided for some time and inefficiently.
TO THE NOBLE YOUTH, RICHARD JONES.
"For the long break in your correspondence with me your excuses are truly most modest, inasmuch as you might with more justice accuse me of the same fault; and, as the case stands, I am really at a loss to know whether I should have preferred your not having been in fault to your having apologised so finely. On no account let it ever come into your mind that I measure your gratitude, if anything of the kind is due to me from you, by your constancy in letter-writing. My feeling of your gratitude to me will be strongest when the fruits of those services of mine to you of which you speak shall appear not so much in frequent letters as in your perseverance and laudable proficiency in excellent pursuits. You have rightly marked out for yourself the path of virtue in that theatre of the world on which you have entered; but remember that the path is common so far to virtue and vice, and that you have yet to advance to where the path divides itself into two. And you ought now betimes to prepare yourself for leaving this common path, pleasant and flowery, and for being able the more readily, with your own will, though with labour and danger, to climb that arduous and difficult one which is the slope of virtue only. For this you have great advantages over others, believe me, in having secured so faithful and skilful a guide. Farewell.
"Westminster: December 20, 1659."
Two days after the date of these letters the uproar of execration round the Wallingford-House Government had reached such an extreme that Whitlocke made his desperate proposal to Fleetwood that they should extricate themselves from their difficulty by declaring for Charles and opening negotiations with him. Two days more, and Fleetwood's soldiery, under the command of officers of the Rump, were marching down Chancery Lane, cheering Speaker Lenthall and asking his forgiveness. Again two days more, and on the 26th of December, Fleetwood having given up the game and sent the keys of the Parliament House to Lenthall, the Rumpers were back in their old places. We have arrived, therefore, at that Third Stage of the Anarchy which may be called "The Second Restoration of the Rump."