A Handbook of English Dictation  (English, Paperback, Dictation English)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: connected with the preservation of the papal authority, the Jesuits, influenced by the same principle of attachment to the interests of their society, which may serve as a clue to the genius of their policy, were the most zealous patrons of those doctrines which tend to exalt the ecclesiastical power on the ruins of civil government. They attributed to the court of Rome a jurisdiction as extensive and absolute as was claimed by the most presumptuous pontiffs during the dark ages ; they contended for the entire independence of ecclesiastics on the civil magistrate : and they published such tenets concerning the duty of opposing princes who were enemies to the Catholic faith, as countenanced the most atrocious crimes, and tended to dissolve all the ties connecting subjects with their rulers. XXIII. After the scheme and fabric of the poem, must be considered its component parts, the sentiments and the diction. The sentiments, as expressive of manners, or appropriated to characters, are, for the greater part, unexceptionally just. Splendid passages, containing lessons of morality, or precepts of prudence, occur seldom. Such is the original formation of this poem, that, as it admits no human manners till the Fall, it can give little assistance to human conduct. Its end is to raise the thoughts above sublunary cares or pleasures. The ideas which are occasionally called forth in the progress, are such as could only be produced by an imagination in the highest degree fervid and active, to which materials were supplied by incessant study and unlimited curiosity. The heat of Milton's mind might be said to sublimate his learning, to throw off into his work the spirit of science, unmingled with its grosser parts. He had considered creation in its whole extent, and his descriptions are t...