Let us think over this passage, and examine its words.

First, is it not singular to find Milton assigning to St. Peter, not
only his full episcopal function, but the very types of it which
Protestants usually refuse most passionately? His "mitred" locks!
Milton was no Bishop-lover; how comes St. Peter to be "mitred"?
"Two massy keys he bore." Is this, then, the power of the keys
claimed by the Bishops of Rome? and is it acknowledged here by
Milton only in a poetical licence, for the sake of its
picturesqueness, that he may get the gleam of the golden keys to
help his effect?

Do not think it. Great men do not play stage tricks with the
doctrines of life and death: only little men do that. Milton means
what he says; and means it with his might too--is going to put the
whole strength of his spirit presently into the saying of it. For
though not a lover of false bishops, he WAS a lover of true ones;
and the Lake-pilot is here, in his thoughts, the type and head of
true episcopal power. For Milton reads that text, "I will give unto
thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven," quite honestly. Puritan
though he be, he would not blot it out of the book because there
have been bad bishops; nay, in order to understand HIM, we must
understand that verse first; it will not do to eye it askance, or
whisper it under our breath, as if it were a weapon of an adverse
sect. It is a solemn, universal assertion, deeply to be kept in
mind by all sects. But perhaps we shall be better able to reason on
it if we go on a little farther, and come back to it. For clearly
this marked insistence on the power of the true episcopate is to