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pull The Church Militant back in line with the politics and aesthetics of the Latin mini-epic tradition from which Herbert had deliberately broken. With this translation, Leeke -who was himself situated within a network of Arminian ministers -produced a more emphatically nationalist and less ecclesiastically controversial version of Herbert's poem, softening its critiques of the English church and of ceremonial practices while amplifying its anti-Catholic content, perhaps with an eye to producing a more "acceptable" Herbert for international circulation. Demonstrating The Church Militant's proximity to this Neo-Latin genre raises pressing, perhaps unexpected questions about Herbert's choice to compose the poem in English rather than in Latin. Our analysis shows him stepping away from a poetic and political tradition that saw Anglo-Latin verse as a medium through which public defenses of the English church could circulate, both within England and abroad. Engaged as it was in a different political project -one far more critical of the English church -Herbert's poem, we suggest, walked a narrow path, retaining and revising markers of the Neo-Latin brief epic while avoiding the political connotations the Latin language had for his generic predecessors.

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