In arguing this, still Scripturally, Milton dilates on the meaning of the "Christian liberty" of the true believer, with the heights and depths which it implies in the renewed spirit, the superiority to "the bondage of ceremonies" and "the weak and beggarly rudiments." The fourth and last reason pleaded, still from Scripture, against the compulsion of the magistrate in Religion, is that he must fail signally in the very ends he proposes to himself; "and those hardly can be other than first the glory of God, next either the spiritual good of them whom he forces or the temporal punishment of their scandal to others." Far from attaining either of these ends, he can but dishonour God and promote profanity and hypocrisy.--"On these four Scriptural reasons as on a firm square." says Milton at the close, "this truth, the right of Christian and Evangelic Liberty, will stand immoveable against all those pretended consequences of license and confusion which, for the most part, men most licentious and confused themselves, or such as whose severity would be wiser than divine wisdom, are ever aptest to object against the ways of God." Such is the plan of the little treatise, the literary texture of which is plain and homely, rather than rich, learned, or rhetorical.
"Pomp and ostentation of reading," he expressly says, "is admired among the vulgar; but doubtless in matters of Religion he is learnedest who is plainest." It was, we may remember, his first considerable English dictation for the press since his blindness, and what one chiefly notices in the style is the strong grasp he still retains of his old characteristic syntax.[1] The following are a few of the more interesting individual passages or expressions:-- [Footnote 1: I have noted in the Tract one occurrence at least of the very un-Miltonic word _its_, as follows:--"As the Samaritans believed Christ, first for the woman's word, but next and much rather for his own, so we the Scripture first on the Church's word, but afterwards and much more for its own as the word of God."] _Blasphemy._--"But some are ready to cry out 'What shall then be done to Blasphemy ?' Them I would first exhort not thus to terrify and pose the people with a Greek word, but to teach them better what it is: being a most usual and common word in that language to signify any slander, any malicious or evil speaking, whether against God or man or anything to good belonging." _Heresy and Heretic_:--"Another Greek apparition stands in our way, 'Heresy and Heretic': in like manner also railed at to the people, as in a tongue unknown.

They should first interpret to them that Heresy, by what it signifies in that language, is no word of evil note; meaning only the choice or following of any opinion, good or bad, in religion or any other learning." _A Wrested Text of Scripture_:--"It hath now twice befallen me to assert, through God's assistance, this most wrested and vexed place of Scripture [_Romans_ XIII, 'Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers,' &c.]: heretofore against Salmasius and regal tyranny over the State; now against Erastus and State-tyranny over the Church." _Are Popery and Idolatry to be Tolerated ?_--"But, as for Popery and Idolatry, why they also may not hence plead to be tolerated, I have much less to say.

Their Religion, the more considered, the less can be acknowledged a Religion, but a Roman Principality rather, endeavouring to keep up her old universal dominion under a new name and mere shadow of a Catholic Religion; being indeed more rightly named a Catholic Heresy against the Scripture; supported mainly by a civil, and, except in Rome, by a foreign, power: justly therefore to be suspected, not tolerated, by the magistrate of another country.

Besides, of an implicit faith, which they profess, the conscience also becomes implicit, and so, by voluntary servitude to man's law, forfeits her Christian liberty.

Who, then, can plead for such a conscience as, being implicitly enthralled to man instead of God, almost becomes no conscience, as the will not free becomes no will?
Nevertheless, if they ought not to be tolerated, it is for just reason of State more than of Religion; which they who force, though professing to be Protestants, deserve as little to be tolerated themselves, being no less guilty of Popery in the most Popish point.