because he has quarrelled with his wife; and upon the freedom of the press because his writings on divorce are censured. He cannot abstract his cause from himself. Since he represents virtue, his adversaries must be embodiments of vice. He not only assumes that his enemies are in the wrong, but he often seems to expect that they will grant so obvious an assumption. He complains, for example, that the 'table of communion' is fortified 'with bulwark and barricado to keep off the profane touch of the laics whilst the obscene and surfeited priest scruples not to paw and mammock the sacramental bread as familiarly as his tavern biscuit.' Why must the priest be 'obscene and surfeited'? Simply because he is a priest. That may be true; but the priest can hardly be expected to admit the fact. Controversy which starts from such assumptions must degenerate into personal abuse. The divorce pamphlets give the other side of the method. Milton, arguing from his own case, thinks only of the hardship upon the good man linked to an unworthy partner. He complains quaintly in one passage that on account of his chastity he has not had that practical experience of transitory connections which often enables a loose liver to make a
