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Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow XXIX.: To Henry Oldenburgh. - The Prose Works of John Milton, vol. 2

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Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: History
Subject Area: Religion
Topic: The English Revolution

XXIX.: To Henry Oldenburgh. - John Milton, The Prose Works of John Milton, vol. 2 [1847]

Edition used:

The Prose Works of John Milton, With a Biographical Introduction by Rufus Wilmot Griswold. In Two Volumes (Philadelphia: John W. Moore, 1847). Vol. 2.

Part of: The Prose Works of John Milton, 2 vols.

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XXIX.

ToHenry Oldenburgh.

The indulgence which you beg for yourself, you will rather have to bestow on me, whose turn, if I remember, it was to write. My regard for you has, believe me, suffered no diminution; but either my studies or my domestic cares, or perhaps my indolence in writing, have made me guilty of this omission of duty. I am, by God’s help, as well as usual. I am not willing, as you wish me, to compile a history of our troubles; for they seem rather to require oblivion than commemoration; nor have we so much need of a person to compose a history of our troubles as happily to settle them. I fear with you lest our civil dissensions, or rather maniacal agitation should expose us to the attack of the lately confederated enemies of religion and of liberty; but those enemies could not inflict a deeper wound upon religion than we ourselves have long since done by our follies and our crimes. But whatever disturbances kings and cardinals may meditate and contrive, I trust that God will not suffer the machinations and the violence of our enemies to succeed according to their expectations. I pray that the protestant synod, which you say is soon to meet at Leyden, may have a happy termination, which has never yet happened to any synod that has ever met before. But the termination of this might be called happy, if it decreed nothing else but the expulsion of More. As soon as my posthumous adversary shall make his appearance I request you to give me the earliest information. Adieu.