With Parker’s thunders and threats of the authority of princes and states, Marvell deals more in the mood of a statesman than of a philosopher, more as a man of affairs than as a jurist.  He deplores the ferocity of Parker’s tone and that of a certain number of the clergy.

“Why is it,” he asks, “that this kind of clergy should always be and have been for the most precipitate, brutish, and sanguinary counsels?  The former Civil War cannot make them wise, nor his Majesty’s happy return good-natured, but they are still for running things up unto the same extremes.  The softness of the Universities where they have been bred, the gentleness of Christianity, in which they have been nurtured, hath but exasperated their nature, and they seem to have contracted no idea of wisdom but what they learnt at school—­the pedantry of Whipping.  For whether it be or no that the clergy are not so well fitted by education as others for political affairs I know not, though I should rather think they have advantage above others, and even if they would but keep to their Bibles, might make the best Ministers of State in the world; yet it is generally observed that things miscarry under their government.  If there be any council more precipitate, more violent, more extreme than other, it is theirs.  Truly, I think the reason that God does not bless them in affairs of State is because he never intended them for that employment."[167:1]

Of Archbishop Laud and Charles the First, Marvell says:—­

“I am confident the Bishop studied to do both God and his Majesty good service; but alas, how utterly was he mistaken.  Though so learned, so pious, so wise a man, he seem’d to know nothing beyond Ceremonies, Armenianism, and Mainwaring.  With that he begun, with that ended, and thereby deform’d the whole reign of the best prince that ever wielded the English sceptre.  For his late Majesty, being a prince truly pious and religious, was therefore the more inclined to esteem and favour the clergy.  And thence, though himself of a most exquisite understanding, yet he could not trust it better than in their treatment.  Whereas every man is best at his own post, and so the preacher in the pulpit."[167:2]

Kings, Marvell points out to Parker, must take wider views than parsons.

“’Tis not with them as with you.  You have but one cure of souls, or perhaps two as being a nobleman’s chaplain, to look after, and if you made conscience of discharging them as you ought, you would find you had work sufficient without writing your ‘Ecclesiastical Policies.’  But they are the incumbents of whole kingdoms, and the rectorship of the common people, the nobility, and even of the clergy.  The care I say of all this rests on them, so that they are fain to condescend to many things for peace sake and the quiet of