But, though this single phrase may be thus explained, the tone of the whole address intimates far less of gratitude to Oliver dead than there had been of admiration for Oliver living.

And the reason at this point is most obvious.

Was it not precisely because Cromwell had failed to fulfil Milton's expectation of him, in his sonnet of May 1652, that he would deliver the Commonwealth from the plague of "hireling wolves," calling themselves a Clergy--was it not because Cromwell from first to last had pursued a contrary policy--that it remained for Milton now, seven years after the date of that sonnet, to have to offer, as a private thinker, and on mere printed paper, his own poor _Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church ?_ It was not in a pamphlet on that subject, wherever else, that Milton could say his best for the memory of Cromwell.
After some preliminary observations connecting the present treatise with its forerunner; Milton opens his subject thus:-- "Hire of itself is neither a thing unlawful, nor a word of any evil note, signifying no more than a due recompense or reward, as when our Saviour saith, 'The labourer is worthy of his hire.' That which makes it so dangerous in the Church, and properly makes HIRELING a word always of evil signification, is either the excess thereof or the undue manner of giving and taking it.

What harm the excess thereof brought to the Church perhaps was not found by experience till the days of Constantine; who, out of his zeal, thinking he could be never too liberally a nursing father of the Church, might be not unfitly said to have either overlaid it or choked it in the nursing.

Which was foretold, as is recorded in Ecclesiastical traditions, by a voice heard from Heaven, on the very day that those great donations of Church-revenues were given, crying aloud, _'This day is poison poured into the Church'_ [Note the adoption of the anecdote from Mr.Wall's letter].