s. 137.
Their political aphorisms are far more dangerous, that His Majesty is not the highest power in his realms; that he hath not absolute sovereignty; and that a Parliament sitting is co-ordinate with him in it.
Hacket himself repeatedly implies as much; for would he deny that the King with the Lords and Commons is not more than the King without them? or that an act of Parliament is not more than a proclamation?
Ib.
s.154.
What a venomous spirit is in that serpent Milton, that black-mouthed Zoilus, that blows his viper's breath upon those immortal devotions from the beginning to the end! This is he that wrote with all irreverence against the Fathers of our Church, and showed as little duty to the father that begat him: the same that wrote for the Pharisees, that it was lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause, — and against Christ, for not allowing divorces: the same, O horrid! that defended the lawfulness of the greatest crime that ever was committed, to put our thrice-excellent King to death: a petty schoolboy scribbler, that durst grapple in such a cause with the prince of the learned men of his age, Salmasius,
, as Eunapius says of Ammonius, Plutarch's scholar in Egypt, the delight, the music of all knowledge, who would have scorned to drop a pen-full of ink against so base an adversary, but to maintain the honor of so good a King ... Get thee behind me, Milton! Thou savourest not the things that be of truth and loyalty, but of pride, bitterness, and falsehood. There will be a time, though such a Shimei, a dead dog in Abishai's phrase, escape for a while ... It is no marvel if this canker-worm Milton, &c.
A contemporary of Bishop Racket's designates Milton as the author of a profane and lascivious poem entitled Paradise Lost. The biographer of our divine bard ought to have made a collection of all such passages. A German writer of a Life of Salmasius acknowledges that Milton had the better in the conflict in these words: 'Hans (Jack) von Milton — not to be compared in learning and genius with the incomparable Salmasius, yet a shrewd and cunning lawyer,' &c.
O sana posteritas!
Ib.
s. 178.