Milton and Toleration: Contexts and Debates

MILTON AND TOLERATION
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Milton and Toleration
Edited by
SHARON ACHINSTEIN
and
ELIZABETH SAUER
1
1
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Contents
Notes on Contributors vii

List of Abbreviations xi
1. Introduction 1
Sharon Achinstein and Elizabeth Sauer
I . R EV I S I N G W H I G AC C O U N T S
2. Milton and the European Contexts of Toleration 23

Nigel Smith
3. Toleration and the Specter of Heresy in Miltons England 45
David Loewenstein
4. John Milton, Roger Williams, and the Limits of Toleration 72
Thomas N. Corns
5. Milton, Marvell and Toleration 86
Nicholas von Maltzahn
I I . PH I LO S O PH I C A L A N D R E L I G I O U S E N G AG E M E N T S
6. Libertinism and Toleration: Milton, Bruno and Aretino 107

James Grantham Turner
7. Milton, Natural Law, and Toleration 126
Jason P. Rosenblatt
8. A Taken Scandal not a Given: Miltons Equitable Grounds of
Toleration 144
Victoria Silver
9. Milton and Antitrinitarianism 171
Martin Dzelzainis
10. Milton and Catholicism 186
Andrew Hadfield
vi Contents
I I I . P O E T RY A N D R H E TO R I C
11. Toleration and Nationhood in the 1650s: Sonnet XV and the Case
of Ireland 203
Elizabeth Sauer
12. Toleration in Miltons Epics: A Chimera? 224
Sharon Achinstein
13. Intolerance and the Virtues of Sacred Vehemence 243
Paul Stevens
14. Secularizing Conscience in Miltons Republican Community 268
Lana Cable
15. Milton, Islam and the Ottomans 284
Gerald MacLean
Afterword 299
Ann Hughes
Index 305
Notes on Contributors
Sharon Achinstein is Reader in Renaissance Literature at Oxford University, and

author of Literature and Dissent in Miltons England (Cambridge, 2003). Her Milton
and the Revolutionary Reader (Princeton, 1994) won the Milton Society of Americas
James Holly Hanford Prize, and she has edited a special issue of Womens Studies on
Literature and Gender in the English Revolution (1994), and published numerous
essays on Milton, Dryden, womens writing, and politics in the seventeenth century.
She is a consulting editor for the forthcoming Milton Encyclopedia (Yale University
Press) and is editor for Volume 5 of The Complete Works of John Milton (under
preparation for Oxford University Press), the Divorce Tracts.
Lana Cable is Associate Professor of English and Master of Arts programme director
at The University at Albany, State University of New York. Her book Carnal Rhetoric:
Miltons Iconoclasm and the Poetics of Desire (Duke, 1995) received the James Holly
Hanford Award. In addition to Milton, her essays and book chapters treat the politics of
metaphor, orientalist drama, and the anatomical epic of Spenserian Phineas Fletcher.
She also contributed the introduction to Milton in the Age of Fish: Essays on Authorship,
Text, and Terrorism, ed. Michael Lieb and Albert C. Labriola (Duquesne, 2006). She is
currently writing a book on the early modern free conscience debate.
Thomas N. Corns, MA, D.Phil, F.R.Hist.S., FEA, is Professor of English and a pro-
vice chancellor at University of Wales, Bangor. His work on Milton includes The
Development of Miltons Prose Style (Clarendon, 1982), Miltons Language (Blackwell,
1990), Uncloistered Virtue (Oxford, 1992), Regaining Paradise Lost (Longman, 1994),
and John Milton: The Prose Works (Twayne, 1998). His most recent publication is A
History of Seventeenth-Century English Literature (Blackwell, 2006). He is editor of the
prize-winning A Companion to Milton (Blackwell, 2001) and the forthcoming Milton
Encyclopedia (under preparation for Yale University Press). He is also General Editor,
with Gordon Campbell, of The Complete Works of John Milton (under preparation for
Oxford University Press).
Martin Dzelzainis, Professor of English, Royal Holloway, University of London, has

co-edited Marvell and Liberty (Macmillan, 1999) and is editor of Volume 1 of The
Complete Prose Works of Andrew Marvell (Yale, 2004). He has edited John Milton,
Political Writings, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge,
1991). Author of essays and chapters in books on such topics as republicanism, Milton,
Roman law, political ideology, Bacon, Charles I, Shakespeare, Hobbes, and Marvell, he
is currently working on a monograph, provisionally entitled The Flower in the Panther:
Truth-telling, Print, and Censorship in England, 16621669. He is also general editor
of The Works of Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, forthcoming from Oxford.
Andrew Hadfield is Professor of English at the University of Sussex, and has published
widely on Renaissance topics, with books including Literature, Politics and National
viii Notes on Contributors
Identity: Reformation to Renaissance (Cambridge, 1994), Edmund Spensers Irish Expe-
rience: Wilde Fruit and Salvage Soyl (Oxford, 1997), Literature, Travel and Colonial
Writing in the English Renaissance (Oxford, 1998), and Shakespeare and Republicanism
(Cambridge, 2005), awarded the Ronald H. Bainford Prize for sixteenth-century liter-
ature (2006). He is also the editor (with Raymond Gillespie) of The Oxford History of
the Irish Book, vol. iii: The Irish Book in English, 15501800 (Oxford, 2006).
Ann Hughes, Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Keele, is the
author of numerous studies on politics and religion under the Stuarts. Her publications
include Gangraena and the Struggle for the English Revolution (Oxford, 2004), Politics,
Society, and Civil War in Warwickshire, 16201660 (Cambridge, 1987), The Causes
of the English Civil War (St Martins, 1991, 2nd edn., 1998), and the co-edited
volumes Conflict in Early Stuart England (Longman, 1989) and The English Civil War
(Arnold, 1997).
David Loewenstein is Marjorie and Lorin Tiefenthaler Professor of English at the
University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is twice winner of the Milton Society of
Americas James Holly Hanford Award for distinguished book, 1991, 2002 and is
author of Milton and the Drama of History: Historical Vision, Iconoclasm, and the
Literary Imagination (Cambridge, 1990) and Representing Revolution in Milton and
His Contemporaries: Religion, Politics, and Polemics in Radical Puritanism (Cambridge,
2001). He has co-edited Politics, Poetics, and Hermeneutics in Miltons Prose (Cambridge,
1990), The Cambridge History of Early Modern English Literature (Cambridge, 2002;
paperback edn., 2006), Paradise Regained in Context: Genre, Politics, Religion, Milton
Studies 42 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003); and Heresy, Literature, and Politics in
Early Modern English Culture (Cambridge, 2006). He is currently editing the Collected
Works of Gerrard Winstanley and is the editor for Paradise Lost in The Complete Works
of John Milton, in preparation for Oxford University Press.
Gerald MacLean, FRAS, F.R.Hist.S., Anniversary Professor of English and Related
Literature at the University of York, has authored Looking East: English Writing and
the Ottoman Empire before 1800 (Palgrave, 2007), The Rise of Oriental Travel: English
Visitors to the Ottoman Empire, 15801720 (Palgrave, 2004) and Times Witness:
Historical Representation in English Poetry, 16031660 (Cambridge, 1990). In addition,
he is editor of Writing Turkey: Explorations in Turkish History, Politics and Cultural
Identity (Middlesex, 2006), Culture and Society in the Stuart Restoration: Literature,
Drama, History (Cambridge, 1995) and co-editor of The Country and the City Revisited:
England and the Politics of Culture, 15501850 (Cambridge, 1999) and The Spivak
Reader: Selected Works of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Routledge, 1996). With Nabil
Matar, he is currently writing Britain and the Muslim World, 15581728 for Oxford
University Press.
Jason P. Rosenblatt, Professor of English at Georgetown University, is the co-editor
of Not in Heaven: Coherence and Complexity in Biblical Narrative (Indiana, 1991) and
author of Torah and Law in Paradise Lost (Princeton, 1994), Renaissance Englands
Chief Rabbi: John Selden (Oxford, 2006), and two dozen essays in journals and books.
He is under contract to produce a Norton Critical Edition of Miltons Selected Poetry
and Prose. Awards include Fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation,
Notes on Contributors ix
the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Professor Rosenblatt is a past president of the Milton Society of America (1999) and
recipient of its Hanford Award (1989).
Elizabeth Sauer is Professor of English at Brock University, Canada, where she was
awarded a Chancellors Chair for Research Excellence. Her books include Paper-
contestations and Textual Communities in England 16401675 (Toronto, 2005),
Barbarous Dissonance and Images of Voice in Miltons Epics (McGill-Queens, 1996)
and nine editions/co-editions, among which are Reading the Nation (Routledge,
forthcoming), Milton and the Climates of Reading: Essays by Balachandra Rajan
(Toronto, 2006), Reading Early Modern Women (Routledge, 2004), winner of the
Society for the Study of Early Modern Women Best Collaborative Work; Imperialisms:
Historical and Literary Investigations 15001900 (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2004), Books
and Readers in Early Modern England (Pennsylvania, 2002), and Milton and the
Imperial Vision (Duquesne, 1999), winner of the Milton Society of America Irene
Samuel Memorial Award. Her book Toleration and Miltons Peculiar Nation is in
progress.
Victoria Silver, Associate Professor, English and Comparative Literature, University
of California, Irvine, is author of Imperfect Sense: The Predicament of Miltons Irony
(Princeton, 2001), and she has published major articles on Milton, Marvell, Jonson,
Browne, and Hobbes. Silver was Recipient of The Chancellors Award for Excellence
in Fostering Undergraduate Research at the University of California, Irvine.
Nigel Smith is Professor of English at Princeton University. He is the author of Literature
and Revolution in England, 16401660 (Yale, 1994) and Perfection Proclaimed: Language
and Literature in English Radical Religion, 16401660 (Oxford, 1989), as well as articles
on Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert, Milton, and Bunyan, and on such topics as atheism,
vegetarianism, and Socinianism. He has edited the Ranter Tracts and the Journal of
George Fox, and is editor of The Poems of Andrew Marvell (2003) in the Longman
Annotated English Poets Series.
Paul Stevens is Professor and Canada Research Chair in English Literature at the
University of Toronto. His publications include Miltons America, Americas Milton
(co-editor, special issue of University of Toronto Quarterly, in progress), Early Modern
Nationalism and Miltons England (co-editor, forthcoming 2007), When is a Public
Sphere? (co-editor, special issue of Criticism, 2004), Discontinuities: New Essays on
Renaissance Literature and Criticism (co-editor, Toronto, 1998), and Imagination and
the Presence of Shakespeare in Paradise Lost (Wisconsin, 1985). He has twice won the
Milton Society of Americas Hanford Award for most distinguished article.
James Grantham Turner is Professor of English Literature, University of California,
Berkeley, and is the author of Politics of Landscape (Oxford, 1979); One Flesh: Paradisal
Marriage and Sexual Relations in the Age of Milton (Oxford, 1987), winner of the Milton
Society of Americas James Holly Hanford Award for distinguished book; Libertines and
Radicals in Early Modern London: Sexuality, Politics and Literary Culture, 16301685
(Cambridge, 2001) and Schooling Sex: Libertine Literature and Erotic Education in Italy,
France and England, 15341685 (Oxford, 2003). Turner has also written chapters
x Notes on Contributors
for historical surveys on Renaissance literature, on the change from Revolution to
Restoration in English culture, and on the eighteenth-century novel.
Nicholas von Maltzahn, Professor of English at the University of Ottawa, is author
of An Andrew Marvell Chronology (Palgrave, 2005) and Miltons History of Britain:
Republican Historiography in the English Revolution (Oxford, 1991). His work on Milton
and Marvell includes a number of articles on their literary and political afterlives. He
has edited Marvells An Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government
for the Yale Prose Works of Andrew Marvell (2003) and is now editing Miltons tracts
on church government and toleration for The Complete Works of John Milton, in
preparation for Oxford University Press. His current research explores questions of
toleration and multiculturalism.
List of Abbreviations
AP Apology against a Pamphlet

Areop. Areopagitica
CJ Journals of the House of Commons
CM The Works of John Milton, gen. ed. Frank Allen Patterson, 18
vols. in 21 (New York: Columbia University Press, 19318)
CSP Milton, Complete Shorter Poems, ed. John Carey, 2nd edn.
(London: Longman, 1997)
DDC De Doctrina Christiana
DDD The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce
Eikon. Eikonoklastes
LP Declaration, or Letters Patent
ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Of Ed. Of Education
Of Ref. Of Reformation
PC Private Correspondence
PL Milton, Paradise Lost, ed. Alastair Fowler, 2nd edn. (London:
Longman, 1988)
PR Paradise Regained
PWAM The Prose Works of Andrew Marvell
RCG The Reason of Church-Government
REW The Readie and Easie Way to Establish A Free Commonwealth
SA Samson Agonistes
SP State Papers
TCP A Treatise of Civil Power
TR Of True Religion
YP Complete Prose Works of John Milton, gen. ed. Don M. Wolfe,
8 vols. in 10 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 195382)
1
Introduction
Sharon Achinstein and Elizabeth Sauer
What is toleration? asked Voltaire, opening his article on that subject in his
Philosophical Dictionary. There, the philosophe offers, not an answer, but a
characterization: it is the prerogative of humanity. Tolerance is the major
question of Enlightenment, one that has come back to haunt our modernity
that is resurgent with religious activism. This books central claim is that a study
of the writings of John Milton can contribute to broadening our understanding
not only of the history of toleration but also of the links between literature and
history. A standard history of ideas approach has long hailed Milton as a hero
of toleration, and it is true that Milton defended different kinds of tolerance
throughout his writing life. Early writings proposing tolerance include the
divorce tracts (16435) and Areopagitica (1644), where Milton advanced
theological arguments with biblical examples, but also came to espouse
radically heterodox views of community and personhood. Miltons Tenure of
Kings and Magistrates (1649) attacked the Presbyterians intolerance, while the
Defences of the People of England (1651, 1654) promoted civil liberties. Serving
as an official in the Cromwellian government, Milton allegedly licensed
the religiously incendiary Racovian Catechism (1652) and other heretical
We gratefully acknowledge our indebtedness to the following: Kathryn Murphy for her superb
editorial assistance; the English Faculty of Oxford University and the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada for generous financial support; David Loewenstein,
Martin Dzelzainis, and David Norbrook for their astute remarks on our Introduction; and all our
contributors for sharing their valuable insights into the richly rewarding subject of Milton and
toleration. Contributors individual styles of spelling and punctuation are retained throughout.
Voltaire, Cest lapanage de lhumanite, in Dictionnaire Philosophique (Paris: Garnier-
Flammarion, 1964), 362; tr. Philosophical Dictionary, T. Besterman (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
2004), 387.
2 Sharon Achinstein and Elizabeth Sauer
works. Like many thinkers of his day, he promoted a philo-Hebraic cultural

and literary program. His shorter poetry expressed outrage at the persecution
of religious minorities and his Psalm translations spoke in the voice of the
oppressed. Even on the eve of Restoration and facing a re-established national
church, his pamphlets Of Civil Power and The Likeliest Means (1659) urged
church disestablishment as a means for achieving a more inclusive political
culture. The Preface to his unpublished theological treatise, De Doctrina
Christiana, is a plea for toleration of unorthodox Christian sects and positions.
In defiance of the anti-sectarian climate of the Restoration era, Milton explored
and defended individual liberty of conscience in his 1673 edition of his Poems
as well as in his major poems, Paradise Lost (1667, 1674), Paradise Regained
(1671), and Samson Agonistes (1671) and in his final tract, Of True Religion
(1673), espoused a broad definition of a Protestant church.
There was also an intolerant Milton. This Milton restricted his appeal
to civil liberties and freedoms of the press to Protestants, with the Roman
church ever vilified for its tyrannies; this Milton was largely silent on the
proposed readmission of the Jews in 1655; this Milton championed Cromwells
campaign against the Roman Catholic Irish in the 1649 Observations; and this
Milton spattered his writings across his career with anti-Catholic satire and
invective. His last pamphlet, Of True Religion, protested against the toleration
of Roman Catholics when English political leaders were considering a Catholic
Indulgence. While the liberal tradition of toleration writing tends to play
down this intolerant Milton, it was indeed as a Protestant that the Whig
tradition hailed him as a hero. With anti-Popery and anti-priestcraft as its
main pillars, Whigs saw Miltons defenses of freedom of conscience and attacks
on persecution as vital to their contribution to the history of liberties of the
individual, culminating in John Locke.
The essays which follow, however, resist unearthing an intolerant Milton
at the expense of the formerly tolerant liberal one. In the early modern period,
as Alexandra Walsham and others have shown, tolerance and intolerance are
Stephen B. Dobranski, Licensing Miltons Heresy, in Stephen B. Dobranski and John P.

Rumrich, eds., Milton and Heresy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 1434; and
see Dzelzainis below.
See Douglas Brooks, ed., Milton and the Jews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
forthcoming).
See Don M. Wolfe, Limits of Miltonic Toleration, Journal of English and Germanic Philology
60 (1961), 83446; and John Illo, Areopagiticas Mythic and Real, Prose Studies 11.1 (1998),
323.
See, for example, Justin Champion, Republican Learning: John Toland and the Crisis
of Christian Culture, 16961722 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 1005;
and on the construction of the Whig Milton, see Nicholas von Maltzahn, The Whig
Milton, 16671700, in David Armitage, Armand Himy and Quentin Skinner, eds., Milton
and Republicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 22953.
Introduction 3
better seen as dialectically and symbiotically linked. And yet, history does
not run backwards: without falling into an easy determinism, one may at least
say that once the printing press was in regular, widespread use, the control
or dissemination of information had to take on new forms. Perhaps, even
more controversially, we might say the same about concepts: once a concept
like freedom of thought was espoused and made public, any subsequent battle
would have to take that into account.
Some readers may be frustrated at the lack of precision about what is
that toleration our contributors have found in Milton. Recent historians
have been helpfully clarifying about the important distinctions between
toleration, tolerance, freedom of inquiry, and matters to do with ecclesiology:
comprehension, rather than toleration, for example. They have also explored
how toleration was a tactical strategy at times rather than a point of principle.
We have hoped to keep the notion of toleration sufficiently broad so as to
investigate how one spectacularly sensitive and engaged author constructed
visions of community, its spaces, boundaries and textures: ours is a project
in the history of the imagination, not simply the reconstruction of legal,
ecclesiological and social practices. Milton was a great upholder of boundaries
(fit though few) but he was also deeply interested, as our contributors show,
in the malleability of boundaries, in the dynamics of mixed communities, and
brotherly dissimilitudes. We seek to show how Miltons visions of tolerance
intersected with contemporary political discourse and also how they reveal
deeper movements in the history of the imagination. Through this study
we hope, moreover, to find how modernitys new discoursesliberty of
Alexandra Walsham, Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 15001700

(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 5; and John Coffey, Persecution and Toleration
in Protestant England, 15581689 (Harlow: Longman, 2000).
In addition to Walsham, Charitable, 234, see also Mark Goldie, The Theory of Religious
Intolerance in Restoration England, 33168; and John Dunn, The Claim to Freedom of
Conscience: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Thought, Freedom of Worship? 17193, both in
Ole Peter Grell, Jonathan I. Israel and Nicholas Tyacke, eds., From Persecution to Toleration: The
Glorious Revolution and Religion in England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991); Tim Harris, Tories
and the Rule of Law in The Reign of Charles II, The Seventeenth Century 8.1 (1993), 927;
John Spurr, England 16491750: Differences Contained? in Steven N. Zwicker, ed., English
Literature 16501740 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 332; John Marshall,
John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2006).
Tom Webster, Godly Clergy: The Caroline Puritan Movement, 16201643 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997), passim, and esp. 3338; Walsham, Charitable, 2367;
Gary S. De Krey, London and the Restoration, 16591683 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2005), passim, and esp. 11640. On the Netherlands, see Andrew Pettegree, The
Politics of Toleration in the Free Netherlands, in Ole Peter Grell and Robert Scribner, eds.,
Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1996), 198.
conscience, natural law, equity, materialism, libertinism, rhetoric, secularism,

even literature itselfcreated spaces for toleration. The traditional liberal
account of toleration that hails 1688 as the landmark (because through it a
toleration was legalized by government) is not the only way of telling the story
of toleration.
In so doing, we insist on breaking down the opposition between theory and
practice that has shaped revisionist approaches to post-Reformation theology
and politics. A number of recent scholars have sought to determine the actual
shape of tolerance and intolerance within particular communities in early
modern Europe, and their work has been invaluable to the reconstruction of
the lives of people who were, at once, removed from the centres of polemic,
but at the same time, those most affected by sectarian strife or concord. At
times, this is an invaluable corrective to an idealizing approach; but at others,
this seems to restrict understanding by setting practice against beliefs,
actions rather than words, reality against rhetoric. Missed by those who favor
functionalist accounts of social change is an explanation of choice, of intention.
Throughout the historian David Cressys important new study, England on
Edge, there is however an agency-less narrative: what happened was, variously:
a collapse (6, 9 and passim), a breakdown, confusions and changes of the
times (21), a distemper, a splintering (9), and last, an earthquake of cosmic
proportions (424), without a clear sense of how ideas played a role in relation
to these great changes.
This rejection of principle or the obscuring of the meaning of beliefs,
words, or rhetoric leaves us wondering why sectarian radicalism spread in the
first place; and how the people experiencing change felt about it. Walsham
points to the distorting effects of the persecuting rhetorics: speech, script
and print may even have been responsible for creating mirages of dissident
movements which did not in fact exist. We question this approach that
seeks an underlying reality beneath the representations. Along with our
view, rather than rejecting these idealizing representations, the historian Ann
Hughes has recently broadened our understanding of the importance of
them. Persecutors like Thomas Edwards, she has shown, may have been the
fabricator of nightmares, but they were also recording something real: an
For example, Ann Hughes, Gangraena and the Struggle for the English Revolution (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2004); Benjamin J. Kaplan, Calvinists and Libertines: Confession and
Community in Utrecht, 15781620 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); Walsham, Charitable.
David Cressy, England on Edge: Crisis and Revolution, 16401642 (Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2006), 6, 9, 21, 9, 424.
Walsham, Charitable, 28, 27; see also J. C. Davis, Fear, Myth and History: The Ranters and
the Historians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). Hughes takes a subtle approach
in Gangraena.
Introduction 5
awareness of pluralism and its threats to a particular, ideologically charged,

vision of commonality.
We think literature has something to offer. In exploring works of literature,
we can gain further insight into why these fantasies mattered in particular;
and in the works of John Milton, we hope to show, we are given a detailed
and multi-layered account of the religious, political and literary landscape of
the mid-seventeenth century, and a convincing case that we should care about
literature and the evidence it has to offer. If some historians all too often
seem to want to get behind the representations to reach a realm of the real,
our contributors demonstrate that the truth of representations is a valuable
truth in itself. The images of literature, rhetoric and poetry present a kind of
truth of the past that we in the discipline of literature are uniquely skilled to
explore. While in some areas of literary study, the topic of toleration seems
rather old-fashioned, perhaps supplanted by an interest in ethics, identity
and difference, we consider the claims of a liberal political tradition to offer a
meaningful engagement with vitaland still unresolvedaspects of human
social life.
Our volume resists a distinction between theory and practice of toleration
without reducing one to the other. Literary evidence is somewhere between
these two poles. As the writers engagements with ideas form a kind of
practice, as Milton insisted, reading was a kind of action in the world; indeed,
discernment was one of the most fundamental actions necessary to a life of
virtue and faith. In Miltons own literary methods, furthermore, practice is
indeed the only way you can know theory (or know that you dont really
know it). Miltons accounts of toleration offer up a more complex picture of
the practical and the theoretical, the passions, interests, reasons, than can be
found in a traditional history of ideas approach or in the newer anti-intellectual
revisionist approach. Miltons vehement rhetorical style, for instance, does
not simply convey ideas, but is itself a particular expressive mode. As Paul
Stevens tags it below, Miltons expressive significance is a kind of action that,
on the one hand, exceeds the pragmatic aims and, on the other, is also a mode
of self-fashioning. We are led to ask about the relation between the literal
Hughess Gangraena is open to the complex but important ways that representations,
including literary representations, need not be set against realities, but indeed help to constitute
the known.
See the important challenges to the concept of tolerance in Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy
in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 2003), 129.
Though he might not put it that way, this is a claim that might follow upon Stanley
Fishs insights; see, in particular, Is There a Text in this Class? The Authority of Interpretive
Communities (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), 13, 168; and How Milton
Works (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), 4.
violence and the rhetorical violences: to ask what are the differences between
speech and action.
We find in literature very compelling evidence for historians to use in
seeking to understand how people experienced new, or painful, or liberating,
ideas. Milton defends the lived experience in the real world, always measured
and recalibrated to the wider purpose of serving God. With Milton we can
see how closely ethics, epistemology, and personal experience are lodged; and
how toleration came about as Milton felt the saving power of interpretive
freedom, as Jason Rosenblatt puts it below. In this volume, we will see Milton
as a reader fully engaged with the deep questions of his day, working with
natural law theorists Grotius and Selden (Rosenblatt), for example, or libertine
writers ( Turner), to rethink his own theological commitments in light of his
personal experience. With Miltons habits of reading we can unearth a de facto
or practical toleration of unorthodox ideas (Achinstein).
Through the history of reading, we can see how Miltons humanist train-
ingin the methods of Hebrew philology, legal history, classical philosophy,
and, most of all, disputation and rhetoriccould lead to new modes of self-
understanding and action in the world, what James Turner here provocatively
calls libertine reading, the practice of willingly confronting the scandalous
or the contrary. Thomas Hobbes had it right to worry that classical learning
had bred a generation of rebels; but that is only part of the story of the legacy
of humanism and its penchant for disputation in England. While Miltons
engagements with classical history and rhetoric were always mediated through
Reformed concerns, his practical application of humanist principles could
lead in strikingly original directions. A deeply religious thinker, Milton
saw the aims of his reading as repairing the work of the Fall, as combining
liberal knowledge the better to serve Gods purpose, a processual approach to
knowledge as open-ended in the human realm.
But if Milton is the conveyor of Reformed humanist thought, with its
communitarian and republican traditions, he is also the one to defend
singularity, the non-controvertibility of individual experience. His poetry is
both defense and exemplum. What tension between equity and the discrepant
instance is found by Victoria Silver here to characterize the Satanic, Milton
absorbs in the name of faith: faith despite the invisibility, the unseen qualities
of the creator. Silvers subtle and complex case below for Miltons particularity
gives us a reason for attending to the writings of this astonishing author. That
For humanist engagements with toleration, see Ingrid Creppell, Toleration and Identity:
Foundations in Early Modern Thought (London: Routledge, 2003), 3964, on Bodin, and 6590,
on Montaigne; Gary Remer, Humanism and the Rhetoric of Toleration (University Park, Pa.:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996).
Introduction 7
emphasis on individual experience was the starting point, but also the field of
action, for a whole new way of conceiving persons, their rights, their political
and civic liberties. Miltons admissions of uncertainty in human and divine
relations need not be seen as the scepticism that inevitably leads to toleration
but rather as a means to reformulate the nature of human obligations.
An attention to Milton helps us broaden our view outwards from the English
focus of the micropolitical framework of British historians of ecclesiology and
controversy. Although Miltons title pages insisted on his Englishness, this
was because he sought a European audience, and our contributors situate
Milton in that wider context. His reading of the Piedmont crisis in light of
English national concerns depends upon a dialogic relation with continental
developments, as Elizabeth Sauer here shows; and this international vista is
not confined to the spectre of Counter-Reformation Roman Catholicism.
Indeed, the lived experience of tolerance, or of multi-confessional coexistence
on the continent, had led to refinements in theology, with, as Blair Worden
and John Coffey have argued, believers seeking for a new ground upon
which to offer the fundamentals of religion. Of course, it was in relation
to his own domestic radical contextssuch as those presented by Thomas
Corns and David Loewenstein in this volumethat Milton created his vision;
but there were wider influences and a wider audience imagined for his
work (Martin Dzelzainiss analysis of Miltons grappling with avant-garde
Continental thought sheds light on this below). A writer at work, Milton
reveals a capacity for rapidly synthesizing fresh positions, as Nicholas von
Maltzahn states it here, and Dzelzainis shows the political processes by
which his ideas emerged. While Milton at times surrendered to a knee-jerk
anti-popery fear, he saw in popery not simply Roman Catholicism, but all
forms of servitude, dependence, and alienation of reason, as Andrew Hadfield
explains in his essay; in this, he sharply and surprisingly differed from his
contemporary tolerationists, such as Vane and Williams, who had both
For the importance of distinguishing tolerance from scepticism, see Richard Tuck,
Scepticism and Toleration in the Seventeenth Century, in Susan Mendus, ed., Justifying
Toleration: Conceptual and Historical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1988), 2135.
As Jonathan Scott, Englands Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political Instabili-
ty in European Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), requires that we
do. See also Sharon Achinstein, Milton and King Charles, in Thomas Corns, ed., The
Royal Image: Representations of Charles I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999),
14161.
Blair Worden, The Question of Secularization, in Alan Houston and Steve Pincus, eds.,
A Nation Transformed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 2040. The radically
tolerationist Baptist Thomas Helwys is exemplary; see John Coffey, Puritanism and Liberty
Revisited: The Case for Toleration in the English Revolution, Historical Journal 41.4 (1998),
96185.
argued for toleration of idolators. His multiple commitments, along with

his rhetorical and philosophical experimentation, provide a sharp corrective
to those who would prefer to take Milton as a hero or anti-hero of tolerant
thinking. In Milton, we shall see the contours of early modern ambivalence
regarding the very nature of human society and its capacity for tolerance.
His calls for tolerance are all the more engaging at a time when we see the
resurgence of various fundamentalisms around the globe.
Above all, our contributors insist on a connection between toleration and
heterodoxy. There is no necessary correlation, to be sure, and historians of
tolerance differ in their assessments about whether the fight against persecution
for religion in England was also a fight for freedom of inquiry. In his study of the
origins of Enlightenment thinking, Jonathan Israel, for example, has contrasted
the continental defenses with those of Britain: on the continent, arguments
for tolerance moved towards freedom of thought; in Britain, he claims, they
were restricted to attacks on priestcraft. However, Margaret Jacob, with her
vision of a radical enlightenment in the history of science, and more recently,
Justin Champion, in his studies of later seventeenth-century heterodoxy, have
sought to reconstruct the underground free-thinking traditions in Britain.
Champion charts the English tradition of anti-priestcraft writing, whereby
religious leaders can become true legislators with the right approach. Henry
Stubbes and Charles Blounts investigations into comparative religion offered
anthropological or proto-secularist frameworks for a civil religion, rather
than arguments for atheism. Champion insists that the English attacks on
priestcraft preceded the French libertine tradition of freedom of thought, and
should be seen as a political engagement with institutional authority. Nigel
Smiths contribution below helps to situate Milton in relation to these avant-
garde movements in Continental thought; and Achinsteins essay explores the
presence of these international intellectual concerns in Miltons poetry.
Coffey, Puritanism and Liberty, 969.

Jonathan I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity,
16501750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). See also Michael Hunter, The Prob-
lem of Atheism in Early Modern England, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser.
(1985), 13557.
Justin Champion, The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken: The Church of England and its Enemies,
16601730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); and Republican Learning: John
Toland and the Crisis of Christian Culture, 16961722 (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2003). See also Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Repub-
licans (London: Allen & Unwin, 1981). To this must be added studies of English Revolutionary
radicalism, particularly Nigel Smith, Literature and Revolution in England, 16401660 (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1994); James Holstun, Ehuds Dagger: Class Struggle in the English
Revolution (London: Verso, 2000); and David Wootton, Leveller Democracy and the Puritan
Revolution, in J. H. Burns and Mark Goldie, eds., The Cambridge History of Political Thought,
14501700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), ch. 14.
Introduction 9
Did Miltons unorthodox views contribute to a theory of toleration? James

Turner has powerfully argued that Miltons questioning of prelapsarian
sexuality was unorthodox, and as William Poole has recently shown, Milton
parted ways with the conservative Puritans of the Westminster Assembly over
how much was lost at the Fall. According to Poole, in Miltons vision of
the Fall, sin has not utterly depraved man; John Rogers has developed the
picture of Miltons unorthodox theological commitments for an account of
political radicalism. While the implications for the political theory or practice
of tolerance are at present unclear, it is sure that Miltons dabbling with or
full immersion in radical ideas depended upon his commitment to absolute
freedom of inquiry. Although scholars disagree over the extent or presence of
these elements in his theology, Miltons engagement with anti-Trinitarianism
or Arianism may likewise be seen in a tolerationist context, where even
fundamentals of faith might surrender to inquiry. In Areopagitica, Milton
recalls the omnivorous reading of Moses, Daniel and Paul, biblical exemplars,
who were skilfull in all the learning of the gyptians, Caldeans, and Greeks
(YP 2.5078), giving real value to unchristian sources of learning. To this
account, we must add Miltons contribution to the history of freedom of
thought, particularly his Areopagitica, which invites the consideration of all
kinde of knowledge whether of good or evill; the knowledge cannot defile, nor
consequently the books, if the will and conscience be not defild (YP 2.512).
James Grantham Turner, One Flesh: Paradisal Marriage and Sexual Relations in the Age
of Milton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987); William Poole, Milton and the Idea of the Fall
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Norman Burns, Christian Mortalism from
Tyndale to Milton (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972); and see also Stephen
Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers: Poetry and Materialism in Seventeenth-Century England
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991); Rachel J. Trubowitz on Miltons alleged monism in
Body Politics in Paradise Lost, PMLA 21.2 (2006), 388404.
For the political consequences of the radical vitalism in contemporary scientific discourse,
see John Rogers, Matter of Revolution: Science, Poetry, and Politics in the Age of Milton (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1996); John Rogers, Milton and the Heretical Priesthood of Christ,
in David Loewenstein and John Marshall, eds., Heresy, Literature and Politics in Early Modern
English Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); on Henry Stubbe, see James
R. Jacob and Margaret C. Jacob, The Anglican Origins of Modern Science: The Metaphysical
Foundations of the Whig Constitution, Isis 71 (1980), 25167, esp. pp. 2601.
On this subject, see for example the scholarship on the theological controversies in Miltons
De Doctrina Christiana: Maurice Kelley, This Great Argument: A Study of Miltons De Doctrina
Christiana as a Gloss upon Paradise Lost [1941], Princeton Studies in English, 22 (Gloucester,
Mass.: Peter Smith, 1962); Stephen F. Fallon, Miltons Arminianism and the Authorship of
De doctrina Christiana, Texas Studies in Literature and Language 41 (1999), 10327; John
P. Rumrich, Miltons Arianism and Why It Matters, in Stephen B. Dobranski and John P.
Rumrich, eds., Milton and Heresy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 7592;
Balachandra Rajan, The Poetics of Heresy and The Two Creations: Paradise Lost and the
Treatise on Christian Doctrine, in Elizabeth Sauer, ed., Milton and the Climates of Reading: Essays
by Balachandra Rajan ( Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), ch. 2, ch. 7.
With his defense of freedom of inquiry, Milton comes to arrive at a radical

ethical position regarding the innocence of the conscience and the will. For
God, Milton writes, left arbitrary the dyeting and repasting of our minds; as
wherein every mature man might have to exercise his owne leading capacity
(YP 2.513). The questions so explosive to Miltonof human sexuality; of
regulating marriage; of desires; of social and spiritual hierarchywarrant
a broadening of our notions of toleration. If sexual discontent can be the
grounds for a struggle for freedom, as James Turner argues, then, how can
the polity, marriage, and even the self be understood? In the essays to come,
we shall see whether, and in what ways the narrower question of liberty of
conscience or religious liberty broadens out into a wider defense of personal
freedoms.
II
As the subsequent essays will also show, Miltons imaginative writings evolved
in conjunction with developments in the political and religious spheres. A
brief overview of the early modern history of toleration in England is in order.
In the early modern era, toleration was not synonymous with religious
freedom, but rather with the concepts of permission and endurance, a
more passive version of the classical term tolerantia. Englands history
of toleration offers no evolutionary narrative toward enlightenment and
liberty. The English nation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was less
advanced in its tolerationist policies and practices than France and Poland,
where, as Milton himself would later acknowledge, Protestants injoy liberty
among Papists of public speaking, writing, and printing more than do English
Protestants in their own land (YP 8.4267).
In England, repression of dissident religious beliefs and practices was
continuous both before and after the Protestant Reformation. As Supreme
In addition to Walsham, Charitable, and Coffey, Persecution and Toleration, see: Joseph
Lecler, Preface, in Toleration and the Reformation, trans. T. L. Westow, 2 vols. (New York:
Association Press, 1960), vol. i, p. x; Cary J. Nederman and John Christian Laursen, Difference
and Dissent: Introduction, in Cary J. Nederman and John Christian Laursen, eds., Difference
and Dissent: Theories of Tolerance in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Lanham, Md.: Rowman
& Littlefield, 1997), 910; Cary J. Nederman and John Christian Laursen, eds., Beyond the
Persecuting Society: Religious Toleration Before the Enlightenment (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1998); Ole Peter Grell and Roy Porter, eds., Toleration in Enlightenment
Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); G. R. Elton, Persecution and Toleration
in the English Reformation, in W. J. Sheils, ed., Persecution and Toleration, Studies in Church
History, 21 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), 16377.
Introduction 11
Head of the Church of England, Henry authorized the persecution of Catholics

and Anabaptists; Edward VI, ascending to the throne in 1547, brought
a new campaign of zeal against Catholics, with persecution overseen by
Protector Somerset; Marys brief reign followed with persecution against
Protestants, a Counter-Reformation program in line with her international
alliances. The Elizabethan settlement re-established Protestantism as the state
religion and, following Elizabeths Act of Supremacy which legislated against
Roman primacy, the 1559 Act of Uniformity saw the revival of the liturgy
of the Edwardian Prayer Book and the establishment of a national Reformed
Church; fines of one shilling were the punishment for failing to attend
Protestant services; the 1581 recusancy law raised this to the extortionate
sum of 20 per month. Elizabeth promoted Erastianism on the basis that, in
William Cecils words, the State could never be in Safety, where there was a
Tolleration of two religions, or, in her own words, There cannot be two
religions in one State. The 1563 Thirty-nine Articles served as the English
Churchs constitution, and despite efforts to accommodate a wide range
of Christian beliefs within one church, the number of people succumbing
to religious persecution in her day totalled that of Protestant deaths under
Mary, with prominent Catholic and Calvinist martyrs among Elizabeths
victims (Edmund Campion, Robert Parson, and Henry Barrow). Recusants
and Anabaptists, for example, faced interrogations, fines, seizure of goods,
imprisonment, deportation, or banishment.
While the advancement of tolerance was rarely an aim of governments in
England, early political and religious history also reveals that the English people
themselves frequently resented the concept and frustrated state-sponsored
efforts to grant toleration. The succession of James VI of Scotland ( James I)
to the throne installed what many believed would be a relatively peaceful,
but for Parliament distinctly uncomfortable, period of tolerance. James was
favourably disposed to the Roman church and laity; and was in general known
for his confessional bridge-building. At the same time, politics and public
pressure conspired to force the king to take the offensive against Catholicism: in
1605 Parliament demanded the revision and enforcement of penal laws against
recusants, and the Gunpowder Plot fueled the nations outrage against popery.
The following year, 1606, saw the passing of bills demanding conformity to
the Established Church and outlawing adherence to Catholicism. The main
threat to the English Church, however, came not from Catholics but rather
Quoted in W. K. Jordan, The Development of Religious Toleration in England, 4 vols.

(193240), 1.88.
Lecler, Toleration and the Reformation, 2.355, 378.
For a good guide to this history, see Walsham, Charitable, ch. 2.
Scott, Englands Troubles, 989.
from Protestant separatists, who would challenge monarchical jurisdiction,

demand disestablishment, and sow the seeds of revolution.
The discontent with state power over religion intensified with the rise of Laud
under Charles I, and with the imposition of the new Prayer Book in Scotland.
Puritans and separatists attacked the instruments of royal and ecclesiastical
power, leading to the Root and Branch Petition of 1640 and ultimately to
execution of the archbishop of Canterbury and the dismantling of episcopacy.
The toleration controversies of the 1640s involved Presbyterians and Erastians,
who argued for unity through the establishment of a Presbyterian national
church, and dissenters who opposed a state church and pressed for liberty
of conscience. The outbreak of the first civil war intensified these religious
disputes, challenged episcopacy, and curtailed the kings infringement on the
liberties and liberty of conscience of his subjects. By the end of the civil wars,
Parliament banned the Book of Common Prayer, the office of bishop was
abolished, and the stage was prepared for the execution of the king.
Emerging in the 1640s and 1650s into organized groups, Levellers, Fifth
Monarchists, Quakers, Diggers, and Ranters were among the radicals who
professed fervent beliefs in the universality of grace and human rights that
underwrote their defences of political liberty and of popular representation.
For these dissenters, the time was ripe for revolutionary ecclesiastical and
political programs that challenged not only the authority of the church from
which it developed but also that of the state that established the church.
Replacing the monarchy, the republican government frustrated rather than
advanced the sectaries causes. Indeed, significant legislative changes were
made under the Commonwealth: the 1650 Act for the relief of religious
and peaceable people was passed and statutes enforcing church attendance
repealed. But the Rumps insistence on maintaining the state church through
civil power undermined toleration efforts. The Protector himself assumed a
range of different positions on toleration: he supported religious toleration and
encouraged learning; he stimulated foreign trade; he promoted the Protestant
League in 16545 and appealed in 1655 for warring Protestant parties by
See Peter Lake, Anglicans and Puritans? Presbyterianism and English Conformist Thought
from Whitgift to Hooker (London: Allen & Unwin, 1988); Kenneth Fincham, Clerical Conformity
from Whitgift to Laud, in Peter Lake and Michael Questier, eds., Conformity and Orthodoxy in
the English Church c. 15601660 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2000), 12558, and Fincham, ed., The
Early Stuart Church: 16031642 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993).
See Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas during the English
Revolution (London: Temple Smith, 1972) and John Coffey, Puritanism and Liberty Revisited,
The Historical Journal 41.4 (1998), 96185.
Blair Worden, Toleration and the Cromwellian Protectorate, in W. J. Sheils, ed., Persecu-
tion and Toleration, Studies in Church History, 21 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), 199233;
J. C. Davis, Religion and the Struggle for Liberty, Historical Journal 35 (1992), 50730.
Introduction 13
brotherly consent and harmony [to] unite into one (YP 5.2.680); under
his authority Irish Catholics were slaughtered or transplanted; he strongly
condemned the atrocities committed against the Waldensians in Piedmont;
he defended in theoryand occasionally in practicea culture of dissent;
he actively suppressed Catholicism in the European theater; he proposed the
readmission of the Jews in the 1655 Whitehall conference; and he declared war
against the Spanish. But the Cromwellian period also saw the introduction of
the 1650 Blasphemy Act calculated to repress antinomians and Quakers.
If the civil war and interregnum gave rise to debates and proposals on
toleration, the Restoration saw the return of forms of religious persecution,
victimizing Catholics but especially Protestant sectarians. The era also
witnessed an eruption of controversies over conscience, extending from
Parliaments imposition of the Westminster Confession on the nation in
1660, to the failures of the Dutch War and Clarendons fall in 1667, to the
disputes over the question of comprehension of dissenters. Confronted by a
rumour abroad of some Motions or Act to be offered for Comprehension or
Indulgence, the Cavalier Parliament voted on 10 February 1668 to enforce laws
against nonconformists. A comprehension bill was, however, much desired
by the greater part of the nation, reported Samuel Pepys. Later that year,
Charles was again approached about this matter, but the Commons seized
the opportunity to legislate, outside of monarchic jurisdiction, adherence to
the Act of Uniformity. Persecution in the Restoration became ideology and
practice.
In the early years of the following decade, the crisis over toleration reached
other climaxes: Charless Declaration of Indulgence (1672) and the Popish
Plots (167981). Shortly before the outbreak of the Second Anglo-Dutch
War, in which he allied himself with France, Charles issued the 15 March
1672 Declaration of Indulgence, the first such declaration having failed a
decade beforehand. Citing the futility of the twelve-year-long suppression of
religious dissent, the 1672 Declaration called for the suspension of Penal
Gary S. De Krey, Rethinking the Restoration: Dissenting Cases for Conscience, 166772,
Historical Journal 38 (1995), 5383; N. H. Keeble, The Literature of Nonconformity in Later
Seventeenth-Century England (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1987); Douglas Lacey, Dissent
and Parliamentary Politics in England, 16611689: A Study in the Perpetuation and Tempering of
Parliamentarianism (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1969).
Samuel Pepys, 10 February 1668, in Robert Latham and William Matthews, eds., The
Diary of Samuel Pepys, 11 vols. (London and Berkeley: University of California Press, 197083),
9.60, quoted in Elizabeth Sauer, Miltons Of True Religion, Protestant Nationhood, and the
Negotiation of Liberty, Milton Quarterly 40.1 (2006), 5.
On the ideology of persecution, see Goldie, Theory of Religious; and Gordon Schochet,
Samuel Parker, Religious Diversity, and the Ideology of Persecution, in Roger D. Lund, ed.,
The Margins of Orthodoxy: Heterodox Writing and Cultural Response, 16601750 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995), 11948.
Laws in matters Ecclesiastical, against whatsoever sort of Non-Conformists

or Recusants. In the charged politico-religious climate that seethed with
anti-Catholic sentiment, Charless proposed indulgence failed. In his final
original prose work, Of True Religion, Hresie, Schism, Tolerationthe
product both of a turbulent era and of a particular moment marking a
conjunction between fierce anti-Catholic agitation and a proposed indulgence
for various nonconformist sectsMilton numbered among the majority in
fully supporting in March 1673 the Commons withdrawal of the Declaration.
The Toleration Act of 1689 freed Protestant dissenters from penalty, though
still legislated political and social exclusion; toleration of those outside the
Protestant church would have to wait until the nineteenth century.
III
The study of the writings of John Milton can help us to see how these dramatic
changes concerning persecution and the ideal of uniformity that were in place
in Tudor and early Stuart England came about. During Miltons writing life,
and in part because of his contribution, religious toleration emerged out
of radical Puritanism. Milton scholars have, however, figured toleration only
secondarily, instead dwelling on the intellectual contexts of Puritan radicalism,
liberalism, nationalism, colonialism, (anti-)imperialism, and republicanism.
The foregrounding of toleration in this book is designed to complement,
supplement, but also establish a methodological departure from related studies
on the subject by offering alternative ways of understanding these movements
and Miltons relationship to them. Milton has enjoyed a reputation during
much of the twentieth century as a champion of liberalism, a reputation
bolstered by the great Whig tradition, as Nicholas Tyacke characterizes
it. In histories of Puritanism, Milton was to enjoy easily the greatest
His Majesties Declaration to all his Loving Subjects, March 15th 1671/2 (London, 1671/2), 6.
See also Mark Knights, Representation and Misrepresentation in Later Stuart Britain: Partisanship
and Political Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Classic progressive analyses include William Hallers The Rise of Puritanism from
Thomas Cartwright to John Lilburne and John Milton (New York: Columbia University Press,
1938), Hallers Liberty and Reformation in the Puritan Revolution (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1955), A. S. P. Woodhouses Puritanism and Liberty (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1938,
1951, 1965), and Arthur Barkers Milton and the Puritan Dilemma ( Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1942).
Nicholas Tyacke, The Rise of Puritanism and the Legalizing of Dissent, 15711719, in
Grell, Israel, and Tyacke, eds., From Persecution to Toleration, 17; and see Annabel Patterson,
Early Modern Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
Introduction 15
posthumous reputation among later liberals and become the only radical
Puritan tolerationist to exercise great influence in the eighteenth century.
Recent excellent studies have offered nuanced historical recontextualizations
of Miltons political and religious emphases to correct an overdetermined Whig
or marxisant approach. Concentrating on Miltons relationship to radical
ideologies, scholars, including Nicholas von Maltzahn, David Norbrook,
Nigel Smith and David Loewenstein, have recently explored the political and
ecclesiological content of that shared culture, developing a formidable portrait
of Miltons republicanism and liberalism but leaving the story of Miltons
theories and ethics of toleration and their relation to the radical tradition yet
largely untold. Otherwise valuable political and literary histories of Miltons
republicanism tend in general to address toleration (and civic rather than
religious toleration) only insofar as it functions as a subcategory of republican
virtues. The vision of republican toleration, moreover, does not fit well
with Miltons own views. Simone Zurbuchen has argued that early modern
republican theorists were more committed to a nationally established church,
in line with their emphasis on communal virtue and civic responsibility.
James Harrington is illustrative here. Harrington in his System of Politics
(1661?) supported liberty of conscience, with conscience only capable of
Coffey, Puritanism and Liberty, 969, 984.

Among the fine investigations situating Miltons life and work in a culture of dissent during
the English revolutionary and Restoration periods are Keeble, Literature of Nonconformity;
Nigel Smith, Perfection Proclaimed: Language and Literature in English Radical Religion (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1989); and Nicholas McDowell, The English Radical Imagination: Culture,
Religion, and Revolution, 16301660 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003). For investigations of
the interrelationship of literature, polemics, and religious politics, see David Loewenstein,
Representing Revolution in Milton and his Contemporaries: Religion, Politics and Polemics in Radical
Puritanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), for the Revolutionary period; and
Sharon Achinstein, Literature and Dissent in Miltons England (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2003) for the Restoration. See also John N. King, Milton and Religious Controversy: Satire
and Polemic in Paradise Lost (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Achsah Guibbory,
Ceremony and Community from Herbert to Milton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998); Kristen Poole, Radical Religion from Shakespeare to Milton: Figures of Nonconformity in
Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); and Dobranski and
Rumrich, eds., Milton and Heresy.
See David Norbrook, Writing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics, 16271660
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Nicholas von Maltzahn, Miltons History
of Britain: Republican Historiography in the English Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1991); Quentin Skinner, David Armitage and Armand Himy, eds., Milton and Republicanism
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Janel Mueller, Contextualizing Miltons
Nascent Republicanism, in P. G. Stanwood, ed., Of Poetry and Politics: New Essays on Milton and
His World (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1995); and Graham
Parry and Joad Raymond, eds., Milton and the Terms of Liberty (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002).
Simone Zurbuchen, Republicanism and Toleration, in Quentin Skinner and Martin van
Gelderen, eds., Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002), 2.4772, at 53.
being protected in a democracy. However, he saw the necessity of a national

religion, and excluded from public office in the state those who, for reasons of
conscience, dissented from that national religion.
Tolerance is also a relatively neglected subject of studies on Miltons
relationship to empire or anti-imperialism. The exploration of Miltons
engagements with imperialism establishes some of the parameters of the
conversation in which this book hopes to participate. To the argument
made by David Quint that Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained are epics
reinforcing and interrogating imperialism we might add an analysis of the
negotiations of toleration in Miltons poetics and poetry. As J. Martin Evans
sees Paradise Lost as a register of the multiple, contesting attitudes to the
colonization of the New World, we can find a model for analysing the equally
controversial subject and discourses of toleration. None of the scholarship
on this subject, however, centres on and treats the question of toleration in
a robust, thoroughgoing manner. We do not propose here to offer a unified
overview of Milton and toleration but hope to open up new possibilities for
present and future investigations which reassess the strengths, limits, and
contradictions of Miltons position.
IV
The organization of our volume reflects the multi-dimensional approach to the

question of Milton and toleration. The contributors in Part I, Revising Whig
Accounts, resist the liberal paradigms of a chronological progression from a
persecuting past to modern-day tolerationism, while reassessing Whig histories
of Englands leading role in developing and even exporting tolerationist
principles. The contributors establish international and national religious and
cultural contexts for addressing the key questions on Milton and toleration.
James Harrington, A System of Politics, in J. G. A. Pocock, ed., The Commonwealth of Oceana

and A System of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 282. For theoretical
analyses, see also Zurbuchen, Republicanism and Toleration; and Charles Larmore, Liberal
and Republican Conceptions of Freedom, in Daniel Weinstock and Christian Nadeau, eds.,
Republicanism: History, Theory and Practice (London: Frank Cass, 2004), 96119.
David Armitage, John Milton: Poet against Empire, in Armitage, Himy, and Skinner, eds.,
Milton and Republicanism, 20625; Paul Stevens, Paradise Lost and the Colonial Imperative,
Milton Studies 34 (1996), 321, and Balachandra Rajan and Elizabeth Sauer, eds., Milton and the
Imperial Vision (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1999).
David Quint, Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1993).
J. Martin Evans, Miltons Imperial Epic: Paradise Lost and the Discourse of Colonization
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996).
Introduction 17
At the same time, they identify some of the polemical stakes and widen
the understanding of the ideologies of toleration. The approaches taken
here are comparative without collapsing into polarities or binaries. At issue
are Miltons engagements with elite groups, dissenting communities, and
with key ideas and proponents of toleration whose arguments informed
his own thinking on the subject. Nigel Smith productively locates Milton
in a broad tradition of intellectual freedom of belief associated with elite
groups in Europe, from which are derived Miltons understanding of religious
toleration and persecution, of free will and anti-Trinitarian theology. The
following three essays locate Milton in the embattled religious cultures of the
day: David Loewensteins Toleration and the Specter of Heresy in Miltons
England studies the scare-mongering of the pamphlet wars over religious
toleration. While Loewenstein situates Milton in relation to John Goodwin
and William Walwyntwo major polemical writers in the English history
of tolerationThomas Corns, in John Milton and Roger Williams, and
the Limits of Toleration, positions Milton in relation to Williams and in
the context of both the new world and the theological aims of civic reform.
Advancing the argument of Miltons limited and Williamss absolute toleration
which critics have generally maintained, Corns, however, explores the issue
more fully, complicating the positions of these two writers on the scale of
toleration in terms of their views on church polity, on the relationship between
congregational independents and Presbyterianism, on millenarianism, and on
questions of civic and spiritual regeneration. Miltons difference from the
Whig perspective on tolerance is at the center of Nicholas von Maltzahns
piece, Milton, Marvell and Toleration. This contribution scrutinizes historical
accounts of liberalism in analysing questions of religious tolerance in early
modern England and the importance of the subject not only for Milton but also
for Marvell, whose contributions to the religious origins of the Enlightenment
are situated in proximity to Miltons.
Part II, Philosophical and Religious Engagements, explores Miltons par-
ticipation in philosophical debates about questions of toleration. In each
case, contributors to Part II analyse a complex of discourses and represen-
tations underlying Miltons concept of heterodoxy, brotherly dissimilitudes,
and the poetics of toleration. In turn they take toleration to its outer lim-
itslibertinism, natural law, equity, Anti-trinitarianismand explore the
main intolerance, anti-Catholicism. Extending the narrower concerns of reli-
gious toleration and the abstract language of toleration to consider the wider
ramifications of defenses of freedom of thought and experience, passions,
and the ethics of confrontation, James Grantham Turners Libertinism and
Toleration: Milton, Bruno and Aretino applies the question of toleration to
a range of erotic classics, as well as to the varied tractates and reasons of
religious controversy. In doing so, he advances the concept of a pan-European

movement towards freedom of thought, with a provocative investigation
of sexuality as the core of libertine philosophy. Jason Rosenblatts Milton,
Natural Law, and Toleration enhances our understanding of the natural law
tradition as well as explaining the significance of Miltons engagement with
theorists from Grotius to Selden, Pufendorf, Locke, and Barbeyrac to account
for the transformation that occurs between Miltons antiprelatical tracts that
apotheosize the spiritual aristocrats of the reformation and the treatises on
divorce which emphasize commonality and toleration. Victoria Silver develops
the links between epistemology and theology in her essay, A Taken Scandal
not a Given: Miltons Equitable Grounds of Toleration. Legal theory, Mon-
taigne, and the extensive treatment of Miltons Of Civil Power combine to
make a powerful and original case for assessing Milton on questions of equity
and toleration, and offer a philosophically nuanced account that challenges
as well as complements some of the volumes historicist offerings. Martin
Dzelzainiss Milton and Antitrinitarianism explores the outer limit of reli-
gious tolerance Milton embraces within reformed Christianity, exploring the
political conditions that expose the dimensions of his intellectual engagement
with antitrinitarianism. The chapter posits an earlier (mid-1640s) date for
Miltons heretical antitrinitarianism, on the basis of his knowledge of religious
controversies in Geneva and Poland. Andrew Hadfields essay on Milton and
Catholicism offers an overview of the central intolerance in Miltons writing
life: popery, seen less as a political threat than a threat to philosophical
freedom.
Milton and Toleration seeks to understand the literary means by which
tolerance was questioned, observed, and became an object of meditation.
Part III in particular addresses the vital role of literary evidence in a study
of toleration. How do the poet, the polemicist, the rhetorician intervene in
the debate on the subject? The essays here examine how representations and
discourses of toleration figure in the field of the literary, which includes
Miltons prose as well as poetry, and how imaginative literature can help
enrich our understanding of the engagement with cultural, religious, and
ethnic difference. Elizabeth Sauer uses Sonnet XV and the literature on the
Irish crisis to investigate the ways that toleration and imperialism operated
side by side in Cromwellian England and were integral to the Interregnum
governments mission to advance a nationalist agenda. Sharon Achinstein
looks for evidence of toleration thinking in the great epics, exploring the
contrast between Miltons philosophical commitment to free inquiry and his
literary methods of forcing confrontation of different faiths. Paul Stevenss
Intolerance and the Virtues of Sacred Vehemence develops these content-
based approaches to offer a different vantage point: his historically particular
Introduction 19
analysis of Miltons language depends on a distinction between the expressive

and the pragmatic functions of the rhetoric of violence, and the defense of
emotional, affective rhetoric. This wide-ranging study asks how the bloody
nature of Miltons anti-persecution rhetoric is ultimately modulated into
a less vehement, more moderate anti-persecution discourse. Our final two
essays explore the impact of Milton for later readers as they stretched the
outer bounds of tolerance. Lana Cable examines the republican tradition,
arguing that a rising secularism led to new concepts of individual agency and
virtue, mediated through the poetry of John Milton for later readers. Gerald
MacLean, in assessing Arab-Islamic responses to Milton that have focused
on the character of Satan in Paradise Lost, shows that Miltons unorthodox
treatment of ancient sources made him attractive to a variety of Muslim
thinkers who recognized in Miltons poetry an attitude toward religious
toleration remarkably in line with their own traditions. The viewpoint of
the other, which is so crucial in addressing questions of toleration, offers
intriguing insights into self constructions generally and the literatureand
silencesof Milton and Muslims in particular. The history of Arab-Islamic
critical response to Milton is the history of attempts by academics, writers,
critics and poets, to make Milton their own. The final section explores, then, a
poetics of tolerance, seeing in Miltons work not simply a preoccupation with
religious difference, but a literary means of representing and, in many ways,
participating in the acceptance of difference.
Part I
Revising Whig Accounts
2
Milton and the European Contexts
of Toleration
Nigel Smith
the largely tolerationist Arian Arminian John Milton
Milton is customarily presented as an apologist for religious and political

liberty. He defended liberty of the press in the mid-1640s, advanced some
extremely heretical views on divorce and some more obscure theological
positions, oversaw the publication of some theology (the Racovian Cat-
echismthe federal document of the Socinians) that was outlawed by the
Commonwealth authorities, maintained that these freedoms were best realized
in a Christian republic, and defended a wide measure of religious toleration
late in his life. If there were limits to the religious toleration offered by the
Interregnum governments, these were for the time comparatively broad, and
as Secretary for Foreign Tongues, Milton was responsible for the communica-
tion of these views to foreign governments. He was a friend of some of the most
influential tolerationist thinkers of his time, especially Roger Williams, the
founder of Rhode Island. These views are embedded, more or less obviously,
in his poetry, and his three most important poems were published during
the period when likeminded Protestant nonconformists suffered the greatest
degree of legal persecution between 1660 and 1688. Milton, then, is presented
as a guiding light toward liberty: what came before him was largely blind
persecution (with some exceptions in the ancient world), and what followed
was a slow and growing awareness that religious toleration was constitutive of
John Marshall, John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006), 8.
Arthur E. Barker, Milton and the Puritan Dilemma, 16411660 ( Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1942), 1820, 7497; repeated in Barbara K. Lewalski, The Life of John Milton
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 2016, 2837, 3826.
24 Nigel Smith
and beneficial for a free society. He was in this sense a precursor of Lockes
influential pro-toleration writings, but in a general sense more influential,
since many more people have read his poetry than have read Lockes political
theory. Both authors have been judged significant influences on the writing of
the constitution of the Unites States of America.
This interpretation of Miltons career and works is very Whig and Protestant;
one formed in the light of the religious strife that followed the Reformation,
and one born out of a typically Protestant and northern European view of
the attempt of the Roman Church, through the Council of Trent and the
Inquisition, to maintain its integrity against the rise of Protestantism. Pre-
1640 England was no light to Europe on the issues Milton cared about: both
his writing, and the extent of the persecution of unorthodox religious views
under Elizabeth, James and Charles, are testimony to that. Milton also knew
that religious toleration did exist to a greater extent in several other European
states than in England. There was the impressive or at least very complicated
example of the United Provinces, and further afield, the Commonwealth of
Poland-Lithuania, which had toleration inscribed into its constitution, which
was home of the original Socinian church as well as communities of exiled
Anabaptists and Mennonites.
It did not serve Miltons purpose to show that the medieval church could
be seen to harbour either tolerationist ideas or practice, and in any case, he
probably did not know about them, although of course he stressed the proto-
Reformation strand in the medieval church. Neither does he seem to know
about the other places in or adjacent to medieval Europe where toleration
was practised. Medieval Spain was ruled by Muslims who made religious
toleration compulsory. Muslims, Jews and Christians cohabited the Iberian
peninsular. Only after the rise of the Aragonese kings did toleration cease to
exist now within the extent of a Christian monarchy. Miltons thought might
indeed more readily be seen to fit within the context of the rise of the three
Atlantic monarchiesSpain, France, Englandand their quest for interior
religious unity as a concomitant to the rise of centralized monarchical power.
Persistently articulated Miltonic themes address the rise of the nation state,
and therefore the kinds of liberty that make the modern Christian nation state
so strong.
Annabel Patterson, Early Modern Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1997), chs. 1, 8.
Cary J. Nederman, Worlds of Difference: European Discourses of Toleration, C. 1100C. 1550
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 30.
See for instance Paul Stevens, Miltons Nationalism and the Rights of Memory, in
Imagining Death in Spenser and Milton, ed. E. Bellamy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003),
17184.
Milton and the European Contexts of Toleration 25
Ideas of tolerance were in circulation long before the seventeenth century,

and emerged from a variety of intellectual frameworks, some of them opposed
to each other. Medieval reformers like John Wyclif thought that it was the
duty of a monarch to guarantee the security of all subjects even though the
theological views of some of those subjects will be wrong and so will not
lead to salvation. In the earlier sixteenth century, radical reformers like Hans
Denck and Sebastian Franck thought that true Christians should be inherently
tolerant since it was a corollary of inward faith and love. Religious truth is in
their view a deeply inward matter and cannot therefore be compelled from
outside. It was the force of this spiritualism that had a huge influence on later
Enlightenment views of religion.
New world exploration also produced new perspectives. The dispute at
Valladolid in the mid-1500s resulted in Bartolome de Las Casas and Francisco
Vitoria arguing that indigenous Americans had a right to religious toleration
(even if it included human sacrifice and cannibalism) as well as cultural
autonomy: they had dominium and a degree of sovereignty so that neither
forcible conversion nor conquest was justified.
Within the Catholic Church these experiences produced the view by the later
sixteenth century that concordanceunity within the Christian realmwas
neither possible nor worthwhile. Thus Bodins Colloquium heptaplomeres
(1588), which was not published until nearly two hundred years after its
composition, argued in favour of the toleration of different creeds and sects
within creeds so that representatives of each position could learn more about
their beliefs through debate with their opponents. Bodin himself, famous
as an apologist for absolutism, reversed his previous position of enforced
conformity.
In eastern Europe, there was an experiment in multi-confessional coex-
istence: the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth began in 1579, with Henry
of Valois as its first elected king. Fausto Sozzino was compelled to leave
Siena and head for Poland where anti-trinitarians were tolerated and where
there was an anti-trinitarian church. The Polish context helps to explain why
Socinianism and Catholicism seemingly met in certain respects, and coexisted.
For instance, in the realm of theology, the Socinian idea of the priesthood of
John Christian Laursen and Cary J. Nederman, eds., Beyond the Persecuting Society: Religious
Toleration Before the Enlightenment (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998),
116.
Burkhard Dohm, Poetische Alchimie: offnung zur Sinnlichkeit in der Hohelied- und Bibeldich-
tung von der protestantischen Barockmystik bis zum Pietismus ( Tubingen: Max Niemeyer, 2000).
Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of
Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
See Richard Butterwick, ed., The Polish-Lithuanian Monarchy in European Context c.
15001795 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001).
26 Nigel Smith
Christ resembles the Catholic position, despite their fundamentally different

view of the Trinity. This connection in turn relates to the degree to which
Protestantism is circumvented in some points of Socinian theology, and
therefore why it might appeal to high Protestants who were in fact looking
more to Rome than to Geneva. In England, this meant the Laudians: Mil-
tons enemies in respect of church government, but a group with whom he
shared much in respect of the theology of free will. The constitution of the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, dedicated as we have seen to toleration,
attempted to enshrine diversity in its constitution and its structure of political
and administrative appointments. Thus, while the elected king of Poland was
often a former Jesuit, his secretary was a prominent Protestant; indeed, in the
case of the appointment in 1649 of Martin Ruar, a Socinian.
Holland involves a different scenario to Poland, and one where Socinian
students and emissaries began to arrive from the second decade of the
seventeenth century onwards. By the end of the sixteenth century and therefore
after the revolt from Spanish rule, the dominant feeling in Holland was that
the imposers of religious unity, wherever they arose, were responsible for
more damage than the heretics themselves. Local privileges were a strong
bulwark here against the threat of interference by the national government.
The Reformed religion was strong in its control of buildings, church revenues,
the dispensing of charity and education, but it was not a state church, and its
access to the total available communion of worshippers was therefore limited.
There was no compulsion to church attendance and baptism; civil marriage
was a possibility. The discipline offered by the Dutch Reformed Church was
not attractive to everyone, and while the government had retreated from the
absolute religievrede of the later 1570s (with its attendant turmoil), it respected
the freedom of individual conscience above confessional unity. Catholics
and Mennonites worshipped in numbers but privately at home or later in
purpose-built private churches.
In Holland, families were thus sometimes markedly divided between three
or more confessions. This is a much more extreme case than in England
G. H. Williams, ed., The Polish Brethren: Documentation of the History and Thought of
Unitarianism in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and in the Diaspora, 16011685, 2 vols.
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1980); Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Government,
15721651 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 186, 189, 3389.
H. J. McLachlan, Socinianism in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1951); Nigel Smith, And if God was one of us: Paul Best, John Biddle and Anti-
Trinitarian Heresy in Seventeenth-Century England, in David Loewenstein and John Marshall,
eds., Heresy in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 16084.
See now Micheal Lieb, The Theological Milton: Deity, Discourse and Heresy in the Miltonic Canon
(Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2006). See also the forthcoming work of Sarah Mortimer
of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.
Williams, The Polish Brethren, 2.476. Ruars predecessor in this post was also a Socinian.
where confessional conformity was still required by law. Many Dutch people
choseperhaps as much as 50 per cent of the populationto be affiliated
to no particular church. Being in a church was therefore a more consciously
voluntary act than in other societies.
It took a while for the theoretical implications of the Dutch situation to
be fully realized. After all, despite there being strong early advocates for tol-
eration, foremost among them Dirck Volkerstzoon Coornhert in the 1570s,
the States of Holland had not officially adopted liberty of conscience. A
moral vision detached from religion had been propounded by Justus Lip-
sius in Politicorum libri sex (1589), based in fact on Roman stoicism. It
was attacked by Coonhert in Defensio Processus de non Occidendis Haereticis
(Gouda, 1591; banned by the State of Holland; Hanover, 1593), precisely
because it appeared to reduce ethics to an art, rather like the art of being
a courtier, as opposed to something connected implicitly to belief. Others
who disagreed with Lipsius on a philosophical level nonetheless thought
that outward conformity was necessary for the sake of an ordered society.
Civil governors were worried by the emergence of Arminianism and by the
apparent progress of Lutheranism within Dutch territories. Anabaptists (i.e.
Mennonites) were frequently banned in many towns until after 1625, and
attempts by the small community of (mostly Portuguese) Jews in Amsterdam
to establish synagogues in Haarlem and Rotterdam failed, not least because
of the resistance of the Reformed Church and local government. Coornherts
arguments for religious peace extended to a proposed ban on the interpreta-
tion, as opposed to the reading, of scripture, which he argued was no attack
on religious freedom, but which readily looked to his Calvinist opponents like
intolerance by the back door. Arminians, when they had influence, were no
less intolerant of separatists than the Calvinists. Intense pamphlet wars in
which the Counter-Remonstrants (Calvinists) attacked their Arminian rivals
continued: it was particularly fierce in the later 1620s. Eventually attitudes
loosened, as Milton himself acknowledged in his The Readie and Easie Way to
Establish A Free Commonwealth (1660). Although he was exceptional in his
views at this time, the influential Arminian scholar Simon Episcopius revived
Coornherts call for a fully fledged toleration, including that of Catholics.
Episcopius argued that most Christians agreed on the fundamentals of their
See Judith Pollmann, Religious Choice in the Dutch Republic: The Reformation of Arnoldus
Buchelius, 15651641 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999).
Now recounted in John Marshall, John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), ch. 11.
YP 7.381.
Of Episcopiuss many works, Vrye Godes-dienst (1627) stands out in respect of toleration.
His collected works were published at Gouda in 16505.
28 Nigel Smith
faith. A wide spectrum of views may be derived from the Bible. Debating
different interpretations of the Bible was a positive good, he maintained, each
belonging to different individual believers, and was a bringing together of the
different parts of the whole truth. These views were repeated and extended in
later decades by Philippus van Limborch and Jean Le Clerc. In the 1650s and
1660s defenders of the republic like Pieter de la Court, a textile manufacturer
from Leiden, contested the Orangists and the Calvinists, and wrote in support
of religious toleration as part of the freedom which was best served in a
totally non-monarchical state: that is, without a stadholder. This was the
best way to preserve a peaceful and prosperous state. Nonetheless, Socini-
anism was often greeted in the United Provinces with horror, and subject
to measures of suppression in the late 1640s and early 1650s; only in the
1660s did such treatment relax. By the time of Miltons death some foreign
observers, such as Sir William Temple and Gregorio Leti, were viewing Dutch
toleration with approval, in contrast with the universally negative views of
earlier commentators.
Across Europe, but with a focus in the Dutch Republic, Arminians and
more especially Socinians developed coherent statements in favor of toleration
during the course of the period. These authors stressed morality over doc-
trinal requirements, which were limited in respect of being requirements for
salvation. Being attentive to the text of the Bible, but allowing a large degree
of difference in individual interpretation, as Milton states in Of True Religion
(1673), is such a minimalist statement, although Milton himself pointedly
excludes the Roman Catholics because their idolatry and the authority of the
Pope is intrinsically bound up with not accepting the Bible as the primary
religious guide. In this respect Catholics embody the implicit faith that Mil-
ton attacked throughout his career, as opposed to the explicit faith grounded
in diligent study and understanding. The full title of the tract is Of True
Religion, Hresy, Schism, Toleration; and what best means may be used against
the Growth of Popery, so tolerance of all faiths was not his goal.
Those who stressed the necessity of the separation of the godly in the
true church from the rest of the world also argued that the secular ruler
had no right to interfere with that church. But many radical reformers had
no developed sense of toleration, and often no distinct toleration theory.
See Philippus van Limborch, Theologia Christiana (1686); Hugo Grotius, The truth of the
Christian religion, with notes by mr. Le Clerc. To which is added a seventh book by mr. Le Clerc.
Done into Engl. by J. Clarke (1711).
Pieter de la Court, Het Interest van Holland (1662); idem, Aanwysing der heilsame politike
gronden en maximen van de Republike van Holland en West-Vriesland (Rotterdam, 1669),
translated as The true interest and political maxims of the Republick of Holland and West-Friesland
(1702).
They wanted toleration by the secular ruler of their beliefs, which, they
believed, once exposed, would become the one true religion of the state,
and eventually of Europe and beyond. In other words, they did not have
a notion of the separation of church and state, or a division between civil
and ecclesial spheres of authority. There are many instances of intolerant
theological differences and struggles for authority within many separatist
churches and groups, including Anabaptists and Baptists in the sixteenth
century, and among English Quakers in the following century. There are
instances of cruelty exercised within the Baptist and anti-trinitarian churches
in western and eastern Europe. Fundamental attitudes of prejudice against
whatever was judged to be idolatrous remained in these theologies. They
functioned as a chief motor of the disciplinary zeal that characterized much
post-Reformation religion. In 1640, Milton presented himself aligned with a
general Puritanism, or perhaps in the precise context of the publication of Of
Reformation in 1640, he stood with a more narrowly defined anti-episcopal
front. Whatever the case Miltons energetic imagery of reformation in his early
1640s tracts participates in this zeal. In 1642 Milton argued on these grounds
that the Book of Common Prayer, the English liturgy as it then stood, should
not be tolerated.
However, in the later sixteenth century, statements of unconditional tol-
eration did emerge, significantly coupled with attacks on predestination
theology. These were Sebastian Castellios De haereticis (1554) and Jacob
Acontiuss Satanae Strategema (1565). Both authors were resident in Basel
at the time. While Castellio condemned atheists, he also maintained, along
with Acontius, that heresy hunting created more sedition than heterodoxy
itself. Many of these tenets are to be found in the Racovian Catechism (first
edition, 1605) the federal document of the Polish Socinian church that was
widely distributed across Europe. Milton controversially licensed a Latin edi-
tion of this work in 1651. And such views were repeated and even extended
by the tolerationist thinkers of mid-seventeenth-century England (such as
Roger Williams, the follower of Montaigne, the Leveller William Walwyn,
the Baptist and Leveller Richard Overton, and, in another political camp,
the neo-Arminians and proto-Latitudinarians John Hales and William Chill-
ingworth) to include all Christians, Jews, Muslims and pagans. For most
of these thinkers, punishment should not be corporal but simply involve
excommunication. In the sixteenth century, there was still a preference for
banishment or fines, but these penal components dwindled in the following
John Marshall, John Locke: Resistance, Religion, and Responsibility (Cambridge: Cambridge
YP 1.938.
30 Nigel Smith
period in pro-toleration writing. The civil magistrate was to keep order in the
civil sphere.
The chiliast notion that it was time in the last days to gather the faithful
and that no truth should be excluded in a debate that would finally establish
the true church, a view that Milton famously propounds in Areopagitica, has
been seen as exclusive and therefore intolerationist in that it included only
Christians (properly Protestants) and Jews, who, it was thought, would convert
to Christianity in the process leading up to the Second Coming of Christ. But
it would be wrong to suggest that this view substantially outweighed another,
skeptical view that since no one could possibly judge Gods ways with man,
no one had the right to condemn anyone for their opinion. Such skepticism,
enforced by familiarity with thinkers like Montaigne and Charron, was shared
by episcopalians and radicals alike, but not by Milton. While it has been shown
that skepticism could lead to intolerant attitudes, it could also be allied with
other outlooks (such as the experience of religious pluralism in stable states,
or an awareness of the detrimental effects of intolerance on trade) to support
toleration.
Spinoza claimed in 1670, towards the end of Miltons life, that anyone
could believe as they wished, and say so too, a statement that has been seen as
descriptive rather than prescriptive. His theory of toleration rested on two
planks: an appeal to the secular ruler to protect minorities from the violence
of the mob or the persecuting clergy and an appeal to the secular ruler to
tolerate secular religion. He denied that there was support for persecution
in the Bible and that the Mosaic Law applied only to the Hebrews, while at
the same time elevating philosophy over theology. But it seems doubtful that
Spinoza tolerated atheists or those who did not believe in a forgiving God. He
also clearly thought that those who spoke seditiously should be suppressed,
and this meant of course the religious too. Spinoza certainly believed in the
right of the individual to freedom, arguing (quite differently from Milton) that
although power might be given through the social contract to the sovereign
by the necessity that governed the universe, there could be no compromise
of the individuals freedom in the exercise of the contract. The extent of
the individuals rights was full, and Spinoza embraced Muslims, Jews and
John Coffey, Puritanism and Liberty Revisited: The Radical Protestant Case for the
Toleration of All Religions in the English Revolution, Historical Journal 41.4 (1998), 96185.
YP 2.5618.
Here I respectfully disagree with Alexandra Walsham, Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and
Intolerance in England, 15001700 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 235.
Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670), esp. ch. 20; John Christian Laursen,
Spinoza on Toleration: Arming the State and reining in the Magistrate, in Cary J. Nederman
and John Christian Laursen, eds., Difference and Dissent: Theories of Tolerance in Medieval and
Early Modern Europe (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 185204.
Catholics as well as Protestants within his boundaries of toleration. Spinozas

notion of liberty is broader than Lockes, since Locke found symbolic but
non-violent religious protest a compromise of the civil magistrate, and he
left it to those very justices to decide in context what was seditious or not
(although he modified these views later in his life perhaps under Spinozas
influence). Certainly a relatively severe strict belief in God was necessary in
Lockes view for toleration. Milton and Locke both believed that liberty was
connected to creating a fit life for the souls of men; Spinoza did not believe in
a notion of the soul in this sense. It was for a deist like Charles Blount, who
appropriated sentences and phrases from Areopagitica in his Just Vindication
of Learning (1679), to go the full measure in the English language and argue
for complete freedom of thought and expression in a free-thinking rather
than a theistic sense; his position is therefore not the same as Miltons. It was
indeed in the literature of the deist critique of priestcraft that we can find a
call for a purging of the prophetic element in Milton. In the eyes of the deists
prophecy remained a limitation in Miltons vision of political and religious
liberty, however important it was as a poetic component.
Behind all of this lies the tradition of intellectual freedom of belief that
belonged to elite groups in Europe, and that we most readily associate with the
Italian city states of the later Middle Ages and the sixteenth century. Milton
himself is a very pure descendant from this tradition, where speculation
belonging to an educated elite might be left alone by ecclesiastical authorities.
Even after the rise of the inquisitions in the sixteenth century, those needing
books on the Index (e.g. medical doctors) were usually allowed them. This
speculative freedom Milton wanted extending to a broader range of people,
although it is never quite clear in his writing, such as in Areopagitica, where the
limit ends: For this is not the liberty which wee can hope, that no grievance
ever should arise in the Commonwealth, that let no man in this World expect;
but when complaints are freely heard, deeply considerd and speedily reformd,
then is the utmost bound of civill liberty attaind, that wise men looke for.
It should also be remembered that Milton is addressing the precise issue of
press freedom and the matter of how books were to be licensed in 1640s
England. He saw the matter of book licensing as distinct from the growth of
religious sects, and hence the issue of toleration. Suppressing books would not
prevent the growth of sects: If to prevent sects and schisms, who is so unread
or so uncatechisd in story, that hath not heard of many sects refusing books
See below, 401.

Nigel Smith, The English Revolution and the End of Rhetoric: John Tolands Clito (1700)
and the Republican Daemon, Essays and Studies (1996), ed. K. Flint, Poetry and Politics,
120.
YP 2.487.
32 Nigel Smith
as a hindrance, and preserving their doctrine unmixt for many ages, only by
unwrittn traditions. Certainly, any Italian intellectual whose heterodoxy
led him to fall foul of the church, such as the unfortunate Giordano Bruno,
or Galileo Galilei, was likely to become a hero for a Protestant tolerationist
of Miltons ilk. And Milton would benefit from the notable insights of the
Venetian critic of the Inquisition, Paolo Sarpi, the author of the History of the
Council of Trent (1618), which was never available in print in Italy in Miltons
lifetime. Sarpi has even been argued to have held atheist views although he
celebrated Mass as a Servite friar until his death in 1624. He also believed,
unlike almost anyone else at the time, that information concerning matters of
state should not be kept from the people, but should be freely circulated. This
he argued would make for a more peaceful society. Matters were different
elsewhere in the Italian peninsula. In 1601, for instance, Pope Clement VII
had the Talmud burned in Rome.
For all this, there was a great deal of intolerance, in theory and in practice.
Confessional states in Europe tried to enforce policies of singular obedience,
and arguments supporting the rightness of such views and practices reached
back into the Middles Ages and beyond. As we have seen, Milton always
maintained Catholics should not be tolerated since they were themselves not
merely idolatrous and superstitious but also seditious: all Roman Catholics
were enjoined by the Pope to undermine the Protestant regime in England.
Back in the late sixteenth century Coornhert had noted that most of the
extant and emergent confessions of his time would become intolerant if
they were given political power, not least because they grounded religious
authority outside of a recourse to unmediated scripture. Many different
kinds of Protestant were tolerated in Civil War and Interregnum England:
Presbyterians, Independents and Baptists. But Quakers and Socinians fell
outside of these boundaries, and while there were Friends in Cromwells
household, this did not mean that the machinery of justice could not and
should not be leveled at those who strayed from unorthodox views into
blasphemy and the theologically unacceptable. The trials of the Quaker
YP 2.529.
Filippo De Vivo, Paolo Sarpi and the Uses of Information in Seventeenth-Century Venice,
Media History 11 (2005), 3751; Nigel Smith, Milton and the Index, in Holly Nelson and
Donald R. Dickson, eds., Of Paradise and Light: Essays for Alan Rudrum (London: Associated
University Presses, 2004), 10122.
However, even here, within the German Protestant states and the Holy Roman Empire,
there were exceptions and exceptional circumstances.
See Pope Sixtus Vs Bull against Elizabeth I: A Declaration of the Sentence and Deposition
of Elizabeth, the usurper and pretensed Queen of England (Antwerp, 1588).
In W. J. Sheils, ed., Persecution and Toleration, Studies in Church History, 21 (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1984), 199233.
James Nayler and the Socinian John Biddle were the public show trials of the
Commonwealth years, the public testing of what was bearable in the Puritan
Revolution.
If 164260 proved for an advanced intellectual Protestant pamphleteer and
poet a relative liberation from a decade of persecution under Archbishop
Laud, and harsh terms for Puritans before that, 1660 saw a tough clampdown
on religious nonconformity. Under the bishops of the restored Church of
England and the majority in the Cavalier Parliament of 16607, rigorous
conformity was seen as the only antidote to the disarray of the previous
period. The years of the Restoration were marked by a series of measures
designed to suppress nonconformist worship, or to license it under the terms
of financial exactions. That the Cavaliers and the bishops did not get their
way all the time was in part due to other persuasions in the court that kept
Charles II interested in the prospect of religious toleration, which he had after
all promised at the start of his reign in the Declaration of Breda. He was
interested in a measure of toleration not least because he wanted to further the
interest of the English Roman Catholics (and he had made promises to this
effect to Louis XIV who wanted to see the toleration of English Catholics as
the beginning of their rise of to supremacy, and the rapid re-establishment of
Catholicism as the state religion in England). James II wanted this even more,
and it was his pursuit of toleration (really for the sake of the Catholics), even
to the extent of interfering with local government and other institutions like
the universities, that resulted in his demise.
If a relatively wide degree of toleration for Protestants was achieved in the
Glorious Revolution of 16889, Louis finally achieved his goal of a single-faith
kingdom. Eleven years after the death of Milton the revocation of the Edict
of Nantes in 1685 resulted in the forced migration from France of 200,000
Huguenots, and the coercion of 700,000 more on pain of incarceration, torture,
slavery, execution. In the same period, the attempt by Charles II to resettle the
Church of Scotland resulted in the persecution of many Protestants resistant
to episcopal government (the Covenanters), and a series of armed revolts by
them. Violence marked Scottish religion down to 1700. In Ireland, Protestant
intolerance towards Roman Catholics prevailed except for brief periods during
revolts by Irish Catholic nobility (latterly supported by the French) and during
the reign of James II. After assuming the English crown, William III led an
international Protestant army to reimpose a Protestant hegemony in Ireland.
King Billys War is the stuff of many legends from which myths crucial to the
N. H. Keeble, The Restoration: England in the 1660s (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 6884;
S. Achinstein, Literature and Dissent in Miltons England (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2003), chs. 14.
34 Nigel Smith
modern Irish sense of nationhood, in all its fraught complexity, begin. As has
often been noticed, Miltons Irish writings, rooted in the arguments of the
Elizabethan settlers of Ireland, line up with these prejudices.
Within Christian Europe, different kinds of minority fitted in generally awk-
wardly. First, there were the behavioral minorities: libertines and sodomites.
Protestant nonconformists were quick to condemn the moral shortcomings
of the court libertines of their own day, and to juxtapose them with their
own moral purity. Miltons treatment of sexuality has been placed in a
subtle and interactive relationship with the native and European discourses of
libertinism. Where practising homosexuality among men can be seen in the
early modern period, it was almost always treated by religious authorities as
evil. Homosexuals in western Europe faced punishment and even execution.
The second category is of the ethnic and cultural minorities. The practice
of toleration in parts of the Islamic world was not reciprocated in nearly
all of Christian Europe and the old prejudices against the Jews remained
commonplace through to the eighteenth century. Where communities of Jews
were tolerated in Europe, they were often circumscribed, and were elsewhere
present in tiny numbers, as in England from the later 1650s onwards. Toleration
arguments here were mixed up with conversion designs; the former being
seen in the case of Jews, Muslims and pagans as a means to achieving the
latter. To be a heretic Jew must have been the worst of all minority positions
in early modern Europe. Having been unveiled by the Portuguese Inquisition
as a reverted conversos Uriel Da Costa traveled across Europe in the earlier
seventeenth century: Amsterdam, Hamburg, Venice, Vienna. He denied the
validity of rabbinic teaching, maintaining that all a Jew needed was the Hebrew
Bible. He has not unfittingly been described as a Jewish Anabaptist. Sadly,
but perhaps not incomprehensibly, he committed suicide in 1640, an outsider
to all belonging in race and religion. It was only in the 1670s that the Elector
of Brandenburg, Friedrich Wilhelm, against the wishes of some of his subjects,
invited different productive minorities to Berlin, including Huguenots and
See below, Elizabeth Sauers essay in this volume, Ch. 11.

George Fox, Journal, ed. N. Smith (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1998), 162.
See James Grantham Turner, One Flesh: Paradisal Marriage and Sexual Relations in the Age
of Milton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); idem, Libertines and Radicals in Early Modern
London: Sexuality, Politics, and Literary Culture, 16301685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2002), 578, 64, 7599; idem, Schooling Sex: Libertine Literature and Erotic Education in
Italy, France, and England 15341685 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 16 n. 35, 4751.
Randolph Trumbach, Sex and the Gender Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1998).
Uriel Da Costa, Tres escritos, ed. A. Moreira de Sa (Lisbon, 1963); idem, Examination
of Pharisaic Traditions, ed. H. P. Salomon and I. S. D. Sassoon (Leiden: Brill, 1993); Miriam
Bodian, In the Cross-Currents of the Reformation: Crypto-Jewish Martyrs of the Inquisition
15701670, Past and Present 177 (2002), 66104.
Jews, thereby beginning that citys rise to later cosmopolitan fame. But
for the most part, Muslims were widely regarded as a Satanic evil, the plain
contrary of Christianity, and purveyors of a monstrous religion that led only to
immorality; especially, it was held, sodomy. It was in the elite world of oriental
scholarship, especially on Arabic texts, that these attitudes began to change,
that some comparative understanding of Islam arose. While the threat of the
Ottoman armies in south-eastern Europe remained very real in the period,
mid- and later seventeenth-century intellectuals were aware of the extent of
toleration of Christianity of all kinds within the Ottoman territories, even to
the extent of holding it up as a model for England. As a monotheistic religion,
Islam was an ally of Christianity against atheism, and as a strictly monotheistic
religion was an ally of the anti-trinitarian Christians against the orthodox, who
themselves could and often did argue that Socinians and Unitarians were close
to Islam and that their claim for the toleration of Muslims was unacceptable.
This largely later-seventeenth-century perspective is absent from Miltons
writings. It is undoubtedly true that the treatment of the experience of Adam
and Eve in Paradise Lost in some places begins to lessen the difference between
Jews and Christians, but Satan remains the stereotype of an oriental tyrant at
the beginning of Book 2:
High on a Throne of Royal State, which far
Outshon the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Showrs on her Kings Barbaric Pearl and Gold,
Satan exalted sat.
(2.15)
The history of Islam and the Islamic peoples, like the Jews after the coming of
Christ, is outside of the poems ambit in any detailed sense.
Within Christian tradition, anti-tolerationists, be they Catholics or Protes-
tants, could always turn to patristic and medieval authorities for views of those
who were not to be tolerated because they were heretics. Heretics and schis-
matics tended to be regarded as inherently seditious or in some circumstances
treasonous; people whose views would destroy the social order that God had
ordained. It was a world of black and white: truth and its diabolical opposite, a
structure exemplified in the allegory of Book I of Spensers The Faerie Queene.
To take an indifferent view of heresy was to risk being bracketed by the ortho-
dox as a heretic oneself. In this context, it would have been startling to read
See Derek McKay, The Great Elector (Harlow: Longman, 2001), 1867.
See also N. I. Matar, Islam in Britain, 15581685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998).
36 Nigel Smith
Miltons redefinition of heresy in Of Education and Areopagitica as choice

(Greek haeresis; Latin electio)a return to the original Aristotelian roots
of the words in Greek prohaeresisreason. A similar statement is made
in A Treatise of Civil Power (1659), where the Presbyterians and Independents
are defined as heretics in the sense of the choise or following of any opinion
good or bad in religion or any other learning. We may be in error, but as
long as we follow the scripture, we are heretics in the truth. In the King James
Bible, Acts 26:5, after the exactest heresie of our religion I lived a Pharise as
Milton translates it, has sect instead of heresy. Patristic authorities like Ter-
tullian had moved the definition the other way from this pagan sense in their
commentaries on St Paul, even though Tertullian himself had defended the tol-
eration of Christians within the pagan Roman empire. There is nonetheless
some inconsistency of usage on Miltons part: a page later we learn that not he
who follows his conscience in a matter of scriptural interpretation but he who
follows the church against his conscience is a heretic: in this instance Milton
lets the pejorative meaning stand. We also encounter Miltons restructuring
of the contemporary definition of enquiry as the discerning of truth from its
contrary, falsehood. Enquiry he understood as the creative and simultaneous
engagement with both truth and falsehood as a contrary experience itself. Yet
faith and obedience to the church, church authority and what was defined
as orthodox therein was privileged over personal reasoning by the majority
of Christians and Christian authorities. During the 1640s and 1650s, several
bodies, notably the Westminster Assembly of Divines, maintained that it was
up to church synods and councils to determine controversies of faith and
matters of conscience. Although in places the Savoy Declaration of October
1658 appeared to uphold the consciences of believers, it also gave the civil
magistrate power in religious matters, a contradiction that Milton identified.
In this respect Milton has a very different position; he even goes as far as to
suggest that a true church is quite distinct from any national grouping, such as
a nation state. He therefore avoids reference to forms of Protestantism that
did involve support from secular force: the established Church of England
and Presbyterianism. But in places he keeps the word doctrine, which seems
to suggest an agreed formulation of faith over and above the finding any
individual might make in a reading of scripture.
YP 2.396, 527. YP 7.247.

Milton noted two instances of this kind of thinking in De Doctrina Christiana, one from
Tertullian, the other from Lactantius: they are noted as injunctions to choose good from evil
within a Christian context: YP 6.3623.
YP 7.2489.
Westminster Confession of Faith, III.669; Savoy Declaration, ch. 35; YP 7.258.
YP 7.262.
To Augustine belonged the most influential statement in support of the

state coercion of heretics and schismatics. He argued that coercion in the
name of faith could be regarded as voluntarist precisely because it was in
the name of faith. Intolerance was a necessary magisterial compensation
for the consequences of original sin. Yet the execution of heretics in
significant numbers as a way of protecting the church from error dates
from much later: the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. After all, heresy
caused the damnation of souls, and was often portrayed as sexual perversity.
Sometimes, sexual libertinism appeared to be practised by the heretics: this
is how Anabaptist polygamy appeared to the orthodox, even if it was a
condition of purity to the Anabaptists themselves. The world needed to be
cleansed of heretics: a view that was widely held by both Catholics and
magisterial Protestant reformers. The way to cleanse it was to burn them.
Anti-trinitarianism represented a particularly grievous heresy. In the eyes
of its opponents, to deny that Christ was God was to open the way to
atheism. To heresy could also be added another deeply troubling category:
witchcraft. The two went hand in hand. From this viewpoint, persecution
and the suppression of heresy was a painful but entirely necessary and
justified cure.
Defenders of the need to suppress heresy or error could always point to
the resistance arguments of Protestants or indeed (and especially in England
and among the Protestant French) Catholics as evidence of both sedition
and treason, not least since such arguments were grounded in traditions of
natural law, rather than religious duty. Those who either refused to make oaths
of loyalty (e.g. Anabaptists, Quakers), or who could be seen to equivocate
(Catholics, especially Jesuits) were also regarded as subversive and disobedient.
Added eschatological urgency was given to this view by the widespread belief
from the early days of the Reformation onwards that the Last Days were
at hand.
In practical terms, toleration arguments were used as a strategy to achieve
unity, the issue of freedom of conscience not being in this case a final or
genuine aim. The post-1559 Church of England was founded on what was
deemed to be an acceptable consensus, with many issues left undecided
and open to individual interpretationadiaphora, or things indifferent;
Milton himself was in some senses more restrictive, since he claimed that
anything indifferent not in scripture should be utterly disregarded. In a
Marshall, John Locke, chs. 56; Walsham, Charitable Hatred, 409.

See Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
YP 8.4278.
38 Nigel Smith
related way Locke thought that indifferent matters were not a real part of
religions concern. The everyday experience of the treatment of religious
heterodoxy, or of religious minorities, is now deemed to be far less flam-
boyant than the literature of toleration and anti-toleration might suggest.
Minorities with a long history in particular localities might well be tolerated
over long periods of time: Roman Catholics in the north-west of England,
dissimulating Familists in parts of Essex, Cambridgeshire and Surrey. Specific
pressure points might emerge at certain junctures, but the system produced
general coexistence. This was true of much of Europe as well as of England.
Harmony, conflict, consensus and repression coexisted all at once, notably
after the initial periods of reform and anti-reform, with their violent con-
sequences, in the 1530s, 1540s and 1550s. It might be more accurate to
describe this state as one of continual potential tension, as is evident in the
lively parish politics of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Lon-
don, or, in more unusual circumstances, the debates between Presbyterians,
Independents and Baptists on the one hand, and Quakers on the other,
in various parts of the country during the 1650s. As has been pointed
out, the state toleration of Roman Catholics remained a possibility through
the seventeenth century. So also, Puritan nonconformity remained at the
heart of the established religion and in greater numbers than those who had
absolutely separated. The hope that the ejected ministers might be compre-
hended within the national church remained a goal for many throughout
the Restoration. Such various attitudes permeated the ecclesiastical estab-
lishment at all ranks, as well as the laity. With such possibilities for the
future of worship, accommodation made more sense from a local point of
view. It also explains extraordinary conversions: why the key General Baptist
and Leveller Robert Everard should eventually become a Roman Catholic,
his faith in a scripture-based faith finally exhausted. Or to look at a case
moving the other way, the scriptural commentator Charles Marie De Veil
(16301685) was born the son of a rabbi in Metz, but was converted by
Bossuet and became a Roman Catholic and an Augustinian priest, then via a
brush with Jansenism joined the Church of England upon arrival in London
in 1677. He was then finally persuaded there was no scriptural justification
for infant baptism, and so became a Baptist in 1684. But these details do not
explain away the brutal treatment of Quakers during this period: old attitudes
Peter Lake with Michael Questier, The Anti-Christs Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and
Players in Post-Reformation England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002); Ann
Hughes, The Pulpit Guarded: Confrontations between Orthodox and Radicals in Revolutionary
England, in Ann Laurence et al., John Bunyan and His England (London: Hambledon, 1990),
3150.
ODNB.
towards religious alterity and the transgression of customary religious behavior

died hard.
Milton grew up in a world in which martyrdom was part of living mem-
ory: the martyrdom of radical Protestants and Roman Catholics, and before
that, the memory of the Protestant martyrings during the reign of Queen
Mary. The last men to be burned for heresy in England, the anti-trinitarians
Edward Wightman and Bartholomew Legate, went to the flames in 1612
when Milton was three. There was also the memory and the continuing
practice of imprisoning Puritan clergyman who would neither wear the
required vestments nor use the Book of Common Prayer, or, later on, the
Book of Sports. The poet Andrew Marvells father, the Revd Andrew Marvell
(c.15851641) was investigated by the archbishop of York for not wearing
the surplice and for not using the Prayer Book properly. Lay people were
also interrogated for reading unapproved material; in the Interregnum the
boot was on the other foot, with Anglicans daring sometimes to use their
liturgy. In France martyrdom was harsherthe tongues of heretics were
slotted with a knife or removed. Everywhere authorities were concerned
that the theatre of martyrdom would create converts rather than induce
conformity. In the sixteenth century even some Protestants made relics of
martyrs bones. Persecution of Protestants remained the object of popular
kudos to the seventeenth century. Printed records, in writing and in pictures,
of martyrological suffering and persecution for the sake of faith were legion
in the period, for Protestants, Catholics and radicals. If martyrdom was
passive resistance, others were prepared to resort to violence, from sophis-
ticated plots to local riots, all of which were part of the texture of a world
in which there was no single religion but where a solution to the issue of
toleration had not been found. Where banishment was a punishment for
heresy, especially on the continent, others chose voluntary exile, typically in
the Netherlands, or in the English Americas. Recent historical investigation
has foregrounded the phenomena of dissimulation and partial conformity,
exploiting a porous boundary between conformity and nonconformity, espe-
cially within families, and as the public regulation of worship intensified
or de-intensified. Down to the end of the seventeenth century, the recog-
nizable behavior of the church papist was recorded: appearing in church
once a month to avoid local harassment and fines, although the success of
such a strategy would require the quiescence of local officials. Evasion of
Nicholas von Maltzahn, An Andrew Marvell Chronology (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005),

256.
Brad S. Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999).
40 Nigel Smith
sacrament and oath-taking, involving in the latter case all sorts of casuistry,
was both practised and reviled by all parties across the central Reformation
divide.
In Europe, the consequence of extended religious war, from the later
sixteenth century until the middle of the seventeenth, was a final agreement
in some areas to permit more than one confession. This was so in the
German Protestant states and the Holy Roman Empire after the Peace of
Westphalia of 1648 that ended the Thirty Years War (and that amplified
the more limited framework of the Peace of Augsburg of 1555). There then
emerged the phenomenon of confessionalization, where tolerated religions
grew insulated from each other through time, so that society became divided.
The same, it is argued, is true of France after the Edict of Nantes of 1598.
Continued peace exaggerated the differences. But the experiment in supra-
confessional coexistence in Poland-Lithuania came to an end in the late
seventeenth century, in part because the boundaries between confessions
had become too strong, there being by then a conflict over the practice of
popular religiosity. The Polish Brethren were ultimately forced into exile.
In France, Louis XIVs final assertion of absolutist will led to one of the
last great population shifts of the early modern period: the expulsion and
further brutalization of the Huguenots. Before then, in the 1650s, Milton had
reacted with horror to the massacre of Protestants in the Waldensian region
of northern Italy.
Miltons career was drawing to a close as John Lockes was on the rise. To
Locke falls the distinction of being the most influential philosopher of the
late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Lockes A Letter concerning
Toleration (1689), translated from Latin to English by Andrew Marvells
nephew William Popple, is the most influential statement of advanced religious
toleration in the English-speaking world at this time. Lockes position is that
Christianity is peaceful and charitable: there can be no such thing as persecution
in the name of Jesus for any reason. There is a boundary between faith and
not faith, and between immorality and morality, but the former is a matter to
be dealt with peacefully within the ambit of religion and the latter within the
ambit of civil law. All this is stated even given the fact that the immoral may
well appeal to religion and the religious persecutors will appeal to the need for
public order. Lockes position is characteristically and beautifully clear-cut.
Milton belongs to a different stage of awareness, in which the emphasis is
upon the felicity of searching for truth in a free state. The separation of church
and state is important to Milton, and he argues strongly for it in 1659, but
Alexandra Walsham, Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity, and Confessional Polemic in

Early Modern England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1993).
he is only a relative tolerationist. Liberty is consistent with Protestantism,

and Catholics, idolators and the immoral are not free precisely because they
do not have liberty. On grounds of morality and civil security, they should
not be tolerated. To persecute and to be a Protestant, says Milton, are
mutually exclusive. But Locke regards an idolatrous church as permissible,
since what is deemed idolatrous is, so to speak, in the eye of the beholder,
not the secular ruler. Yet Locke regards the safety of the commonwealth
as the ultimate criterion: all religious practice must be consistent with the
laws of a given state, and no allegiance by any religion in a given state can
be made to a foreign prince. Locke is also adamant that the only cause of
sedition in religious conventicles is oppression: the making of their existence
illegal.
Elsewhere, Locke is interesting in assuming that church membership is
voluntary rather than inherited, and it looks like a separatist argument itself
(or as if secular concepts of association were influencing this conception),
whereas with Milton voluntary church membership is not so important and
was apparently not practised by the poet himself. Like Milton, Locke is
sure that the reading of scripture is crucial and foundational, but where
Milton celebrates the diversity (the heresies) that will occur through various
readings of scripture, Locke (with perhaps his interest in an individuals
cognition playing on his mind) is more concerned with singularity: each man
is an orthodoxy unto himself, each church is an orthodoxy unto itself. In
the light of these comparisons, the argument that education and licensing
rather than toleration is the primary guiding principle in Areopagitica comes
to mind.
Milton is quite clear that there is distinction between matters purely
religious and those that belong to the civil law, and which are therefore the
concern of the magistrate. In this respect, he is again close to Locke. And he
thinks it is a greater crime to Protestants to persecute, even to the extent of
bloodshed, when they have a scripture-based religion as a foundation. He
calls for a repressing of thir contraries determinable by the common light
of nature, a formulation that belongs with Miltons sharp and distinctive
treatment of contrariness at the heart of his vision. But he is as much, or
even more interested in what it means to be a free Christian, in what that
positive experience consists, than in the conditions that make it possible. A
word that is more frequent in Miltons prose and poetry than toleration
Nigel Smith, Areopagitica: Voicing Contexts 164345, in David Loewenstein and James
Grantham Turner, eds., Politics, Poetics and Hermeneutics in Miltons Prose (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1990), 10322.
YP 7.253. YP 7.258.
42 Nigel Smith
is tolerable: what is tolerable in a marriage, or hell, for instance. Hence

he devoted an entire tract to the abolition of hirelings (a paid ministry,
perhaps maintained by tithes) as opposed to a ministry of people called
personally irrespective of education and support to preach the Word of God.
To this extent, and unlike the Presbyterians, Milton considered that the entire
Mosaic law, with its list of civil prohibitions, was abrogated with the birth of
Christ. Any pattern of civil magistracy as exercised originally by the Israelite
priests does not apply to Christians. Equally, churches must not seek to
influence political assemblies, as instanced with the Fifth Monarchists in
the 1650s: turbulence was the result. Yet, as commentators have argued, if
introduced, it would have been all too easy for Miltons republic to become
divided between an empowered and tolerated radical Christian elite, who
would surely be those enjoying the civil rights and advancments of every
person according to his merit and those excluded from that category who
would not enjoy full citizenship: hardly what we would think of as a tolerant
society. In a difficult moment for the English republic, in respect of Ireland,
Milton defended denial of toleration to anything absolutely contrary to
sound Doctrin or the power of godliness. Mere conscience would have
to wait.
It is the purpose of this volume of essays to discuss in detail Miltons
response to toleration issues, in his writings, and in the political predicaments
we know he found himself in his career. It has not been the purpose of
this article to go into these matters and texts in such detail. However, it is
worth making two points by way of conclusion with regard to Milton and
toleration. First of all, and this is a point seldom understood, not least because
Christopher Hill characterized Miltons theology as left wing Arminianism,
thereby obscuring the way in which Milton discovered his Arminianism.
Through the 1630s, Milton was broadly connected with some of the most
advanced political and religious English thinkers of the day. He sought the
patronage of Sir Henry Wotton and he knew John Hales. Those of this group
that survived into the 1640s were indubitably supporters of the king, but
they had the greatest degree of access to the challenging ideas of men like
Sarpi, and were best placed to understand the debates of theology that were
preoccupying the Dutch republic and the rest of Protestant Europe. They were
often more intellectually advanced than their Calvinist compatriots. Miltons
mature knowledge of religious toleration and persecution, of free will theology
and of anti-trinitarian theology, begins at this juncture and in this context,
whatever he did with it later on, and however Puritanism itself also produced
its own heretical wing.
YP 7.380. YP 7.383. YP 3.325.

Second is the argument that the mature poems, especially Paradise Lost, are
exemplary tolerationist works of literature. They confess no particular party
line yet invite the reader to contemplate a series of theological positions that
have to be understood as a debate, with trains of reasoning involved, even as
God lays down the law on free will, or the Son appears distinct from the Father
(or does he?). On the level of poetry and poetic tradition, this means inviting
the learned reader to debate the worth of earlier models of creation epic,
stretching back even to Lucretius and Epicurus before him. It is consistent
with the idea of scripture reading (as opposed to sermon listening) that the
most advanced tolerationist thinkers of Miltons time urged. Here one thinks
of Coornhert. But Coornhert remained a Roman Catholic in some senses,
and his own poetry tends towards the deeply introspective and mystical. In
Miltons England, we would have to look at some of the more educated early
Quakers, and their fellow-travelers, to find similar views. Milton was quite
sure that there was a human state called bondage or slavery, that it had been
perpetuated by ancient or modern tyrannies, and that one of the greatest of
these was the Roman church. His writing, fusing classical republicanism and
advanced Protestantism, is dedicated toward inculcating freedom and belief
as vigorously anti-idolatrous and hence anti-enslaved activities; a perpetual
source of renewal for a free state. But liberty is not toleration, however closely
related, and probably this is a good thing too. Miltons liberty must mean
some things are not to be tolerated; that message is everywhere evident in his
poetry and prose.
However, with regard to Miltons writings, the model of early modern
society as a dialogue of tolerance versus intolerance is insufficient as an
analytic paradigm. This is because every theory of toleration appears to
contain a measure of intolerance; this is so even in Coornherts writing. The
metaphor of a Moebius strip, with two pieces of different metal fused together,
back to back, will not do either. A model of a molecule, in which one part
of the structure was intolerance in ratio to a larger collection of toleration
atoms is more fitting. It may be that the kind of toleration vision deducible
from a writer like Andrew Marvell, governed by pragmatic considerations,
open to charges of some conceptual incoherence, or at least considerable
obliqueness, but generating an ethos of sympathy, if not also an ardor, for
the other, and certainly acceptable to some Roman Catholics, is less open to
charges of inconsistency on the grounds of toleration than is the case with
Milton. But Miltons writings draw in the reader to think hard about what
being free means, and where we might begin to be aware of toleration. In the
early modern world, no less than today, there appears to be no possibility of
See below, Nicholas von Maltzahns essay in this volume, Ch. 5.

44 Nigel Smith
a toleration utopiawhere anyone and everyone can believe what they like
and practise it. In his terms, Milton makes one confront this reality where
others imagine toleration but at the price of the active mind or imagine
toleration as it could never actually be, as was the case with the balance of
power in Restoration England. In this case, we have manifest the betrayal of
the active mind.
3
Toleration and the Specter of Heresy
in Miltons England
David Loewenstein
1. Monstrous Toleration and the Growth of Heresies

Fearing the dramatic growth and spread of heresies during the 1640s, the
mainstream godly considered the very idea of religious toleration almost
unthinkableor, indeed, intolerable. The notion of toleration threatened
their vision of an ordered, unified, and godly national community, and it
generated powerful fears of religious chaos and moral confusion. It provoked
in their writings visceral responses and shocking images, including images of
monstrosity and disease. When the Presbyterian divine and zealous heretic
hunter Thomas Edwards published his massive Gangraena in three parts
during 1646, he employed images of monstrous generation to convey the
alarming consequences of toleration in an age of religious sectarianism and
anarchy; this new age of religious turmoil, he believed, had produced vast
and endless new errors and heresies which he feared his own work could
never fully represent or possibly contain. The splintering of Protestantism,
Indeed, in his third part, published in December 1646, Edwards warned that the swelling
of sectaries and heresies was so great that he might need to produce a fourth part: The Third
Part of Gangraena. Or, a New and Higher Discovery of the Errors, Heresies, Blasphemies, and
Insolent Proceedings of the Sectaries of These Times (London, 1646), 218, 271. He also concludes
this work by promising to produce a Treatise against Toleration and pretended Liberty of
Conscience (295). For an excellent comprehensive treatment of Edwards in the context of
the religious ferment and culture of revolutionary London and in relation to contemporary
heresiographers, see Ann Hughes, Gangraena and the Struggle for the English Revolution (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2004); my discussion here addresses more specifically the ways Edwards
and other Presbyterian ministers figured the monstrosity of toleration and generated acute fears
about it.
46 David Loewenstein
followed by fractious religious diversity and the explosion of heresies, was

transforming England itself into an alien landa world of strange errors
and mishapen children. Edwards envisioned that toleration itself was both
the midwife and nursing mother of this monstrous offspring and would
cause growth of Heresies fast enough, and the ruine of Religion and god-
linesse (Gangraena, 1.3; 3.233). Likewise, Edwards depicted toleration itself
in terms of a monstrous conception and deformed offspring produced by
swelling numbers of sectaries in England: the monster of Toleration con-
ceived in the wombe of the Sectaries long ago, they having grown big with
it ever since (Gangraena, 1.645; cf. 2.5). In Gangraena he would ren-
der the analogy between toleration and monstrosity even more grotesque
and shocking as he conjured up the image of a monstrous body of heresy
created out of an amalgam of different errors and sects, found especially
in the New Model Army, where liberty of conscience flourishes as the
great Religion: England was now a land breeding strange monsters, having
their heads of Enthusiasme, their bodies of Antinomianisme, their thighs of
Familisme, their leggs and feet of Anabaptisme, their hands of Arminian-
isme (Gangraena, 1.1617). Besides expressing deep religious anxieties, this
language of monstrosity dehumanized heretics, making the violent assault on
heresy, schisms, and religious toleration appear more justified and natural.
We tend to think of revolutionary England, with its massive outpouring
of books and pamphlets, as a crucial period in the history of debate about
the nature and limits of religious toleration. In many ways it was, as this
volume of essays on the struggle for toleration in Miltons England confirms.
Yet it is also important to emphasize (as the passages from Edwards above
suggest) the depth of visceral and irrational feelings, as well as feelings of rage
and hatred, that the idea of toleration could arouse during these years when
the heated religious imagination was easily inflamed. As the Independent
minister John Goodwin put it in responding to Thomas Edwards, this was
a fiercely contested subject that stirred up arguments that were onely or
chiefly, firebrands of Reproaches and Defamations, throwne in the faces of the
On monstrous bodies in the early modern period, see Laura Lunger Knoppers and Joan
B. Landes, eds., Monstrous Bodies/Political Monstrosities in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2004). This valuable book, however, does not specifically address the
monstrosity of toleration or heresy in Miltons England, although David Cressys account of the
trope of monstrosity in the 1640s has implications for the subject: Lamentable, Strange, and
Wonderful: Headless Monsters in the English Revolution (4063). On heresy, monstrosity, and
gender in anti-heretical writing of the English Revolution, see also John Marshall, John Locke,
Toleration, and Early Enlightenment Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006),
297302.
Toleration and the Specter of Heresy 47
one side by the other. For the orthodox godly, especially Presbyterians who
advocated a compulsory national church and abhorred radical sectarianism,
the notion of toleration was so frightening that there were limits to the
degree in which they were ableor indeed wishedto engage in reasoned
debate and careful argument about an issue that aroused deep fears of
moral chaos and confusion; and which also pitted them against threatening
religious opponents they considered such a rash, heady People. Radical
religious writers, as we shall see below, might appeal to the efficacy and
convincing power of sound reason and argument in order to challenge
the fury of anti-tolerationist writers fiery hot against errours and heresies
so called. But, as William Walwyn observed, godly writers and preachers
bitterly opposed to toleration tended to use other weapons, especially
reviling language and alarming images that in turn contributed to this
new climate of anxiety, fear, and dread. Toleration, in the minds of the
orthodox godly, threatened to tear apart religious unity, thereby generating
political and religious anarchy and a frightening world overrun with errors,
schisms, and heresies. If the growth of menacing heresy evoked images of
contagious disease and gangrene from mainstream godly writers, toleration
evoked images of chaos, inundation, violent dismemberment, and deformity.
Its dangers were denounced by enraged preachers and writers employing a
rhetoric of fear, hysteria, and savagery that had, in some ways, as tenuous
a connection with reality as the fear-mongering rhetoric of Senator Joseph
McCarthy and the House of Un-American Activities Committee did in
the 1950s.
John Goodwin, Cretensis (London, 1646), 34. Edwards, in turn, complained about the
sectaries violent and fierce pleading by word and writing a free Liberty and Toleration of all
kind of Religions (Gangraena, 3.185).
A Letter of the Ministers of the City of London Against Toleration (London, 1645),
3: regarding the Independents and toleration, these ministers claimed, Their desires and
endeavours are unreasonable. Anti-tolerationist writers, as William Walwyn noted, tended to
see separatists as a rash, heady People, and not so much concluded by their Reason, as their
Fancie: The Writings of William Walwyn, ed. Jack R. McMichael and Barbara Taft (Athens, Ga.,
and London: University of Georgia Press, 1989), 103. Further references to Walwyns writings
are taken from this edition; page numbers are given parenthetically in my text.
Tolleration Justified, and Persecution Condemned, in Writings, 164; see also 159, 167, 170,
and The Compassionate Samaritane, in Writings, 117 (Separatists feare your Club more then
your Reason). Also see John Goodwin, Sion-Colledg Visited (London, 1648), 78; and the title
page of Goodwins M.S. to A.S. with A Plea for Libertie of Conscience (London, 1644), where
Goodwin appeals to the judgements of all rationall, and moderate men. On heresy hunters
fiery hot against errours, see Walwyn, Writings, 208. On Walwyn and rational discussion, see
also William Haller, ed., Tracts on Liberty in the Puritan Revolution, 16381647, 3 vols. (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1934), 1.63.
Cf. Diarmaid MacCulloch writing of the hysteria against heresy in sermon writers of the
fifteenth century in central Europe: The Reformation (New York: Viking Press, 2003), 37.
Thus a large number of London Presbyterian ministers in 1648, anxiously

warning against bringing in an universall, boundless, lawless, abominable
and intolerable Toleration, evoked images of savage dismemberment and
uncontrolled profusion: they observed that we swarm with noisome Errours,
Heresies and Blasphemies: Instead of unity and uniformity in matters of
Religion, we are torn in pieces with destructive schisms, Separations, Divisions
and subdivisions; and they concluded that instead of a Reformation, we have
a Deformation in Religion. To make their case for increased alarm, these godly
ministers cited a wide range of abominable Errours and damnable Heresies
maintained under the notion of New Truths, including anti-Trinitarianism,
mortalism, the belief in general redemption and the role of human free will
in matters of salvation, the denial of the sacrament of baptism, the belief that
hell is a non-entity, errors concerning marriage and divorce (with Milton as
the main proponent), among numerous others. Like Thomas Edwards, they
envisioned a new religious world of nightmarish, unnatural generation out of
control and they employed the trope of monstrosity, agreeing that England had
now brought forth an hideous Monster of Toleration (A Testimony, 4, 33).
The specter of heresy and its ability to spread rapidly contributed greatly to
these intense fears of England swallowed up with Sects, Schismes, Divisions,
disorders, contentions and confusions (A Testimony, 32), thereby severely
testing the degree to which the mainstream godly could ever imagine, with any
kind of sympathy, a world of religious diversity. Heresy was regularly compared
to a terrible gangrene, disease or infection spreading quickly throughout the
body politic; a threat to thousands of souls, it was potentially incurable,
while devouring faith, peace, and godliness. Metaphors of ravaging disease
suggested that if heresy was profoundly unnatural, so was toleration. It was as
though hell itself had broke loose, to echo the title of one hostile tract warning
about the specter of spreading errors and heresies. It was generating not only
Ecclesiasticall Anarchy and confusion but endangering the whole nation and
the entire social order: If errours arise in the Church, one fearful commentator
on its alarming spread noted, the Common-wealth will not want confusion
(Cranford, Haereseo-Machia, 5, 10). Whether or not toleration was a remedy
A Testimony to the Truth of Jesus Christ (London, 1648), 2931; this text was signed by
John Downame, James Cranford (mentioned later in this essay), Christopher Love, and Edmund
Calamy, among other London divines.
See also Edwards, Gangraena, 3.277.
See e.g. Edwards, Gangraena, passim; James Cranford, Haereseo-Machia: Or, The Mischiefe
which Heresies doe (London, 1645), 57, 34.
Hell Broke Loose: or, A Catalogue of Many of the Spreading Errors, Heresies, and Blasphemies
of These Times (London, 1646).
See also David Cressy, England on Edge: Crisis and Revolution, 164042 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2006), ch. 10, esp. 217, 219.
or cure for a diseased nation weakened by bitter religious warfare and fears of
division was itself a matter of intense controversy; as this skeptical observer
went on to note: It is commonly replyed in Pulpits, in Presses, That a toleration
of all consciences, even Antichristian, would be a sovereign remedy to cure all
dissentions, and an effectual means to compose the warres of Christendome
(Cranford, Haereseo-Machia, 11). But as this writer, who warned about the
mischiefe which Heresies doe, also observed, toleration might have precisely
the opposite effect: the toleration of errour is not a way to peace, as some men
pretend, but to disorder and the unrestrained inundation of our errours
(Cranford, Haereseo-Machia, title-page, 14, 15). Accusatory terms such as
error and heresy, however indiscriminately employed and conflated, thus
had the power to arouse enormous fears during the mid-century crisis, fueling
ferocious opposition to religious toleration; consequently, those godly writers
opposed to toleration could also be calculating in their manipulation of fear:
Thomas Edwards, Goodwin noted, simply had to pronounce the formidable
sentence of Error and Heresie, against all opinions and judgements of men
whatsoever, which will not comport with his understanding (or fancie rather)
as the standard of all Truth (Cretensis, 10).
Because fears of toleration and religious anarchy were so closely related
to the specter of a flood of heresies and errors unleashed, radical religious
writers in Miltons England attempting to justify religious toleration were
faced with a particularly difficult challenge. In this new poisoned climate
of religious controversy, toleration was represented in godly propaganda as
the great enemy of religious unityand indeed of any kind of religious
stabilityand radical religious writers had to muster all their polemical
and imaginative resources to justify it. In the following sections, I examine
some of the more striking ways three of the most original radical religious
writersJohn Goodwin, William Walwyn, and Milton himselfresponded
to the specter of heresy and the language used to demonize heretics in the
context of the bitterly contested issue of religious toleration. One purpose
of this essay, especially in its final section, is to reassess the freshness of
Miltons reformulations of heresy and heretic in Areopagitica by situating
Milton in the context of other leading radical religious writers struggling to
respond to the crisis over toleration during these years of religious division,
To stifle toleration, Goodwin writes elsewhere, ministers simply had to stigmatize the
Truths of God, with the odious and hatefull names of infamous & pernicious Errors & Heresies
(Sion-Colledg, 19).
Roger Williams is also among the leading radical religious writers who engaged, in
exceptionally original and independent-minded ways, with the notion of religious toleration and
fears of heresy. On Williams and Milton on toleration, see the essay in this volume by Thomas
N. Corns., Ch. 4.
fear, and varying degrees of intolerance. By situating Areopagitica in relation to

tolerationist writings of Goodwin and Walwyn, as well as the specter of heresy
generated by Edwards and mainstream godly writers, I hope to illuminate
Miltons highly distinctive responses to contemporary fears of toleration and
the spread of heresy.
2. John Goodwin: Heresy, Independency, and the Struggle

for Toleration
Repeatedly vilified by Thomas Edwards and other religious enemies as a
Grand Heretic and a monstrous Sectary (a compound of Socinianisme,
Arminianisme, Libertinisme, Antinomianism, Independency, among other
so-called heresies (Gangraena, 3.114)), the radical Independent London
minister and religious polemicist John Goodwin addressed the specter of
increasing heresies in his many writings promoting religious liberty and
toleration and interrogating the role of coercive power in matters of religion.
As early as 1642, Goodwin, who rejected predestinarian orthodoxy and
embraced the doctrine of general redemption, found himself caught up in
violent controversy and charged with heresy by George Walker (soon to
become a member of the Westminster Assembly). In response Goodwin
articulated a remarkable openness to the possibility of new religious truths
and a striking independent-mindedness about a diversity of religious beliefs.
Informing the London clergy in Imputatio Fidei, or, A Treatise of Justification
that he was not afraid to cast away long-endeered and professed opinions,
when once the light hath shone upon them, and discovered them to be but
darknesse (indeed, it was a marveilous bewtie and blessing to do so),
Goodwin suggested that the exegesis of scriptural matters and texts needed to
remain free and open to new interpretations because there were thousands
of Scriptures that have not yet opened, or delivered out their treasures.
Goodwin expressed his provocative point of view, with its implications for
thinking about religious toleration, by employing the analogy of the New
World and its relatively recent discovery: having remained unknown for so
See also Sion-Colledg Visited, where Goodwin complains that godly ministers have rep-
resented him as a man of monstrous and prodigious errours (13). On Goodwin vilified by
Presbyterians as The Grand Heretic of England, see the Leveller Humphrey Brooke, The
Charity of Church-Men (1649), in William Haller and Godfrey Davies, eds., The Leveller Tracts,
16471653 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1944), 342; on Goodwin viciously satirized
as the monstrous Metropolitan, see John Vicars, Coleman-Street Conclave Visited (London,
1648), 27.
John Goodwin, Imputatio Fidei (London, 1642), The Epistle Dedicatory (to the London
clergy), (a2)v ; sigs. (b4v )(Cr ).
long, its discovery, after all, had deeply unsettled received ideas about the
world. Similarly, Goodwin suggested, there was much yet to explore about
scripture and its wealth of undiscovered spiritual truths:
If so great and considerable part of the world as America is, being as large as all the
other three [i.e. Asia, Africa, Europe] so long knowne was yet so unknowne to all
the world besides, for so many generations well may it be conceived, not only that
some, but many truths, yea and those of maine concernement and importance, may
be yet unborne. (Imputatio Fidei, sig. (b4r ))
As the last part of this passage suggests, Goodwin is a writer receptive to
new conceptions of religious truth since many may indeed be yet unborne.
The process of searching for religious truths, as Milton likewise suggests in
Areopagitica, remains ongoing and open-ended; Goodwins religious outlook
and language already differed from that of godly heresy hunters who would
employ the language of monstrous generation to represent the birth of new
heresies and the frightening consequences of religious toleration. Goodwin
would soon emerge as one of the most formidable and combative proponents
of toleration in a period of religious crisis when it was under massive
assault.
The religious tensions and ferment of the Civil War years radicalized
Goodwins religious positions so that by 1643 he founded a gathered church
within the London parish of St Stephen, Coleman Street. As the Presbyterian
clerical faction grew in power, Goodwin became increasingly embroiled in
bitter pamphlet controversy over toleration and the fear that Independency
had opened a doore to all errors, heresies, and unsound opinions which
were quickly spreading and endangering both the stability of mainstream
religious institutions and the nation itself. Goodwins religious outlook
during the 1640s, like Miltons in Areopagitica, was increasingly dominated
Tension between Goodwins gathered church and the parish meant that Goodwins church
met at his house in Coleman Street from 1645 to about 1648: Murray Tolmie, The Triumph
of the Saints (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 1116. On Goodwins career as
a minister, see also the ODNB article by Tai Liu, 22.81922. Helpful studies of Goodwins
career and religious beliefs include E. S. More, Congregationalism and the Origins of the
New Arminianism, Journal of British Studies 22.1 (1982), 5070; More, Congregationalism
and the Social Order: John Goodwins Gathered Church, 164060, Journal of Ecclesiastical
History 37 (1987), 21035; Perez Zagorin, How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 20813; and especially John Coffey, John
Goodwin and the Puritan Revolution: Religion and Intellectual Change in Seventeenth-Century
England (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2006), which the author kindly allowed me to read in
page proofs. Coffey persuasively shows that Goodwin had created a gathered church by late 1642
(pp. 98101).
John Goodwin, Theomachia, or, The grand imprudence of men running the hazard of fighting
against God in suppressing any practice concerning which they know not whether it be from
God or no (London, 1644), 33.
by a vision of England as a terrain of religious as well as ideological warfare.

In Theomachia; or The Grand Imprudence of Men Running the Hazard of
Fighting against God, he argued that there were ways of fighting against
God as well as fighting for Him. Elaborating upon two of his sermons
based upon Acts 5:2739, Goodwin engaged in intense scriptural exegesis,
giving a fresh contemporary interpretation to the story of Gamaliels speech
admonishing the Jerusalem authorities not to suppress Peter and the other
apostles and their erroneous and dangerous Doctrine since, according to
the authorities, they were not meet to be tolerated in the State, nor yet
to live. Gamaliel warns them not to persecute the apostles when they are
put on trial, especially if their work be of God; for then these authorities,
by exercising the bloudy rage and violence of men (as Goodwin puts
it) (Theomachia, 5, 10), would be found even to fight against God (Acts
5:349), since the apostles take their orders from a higher authority and
are not bound by any human assembly or power. In the context of the
mid-seventeenth-century struggle for toleration, anxieties about increasing
religious divisions, and the rise of Presbyterian power and the forceful
assertion of its authority against religious deviants, this scriptural story took
on new potency in Goodwins exegesis. Chief among ways of fighting against
God was the use of the weapons of secular power to suppress religious
freedom, separate congregations, and rival beliefs, and to punish heretics
by force or even with death. Here Goodwins fierce anti-authoritarianism,
when it comes to restraining matters of conscience, began to manifest itself:
if the only means of slaying these enemies of Christ was by the sword
of the Spirit, then, Goodwin concluded, our Prisons and Swords are no
Church-officers, nor any appurtenances to any Ecclesiastique authority in what
form of Government soever (Theomachia, 34). In contrast, the so-called
congregationall waythe Independent way encouraging gathered churches
of true believers or saintswas now, Goodwin suggested, the most promising
method of warfare against those enemies of God, and Religion, errors
and heresies (Theomachia, 33). The recent explosion of errors and heresies
had resulted in the godly objection that if an heretique be suffered to
live, he is in danger of infecting others, and destroying them eternally;
yet Goodwin perceived that violent suppression and restraintas if one
could put fetters upon the feet of errors and heresies to secure and keep
them underwould have precisely the opposite effect, comparable to the
attempt to censor authors and books, as Milton argued in Areopagitica: it
Goodwin would later recall the scriptural story of Gamaliel and the issue of fighting against
God: see Goodwins bitter attack on Thomas Edwards in Cretensis, 78.
would stimulate the multiplication of heretics and sects by casting a spirit

of Authoritie upon them, turning them into martyrs, and making their
reputation glowe (Theomachia, 37).
The apparent intolerablenesse of a Toleration for begetting new schisms
and religious factions was a major focus of Goodwins lengthy assault on
the Presbyterian heretic hunter Adam Steuart in M.S. to A.S. with A Plea
for Libertie of Conscience (1644), Goodwins first Independent book and a
striking assault on the traditional Reformed view of the magistrates power
in religion. Interrogating the anti-tolerationist positions of A.S.one of
the heretic hunters Milton would lash out at two years later in his On
the New Forcers of Conscience under the Long ParliamentGoodwin
argues that the reason why sects, schisms, and wild opinions lately started
amongst us spread so rapidly is that we resort to coercive human authorities
and power, especially the iron rod of the Civill Magistrate, to try to crush
them: we have recourse to our own arm, hoping by disgracing, displacing,
way-laying, impoverishing, suspending, imprisoning, and other weapons and
wayes of the flesh, to ease our selves of the burthensomenesse and trouble
of them (M.S. to A.S., 54, 59). Goodwins catalogue of gerunds conveys
the futility of violent compulsion by human authorities, acts which inflame
greater religious hatred and fears rather than quenching those flames of
divisions and dissentions that are amongst us in matters of Religion (55). This
new climate of fear and defamation by coercive powers, Goodwin suggested,
discouraged individuals of good conscience from exercising freedom of
intellectual inquiry and independent religious judgment, particularly from
searching and inquiring into the Scriptures, after a more exact knowledge of
the perfect will of God in things (59). Fear was not merely an impulsive,
visceral response among the orthodox godly shocked by the idea of toleration;
it was also being manipulated by them in an increasingly vicious war of
religion: whereas feare indeed ordinarily makes men cruell, it is much to be
feared, A.S. only pretends feare, that so he may have a colour [i.e. an outward
appearance or show] to be cruell (1045). Like Milton and Walwyn, Goodwin
revealed an increasingly strong anti-authoritarian strain in his writing as he
stressed the fallible judgments of civic and religious authorities, including
Cf. Areopagitica: instead of suppressing sects and schisms, it raises them and invests them
with a reputation, YP 2.542.
CSP 298300. See my discussion of this sonnet in The War against Heresy in Miltons
England, forthcoming in Milton Studies 47 (2007).
Steuart had responded with hostility to An Apologeticall Narration by five Independent
ministers arguing for a wider latitude of governance for individual congregations, an argument
that stimulated further the debate over toleration.
godly ministers who invoke the specter of heresy and religious anarchy to
scare away support for toleration and underscore the urgent need for a state
church.
It was perhaps inevitable that Goodwin, soon savagely demonized by
Thomas Edwards (as well as by other Presbyterians, including Robert Baillie)
for his heretical positions and for becoming one of the grand Patrons of
Toleration, would strike back hard. In Cretensis: or a Briefe Answer to An
Ulcerous Treatise (1646) Goodwin devotes his polemical energies to answering
at length the first part of Edwardss Gangraena and reconceiving (as Walwyn
likewise does; see below) two widely used tropes: heresy as a rapidly spreading
disease and the heresy hunter as physician who cures, by means of his bitter
writings, his readers, as well as the church and state, of a terrible infestation and
poison. There Goodwin, attempting to expose the sickness of the virulent and
feverish heretic hunter, points out spots which appeare here and there in the
body of the Gangrene, which plainly shew the very vitals & inward parts to be
pestilently infected; written with Edwardss gangred pen, it is a book swelling
with poison, and the gall of aspes (Cretensis, 47, 3, 27). As the defender of
toleration and Independency, Goodwin presents himself as an alternative kind
of physician in these poisonous religious times, producing the cure of the
said dangerous ulcer, called Gangraena, and to prevent the spreading of it
to the danger of the precious soules of men (Cretensis, title page). Goodwin
mocks Edwards for generating a kind of uncontrolled, extravagant fantasy
of increasing heresies that might be multiplied in print ad infinitum as his
overheated religious imagination invents more and more of them:
I marvaile how Mr Edw. having (it seemes) an authorized power to make errors and
heresies at what rate, and of what materials he pleaseth, and hopes to live upon the
trade, could stay his pen at so small a number as 180; and did not advance to that
Angelicall quotient in the Apocalyps, which is ten thousand times ten thousand, and
thousand thousands. (Cretensis, 9)
Edwardss Catalogue, or black Bill has, more than any other contemporary
text, fabricated a frightening image of heresy by means of lying tales and
Coffey, Goodwin and the Puritan Revolution, 11112, notes Goodwins partial retreat from
his radical tolerationist positions in revisions made in the second edition of this tract; however,
Goodwins willingness to compromise with conservative Independents seems to have been
temporary.
Thomas Edwards, The Casting Down of the Last and Strongest Hold of Satan (London, 1647),
46. Edwards would soon devote more than 100 pages of Gangraena to mounting an undisciplined,
ferocious attack on Cretensis and its author as the profound Oracle of the Sectaries: Gangraena,
2.30140 (phrase from 90). For hostile Presbyterian responses to the tolerationist positions of
M.S. to A.S. and Theomachia, see Coffey, Goodwin and the Puritan Revolution, 111, 11516.
Coffey reviews other contemporary satirical portraits of Goodwin in ch. 5.
See, e.g., Edwards, Gangraena, 2.131.
reports, yet Goodwin, by picking apart passages from Edwards, tries to expose
the savagery of his dogmatic religious judgments and intolerant assertions,
fueled by a Dragon-likenesse of spirit, as arbitrary, subjective, and therefore
unfounded: For I professe ingenuously, that I know not by what other rule
or measure, besides his own humour and will, he judgeth of error or heresie
(Cretensis, 8, 29, 19, 10). Cretensis, the title of Goodwins diatribe, echoes
Pauls epistle to Titus where Cretans, in Pauls satirical characterization, are
alwayes liers and therefore should be rebuked sharply and (to use Goodwins
word) cuttingly. But whether Goodwins own harsh verbal responses might
help to restore Edwards and his pestilent book to a measure of health remains
uncertain; like Paul concerning the Cretans and their church (see Titus 1:16),
Goodwin seems not to expect much success.
Goodwin also responded in Sion-Colledg Visited to the specter of heresy
and monstrous toleration generated by London Presbyterian ministers in A
Testimonie to the Truth of Jesus Christ (1648), a text touched on in the first
section of this essay and one in which Goodwin found his own writings
tarnished with the blacke brand of Infamous and pernicious Errors (Sion-
Colledg, title page). In Sion-Colledg Goodwin challenges godly ministers who
refuse to engage rationally with authors they anathematize as heretical,
and who prefer instead to poure out flouds of such reproachfull and foule
language upon mens sayings or opinions without answering so much
as any one reason or ground, upon which they build such assertions.
Such ministers are impetuous, frenetic, and indiscriminate in their use of
inflammatory termsthey insult and stamp with the foot, and cry out, Errors,
Heresie, Blasphemy, anti-Scripturisme, Arminianisme, and I know not what,
and such strident rhetoric only fuels sharper religious divisions. Furthermore,
in the heat of religious controversy, the ministers offer crude and rash
interpretations of contemporary religious texts they disagree with, making
errours and heresies of similitudes and dismembering the texts by mangling,
maiming, and deforming the sayings of [their] Brethren, [and] when [they]
cite them, by leaving out very emphaticall and materiall words, and clauses.
In this climate of violent controversy and textual warfare there exists a witch
hunt against so-called heretics so that the ministers who make errors and
heresies of similitudes are indeed seeking errors and heresies in other men,
untill [they] finde them (Sion-Colledg, 7, 8, 14). The crisis over religious
toleration had consequently become so inflamed by visceral passions and the
Titus 1:1213; see Cretensis, title page and 50.

I make no question but ere long you will see the whole body of [the Gangrene] full of
such spots all over (Cretensis, 47). For additional discussion of Goodwins critical responses to
Edwards, see Hughes, Gangraena and the Struggle for the English Revolution, esp. 2669.
strident war of words that vocal proponents of toleration found themselves

regularly demonized as monstrous heretics or sectaries, while engaged in a
highly precarious struggle whose outcome in favor of their cause was far from
assured.
Goodwin, then, was surely one of the English Revolutions most daring
proponents of religious toleration, and in some ways he embodied what
Bernard Williams has identified as a main tension of toleration: the tension
between commitment to ones own outlook and acceptance of the others.
In Goodwins terms that meant his strong commitment to a congregational
or Independent way, along with his acceptance of other religious truths,
including those many that were yet to be discovered and that were yet
unborne. Nonetheless, there were also limits to Goodwins creative thinking
about religious toleration in relation to the alarming specter of growing errors
and heresies evoked and exploited by godly ministers and heresy-hunting
writers. As the war against heresy, separatism, and toleration escalated during
the 1640s, Goodwin, unlike Walwyn and Milton, did not interrogate skeptically
the emotionally charged analogy between the spread of heresy and contagious
disease; nor did he repudiate altogether the potential danger of heresy within
Protestantism. Moreover, he did not question or revise the concept of heresy
itself as a crime, although he often deplored the polarizing language associated
with it and remained deeply suspicious about human authorities, including
any kind of state church, determining what is heresy, error, and schism: if
a person, one, two, or more, being members of a particular Church, shall
be infected with any hereticall or dangerous opinion, and after two or three
admonitions shall continue obstinate, he ought to be cast out from amongst
them by that Church (Goodwin, M.S. to A.S., 53). There is no mistaking the
Pauline echo here, although Goodwin is more generous than Paul when it
comes to the problem of what to do about obstinate heretics fomenting
divisions and sects by propagating dangerous opinions within a particular
religious community: A man that is an heretick [hairetikon anthropon] after
the first and second admonition reject; Knowing that he that is such is
subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself ( Titus 3:1011). Yet
in Goodwins age of religious fear and anxiety, when the fight for toleration
was exceptionally heated, coercive powerpower very dangerous for a
Magistrate to ownewould never, he always insisted, suppress the explosion
of errors, schisms, and heresies; rather ministers truly agitated about the
See Bernard Williams, Tolerating the Intolerable, in Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 127, 130.
See Goodwins response to William Prynne in Innocency and Truth Triumphing Together
(London, 1645), 34.
specter of spreading heresies, he suggested, should preach soundly from

the Scriptures to evince the folly, vanitie and falsehood of all such wayes
(Goodwin, M.S. to A.S., 57, 53). In the mid-seventeenth-century crisis over
toleration, Goodwin stands out as a formidable polemical opponent of zealous
heretic hunters and as a vigorous, independent-minded defender of free
inquiry into religious truths who, if necessary, would resist, as he himself
did during the Interregnum, excessive compliance with any religious faction
or group. Walwyn and Milton, however, would show greater linguistic
suppleness and conceptual imagination as they interrogated orthodox visions
of the terrifying growth of heresy in the midst of the English Revolutions
deepening crisis over religious toleration.
3. William Walwyn: Toleration and The Power of Persecuting

Considered by Thomas Edwards a desperate dangerous man a man for all
Religions, pleading for all (Edwards, Gangraena, 2.26), William Walwyn was
one of the most gifted polemicists promoting religious toleration in Miltons
England, especially in response to the alarming specter of heresy generated by
godly writers; he was already formulating his views well before the Levellers
emerged as a threatening radical political force at the end of 1646. Wary about
religious dogmatism in a period when the orthodox godly were so inimical
to the idea of toleration, Walwyn observed that the concept of heresy was
itself a remarkably volatile and slippery one, so that what was considered
heresy in one age might well be considered religious truth in another; hence
the relation between heresy and orthodoxy, he suggested, remained an
unstable one: those tenets which are now accounted heresies, may be the
countenanced truthes of the next age; as what formerly was accounted errour,
is now esteemed truth (Writings, 242). Walwyn made this observation in
A Demurre to the Bill for Preventing the Growth and Spreading of Heresie
(October 1646), a text in which he vigorously challenges a proposed ordinance
for punishing heresy by means of death and blasphemy by means of branding
Goodwin in the 1650s could write against the gathered churches, such as when they
supported the Fifth Monarchists or when Baptist doctrine caused schism within his own church
or when Independent divines supported the system of Triers under the Protectorate: see Liu in
oDNB, 22.822; and especially Coffey, Goodwin and the Puritan Revolution, ch. 8.
Cf. Walwyn, Writings, 1823 (where Walwyn notes that he has been called a great
Anabaptist and a great Antinomian, as well as a dangerous man).
Cf. liberty-of-conscience, in Richard Overtons Araignement of Mr. Persecution (Lon-
don, 1645): is it not frequent amongst us, that the thing that we judged heresie, wee now believe
is Orthodox [?] (24).
with a hot iron. There Walwyn warns Parliament that inflammatory anti-
heretical language, and the disturbing specter of heresy that such polarizing
rhetoric was encouraging, was also the weapon of the clergy, an instrument
of intimidation used to stifle debate about toleration, to establish a very
inquisition, and to terrifie men from a free and necessary search into the
grounds and originall of things, and to dispose all men to believe whatsoever
the Synod and learned Church-men shall hold forth (237, 243). Urging
religious toleration for separatists who were being hunted into corners (95),
Walwyn perceived, like Goodwin, that the outburst of violent anti-heretical
discourse in his age was both fueled by and fueling a new climate of fear and
repression.
Thus two years earlier, in The Compassionate Samaritane (1644), Walwyn
had examined the liberty of conscience for separatists persecuted by Presbyte-
rian ministers in a more Socratic fashion, employing a series of reasons and
objections. There he presents the argument, in terms of an Objection, that
toleration would contribute to the shattering of religious unity and political
stability, thereby turning the nation itself into a loathsome monster of sep-
aratist religion: we shall become a very monster in matters of Religion, one
part being Presbyter, another Anabaptists, Brownist another, and a fourth an
Independent, and so divers according to the diversity of opinions that are
already, or may be broached hereafter (1045). Walwyns passage anticipates
Thomas Edwardss analogy of the grotesque monstrous bodyrepresenting
hostile fears about the uncontrollable growth of heresyand reminds readers
of the alarming consequences of toleration which creates deformity where
there was once apparently religious unity. Yet for Walwyn, as for Milton in
1644, the most troubling prospect facing his age was not the recent explosion
of sects and heresies; it was the newly acquired power of persecuting pos-
sessed by zealous Presbyterian clergy in their highly ambiguous role as judges
over the consciences of others. The victims of persecution and repression
during the Laudian years, these godly ministers were seizing the power to
enforce compulsion and servilityyet they will be more violent, Walwyn
warns, as slaves usually are when they become masters (158, 106). In
order to destroy the prospects of toleration and heighten fears of social and
political dissolution, they employ stigmatizing labels or evoke the specter of
Anabaptist anarchy: They brand men with the name of Hereticks, and fasten
what errours they thinke are most hatefull to the people, upon those men
they purpose to make odious (112; cf. 1201). Walwyns analysis in 1644
Edwards consequently noted Walwyns text among the scores of Books written wholly for
Toleration, and pretended Liberty: Gangraena, 3.186.
See also Tolleration Justified, in Writings, 156.
anticipates Gerrard Winstanleys analysis of a sinister clergy power during

the early Interregnum; like Winstanley, he depicts a menacing professional
clergy using learning, language, and cunning contrivances (111), including
sophisticated hermeneutics, in order to keep the Bible a mystery so that
godly ministers may retain their hold on power, especially over vulnerable
lay parishioners. Irrational fears, as well as their desire for power, likewise
prompt the institutional clergy to project in preaching and print a specter of
monstrous religious confusion and heresy.
Most likely Walwyns religious skepticismincluding his sense of the
uncertainty of knowledg in this life influenced by reading Montaignemade
him increasingly doubt the authority of institutions, including Generall Coun-
cells, Nationall Assemblies, Synods, and Parliaments (104), to judge separatist
congregations for their religious beliefs, compelling them to accept one reli-
gious truth over another. Montaignes skepticism, especially his wariness
about dogmatism in matters of religion, had been deepened by his experience
of the sixteenth-century French Wars of Religion; Walwyns was deepened
by Englands own war of religion, inflamed by the specter of separatism
and radical sectarianism that seemed increasingly out of control during the
1640s. Paradoxically, it was from a Romish Catholique French author and
an honest Papist (400), as Walwyn puts it, that the English Independent
churches themselves might learn much about the spirit of toleration in this
new age of religious crisis.
Sharing a deeply anti-authoritarian religious perspective with the Milton
of Areopagitica, Walwyn was no less concerned about Presbyterian control of
the press because, as he stresses, that will give the clergy a distinct advantage
in the war of words fought over toleration and the definition of heresy. As
Masters of the Presse, of which they are lately become by an Ordinance
for licensing of Bookes (i.e. the Ordinance of June 1643), the Presbyterians
now possess greater power to control public opinion and stifle debate when
it comes to controversial religious matters and thus they may write what
See Writings, 109, 11011, and cf. 2314, where Walwyn imagines a contrite Edwards
confessing he felt the need for the learned clergy to keep their power over plaine unlearned
men and to create a mere Clergy religion; on Winstanleys analysis of clergy power, especially
during the Interregnum, see my Representing Revolution in Milton and His Contemporaries:
Religion, Politics, and Polemics in Radical Puritanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2001), ch. 2.
Writings, 399401, where he observes that he has been long accustomed to read Montaigns
Essais. See also Olivier Lutaud, Montaigne chez les niveleurs anglais: Walwyn et Les Essais ,
Rivista di letterature moderne e comparate 12 (1959), 538.
On Englands War or Wars of Religion, see Anthony Fletcher, The Outbreak of the English
Civil War (London: Arnold, 1981), 41718; and especially John Morrill, The Nature of the
English Revolution (London: Longman, 1993), 33175.
they wil, they may abuse whom they will, and nothing can be said against
them (11213). One of the most prominent of these Presbyterian licensers
(mentioned by name by Walwyn in 1649) was James Cranford, a leader in the
campaign against toleration of heterodox opinion and the divine who would
soon license Edwardss Gangraena (and write prefaces to its three large parts);
his own Haereseo-Machia would soon contribute to the imaginary terror of
schism and heresy by invoking the specter of the bloody Irish Rebellion and its
unnaturall consequences, including the killing of thousands of Protestants, in
order to warn against the menacing consequences of encouraging toleration.
The struggle to justify toleration in the midst of an age disturbed by such
bitter religious differences prompted Walwyn to recall Christs engagement
with the politico-religious sect of the Sadducees (see Matthew 22:2333).
His Good Counsell to All, originally published as part of The Compassionate
Samaritan, offers a highly distinctive interpretation of the confrontation
between Jesus and the Jewish sect. The Sadducees, after all, rejected the
belief in the existence of angels and spirits and in the resurrection of the
dead (it was foreign to the Pentateuch); in debate with them Jesus displays
his skill in interpretation (he uses argument and perswasion to alter or
controle their judgements, Walwyn observes) as he meets them on their own
ground by citing Exodus 3:6. Yet rather than emphasize that the Sadducees
do err (Matthew 22:29), like factious heretics or religious deviants, Walwyn
presents a Jesus who refrains from becoming defensive or dogmatic and then
zealously demonizing the sect despite their dangerous opinions, including
their rejection of the idea of the resurrection: He, nevertheless both heard
and answered them gently; he did not revile them with reproachfull language,
telling them that they were not worthy to live in a Commonwealth; nor did
he warne others to discourse with them (1289). Christ answered them
gently is clearly Walwyns irenic formulationit is not especially supported
by the biblical accountsince Walwyn wants to believe in the role of gentle
persuasion in a world of religious warfare inflamed by reviling accusations.
Walwyn thus transforms this confrontation between Jesus and an opposing
sect into a model of how to respond to heretics in an age when the specter
of heresy and fears of religious faction were generating fierce hatred for
differing beliefs. Yet this polemical warfare aggravated by fiery, polarizing
See also Writings, 184.

Cranford, Haereseo-Machia, 13: Will a toleration satisifie hereticks, if they have power
in their hands? It did not content the Irish Papists, witnesse the bloud of 150000 Protestants
shed upon the first advantage, and these unnaturall warres so long continued. For Walwyns
reference to Cranford, see Writings, 396.
For Walwyn on Christ and the Sadducees, see also Writings, 136, 240.
See Walwyns A Whisper in the Eare of Mr. Thomas Edwards Minister, in Writings, 175, 183.
language seemed to leave little hope for Walwyns appealing belief that sound
argument and perswasion could eventually create a world where men might
live peaceably and lovingly together, though they differ in judgement one from
another (129).
In 1645 a letter written by anxious orthodox ministers of the city of
London also invoked the specter of increasing heresy in order to undermine
any sympathy for toleration. Addressing their concerns to the Assembly of
Divines, they complained that Reformation would never be completed until
Schisme and Heresie is extirpated, that Sects and Heresies would shelter
themselves under the wings of Independency, and that a lawlesse Toleration,
utterly Repugnant to the 1643 Presbyterian Solemn League and Covenant
(which pledged to eradicate heresy and schism, while protecting the power
of godliness), would only unleash more strange and horrid opinions.
Walwyn answered with Tolleration Justified, and Persecution Condemned,
a tract published anonymously warning that the Presbyterian ministers,
possessing in their hands the power of persecuting, were attempting to
enforce their severe judgments upon Independents and other separatists,
thereby blowing the coales of dissention (158, 169). Walwyn depicts their
spirit of fury and bitterness against sectaries as a latter-day form of Old
Testament vengeancethey resemble Jews crying out an eye for an eye, and
a tooth for a tooth (161) rather than the Jesus who urges his followers, in
the Sermon on the Mount, to love their enemies and blesse them that curse
you (Matthew 5:44). Walwyns tract presents the London ministers as cynical,
restless, and power-hungry with their private junctos and councels (156).
What drives their violent spirit of persecution and their aggressive assault on
toleration is fear: not only fear as a calculated means of enforcing religious
conformity and mental servility, Walwyn suggests, but fear in the sense
of their underlying insecurity about their own ambiguous authority. Only
godly ministers deeply insecure about their tenuous and precarious hold on
power would so violently oppose toleration, insisting that their interpretation
of religious truth was right and everyone elses wrong: Upon how slight
foundation is their reputation supported, that fear being despised unlesse
Authority forces all to Church to them? (166).
During 1645/6 Walwyn responded to Thomas Edwardsa Master and
Comptrouler to other mens judgements and practises in the worship of God
(206)in no less than five tracts in which Walwyn reversed (like Goodwin)
the trope of poisonous heresy and accused Edwards himself of spreading, by
A Letter of the Ministers of the City of London Against Toleration (London, 1645), 4, 56;
The Solemn League and Covenant, in S. R. Gardiner, ed., The Constitutional Documents of the
Puritan Revolution, 16251660 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905), 26.
means of his books and his infectious braine, poison that had envenomed the
hearts and understandings of thousands easily deluded by the least pretence
of zeal and godlinesse (213, 210). Appalled by the extream fury with which
Edwards expressed his hatred of separatists and conducted his unbridled
campaign against so-called heretics, Walwyn employed vivid animalistic
images to convey the elemental savagery of this leading heretic hunter whose
vicious enmity has dehumanized him. Indeed, any attempt to restrain him
had only backfired, as Walwyn suggests in a passage that gives the scriptural
comparison of false prophets to ravening wolves (see Matthew 7:15) a
contemporary immediacy that also exploits a note of ethnic stereotyping
atypical of Walwyn: instead of qualifying his spirit [it] hath set him all on
fire, that he rageth like an Irish ravenous and hungry woolfe, deprived of his
prey by generous and true English Mastives, that watch both night and day to
save his harmlesse and benefitiall sheep (the Independents and Separatists)
(174, 207). Walwyns responses to Edwards resulted in some of his most
inventive writing, and I want to conclude this section by briefly examining one
of Walwyns most ingenious and ironic texts: his Prediction of Mr. Edwards His
Conversion and Recantation ( July 1646). Walwyn possessed a remarkably agile
literary imagination that could express itself in inventive ways that deserve
more attention from literary scholars and, for that matter, from historians who
have focused on Walwyns religious beliefs and his contributions to Leveller
political thought and polemics.
In his Prediction, Walwyn allows his imagination free rein as he envisions
Edwards, finally tormented by guilt over the violence of his spirit against
conscientious people who differ with him in judgement (228), producing
a lengthy dramatic monologue in prose recanting his McCarthyite campaign
of heresy hunting. Edwards, like Paul (before his conversion) viciously per-
secuted the church of God (1 Corinthians 15:9; Galatians 1:13), although
Edwardss violent spirit of persecution, expressed by means of his embittered
pen (229), has exceeded Pauls. Lashed by his own stinging conscience (O vile
man, what have I done?), the anguished heresy hunter confesses that he has
committed evils, of a new and unparalelled nature, such as the Protestant Religion in
all after-ages will be shamed of. I most presumptuously and arrogantly, assumed
to my selfe, a power of judging, and censuring all judgements, opinions, and wayes
of worship (except my owne) to bee either damnable, hereticall, schismaticall, or
dangerous.
I discuss one of the most ingenious of these texts, A Parable, or Consultation of Physitians
upon Master Edwards, in The War against Heresy in Miltons England.
Perhaps with irony Walwyn comes close here to echoing Edwardss own complaint about
the violent Spirit of Sectaries against all persons and things that pleases not them (Gangraena,
1.109).
Moreover, the anathematizing nick-names he has so stridently and indiscrim-

inately employed in printBrownists, Independents, Anabaptists, Antino-
mians, Seekers, and the likehave served as his verbal weapons in rendering
separatists and sectarians and their gathered churches (however small or close
to the practices of the apostles) odious to Authority, and all sorts of men
(2301). The result, Edwards admits, is that his own inflammatory writings,
rather than those advocating toleration, have helped to dissolve all civill and
naturall relations, turning England into a frightening, chaotic Nation of
quarrels, distractions, and divisions (231).
Furthermore, Walwyns contrite Edwards can now see that he, who once
assumed a power of judging other religious opinions heretical, in fact has no
infallible spirit to discern between truth and errors (2301, 234)much as
John Goodwin himself had been arguing. Close to a state of despair resembling
Miltons inwardly tormented and theatrical Satan (what shall I doe? whither
shall I fly?), the anguished heretic hunter finally grasps a key lesson from
Christs sermon on the mount: But I say unto you, Love your enemies
(Matthew 5:44; 235). In Walwyns text, however, the lesson reinforces the
point that, rather than separatists loving their persecutors, religious persecutors
should love those whom they have so savagely demonized. Of course, one
could hardly imagine a more implausible depiction of this most implacable of
seventeenth-century heresy hunters. Walwyn clearly relishes his prediction,
his satirical fantasy of an inwardly tormented heresy hunter who, seeking to
redeem himself, finally manages to breake forth and publish to the world an
anguished recantation of his behavior and writings (230); beneath the irony
and ingenuity of this imaginative work, however, there lies a more urgent
message about the specter of heresy created by godly propaganda as well as the
struggle to promote toleration in such a bitterly contentious religious world.
Yet rather than relinquish his vocation as a godly warrior leading a ferocious
campaign to eradicate heresy and toleration, Edwards would make the specter
of heresy appear even more frightening and monstrous by publishing his third
massive part of Gangraena in December 1646an unrelenting assault on the
anarchic dangers of sectarian writing and political revolution.
4. John Milton: Toleration and Fantastic Terrors of Sect

and Schism
Like Goodwin and Walwyn, Milton felt the need to respond, as he does in
Areopagitica, to these fantastic terrors of sect and schism (YP 2.554) which
Walwyn, Writings, 235; cf. PL 4.73: Me miserable! Which way shall I fly[?].
were making the struggle over toleration increasingly divisive and difficult.
Positioning Milton in relation to contemporary writers like Goodwin and
Walwyn does indeed remind us that Areopagitica is no isolated document,
nor Milton a cloistered and bookish academic; however, it also enables
us to see more sharply what was so distinctive and original about Miltons
own revaluation of the specter of terrifying heresy and schism, as well as the
polarizing language used in the escalating war against toleration.
As early as The Reason of Church-Government (February 1642), where
Milton shows little interest in the structures and rituals of the visible church,
we see him responding increasingly skeptically to deepening anxieties in
his culture about the new specter of heresy, as well as to the slipperiness
of religious labeling, created by the disintegration of Protestant unity. To
be sure, his text addresses fears expressed by defenders of the Church of
England, yet it does so in a way that anticipates his responses to the worries
of the mainstream godly about the splintering of Protestantism producing a
terrible and potentially irreversible deluge of innumerable sects and popular
heresies. In Church-Government, Milton is beginning to deflate these fears
and to question warnings about unstable religious divisions developing that
threaten to dissolve more traditional religious identities. Consequently, Milton
challenges the notion that if prelacy were destroyed we shall be all Brownists,
Familists, Anabaptists: If we go downe, say you, as if Adrians wall were
broke, a flood of sects will rush in. What sects? What are their opinions?
give us the Inventory (RCG, YP 1.7834, 7867). Although the Presbyterians
themselves would soon supply plenty of these sprawling inventories, Milton
is dismissing the fears of spreading heresy and schism in a way that would
hardly assuage the growing concerns of godly brethren: Noise it till ye be
hoarse; that a rabble of Sects will come in, it will be answerd ye, no rabble
sir Priest, but a unanimous multitude of good Protestants will then joyne to
the Church, which now because of you stand separated (RCG, YP 1.7878).
Miltons phrase unanimous multitude anticipates the subtle double negatives
of Areopagitica (see below) where religious truth may be both one and many,
and whereon a linguistic levelMilton challenges the rigid dualisms
encouraged by anti-tolerationist Presbyterian discourse.
Like Walwyn and Goodwin, Milton also sees how vile and hateful
terms have been increasingly used as verbal weapons (more than rea-
soned argument) in the ongoing war against heresy, whether conducted by
Christopher Hill in the Foreword to Writings of William Walwyn, xiii. See also Nigel
Smith, Areopagitica: Voicing Contexts, 16435, in Loewenstein and James Grantham Turner,
eds., Politics, Poetics, and Hermeneutics in Miltons Prose (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1990), 10322, and esp. 11213 for a brief comparison of Walwyn and Milton in 1644.
prelates or Presbyterians: those terrible names of Sectaries and Schismaticks

are now essential to their manner of fight, especially when the quiver
of arguments is ever thin, and weakly stord, [and] after the first brunt
is quite empty; for then heresy hunters will resort to that other quiver of
slander (RCG, YP 1.788). Such hateful labels are manipulated as protean
rhetorical devices by those heresy huntersprelates and soon the Presbyte-
rians themselveswho revile sects and the growth of heresies: For the word
Puritan seems to be quasht, and all that heretofore were counted such, are
now Brownists (784), a reference to the leading Elizabethan separatist Robert
Browne whose name and the names of his followersBrownistswere
indiscriminately invoked during the 1640s to evoke the specter of increasing
heresy. Not only does Church-Government, with its vigorous assault on
the scandalous misnaming (RCG, YP 1.788) of sects and separatists, antici-
pate Miltons spirited defense of radical sectarianism in Areopagitica and his
searching critique there of anathematizing names (including heretic); it also
begins to reveal his deepening differences with the Presbyterians on this crucial
matter. It anticipates his fresh responses in Areopagitica to the escalating war
against heresy and toleration aimed at casting panick terrors into the hearts
of weaker Christians (RCG, YP 1.794).
A text saturated with metaphors of ideological warfare as it participates
in the revolutionary world of religious ferment and expanding political
debate, Miltons Areopagitica (November 1644) provocatively engages with
the explosive language of heresy huntingboth contesting received ideas
and labels and reinterpreting them in strikingly new ways. In Areopagitica
Milton envisions London, the nations most vital center of print culture
in his revolutionary age, as a shop of war with both readers and writers
actively engaged in controversy and disputesitting by their studious lamps,
musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas (Areop., YP 2.554).
Milton is acutely aware of the power of print not only for revolving new
notions of political and religious liberty, as well as of a free press, but
also for revolving new notions of heresy and heretic at a time when
their pejorative implications were increasingly dominating bitter religious
controversy. Rethinking the meaning of such terms and the powerful fears
they were provoking was crucial, in Miltons view, to the reforming of
See e.g. The Brownist Haeresies Confuted ([London], 1641). David Cressy notes that between
1640 and 1642 there were some forty-five publications which had the derisive name Brownist
in their title: England on Edge, 214.
On Areopagitica and revolutionary print and pamphlet culture, see esp. Sharon Achinstein,
Milton and the Revolutionary Reader (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 5867;
Joad Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge
Reformation it self (Areop., YP 2.553). The Licensing Ordinance of June 1643,

to which Areopagitica directly responds, registers Parliaments fears that the
recent uncontrolled outpouring of printthe publishing of books, pamphlets
and papers, in such multitudeswas not only threatening the authority
of Parliament but endangering godly religion itself by encouraging radical
sectarianism and shattering religious unity: thus the ordinance recognizes the
urgency of suppressing the great late abuses and frequent disorders in Printing
many false, forged, scandalous, seditious, libelous Papers, Pamphlets, and
Books to the great defamation of Religion and Government. Indeed, by the
time he published the first installment of his Gangraena in early 1646, Thomas
Edwards was urgently warning Parliament that its 1643 Ordinance was not
only ineffective, but that there were never more dangerous unlicensed Books
printed, then since the Ordinance against unlicensed printing (Edwards,
Gangraena, sig. a2r ; see also 589). In Areopagitica, a text printed unregistered
and unlicensed, Milton provocatively exploits the medium of print to intervene
in the escalating war against heresy and toleration and to revolve his own
distinctive notion of heresy.
Thus in the midst of proclaiming England a place of Philosophic freedom
(rather than a place of intellectual, religious, or political servility) and observing
that the new Presbyterians are but old priests writ large (that Bishops and
Presbyters are the same to us both name and thing, Areop., YP 2.537, 539),
Milton inserts his most striking reformulation of what it means to be a heretic:
A man may be a heretick in the truth; and if he beleeve things only because his
Pastor sayes so, or the Assembly so determins, without knowing other reason,
though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds, becomes his heresie
(Areop., YP 2.543). No one in Miltons Englandincluding such notable
defenders of toleration as Goodwin and Walwynhad reinterpreted heresy
in quite this way before, nor presented it to Parliament as an alternative to
currently received notions of heretics and the frightening dangers they were
supposedly posing to the health of the body politic and religious unity.
Miltons fresh redefinition includes nothing of the pejorative New Testament
or Pauline implications associated with heresy as the fomenting of divisions and
sects among Christians by means of false teachers or false prophets propagating
dangerous or deviant beliefs: hence Paul warns the Corinthians that there be
Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum (London: HMSO, 1911), 1.184.

Revolve is meant to recall Miltons revolving new notions and ideas and can mean To
consider, think over, ponder or meditate upon (something) (OED 4b).
Walwyn resembles Milton when he urges his readers to abhor that most superstitious
maxime to believe as the Church believes (A Demurre to the Bill for preventing Heresie, in
Writings, 243), but he does not align this servile belief, as Milton does in Areopagitica (see below),
with heresy itself.
divisions [schismata] among you and there must also be heresies [haireseis]
among you (1 Corinthians 11:1819), while in his second epistle, Peter the
apostle warns that there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall
bring in damnable heresies [haireseis], even denying the Lord that brought
them (2 Peter 2:1). Even John Goodwin, as we saw earlier, did not altogether
reject the Pauline implications of heresy as the fomenting of divisions and
sects among Christians by means of the propagation of dangerous opinions. In
the war against heresy and toleration, the orthodox godly especially exploited
these negative implicationsMilton refers to their fears that these divisions
and subdivisions will undoe us (Areop., YP 2.556)in their campaign to
make the specter of heresy and schism seem more terrifying and threatening
to the health of the body politic.
Milton responds to such escalating fears about heresy by conceiving Truth
dynamicallyhe likens Truth to a streaming fountain with her waters
flowing in a perpetuall progression rather than stagnating into a muddy
pool of conformity and tradition (Areop., YP 2.543)so that the greatest
heresy is not religious division but the static possession of religious truths:
it is a blind, unquestioning, and servile acceptance of theological beliefs
determined by any ecclesiastical or political authority, whether that be the
Westminster Assembly of Divines or even, for that matter, a minister who
leads a gathered church. Godly writers anxious about the recent appearance
of so many horrid opinions and blasphemous heresies were urging orthodox
ministers as well as magistrates to determine once and for all what is dangerous
heretical belief and what is not, as if the definition of religious truth could and
should be firmly fixed: The declaration of what is hereticall, what orthodox;
what is lawfull, what scandalous, belongs to you (Cranford, Haereseo-Machia,
42). Yet when it comes to judging inflammatory or alarmist statements
about heresy and heretics, Miltons text challenges its readers not to assume
a passive or timorous role, but to exercise their own acute, independent,
vigilant judgments. And this skeptical, anti-authoritarian perspective Milton
exemplifies himself by interpreting against the grainby freshly and vividly
reformulating contemporary conceptions of the war between heresy and truth,
while calling into question hostile godly attitudes towards growing heresies,
including the fear that the infection may spread to the common reader
(YP 2.517) exposed to provocative or seductive heretical and unlicensed
books.
Moreover, Miltons Areopagitica offers its contemporary readers a vision of
a pliant, puissant, vigorous body politic (Areop., YP 2.554, 558) stimulated
See also, for discussion of Pauline texts and heresy, Zagorin, How the Idea of Religious
Toleration Came to the West, 1819.
by religious ferment and flux and the massive outpouring of print. This
is one way, indeed, that Milton answers godly writers who were begin-
ning to employ graphic images of contagious disease, monstrous bodies,
and swarming sectaries in order to convey the sickness, deformation, and
increasing vulnerability of the body politic and the church to spreading
heresies, thereby creating (in Miltons words) these fantastic terrors of sect
and schism. Miltons metaphor of the organic body politicwith its blood
fresh, its spirits pure and vigorous (Areop., YP 2.557)conveys a vision
of a vibrant nation and its rapidly changing religious culture that are in
the process of being reinvigorated and recreated by much arguing, much
writing, many opinions and many schisms (Areop., YP 2.554). Contrary to
the frightening specter of religious and political chaos offered by anxious
heresy hunters fearful of monstrous toleration, a profusion of errors, and
that infection which is from books of controversie in Religion (Areop., YP
2.519), this pliant Protestant nation full of growing sects and schismsnow
a terrain of religious warfare as well as political experimentationis not
degenerated, nor drooping to a fatall decay, but casting off the old wrincld
skin of corruption to outlive these pangs and wax young again (Areop.,
YP 2.557).
Milton is indeed scornful about the specter of all these supposed sects and
schisms (Areop., YP 2.556), as if their dangers to the new Protestant nation
in the process of being forged are nothing more than a frightening fantasy
and an imaginary terror projected by the orthodox godly. Yet as his elaborate
passage about building the Temple of the Lord suggests, his response is more
complex than this, enabled by his figurative writing in this densely imagistic
text. Taking a common enough tropetemple building or workfor the
construction of godly reformation in the turbulent 1640s (it was regularly
employed by Presbyterian preachers), Milton refashions it in a strikingly
fresh way as he responds to the growing crisis over religious toleration and the
menacing specter of heresy and schism:
Yet these are the men cryd out against for schimaticks and sectaries; as if, while the
Temple of the Lord was building, some cutting, some squaring the marble, others
hewing the cedars, there should be a sort of irrationall men who could not consider
there must be many schisms and many dissections made in the quarry and in the
See e.g. Thomas Hill, The Season for Englands Selfe-Reflection, and Advancing Temple-
Work (London, 1644), 25 ff.; Stephen Marshall, A Sacred Panegyrick (London, 1644), 21;
John Marshall, The Right Understanding of the Times (London, 1647), 38. For political and
religious uses of temple work in sermons of the period, see Achsah Guibbory, Israel and
the Fast Sermons during the English Revolution, in David Loewenstein and Paul Stevens,
eds., Early Modern Nationalism and Miltons England ( Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2007).
timber, ere the house of God can be built. And when every stone is laid artfully together,
it cannot be united into a continuity, it can but be contiguous in this world; neither
can every peece of the building be of one form; nay rather the perfection consists
in this, that out of many moderat varieties and brotherly dissimilitudes that are not
vastly disproportionall arises the goodly and the graceful symmetry that commends
the whole pile and structure. Let us therefore be more considerat builders, more wise
in spirituall architecture, when great reformation is expected. (Areop., YP 2.555)
Miltons emphasis is on the process of building; like Goodwin (who uses

the trope of discovering the new world, as we saw earlier), his focus in
Areopagitica is on the process of searching for religious truths, just as the
Temple of God is under constant construction. Yet Miltons figurative writing
and conceptualization also convey a level of subtlety and nuance missing in
Goodwins works about toleration and the specter of heresy. Miltons dense
metaphor of the Temple of the Lord, combined with his linguistic formulations
(e.g. his double negative not vastly disproportionall), allow him to escape
from rigid dualisms when it comes to thinking about religious differencesto
offer an image that contains proportion and disproportion, schism as well as
unity. In the new religious world of this pliant godly nation, opposites are not
unopposed. It is possible to achieve perfection and graceful symmetry even
when every piece of spirituall architecture is not of one form. Religious
truth may thus be both one and disparate, various yet homogeneous; or
to invoke another Miltonic double negative, it is not impossible that she
may have more shapes then one (Areop., YP 2.563), so that Miltons fresh
conception revises the late medieval and early modern emphasis on truth as
essentially single and indivisible. Miltons vision of the Temple of the Lord
is consequently a distinctive and subtle conceptual and imaginative response
to godly writers and preachers who were increasingly prognosticating only
religious deformity, division, and chaos in a new world of growing sects and
destructive schisms. When the godly were expressing such acute fears that
religious unity might be shattered forever in a world of fractious diversity and
proliferating errors encouraged by toleration, Milton in Areopagitica offers a
striking revision of what the unity of Spirit (Areop., YP 2.565) might indeed
be like.
It is notable that in Areopagitica and elsewhere in his controversial writings
Milton never associates any particular Protestant sect or radical religious
group with dangerous heresy or heretics; indeed, it is also notable that, dur-
ing periods of acute religious and political crisis, he almost never invokes
On the concept of truth as single and indivisible, see Alexandra Walsham, Charitable
Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 15001700 (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2006), 1.
specific sects or radical religious groups or their leaders by name, as if coming

to their defense or invoking their authority might somehow compromise
his own authority as a controversial writer and defender of radical reli-
gious views. Nevertheless, in his subsequent controversial writings Milton
would continue to confront and redefine, in original and striking ways, the
concepts of heresy and, as I argue elsewhere, the equally feared specter
of horrid blasphemy likewise used to terrifie the people (TCP, YP
7.246). The seeds for Miltons conceptual rethinking and verbal ingenu-
ity, however, were already well developed in Areopagitica, as the crisis over
religious toleration in his age was deepening and becoming increasingly
embittered.
5. Conclusion
Early modern fears of heresy and anxieties about religious toleration have
taken on fresh implications in our own time when the specter of terrorism
and religious extremism have fueled intolerance, misunderstanding, and
divisions, thereby making our world more unstable and threatening its ideals
of religious diversity. As we have seen, the perceived dangers of heresy in
Miltons England and the heated religious imagination converged, resulting
in pathological and visceral responses by fearful godly writers who attempted
to combat heresys insidious spread and monstrous generation, and who
were terrified about increasing religious divisiveness and chaos unleashed by
toleration. During the war of religion in the mid-seventeenth century it had
become common, as one leading Quaker controversialist would put it, for
all different sorts of men to cry out one upon another, and against each other,
Heresie, Hereticks, Erronious Persons, and the like, thereby filling the world
with Enmity about difference in Religious matters. While that Enmity
about difference in Religious matters during the mid-seventeenth-century
crisis should be understood in its own culturally and historically specific
contexts, such vicious Enmity also reminds us that the challenges created
On this matter, see my essay, Milton among the Religious Radicals and Sects: Polemical
Engagements and Silences, Milton Studies 40 (2001), 22247.
For discussion of these matters in A Treatise of Civil Power and Of True Religion, see my
essay, The War against Heresy in Miltons England. On contemporary responses to horrid
blasphemy, see also my Treason against God and State: Blasphemy in Miltons Culture and
Paradise Lost, in Stephen B. Dobranski and John Rumrich, eds., Milton and Heresy (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998), 17698; and Janel Muellers acute philological analysis in
Milton and Heresy in the same volume (2138).
Edward Burrough, Memorable Works of a Son of Thunder and Consolation (London, 1672),
866, 867.
by religious difference and the struggle for toleration remain as pressing

and as precarious as ever. To be sure, the bitter religious divisions and
polarizing language fueled by the frightening specter of heresy and toleration
in Miltons England remain distant from us; yet in other ways they eerily
resonate today in our own world of discord and difference in Religious
matters.
4
John Milton, Roger Williams, and the Limits
of Toleration
Thomas N. Corns
1
Since approximately the mid-twentieth century Miltons Areopagitica has
seemed less like an iconic proclamation of core values of western liberalism
and more like a series of problems to be explained away. The large arguments
of the tract substantiate the case for the exclusion of civil power from matters
of conscience and belief and seemingly defend unlimited toleration of doctrine
and perhaps discipline. They exclude the role of censorship and assert the right
to freedom of speech: in Miltons ringing sentence, Give me the liberty to
know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties
(Areop., YP 2.560). Yet the toleration the tract actually demands from the
Long Parliament is much more limited. The tract accepts that some texts
should be suppressed for reasons of state and that, after they have published,
all authors should be open to prosecution and their texts to confiscation and
destruction; for some the fire and the executioner will be the timeliest and the
most effectuall remedy (Areop., YP 2.569).
Milton proclaims that a fugitive and cloisterd vertue is unmeritorious
and that which purifies us is triall, and triall is by what is contrary (Areop.,
YP 2.515). He argues that, when Truth and Falsehood grapple, who ever
knew Truth put to the wors, in a free and open encounter[?] (Areop.,
YP 2.561). Given such confidence, why then should Milton exclude from
toleration Popery, and open superstition and, even more mysteriously, that
also which is impious or evil absolutely either against faith or maners (Areop.,
YP 2.565). The first phrase has attracted most discussion, since it makes
explicit the exclusion of Catholicism from toleration. Perhaps we should
Milton, Roger Williams, and Limits of Toleration 73
read it simply as a hendiadys. But it may have a wider significance. Milton

previously had linked English episcopacy with Catholicism in its decline
into irrecoverable superstition manifest in its empty conformities, and gay
shewes (RCG, YP 1.766), and the violent fantasy which ends Of Reformation
certainly envisages a shamefull end in this Life (which God grant them) for
English bishops (RCG, YP 1.616); we may recall that William Lauds trial
was drawing to its vindictive conclusion as Areopagitica appeared. The second
phrase is enigmatic. Ernest Sirluck simply interpreted it as a further part of
the case against tolerating Catholicism (YP 2.1801). Yet impiety against
faith implies, instead, some kind of blasphemous deviation from within the
Protestant community. Maners hints rather at acts of outrageous behaviour
against accepted standards of propriety, a phenomenon which does not really
suggest Catholic practices. The term surely suits better the sorts of transgressive
conduct extremer sectaries were likely to get up to, the kinds of actions which
culminated in Ranter and early Quaker enthusiasm for disrupting church
services and which were already noted in some accounts of radical groups.
So how may the evident inconsistencies in the argumentthe soar-
ing generalizations and the significant exceptionsbe addressed? Typically,
Miltonists suggest Milton has adopted some subtle stratagem to achieve a
defensible polemical objective. Reviewing the interpretations of Ernest Sirluck,
Joseph Wittreich, John Illo, Annabel Patterson, and Christopher Kendrick,
Abbe Blum summarizes the state of the argument thus:
current scholarship offers contradictory explanations for what appears to be contra-
dictory in the tract. Milton is variously seen as a canny tactician who moderates his
stance on toleration in order to convey the appearance of solidarity with those who
could repeal the 1643 Licensing Act (especially Parliamentary groups and members
of the Westminster Assemblythe latter then meeting to decide religious matters); a
brilliant moral instructor who employs irony to move ethically upright, intellectually
superior readers (who as kindred liberal Christians will affirm his rhetorical prowess);
a conservative party-line Protestant spokesman for intolerance who constructs a con-
ditional restricted freedom of expression tailored only for the elect. Most recently
Areopagiticas seeming contradictions have been interpreted as Miltons manifesto for
indeterminacy, a conversion of various factions disagreements into a nonoppositional
celebration of intellectual energy, and finally and quite differently, as the product of a
self-validating, monistic ethos which registers the tensions deriving from a bourgeois
problematic.
I would contend that several of the most illuminating of recent accounts
succeed by actually subordinating the ostensible argument of the tract to the
Abbe Blum, The Authors Authority: Areopagitica and the Labour of Licensing, in Re-
membering Milton: Essays on the Texts and Traditions, edited by Mary Nyquist and Margaret W.
Ferguson (New York and London: Methuen, 1988), 77. First published in 1987.
74 Thomas N. Corns
identification of some larger ideological appeal. Thus, in a radical celebration

of workers by hand and brain, Michael Wilding sees, running throughout the
Areopagitica, a structural contrast between the dignity of labour, manual and
intellectual, and its opposite, the lazy, loitering easy life readily imaged in the
beneficed clergy or Roman church. For Stanley Fish, in classic Fishean mode,
the tract becomes at once an emblem and a casualty of the lesson it teaches, the
lesson that truth is not the property of any external form, even of a form that
proclaims this very truth, and a (self-consuming) emblem at that. Sharon
Achinsteins Habermasian reading sees the tract as advocacy for a redefinition
of the appropriate arena for debate and a new engagement of the private
reader in the processes of civic decision-making and discussion; it constitutes
a significant moment in the conceptualization of the public sphere. For David
Norbrook, as he works to establish the early history of secular republicanism
in England, this is Miltons major contribution towards the celebration of
the public sphere, imperfectly simulating a classical Athenian form, and
calling for a recovery of the political potential of Greek democracy. Rather
against the trend, my intention is to return to the narrow, surface argument,
and to come at its apparent inconsistencies somewhat differently. I shall not
defend its polemical ingenuities, as once I did, because, frankly, they are not
that ingenious; most modern readers, I suspect, see through them readily
enough. But I am reluctant to attribute simple incompetence to a tract that
contains some of Miltons most brilliantly figurative prose, and which, quoted
selectively, anticipates with a resounding magniloquence the principles of
western liberalism articulated by John Locke and inscribed in the American
constitution. What, then, is going on inside Areopagitica?
2
Answering the question is helped by a careful consideration of the case
of Roger Williams, whose Bloudy Tenent, of Persecution, for cause of Con-
science (1644) caused him both in his own age and in ours to be associated
Michael Wilding, Miltons Areopagitica: Liberty for the Sects, Prose Studies 9.2 (1987),
738, p. 17.
Stanley Fish, Driving from the Letter: Truth and Indeterminacy in Miltons Areopagitica,
in Nyquist and Ferguson, Re-membering Milton, 243, 248.
Sharon Achinstein, Milton and the Revolutionary Reader (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1994), 58.
David Norbrook, Writing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics, 16271660
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 11819, 129.
Thomas N. Corns, Uncloistered Virtue: English Political Literature 16401660 (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1992), 5560.
with Milton. Milton criticism almost habitually contrasts the limitations

on toleration proposed by Milton with the perfect toleration advocated by
Williams. Most recently, for example, Barbara Lewalski draws attention to
his exclusion of Roman Catholicism, [u]nlike Roger Williams who proposed
complete religious toleration, a constraint she, no doubt correctly, links to
English anxieties about the assault on Protestantism launched in the Thirty
Years War.
Among contemporaries, Williams and Milton shared a brief notoriety, in
which the latters Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643, 1644) was linked
with The Bloudy Tenent. Thus, for example, Ephraim Pagitt declared that
extremists preach, print, and practise their hereticall opinions openly: for
books, vide the bloody Tenet, witness a tractate of divorce in which the
bonds are let loose to inordinate lust. Of course, both tracts are subject to
tendentious and hostile representation. Ann Hughes has made a meticulous
study of the work of another heresiographer, Thomas Edwards, who also
attacks both Williams and Milton. She identifies in the middle years of the
1640s the formation of what she terms the Presbyterian mobilization against
extremer Puritans, inspired by the belief that the main danger to orthodox
Presbyterian reform came from religious radicalsoften described as the
white devils promulgating errors on the right handwho campaigned
for toleration, rather than the black devils, the profane people who resented
godly discipline and Calvinist preaching. Milton and Williams both served
unwillingly and perhaps inadvertently the ends of that mobilization, since
they could be represented as characterizing in extreme form white devilry as
pursued by dangerously misguided intellectuals, in Miltons case leading to
libertinism and promiscuity, in Williamss to the prising open of a Pandoras
box of heretical dangers.
Williams and Milton may well have met already outside the proxy
connections in the pages of heresiographies. They were Cambridge contem-
poraries, overlapping from 1625 to 1628, though at different colleges. Lewalski
and Francis Bremer both postulate an acquaintance during Williamss time
in London in 16434. Certainly they were in each others company during
Williamss second return to England in 16514. Williams taught Milton
Barbara K. Lewalski, The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography (Oxford: Blackwell,
2000), 191.
Ephraim Pagitt, Heresiography: or, A description of the Heretickes and Sectaries of these
latter times (London, 1645), quoted in The Life Records of John Milton, ed. J. Milton
French (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 194958), 2.127; see also 122,
143, 171.
Ann Hughes, Gangraena and the Struggle for the English Revolution (Oxford: Oxford
Lewalski, Life, 180; Francis J. Bremer, Williams, Roger (c.16061683), DNB.
76 Thomas N. Corns
Dutch, useful to a diplomatic civil servant (or possibly German, useful for a
controversial theologian) in return for other language instruction. Miltons
own positions on the issues of toleration and on the total separation of the
church and state certainly moved close to Williamss own in the late 1650s.
In 1644, however, Williams had three clear advantages over Milton as he
approached these topics. He had actually founded and run a civic society,
albeit the puny new colony of Rhode Island, whereas Milton had, perhaps,
run a very small private school. He also knew far better than Milton the
authoritarian aspirations of those Puritans who wished to remain members
of the Church of England and to reform it to their own agenda. The New
England non-separating congregationalists (we shall turn to issues of church
government shortly) dominated the Massachusetts Bay colony, from which
he had been forced to flee through winter snows, taking refuge with a tribe of
native Americans (Bremer). Milton was still writing to defend Smectymnuus,
the presbyterian anti-prelatical propagandists, in 1642, and may well have
been surprised by the vehemence with which presbyterians and those broadly
aligned with them attacked his divorce publications. Williams knew his
enemies; Milton probably did not. The political poems he penned but did
not publish in the mid-1640s suggest a bewilderment that Men whose life,
learning, faith and pure intent / Would have been held in high esteem with
Paul (among whom he surely numbers himself) were pilloried in print as
heretics; moreover, as the line When straight a barbarous noise environs me
suggests, the suddenness of the presbyterian mobilization had caught him off
guard (On the New Forcers of Conscience, ll. 910, CSP 299; Sonnet XII,
l. 3, CSP 297, my italics).
Finally, Williams had a defined and coherent soteriology which accorded
well with his arguments on toleration. Carrying his strict Calvinism to its
relentless conclusion, he observed no general advantage in proselytizing in
print: the Holy Spirit would select those who were to be saved, and would
select the human agency by which conversion would occur, irrespective of
human choice, planning or understanding. Other strict Calvinists, in America,
Scotland, England, and continental Europe, believed there was an obligation
to restrain and govern the reprobate through an alliance of ministers and
magistrates. Williams preferred wholly to resign the spiritual life of citizens to
the secret working of Gods determination. Mark Goldie has traced the debt
of Whig tolerationism to the civil war period when A substantial segment
of Protestancy came to believe that priestly usurpation [of civil power] took
Gordon Campbell, private communication.

Gordon Campbell, A Milton Chronology (Houndmills and New York: Macmillan and St
Martins Press, 1997), 155.
not one but three forms: prelatical and presbyterial as well as popish.
Williams anticipated that trend, and perhaps was the first to extend suspicion
of priestcraft to congregational Independency.
The issue emerged clearly in his Christenings make not Christians, published
in 1645, in which he explains why he did not convert native Americans, among
whom he had lived and whose language he had learnt. His explanation, in a way
characteristic of Williamss dialectic in The Bloudy Tenent, is both practical
and spiritual. Indeed, he has written the first guide to a native American
language, his Key into the Language of America (London, 1643), but that level
of knowledge scarcely permits one to discourse in matters of Heaven. His
assessment is fair enough. A Key broadly anticipates the form of a Berlitz
phrase book, with chapters on greetings, numbers, securing accommodation,
the parts of the body, and so on, though with additional meditational material,
often in verse, in which native American conduct is compared to that of white
settlers, usually to the detriment of the latter. But the spiritual argument,
stated clearly too in A Key, is that the task of determining when and how true
conversion may extend to the elect among the indigenous people is one which
belongs to God alone:
the Father of Spirits will in his holy season (I hope approaching) perswade, these
Gentiles of America to partake of the mercies of Europe, and then shall be fulfilled
what is written, by the Prophet Malachi, from the rising of the Sunne in (Europe) to
the going down of the same (in America) my Name shall be great among the Gentiles.
(Williams, A Key, sig. A6v )
The millenarian edge implied by the first parenthesis is pertinent as we turn
to The Bloudy Tenent.
Williams plainly knew that diverse religious groups could peacefully coexist
in a state in which the civil magistrate is not empowered to enforce orthodoxy.
They did so in Rhode Island, which had already admitted to live among
Williamss followers a radical Arminian group, expelled from Massachusetts
Bay. It would continue to do so, and in due course provided shelter for
other groups persecuted elsewhere in New England. Williams had worked out
that crimesTreasons, Rebellions, Massacres, and so oncould be treated
simply as civil offences even if their motivation were religious and based on
the free exercise of conscience. He contended that the civil law need interest
itself in religious belief and practice (as opposed to civil disorder motivated by
religious belief) in order to ensure that no persons, Papists, Jewes, Turkes, or
Mark Goldie, Priestcraft and the Birth of Whiggism, in Nicholas Phillipson and Quentin
Skinner, eds., Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1993), 216.
Roger Williams, Christenings make not Christians (London, 1645), 18.
78 Thomas N. Corns
Indians be disturbed at their worship, (a thing which the very Indians abhor
to practice toward any) (Bloudy Tenent, 139). With the confidence of an
experienced political leader, he could advance the argument that toleration
secures peace and stability, while persecution for cause of conscience breeds
discord:
Yea and for the generall good of the whole world, the field it selfe, which for want of
this obedience to that command of Christ, hath beene and is laid waste and desolate,
with the fury and rage of civill War, professedly raised and maintained (as all States
professe for the maintenance of one true Religion (after the patterne of that typicall
land of Canaan) and to suppresse and pluck up these Tares of false Prophets and false
Professors, Antichristians, Heretickes, & c. out of the world.
Hence illae lachrymae: hence Germanies, Irelands, and now Englands teares and
dreadfull desolations, which ought to have beene, and may bee for the future (by
obedience to the command of the Lord Iesus, concerning the permission of Tares to
live in the world, though not in the Church) I say ought to have beene, and may bee
mercifully prevented. (Williams, Bloudy Tenent, 856)
Williams briskly anticipates John Morrills influential contention that The
English civil war was not the first European revolution: it was the last of the
Wars of Religion. Williams looks at the recently started conflict and places
it in succession to the Irish rebellion of 1641 and the horrors of the Thirty
Years War.
The passage also shows his scepticism about the state-founding optimism
of John Winthrops Massachusetts colony. He denies the claim that the
Israel of the Old Testament provides the type on which a modern Puritan
commonwealth can model itself, along with the contingent assertion that
the religion of the state should be pervasive and supported by the action
of the civil magistrate. Typology is at the heart of the protracted debate
between John Cotton, the leading theologian of Winthrops Massachusetts,
and Williams, which reached its climax in The Bloudy Tenent. As Emory Elliot
notes, Williams maintains a conservative position on the use of types, arguing
that the only valid reading of Old Testament types is as foreshadowings of
New Testament antitypes. In so doing, Williams seeks to turn off the energy
feeding Winthrops Puritan experiment, which it drew from its own sense of
founding a new Jerusalem on American shores.
Instead, Williams offers a different kind of millenarianism, of a more
sombre kind. Most early modern tolerationist arguments at some point draw
John Morrill, The Nature of the English Revolution (London and New York: Longman,
1993), 68.
Emory Eliot, New England Puritan Literature, in The Cambridge History of American
Literature, vol. i: 15901820, edited by Sacvan Bercovitch (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1994), 198.
on Christs parable of the wheat and the tares (Matthew 13), which suggests
that deviant elements should be left without state intervention till the two
groups are separated at the great reaping when Christ returns in judgement.
Williams alludes to it frequently, as in the passage cited above, and he opens
The Bloudy Tenent by reprinting a statement from an earlier persecuted
tolerationist, the first sentence of which cites the parable. Winthrop and his
associates saw themselves as establishing, in his frequently quoted phrase, a
city on the hill, a millenarian state in which the saints could live in holiness
together. Williams does not allow this. For him, the book of Revelation clearly
indicates that the millennium is to be ushered in by pandemic devastation,
when the glorious white Troopers (Rev. 19) shall in time be mounted (Bloudy
Tenent, 117). Gods decisions about who may be saved cannot be understood
or influenced, and any supposedly godly state is temporary, subject in due
course to the general destruction awaiting the world, and of unknowable
spiritual status. Just possibly, a pious society may providentially be reserved
till the end of all things. He offers that as an uncertain prospect to revolutionary
England, if this Nation shall turne from that violent persecuting or hunting
each of other for Religion sake (Bloudy Tenent, 243). Were such benevolence
developed, it would in civil terms avoid the brutality of persecution for the
cause of conscience, but it would not secure salvation for the individual nor
offer an abiding and collective solution under the view of eternity.
3
In 16434 American colonial politics appeared on the London scene, though
it mapped imperfectly on the new ideological formations of England at
war. The Massachusetts Bay colony from which Williams had been expelled
had developed a uniformity of religious practice in which non-separating
congregationalism was confirmed by civil authority and by the structure of
government. As it happened, those Puritans who had settled there in numbers
since the very early 1630s were not, for the most part, advocates of a presby-
terian church government, and they saw no reason for the development of its
complex hierarchies to reform religion and protect its doctrine and discipline.
Instead, without seceding from the Church of England, congregations formed
and observed their own particular discipline. Some were more radical than
others, but as time went on the leaders of the church gradually moved in
the direction of greater and greater uniformity. Civil government closely
mirrored ecclesiastical development: As early as 1631 the franchise was
limited to the members of the churches. In 1635 church attendance was made
compulsory for all, whether members of the church or not. From 1636 onward
80 Thomas N. Corns
the organization of new churches had to be approved by the magistrates and

the church elders.
In effect the New England non-separating congregationalists had achieved
the sort of status as a puritanical and national church to which English presby-
terians, seconded by their Scottish allies, aspired in the early 1640s. Williams
knew exactly where he stood with respect to this American establishment: he
knew with absolute clarity that they were his enemies. His disagreement with
them had both religious and civil components. His Calvinist soteriology and
his own notion of separating congregationalism made him critical of retaining
a communion with the unregenerate majority of the Church of England and
of forcing into New England congregations unregenerate elements that were
unfit to mix with the saints who had chosen to worship together. At the same
time, he disputed the facile assumption that a combination of a gift by James
I to the Massachusetts Bay Company and intervention of a divine providence
had presented the Puritan settlers with the lands of the native Americans on
which to establish their new Israel. Williams saw settlement as part of a transfer
of property from the indigenous peoples to the newcomers which should be
governed by law, by contract and by appropriate compensation. The view
was at once secularizing and subversive; when the Massachusetts Bay colony
banished him in 1635, the first of the four charges Governor John Winthrop
listed against Williams was that he denied the colonists territorial rights.
Just as Scottish presbyterians descended on London to give their advice
on the Puritan reformation of England, so, too, did an influential cluster
of influential divines who looked to the American model of non-separating
congregationalism. In London, theirs was an uphill battle, though some
secured membership of the Westminster Assembly of Divines. Late in 1643
Philip Nye, a promoter of the New England initiatives in church government
though not himself an emigre, together with four other ministers, published
in London An Apologeticall Narration, Humbly Submitted to the Honourable
Houses of Parliament. At this point, English Puritanism started to crack open.
The ministers were of a devout respectability that left them individually
beyond reproach, and their argument was simply for a certain latitude in the
new reformation to some lesser differences with peaceableness (Apologeticall
Narration, sig. A1v ). They are suggesting a limit to toleration, though one
which permits their variations in practice, while excluding others. David
Masson, who writes vividly of these years, suggests that, were it not for their
growing unease about sectaries, the presbyterians would have patted the
Max Sevelle, A History of Colonial America, 3rd edn. (Hinsdale, Ill.: Dryden Press, 1973), 161.
Myra Jehlen, The Literature of Colonization, in Bercovitch, ed., Cambridge History of
American Literature, 76.
Five Dissenting Brethren [that is, the authors of the Apologeticall Narration]
on the back, and said, It shall be made easy for you; we will yield all the
accommodation you can possibly need; only dont call it Toleration.
Possibly, such a compromise could have been achieved, other things being
equal, though the five brethren, and Milton with them, were in the event
overwhelmed by the presbyterian mobilization, designed both to reform the
church on their chosen model and to get the kind of stranglehold on extremer
dissent that the New England congregationalists had achieved in Boston and
its environs.
4
Milton in 1644 was left with all the confusions and ambivalences that
characterized incipient radical Independency. Like Nye, he had assumed
he could be in dialogue with men such as Thomas Young and the other
Smectymnuans, whose efforts they had so recently seconded. But he had
developed, too, an awareness of his own differences from presbyterians, both
in the heterodoxy of his doctrinal position, specifically and explicitly about
divorce reform, and in his perspective on the extent to which sectaries should
be tolerated. Yet he still retained a shared vision of national regeneration once
prelacy was expelled. Areopagitica perfectly embodies those complexities and
ideological fissures.
Unlike Williams, but like Winthrop, Milton apparently envisaged a new civic
foundation on the basis of spiritual regeneration. The vision of Areopagitica
is of a new Jerusalem for the saints to dwell in; for both men, that vision
is as much utopian as millenarian. Winthrops foundation sermon, preached
before his settler party reached land, dwelt on Matthew 5:14, Ye are the light
of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid, an image which
reflected the core of his thinking about the society he and his fellows intended
to establish. For Milton, too, cities of biblical vision are to be equated with
a real and familiar citynot Boston, of course, but London:
Behold now this vast City; a City of refuge, the mansion house of liberty, encompast
and surrounded with his [Gods] protection; the shop of warre hath not there more
anvils and hammers waking, to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed Justice
in defence of beleaguerd Truth, then there be pens and heads there, sitting by their
David Masson, The Life of John Milton (London, 188194; rpt. Gloucester, Mass.: Peter
Smith, 1965), 3.11213.
Darrett B. Rutman, Winthrops Boston: Portrait of a Puritan Town 16301649 (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture,
1965), 4.
82 Thomas N. Corns
studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to
present, as with their homage and their fealty the approaching Reformation: others
as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement.
What could a man require more from a Nation so pliant and so prone to seek after
knowledge. What wants there to such a towardly and pregnant soile, but wise and
faithfull labourers, to make a knowing people, a Nation of Prophets, of Sages, and
of Worthies. We reckn more then five months yet to harvest; there need not be five
weeks, had we but eyes to lift up, the fields are white already. (Areop., YP 2.5534)
Once more the biblical resonances are crucial. Here they point both backwards
to Old Testament Israel and forwards with a millenarian optimism. As Sirluck
notes, cities of refuge were established by the Israelites, under Moses (YP
2.553, n. 236, citing Numbers 35). They are part of the foundation myths of
Israel, and, as such, taking a Winthropian view, they type out the foundation
of Puritan England as a state fit for a new chosen people. Williams, in
contrast, asserts that Doubtlesse that Canaan Land was not a patterne for
all Lands: It was a none-such, unparalleld and unmatchable (Bloudy Tenent,
183). Milton rehearses the notion of Englands own special relationship to
divine providence. Moses had wished all the children of Israel to be a nation
of prophets (YP 2.556, n. 245, citing Numbers 11:29), something that may
imminently be achieved in London. The allusion to an imminent harvest
echoes the words of Christ, anticipating the completion of his mission and
foreshadowing its millenary resolution ( John 4:35).
The concept of London as a new Jerusalem finds its most eloquent expression
in his remarkable analogy between Solomons foundation of the Temple (1
Kings 56) and the work of reformation now under way in the capital, a
project in which the men cryd out against for schismaticks and sectaries
have an integral role: as if, while the Temple of the Lord was building, some
cutting, some squaring the marble, others hewing the cedars, there should be
a sort of irrationall men who could not consider there must be many schisms
and many dissections made in the quarry and in the timber, ere the house
of God can be built (Areop., YP 2.555). Milton conceptualizes the work of
founding the Puritan utopia as a finite onethe building will be built, it will
be finishedbut when it is, it will still admit of diversity within a complex and
artful design: it cannot be united into a continuity, it can but be contiguous
in this world (YP 2.555). In an undeveloped and untheorized way, Milton
seems to be reaching towards a model of congregational independency within
a broadly defined state church, which substantially accords with the New
England model that Williams had rebelled against. Wilding has analysed the
passage about the building of the Temple as an exhilarating evocation of the
dignity of labour (Wilding, Miltons Areopagitica, 1617). Such labour had
literally gone on with a similar frantic energy in Winthrops Boston, as its
people were immediately busy building, fencing, breaking ground, planting,

building roads and bridges and fortifications, for as John Winthrop, Jr., was
to write, they had all thinges to doe, as in the beginninge of the world
(Rutman, Winthrops Boston, 40). But London, too, had seen recent and
concerted expenditure of human effort in the reinforcement of its defences
through the construction of an outer defence of earthworks. Puritan utopias
are won by the sweat of the brow as well as the efforts of the brain.
But Areopagitica shows a pervasive uncertainty and some confusion about
the stage the new reformation had reached and about the intentions of those
who were driving it. Like Nye and his associates, Milton tries to talk to
presbyterians and their supporters, those who controlled the Assembly of
Divines and the Long Parliament; he persistently speaks the language of we
and us, as though he and they were still comrades, as in his anti-prelatical
campaign of 16412. Milton, however, has gone a lot further than Nye down
the road to presbyterian censure and ostracism. His first divorce tract placed
him in that most difficult of polemical situations by identifying him as an
egregious example of libertine heterodoxy. From there, surely, there was no
way back into dialogue.
But still he tries. He even vouchsafes a rare attack on Jacobus Arminius. I
have argued elsewhere that Miltons assault on prelacy was distinguished from
the typical Puritan discourse of the early 1640s by its reticence on points of
doctrine in general and on the Arminianism of Laudian churchmen, and I have
attributed this to his own nascent Arminianism, which can be identified even
in works written before Lycidas. Somewhat gratuitously, Milton observes
in Areopagitica, the acute and distinct Arminius was perverted meerly by the
perusing of a namelesse discours writtn at Delf, which at first he took in hand
to confute (Areop., YP 2.51920). Of course, as English Puritan criticism
of Arminius goes, this is tepid to the point of deference: Arminianism was
routinely confused with Catholicism and the controversy over Arminianism
and predestination was inextricably bound up with fears of Catholicism and
the question of the Church of Englands relations with Rome. Milton
chooses to offer up the anecdote, as if to reassure his target readers, somewhat
disingenuously perhaps, of the soundness of his own orientation.
Another, more pervasive stratagem shows him hanging on to the disap-
pearing coat-tails of presbyterianism: his reiterated distinction between good
Thomas N. Corns, Miltons Antiprelatical Tracts and the Marginality of Doctrine, in

Stephen B. Dobranski and John P. Rumrich, eds., Milton and Heresy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998), 3948; Milton and Presbyterianism, Milton Studies [of Korea] 10.2
(2000), 33754; Milton before Lycidas , in Graham Parry and Joad Raymond, eds., Milton
and the Terms of Liberty (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002), 2336.
Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 301.
84 Thomas N. Corns
books and good men on the one hand and the generality of books and
men on the other (Areop., YP 2.487, 492, 493, 500, 503, 504, 507, 510, 521,
531, 544, 549, 551, 554, 556, 564). It generates a problem that lies at the
core of some of those contradictions noted at the start of this essay. Milton
persistently produces arguments in favour of a general toleration and of a
wholly uncensored press, only to pull back to require freedom for those whom
fellow Puritans would recognize as within the pale of respectability. It marks
the application in Areopagitica of a manoeuvre perfected in The Judgement of
Martin Bucer (1644) and continued in the coda to Tetrachordon (1645), in
which he lines up the opinions of men regarded by the mainstream of English
Puritanism as authorities of impeccable standing in order to demonstrate that
his own heterodoxy falls inside the range of those opinions. If Wycliffe, Luther,
Melanchthon, Erasmus, Bucer and Fagius are renowned men, worthy to be
their [that is, presbyterians and their supporters] leaders (Tetrachordon, YP
2.707) and if their doctrine of divorce approximates to his own, then he, too,
should be accorded the rights to be heard and to be taken seriously. Like them,
he is a good man, and, like theirs, his books are good books.
But, ideologically, Milton seems on the move, towards redefining the
relationship of church and state in ways that foreshadow his later thinking
in, for example, A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes (1659). His
assertion that The State shall be my governours, but not my criticks (Areop.,
YP 2.534) points the way to a separating out of the civil magistrate from
matters of conscience and belief in a manner that Williams could indeed have
approved. Yet the latter in the early 1640s was profoundly suspicious of the
congregational independents as they emerged in England as an alternative to
presbyterianism:
The third, though not so great [as prelatical and presbyterian supporters], yet growing
faction is that (so called) Independent: I prejudice not the personall worth of any of
the three sorts: This latter (as I beleeve this Discourse hath manifested) jumpes with
the Prelates, and (though not more fully, yet) more explicitely then the Presbyterians
cast down the Crowne of the Lord Jesus at the feet of the Civill Magistrate. And although
they pretend to receive their Ministrie from the choice of 2 or 3 private persons in
Church-covenant, yet would they faine perswade the Mother Old England to imitate
her Daughter New Englands practice, viz. to keep out the Presbyterians, and only
to embrace themselves, both as the States and the Peoples Bishops. (Bloudy Tenent,
2001)
Were he to have reviewed the course of English political history from a
vantage point in the mid-1650s, Williams could have congratulated himself,
in qualified fashion, on his powers of prophecy. Successive governments
from 1649 onwards were tolerant of some alternatives to congregationalism,
and congregations which favoured presbyterian models of government were
certainly allowed to flourish, even to generate overarching structures binding

them together into larger organizations, as happened, for example, in London.
Independency did not persecute them. Yet more radical groups were, with
varying degrees of assiduity, hounded, in the case of Ranterism to extinction.
Quakers, too, were spectacularly punished, by local magistrates and in the
sensational trial and torture of James Nayler. In 1649 Milton found himself,
as apologist for the Rump Parliament, solemnly assuring presbyterians that,
though the overthrow of error can be no work of the Civil sword, the regicide
regime would not tolerate the free exercise of any Religion, which shall be
found absolutely contrary to sound Doctrin or the power of godliness (Articles
of Peace, YP 3.324, 325). So who, then, has decided which doctrine is sound?
Milton speaks for a civil government, presumably one that is satisfied that it
may set a bound to acceptable belief and use the civil sword, as a last resort,
to curtail the free exercise of conscience in the case of those outside that
bound. Of course, why it was necessary to defend the state in these terms
and to sacrifice radical sectaries to civil persecution is easily explained as
an expedient for securing presbyterian compliance with the new regime. Yet
Miltons argument in government falls interestingly between the more ringing
and declarative sentiments voiced in parts of Areopagitica and his eventual
emergence, in the Restoration, as a friend of Quakers, a group as harried
in New England as in the Old, and one which was to find surest haven in
Williamss absolutely tolerationist Rhode Island.
Alan Taylor, American Colonies (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2002), 182.

5
Milton, Marvell and Toleration
Nicholas von Maltzahn
John Milton and Andrew Marvell have long been celebrated as apostles of
religious toleration and toleration has long been celebrated as a defining value
of liberalism. Already in their own lifetimes they won some praise for what
they wrote on behalf of toleration, a praise renewed after the Revolution of
1688/9, and sounded variously to our own day. The applause for Milton has of
course been longer, steadier, louder. Yet it is Marvells take on toleration that
proved the more durable, becoming the norm of liberal tradition, especially in
its most influential early modern expression: John Lockes Letter Concerning
Toleration. Marvells is the more familiar liberal perspective that contending
faiths might agree to disagree, or even turn a blind eye on each other, with
religion increasingly construed as a private practice tolerable within a secular
state. This essay speaks first to Marvells place in the emergence of this principle
of non-interference with others beliefs, a negative liberty in his case designed
to secure free-thinking from religious persecution. Milton, by contrast, sees
toleration as committing us to some collective discovery of Christian saving
truth. I shall emphasize his insistence on our obligation to engage with
competing views, in a positive liberty requiring dialogue between believers.
Milton and Marvell have long been claimed for the tradition of liberalism.
My premise is that their parallel careers and personal association have led
commentators in their lifetime and since to collapse important religious and
political distinctions between them. The aim here is to explore how their related
but contrasting examples can enlarge our conception of that liberal tradition.
1
Milton and Marvell found themselves joined in controversy in 16734, when
Marvell twice came publicly to Miltons defence. The year 1673 marked the
beginning of what may be thought of as a second Restoration, when, after the
Milton, Marvell and Toleration 87
liberalizing of church and state that culminated in Charles IIs Declaration

of Indulgence (1672), the Cavalier Parliament then forced the cancellation
of that toleration (March 1673), the royal signature on the Test Act, and the
end of the moderate Cabal administration. With the Earl of Danbys rise to
power, these changes meant the renewal of a High-Church regime harsher
to dissent. Marvell had become prominent as a proponent of toleration late
in 1672, when he supported the Declaration of Indulgence in The Rehearsal
Transprosd. Against him were then gathered what he mockingly styled a Posse
Archidiaconatus, whose attacks on Marvell made much of his friendship with
the notorious Milton, that canting proponent of divorce and regicide whose
blindness was so plainly Gods judgement on his iniquities. In The Rehearsall
Transprosd: The Second Part (late 1673) and in his commendatory poem on
Paradise Lost (c.April 1674), Marvell skilfully defended his older friend.
Their friendship seems to have begun when Marvell sought employment
with the revolutionary government in 1652/3. Marvell successfully cultivated
the relation and Milton, now entirely blind, seems to have been grateful for
the flattering attentions of the learned younger man. The friendship developed
and lasted to the end of Miltons days. The knowledgeable John Aubrey gave
Marvell pride of place among Miltons familiar learned Acquaintance. A
couple of years later, Marvell promised to write his late friends biography for
Anthony Woods collections. Before Marvell met that obligation, he too died,
in 1678. We can only guess at what he might have written. Marvells relation
to Milton had been at first dutiful and admiring, whether in the approach that
won him Miltons letter of reference in February 1653; in the assistance he
offered Milton with the Defensio secunda, it would seem, which followed that
spring; in Marvells lavish thanks and praise for that work in the spring of 1654,
when the great Milton made sure to send a copy of the new publication to the
menial Marvell; in his circulation of Miltons work when in Saumur in 1656.
But in his service to the House of Cromwell, and then in his fellow-service as a
secretary for foreign correspondence in 1657 to 1660, Marvells independent
direction may be surmised.
Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Aubrey 8, f. 63v .

Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Wood F39, f. 296r .
Nicholas von Maltzahn, An Andrew Marvell Chronology (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2005), 38, 41, 424, 4659. That it was the Defensio secunda with which Marvell helped Milton,
rather than Eikonoklastes (as Anne Sadleir reported, Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.5.5), is
my inference from Miltons seeming only newly familiar with Marvell in February 1652/3; from
the Defensio secunda being the work Milton had in hand that spring before Marvells recorded
employment in Eton as William Duttons tutor; from Miltons sending Marvell a copy at its
publication; from Miltons needing no assistance with Eikonoklastes because in 1649 he still had
his sight and the publication was in English; and from the exceptionally contradictory allegiances
the earlier involvement would require of Marvell in the summer of 1649.
88 Nicholas von Maltzahn
The change is conspicuous in Miltons and Marvells diverging responses

in 16589 to the government of Richard CromwellMilton more distant,
Marvell ever closer the centre of powerand in their very different fortunes
when the army then restored republican power in the spring and summer
of 1659. Marvell now lost ground even as Milton seems better to have
been trusted by the new-old parliament and its council, not least the again
influential Sir Henry Vane, bitter republican rival in Hull to Marvell the
Protectoral candidate in the parliamentary election of January 1658/9. The
facts of their careers at that date have been misleadingly reportednote, for
example, Marvells tellingly rough ride in the Whitehall office shuffle of the
summer of 1659 (von Maltzahn, Marvell Chronology, 58)in a way that
has obscured the pronounced difference in their fortunes. But whatever their
political differences, their friendship endured the Restoration and may well
have been strengthened by it. Marvells scrutiny in Parliament of Miltons
excessive prison fees (December 1660) shows some lasting commitment, as
does the intermittent evidence of Marvells association with Milton thereafter.
He was familiar enough with Miltons Jewin Street household (16613)
later to recall Samuel Parkers presence there. After Marvells return from
Russia (he was with the Carlisle embassy from the summer of 1663 to
January 1664/5), they kept up their friendship, as appears from Marvells
familiarity with Paradise Lost before its publication in October 1667 (attested
by the allusions in Last Instructions, dated 4 September 1667) and from
his later report that, by chance, he had not seen Milton for two years
before The Rehearsal Transprosd, which after I undertook writing, I did
more carefully avoid either visiting or sending to him, least I should any way
involve him in my consequences (von Maltzahn, Marvell Chronology, 63,
978, 113).
Strong as the friendship was, it did not require agreement on all matters.
On the question of religious toleration, for example, Milton and Marvells
interventions in 16678 articulate very different views. I have elsewhere
explored the relation of Miltons publication of Paradise Lost to the politics
of 1667, both his bringing it to the press, probably in January or early
February in a season of penitence after the calamities of plague, fire, war,
Vane had been angered by Marvells election as MP from Vanes seat in Hull ( January
1658/9), unfairly owing to the practices of some and the Influence of Court Party, Hull City
Archives, Borough Letters, 635 (10 May 1659).
Compare Pierre Legouis, Andrew Marvell: Poet, Puritan, Patriot, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 1968), 117.
The Prose Works of Andrew Marvell, ed. Annabel Patterson, Martin Dzelzainis, Nicholas von
Maltzahn, and Neil Keeble, 2 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 1.417. Hereinafter
cited as Marvell, PWAM.
and economic recession, and then the epic appearing in print just as renewed
calls for toleration greeted the meeting of Parliament in October 1667.
His Protestantism remained uncompromising and apocalyptic. Marvells
much suppler tactics show in Last Instructions and more clearly still in
his interventions in Parliament that winter. There, seeking to circumvent
the Cavalier House of Commons, he favoured Charles IIs use of royal
prerogative to achieve some better Union and Composure in the minds of
[his] Protestant Subjects in Matters of Religion. For Marvell and others,
this meant the king imposing a wider Comprehension in the English church.
Marvells kindness to Presbyterianswith his Presbyterian friend Philip, Lord
Wharton, he was prepared to encourage Charles II to exert the Power inherent
in You in Ecclesiasticall affairs by the Prerogative annext to Your Imperiall
Crownwas not shared by Milton, as we shall see. At the beginning of the
Cabal administration, with the High Church in retreat, Marvell was eager to
work with the powers-that-be, whether the King or the Lords, to achieve a
more comprehensive Church of England than the House of Commons would
contemplate. Where Marvell favoured a more comprehensive but still national
church, Milton early and late decried the very institution of a national church
and the interference of the civil power in ecclesiastical causes.
The difference between Milton and Marvell is more apparent still in 1673.
It also found recognition at the time. Whatever the bitter prejudice of the
Posse Archidiaconatus, which was quick to collapse any distinction between
the two, the judgement now in another quarter was that Milton and Marvell
were indeed quite distinct. In the year of the Indulgence, the Catholic Earl
of Castlemaine recognized that The Rehearsal Transprosd extended toleration
even to his own religion, and accordingly celebrated it and its witty, Masculine
and most judicious Author. His response to Marvells tract was one of the
first in print, and the first to be entirely positive, whereas towards Milton,
Castlemaine displays only unremitting hostility, perceiving the strict limits to
Nicholas von Maltzahn, The First Reception of Paradise Lost (1667), Review of English
Studies 47 (1996), 47999. The February date is suggested by Simmons then also having Miltons
Accedence commenced grammar to hand, which he needed to clear with the Stationers
Company (5 Feb. 1667) since it might infringe on their monopoly on Latin grammars (London,
Stationers Company, Court Book D, f. 127v , and also Waste Book 166168, f. 110v ); the
licensing of the epic allowed Milton to contract with Samuel Simmons for its publication, 27
April 1667.
Journal of the House of Lords, n.d. 12.181.
Nicholas von Maltzahn, Andrew Marvell and the Lord Wharton, The Seventeenth Century
18 (2003), 2567. In 1670, Marvell again shows an interest in the Lords efforts to qualify the
Conventicles Bill with a reserving clause for his Majestys ancient prerogative in all Ecclesiasticall
things, Andrew Marvell, Poems and Letters, 3rd edn., ed. H. M. Margoliouth and P. Legouis, 2
vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 2.104.
Roger Palmer, Earl of Castlemaine, A Full Answer and Confutation ([Antwerp], 1673), 10, 19.
Miltons ecumenism even in Of True Religion (1673). And when Marvell a

few years later published An Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary
Government, there is a notably antic quality to the character of popery to
which that tract turns after its constitutionalist introduction. Moreover, it
makes that turn with an odd syntactic lurch, as if this whole character were
but another passage of separate origin available for this assemblage (Marvell,
PWAM 2.209, 227). Sharp as the wit is, it is still wit, and marks a hostility
more against the Court of Rome than the Church of Rome, and most of
all against France. To recognize the lesser animus of Marvells Account only
requires comparison of that work with the much flatter denunciations of
popery from his contemporaries, or with the fiercer logic of Miltons Of True
Religion. Moreover, the Hobbesian logic of Marvells position, especially in
The Rehearsall Transprosd: The Second Part, has been tellingly contrasted with
Samuel Parkers thinking:
Hobbes had made effective political authority a consequence of the decisions of
self-interested individuals; his sovereignty was artificial and man-made. Parker was
claiming, in a more conventionally Scholastic fashion, that political authority was a
divinely-willed consequence of mans natural sociability. Individuals were naturally
born into societies, and under government.
Marvells Hobbesian regard for the royal prerogative in matters of religion,

whether in 1668 or in 1673, remained profoundly at odds with Miltons
distrust of any royal supremacy. As John Aubrey knew, even though Milton
acknowledged Hobbes to be a man of great parts, a learned man[,] Their
Interests and tenets were diametrically [opposite,] did run counter to each
other. This was a fundamental difference. More generally, it marks Marvells
prose of the 1670s as distinct from Miltons example, even as he was in some
part taking up the mantle that had fallen from Miltons shoulders. Once more
a poet with flair for lyrical and also satirical poetry was turning to works of
his left hand. But Marvells emphases are different, and his style still more
so. Miltons high style, which controversialists like Samuel Butler found so
vulnerable to their attacks, was now replaced by a coffee-house style of a-la-
mode raillery more alert to competing interests, and backed by a Hobbesian
conception that politics and even religion were interest-driven and in need of
sovereign administration.
Martin Dzelzainis, Miltons Of True Religion and the Earl of Castlemaine, The Seventeenth
Century 7 (1992), 5369, 64, and Dzelzainis, Marvell and the Earl of Castlemaine, in Marvell
and Liberty, ed. Dzelzainis and Warren Chernaik (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), 290312, 303.
Jon Parkin, Liberty Transprosd: Marvell and Samuel Parker, in Marvell and Liberty, ed.
Dzelzainis and Chernaik, 26989, 274.
Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Aubrey 6, f. 63v .
2
What then was Marvells religion that it had need of comprehension in an
English national church or even toleration? Marvell is well-known for his
hostility to High Church pretensions, which have been presumed to follow
from Presbyterian allegiances as expressed in his satires and prose works of
the Restoration. About this Marvell we know much, or think we do. Some
fifteen years ago Willie Lamont described The Religion of Andrew Marvell as
a moderate Presbyterianism of the kind associated with the major moderate of
the day, Richard Baxter, which in the Restoration sought Comprehension in a
national church, this in disagreement with the Independents who insisted on a
wider toleration. This was the so-called Baxterian middle way, which Lamont
styled a very clearly defined wing of Protestant nonconformity. Against the
interpretive uncertainties in which Marvells literary critics have long revelled,
the historian Lamont confidently proposed that we can learn what Andrew
Marvells religion is, especially by focusing on Marvells Short Historical
Essay (1676) and the Remarks upon a Late Disingenuous Treatise (1678).
Seeming to support Lamonts argument was my later discovery of Marvells
long cooperation with that important Presbyterian, the Lord Wharton, from
1660 to the end of Marvells life. Their shared purpose emerges in Marvells
conspicuous parliamentary support in the fall of 1660 for the Worcester House
Declaration, where the king favoured liberty of conscience, and continues to
his later parliamentary intervention in the spring of 1677 against the Bishops
Bill, which legislation sought to strengthen the episcopal hold on late Stuart
politics. Lamonts claims for Marvells religion have been skilfully elaborated
by Neil Keeble in editing Marvells last tract from 1678, the Remarks upon a
Late Disingenuous Treatise.
William Lamont, The Religion of Andrew Marvell: Locating the Bloody Horse , in The
Political Identity of Andrew Marvell, ed. Conal Condren and A. D. Cousins (Aldershot: Scolar
Press, 1990), 13556, 151, 137. Among those too ready to take Lamont at his word, see von
Maltzahn, Andrew Marvell and the Lord Wharton, 252, 260.
Their association may already inform Marvells part in the debate on settling religion, 16
July 1660, where he sought with others to forestall further separate debate on church discipline,
thus supporting at most an episcopal church without deans and chapters (Oxford, Bodleian
Library, MS Dep. f. 9, 79v [Seymour Bowman parliamentary diary]); Wharton listed Marvell
among his parliamentary frends in 16602, and a few years after Marvells death might still
recall him with affection as a friend deceased: von Maltzahn, Andrew Marvell and the Lord
Wharton, 253, 257, 261.
Journal of the House of Commons, 8.191 (24 November 1660); Marvell, Poems and Letters, 2.6.
Marvell, Remarks, ed. Neil Keeble, in Marvell, PWAM 2.379482. Keeble is also Baxters
biographer (Richard Baxter: Puritan Man of Letters (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982)) and editor,
and has with Geoffrey Nuttall assembled an impressive Calendar of the Correspondence of Richard
Baxter, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).
How far did Marvell need in the Remarks to be endorsing the position
he there defends? Is he agreeing with the moderate Presbyterian John Howe,
or is he just siding with him? Might he there and earlier have instead
been seeking a roomier national churchnot least at a time when a wider
toleration seemed unlikely of political successin which orthodoxy might
prove less confining? And might not his apparent confessional solidarity with
moderate Presbyterians exactly reflect the strategy, described over forty years
ago by the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, whereby free-thinking before the
Enlightenment sought to protect itself against worse oppressions by consorting
with Presbyterianism, or more widely Calvinism? Trevor-Roper memorably
described the widespread phenomenon in which the free-thinking heirs of
Erasmus, when threatened by the Catholic Reformation, made common cause
with their stouter Calvinist brethren, wearing their armour as he had it. In
this view the Puritan Revolution proved retrograde, however, because it so
polarized religious debate and political life. In short, the armour might soon
become a straitjacket.
I cite the Trevor-Roper argument because the Marvell family begins to look
like its living embodiment. This begins with Marvells minister father, the Revd
Andrew Marvell (c.15851641). Marvells father matters to us because Marvell
came in the 1670s to express views that strongly recall his fathers position,
which he plainly meant to honour. The Revd Marvell senior proves a very
interesting case indeed. He was a via media Church of England cleric, trained
in the turn-of-the-century Cambridge that so fostered moderate Puritanism.
By the 1630s, he was caught between a rock and hard place. The rock was
the Laudian church. The hard place was the Hull church and especially its
more radical component, who supported other ministers and lecturers in that
town. Matters came to a head in 1638 when, after a long season of plague
in Hull, the Laudian archbishop in York sought to reform the church in Hull.
The church visitors plainly saw Marvells father as no eager agent of their
reforms because he himself was in need of discipline. Even so, he struck the
York officials as their best means of correcting the more radical church in Hull
(von Maltzahn, Marvell Chronology, 227). It may well be this episode that
the poet Marvell later recalls at Appleton House, where in a Parthian shot,
Hugh Trevor-Roper, Religious Origins of the Enlightenment, in Religion, the Reformation

and Social Change, 2nd edn. (London: Macmillan, 1972), 193236.
We have from Marvell seniors hand a list of complaints against those who challenged his
ministry, Hull Central Library, MS Sermons &c of the Rev. Andrew Marvell (Wilson-Barkworth
volume), unfoliated.
Ronald A. Marchant, The Puritans and the Church Courts in the Diocese of York, 15601642
(London: Longman, 1962), 262; Hull City Archives, Borough Records Miscellaneous (BRM),
no. 166.
turning away from his celebration of Fairfaxs garden, he opposes that place of
Conscience to ThAmbition of proud Cawood Castle, the archiepiscopal
seat nearby, and its Prelate great (Upon Appleton House, 3536, 3636,
in Miscellaneous Poems (1681), 889). Marvell was also proud to invoke his
father in a later season of controversy, as an exemplary minister whose death
before the Civil War and Piety and Learning go far to consecrate his being a
Conformist to the established Rites of the Church of England, as the younger
Marvell was too. But Marvell then adds of his father that he was, I confess
none of the most over-running or eager in those established rites, and we may
assume Marvell too shared in such restraint (Marvell, PWAM 1.241, 2889).
The moderation of the Revd Andrew Marvell followed from habits of
learned free-thinking in the Erasmian tradition. His support for a more
learned ministry in Hull and its surrounds appears from his proposal to start
a perpetuall Library for the Maister at the Charterhouse where he presided.
This good library would distinguish the port of Hull among the towns of the
north and enable its churchmen to deale in matters of Controversy, either to
Confute an adversary, or to establish an irresolute staggerer: this will make
the Schollers in and about the towne, still to live as it were in a Colledge, in
the university, having the use of a library well furnisht (Sermons of the
Rev. Andrew Marvell). He was prepared to dedicate his own books, collected
at some expense, to this end. That his interests extended to Socinianism is
indicated by the presence in the Revd Marvells papers of a translation into
English of the heretical Racovian Catechism, this in his hand, it seems, and thus
the first known English translation extant of that notorious proto-Unitarian
document, one of the most scandalous works of the 1600s. Other of his
writings show that Marvells father was no friend to the Athanasian Creed. He
plainly shared the belief that it was Romish and Popish. One did not need
to be Socinian even in a broad sense to have misgivings about the Athanasian
Creeds elaborate insistence on the tripersonality of Christ as an article of
salvation. But it helped.
My inference is that the moderate churchmanship of the Revd Marvell
and of Andrew Marvell in the 1650s, -60s, and -70s was not designed
to foster Presbyterian orthodoxy in a national church, but was directed
toward emancipating Christian inquiry from institutional constraints deemed
counter-productive to a free-thinking that was learned and pious, whether in
the individual or in the fellowship of believers. From this perspective, feature
Bound out of sequence in Sermons of the Rev. Andrew Marvell.

Quoted is the Socinian Paul Best, Journal of the House of Commons, 4.500 (4 April 1646),
from Stephen D. Snobelen, Best, Paul (15901657), in DNB; but many less exceptional figures
shared the view, for example John Evelyns correspondent, John Beale, as noted in William
Poole, Milton and the Idea of the Fall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 46.
after feature of Marvells life and writings comes further into focus: whether
his reverence for the great Wit of that Erasmian moderate John Hales,
whom he befriended while at Eton (16535) (Marvell, PWAM 1.130); his
parliamentary attempts to forestall the Restoration church settlement in 1660
and to contest it in later years; his relation to the Independent Calvinist John
Owen in the Restoration but also Marvells rejection of the stringent Calvinism
of Thomas Danson in 1678; his peculiar commitment in the Restoration to
getting legislation for burning heretics off the books; his anti-Athanasian
position, which recalls his fathers. He knew he was not alone in his propensity
for rational religion and joked about how readily latitudinarians in the Church
of Englandwheresoever the Inspection of Books is lodgedmight tolerate
the printing of Socinian Books which sell as openly as the Bible (Marvell,
PWAM 1.128). Marvells adversaries in the 1670s recognized his Socinian
leanings, especially in the anti-Nicene Short Historical Essay appended to
Mr. Smirke. Calling an antagonist Socinian was no unusual insult in the
1670s. Marvell retorted the charge upon Samuel Parker in The Rehearsall
Transprosd: The Second Part: No man can tell you truth but he must presently
be a Socinian (Marvell, PWAM 1.396). Yet that the charge against Marvell
might be not smoke but fire appears from the later Socinian republication
of Marvells Short Historical Essay, reprinted to cap a unitarian compilation in
1703, and printed again in a deist collection of 1709.
Moreover, Marvell was also the key figure in his beloved nephew William
Popples intellectual formation. Popple, who after 1670 was based in France
for twenty years, reveals in his writings a fascination with natural religion,
coupled with a readiness to conform to Roman Catholicism in externals. We
should note that Popple was the first translator into English of Lockes Letter
Concerning Toleration (1689). His preface there famously insists on the need
for Absolute Liberty in religion, thus exceeding Lockes own terms. Likewise
in the 1690s, the early deist John Toland repeatedly quotes the most ingenious
Hales was conspicuously lenient in his view of an Arian church in A Tract concerning
Schisme (London, 1642), 10, a tract prized in The Rehearsal Transprosd as well as its Second Part,
Marvell, PWAM 1.1305, 3956; he had immediately been accused of Socinianism in the 1640s,
e.g. Antidotes Against Some infectious passages in a Tract, concerning Schisme (London, 1642).
See for example von Maltzahn, Marvell Chronology, 163, 183; Marvell, PWAM 2.72; Marvell,
Poems and Letters, 2.1923, 199.
Simon Patrick, Falshood Unmaskt (London, 1676), 224; Jean Daille, The Lively Picture of
Mr Lewis Du Moulin (London, 1680), 910.
Andrew Marvell, A Short Historical Essay (London, 1703), gathered into A Fifth Collection
of Tracts (London, 1703); William Stephens, An Account of the Growth of Deism in England
(London, 1709), 339401.
William Popple, A Rational Catechism (London, 1687); British Library, Add. MS 8888;
Caroline Robbins, Absolute Liberty: The Life and Thought of William Popple, William and
Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 24 (1967), 190223.
Mr. Andrew Marvell, praising this great Man as if a model for Toland as
controversialist; Toland was soon to surprise the world with his Christianity
not Mysterious (1696). With Marvells father, Marvell himself, William Popple,
John Locke and John Toland, and then those who later republish Marvells
Short Historical Essay, we follow a path that leads from Erasmian religion,
through Socinianism, toward deism.
When we look at Marvells prose in the 1670s, it is easier to see what he
is against than what he is for. This follows from the defensiveness natural to
the controversialist, who does not wish to give hostages to fortune. We do
know that in the Restoration Marvell conformed to the rites of the Church
of England, at least outwardly, and took the oaths of conformity as required
for his continuation in office as a Member of Parliament. He was also in
the main tolerant of English Catholics, as Castlemaine acknowledged. But
especially in his twin tracts of 1676, Mr Smirke and the Short Historical Essay,
Marvell reveals himself to a surprising degree. He is against clerical power,
hostile to Athanasius, resents the proliferation of creeds, mocks the worldly
interest expressed in church councils. He is very doubtful about the excessive
claims made for the Holy Spirit, whether in the Nicene Council or since. His
references to Socinianism are surprisingly equivocal, as if he meant to extend
the Latitude of Equivocation to himself. He was too skilful an ironist to
be caught out on this. But he is kind to Arius and perhaps even to Arianism;
uneasy only about the clerical interest animating the Arian party.
Marvell also still sees the magistrate as likely to be the best defender of
liberty of conscience, with obedience to the magistrate given pride of place in
the argument of the Short Historical Essay (Marvell, PWAM 2.16871). This
followed from his hopes of Charles II as a supporter of toleration against a
reactionary House of Commons and a House of Lords in which the bishops
sat. By contrast, the excesses of Archbishop Laud are in great part blamed for
the English Revolution, as Marvell develops the line of argument in which
moderate Puritans are seen as normative and the Laudian innovations of the
1630s as a characteristic piece of clerical overreaching. His hopes of the
king led him to sometimes Hobbesian arguments about sovereignty and royal
prerogative in religion. But the royal prerogative was to be exerted for liberty
[John Toland,] A Letter from General Ludlow to Dr. Hollingworth (Amsterdam, 1692), iii;
Slingsby Bethel (attr.), Ludlow No Lyar (Amsterdam, 1692), 7.
See esp. Marvell, PWAM 2.1921, 723, 75, 92, 1345, 144.
See esp. Marvell, PWAM 2.65, 76, 78, 823.
See esp. Marvell, PWAM 2.136, 1402, 150.
This version of recent English church history had been promoted in The Rehearsal
Transprosd and its Second Part (1672, 1673), but is again the subtext in the Short Historical Essay
(esp. Marvell, PWAM 2.1289, 156, 160).
of conscience, understood by Marvell as non-interference in others beliefs, a

negative religious liberty, where we can agree to disagree.
When we do list what Marvell was for in his twin tracts of 1676, no elaborate
theology emerges: liberty of conscience he promotes, also humble service,
moderation, the modest example of Gregory Nazianzen; fasting, prayer, piety,
candour; a learned and disinterested clergy; peace in the church and the
acceptance of conventicles, or unity rather than uniformity; the Apostles
Creed; and an emphasis on the grace of intensive rather extensive faith,
which spells doubt about complex doctrine like the Trinity, with telling
reservations about the role of the Holy Spirit among the apostles or the
first, Jewish Church. The magistrate is to enforce a moderate and scriptural
worship, in which the chief specification is only that Jesus Christ is the Son of
God, which would men even now believe that one thing thorowly, they would
be better Christians, than under all their Creeds (Marvell, PWAM 2.67, 74). In
this gentlemanly way of disarming clerisy, Marvell the ministers son became
an early and influential type of a significant English Enlightenment figure. As
J. G. A. Pocock has observed, At the end of the road, of course, lay Socinianism,
to which the very logic of discussion seemed to point; but there were many
stopping-places along the way, and the value of discussion was always that it
might remain inconclusive, with Christian charity or enlightenment good taste
taking the place of final commitment. Marvell might especially in his poetic
satires transgress against the politeness later demanded of this gentlemanly
ideal, but even if his Poetick fury was held to misguide his Pen, his answer
to what he variously termed the Prelats Rage or A Bishops Cruelty found
high commendation.
3
Milton was less gentlemanly, especially where it came to Roman Catholics. The
full title of Of True Religion in its boldest upper-case font advertises what
Annabel Patterson observes the limit on Marvells perhaps tactical Hobbesianism, Marvell,
PWAM 1.21213.
See esp. Marvell, PWAM 2.118, 146, 159; 2.50, 1701; see also his intervention in Parliament
on behalf of the dissenters Hayes and Jekyll (von Maltzahn, Marvell Chronology, 120), and later
his regard for Scots covenanters, Poems and Letters, 2.3556.
See esp. Marvell, PWAM 2.71 (and note), 767, 801, 889.
J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, vol. 1: The Enlightenments of Edward Gibbon
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 64.
L. A. Davies, An Unpublished Poem About Andrew Marvell, Year in English Studies 1
(1971), 1001: this anonymous poet sees Marvell enjoying a heavenly reward for deriding A
Princes Folly or Prelats Pride. See also Bermudas (l. 12) and Marvells epigram on Bloods
attempt on the Crown jewels (l. 8).
best means may be usd against the growth of POPERY. Famously he there
derides the very term Roman Catholic as a meer contradiction, one of the
Popes Bulls, as if he should say, universal particular a Catholic Schismatic
(TR, YP 8.422). But his strokes of wit are founded in his certainty that Popery
is the only or the greatest Heresie: and he who is so forward to brand all others
for Hereticks, the obstinate Papist, the only Heretick (TR, YP 8.4212). This
has long perturbed those enlisting Milton as an apostle of toleration, who can
stumble over his restriction, seek to excuse him on this point, or even perceive
some softening of his stance at this late date. But his logic in harshly defying
Roman Catholicism bears emphasis, even as we learn of its part in Miltons
construction of Protestant nationhood. What, after all, was this nation meant
to defend? It was to be a bulwark against coercion in religion so that faith
and works might bring the believer to salvation without risk of interference.
Institutional interference, whether political or ecclesiastical or both, as with
popery, jeopardized the community of believers needed for justification
(saving faith) and sanctification (the resulting worship, good works) to be
complete. Hence the sharp reservation against Roman Catholicism, of which
confession Marvell proved so much more accepting. For Milton, the religious
coercion he perceived as fundamental to that church followed from its
reliance on secular rather than scriptural authority. The Roman Catholic
commitment to a coercive institution prevents genuine communion and
may preempt the saving experience of justification and sanctification. The
Protestant commitment to sola scriptura invites toleration so that the dialogue
of believers may fully contribute to salvation, since God hath promisd by his
Spirit to teach all things (TR, YP 8.424).
Hence Miltons unwillingness to concede to the Church of England the
role in contesting Roman power that was played, for example, by the Gallican
church. This would be to harness religion for nation rather than for salvation,
whereas nation remains for Milton a means, not an end. Conspicuous in Of
True Religion is Miltons refusal to endorse the institutional pretensions of the
Church of England or Presbyterianism. Indeed he construes these as if another
form of popery, for the true Protestant disavowes all implicit Faiththat
is depending on others judgements in faith. Instead, Protestants must on all
occasions give account of their Faith, either by Arguing, Preaching in their
several Assemblies, Publick writing, and the freedom of Printing (TR, YP
8.426). We may recall Miltons construction of the young Jesuss intervention
See Reuben Marquez Sanchez, Jr., The Worst of Superstitions: Miltons Of True Religion
and the Issue of Religious Tolerance, Prose Studies 9 (1986), 2138.
Elizabeth Sauer, Miltons Of True Religion, Protestant Nationhood, and the Negotiation
of Liberty, Milton Quarterly 40 (2006), 119.
at the Temple, which opens into his mothers belated revelation to him of
the Annunciation, as a fundamental instance of scriptural discussion yielding
Christian identity (Paradise Regained, 1.196258). The theological positions
he describes as contributing to the rich mix of Protestant religious liberty,
including Lutheran, Calvinist, and Arminian, are nowhere linked to their
denominational expressions. More theological than ecclesiological, these are
all up for conscientious discussion. Moreover, a demanding rule of charity
prevails against institutional constraints. Where we charitably tolerate (TR,
YP 8.426) and even the hottest disputes among Protestants [are] calmly and
charitably enquird into (TR, YP 8.424), no secular institution is to relieve us
of the obligation to read and discuss scripture as the word of God.
There is no refuge from the requirement of faith and worship. This is a
much more strenuous and public religious observance than that demanded
by Marvells more ethical and private emphases. The theological thrust is
writ large in Miltons De Doctrina Christiana as well as in the studious
biblicism of Paradise Lost. Hence too Miltons resentment of the Presbyterians
ongoing struggle for comprehension in a national church, a far cry from the
toleration he favoured. After Charles II was forced to revoke his Declaration
of Indulgence, a comprehension may well have seemed to Milton a worse
threat to his position than an under- or unenforced uniformity. The difficulty
here is to see Miltons case without too much submitting to the traditional
historiography of Puritanism, which has in considerable part been filtered
through the lens of 1662 and Restoration religious settlement as codified in
the Act of Uniformity, especially the widespread resignation of ministries it
forced on Presbyterian incumbents on Black Bartholomew (24 August 1662).
That historiography has too often collapsed the sometimes very different
interests of nonconformists. Moreover it has in some part cooperated with
High Anglicanism in too much polarizing the spectrum of religious opinion,
the strict binary reflecting the harshness of Restoration debate rather than
contemporary efforts at compromise. Since the eighteenth century at least, it
has puzzled commentators why Milton should in his Restoration publications
remain hostile to Presbyterians. But it should be recalled that Milton had long
shown no kindness to the Presbyterians. His History of Britain, published in
1670, reveals no warming of his regard for them. Its attack on their Westminster
Assembly may have been excised from the History (the Digression) when
it went to the press, but other waspish asides remain, conspicuously that
lamenting the Presbyters of our Age; who like well to sit in Assembly on
Mark Goldie, Roger Morrice and the History of Puritanism, in Religious Identities in
Britain, 16601832, ed. William Gibson and Robert G. Ingram (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005),
1114.
the publick stipend (History, YP 5.116). In the Restoration, when Milton

has been presumed finally to have a common cause with the Presbyterians,
he seems instead to have viewed their sufferings as their just deserts for
obstructing religious liberty, frustrating the English Revolution, and assisting
the Restoration. Martyrs bear witness to the truth, he had often averred, not
to themselves (Eikonoklastes, YP 3.575).
After Of True Religion, even as High Anglican reaction was encouraged by
the success in overturning the Indulgence, Milton saw fit in republishing his
Poems later in 1673 now to include his bitter sonnets impugning Presbyterians
as well as that anti-Catholic cri de coeur, On the late Massacre at Piedmont
(CSP 3423). There might be some doubt as to the target of I did but prompt
the age to quit their clogs (Sonnet XII. On the Detraction which followed upon
my Writing Certain Treatises, CSP 297), but Miltons attack on Presbyterians
was unmistakable in A book was writ of late called Tetrachordon (Sonnet
XI, CSP 308), not least where he sneers at the barbarous dissonance of the
Scots names of members of the Westminster Assembly. But it is the ferocity of
his attack on Presbyterians in On the New Forcers of Conscience under the
Long Parliament that impresses most (Poems (1673), 69; CSP 298300). Even
as the end of the Cabal and the Earl of Danbys rise to power occasioned the
attempt at what may be thought a second Restoration with a renewal of the
Clarendon Code, moderate Presbyterians might still hope to be joined with
Anglicans, thereby becoming for Milton new forcers of conscience under a
new long parliament (elected in 1661 and to be dissolved only in 1679). The
next year appeared the second edition of Paradise Lost (1674), which revision
allowed a more emphatic placement at the beginning of the twelfth book
of the Nimrod passage with its republican thrust, the arrogation of political
power now more conspicuously balanced against Michaels description of the
arrogation of spiritual power in the post-apostolic church, when Wolves shall
succeed for teachers, grievous Wolves (12.508). These forcers of Spiritual
lawes by carnal power are described by Milton as unbuilding Gods living
Temples, built by Faith to stand / Thir own Faith not anothers; moreover
Michael warns that heavie persecution shall arise / On all who in the worship
persevere / Of Spirit and Truth (12.52133). So general is the condemnation
of Secular power in religion that it must be understood as a renewed attack
on popery in the widest sense, as intimated in Of True Religion.
In these Restoration publications, Milton was airing grievances of earlier
origin. His malice against Presbyterians in the late 1640s had been aggravated by
their readiness to compromise with the imprisoned Charles, which backsliding
Milton furiously denounces in the Digression from The History of Britain, in
The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, in Eikonoklastes, and even in the Defensio.
In the Tenure there is no mistaking his animus against those bad men eager to
collude with Tyrants, who only would seeme good Patriots but are concerned
only with the intire advantages of thir own Faction, given as they are to levitie
and shallowness of minde, or else a carnal admiring of that worldly pomp and
greatness from which Charles I had fallen (Tenure, YP 3.1901, 193). The
tract finally cautions Presbyterians not to belly-cheare in thir presumptuous
Sion, or to promote designes, abuse and gull the simple Laity, and stirr up
tumult, as the Prelats did, for the maintenance of thir pride and avarice, lest
they be the Ministers of Mammon instead of Christ, whom God would root
out as he did the bishops before them (Tenure, YP 3.2412). The Tenure
is in great part written against this frustrated Faction of our Adversaries,
which Presbyterians it instructs with arguments from earlier Presbyterial
authorities justifying resistance against tyranny (Tenure, YP 3.195, 198). Again
in Eikonoklastes, Milton denounces the Presbyterian divines, or wizzards, as
no disciples of Christ, but of Iscariot, who had almost brought Religion to a
kinde of trading monopoly, even as they comply with enemies in that wicked
cause and interest which they have too oftn cursd in others (Eikonoklastes,
YP 3.3479). In later advising Cromwell or applauding Sir Henry Vane,
Milton was no kinder to these hireling wolves whose gospel is their maw (To
the Lord General Cromwell, 14, CSP 329); in 1659, he again sought in two
tracts to forestall their success in what seemed a new season of opportunity
after Cromwells death.
Once Milton had arrived at the anti-Presbyterian views expressed in his
sonnets of the 1640s, it is no wonder that his disgust should have deepened
when Presbyterians then sought compromise with Charles I thereafter, even
as that king or tyrant was eventually brought to the block. The question
remains how soon Milton came to this view. When did his reaction set in
against the Presbyterians with whom he had made common cause in the
antiprelatical pamphlets of 16412? The change has long been associated
with the Presbyterians censure of The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, first
published in 1643 (George Thomason dates his copy 1 August), just as the
Westminster Assembly had begun sitting. That work seems soon enough to
have found a libertine audience, as Milton himself reports in addressing the
second edition to Parliament and the Westminster Assembly (Thomason,
2 February 1644); moreover, others had chosen to rail against it out of a
waterish and queasy conscience because [they are] ever crazy and never yet
sound, claiming that injury and licence is the best of this Book (YP 2.2246).
These dubiously conscientious judges may well be Assembly divines, although
Herbert Palmers denunciation of the tract, as an example of the infamous
consequences of toleration, came only in his sermon to Parliament later that
Milton develops the point in the second edition of Eikonoklastes.

year (13 August 1644). The story then is of Miltons bitterness at such
betrayal by his sometime brothers-in-arms.
The more sophisticated version of this story dwells on the revolution
in Miltons thinking where, following the lead of parliamentary apologists
of this date, he reconceives the relation of natural to divine law. Hence
the shock of Miltons encounter with the rebarbative Westminster divines,
unwilling thus to follow him in extrapolating from arguments in part their
own, to which he reacted in part by trying to drive a nationalist wedge
between the Scots Presbyterians and their English counterparts, not least his
Smectymnuan associates of two years before. It would be easiest to follow
Don Wolfe in redescribing the Smectymnuans as Independents, but that
they most definitely are not, even if Stephen Marshall might be many things to
many men. How entirely had Milton made common cause with Presbyterians
in the apparently Smectymnuan beginning of his career in prose? He himself
distinguishes between his writing Of Reformation to a Freind, as its title
declares, or Amicum quendam as he reaffirms in the Defensio secunda,
whereas the remaining antiprelatical pamphlets he wrote for love of truth
(veritatis) and sense of Christian duty (officii Christiani) (Of Ref., YP 1.517;
Second Defence, YP 4.6223). The implied friend is surely a Presbyterian
in view of Miltons comments on the Discipline propounded and this
discipline we desire (Of Ref., YP 1.598, 605), most likely his former tutor the
Smectymnuan Thomas Young. But Milton may have had a more independent
position than has commonly been assumed. In Of Reformation he is not yet
performing the role he assumes in the remaining antiprelatical pamphlets,
where he hastens to defend certain eminent ministers (Ministros quosdam
primarios) whom he was later, when addressing a continental audience,
reluctant to concede were in fact Presbyterians, lest they be confused with the
Presbyteriani quidam ministri accused of collusion with the tyrant Charles
(Defensio secunda, 89, 92; Second Defence, YP 4.623, 626). Of Reformation is
no very Presbyterian work: take, for example, Miltons Aristotelian emphasis
that to govern well is to train up a Nation in true wisdom and vertue, and
Gordon Campbell, A Milton Chronology (Houndmills and New York: Macmillan and St
Martins Press, 1997), 81. Palmer was as English as his name and an exceptionally moderate
Presbyterian.
This was the breakthrough of Ernest Sirluck, for which see esp. his introduction to YP
2.1216, 52; compare Sirlucks MA thesis on Miltons Political Thought: A Survey Preliminary
to the Investigation of the Classical Influence (University of Toronto, 1941) and Ph.D. thesis
Milton and the Law of Nature (University of Toronto, 1948).
Second Defence, YP 4.623 n.
Joannis MiltonI angli pro populo anglicano defensio secunda (London, 1654), 89; Second
Defence, YP 4.6223.
See also 1.546, 606.
that which springs from thence magnanimity, (take heed of that) before he
adds that which is our beginning, regeneration, and happiest end, likenes to
God, which in one word we call godlines (Of Ref., YP 1.571). Its oratorical
splendour does not enough mask its lack of more concerted argument, which
Milton, had he been more Presbyterian, might have found much easier to
generate. As an orator next on behalf of Smectymnuus, he then gained a fuller
case to make.
The question remains how soon, having at first attacked prelates, Milton
came to see that New Presbyter is but Old Priest writ large, as when he later
excoriated these latter-day Pharisees (On the New Forcers of Conscience
under the Long Parliament, 20, CSP 300). In the first version of On the
New Forcers of Conscience he associates them still more directly with
William Prynne. There was more than the Scots intervention to provoke
his disaffection. Recent work by Sharon Achinstein has suggested that Milton
might already in 16412 stand at a remove from the Presbyterians with
whom he is so often associated and that his later break with them may
have followed from his never having so entirely sided with them in the
first place. As Achinstein has it, we need to be more careful in assessing
Miltons allegiances at this date and in doing so disentangle political ends
from political means. Her argument too accords with the Trevor-Roper thesis
that more free-thinking dissidents, including Socinians, broadly or narrowly
construed, and the Erasmian tradition on which they drew, might require
Calvinism, however intellectually reactionary, [as] the necessary political
ally of intellectual progress, that when embattled they might don a Calvinist
suit of armour ( Trevor-Roper, Religious Origins, 2346). Or a straitjacket,
as it might prove. Milton would not be the first to find that the church so
welcoming of the newcomer might prove less liberal once he was within it; the
Smectymnuan association needed soon to be discarded. Although intellectual
progress toward toleration might also develop within Puritanism, Milton
was preparing for longer flight, and on the basis of that preparation was
Richard Strier explores Miltons assertion of the dignity of man in Milton against
humility, in Religion and Culture in Renaissance England, ed. Claire McEachern and Debora
Shuger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 25886.
John Milton, Poems: Reproduced in Facsimile from the Manuscript in Trinity College,
Cambridge (Menston: Scolar Press, 1972), [48]. Prynnes attack on divorce at pleasure won
Miltons reproach in Colasterion (YP 2.7224); as a late hot Qurist for tithes he was still under
the lash in Considerations Touching The likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church in
1659 (567; YP 7.294).
Sharon Achinstein, Before Independency? John Milton in 1641, MLA Convention,
Philadelphia, 2004I am grateful to the author for letting me see this in typescript.
John Coffey, Puritanism and Liberty Revisited: The Case for Toleration in the English
Revolution, Historical Journal 41 (1998), 96185.
capable of rapidly synthesizing fresh positions, as the divorce tracts show.

Moreover, before and no doubt after his Italian trip, Milton was also keeping
other less Calvinist company. For example, David Masson long ago proposed
that it was John Hales of Eton to whom Milton owed his introduction to the
Provost of Eton, Sir Henry Wotton, who cites your said learned Friend, Mr.
H., as one who might join them in dining there, were Milton to make some
farther stay in these parts (Sir Henry Wotton to Milton, 13 April 1638, YP
1.340). Milton seems in his years at nearby Horton to have benefited, as
Marvell would later, from having conversd a while with the living remains of
one of the clearest heads and best prepared brests in Christendom, the John
Hales whom Aubrey judged the first Socinian in England (Marvell, PWAM
1.130). It is not to be supposed that the reticent Hales need be entirely
free with his views in such encounters, but Milton had plainly impressed
that discerning scholar as suitable for introduction to his friend Wotton. An
expansive sense that truth is discovered beyond the customary and orthodox
animates Miltons wide-ranging sympathies.
By late 1644, Milton had faced enough of the reaction to the divorce
tracts, and still more of the Stationers and Presbyterians work to renew pre-
publication licensing, to express his independence from those monopolists of
truth in the memorable terms of Areopagitica. It is the logic of that work he is
reported as having invoked when, faulted in 1652 for having licensed the Latin
Racovian Catechism, he answered yes, and that he had published a tract on
that subject, that men should refrain from forbidding books; that in approving
of that book he had done no more than what his opinion was. There is
a consensus that Milton was no strict Socinian, nor were there many such
doctrinaire heretics at this early date. But his interest in such possibilities
was already active and fearless. In the summer of 1652, Biddles translation of
John Milton, Poems (London, 1645), 71; David Masson, Life of John Milton, 6 vols. (London,
185994), 1.7379.
Aubrey is thus quoted by Masson, who also describes Wottons character and reasonable
theology, Life of John Milton, 1.52831, 5357. In addition to Clarendons elegiac recollection
of such spirits at Great Tew, the milieu of Hales and Wotton is memorably evoked in Hugh
Trevor-Roper, The Great Tew Circle, Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans: Seventeenth-Century
Essays (London: Secker & Warburg, 1987, 1988), 166230.
J. Milton French, Life Records of John Milton, 5 vols. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University
Press, 194958), 3.206.
Dobranski, Licensing Miltons heresy, in Milton and Heresy, ed. Dobranski and John P.
Rumrich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 13958; Michael Lieb, Milton and
the Socinian Heresy, in Milton and the Grounds of Contention, ed. Mark R. Kelley, Michael
Lieb, and John T. Shawcross (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2003), 23483. Dobranski
seems unduly suspicious of the evidence, not least from Aitzema, on the point of Miltons having
licensed the Racovian Catechism; also too ready to take Christopher Hills word for Socinian (or
Arminian) thinking gradually merging with the indigenous radical tradition (147), where
the likes of John Hales are not to be found.
The Racovian Catechisme appeared ( Thomason, 8 July), from Amsterledam

or perhaps somewhere nearer to London. For this work Milton and Marvell
may have shared some regard as early as their meeting by the next February,
1652/3. How soon they were ready to acknowledge its interest each to the
other remains uncertain.
Milton had a talent for attracting younger friends, drawn to him, it seems,
by his compelling freedom of thought, a liberty made the more attractive by
the biblical and classical learning that sustained it. That Marvell was receptive
we know; of how much and how soon remains unclear. But the strenuous
engagements on which Milton insisted, early and late, and which carried him
far in systematic theology as well as epic renarration of biblical history, are at
a remove from Marvells more inflected, intricate, and intimate responses to
such challenges. Their divergent ideas of toleration, which may be construed
respectively as a positive and a negative conception of religious liberty, would
be collapsed when later tradition made of Marvell Miltons secretary and
coreligionist. Miltons poetry of course triumphed and only belatedly did
Marvells encounter any like esteem, if still different in kind. But in the history
of liberalism and the secular state, it is the position on toleration for which
Marvell stands that has prevailed, or has done in the West. That has allowed
an extraordinary freedom of religious inquiry but one perhaps also limited
by the widely agreed concession of privacy, with narrowing expectations of
conscience as an individual matter.
Part II
Philosophical and Religious
Engagements
6
Libertinism and Toleration: Milton, Bruno
and Aretino
James Grantham Turner
Since therefore the knowledge and survay of vice is in this world so

necessary to the constituting of human vertue, and the scanning of error
to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely, and with lesse
danger scout into the regions of sin and falsity then by reading all manner
of tractats, and hearing all manner of reason? And this is the benefit which
may be had of books promiscuously read.
(Areopagitica, YP 2.51617)
Thinking about Milton and toleration has generally concentrated on religious

diversity, the coercion of belief, or the expression of heterodox ideas (within
Protestantism). But questions of sexualityregulation of marriage, sanc-
tions against unchastity, censorship of eroticahaunt Miltons discourse of
toleration. The divorce tracts, most obviously, present sexual discontent as a
crucial issue in the struggle for freedom and the rebuilding of a revolutionary
male elite; they offer practical instances of toleration too, for example by
suggesting that the wifes adultery need not harm the marriage. In Paradise
Lost, again, frank depictions of eroticism are flanked by polemics against those
hypocrites who deny Edenic sexuality or censor it behind shows of seeming
pure. Fiercely as he defends chastity, Milton seems always ready to attack
intolerance in the sexual realm.
This chapter will focus on Areopagitica, where every instance of heterodoxy
is matched by a parallel allusion to sexuality, even when describing scripture.
( The Licensing Order itself said nothing about bawdy writing, specifying the
It would be redundant to document the absorption of Milton into the discourse of political
history; outstanding examples are cited in the editors introduction and throughout this volume.
108 James Grantham Turner
danger as defamation of Religion and government (YP 2.797).) The first step
in Miltons case for tolerating obscene sexual discourseincluding Pietro
Aretino, that notorious ribald of Arezzo, proscribed by the papal Indexis
to demonstrate the futility of censoring not only books but talk, song, gesture,
clothes, even the windows and balconies where lovers might flirt. But the heart
of his argument involves, not the impracticality of censorship or the benefits
of mere toleration, but the positive necessity of encountering unlawful sex in
literary format least for the imagined community of good readers whose
sensibility lifts them above the crowd. In the terms of the famous passage
serving as my epigraph, Aretino provides a key instance of the survay of
vice that Milton identifies as not merely permissible, but so necessary to the
constituting of human vertue (Areop., YP 2.516).
Much of what follows, then, will explore the implications of citing the
ribald, pornographic Aretino in an argument ostensibly devoted to toleration
of all manner of tractates and all manner of reason (Areop., YP 2.517). My
most recent book drew on Miltons theories of personal development to show
the deep congruity between the scandalous hard-core writing of the period
and the educational revolution for which it is justly famous; Aretino played
a founding role in that libertine literary tradition. I already defined what
I called Miltons ethics of confrontation in One Flesh, using key passages
in Areopagitica, and here I develop one of his central ideas: that virtue is
constituted by knowing forbidden sex as deeply as possible without actually
doing it. Aretinos writings, real and apocryphal, therefore offered precisely
those provoking objects or objects of lust that typify the desirable plenitude
of the world in Areopagitica, necessary for the unfallen Adam as much as for
the warfaring Christian (Areop., YP 2.527). Immediately before the passage
cited above, Milton condemns the fugitive and cloisterd virtue of those who
shun the hot, dusty struggle with vice, who fail to engage in triall by what is
contrary and to explore the utmost that vice promises to her followers (YP
2.515). This conception of Aretino as the enlivening contrary, the epitome of
a salty obscenity that is beneficial and even necessary for the advanced reader,
had been strikingly anticipated by another victim of Inquisitorial intolerance,
Giordano Bruno, in the very dialogue for which he was burnt at the stake
in 1600. I suggest in my first section that Bruno provides the essential link
between Aretino and Milton, even though the English rebel never mentions
the Italian heretic directly. Both Milton and Bruno propose that personal
See Defensio secunda, CM 8.134 (supra vulgus, in Miltons explanation of the motives
behind Areop.).
See James Grantham Turner, One Flesh: Paradisal Marriage and Sexual Relations in the Age
of Milton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), ch. 5.
Libertinism and Toleration: Milton, Bruno, Aretino 109
growth depends on contrariety, and that the wise reader must therefore
experience to the full the ribald writings of libertines like Aretino.
The editors of this volume seek to distance themselves from the anachronistic
debate over whether Milton is good/progressive or bad/repressive, and to
develop a specifically literary account of toleration. To clarify this process, I
would like to identify three main ways in which toleration could be promoted.
(1) De jure, it is achieved by campaigning for the abolition of legal strictures
and the repression they encourage. (2) Theoretically, toleration is advanced
by explicitly discussing the concept, developing an abstract language for
that discussion, and formulating general principles that make it the basis of
civilization. (3) But it is de facto or practical toleration that should interest
the literary historian most. By this I mean admitting the proscribed into
the sphere of discourse and representing it in a positive, empathetic light.
Milton campaigned eloquently against repressive laws that affected himself,
particularly after the divorce tracts were condemned, and I will show that
he extends imaginative, practical toleration to a range of erotic classics,
as well as to the varied tractates and reasons of religious controversy.
The benefit of books promiscuously read mutates into the freedom to
read promiscuous booksa freedom that becomes a right when cut off by
unworthy censors.
Miltons use of the language of toleration, on the other hand, is more
limited. Within Areopagitica, the word tolerate entirely lacks the resonance it
acquired in the Restoration. Peevish intolerance is duly mockedfor example
in Plato, who appreciated libertine literature in reality but dreamed he could
banish poetry from his theoretical republic (Areop., YP 2.522). But symmetry
does not apply: intolerance may be condemned, but toleration is not thereby
raised to a universal positive value, and often carries a belittling undertone.
When Milton endorses Lord Brookes charitable view of the sectarians, he
also labels them as misguided and distances them from us, the presumed
circle of intellectuals and leaders. In the divorce tracts he urged readers not
to blame those radicals, because their fervor can be explained as the result of
pathological sexual frustration; now he condescendingly calls on Parliament
to tolerat them, though in some disconformity to our selves (Areop., YP
2.561). Differences among English revolutionaries might be tolerated in
peace because they amount to so little, because they should be defined as what
St Paul called things indifferent (2.563). At the time of writing, however,
England was not in peace but at war, that speciall time when the Temple
of Janus gapes open, the time that confers priviledge on controversy (2.561).
Miltons most endearing plea for toleration is therefore hedged around with
belligerent threats: when it comes to neighboring indifferences it is better
that many be tolerated, rather then all compelld; in contrast, we must
ruthlessly extirpat not only Roman Catholicism, the famous exception, but
anything that Milton chooses to label superstition, impious or evil, against
faith or maners (2.565). In conspicuous contrast, he never suggests that
libertine writing should be extirpated, however gross its offense to manners.
The point of this preface is not to unmask Milton as intolerant, but to
encourage a more complex view of the passions and interests that the issue
of tolerance dredges up. I will focus on the third kind of tolerance, the
practical, and on the sexual and corporeal aspects of reading. Making Milton
a political and intellectual animal need not mean neglecting the sensuous
and passionate. Considerable work has been done on the hermeneutics of
reading and the ontology of books in Areopagitica. I want to put the body
back into this account of Miltons promiscuous reading, and into his furious
intolerance of anything that prevents it.
1. Aretino, Bruno, and the Necessity of Ribaldry

Pietro Aretinothe pen-name meaning Peter from Arezzoappears in
Areopagitica as a test-case for the futility of book-licensing, alongside Petronius
a familiar example of the infection emanating from evil courtiers that infuses
itself into the population despite anything that censorship can do. This stage of
the formal counter-argument (First, is feard the infection that may spread)
begins with a typically aggressive reductio ad absurdum: then all human
learning and controversie in religious points must remove out of the world,
yea the Bible it selfe; for that oftimes relates blasphemy not nicely, it describes
the carnall sense of wicked men not unelegantly, it brings in holiest men
passionately murmuring against Providence through all the arguments of
Epicurus (Areop., YP 2.517). (Note how religious controversy morphs into
carnal sexuality within a single sentence.) Then follows the refutation of a
further unspoken objection:
Nor boots it to say for these [biblical and patristic writers], and all the heathen Writers
of greatest infection, if it must be thought so, with whom is bound up the life of human
James Rovira, Gathering the Scattered Body of Miltons Areopagitica, Renascence 57 (2005),
89. Rovira, like John D. Schaeffer in Metonymies We Read By: Rhetoric, Truth and the Eucharist
in Miltons Areopagitica, Milton Quarterly 34 (2000), 8492, is still largely concerned with
refuting earlier formulations by Stanley Fish and Lana Cable. Thomas Festa, Repairing the
Ruins: Milton As Reader and Educator, Milton Studies 43 (2004), 3563, includes a careful
study of the reading process in Areop. (4657 passim). Markus Klinge, The Grotesque in
Areopagitica, Milton Studies 45 (2006), 82128, continues the anti-Fish polemic by defining
books as daimons or half-creatures (118), but cites Aretino only as a libeller and heretic, not
as a ribald and founder of sexual discourse (102, 126 n. 49).
learning, that they writ in an unknown tongue, so long as we are sure those languages
are known as well to the worst of men, who are both most able, and most diligent to
instill the poison they suck, first into the Courts of Princes, acquainting them with the
choisest delights, and criticisms of sin. As perhaps did that Petronius whom Nero calld
his Arbiter, the Master of his revels; and that notorious ribald of Arezzo, dreaded, and
yet dear to the Italian Courtiers. (Areop., YP 518)
Strictly, Aretino illustrates only the transmission of oral corruption, conveying

filth to the ear of Renaissance princes as Petronius did to Nero, and as Satan
whispers into the ear of Eve to produce inordinate desires (PL 4.808).
Like Petronius, however, Aretino was famous as an author, a classic of
depravity; indeed, his role as a courtier (satirized in his best-known comedy
La Cortegiana) lasted only briefly, while he dominated print culture for many
decades. Arguments in Areopagitica often do double duty, and I propose here
that by implication Aretino also stands as an example of the depraved but vital
discourse that must remain freely available to an elite readership.
Aretino enjoyed a lurid reputation throughout Europe as an author of
erotic practises and discourses, while in the English imagination Aretino was
to sexuality as Machiavelli was to politics. He actually did write dialogues
in the voice of prostitutes (literally pornography), and though his sonnets
on the most explicit sexual engravings of Renaissance Italy circulated only in
corrupt copies, his authentic letter on this exploit was published and widely
read. In urban mythology, Aretine invented and codified every sexual variant,
and several familiar references in Ben Jonsons comedies show how far he
had penetrated the atmosphere. Corvino justifies prostituting his wife to the
decrepit Volpone by contrasting him to:
some yong Frenchman, or hot Tuscane bloud,
That had read Aretine, connd all his printes,
Knew every quirke within lusts laborinth,
And were profest critique in lechery.
(III.vii.5962)
And in The Alchemist Sir Epicure Mammon fantasizes about collecting, and
performing, so many erotic postures that he will make Aretino seem dull
(II.ii.44).
Knowledge of the Aretino-figureand of Giordano Brunocame closer
to Milton when Thomas Carew staged his Court masque Coelum Brittanicum,
the immediate precedent and perhaps antitype of his own A Masque. Carew
dramatizes Brunos 1584 Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante, the very work that led
Ben Jonson, Complete Works, ed. C. H. Herford and Percy Simpson (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1937), 5.78, 319.
to his prosecution and execution. Momus, the presenter of Carews masque,

was probably also suggested by Brunos comedy Il Candelaio, which defines the
necessary, revitalizing function of Momus in terms that anticipate Miltons
argument for confronting uncensored books: ribald mockery provides the
contrario that makes virtue piu bella, manifesta e chiara, more beautiful,
more manifest, more clear; scurrility confirms and reinforces the good in
Bruno, just as in Milton the scanning of error leads to the confirmation
of truth (Areop., YP 2.516). In the Spaccio Bruno explicitly cites Aretinos
pornographic Ragionamenti in order to define a philosophical mode of reading
that converts ribaldry into something like divinity. Following this hint, Carews
Momus identifies himself as the follower of Rabelais and old Peter Aretine.
As I show elsewhere, Momuss scurrilous infusion of bawdy double entendre
contaminates and destabilizes the official doctrine of the entertainmentthe
reformation of a once-libertine Olympus, inspired by the virtuous marriage
of Charles I and Henrietta Maria.
In any case, Milton saw himself as a European intellectual not a Little
Englander, so even without these English sources he must be presumed familiar
with Continental libertine and radical writings. He sought out the amorous
classics as a youth, and on his Italian journey mingled in those free-thinking
private academies whose members were categorized as (intellectual) libertini
and in some cases persecuted or killed for their (sexually) libertine satires.
Though he was less attuned to French culture, Milton could certainly learn
about all the perversions of the libertins from the massively intolerant Father
Franois Garasse, who like Thomas Edwards catalogued every transgression
he could find, and more. To heat up the obscenity trial of the leading libertin
Theophile de Viau, Garasse presents or invents a vast swarming conspiracy of
atheists, priapists, and sodomites; this Jesuit treatise may have given Milton
the image of a huge crowd of sceptics seeking to promote vagabond lust,
such as those sons of Belial who laugh broad at his divorce tracts or the
chorus of foolish tongues who jeer at God for placing Adam in a delicious
Paradise and then allowing him to fall. Garasse denounces what he claims
is a widespread doctrine, that God and Nature put man in the world to
enjoy its pleasures even more thoroughly than the animals do; Areopagitica
insists that many hold a similar opinion, that God is unjust for creating a
Giordano Bruno, Oeuvres completes, vol. i: Chandelier, ed. Giovanni Aquilecchia and Giorgio
Barberi Squarotti, trans. Yves Hersant (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1993), 373.
James Grantham Turner, Libertines and Radicals in Early Modern London: Sexuality, Politics
and Literary Culture, 16301685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 46.
Two examples discussed in my Schooling Sex: Libertine Literature and Erotic Education
in Italy, France, and England, 15341685 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), ch. 2, are
Antonio Rocco and Ferrante Pallavicino, both from the Venetian Accademia degli Incogniti.
libertine Adam then cruelly cutting him off from the pleasure that defines
his existence (Areop., YP 2.527). Milton brought back a manuscript of the
dangerous French-authored libertin tract Heptaplomeres, and in Florence the
Academician Antonio Malatesti presented him with a manuscript of his own
lewd sonnets, evidently responding to the English visitors interests. Moving
in the circles he did, and priding himself on his solidarity with victims of
Catholic intolerance such as Galileo, it is inconceivable that Milton would
not have encountered Brunos as well as Aretinos writings, by repute and
probably in the original.
Brunos embrace of Aretino began in the Explicatory Epistle of the Spaccio,
dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney (and therefore likely to be known to English
literati). He defines himself as a vulgar but free speaker who refuses to
treat as shameful what Nature makes worshipful or cover that which she
reveals openly, deliberately echoing Aretinos naturalistic defence of his Modi
sonnets, in a famous published letter. As Bruno spells out the hermeneutic
principle that draws him towards the jocular mode, the literary equivalent of
the coincidence of contraries that underlies his entire philosophical project, his
focus shifts from authorship to reception. Confronted with serious and jocose
subjects mixed together, the reader must think that all of them are equally
worthy of being gazed upon through extraordinary spectacles (equalmente
degni dessere con non ordinarii occhiali remirati). Value, even dignity, derives
from the readers capacity to synthesize from the entire range of subject-matter,
to remirare or contemplate in repeated wonderment what is conventionally
considered the most abject. And conversely the lewd and talentless reader
can ruin even the most sacred truths: good people can convert the utmost
malignancy into something useful and beneficial, whereas at the opposite pole
i ribaldi can find matter of scandal in the noblest subjectthat is, the
carnivalesque chorus of ribalds who turn everything into comic mockery,
Franois Garasse, La Doctrine curieuse des beaux esprits de ce temps (Paris, 1623), esp.
Book 6, chs. 67. See further my Schooling Sex, 44, 923, and Joan DeJean, The Reinvention of
Obscenity: Sex, Lies, and Tabloids in Early Modern France (London and Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2002), ch. 1.
Spaccio, Epistola Esplicatoria, in Giordano Bruno, Dialoghi italiani: Dialoghi metafisici e
dialoghi morali, ed. Giovanni Gentile, 3rd edn., ed. Giovanni Aquilecchia (Florence: Sansoni,
1985), 551; my translations make use of Bruno, The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast,
trans. and ed. Arthur D. Imerti (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1964), 71 (in
subsequent references the Dialoghi citation is followed by the corresponding page in Imertis
version). Bruno cites Aretino in many other places, but they are outside the scope of this
essay.
like the ribald of Arezzo in Areopagitica or the Sons of Belial in the divorce
tracts.
Bruno assumes, like Milton later, that wicked material becomes the site
of a hermeneutic contest over ways of seeing. The good observer gazes and
regazes through a special optic lens that converts turpitude into philosophical
insight, while the ribald turns everything into obscenity. In what is only a
contradiction on the surface, the philosophical reader simultaneously repu-
diates and embraces the ribald. He establishes the greatest possible distance
from the vulgar but also playfully assumes, and subsumes, the wise folly of
wantonness and the festive acceptance of everythingwhat we might call
the carnivalesque model of tolerance. The ribald, like the scurra, performed a
distinct social function as lewd jester-satirist, and the role could be assumed
in an Attic or Socratic spirit. This was the principle behind the Aretine
character of Momus in Coelum Brittanicum, Carews adaptation for Court
entertainment of one of Brunos most radical dialogues.
Brunos praise of Aretino in the second dialogue of the Spaccio matches and
exemplifies the process of reading recommended in his introductory letter,
the special optics that shift from the ribald to the enlightened perspective.
The adept Saulino is surprised to hear, from Sophia or Divine Wisdom
herself, that the gods public library contains the Priapea, popular romance,
scurrilous poetry, and most notably la Pippa, la Nanna, lAntoniathat
is, the outrageously obscene Ragionamenti of Aretino. Sophia insists over
Saulinos protests that the true philosopher finds these texts weighty and
serious, since there is no reading-matter, no book that the gods exclude,
provided it has some sale or saltiness. Salt in this Priapic/Aretine context
means salaciousness as well as Attic wit; readers familiar with Miltons Sixth
Prolusion and his Defences know how enthusiastically he promoted sales or
displays of bawdy jocularity, provided they were couched in elegant and
urbane Latin (Prolusiones, CM 12.238, 244). The divine mode of judgment
(as opposed to that of the common reader for whom these things are sinful,
or the ignorant scelerati who will derive bad education from them) involves
the aesthetic appreciation of creative mind at play: the gods take pleasure in
Spaccio, 555/74: non e cosa s ria che non si converta in profitto ed utile de buoni; e non e
cosa tanto buona e degna che non possa esser caggione e materia di scandalo a ribaldi.
For ribaldi as a social group, see Richard C. Trexler, Dependence in Context in Renaissance
Florence (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1994), 11626; Milton
combines Scurra and Ribald in one sentence in Animadversions (YP 1.732).
See John Milton, Latin Writings: A Selection, ed. John K. Hale (Assen: Van Gorcum; and
Tempe, Ariz.: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1998), 12, 88 n. 20, 89 n. 77, 93 n.
84, and my Milton among the Libertines, in Christophe Tournu and Neil Forsyth, eds., Milton,
Rights and Liberties (Berne: Peter Lang, 2007), 44760.
the multiform representation of all things, and in the multiform fruits of all
kinds of genius, the frutti moltiformi de tutti ingegni (Spaccio, 6734/15960).
Sophias remark might seem like a facetious digression, but when Saulino
earnestly presses her to exclude books written by infamous, dishonorable, and
dissolute authors she praises their educational value as fruits of cognition
in the highest philosophical language. As Milton would later do, Bruno
couples a vivid practical example of tolerationAretinos rude but salty
dialogueswith a theoretical justification, couched not as a matter of abstract
rights but as an opportunity for personal growth in the reader. Both authors
propose an interactive and transcendent model of reading based upon trial
by what is contrary.
Scurrilous writings, Sophia explains, teach how laughter is set in motion,
how disgust, pleasure, nausea; and in all there is wisdom and providence,
and in everything there is everything, and where one contrary exists there the
other exists to the utmost, each generating the other to the utmostmassime
e luno dove e laltro contrario (Spaccio, 674/160). Already in the first dialogue
she had proposed a full-blown theory of contraries, preparing for this account
of divine reading. Wherever there is contrariety there is action and reaction,
there is movement, there is diversity (Spaccio, 573/901). Laumento e la
perfezione, growth and perfecting, come from experiencing the clash of
passions that include the most powerful erotic feelings: the state of venereal
ardor tortures you, the state of spent lust saddens you, but what satisfies in
this is the transition from one state to the other (Spaccio, 571/89). As later in
Milton, true reading must involve working emotions and not merely cerebral
judgements. The dynamic, mutually maximizing, exchange of contraries
requires il riso, il fastidio, il piacere, la nauseathe full range of passions and
gut reactions from delight to revulsion. It is tempting to discover in Brunos
account of growth and perfecting the core of Miltons argument against
repression in Areopagitica, the haughty assurance that God sure esteems the
growth and compleating of one vertuous person, more then the restraint of
ten vitious (Areop., YP 2.528).
Miltons theories of passionate reading and trial by what is contrary seem,
then, to be powerfully foreshadowed in Bruno. And Bruno, again like Milton,
applies vitalistic criteria to determine the ultimate value of discourse: the
goddess Isis commends the vive voci of those who worship divinity in Nature,
in contrast to the vane fantasie of false, conventional religion. Areopagitica
likewise exalts the goddess Isis as the paradigm of active truth-seeking. Milton
and Bruno both explicitly cite Aretino, as a prime example of carnal writing
Spaccio, 602/109, 778/237; for a fuller account of Brunos theology here, see my Libertines
and Radicals, 45 (which includes an earlier version of the previous paragraph).
bound up with the life of human learning, writing that should not merely
be tolerated, but positively and necessarily embraced as part of ones bold
accustoming or growth and compleating. Both authors establish an elitist
and ascetic morality on the principle that one must know wickedness to the
utmost, emotionally as well as abstractly. Both authors argue for total exposure
to dangerous representations, using many of the same conceptsthe divine
plenitude of the world, the interconnection of contraries, the intrinsic value
of living words even when their subject is notoriously ribald.
2. That notorious ribald of Arezzo in Miltons Argument

for Toleration
With this context in mind, we return to the specific moment in Areopagitica
where Milton evokes the notorious Pietro Aretino. What motivates this
citation, and what work does it do in the evolving treatise?
At first glance Aretino does seem to be marginal to the argument against
book-licensing, a parallel instance of the futility of censorship showing how
wicked ideas flow into the country orally rather than through the print
medium. Thus all the contagion that foreine books can infusea vivid
metaphor of pathological liquefaction that mingles with images of sea-borne
importswill find a passage to the people via the Courts of Princes and
their corrupt Masters of the Revels (Areop., YP 2.518). And this will happen
even if the press is severely gagged and the wickedness is couched in a foreign
language. Oddly, Miltons third example after Petronius and Aretino is Sir
Francis Bryan, a licentious courtier of Henry VIII who presumably poured out
his poison in English, making him tangential to the point being refuted. By
juxtaposing Aretino and specifically English Court officials Milton sacrifices
his argument to the war effort, losing no chance to discredit the Cavalier
festivities of Whitehall. On this local level he may be sniping at a specific
target, the Court masque in which Carew exploited Bruno and Peter Aretine
for tainted royalist purposes. Bryan (identified only by his nickname Vicar of
Hell) seems anomalous in this group, but common sexual associations link
them; perhaps Milton is thinking of Petronius and Aretino as procurers of
lewd fiction and Bryan as the pimp of his cousin Anne Boleyn.
But what does Milton mean by this contagion, poison, or infection?
What is the test-case or chief exemplum on which the fight against censorship
takes its stand? Milton seems unclear whether he is principally concerned with
unorthodox religious ideas or with dangerously arousing sexual representa-
tions. The case of pornography keeps bobbing up just when he seems to be
launching a theological or intellectual point. The Aretino allusion comes in
just such a double-focused passage. Milton is triumphantly defending the

benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read, having just invoked
(or recreated) Spensers Bower of Bliss episode as the supreme example of
moral teaching, and having just declared that the knowledge and survay of
vice is absolutely necessary to the constituting of human vertu (Areop., YP
2.516). He tries to maintain his rationalist focus on human learning and
controversie in religious points, but immediately starts pointing out that the
Bible itself describes the carnall sense of wicked men not unelegantly and
that the Church Fathers transmit our ears through a hoard of heathenish
obscenitiesa weirdly inverted phrase that has our ears traveling through
the sexual world of antiquity described in such detail by Clement and Eusebius
(2.51718). In Miltons short list of dangers presented by the Bible and the
Church Fathers, blasphemy, Epicurism, obscurity, and heresy feature once
each, but carnal and obscene sexuality four times; the modest mention of
the Talmudic Keri or euphemism is also associated with hard-core sexual ref-
erence, as becomes clear in Pro Se Defensio when Milton cites it again to justify
plain-speaking obscenity in his own attacks on Alexander More (Areop., YP
2.517; Pro se defensio, CM 9.110). We must not distort the meaning of books
promiscuously read by automatically supplying the modern, sexual meaning,
but Miltons examples reveal it lurking there nonetheless. Promiscuous in
Miltons later verse might refer only to the mingling of large crowds, but in the
hot-headed Areopagitica it certainly evokes orgies both physical and verbal:
the Spartans might have banished Archilochus for his broad versesa very
rare case of censorship in the enlightened ancient worldbut if so this only
shows their hypocrisy and barbarity, since they were as dissolute in their
promiscuous conversing; whence Euripides affirmes in Andromache, that their
women were all unchaste (Areop., YP 2.496).
In his review of Classical censorship, Milton also stresses the lack of legal
action against opinions tending to voluptuousnesse such as that libertine
school of Cyrene, denies that Ovid was really banished for his wanton Poems,
and explodes the rigid laws of Platos Republic by citing Platos own liberal
taste in erotic literature. Not only did Plato write wanton epigrams and
dialogues himself, but he constantly read Sophron Mimus and Aristophanes,
books of grossest infamy. Aristophanes in particulardescribed as not
only libellous but the loosest of them all, an obvious reference to sexual
licentiousnesswas valued so highly by Plato that he recommended him as
essential reading for the ruler Dionysius. In the early Christian era, Chrysostom
borrowed Aristophaness scurrilous vehemence for his sermons, Jerome
enjoyed scurrill Plautus, Basil appreciated the sportfull Poem Margites
(Areop., YP 2.4946, 499, 523). Milton aligns himself with this alternative,
non-repressive history, which involves cultivated appreciation of a low and
frequently bawdy canon, and his vocabulary should not be interpreted as

negative: in the controversy with More, Milton happily accepted the accusation
of scurrility since Socrates, the wisest oracle, had been called the Scurra Atticus
(Pro se defensio, CM, 9.104; cf. Defence of Himself, YP 4.723). He even seems
to exaggerate the trash[iness] of this classical bawdy in order to savor its
contradictory pleasures all the more, like Brunos gods.
In this context, the dismissive-seeming reference to the notorious ribald
of Arezzo actually conveys a certain prestige. Aretino is ushered in with
Petronius immediately after an august group of Church Fathers headed by
St Jerome, who discover more heresies than they well confute, and that oft
for heresie which is the truer opinion; he is thus placed among foundational
writers from whom sovereign truths might be derived by reading against the
grain. Aretino, Petronius, and Jerome are bracketed together by the phrase
these, and all the heathen Writers of greatest infection (Areop., YP 2.518).
(Heathen, for the Protestant Milton, applied to modern Italians, to those who
write about heathenish obscenities, and even to secular romances by other
Protestants; Sidneys Arcadia, cited in Areopagitica as the quintessential erotic
text that censors long in vain to suppress, is denounced in Eikonoklastes as a
Heathen fiction as well as a vain amatorious Poem (Eikon., YP 3.362).)
This heathen company confirms Aretinos cultural clout, in fact: the Imperial
adviser Petronius represents the ancient world, Henry VIIIs finest courtier
represents England, and between them sits enthroned that notorious ribald
of Arezzo, dreaded, and yet dear to the Italian Courtiers. Though Milton
degrades him with the title ribald he also recognizes the dread that Aretino
could strike. He endorses the Italian writers proud claim to be the Flagellum
Principum, the satyr whose bold sexuality makes him the fearless critic and
Scourge of princes rather than the sycophantic courtier.
Miltons bracketing-act itself hesitates between condemnation and canon-
ization: the full phrase reads the heathen writers of greatest infection, if it
must be thought so, with whom is bound up the life of human learning (italics
mine). Not only does he put the entire concept of infection into doubt, but he
positively asserts that Aretine pornography is bound up with the life of human
learning. The designation is both vitalistic (life) and intellectual (learning).
Brunos Isis had defined living words as the ideal point where the human and
Cf. RCG, YP 1.812 (what the poets of modern Italy did for their country, I in my
proportion with this over and above of being a Christian, might doe for mine).
As Miltons source Davanzati calls Sir Francis Bryan, according to the translation in Areop.,
YP 2.518 n.
This is the aspect of Aretino that Raymond B. Waddington brings out in his important
book Aretinos Satyr: Sexuality, Satire, and Self-Projection in Sixteenth-Century Literature and Art
( Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2004).
the divine meet, and Milton uses a similar life-based imagery for the discourses
he most appreciates. Bound up with the life of learning recalls the famous
definition of good books as the pretious life-blood of a master spirit (Areop.,
YP 2.493). Almost all Areopagiticas metaphors for deep-experiential reading
involve transformations of the living body that refine or concoct low-grade
material into a valuable elixir, antidote, or seed, and all these physiological
tropes tend towards the master-metaphor of sexual arousal, insemination, and
propagationthe effects of not unelegant representation of carnal sense.
Milton rejects metaphors of the unhealthy body (toxic transfusion of body
fluids, feverish infection) in favor of the heat of triall (Areop., YP 2.515),
the tempering of drugs, and the state of alertness associated with procre-
ative arousal. His vitalistic arguments for promiscuous reading set up his
depiction of revolutionary England as a kind of phallic androgyne, piercing
and sinewy, pregnant, puissant, rousing herself like a strong man, not
drooping but erected by the issue of [Parliaments] vertu propagated in
us (Areop., YP 2.551, 554, 5579). The most striking example is his vision
of the canon as a sperm bank where books that contain a potencie of life in
them do preserve as in a violl the purest efficacie and extraction of that
living intellect that bred them, so that their pretious life-blood will not spill
(Areop., YP 2.4923)words blazoned on many a nineteenth-century public
library. Milton seems aware of something scandalous in the image, for he
immediately breaks off to proclaim his innocence, lest I should be condemnd
of introducing licence, while I oppose Licencing (Areop., YP 2.493).
Milton confirms the positive element in his account of Aretino and Petronius
when he describes them sharing with their fellow courtiers the choicest delights
and criticisms of sin (Areop., YP 2.518). This very suggestive phrase refers
not to hostile critiques butas I put it in Schooling Sex to sin evaluated,
selected, and stylishly enhanced by critical intelligence (50). Milton seems
here to cite another dramatic allusion to the mythic Aretino, author of every
imaginable sexual perversion: we recall that the jealous husband in Jonsons
Volpone feared the student of Aretino who has mastered every quirk within
lusts labyrinth, and so graduated to the rank of professed critic in lechery.
Aretinos libertine discourse represents not just life but choice, the central
tenet in Areopagitica, whose ethics of freedom derive from the principle
that reason is but choosing (Areop., YP 2.527). Choicest delights arranged
according to a libertine canon of taste correspond precisely to what is alluring
about the Bible itself, which describes sexuality not unelegantly. Petronius
is the Arbiter Elegantiarum. Milton frequently flatters his presumed reader
as elegant, to establish the elite credentials that unite speaker and audience
against the common crowd; Reason of Church Government appeals to the
elegant & learned reader over the heads of the controversialists, and Parliament
in Areopagitica itself is assumed, improbably, to imitate the old and elegant

humanity of Greece (RCG, YP 1.807; Areop., YP 2.489). Milton describes his
own sexual bantering as elegans or urbanitatis elegantulae licentia (Pro se
defensio, CM 9.112; Prolusiones, CM 12.218); he also used elegantius frequently
in his annotations on Euripides, according to Thomas Festa. Elegance in
Milton retains its etymological connection with choice, for good or evil, as well
as its epicurean tang. Adams first fallen speech in Paradise Lost, for example,
begins, Eve, now I see thou art exact of taste, / And elegant (PL 9.101718)
but this does not mean that the term is intrinsically tainted: by a ghastly
irony, Adam echoes that intenselyand innocentlysensuous moment in
Book 5 when Eve is planning lunch, deliberating, What choice to choose for
delicacy best, / What order, so contrived as not to mix / Tastes, not well joined,
inelegant (PL 5.3335).
I am suggesting, then, that the evocation of Aretino and his choicest
delights of sin is not incidental but central to Areopagiticato its ethics
of confrontation and to its homeopathic theory of reading. Aretino repre-
sents the superlative degree of sexual discourse, and sexuality represents the
quintessential test-case of temptation because its knowledge is inescapably
carnal, stirring the body in a way that mere ideas cannot do. Choicest
delightsthe programmatic enhancement of pleasure to the maximumare
virtually synonymous with the utmost that Vice promises to her followers.
Libertine reading is thus essential for any warfaring Christian or Red Cross
Knight who wants to achieve deep apprehension of sin and avoid superfi-
cial or childlike knowledge, fugitive and cloisterd vertue, unexercisd and
unbreathd (Areop., YP 2.515). In short, Aretino is the Bower of Bliss.
Miltons metaphors of good and bad reading cannot of course be confined
to erotic arousal, but they slide in that direction. Thus the maxim that a wise
man like a good refiner can gather gold out of the drossiest volume, and that
a fool will be a fool with the best book, becomes a wise man will make better
use of an idle pamphlet, then a fool will do of sacred Scripture, because to
the good reader such books are not temptations, nor vanities, but usefull
drugs and materialls wherewith to temper and compose effective and strong
medcins (Areop., YP 2.521). The medical image that replaces the metallurgical
is not sexual per se, but sexuality is its active ingredient. Milton gives as his
example of a necessary material or working minerall, not brilliant heresy or
unpalatable truth, but idle tempting drossclearly in the same category as
the ribald trash of Aristophanes that Plato nevertheless considered splendid
Festa, Repairing the Ruins, 38.

Cf. the thirst for knowledge that God hath stirrd up (Areop., YP 2.554). The following
point is closely related to my Schooling Sex, 51.
reading (Areop., YP 2.521). In seventeenth-century usage the innocuous word

idle (like loose, broad, or wanton) denoted lewd content rather than
mere frivolity; the Root and Branch petition, for example, went straight
from whoredoms and adulteries to lascivious, idle, and unprofitable books
and pamphlets, naming as their example the bawdy Parlament of Women.
In Miltons medical metaphor the readers own body is the laboratory:
homeopathic tempering cannot happen without working, a particularly
virtuous transformation when the text is idle. In the context of Petronius
and Aretino, wanton poems and elegant obscenities, working must mean
some kind of internal, erotic response to an aphrodisiac representation, some
experience of passion that can then be converted into virtue by refusing to
indulge it to the utmost. Paradise Lost provides the exact Latinate equivalent
of this erotic-pharmaceutical working when Adam and Eve eat their fill
of the fruit: they hallucinate sprouting wings, but soon feel the drugs true
operation / Carnal desire enflaming (9.101213).
These implications and associations become entirely explicit in the famous
passage where Milton moves from sexual representation to the emotional
condition of Adam in paradise:
Wherefore did [God] creat passions within us, pleasures round about us, but that
these rightly temperd are the very ingredients of vertu? Banish all objects of lust,
shut up all youth into the severest discipline that can be exercisd in any hermitage, ye
cannot make them chaste, that came not thither so. (Areop., YP 2.527)
God Himself demands continence and chastity among other virtues, yet delib-
erately places Adam and all his descendants in a voluptuous worldindeed,
wantonly powrs out before us evn to a profusenes all desirable things, and
gives us minds that can wander beyond all limit and satiety (Areop., YP
2.528). In this extraordinary portrayal of the human condition, objects of
lust form the crucial pivot between the passions within and pleasures round
about, the profuse display of all desirable things and the mental urge to
transgress not only limit but satiety itself. Milton makes thought sound like
libertine sex, an endlessly escalating sequence of intensities, pushing pleasure
to the utmost and beyond. This illustration of unlimited passion, which
juxtaposes lust, greed for treasure, and unbounded mental fantasy, once
again suggests the stock figure of Aretino. The dizzy possibilities of desire that
must be known to the full before abstainingwhat Jonson called every quirk
within lusts labyrinth and Milton calls the utmost that Vice promises to
her followerssound like the sensual speculations of Sir Epicure Mammon,
Cited in my Libertines and Radicals, 88; unlike Milton, of course, the petitioners sought to
stamp this sort of thing out completely.
who imagines that with his new wealth he will surround himself, literally,
with every conceivable pleasure including the erotic postures and sensations
that dull Aretine/But coldly imitated. But where Jonson satirized this
urge, Miltonlike Bruno before himexults in this vision of a cornucopian
providence, a deity who appreciates the multiform fruits of all kinds of genius
and encourages virtuous engagement with the full gamut of the passions.
Passion must not simply be equated with sexual desire, I realize. Schol-
ars like Michael Schoenfeldt and Victoria Kahn have greatly enhanced our
understanding of the passions in general and Miltons sense of their essential
complexity. Within Areopagitica, the category passion includes intellec-
tual craving for knowledge, miserly longing for wealth, and even political
indignation of the righteous kind: Miltons tract begins by asserting that the
excitement of addressing Parliament hath got the power within me to a
passion (Areop., YP 2.487). But the sexual meaning is both the prototype and
the predominant instance, here as in Paradise Lost. When Adam recounts his
wedding night to Raphael in Book 8 he identifies an emotion quite different
from any other delight in sensory things: here passion first I felt, / Commotion
strange (PL 8.5301). All other pleasure, in contrast, works in the mind no
changeanother confirmation that the archetype of internal working is
erotic desire (PL 8.525).
In the epic the word passion is hedged in by Raphaels somewhat obtuse
moral condemnation, but this passage of Areopagitica explicitly evokes Adam
in paradise as the supreme example of the necessity of temptation and the
divine genesis of passion. Even in the unfallen state freedom means reason,
reason means choosing, and choosing is meaningless without experiential
engagement of those passions within us. If God had exempted Adam from
sexual desire (or implanted it only after the fall) he would have been, in
Miltons famous phrase, a meer artificiall Adam, such an Adam as he is in the
motions, a mere wooden puppet or empty simulacrum. Let me emphasize
again that this scene of Adamic testing occurs in a string of allusions to libertine
and erotic encounters. It comes shortly after polemic against the futility of
licensing wanton dialogues, wanton garb, the illicit conversations of our
youth, male and female together, serenades on balconies, guitars, windows,
Alchemist, II.ii.445. Jonsons character-name reminds us that this passage in Areop.,

going rapidly from the desires of the miser to those of the unchaste, replicates in miniature
the Spenserian sequence he cites earlier, from the Cave of Mammon to the (Epicurean) Bower
of Bliss.
Schoenfeldt, Commotion Strange: Passion in Paradise Lost, in Gail Kern Paster, Mary
Floyd-Wilson and Katherine Rowe, eds., Reading the Early Modern Passions (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 4367; Kahn, Wayward Contracts: The Crisis of Political
Obligation in England, 16401674 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), esp. 197222.
all the airs and madrigalls, that whisper softnes in chambers, and all the
ballads that serve country folk as their Arcadias (Areop., YP 2.5236). The
whole of material culture, in this brilliant satirical catalog, becomes a machine
for producing objects of lustso that when that phrase appears in the Adam
sequence it renders explicit what was already a running theme. God not only
left Adam free, but deliberately set before him a provoking object, ever almost
in his eyes (Areop., YP 2.527). The semantic history of provoking is virtually
the reverse of promiscuous, and in this context provoking object would
certainly denote an aphrodisiac for the seventeenth-century reader. Is this the
forbidden apple, or is this Eve herself, whose first appearance in Paradise Lost
spectacularly reasserts the innocence of the word wanton?
Passion in its utmost formpoured out in a series of provoking objects
that comprise all desirable thingsis therefore not merely harmless or
acceptable but constitutively necessary for the supercharged kind of virtue
now being manifested and propagated in Civil War London. And it is par-
ticularly requisite for the author, who must produce his test-tubes of precious
life-bloodnot to mention giving birth to the issue of the brain, explicitly
paralleled with the issue of the womb (Areop., YP 2.505)without actually
breaching continence. Well-known autobiographical passages elsewhere in
Miltons early prose make it abundantly clear that reading the erotic text
provided Milton with the crucial testing-ground, where he could experience
sexuality to the utmost (with all its fuel, allurement, desire, infusion, and
incitement) while keeping himself above it. In the Doctrine and Discipline
of Divorce he had even flirted with the idea that non-committal sexual rela-
tionships satisfied his educational criteria: libertines eventually make the most
succesfull husbands because their bold accustomings give them experience
with the opposite sex (DDD, YP 2.24950). It seems unlikely that Milton
ever applied this experimentalism to himself; instead, he channeled his bold
desires into textual form. In Areopagitica he turns again from bodies to texts,
once again advocating the benefits of libertine reading: Petronius, Aretino,
and their wanton progeny offer a vicarious version of the bold accustoming
necessary for growth. In the Apology for Smectymnuus Milton presented his
ability to extract virtue from the fuell of wantonnesse and loose living as a
kind of miracle vouchsafed to him alone (Apology, YP 1.891). In the supremely
confident Areopagitica he promotes it as a general rule, necessary for elite
intellectuals and possibly for all men.
Discussed in my Schooling Sex, 4951, and in more detail in Milton among the Libertines.
The reading in YP 2.521 and in the original (to all men such books are not temptations,
nor vanities, but usefull drugs) elicits no emendation even though it refutes the entire argument,
which depends on discriminating between wise men and the rest; a word has clearly been
But did Milton put his called-for toleration of Aretino into practice, letting
him work within his text? A full answer lies beyond the scope of this chapter,
but it would begin with suggestive parallels between the most erotic moments
in Paradise Lost and Aretinos sonnets on the Modi engravings: the first sonnet
evokes Adam and Eve on seeing a couple embracing Straight side by side (cf.
PL 4.741); a later sonnet, for a complex posture in which the man stands up
and lifts the woman, interprets him as striving to reach paradisoor as Satan
would say, to be Imparadised in one anothers arms (PL 4.506). I cannot
prove that Milton saw these particular images of lovers side-by-side and
leaning together, or these particular sonnets with their powerful associations
of sexuality with Eden and their violent contrasts of idealization and ribaldry.
In Areopagitica, only a few lines before Milton speaks about objects of lust and
all desirable things, the passionate Adam finds himself in a situation like that
of an impressionable young man, militantly chaste but devoted to the simple,
sensuous and passionate art of poetry, who opens for the first time a volume of
Aretinos Postures. We know that Malatesti presented Milton with a volume
of his own libertine sonnets, which frequently describe peasant sex in terms
of pestles, mortars, and grinding millsimagery that directly suggested the
divorce tracts grinding in the mill of an undelighted and servil copulation (YP
2.258). Perhaps another worldly collector in a Florentine academy set before
[Milton] a provoking object, ever almost in his eyes (Areop., YP 2.527)some
version of all desirable things with Aretinos ribald commentary?
Aretino may have been a notorious ribald but he could also serve as the
dreaded yet dear master of sexual representation, who dared depict the carnal
act not unelegantly, who turned incitement into art and invested it with the
cultural prestige of the Italian High Renaissance. Essential precisely because
Good and Evil appear in the world as two twins cleaving together (Areop.,
YP 2.514), the ribaldi must be brought in or interpolated as testing figures,
opportunities for passionate confrontation. As a consequence of his dialectical
and somatic theory of reading Milton has inferred from the necessity of pro-
voking objects to the necessity of provoking personsinfamous interpreters
like the brood of Belial who clarify the difference of Licence and Liberty
by treating the divorce tracts as a charter for debauchery, as if they were the
choicest delights and criticisms of sin. The idea of reading in the libertine
school, and thereby gaining virtual access to lust, fed his literary imagination
omitted after all, or else such and men have been transposed, but Milton seems not to have
noticed.
Bette Talvacchia, Taking Positions: On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1999), poems 1 and 11 in her numbering (in the latter sonnet, the
paradisal soliloquy is interrupted by an eye-witness who yells out Ahi ribalda, ahi ribaldo!).
long before and long after he worked Aretino into his argument for toleration:
where else to learn sales, to rehearse the role of Scurra Attica, and to form
dramatic sensualist villains like Comus or the three Satansone in Quintum
Novembris wrapping his salacious loins in a monks garb (l. 84, CSP 41), one
in Paradise Lost burning in fierce desire or breathing vain hopes, inordinate
desires into Eve (PL 4.509, 808), one in Paradise Regained tempting Christ
with beautiful nymphs and boys at a Classical banquet (CSP 2.35261)? But
the principle is articulated in Areopagitica most fully.
Miltons literary instincts encouraged empathetic projection into the
utmost that Vice promises to her followers, which actually strengthened
the case for his extirpation. As I show in Schooling Sex, hostile readers used
Miltons argument to brand him a great agent for libertinism. One Restora-
tion satirist, commenting on exactly the notorious ribald of Arezzo passage
in Areopagitica that occasioned this essay, jeered that the more modest Are-
tine, were he alive in this age, might be set to school again, to learn his
own art of the blind school-master. Ironically, Miltons display of practical
tolerance for the libertine enemy had, like the forbidden fruit, far other
operationdefining him as a figure who cannot be tolerated in an Age of
Toleration.
See Schooling Sex, 51, citing Richard Leigh, The Transproser Rehearsd (Oxford, 1673),
1367 (a passage earlier brought to light by Christopher Hill, Milton and the English Revolution
(1977; New York, 1979), 4534).
7
Milton, Natural Law, and Toleration
Jason P. Rosenblatt
John Miltons first published writings are marked by a Pauline absolutism

that will not compound with human weakness as an inevitable condition
lying within the bounds of divine forgiveness. In five substantial antiprelatical
treatises published in 1641 and 1642, Milton traces the decline of the church
from the perfect pattern of scripture clearly revealed, backslid[ing] one way
into the Jewish beggery, of old cast rudiments, and stumbl[ing] forward
another way into the new-vomited Paganisme of sensuall Idolatry (Of Ref.,
YP 1.520). Miltons mission is to recover the pristine original of the gospel by
removing layers of ecclesiastical accretion, to rebuild the church according to
the pattern stamped in religions golden age, and to prepare for the second
coming, when thou the Eternall and shortly-expected King shalt open the
Clouds to judge the severall Kingdomes of the World (Of Ref., YP 1.616).
Those who assist in that mission shall receive, above the inferiour Orders
of the Blessed, the Regall addition of Principalities, Legions, and Thrones in
their glorious Titles, and in supereminence of beatifick Vision shall clasp
inseparable Hands with joy, and blisse in over measure for ever (Of Ref., YP
1.616). Those who attempt to thwart it shall be thrown downe eternally into
the darkest and deepest Gulfe of HELL, the Slaves and Negros of the other
damned, the basest, the lowermost, the most dejected, most underfoot and
downe-trodden Vassals of Perdition (Of Ref., YP 1.61617).
Is there any group, other than the Presbyterians, the one right discipline
(Of Ref., YP 1.605), whom Milton has not offended in these polemical
tracts? Anglicans are condemned as Roman Catholics, and therefore as pagan
idolaters, and also as Jews, who are identified with the sinful Canaanites God
commanded them to displace: for that which was to the Jew but jewish is
to the Christian no better than Canaanitish (RCG, YP 1.845). Arians and
See also, among other examples in the antiprelatical tracts, Miltons assertions that the
English prelates have joined the Pope and Papists to stop the furtherance of Reformation (Of
Milton, Natural Law, and Toleration 127
Pelagians, martyred by the Heathen for Christs sake, are nevertheless no

true friends of Christ (Of Ref., YP 1.5334), and Arminians are tainted with
that infection (Apology, YP 1.917). Both heaven and hell are hierarchical and
imperial. Those condemned to everlasting perdition enjoy the satisfaction,
expressed in racist language, of trampling and spurning the most damned of
all, Miltons non-Presbyterian antagonists.
Reading Miltons prose chronologically, there is no way to prepare for the
differences between the last antiprelatical tract (April 1642) and the first divorce
tract ( July 1643)or, for most readers, between Volume 1 and Volume
2 of the Yale edition of Miltons prose. The latter contains the great treatises
written between 1643 and 1645including the two editions of The Doctrine
and Discipline of Divorce, Tetrachordon, Of Education, and the Areopagiti-
cawhich advocate, respectively, domestic liberty, educational reform, and
freedom to express oneself (Second Defence, YP 4.624). In these treatises
Milton advocates freedom to divorce on grounds of incompatibility, religious
toleration, and a rescinding by Parliament of a Licensing Order that would
offend against both God and human reason by preventing the discovery of the
good. Having severed his ties with the Presbyterians, Milton has allied himself
with the Independents and Separatists. He can even speak with a measure
of sympathy about Anabaptists, Familists, and Antinominans, of life not
debausht, attributing their excess zeal to the restraint of some lawfull liberty,
which ought to be givn men, and is denyd them (DDD, YP 2.278).
Scholars and biographers have found in The Doctrine and Discipline of
Divorce traces of the bitter disappointment most likely caused by young Mary
Powells refusal to leave her family and rejoin her new husband. Far more
profound though less immediately noticeable than the occasional bitter tone
are transformations in Miltons theology, philosophy, and politics, and in
his attitude toward human weakness. A young poet who seems always to
have had a sense of personal election might have begun to feel profoundly
abandonedand not only by his wife. Beginning with the first divorce tract
and extending through the Areopagitica, the former (and future) Pauline
absolutist confronts with compassion a life of mistake and the inseparability of
good and evil in this imperfect world. If Miltons prose provides the doctrinal
underpinnings of his greatest poetry, then his first marriage and separation
constitute a major correlative of the Fall: like the prohibition, marriage is
a mysterious law (PL 4.750) instituted in paradise (Genesis 2:18), whose
subjects find it at first easy to keep, then discover tragically that it has become
impossible.
Ref., YP 1.527) and that the recreant Jew, the Anglican, and the Roman Catholic have been
seduced by traditions and carnalities figured as adulteries (Apology, YP 1.895, 942).
128 Jason P. Rosenblatt
The motives of Miltons transformationpsychological, environmental,

religious, politicalare overdetermined. Taken together, with a full recogni-
tion of their absolute incompatibility, Dayton Haskins exclusively religious
explanation and Thomas Fultons exclusively secular one help us to understand
the range and depth of the change. Miltons assurance in the antiprelatical
tracts that scripture has a fixed meaning gives way to the recognition in the
divorce tracts that the pronouncements of Christ and Paul on the indissol-
ubility of the marriage bond would make the misery of an unhappy spouse
inescapable. Haskin is sensitive to the subtlest implications of the paradigm
shift in Miltons hermeneutics. These include a newly charitable conception of
the analogy of faith, which undermines a literalistic interpretation of scripture,
a waning confidence in the power of human reason, and a commitment to
biblical authority precisely when the plain sense of scripture would seem to
deny what he desires so passionately, the right to divorce. The complexity of
scripture, like that of poetry, is a blessing. In the divorce tracts, Milton felt
the saving power of interpretive freedom, which released him from the fear
that his marriage was a permanent sign of reprobation, and in his poetry he
associated complexity with copia and eloquence.
Fulton, concentrating on the Areopagitica, discusses the philosophical
systems that allow Milton to make his intellectual arguments. He finds the
roots of liberal epistemology in the emergent natural law theory, which
focused on finding universally agreed beliefs accessible to human reason
instead of depending on established external authorities. Those authorities
include theologians and the texts they adduce as irrefutable evidence, so Fulton
traces a shift in Miltons argumentation from biblical citation to the exercise of
untrammeled moral cognition (reason is but choosing). Consistently reading
Miltons biblical references as political rather than religious, he interprets the
reference to the current state of man (Areop., YP 2.514) in a postlapsarian
world as an argument from the state of nature (Fulton, Areopagitica and the
Roots of Liberal Epistemology, 67).
See Dayton Haskin, Miltons Burden of Interpretation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsyl-

vania Press, 1994), 5763.
See Thomas Fultons well-informed discussion in Areopagitica and the Roots of Liberal
Epistemology, English Literary Renaissance 34 (2004), 4282. I have also benefited from his
unpublished paper Resorting to Reason: Milton and the Hermeneutics of Science. Like all
students of early-modern natural law theory and the political conditions through which people
acquire moral knowledge, Fulton is indebted to Richard Tuck, in particular his Scepticism and
Toleration in the Seventeenth Century, in Susan Mendus, ed., Justifying Toleration: Conceptual
and Historical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 2135. For the most
balanced and comprehensive discussion of Miltons writings against the bishops and in defense
of domestic or personal liberty, see chapters 5 and 6 of Barbara K. Lewalskis The Life of John
Milton (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000). She summarizes Miltons shifts in perspective on 1556.
When Milton refers, in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, to Deuteronomy

17, on the limitations of royal prerogative, and to 1 Samuel 8, on the rejection
of the prophets government in favor of a king, he claims that the power of
the people to choose, reject, retain, or depose their ruler, though it cannot
but stand with plain reason, shall be made good also by Scripture (Tenure, YP
3.206). This Fulton considers to be an astonishing defiance toward biblical
precedent (Fulton, Resorting to Reason). But one might conclude instead
that Milton is exercising not defiance but exegetical freedom, to a degree that
would have been unthinkable in the antiprelatical tracts, where he warned
that church discipline, platformd in the Bible (RCG, YP 1.750), is beyond
the faculty of man to frame, and dangerous to be left to mans invention
(RCG, YP 1.756). Indeed, the biblical verses are ambiguous, and exegetes never
resolve the question whether the appointment of a king in Deuteronomy is
a commandment to appoint a king or only a statement that such a king is
possible. The chapter has been read both as a limitation on the growth of
military power (the prohibition against multiplying horses) and as a warning
against an extravagant lifestyle in the kings court.
Similarly, both royalists and republicans noted the ambiguity in 1 Samuel
8. Gods apparent waiver of his exclusive political role as king is conditional
on both the king and the people understanding that they are still subject to
God and that the king is nothing but an agent (1 Samuel 12:1415). God
is the king, Israel the vassal, and 2 Kings 11:17 describes a double covenant
based on those that a human lord would make with the vassal. He would
have the people swear to be loyal to him and then have them swear to be
loyal to the vassal. In the same way, Jehoiada made a covenant between the
Lord and the king and the people, that they should be the Lords people;
between the king also and the people. As Halbertal and Margalit point out,
the illusion of power blurs the boundaries between the human and the
divine and traps the powerful person in the myth of his own power. The
source of idolatry as political metaphor is pride and power-drunkenness
(Halbertal and Margolit, Idolatry, 221).
Fulton traces Miltons experimentation with a new, self-authenticating
method of ethical reasoning, back to Hugo Grotius (Areopagitica and the
See also John Milton: Political Writings, ed. Martin Dzelzainis (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991). Milton, commenting on Jehus special divine command to slay Jehoram
(2 Kings 9:24), concludes that where a thing grounded so much on natural reason hath the
addition of a command from God, what does it but establish the lawfulness of such an act (YP
3.216). According to Dzelzainis, this proves that for Milton the lawfulness of an act followed not
from the expressed will of God, but from the fact that it was an intrinsically just and reasonable
thing to do (xv).
See on this point Moshe Halbertal and Avishai Margalit, Idolatry, tr. Naomi Goldblum
(Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1992), 2901 nn. 46.
Roots of Liberal Epistemology, 53). But Grotius, in his magnum opus De Jure
Belli ac Pacis libri tres (Paris, 1625), famously interprets 1 Samuel 8 in accord
with the right of kings to act with impunity. For a reader interested in the
relationship between religion and politics, scriptural hermeneutics and human
cognition, there is a special pleasure in reading Grotius in the great 1738 edition
of De Jure Belli ac Pacis by Jean Barbeyrac. Writing in the Huguenot diaspora of
the 1690s, having been expelled from a religiously unified France, Barbeyrac,
a more thoroughgoing natural law theorist than Grotius, had a special reason
for separating religion from society and thus a special sensitivity to Grotiuss
various difficulties in maintaining this distinction. Reading Barbeyracs notes,
one is often reminded of Charles Kinbotes annotations of John Shades Pale
Fire, although the dissonance is the result of violent disagreement rather
than misunderstanding or pathological narcissism. When Grotius interprets
Samuels words about the effect of the right of kings, that is, it implies the
Obligation of Non-resistance (I.IV.3, 1.343), Barbeyrac quotes from Miltons
Defence (1.4), on the Jews, even after the Captivity, to prove the opposite: The
Example of the Machabees, and the whole History of that Nation, manifestly
shew the contrary (I.IV.3, 1.343 n. 4).
Barbeyrac considers Milton to be a champion of liberty, and his frequent
footnote quotations from the Defence counter Grotiuss assertions in the
text of a sovereigns right to exercise virtually unlimited power. Sallust, in
Catiline VI. 7, quotes Gaius Memmius, a tribune of the people: to do what
one wishes with impunity is to be a king. Miltons antagonist, Salmasius,
quotes the statement approvingly, as does Grotius. Barbeyracs evidence
against Grotius is Miltons against Salmasius. Moreover, in accord with
his emphasis on individual conscience and a rationalist natural law theory,
Barbeyrac, like Milton, reads the biblical text (1 Samuel 8) in the light of
natural law as exemplified by the pagan Cicero. Milton tells Salmasius, who
is delighted with Memmiuss statement, that Cicero could have shown you
how to understand Sallust better, and Samuel too (First Defence, YP 4.350).
Barbeyrac explains:
This is said by Memmius, a Tribute of the Roman People, and a zealous Assertor of
public Liberty. He had no Intention to compliment Kings with a Right to do what they
pleased with Impunity; he only meant that Affairs usually take this Course, that such
is the Custom of Kings, and the Success of their evil Actions. Upon which MILTON
(Defens. Cap. II. p. 34) judiciously alledges the following Quotation from CICERO,
which the Reader may compare with the Passage in the Book of SAMUEL. This is
Hugo Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace [De Jure Belli ac Pacis], ed. J. Barbeyrac, tr. anon.
(London, 1738), with a new introduction by Richard Tuck (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005),
I.IV.3, 1.343. Parenthetic book, chapter, and section references are to this edition of Grotius.
the Stile of their Orders, Take Notice, and obey and this of their Menaces, If I find you
here a second Time, you die. Terms, which we are not only to read and consider for our
Amusement, but consider as a Lesson to caution us against coming under such a Power.
(I.IV.2, 1.341)
When Milton in his divorce tracts breaks, at least temporarily, his link with
Pauline dualism, he becomes part of a newer chain, beginning with Grotius and
continuing with John Selden (De Jure Naturali et Gentium juxta Disciplinam
Ebraeorum, 1640), the Hobbes of Leviathan (the chapters on natural law, esp.
1415), Nathanael Culverwel (An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light
of Nature, 1652), Richard Cumberland (De Legibus Naturae, 1672), Samuel
von Pufendorf (De Jure Naturae et Gentium, 1672), Locke (especially his
Epistola de Tolerantia, 1689), and Barbeyrac (his immense annotated editions
of Grotius, Pufendorf, and Cumberland, and his own Science of Morality).
This chain stretches across the Atlantic, and it is worth remembering that
Barbeyracs Milton, a defender of liberty, is also the Milton of Jefferson and
Madison.
Grotiuss hortatory statement that Christ often bids us to take up our
Cross, [which] seems to require from us a greater Measure of Patience (I.IV.7,
1.365) so exasperates Barbeyrac that he must repeatedly assert the right of
a Man, unjustly oppressed, [to] employ what Force he is master of, for
delivering him from Oppression. And when, in the same section, Grotius
praises the primitive Christians who rejoiced to suffer persecution for their
religion, Barbeyrac notes, We are very well assured that they entertained
extravagant Notions on the Point before us, which put them on extending
the Obligation of suffering Martyrdom, far beyond its just Bounds. He adds,
when the Emperors had embraced Christianity, the Christians proceeded
on very different Principles. See MILTON, Defensio, Cap. IV. p. 136 &c.
(1.3667).
Grotius quotes positively that Saying of Marcus Antoninus the Philosopher,
No one but GOD only can be the Judge of a Prince, but Barbeyrac counters
with MILTONS Exposition of this Passage, Defens. pro Pop. Anglic. Cap. II.
p. 49 (I.III.8, 1.268 n. 30). Milton cannot agree that the word autarchy in
context means monarchy, particularly since Marcus Aurelius was the best of
emperors and treated the people as had been done when the state was free.
Moreover, he revered all tyrannicides or men who wished for that honor,
and he tells also of his design for a commonwealth governed by just laws with
equal rights for all (First Defence, YP 4.360).
To cite one more example, Grotius, like Salmasius, cites what Milton calls
that old argument which is the masterpiece of our courtiers (First Defence,
YP 4.361), Davids famous confession, Against thee, thee only have I sinned
(Psalm 51:5), as evidence that a king is answerable only to God (I.III.20,
1.31112). Barbeyrac responds that David has sinned against Gods most
indisputable laws and thus has offended him:
I am surprized that our Author could adopt so unreasonable an Explication of
DAVIDS Words, as that given by the Fathers of the Church, and the loose Conclusion,
they draw from them. To speak with MILTON, in his Defensio pro Pop. Angl. Cap. II, p.
51 is there any Probability that David, when he spoke these Words, penetrated with
Sentiments of Humiliation and Repentance, thought of the Prerogative of Kings; and
that he intended to boast of a pretended Power, which authorized the Commission
of Rapin, Murder, and Adultery, and left his Subjects no Room for Complaint? I
cannot think the most zealous Defenders of Power, how extravagantly soever they
may compliment Kings with Impunity, and however strong an Obligation they may
impose on Subjects of Non-Resistance, would venture to maintain, that a Prince, who
takes away the Life of an innocent Man, or takes away a Subjects Wife, sins against
GOD alone; and that he is not guilty of a real Injustice in Regard to the Person killed,
or the Husband. (1.31112 n. 9)
In the rest of this essay I want to suggest, with Fulton, that natural
law theoristsin particular, Hugo Grotius and John Selden, who figure
importantly in The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorceaccount at least in
part for the transformation that occurs in the prose tracts of 16435. But
these two founders of the early modern science of morality do not diminish
Miltons commitment to the Bible. The common expositors of Christs and
Pauls pronouncements against divorce in the gospels and epistles would
trap an unhappy spouse in a loveless marriage, but Milton learns from
Grotius and Selden that exegetical and rational cognition can be compatible.
Sometimes this requires going beyond Calvin and Luther to sources such as
the Rabbins and Maimonides (DDD, YP 2.257). Much of what Milton learns
from Grotius and Selden bears both directly and indirectly on questions of
tolerationon human beings with beliefs different from ones own, and on
the ideas and opinions that issue from diversity. Philology is not a value-
free discipline, and the philological skill Milton develops removes rather
than evades some of the obstacles to divorce, at times like Portia in The
Merchant of Venice, by submitting to the text more literally and rigorously
than even Shylock thought to do. Sometimes, not always, the best way out is
through.
See also I.III.8, 1.269 n. 33, where Barbeyrac relies on Milton to contextualize Grotiuss
reference to the Argive Tragedy of Suppliants, where the People address the King in Aeschylus
as one who is free, master of the laws, so that he does what he pleases. Barbeyracs note: But, as
MILTON observes, in his Defens. Pro Pop. Anglic. Cap. V. p. 174. The poet puts those Words into
the Mouth of some foreign Women, who desiring the King of Argoss Protection and Assistance
against the Aegyptian Fleet in Pursuit of them, flatter him with an absolute Power, which did not
belong to him.
In the antiprelatical tracts, scripture bears only a single sense, according

to which the Mosaic law can be of no value in establishing precedent
for the prelates: For the imperfect and obscure institution of the Law, which
the Apostles themselves doubt not oft-times to vilifie, cannot give rules to the
compleat and glorious ministration of the Gospell, which lookes on the Law, as
on a childe, not as on a tutor (RCG, YP 1.762). For the mature gospel to learn
from the infancy of the Law would be for the stronger to imitate the weaker,
the freeman to follow the captive, the learned to be lessond by the rude (RCG,
YP 1.763). A chapter-heading in Reason of Church-Government warns That
it is dangerous and unworthy the Gospell to hold that Church-government is to
be patternd by the Law, as B. Andrews and the Primat of Armagh maintaine
(RCG, YP 1.761). The young Milton dares to demean two men of far greater
learning than himself, Bishops Lancelot Andrewes and James Ussher. Both
were friends of John Selden. The incomparable Andrewes, justly renowned for
his scholarship and eloquence, was the only bishop who read with pleasure
Seldens controversial Historie of Tithes (1618) and supported him in the bitter
aftermath of its publication. James Archbishop of Armagh taught the young
Selden the rudiments of Hebrew, Aramaic, and probably Arabic in 1609, and
he preached his funeral sermon. According to Richard Parr, Ussher looked
upon the person deceased as so great a Scholar, that himself was scarce worthy
to carry his Books after him. But this was extreme modesty, and Selden in
turn described Ussher as a miracle of learning in his preface to Marmora
Arundelliana.
How different Milton sounds even as early as the first edition of The
Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, where he concludes that it is absurd to
imagine that the covnant of grace should reform the exact and perfect law
of works, eternal and immutable (DDD, YP 2.318). Of course the simplest
explanation is that the Hebrew Bible permits divorce and the New Testament
does not. Hence, on the issue of divorce, the law is clear and charitable,
the gospel obscure, apparently severe (What God hath joined together,
let not man put asunder (Matthew 19:6)), and therefore in need of radical
reinterpretation. Miltons exposition of a Mosaic law for fallen humankind
comprises some of his most mature and passionate prose. We hear in other
Miltonic treatises the accent of judgment in relation to frail, erring humanity,
but in the prose tracts of 16435 we hear the accent of sympathy as well.
Where Christ rejects divorce for the Jews as a temporary concession to the
Joannes Seldeni vindiciae secundum integritatem existimationis suae (1653), 1617; quoted in
G. J. Toomer, Seldens Historie of Tithes: Genesis, Publication, Aftermath, Huntington Library
Quarterly 65 (2002), 361.
Reported in Richard Parr, The Life Of James Usher, Late Lord Arch-Bishop of Armagh
With a Collection of Three Hundred Letters (London, 1686), 75.
hardnesse of your hearts (Matthew 19:8; Tetrachordon, YP 2.660), Milton

interprets hardheartedness as a universal condition: when it is in a good man
taken for infirmity, and imperfection, which was in all the Apostles, whose
weaknesse only, not utter want of beleef is calld hardnes of heart. The Fall
hardens all hearts, not only among the Jews, and therefore God permitted
divorce partly for this hardnesse of heart, the imperfection and decay of man
from original righteousnesse. If nothing now must be sufferd for hardnes
of heart, I say the very prosecution of our right by way of civil justice can
no more bee sufferd among Christians, for the hardnes of heart wherwith
most men persue it. But if it be plaine that the whole juridical law and civil
power is only sufferd under the Gospel, for the hardnes of our hearts, then
wherefore should not that which Moses sufferd, be sufferd still by the same
reason? (Tetrachordon, YP 2.6612).
Whereas the antiprelatical tracts apotheosize the spiritual aristocrats of the
Reformation and anathematize the bishops and their supporters, the treatises
on divorce, more than any other Miltonic works, emphasize commonality. In
these tracts, Milton regards Christians as superior in faith but not in virtue:
Wee find by experience that the Spirit of God in the Gospel hath been
alwaies more effectual in the illumination of our minds to the gift of faith,
then in the moving of our wills to any excellence of vertue, either above
the Jews or the Heathen (DDD, YP 2.303). Christians unhappily matched
should not presume upon the superior refinement of patience and suffering
but should instead accept the relief divorce affords them: If wee bee wors
[than the Jews], or but as bad, which lamentable examples confirm wee
are, then have wee more, or at least as much need of this permitted law,
as they to whom God therfore gave it under a harsher covenant (DDD,
YP 2.354).
To understand the transformations in Miltons prose, it is helpful to
recall that the 16435 prose tracts contain the first references to natural
law theorists, who are generally more tolerant of religious diversity than the
patristic, medieval, and Reformation theologians cited in the antiprelatical
tracts. Instead of a Pauline dualism that pits the carnal children of loins
against the spiritual children of faith, Grotius and Selden look for continuities
among the cultures and religions of pagans, Jews, Muslims, and Christians.
A religious rationalist such as Nathanael Culverwel, in his Discourse of the
Light of Nature, arguing that the light of reason is available to all human
beings, substitutes a new final clause for Colossians 3:11 that underscores
the difference. What Paul says about evangelical light free to all, we may
say the very same in respect of the commonnesse of natural light. Where
there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian,
Scythian, bound nor free, but all these are one in respect of Nature, and
natures Law, and natures Light. Where Paul would heal the fundamental
divisions of humankind by baptizing all nations in Christ, for ye are all one
in Christ Jesus, Culverwel insists that all human beings already share the light
of nature, a sign that the image of God in which all were created has not
been lost.
Grotius, in De Jure Belli ac Pacis, wants to identify as the true law of
nature an extremely minimal set of rules that follow, as Richard Tuck puts
it, as a logical necessity from some non-controversial assumption about the
world. Theoretically, the discovery of shared moral rules in the natural,
pre-civil state of humankind would provide a basis for relationships among
human beings anywhere in the world. This is in part what makes the
work a pioneering contribution to international relations. Selden, a post-
skeptical humanist, differs from Grotius, positing an external source of
natural lawthat is, a universal divine positive law of perpetual obligation.
In what is arguably his most important work, De Jure Naturali et Gentium,
Selden follows the Talmud, which for him records a set of doctrines far
older than classical antiquity. As both Tuck and J. P. Sommerville have
demonstrated, natural law as conceived by Selden consists not of innate
rational principles that are intuitively obvious but rather of specific divine
pronouncements uttered by God at a point in historical time. In De Jures 847
folio pages, Selden discusses the rabbinic identification of natural law with the
divinely pronounced Adamic and Noachide laws, the praecepta Noachidarum,
considered by rabbinic tradition as the minimal moral duties enjoined upon
all of humankind. De Jure consists of seven books, corresponding to the seven
commandments promulgated by God to the children of Noahhence, to all
of humankind: the prohibitions of blasphemy, idolatry, homicide, robbery,
unchastity (incest, adultery, bestiality), eating a limb torn from a living animal,
and the establishing of a civil judicial system in order to enforce these laws.
Despite important differences, a common interest in natural law that crosses
national borders links the Arminian Grotius and the Erastian Selden, as well
as the emerging heretic Milton and the Huguenot Barbeyrac. Each observed
Nathanael Culverwel, An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature (1652), 68.
Richard Tuck, Grotius and Selden, in J. H. Burns and Mark Goldie, eds., The Cam-
bridge History of Political Thought, 14501700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1991), 512.
See Richard Tuck, Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1979), 82100; J. P. Sommerville, John Selden, The Law of Nature,
and the Origins of Government, The Historical Journal 27 (1984), 43747. In the course of
a uniformly excellent survey of the topic, Sommerville corrects Tuck by pointing out that for
Selden six of the Noachide laws go back not merely to a point in time after the Flood but all
the way back to Edenthe seventh, the prohibition against eating the limb of a living animal,
would have been irrelevant to our vegetarian first parents in paradise.
at first hand the dangers of uniform religious practice, whether Catholic or

Calvinist, and each in his own way defended a pluralist culture.
Milton met Grotius (a most learned man whom I ardently desired to
meet, Second Defence, YP 4.615) in May 1638, when the international jurist
was in exile in Paris as an opponent of his native Hollands orthodox state
religion. Grotius employs his immense learning to build bridges between
different cultures. A typical example from De Jure Belli ac Pacis is his defense
of conventicles and assemblies, where he applies to Christians an ancient
Jewish authoritys defense of Jews: What Philo informs us to have been said
by Augustus, of the Jewish Synagogues, is more truly and properly applicable
to the Christian Congregations, That they were not Meetings for Revellings,
or seditious Cabals, but pure Seminaries of Virtue. Grotius adds that Philo
shews elsewhere, how great a Difference there is between the Synagogues and
the Mysteries of Paganism which passage is well worth reading, and he also
cites on this point Josephus, Contra Apion (De Jure Belli II.XX.49, 2.1045).
The passage reinforces a hierarchy maintained throughout the work of pagan,
Hebraic, and Christian thought that corresponds to the tripartite crescendo of
natural law, the Mosaic law, and the gospel. What makes it typical is the mix of
sympathy for specifically Jewish thought and an insistence on the superiority
of Christianity.
Milton refers to Hugo Grotius, a man of these times, one of the best learned
(DDD, YP 2.238), ten times in the divorce tracts, beginning with the heading
of the Preface to book 1 of The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (YP 2.234).
Where the antiprelatical tracts segregate pagans or Jews from Christians,
nature or law from gospel, Old Testament from New, the monist spirit of
the 16435 tracts emphasizes congruity and inclusiveness. While maintaining
the superiority of Christianity, Milton nevertheless treats as compatible all
human beings natural rights as reasonable creatures, the rights of biblical
Israel as members of a holy community, and the individual privilege of the
regenerate Christian saint. He emphasizes the gospels perfect correspondence
with Mosaic law grounded on [the] morall reason of natural law (DDD, YP
2.264). In these tracts, as in paradise before the Fall, God and Nature bid the
same (PL 6.176), and Milton speaks of the fundamentall law book of nature;
which Moses never thwarts, but reverences (YP 2.272).
Grotius is John Seldens strong precursor, although the slightly younger
scholars consideration of the ancient constitution of pre-Christian Britain,
See Lewalski, The Life of John Milton, 89 and 571 n. 7, on the possible influence on Miltons
poetry of Grotiuss Adamus Exul and Christus Patiens.
See also 1045 n. 5. Grotius cites Philos De Legat. Ad Cajum (p. 1035. E. Edit. Paris) as well
as Lib. De Sacrificant.
Analecta Anglobritannica, precedes and parallels Grotiuss study of the early

Netherlanders, De Antiquitate Reipublicae Batavicae. But Seldens Mare
Clausum was commissioned as a reply to Grotiuss Mare Liberum; and
his De Jure Naturali can best be understood within the post-scholastic, anti-
Aristotelian tradition of De Jure Belli. Seldens intercultural studies are less
judgmental and far less morally hierarchical than Grotius. I have recently
suggested that Miltons muse in Paradise Lost may owe something to Seldens
discussion in De Jure of the intellectus agens or active intellect, an external
force, either God or a heavenly messenger, that actuates the minds cognitive
faculties. Although Selden cites Maimonides most frequently on the idea of
prophetic inspiration as an extraordinary overflow of light from the divine
intellect, he also finds it in commentaries on Aristotle by the Muslim philoso-
phers Avicenna and Averroes, as well as in the work of one of his heroes
of intellectual bravery, Friar Roger Bacon. In an epic embodying a myth of
universal appeal, it is fitting that Miltons muse belong to Islam, Judaism, and
Christianity.
The capital importance of Hebrew philology in the divorce tracts makes
Selden at least as important a Miltonic source as Grotius, since he outstrips
his predecessor in the field of Hebraic and especially rabbinic scholarship.
Milton reflects at some length on the meaning of what has been translated
as some uncleannesse; but in the Hebrew it sounds nakednes of ought, or any
reall nakednes: which by all the learned interpreters is referd to the mind,
as well as to the body (DDD, YP 2.244). Milton dedicates The Doctrine
and Discipline of Divorce to Parliament and the Westminster Assembly, and
Selden, a member of both bodies, is the only dedicatee of either to be named.
Of the 149 members of the Assembly, 119 were divines, and only twenty
were from the Commons, Selden among them. Milton had already noted
that lay persons were invited to participate in the first Council of Nicaea
(RCG, YP 1.839), and he may well have Selden in mind as one of those
persons of what liberall profession soever, of eminent spirit and breeding
joynd with a diffuse and various knowledge of divine and human things;
For more on the relation between the two, see Richard Tucks Grotius and Selden,
499529, and his Philosophy and Government 15721651 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1993), 154221.
See Jason P. Rosenblatt, Renaissance Englands Chief Rabbi: John Selden (Oxford: Oxford
Seldens magnificent Hebrew scholarship includes remarkable competence in the Babylo-
nian-Aramaic texts of the Talmud. Less well known (and less magisterial) are his Arabic studies,
which begin with Titles of Honor (1614) and extend up to the posthumously published third
book of De Synedriis (1655). With the publication of Mare Clausum (1635), he introduced
Arabic movable type into England. See G. J. Toomer, Eastern Wisedome and Learning: The Study
of Arabic in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 6471.
able to balance and define good and evill, right and wrong, throughout every
state of life. These worthies Milton contrasts with the narrow intellectuals
of quotationists and common placers (DDD, YP 2.230). As a member of
the Assembly, Selden delighted in confuting the jure divino claims of the
Presbyterian divines. According to the eyewitness testimony of his friend
Bulstrode Whitelocke,
Mr. Selden spake admirably, and confuted divers of them in their own learning. And
sometimes when they had cited a text of Scripture to prove their assertion, he would
tell them, Perhaps in your little pocket-bibles with gilt leaves (which they would often
pull out and read) the translation may be thus, but the Greek or the Hebrew signifies
thus and thus, and so would totally silence them.
The influence of Seldens De Jure begins with the second edition of The
Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, and in the Preface Milton appeals to the
fellow feeling of those worthy Patriots who, like himself, have suffered for
the cause of truth: for who among ye of the formost that have travaild in
her behalfe to the good of Church, or State, hath not been often traduct
to be the agent of his owne by-ends (DDD, YP 2.225). Besides the attacks
suffered after the publication of his Historie of Tithes (1618), Selden was one
of nine members of Parliament for whom the Privy Council issued warrants
on 3 March 1629. His study was sealed, and he was committed to the Tower,
without any cause expressed and simply on the order of the king. His two
years in prison attest to his parliamentary labors on behalf of individual rights
and in opposition to constitutional violations by King Charles and Archbishop
Laud.
It is fitting that Grotius appear at the beginning of the treatise, Selden at the
end, where Milton refers to the divine testimonies of God himself, lawgiving
in person to a sanctifyd people, available in that noble volume, written by our
learned Selden, Of the law of nature & of Nations [De Jure Naturali et Gentium],
a work worthy to be perusd [by] whosoever studies to be a great man in
wisdom, equity, and justice (DDD, YP 2.350). Grotius originates important
ideas, which both Selden and Milton then develop. Indeed, Seldens serious
interest in the rabbinic Noachide laws may have begun with his reading of De
Jure Belli, which takes note of that antient Tradition among the Hebrewes,
that GOD gave more Laws to the Sons of Noah, which were not all recorded by
Moses (I.II.3, 1.193). Miltons use of charity as a hermeneutic key to open the
New Testament passages that seem to reject divorce unequivocally may have
Bulstrode Whitelocke, Memorials of the English Affairs (London, 1682), 71.

Selden, Vindiciae; cited in David Sandler Berkowitz, John Seldens Formative Years: Politics
and Society in Early Seventeenth-Century England (Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library,
1988), 22630.
originated with his reading of Grotiuss Annotationes in Libros Evangeliorum

(Amsterdam, 1641):
If we rightly consider the Nature of all the Precepts of JESUS CHRIST, we shall find
that Charity is their Principle and Perfection: Now Charity requires we should procure
the Advantage of others, but so as to think of our own, and not be cruel to ourselves,
as St. PAUL teaches, 2 Cor. viii 13.
Grotius, on the same text in Mark, anticipating Milton on the apt and
cheerfull conversation of man with woman (DDD, YP 2.235), asserts that
Matrimony was not instituted only for the Propagation of Mankind; the
mutual Assistance which is expected from that Union is certainly to be consid-
ered. He also points out that the Bible leaves unstated but understood grounds
for divorce other than adultery, such as attempted murder of a spouse or the
murder of their children. Grotius, in advocating a just Medium between
too credulous Jealousy and stupid Indolence, begins to furnish Milton with a
broader conception of fornication:
[T]he Law is not able to judge of these things but by the rule of equity, and by
permitting a wise man to walk the middle-way of prudent circumspection, neither
wretchedly jealous, nor stupidly and tamely patient. To this purpose hath Grotius in
his notes [Annotationes]. He shews also that fornication is takn in Scripture for such
a continual headstrong behaviour, as tends to plain contempt of the husband: and
proves it out of Judges 19.2. where the Levites wife is said to have playd the whoor
against him; which Josephus and the Septuagint, with the Chaldaean, interpret only of
Hugo Grotius, Annotationes in Quator Evangelia & Act Apostolorum [1641], rpt. in Opera
Theologicorum (Amsterdam, 1679), 2.534: Quod si diligenter advertamus ad naturam omnium
Christi praeceptorum, reperiemus & originem eorum & consummationem in caritate consistere,
quae ita nos vult aliis consulere ut ne in nos ipsos crudeles simus, quemadmodum docet Paulus
II Corinth. VIII.13. This is the passage that Grotius whispered to Milton: When I had almost
finisht the first edition [of DDD], I chanct to read in the notes of Hugo Grotius upon the 5. of
Matth and somthing he whisperd rather than disputed about the law of charity, and the true
end of wedlock (Martin Bucer, YP 2.4334). The translation is from Barbeyracs edition of De
Jure Belli, II.V.9, 2.517 n. 7. Barbeyracs long note emphasizes the difference between Grotiuss
restrictive view of divorce in De Jure Belli and his far more liberal interpretations sixteen years
later in his Annotationes. In my book Renaissance Englands Chief Rabbi (1457), I erroneously
assumed that Milton refers to Grotiuss commentary on Matthew 5 in De Jure Belli. This led me
to overstate the difference between Grotius and Milton on charity. In his brief commentary on
Matthew 5, Grotius, who appears in both editions of Doctrine and Discipline (Selden appears only
in the second edition), treats of numerous important ideas that Selden develops, and we cant
be absolutely certain which source Milton borrowed from: these include citations of Origen,
Ambrose, and Epiphanius (Grotius, 50); the dispute between the schools of Hillel and Shammai
on the meaning of Deuteronomys phrase ervath davar nakednes of ought, Grotius, 51; Milton,
DDD, YP 2.244, 620; the story of Paulus Aemilius and the pinching shoe (Grotius, 51; DDD, YP
2.348); the Hebrew text of Judges 19:2 (Grotius, 53; DDD, YP 2.335); even the important idea
attributed by Milton to Selden that the word fornication bears more than one sense (Grotius, 53).
stubbornnes and rebellion against her husband: and to this I adde that Kimchi and the
two other Rabbies who glosse the text, are in the same opinion. (DDD, YP 2.335)
It remains for the even more intimidatingly learned Selden to deconstruct the
word fornication so that one might sue for divorce for any reason. For Milton,
as for the most extreme among those overweening Pharisees whose excesses
he attacks with zeal, this law [of divorce] bounded no man; he might put
away whatever found not favour in his eyes (Tetrachordon, YP 2.6567). A
passage in De Doctrina Christiana, which incidentally supports the Miltonic
authorship of that work, clarifies the point:
[A]s Selden demonstrated particularly well in his Uxor Hebraea, with the help of
numerous Rabbinical texts, the word fornication, if it is considered in the light of the
idiom of oriental languages, does not mean only adultery. It can signify anything
which is found to be persistently at variance with love, fidelity, help and society. (DDC,
YP 6.378)
Jewish law provides the most important precedent for Miltons argument
that divorce should be granted for incompatibility, and Milton relies on Grotius
and Selden as much for their skill in hermeneutics and Hebrew philology as
for their views on moral epistemology. The title alone of Seldens Uxor Ebraica,
Seu de Nuptis & Divortis ex Iure Civili, Id Est, Divino & Talmudico, Veterum
Ebraeorum [The Hebrew Spouse, or Three Books on Marriages and Divorces from
the Civil Law, That is, Divine and Talmudic, of the Ancient Hebrews] reveals not
only the authors belief that post-biblical rabbinic law is ancient but also the
reason that Milton finds it useful. But Samuel von Pufendorf reads the 1644
edition of The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce entirely within the context
of natural law theory in his monumental treatise De jurae naturae et gentium,
or Law of Nature and Nations (1672), which Barbeyrac edited and annotated.
Although Pufendorf explicitly refers to God as the origin of moral obligation,
his investigation of the ultimate principles of moral experience concentrates
on law as a human construction. His remarkable epitome of Miltons treatise
occupies more than six folio columns.
On the subject of divorce, Pufendorf devotes only a single sentence to
Grotius, summarizing the more conservative opinion in De Jure Belli that
Christ came to ratify by a new law what was before most agreeable to the
divine Willnamely, that the Bond of Marriage should be perpetual. He
then turns briefly to Selden, on the talmudic dispute between the Sammeans
and the Hillelians, the former arguing that only the discovery of baseness and
Samuel von Pufendorf, De jure naturae et gentium libri octo [1672] [On the Law of Nature
and Nations in Eight Books], 5th edn., ed. Jean Barbeyrac, trans. Basil Kennet (London, 1749),
6.1.24, p. 582. Parenthetic page references are to this edition.
dishonesty could justify divorce, the latter holding that spousal dislike was
sufficient. Christ declares in Favour of the Sammeans (582). But Pufendorfs
real interest is in Miltonin his passionate reasons for divorce, decidedly
not in his biblical hermeneutics, which he rejects summarily: When God
was pleased to give Man a Helpmeet for him [Gen. 2:18], and afterwards
commanded the primitive Couple to increase and multiply [Gen. 1:28], he did
not hereby ordain two different ends of Marriage; but the latter Words seem
designed to describe the chief Fruit arising from the mutual Assistance first
mentioned (583). Failing to understand that for Milton the word conversation
includes not only habitual proximity and cooperation but also intimacy,
Pufendorf pokes gruesome fun at the idea that it is the primary purpose of
marriage. He quotes approvingly and at length, in both Latin and in Drydens
translation, from Juvenals sixth satire, which bemoans the Midnight Curse
of marriage to a woman learned in languages, logic, and history, preferring
instead a quiet, humble Fool: / I hate a Wife, to whom I go to School (584).
When Pufendorf disagrees with feminist Milton, he unintentionally judges
himself, sounding like the late-middle-aged, cigar-smoking man at ease in
his club chair, in a New Yorker cartoon, who confides to his friends, I
actually prefer same sexas long as it doesnt involve sex. Pufendorf assumes
that once we remove the Pleasures which by the Appointment of Nature
sweeten and recommend the Procreation of Offspring, men alone make
more agreeable companions:
And thus we see, that Boys and old Men, those who have not felt the Passion of Love,
and those who are past it, agree in preferring the Converse of their own Sex to all
the Charms and all the Entertainments of the Fair. But Mr. Milton seems to dream of
some more delicate and more refined Pleasures; and frames the Idea of a Wife suitable
only to the Genius of a wise and learned Husband: He would have her able to be
the Companion of his Studies, or to refresh him with her Wit, when he comes from
severer Meditations, to compose his Cares with sweet Discourse, and charm away a
melancholy Fit. (583)
Pufendorf sympathizes with the central argument of Miltons treatise, that

Christs pronouncements on divorce might bear another Interpretation
more agreeable to the Gospel Clemency and Goodness than that which
is at present receivednamely, that mental or spiritual unfitness should
be a much weightier Cause of Divorce than any physical defect (584).
Summarizing Miltons arguments, Pufendorf frequently echoes the treatises
own passionate tone:
It is against the Law of Charity: Nay, it is most barbarous and inhuman, to confine
and chain down a Man to such Miseries as are not to end until his Death; and which
would admit of an easy Cure, did not the Severity of this positive Ordinance stand in
the Way. (584)
When the Soul doth not find in Matrimony that sweet Agreement which it sought,
so ill-matched a Pair live rather in the Misery and Hardship of a Prison, than in the
Comfort of Society. (585)
Although Pufendorf is undeniably sexist, his paraphrase of Miltons treatise
emphasizes the injustice of the institution of marriage under canon law, which
traps both partners, even more than it does the evil caused by an unfit wife:
No Partnership can oblige Persons concerned, in Contradiction either to the chief End
of its Institution, or to the Intentions and Hopes of both or of either Member. (584)
It is repugnant to Nature, that two Minds directly opposite, and admitting of no
Possibility of Union, should be tied together in a Bond never to be broken. The
Christian Emperors have declared it as their Judgment, that the Plotting of either Party
against the Life of the other, is a good Reason of Divorce. (585)
It has at least become possible to ask whether or not the inclusiveness of
natural law theory relative to Reformation doctrine had a benign effect on
Miltons gender politics in his divorce tracts.
Barbara Lewalski reminds us that Milton put his name to most of the tracts
published between 1643 and 1645, proudly proclaiming his willingnesse to
avouch what might be questiond (Life of John Milton, 155; Tetrachordon,
In the 1980s, the most powerful readings of Miltons gender politics in the divorce tracts
were overwhelmingly negative. See especially James Grantham Turner, One Flesh: Paradisal
Marriage and Sexual Relations in the Age of Milton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), and
Mary Nyquist, The Genesis of Gendered Subjectivity in the Divorce Tracts and in Paradise
Lost, in Nyquist and Margaret W. Ferguson, eds., Re-Membering Milton: Essays on the Texts
and Traditions (London: Methuen, 1987), 99127. It is curious that Turner reserves his most
memorable description, authentically ugly (229), not for the antiprelatical tracts but rather for
DDD. More recently, essays in Catherine Gimelli Martin, ed., Milton and Gender (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004), have attempted to provide a more positive view. Both sides
can quote amply from the text to support their positions. See Gimelli Martins own essay in
the collection, Dalila, Misogyny, and Miltons Christian Liberty of Divorce, which identifies a
consistent tilt toward androgyny in the tracts, traceable to a monist attempt at harmonious
synthesis at every level of [Miltons] creation (56). In One Flesh, One Heart, One Soul:
Renaissance Friendship and Miltonic Marriage, Modern Philology 99 (2001), 26692, Gregory
Chaplin argues persuasively that Milton formed an idea of matrimony from the classically
inspired doctrine of friendship that marked his relationship with Charles Diodati. For Chaplin,
Miltons position on rational conversation was so radical that it virtually makes hierarchical
gender difference disappear (282). It would be apt if Diodati, the young medical student,
were indeed a model for the sociable spirit Raphael, whose name means Gods healing and
whose conversation attempts to repair the psychic malaise caused by Eves satanically induced
dream. Most recently, Thomas Luxon, in Single Imperfection: Milton, Marriage and Friendship
(Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2005), argues that in the divorce tracts Milton attempts
to redefine Protestant marriage as a heteroerotic version of classical friendship, originally a
homoerotic cultural practice.
YP 2.581). Unlike the dualistic, exclusionary, and anonymous antiprelatical

tracts, these affirm the compatibility as well as the hierarchy of natural law,
Mosaic law, and Gospel. The aesthetic counterpart of this progression is
the inclusively tripartite crescendo movement in Miltons poetry. One can, I
think, discern the spirit of rejection in some of Miltons less successful work.
Like the antiprelatical tracts, which denounce Jewish/Catholic institutions and
ceremonies, books 11 and 12 of Paradise Lost employ the negative typology
of the Epistle to the Hebrews, emphasizing disparity rather than congruity
(12.285314), and the Pauline distinction between children of loins and
children of faith (12.44650). The right order of ascending value in Miltons
monistic treatises, including the 1644 edition of The Doctrine and Discipline of
Divorce and Tetrachordonfrom the natural law of human happiness to the
Hebraic law of divorce in Deuteronomy 24 and then to Christian charity in the
gospelsincludes the lower in the higher without a turning away or rejection.
This crescendo arrangement also informs some of Miltons most successful
poetry: the development of the idea of katharos in the successive quatrains
of the nineteenth sonnet, which begin with Euripides Alcestis, extend to the
levitical rites of purification after childbirth under the old Law, and conclude
with a vision of absolute purity in a Christian heaven; and the continuous
but developing sense of the pastoral in Lycidas, narrated by a shepherd whose
consolation is measured at least in part by the progression in meaning of the
very words shepherd and pastoral, from classical aesthetics (ll. 6484), through
Hebraic-prophetic ethics (ll. 11331), to the limitless reward of a Christian
heaven purged of evil (ll. 16585). A shaping force in Miltons more expansive
work is the formidable and wide-ranging scholarship of Grotius and Selden.
See Leo Spitzer, Understanding Milton, in his Essays on English and American Literature,
ed. Anna Hatcher (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), 11631.
8
A Taken Scandal not a Given: Miltons
Equitable Grounds of Toleration
Victoria Silver
There are, as has been well said, not only depths of the abyss and of the
dark; there are also depths of light: the mystery in what is utterly clear.
Gerhard Von Rad
1
In one of those seemingly incalculable moves which have tended to confound
Miltons own interpreters, the great propounder of equality in Paradise Lost
is Satan, the fallen archangel formerly known as Lucifer, whose idol is the
fixed and categorical identity of the theologians God; and for whom creatural
change, and the difference consequent upon such change, areironically in
the eventanathema. This perverse revulsion begins with the distinction of
Satans creator from himself; extends to the angelic hosts and especially Abdiel
in his dissent from the mindless conformity of the apostate; and concludes
with our first parents, whose divine likeness Satan immediately determines
to impropriate through mutual amity so strait, so close, / That I with you
must dwell, or you with me (4.3767). For satanic equality is not just
outward conformity but the condition of psychological identityimplicit
faith, suggestibility and submission of will, which are the irrational values that
reign in heavens north and in hell. They are also the desiderata Milton ascribes
to papal dominion in both A Treatise of Civil Power (1659) and his last tract,
Of True Religion, Hresie, Schism, Toleration (1673), with whose supremacy
in spiritual malfeasance the Anglican church competes. In his view, the
latters ecclesiology, whether episcopal or presbyterian, comparably inculcates
such traits in refusing a policy of comprehension within itselfforbearance
towards members in adiaphora or things indifferent where nothing essential
Miltons Equitable Grounds of Toleration 145
to salvation is at issueas well as tolerance towards different religious

opinions and practices outside the church.
Indeed, Book 5 of Paradise Lost demonstrates how, when the postulate of
the creator God is effectively removed from the creatures picture of creation,
an argument from natural and therefore equal right can have the perverse
effect of eradicating what it notionally exists to protect: the liberty of the
individual to observe the dictates of conscience and choose a singular or
distinctive expression of faith within the limits of right and equal justice.
For although the Protectorate proved the most tolerant Protestant regime in
England to that date, Milton still associates it and especially its tithing and its
Triers with Erastus and state-tyranie over the church (TCP, YP 7.252); and in
Civil Power, written on the verge of the Protectorates collapse and the recall
of the Rump, he argues for the institutional separation of church and state,
on the equitable principle that To heal one conscience we must not wound
another (TCP, YP 7.267):
Lastly as a preface to force, it is the usual pretence, That although tender consciences
shall be tolerated, yet scandals thereby given shall not be unpunished, prophane and
licentious men shall not be encouragd to neglect the performance of religious and holy
duties by color of any law giving libertie to tender consciences. By which contrivance
the way lies ready open to them hereafter who may be so minded, to take away by little
and little, that liberty which Christ and his gospel, not any magistrate, hath right to
give: though this kinde of his giving be but to give with one hand and take away with
the other, which is a deluding not a giving. As for scandals, if any man be offended with
the conscientious liberty of another, it is a taken scandal not a given. (TCP, YP 7.267)
As Cromwell and then Charles II learned to their chronic chagrin, toleration

was not a policy broadly supported by the British people; for the value of civil
order was bound to be a great good in an age where disorder was yet the rule,
as William Holdsworth observes. Thus the vast majority of those Protestants
William Holdsworth, A History of English Law, 9 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1927), 5.196.
Holdsworth concludes his discussion of the continental method per inquisitionem and the
common laws public method of indictment with these salutary remarks for modern readers:
We have seen that the manner in which the accused was deprived of or hampered in his liberty
of defence, and the systematic use of torture, which make the history of this branch of the law
one of the most revolting episodes in the history of mankind, were not only tolerated, but even
applauded by a large body of public opinion. We have seen that they were applauded because
the government was so weak and its enemies were so strong that it was felt, not without reason,
that it must take every advantage of its enemies. It was, as [James] Stephen has said, not strong
enough to be generous. It would seem to follow, therefore, that the maintenance of a strong
government and of habitual respect for the law are the conditions precedent for the existence
of a criminal procedure which is fair to the accused. If a government once allows any body of
men to become so strong that they can defy the law with impunity, if by its conduct it destroys
that instinctive respect for the law to which civilized nations have painfully attained, it will be
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who both could and could not afford to reflect upon the fundamentals of
religion embraced uniformity, as they had, in the ordinary way of things,
done with Catholicism. The scandal thus taken at the different or singular
in religious opinion and practice was made an excuse for the civil institution
of religious conformity, officiously disguised as a concern for public morality.
Cromwell himself makes the same point in a letter to the Scottish Kirk in 1650:
Your pretended fear lest Error should step in, is like the man who would keep
all the wine out of the country lest men should be drunk. It will be found
an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon a
supposition he may abuse it. When he doth abuse it, judge.
However, this pretended fear exceeds the desire for conformity in religion
or its positive legislation, whether episcopal or presbyterian. It expresses the
primal human anxiety to master the adventitious and unknownthe terror
lest human unpredictability undermine civil order. And that anxiety extends
to the interpretation and application of law itself, whose stated purpose is
to secure peace and the commonweal. Thus it remains a venerable maxim
of the English common law that it is better to suffer a mischief than an
inconvenience; or as J. H. Baker glosses these words, it is better to suffer
hardship in individual cases than to make exceptions to clear rules. So rather
than admit circumstances justifying such an exception, either in the law itself
or on emergent occasions when the facts warrant it, a judge would allow an
injustice to stand or would even commit one, rather than muddy the lambent
waters of the law.
To do so in a system of precedent, it was felt, would only complicate
and confound the administration of justice, which is directed and restricted
by the tradition of previous judgments addressing comparable issues. No
amount of careful qualification or acute degree of specificity, it was argued,
could sufficiently inhibit the impact of a legal exception, much less begin
to anticipate the flood of human contingencies it might open up. But if the
sustained generality of the law undeniably ensures its intelligible, practicable
application, this juridical concern with formal clarity can also conspire to
foster a belief in the laws autonomy, universality and inerrancy, and on
that ground to justify the suffering of the innocent perpetrated by a merely
legal judgment. For the claim of the laws inerrancy effaces the constructive
obliged, in order to regain its lost authority, to resort to methods similar to those which were
found to be necessary in the sixteenth century. A nation cursed with such a government will
begin to fear its criminals; and fear, as [S. R.] Gardiner has said, is the parent of cruelty.
Oliver Cromwells Letters and Speeches, ed. Thomas Carlyle, 3 vols. (London: Chapman &
Hall, 1886), 2.1367.
J. H. Baker, An Introduction to English Legal History, 4th edn. (London: Butterworths,
2002), 102.
role played by its all-too-human administrators, deflecting criticism from the

actual abuse of judicial discretion, which the event of an anomalous case
and judgment would expose. Such resistance also manifested itself in the
matter of evidence; for the judiciary were equally reluctant to inquire into the
detailed circumstances of any case which might justify making an exception.
Due process of law therefore came increasingly to exclude all but formal or
categorical proofs, with the admissible facts further circumscribed in their
significance by the device of legal presumption (Baker, Introduction, 80). In
his great final essay, On experience, Montaigne finds occasion to count the
human cost of such legal formalism:
Here is something which has happened in my time: some men had been condemned to
death for murder; the sentence, if not pronounced, was at least settled and determined.
At this juncture the judges were advised by the officials of a nearby lower court that
they were holding some prisoners who had made a clean confession to that murder
and thrown an undeniable light on the facts. The Court deliberated whether it ought
to intervene to postpone the execution of the sentence already given against the first
group. The judges considered the novelty of the situation; the precedent it would
constitute for granting stays of execution, and the fact that once the sentence had been
duly passed according to law they had no powers to change their minds. In short, those
poor devils were sacrificed to judicial procedure.
At one level, we confront in this episode the intuitive assumption that truth
works by likeness or analogy, usually to ourselves and our own notions.
The expectation of such a self-evident truth, which we find clear and dis-
tinct because in some degree automorphic, frequently serves as grounds
for hostility towards any novel, unfamiliar or divergent way of life and
understanding. Indeed, the principle of equityunderstood as equal right
to justice under the lawcan in its application become a test of human
comparability, of our conformity to a received paradigm or category of speech
and action. Thus Bracton, in the Laws and Customs of England (c.1275),
defines equity as the bringing together of things, that which desires like
right in like cases and puts all things on an equality: Equity is so to speak,
uniformity, and turns upon matters of fact, that is, the words and acts
of men. He intends here to describe the equal in the sense of impar-
tial administration of justice, as distinguished from respect of persons or
prosopolepsiathe corrupting regard for rank, wealth, power which under-
mines the integrity of any legal system. But that description also evokes how,
Michel de Montaigne, The Essays: A Selection, tr. and ed. M. A. Screech (London: Penguin,
1993), 371.
Bracton on the Laws and Customs of England, tr. and ed. Samuel E. Thorne, 3 vols.
(Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 1968), 2.25.
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in its judgments, positive law or lex scripta works by likeness or analogyin

Bractons phrase, a similibus ad similia (2.21)and in the application of
summum et strictum jus, the rigor of the law, even presumes to categorical
identities.
It was on such categorical grounds that both Tudor and Stuart regimes
could enforce the various Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity in religion
which attended the accession of each new Protestant monarch, even as
that monarch would swear in the words of the coronation oath to do
aequa et recta justitia, equal and right justice and discretion in mercy and
truth (Baker, Introduction, 98). Of course, the meaning of this clause was
momentously disputed throughout the seventeenth century, with Robert
Filmer construing royal discretion differently from, say, Locke or Algernon
Sidney. In effect, the conflict of the age engenders two senses of the arbitrary,
depending upon an individuals civil and ecclesiastical politics. One is imagined
as judicial discretion whimsically exercised in construing and applying lex
scripta, whose endless exceptions confound the laws proper clarity and
impartiality, effectively subverting the administration of equal justice. The
other is conceived as strictum et summum jus, the unyielding construction and
unbending imposition of categorical judgments on a circumstantial world to
which they are alien, with the inevitable result summa injuriathe greatest
harm done to justice and its human constituency.
That divergence in understanding itself excites the primal fear of meanings
contingency, which Descartes cannily exploits when he introduces his deus
deceptor and the method he calls ridiculous and hyperbolical doubt in the
Meditations. To admit an exception is to admit a discrepancy between our
ideas and our actualities; and unless we are bent on courting self-delusion or
a wholesale quietism, such an anomaly obliges us to construe our experience
differentially, not categorically: that is, it should constrain us to work against
the appearances things have for us, not to save them. However, as Montaigne
argues throughout The Essays, we are forever disinclined to do this, although
the induction which we wish to draw from the likeness between events is
unsure since they all show unlikeness (Montaigne, Essays, 364). Likeness,
he avers, does not make things one as much as unlikeness makes them
other (365). Such discrepancies are the conceptual scandal of systematic
knowledgea threat to the ever-burgeoning egoism of the human species and
our conviction that the world is as we think and say it is. Yet experience proves
that the clarity achieved by likeness is always relative to the circumstances in
which we apprehend something, even as the laws presumption to that value,
The Philosophical Works of Descartes, tr. Elizabeth Haldane and G. R. T. Ross, 2 vols.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 1.1989.
whether in its language or in the train of legal precedent, always depends upon
the case to which either is applied.
This is equity understood not as formal equivalence or commensurability,
but as the principle which, owing to the distinctive circumstances of a case,
in its judgments recognizes the discrepant and exceptional. For whenever
positive law, in its necessarily general representation of human action and
speech, fails rightly to describe and adjudicate a case, equity intervenes in
order to ensure equal justice to the parties at law. In effect, it recognizes that
the law is a human artifact, humanly administered, and therefore fallible. So
Joseph Story argues that equity, taken in its general as against what he calls
its civil or municipal sense, is a legal principle contradistinguished from
mere law or strictum jus, and applied to the interpretation and limitation of
the words of positive or written laws; by construing them, not according to
the letter, but according to the reason and the spirit of them:
Every system of laws must necessarily be defective; and cases must occur to which
the antecedent rules cannot be applied without injustice, or to which they cannot be
applied at all. The general words of a law may embrace all cases; and yet it may be
clear that all could not have been intentionally embraced, for if they were, the obvious
objects of the legislation might or would be defeated. (Story, Commentaries, 1.7)
Drawing on the locus classicus of equity, Aristotles account of epieikeia in the
Nicomachean Ethics (5.10), Story remarks that [i]n this sense Equity must
have a place in every rational system of jurisprudence, if not in name, at least
in substance, inasmuch as [i]t is impossible that any code, however minute
and particular, should embrace or provide for the infinite variety of human
affairs, or should furnish rules applicable to them all (Story, Commentaries,
1.6). In that sixteenth-century bible of English equity jurisprudence, Doctor
and Student, Christopher St. Germain also echoes Aristotle:
And for the plainer declaration what equity is, thou shalt understand, that sith the
deeds and acts of men, for which laws have been ordained, happen in divers manners
infinitely, it is not possible to make any general rule of the law, but that it shall fail
in some case: and therefore makers of laws take heed to such things as may often
come, and not to every particular case, for they could not though they would. And
therefore, to follow the words of the law were in some case both against justice and
the commonwealth. Wherefore in some cases it is necessary to l[ea]ve the words of
the law, and to follow that reason and justice requireth, and to that intent equity is
ordained; that is to say, to temper and mitigate the rigour of the law. And it is called
also by some men epieikeia; the which is no other thing but an exception of the law
of God, or the law of reason, from the general rules of the law of men, when they by
Joseph Story, Commentaries on Equity Jurisprudence, 13th edn., 2 vols. (1846; reprint,
Littleton, Colo.: Fred B. Rothman, 1988), 1.6.
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reason of their generality, would in any particular case judge against the law of God
or the law of reason; the which exception is secretly understood in every general rule
of positive law. And so it appeareth, that equity taketh not away the very right, but
only that that seemeth to be right by the general words of the law. Wherefore it
appeareth, that if any law were made without any such exception expressed or implied,
it were manifestly unreasonable, and were not to be suffered: for such causes might
come that he that would observe the law should break both the law of God and the
law of reason.
In sum, Equity is a right wiseness that considereth all the particular
circumstances of the deed, the which also is tempered with the sweetness
of mercy (Saint Germain, Doctor and Student, 45). Equity justifies what
the general terms of the law would otherwise render illicit and criminal:
it legitimates the different, the anomalous, the problematic by extenuating
for the circumstances of an action or speech, in the manner described by
the Nicomachean Ethics (6.11) when it says that the equitable person is
considerate in judgment. To quote Terence Irwin, such a person will often
find something pardonable in cases where the inflexible application of a
rule that is only [usually] true would result in mistaken blamean order
of equitable consideration that Cicero also remarks, distinguishing between
justice and right where a man has carelessly or under compulsion or by
accident committed an action that in the case of persons acting deliberately
and voluntarily would not be permissible (De Partitione Oratoriae 37).
Expedience understood this way is charitably, mercifully, to acknowledge
the contingent nature of human experience, which we incorrigibly propose
to master despite daily proof of human finitude, and so only succeed in
effacing from our expressions about the world, in the process falsifying our
relationship to it.
The doctrine of legal inerrancy itself depends upon such an elision, becoming
a source of injustice when we obliviously insist on the categorical sense of
legal things at the expense of human actualities. Then the law devolves upon
a formal, self-enclosed and self-perpetuating system, divorced in its concerns
from the human world it is meant to describe and shape. Thus Harold
Potter observes that equity jurisprudence originated in the prerogative of the
monarch and his chief minister, the lord chancellor, to dispense aequa et recta
Christopher Saint Germain, Doctor and Student, 2nd edn. (1787; reprint, Birmingham,
Ala.: Legal Classics Library, 1988), 456.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, tr. and ed. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1985),
1645. All parenthetical citations of the Ethics refer to this edition.
Nicomachean Ethics, 418.
Cicero, De Oratore (Book III), De Fato, Paradoxica Stoicorum, De Partitione Oratoriae,
tr. H. Rackham (Cambridge, Mass.: Loeb Library/Harvard University Press, 1977), 413. All
parenthetical citations of De Partitione Oratoriae refer to this edition.
justitia where the common law in its formalism was either unable or unwilling
to do so, in the manner Montaigne recounts of the French judges. It was
necessarily an indefinite jurisdiction, whose contingent exercise was further
aggravated by the frailty of civil order in the medieval world, where might
could and did oppress right with remarkable impunity.
This dispensation of extraordinary justice was represented as an expression
not only of the monarchs grace and mercy, which included the vexed
prerogative of pardon, but also the royal conscience which the chancellor was
said to embody in himself. Nor was it coincidental that such an organ of
government developed under the aegis of ecclesiastical chancellors, who were
themselves bred up under the canon law to adjudicate the right in cases of
individual conscience, and whose procedures, like those that came to obtain
in the court of Chancery, involved personal examination of the parties to
any legal issue, as well as a detailed inquiry into the full circumstances of
the case, introducing evidence of intent or mental state, the better to assess
the moral significance and gravity of an action or speech. The result was to
give legal standing and agency to the conscienceboth the courts and its
constituencyswhich neither enjoyed to the same degree elsewhere, enabling
its judges better to distinguish between, say, premeditated and inadvertent or
incidental offenses, and thus to make a critical refinement in the sometimes
blunt instrument of the common law, which in the name of a notional
clarity discountenanced the peculiar evidence of consciences expression. For
in its efforts simultaneously to forestall what it feared would be the endless
exfoliation of exceptions, not to mention the scandal of legal error, a literal
or categorical understanding of the law in effect disdains the due constraint
exerted on inference by the particular circumstances surrounding any human
expression, and consequently the discriminate, elucidating power of intent.
This procedural denial of the full evidence of intent, conjoined to the heedless
assumption of the laws infallibility, could lead to interpretive incoherence
especially when a judge was confronted with an anomalous case, whose
result was psychological and moral incoherence in the world subject to such
implacable legality.
By contrast, the value and interpretive principle of equity admits the
scandal of human fallibility in how we promulgate and administer the law that
penalizes our malfeasance. In order to rectify the error endemic to any human
enterprise, it negotiates between texts or judgments on the one hand, and
their use and occasion on the other, exercising a careful discretion or latitude
of interpretation within the parameters set by the words of the law (which
Harold Potter, Historical Introduction to English Law and Its Institutions (London: Sweet &
Maxwell, 1932), 492 ff.
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would include precedent judgments) and the force of particular circumstances.

Moreover, as St. Germain attests and Potter explains, the grounds of equitys
justification were also taken from canon law, whose jurisdiction likewise
depended on the theory that the law of God governed the universe, and hence
His law and the law of nature and reason, which was nearly synonymous,
predominated over the rules of any State. A human law could not be valid
in contradiction to divine law. Consequently, the Chancellor arrogated to
himself the right to interfere with the course of law in a particular instance,
even where the general rule was just, if according to conscience it would work
against the law of God (Potter, English Law, 495).
2
By St. Germains account, equity takes exception wherever a judgment seemeth
to be right by the general words of the law, but in actuality is morally
repugnant because unjust, thus aggravating the original wrong. He argues
still further that whenever a human law, or that which is taken for law, is
expressed absolutely, unconditionally, the divine imperatives of right and
justice, embodied in natural law, require that such a law admit exceptions
and remedy the wrong. For to do otherwise is not to do justice ex aequo
et bonoin the phrase of Roman civil law, from the fair and the good
(Cicero, De Partitione Oratoriae, 37). What with the Catholic Inquisition, the
Avignon papacy, and the wars of religion consequent upon the Reformation,
Milton fairly observes that the very words blasphemy, heresy and schism
had become imbued with a theopathic, not to say demonic aura, which
militated against the popular understanding of dissenting practices, and which
he would see dispelled by religious education. In the case of blasphemy, he
challenges his Erastian opponents in Civil Power not thus to terrifie and pose
the people with a Greek word: but to teach them better what it is; being a
most usual and common word in that language to signifie any slander, any
malitious or evil speaking, whether against God or man or any thing to good
belonging (TCP, YP 7.246). He himself takes heresy in its original usage
as mere heterodoxya difference or departure from received opinion in
religion or any intellectual matteras Hobbes does, who unlike Milton chose
to publish his blasphemous and heretical ideas. Schism, like sectarianism, is
meaningless where there is no ecclesiastical institution or hierarchy above the
congregational level and consequently no tithing, a situation which Milton in
his restrictive antinomianism prefers, having long regarded such particular,
local administration as the primitive form of discipline practised in the early
church.
But until the psychological miasma surrounding these terms is dispersed,

Miltons distinction between a taken scandal and a given was no more
likely in 1659 to find a receptive audience outside learned circles than his
last-ditch effort to save the Good Old Cause. Juridically, positive law would
be obliged to treat both heresy and blasphemy in categorical terms, thus
effacing any difference of circumstance and intent, which of course the
literalism of strictum et summum jus would not recognize in the first place.
Given the juridical abuse of such legislation, it is curious that Milton would
hold up for more than politic approval the commonwealths prudent and
well deliberated blasphemy ordinance of 1650, where the Parlament defines
blasphemie against God, as far as it is a crime belonging to civil judicature,
plenius ac melius Chrysippo & Crantore; in plane English more warily, more
judiciously, more orthodoxally then twice thir number of divines have don
in many a prolix volume: although in all likelihood they whose whole studie
and profession these things are should be most intelligent and authentic
therin, as they are for the most part, yet neither they nor these unnerring
always or infallible (TCP, YP 7.2467). I will defer for the moment Miltons
assertion of human fallibility, a practical scepticism which, along with liberty
of conscience, provides the grounds on which he removes all religion, not
excluding Catholicism, from the purview and penalties of the magistrate, who
would then address such concerns only when they became a substantive and
so actionable threat to civil order.
This is the significance of his phrase, as far as it is a crime belonging to
civil judicature, by which Milton draws the always-fine line between religious
expression and civil disturbance, in which latter category the ordinance
places the social protests of the Ranters, by conduct if not by name. For
with the due exception of persons distempered with sickness, or distracted
in brain, it proscribes the behavior of those who should abuse and turn
into Licentiousness, the liberty given in matters of Conscience. Yet unlike
the Scottish Kirk, the ordinance focuses on intent, or in Miltons phrase,
scandal deliberately giventhat is to say, the Ranters calculated outraging
of public opinion and the common peace. So while the ordinance prohibits
public speech denying the existence and offending against the holiness of
God, it also proscribes such assertions as proclaiming oneself God, that
all creatures are God or that God is within all creatures, none of which
are monotheistic, much less Judeo-Christian tenets; that scripture does not
prohibit acts of Lying, Stealing, Cousening and Defrauding others, which
is arguable given the behavior of the patriarchs; that the acts of Murther,
C. H. Firth and R. S. Rait, eds., Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 16421660, 3 vols.
(London: Stationery Office, 1911), 2.410.
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Adultery, Incest, Fornication, Uncleanness, Sodomy, Drunkenness, filthy and

lascivious Speaking, are not things in themselves shameful, wicked, impious,
abominable, and detestable, again arguable from scripture; and finally, the
Manichean expedient that whatsoever is acted by them (whether Whoredom,
Adultery, Drunkenness or the like open Wickedness) may be comitted without
sin, if demonstrably not without civil penalties (Firth and Rait, Acts and
Ordinances, 2.410).
Milton himself would, I suspect, have been willing to admit that some of
these claims are indeed arguable from scripture, although he would probably
have taken issue with the reasoning behind them. At the same time, observing
his own distinction between a taken and a given scandal, he would have
separated the Ranters opinions as such from their deliberate use as public
provocation and, as the ordinance declares, to license every kind of civil offense
from theft and fraud to public indecency. In short, it does not enforce religious
opinion so much as civil order and the common peace. By the exceptions it
makes and by the justification it gives, the ordinance itself admits the question
of mental state or intent into law, distinguishing the private beliefs of religious
conscience from acts of open Wickedness. It also shows that discernment
between civil and religious which Milton desires to see in government, but on
which he knows better than to depend, having lived through an era of summa
jus, summa injuria in which the rigor of the law knew no bounds.
I refer to the 1648 Act of the Long Parliament, which made felonious
the Preaching, Teaching, Printing, or Writing of blasphemy and heresy
(Firth and Rait, Acts and Ordinances, 1.1133), and whose severe penalties
the 1650 ordinance could be said to temper, earning not only Miltons
approval but his gratitude, which better explains its appearance here. For
the earlier Act pretty much proscribes the fundamentals of his personal
theology: antitrinitarianism and subordinationism if unabjured are punishable
by death; Arminianism, mortalism and antinomianism by renunciation and
imprisonment until sureties are given (Firth and Rait, Acts and Ordinances,
1.11336). Before the 1640s, such matters belonged to the jurisdiction of
canon law and the ecclesiastical courts, in whose purview public morality
also lay, and which at least admitted the forensic instrument and evidence
of intent. But in England as elsewhere, its penalties were still those executed
by the magistrate, running the gamut from the stocks, flogging, branding
and mutilating to imprisonment, transportation and death. When the Long
Parliament abrogated the authority of both ecclesiastical and prerogative
courts as well as High Commission, moral and religious malfeasance fell
under the jurisdiction of the common lawthe courts of Common Pleas and
Kings (or in commonwealth usage, Upper) Bench, with the consequent loss
of canon laws procedural and interpretive latitude.
In a theopathic age, even the Protectorate with its positive and tacit
policy of toleration was helpless to stave off the tongue-boring, pillorying,
whipping and imprisonment of the Quaker, James Nayler, for blasphemously
entering Bristol in 1656 as the Messiah, complete with palm leaves and ecstatic
crowds. Yet Cromwell still managed to avert Naylers execution in the face
of parliamentary and popular hysteria, as he had the Unitarian (or Socinian)
John Biddle a year earlier. In this context, the penalties for public blasphemy
levied by the 1650 ordinance appear moderatefor a first offense, six months
imprisonment; for a second, exile from the commonwealth upon pain of death,
while still allowing for the legal process of abjuration of felonywhich is
congruent with Civil Powers detestation of material or physical coercion in
religion. Indeed, the whole ordinance displays the sort of circumspection that
Bacon for one praises in a good law: its unambiguous expression, its explicit
statement of the lawmakers intent, its economical exceptions to the rule,
and its carefully delimited description of the offense. Such circumspection
is singularly absent from the comprehensive and unextenuated proscriptions
of 1648; but however properly and temperately composed a law may be, it
cannot control how its language will be construed and applied by a magistracy
disinclined to observe its mitigating spirit. This John Bunyan discovered to
his despair even before the Cavalier parliaments oppressive legislation against
nonconformity was enacted, and conventicles made sedition ipso facto in 1662,
1664, 1665, 1670 and so forth. For as the Restoration dictum categorically
declares, It is impossible for a Dissenter, not to be a REBEL.
But depending on the circumstances at hand, any expression or action
can mean one way and then anothera fact of human usage as valid for
the language and administration of the law as it is for those living under
its ordination. Nor is all scandal taken, any more than it is given: both law
For a further account of Nayler, see G. E. Aylmer, Rebellion or Revolution? (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1986), 1767; Robert Ashton, Reformation and Revolution 15581660 (London:
Paladin, 1985), 414; and Derek Hirst, Authority and Conflict (London: Arnold, 1986), 3425.
Hirsts second chapter is particularly good on the mental world in which Englands dissenting
communities, both Catholic and Protestant, had to make their way, while Christopher Hills The
World Turned Upside Down (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975) is as always the locus classicus for
seventeenth-century sectarian history, with an extensive discussion of Nayler, especially 24858.
Charles Firth, Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England (1900; reprint,
London: Oxford University Press/World Classics, 1972), 358. Hirst is more sceptical about
Cromwells efforts on Naylers behalf.
The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon
Heath, 7 vols. (London: Longman et al., 1861), 5.1012.
Holdsworth separately cites this dictum and the source from which I quote it, Lord
Halifaxs Letter to a Dissenter (London, 1687), 15, written in response to the still more
controversial Declaration of Indulgence made by James II, that of course led to the arrest and
trial of the Seven Bishops for resisting it, whose acquittal in turn may be said to have been the
precipitating cause of the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
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and civility exist precisely to mediate our inevitable differences with each
other, so that we can share a sociable existence in spite of our incorrigible
egoism (of which twin facts the 1650 ordinance is well aware). On this head,
it may be remembered, as one occasion for Areopagiticas assault on the
licensing ordinance in 1645, that Milton was condemned by name in the
Long Parliament for advocating the dissolution of marriage on the grounds
of mental as against sexual incompatibility, with his offending pamphlet, the
Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643/4), placed on the Long Parliaments
index. If ever Milton experienced the personal anguish of taken scandal,
this was it, given the rumors that immediately sprang up of his licentiousness
and even bigamy (made a capital crime in 1650); and his shocked attempts in
subsequent tracts and the odd sonnet to vindicate both his views and himself
amply testify to his abiding sense of injury.
But whatever the role played by his own experience of misprision, Milton
embodies the predicament of scandal taken or given in Satans outrage at
the exaltation, initially articulated by this ontological hierarch as an offense
against natural equality and right, and then as blasphemy against the godhead
of the heavenly hosts. Thus when the Father singles out the person enthroned
on heavens high hill as his Son, anointing him as Messiah, Lord Vicegerent
of creation, Satan imagines not only that his rightful position has been
usurpedwhich Raphael comparatively and so parodically describes as of
the first / If not the first archangel, great in power, / In favour and pre-
eminence (PL 5.65961)but that his presumptive identity as the creature
most proximate and therefore most like God has been impaired (PL 5.665).
In his eyes, the new monarch, who has engrossed all power and eclipsed
angelic being (PL 5.7756), is not the only begotten Son of the one true God:
he is Satans creaturely equal, newly and ironically disclosed as such by the
express spectacle of the Sons deification. Nor are the angels themselves the
powers the Son created by the Father, but Natives and sons of heaven (PL
5.790), born with that world and to it, whose puissance is our own because
newly autochthonous (PL 5.864): Rememberst thou / Thy making, while the
maker gave thee being? / We know no time when we were not as now; / Know
none before us, self-begot, self-raised / By our own quickening power (PL
5.85761). They are gods who without law / Err not, possessed of perfect
virtue that renders the seeming penalty attached to the Fathers decree at
once superfluous and sacrilegious (PL 5.7989), and whose imperial titles
proclaiming their right to rule are innate or self-evident, to be read off each
angel as the cabalistic Adam reads the Hebrew name inscribed on every
See William Parker, Milton: A Biography, ed. Gordon Campbell, 2nd edn., 2 vols. (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1986), 1.2448, 2605.
inferior animal (PL 5.8012). Last but not least, the Father is transformed
into a despot who defrauds his noble peers of their natural and lawful equality
by arbitrarily imposing on them the rule of his favorite and court parasite, the
Sonthe faithless reading of the divine decree and its ostensible illogic.
Yet once more, we are on the field of Runnymede, with Satan characterizing
the exaltation and the Sons figural begetting as something along the lines
of a Caesarian apotheosisa self-deification by the Father which involves
the civil worship of the Son as his image. Accordingly, in addressing those
as-yet-guiltless spirits in heavens north, Satan derides what he calls Knee-
tribute prostration vile, / Too much to one, but double how endured, / To
one and to his image now proclaimed (PL 5.7824). Moreover, he raises a
novel fearthat the Sons new creation or ennobling by royal prerogative
and proclamation renders merely titular all those angelic degrees, ranks
and distinction which Satan mercilessly intones in imitation of his divine
betters (PL 5.774). I need hardly point out the political significance of that
charge, where the creation of new nobility is seen not only to undermine the
wonted prestige and power of old titles, but by such a seemingly arbitrary
dispensation, to render even hereditary rank revocable and suspect in value.
And Satan promptly exploits this self-created anxiety when, made sleepless
by indignity, he speaks of new law from him who reigns to his companion
dear and next subordinate, the angel latterly known as Beelzebub (PL
5.6713, 680).
The episode also offers a further rhetorical instance of taken scandal, when
Satan describes the undisrupted sleep of his inferior companion as dissent
from their wonted unity of mind, and by implication, a moral blindness to
the wrong done his chief and all the angelic hosts by the exception made of
the Son (PL 5.679). It is a failure of class solidarity to which Satan swiftly
awakens Beelzebub and the rest of his great cohort with apostasys drumbeat
of equality: Will ye submit your necks and choose to bend / The supple knee?
Ye will not, if I trust / To know ye right, or if ye know yourselves (PL 5.7879).
Setting aside Miltons irony, which here abounds in the devices of Satans
habitual demagogueryhis false ingratiations, equivocating clauses, dubious
abstractions and inflammatory iterationsevery statement the malign spirit
makes evacuates the hidden God from the world. Heaven begins to look a lot
like the natural aristocracy of republicanism and thus like hell, to be governed
by those angels acknowledged and elected primus inter paresthe best of the
best. But as J. G. A. Pocock argues, republicanism in England was rarely if
ever thoroughly Machiavellian and naturalized in Satans manner. Rather,
In The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975), Pocock
articulates something remarkably close to Satans sentiments when he describes the role of
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as Miltons did, it usually took as its first principle a God who creates and
erects human reason, from which divine gift derives any claim to natural right,
equality and libertythe grounds on which St. Germain argues an equitable
exception from law, and Milton justifies religious dissent.
Tellingly, a version of Satans outrage and its epiphenomena of fraud and
violence inspired a thirteenth-century statute against what was called scan-
dalum magnatum, injurious rumors supposedly spread about those temporal
gods of scripture, the lordly and mighty, which the law sought to inter-
dictnot so much to ward off the defamation of grandees as to safeguard
the peace of the kingdom, since the offended great one was only too ready
to resort to arms to redress a fancied injury by the crown, as Holdsworth
comments (History, 3.409). The circumstances of its enactment and its own
language argue that the statute was actually devised to avert a taken as against
a given scandal; but as Satan demonstrates by his own baronial rebellion,
presented to his cadres as the angelic Magna Carta, positive law even in the
form of a divine decree is helpless to stave off such psychological contingencies.
For notwithstanding the notionally prophylactic effect of its penalty, which
has no effect whatsoever on Satans limited imagination and bad conscience,
only God himself could pull off such an impossibly totalitarian project of
mind control, in which every thought not expressly allowed is forbidden. Even
supernal law restricts itself to the demonstrable fact of an offense, which is
why the satanic legions are guiltless in the eyes of heaven and their sin not
actionable until the moment when they vote to revolt with their great chief
against the regality of God, upheld by old repute, / Consent or custom (PL
1.63940).
For in Satans heaven, there is no God as such, only the autarchy of angelic
godhead. That which exists must be seen to exist; but Miltons God is a
hidden God, a Deus absconditus sub contrario in Luthers formulationthe
creator irretrievably concealed beneath its contrary in the creaturewhose
very hiddenness expresses the ultimate and absolute distinction between deity
and the world, unmade and made, while also constituting the salient condition
of their relationship. For the creators invisibility elicits and tries the creatures
custom or second nature in justifying any peoples sense of political and legal uniqueness: A
claim to uniqueness was a claim to autonomy, and when it was asserted that there was nothing
in English law and government that was not customary and autochthonous, the claim was
being made that the English possessed a historical and immemorial sovereignty over themselves;
they were not, and they had never been, anything which was not of their own making (341).
Indicatively, Milton does not make a republican or any other argument that I can recall from
the authority of custom or second natureonly from human equality before God.
For an extended discussion of this issue and its theological sources, see my argument in
Imperfect Sense (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001), 4593, 20882.
faith in its unseen maker and, by extension, all religious invisibilia including
faith itself, which in the words of Hebrews 11:1 is the assurance of things
hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. In the Christian Doctrine, where
Milton argues for the Sons subordination to deity per se, he uses this very
distinction to analyze the character of scriptural theophany: for deity to be
manifest, the hidden God requires the Son, his image; in any other way he is
invisible (DDC, YP 6.244); moreover, God is inaudible just as he is invisible,
except through the Son as his Word (DDC, YP 6.239). All other theophany
is either heraldic and mediated by angels, or prophetic and human. So when
the speaker (as his wont) anticipates the eventual apostasy of humankind, he
describes them as corrupted to forsake / God their creator, and the invisible /
Glory of him that made them (PL 1.36870).
But Satan, after the manner of lex scripta or positive law, only admits
categorical evidence of godheadwhat appears as suchwhile attending
obsessively, like strictum jus, to its mere superficies. As a consequence,
theophany as the mediated presence of deity escapes him, in a fashion not
unlike the way that the evidence of conscience or intent, warranting a different
construction and a procedural exception, escapes the notice of the common law
or the literalism of strictum jus. In Civil Power, this differential understanding,
which argues that any expression can mean more and other than it appears to
do, enables us to discern between civil and religious, and to cure the disorder
and corruption of either realm created by their Erastian conflation, which
Satans reasoning mimics (TCP, YP 7.240). It also allows us to distinguish
between dissent and insurgency, just and unjust, as well as scandal taken and
given; because it is at this juncture that Abdiel gives the lie to angelic inerrancy
and dissents from Satans atheism, exclaiming: O argument blasphemous,
false and proud! (PL 5.809).
3
Not accidentally, the competing figures of Satan and Abdiel, who naturally
argue in utramque partemon either side of the question of a creator
Godappear alike in the broad outlines of their actions: each is scandalized
by the blasphemous words of ostensibly divine authority and openly repudiates
them, refusing to remain a member of the community over which it rules;
and each subsequently takes up arms against professed godhead to effect
its overthrow. Strictum jus would find nothing to choose between the two,
both dissenters and insurgents against established authority and consequently
both outlaws; and lex scripta would not admit into evidence the particular
circumstances which would permit their discrimination. That is precisely why
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Milton argues that the magistrate has no place meddling in religion; for the
difference between Satan and Abdiel does not lie in what is obvious but in what
is incapable of more than probable demonstrationthat their actions are done
in good conscience and good faith, which in law only equity and its interpretive
procedure can detect. And that inquisitorial method, it should be remembered,
is largely imported from canon law, and to that extent a papistical invention.
Equity can take exception to the false necessity imposed by such categorical
imperatives, allowing it to pursue extraordinary justice ex aequo et bono. And
in Chancery, extraordinary justice also involved exceptional procedures: the
novel invention of a writ of subpoena to compel personal attendance and
what was originally a viva voce examination by the court; an indefinite latitude
of inquiry that would allow the chancellor or his proxies to construct a fully
circumstantial account of the case, which would include considerations of
intent or consciencenot only of the law but of the parties at law. Civil
Power would make such an equitable exception for all religious opinion and
practice, not excluding Catholicism, on the grounds that Christian liberty
similarly sets us free not only from the bondage of those ceremonies, but
also from the forcible imposition of those circumstances, place and time in
the worship of God: which though by him commanded in the old law, yet in
respect of that veritie and freedom which is euangelical, S. Paul comprehends
both kindes alike, that is to say, both ceremonie and circumstance, under one
and the same contemtuous name of weak and beggarly rudiments, Gal. 4.3.9,
10. Col. 2.8. with 16 (TCP, YP 7.262). Ceremonies and circumstances are
the mere externals of religion, the weak and beggarly rudiments of the law
whose enforcement is tantamount to idolatry in Miltons eyes, and an offense
against the liberty of the gospelthat freedom of understanding and choice
that he invests in the faculty of conscience.
To save his cause and his life, and later to staunch the outpouring of
political and religious radicalism consequent upon his ideas, Luther became
an Erastian perforcealthough, as Milton remarks, the threat against this
capital Protestant came not only from the papacy but from its anointed, the
Holy Roman emperor (TCP, YP 7.243). Yet it is on the Pauline ground of
Christian liberty which Luther himself revived in The Freedom of a Christian
(1520) that Milton would radically restrict the legal domain of civil obligation,
urging the separation of church and state:
It should be noted that, unlike England, where the inquisitorial procedure of canon law
was confined to prerogative courts like Chancery and Star Chamber, its assimilation to criminal
law on the continent had horrific consequencesas Holdsworth argues, legitimating the use
of torture. See Holdsworth, History, vol. 5, for a comparison of the English and continental
systems, and full discussion of Star Chambers history and procedure.
Christ hath a government of his own, sufficient of it self to all his ends and purposes
in governing his church; but much different from that of the civil magistrate; and the
difference in this verie thing principally consists, that it governs not by outward force,
and that for two reasons. First because it deals only with the inward man and his
actions, which are all spiritual and to outward force not lyable: secondly to shew us
the divine excellence of his spiritual kingdom, able without worldly force to subdue
all the powers and kingdoms of this world, which are upheld by outward force only.
That the inward man is nothing els but the inward part of man, his understanding and
his will, and that his actions thence proceeding, yet not simply thence but from the
work of divine grace upon them, are the whole matter of religion under the gospel,
will appeer planely by considering what that religion is; whence we shall perceive
yet more planely that it cannot be forcd. What euangelic religion is, is told in two
words, faith and charitie; or beleef and practise. That both these flow either the one
from the understanding, the other from the will, or both jointly from both, once
indeed naturally free, but now only as they are regenerat and wrought upon by divine
grace, is in part evident to common sense and principles unquestiond, the rest by
scripture. (TCP, YP 7.255)
To the differing ends of civil and religious order, Milton argues that any
subjective faculty like the understanding and will is by its very nature exempt
from legislation and coercion. For conscience and its peculiar subject, the
spiritual dimension or significance of things, are what Luther after Hebrews
calls res non apparentes, things that like the hidden God do not appear as such.
So Milton demands to know how can such religion as this admit of force
from man, or force be any way applid to such religion, especially under the
free offer of grace in the gospel, but it must forthwith frustrate and make of no
effect both the religion and the gospel? (TCP, YP 7.256). He takes exception
to the intrusion of lex scripta in religion, not only because it reduces the
impalpables of faith to the superficies of ceremonies and circumstances, the
meretricious display of hypocrisy, but also because he resists the categorical
logic of the lawBractons a similibus ad similiafor whom equal justice is
likeness and thus the enforcement of outward conformity at the expense of
conscience, that religious faculty or intelligence which apprehends and enacts
the dictates of faith and charity.
As Hobbes of all people regularly insists, only God can judge the heart,
which lies in the domain of invisibilia to which deity itself belongs, with the
judgments of positive law restricted to visibilia, which is to say actionable in
the sense of demonstrable offenses. The virtue of equity, as the principle of
conscience whether embodied in common law or Chancery jurisprudence, is
that it admits the distinction between the categorical or presumptive sense of
speech and action, and their actual significance. And this differential order
of meaning begins for Milton with the fact of deitys hiddenness, and the
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abysmal difference between creator and created that Satan would deny. And it
does so because conscience, like all religious meaning for Milton, is mediated
by the manifold phenomena of temporal experience. Thus equity itself is not
identical with the law, only with justice; and to the extent that lex scripta
misrepresents a state of affairs by its categories and procedures, so equity
intervenes to do justice precisely because its own procedures acknowledge the
discrepancy between the ostensible and the actual sense of things where the
categorical logic of positive law argues their likeness, and summum et strictum
jus their identity.
So where lex scripta confines the magistrate to the categorical sense of the
law, common law procedure itself largely ensures that judgment is restricted
to external facts and their presumptive construction, to which material and
corporal penalties are then adduced. So when civil law is imported to religion,
the inevitable result is to convert the spiritual exercise of faith and conscience
into weak and beggarly rudiments, the outward shows of religion, which
here as in the anti-prelatical pamphlets Milton associates with the repressive
policies of the Laudian episcopate and of course the papacy. By contrast, the
procedures of equity historically admit into evidence the individual expressions
and particular circumstances which mediate human intent, precisely because
it acknowledges the conscience of both the court and the parties at law, and
with conscience the discrepancy between what appears and what is actually
the case.
Since conscience as a differential order of meaning has no legal standing
in the civil law as applied to religion, the discrepant sense of the spiritual
is evacuated perforce from religious practice, like God from Satans heaven;
and with it goes all possibility of making those moral and religious dis-
criminations in human speech and action which depend upon admitting
circumstantial evidence and the elucidating force of intent. Abdiel looks
just like Satan; Bunyan the loyalist instead looks like a Fifth Monarchy
man (whose open sedition in Venners crackpot Rising of 1661 was made
the pretext for Parliaments harsh measures against nonconformity); and
Milton himself looks like a libertineas he does even to this day. On the
grounds of divine and human equity, therefore, the author of Civil Pow-
er would remove religion from the civil jurisdiction of law, and from all
compulsion except the suasive. For they address distinct if related orders of
human experience and meaning whose conflationwhether by the Ranters
For a brief account, see J. P. Kenyon, Stuart England, 2nd edn. (London: Penguin, 1985),
1978; a fuller, contemporary account appears in Bishop Burnets History of My Own Time, Part
One: The Reign of Charles the Second, ed. Osmund Airy, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1897),
1.2789.
or their Erastian opponentsis destructive of truth, justice and the right in

either realm.
But by enfranchising civil judgment and punishment in causes ecclesiasti-
cal, Erastianism establishes a civil inquisition, degrading to the instinctual
reflex of bodilie fear the free intelligence of consciencethat full perswasion
whereby we are assurd that our beleef and practise, as far as we are able to
apprehend and probably make appeer, is according to the will of God & his
Holy Spirit within us, which we ought to follow much rather then any law of
man, as not only his word every where bids us, but the very dictate of reason
tells us (TCP, YP 7.242). More grievously still, such an inquisition presumes
to a capacity impossible in any creature, which is to judge infallibly, inerrantly
in religious matters, as Satan claims for the gods of heaven but mostly himself,
in his delusional effort to be most like God, to equal him (PL 1.2489), and
even to supercede him, having supposed that one step higher / Would set me
highest (PL 4.501).
As Miltons language inescapably declaresno less a pope or popedom
than he at Rome (TCP, YP 7.244); a popish commuting of penaltie, corporal
for spiritual (TCP, YP 7.245); a civil papacie (TCP, YP 7.244)the epitome
of such penal enforcement of thought is the papacy, which in its idolatry
exalts human traditions over the authority of scripture, its own inerrancy over
conscience and the illumination of the Holy Spirit, implicit faith sequestered
from the sacred text over its unrestricted access and interpretation, and whose
Holy Inquisition perverts canon laws inquisitorial procedure into the bloody
tenet of persecution. Thus Milton pictures the pope like he pictures Satan in
Book 2, sitting in the temple of God, as it were opposite to God, and exalting
himself above all that is called god, or is worshipd, 2 Thess. 2.4.; and, in case we
might miss the point, he adds a gloss: That is to say not only above all judges
and magistrates, who though they be calld gods, are far beneath infallible, but
also above God himself, by giving law both to the scripture, to the conscience,
and to the spirit it self of God within usthe aspiration, in short, of a Lucifer
(TCP, YP 7.244).
But since Protestant theology acknowledges no other divine rule or autoritie
from without us warrantable to one another as a common ground but the
holy scripture, and no other within us but the illumination of the Holy
Spirit. which no man can know at all times to be in himself, much less to
be at any time for certain in any other, it follows cleerly, that no man or body
of men in these times can be the infallible judges or determiners in matter
of religion to any other mens consciences but thir own (TCP, YP 7.2423).
For Milton, the criterion that validates exegesis and conscience at once is not
orthodoxy but rather probabilitythat is to say, what usually happens or
is meant under such circumstancesthe value which in Aristotle (as eikos,
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cognate with epieikes or equity) and Cicero (as probabilis or verisimilis) governs
any inference in the arena of human affairs: Seeing therfore that no man, no
synod, no session of men, though calld the church, can judge definitively the
sense of scripture to another mans conscience, which is well known to be a
general maxim of the Protestant religion, it follows planely, that he who holds
in religion that beleef or those opinions which to his conscience and utmost
understanding appeer with most evidence or probabilitie in the scripture,
though to others he seem erroneous, can no more be justly censurd for a
heretic then his censurers (TCP, YP 7.2478).
It is precisely because the papacy has consistently resorted to the expedient
of force to secure religious uniformity and thus its own hegemony over his
own nation, that Milton like the vast majority of his fellow citizens regards
Catholicism primarily as a political institution, not a religiona Roman
principalitie rather, endevoring to keep up her old universal dominion under
a new name and meer shaddow of a catholic religion; being indeed more
rightly namd a catholic heresie against the scripture; supported mainly by a
civil, and, except in Rome, by a forein power: justly therfore to be suspected,
not tolerated by the magistrate of another countrey (TCP, YP 7.254). He
reiterates that civil justification for intolerance towards Catholicism, whose
private services and household meetings Milton is hardly unique in regarding
as a hotbed of foreign subversion and civil insurgency. But neither in Civil
Power, nor the expediently anticatholic True Religion, does he sanction the use
of corporal or monetary penalties against Catholics, although in True Religion
he recommends the destruction of their images and the proscribing of their
private worship as antichristian idolatry.
The enforcement of that latter proscription would seem to require the
levying of some civil penalty, as both Masson and Keith Stavely remark (TR,
YP 8.431 n. 59); but Milton conspicuously fails to follow up this implication.
Instead, despite a hundred years or more of fervent popular bigotry, regrettably
fanned on this occasion by Charles IIs 1672 Declaration of Indulgence (which
modestly allowed Catholics only private worship while removing all civil
penalties for Protestants), he succumbs to the general hysteria only insofar
as he exploits it for the sake of nonconformist toleration. Thus, against
the trend of current legislation, he abides by his principled resistance to
force in religious matters, although his endorsement of that exception for
Catholics could hardly be called ringing: Are we to punish them by corporal
punishment, or fines in their Estates, upon account of their Religion? I
suppose it stands not with the Clemency of the Gospel, more then what
For the full text of the 1672 Declaration, see J. P. Kenyon, The Stuart Constitution
16031688, 2nd edn. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 3824.
appertains to the security of the State (TR, YP 8.431). Instead, he restricts his
recommendations to preventative measures designed to fend off Catholicisms
notionally deleterious effects, especially the irrational seduction images have
for an implicit faith: educating the Protestant laity in the scriptures, allowing
the free and open discussion of religious ideas, and the encouragement of each
persons moral amendment.
Again, the distinction between Catholic and nonconformist prosecution is
one of circumstance and intent, between civil insurgency and ecclesiastical
dissent, which can only be argued in particular instances, and not categorically.
For in the tracts ongoing paradox, which informs almost every argument
Milton makes, he contends that the effort forcibly to coerce the human mind
will recoil back upon itself. This is the reflexive action that he famously
exemplifies in the Areopagitica by his comparison of truth to the new Proteus,
who when palpably constrained, assumes every shape but his own. For
whenever we seek to circumscribe and fix the mind of God or our neighbor,
we succeed only in disfiguring our own understanding and will. In Civil Power,
the imposition of material penalties induces only hypocrisy and profanation
in its victims while illustrating the corruption of their advocates, who in
disdaining spiritual means betray the gospels fundamental principles of faith
and charity: Since force neither instructs in religion, nor begets repentance
or amendment of life, but, on the contrarie, hardness of heart, formalitie,
hypocrisie, and, as I said before, everie way increase of sin; more and more
alienates the minde from a violent religion expelling out and compelling in,
and reduces it to a condition like that which the Britains complain of in
our storie, driven to and fro between the Picts and the sea (TCP, YP 7.269).
True church discipline must be intelligible and voluntary, contingent upon
the individuals free and unforced consent, to be exercisd on them only who
have willingly joind themselves in that covnant of union, and proceeds only
to a separation from the rest, proceeds never to any corporal inforcement or
forfeture of monie; which in spiritual things are the two arms of Antichrist,
not of the true church; the one being an inquisition, the other no better than
a temporal indulgence of sin for monie, whether by the church exacted or by
the magistrate (TCP, YP 7.245).
Accordingly, he concludes that if [Catholics] ought not to be tolerated, it
is for just reason of state more then of religion; which they who force, though
professing to be protestants, deserve as little to be tolerated themselves, being
no less guiltie of poperie in the most popish point (TCP, YP 7.254). This is not
only a rhetorical maneuverthat is, to create an aversion to the practice by
damning as papistical the Protestant imposition of civil penalties in religion:
it is also to accuse the makers and enforcers of recusancy legislation of being
no less antichristian than the Pope, by similarly substituting corporal for
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spiritual (TCP, YP 7.245). Further, they do so on such dubious scriptural

grounds as Pauls adducing the authority of conscience in Romans 13:5Be
subject not only for wrath, but for conscience sake (TCP, YP 7.252)to secure
civil obedience explicitly in those civil things covered by what was called
the second and moral table of the decalogueadultery, murder, theft,
false witness, and covetingover against its initial religious prescriptions
(13:9), and which Paul himself sums up in the Levitical terms of Jesus great
commandment: You shall love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:39).
The Erastian reading of Romans 13:5 isolates the verse from that context,
focusing arbitrarily upon the simple interjection of the word conscience
in this most wrested and vexd place of scripture, in order to claim the
magistrates jurisdiction in spiritual matters, which is to distort the clear trend
of Pauls argument, as Milton observes: If from such uncertain or rather such
improbable grounds as these they endue magistracie with spiritual judgment,
they may as well invest him in the same spiritual kinde with power of utmost
punishment and then turn spiritual into corporal (TCP, YP 7.252).
The problem of discernment thus raised consists in an inability to recognize
that spiritual meanings do not operate like physical or monetary onesnot
because they are somehow transcendent and so ineffable, but because they
simply signify differently, neither objectively nor equivalently, fungibly. In
Miltons view, Erastianism assumes the opposite, an assumption expressed in
both the legal criteria of blasphemy and heresy as well as their punishments:
How many persecutions then, imprisonments, banishments, penalties and
stripes, he then exclaims: how much bloodshed have the forcers of conscience
to answer for, and protestants rather than papists! (TCP, YP 7.253). Given
its inefficacy, coercion of opinion is nonsense in the very word, and immoral
nonsense at that: men must be exhorted to beware of scandals in Christian
libertie, not forcd by the magistrate; least while he goes about to take away the
scandal, which is uncertain whether given or taken, he take away our liberty,
which is the certain and the sacred gift of God, neither to be touchd by him,
nor to be parted with by us (TCP, YP 7.267).
Not only Miltons admission of uncertainty in human relations, but his
very distinction between given or taken scandal recognizes the fundamentally
interpretive character of our social existence, insofar as it involves the perpetual
possibility of misunderstanding within the daily fact of mutual if not perfect
comprehension. Milton makes this point by his own exegesis, which takes
issue not only with the inferences of his Erastian opponents, but also with their
interpretive procedure, which is to fragment the text into semantic particles,
extracting at will a phrase or a sentence that can then be made to signify
arbitrarily. In a world of controversy that invariably clothes its argument in
chapter and verse, Milton can afford to do the same; but his own readings
observe the grammatical-historical method of Erasmus and the reformers,

which attends to just those circumstances of expression and occasion that
are expediently elided by the strictum jus of such biblicism. Oddly enough,
that method is identical with legal interpretation, as F. Vaughan Hawkins
describes it, quoting Grotius: Interpretatio est collectio mentis ex signis maxime
probabilibus. It is a collecting of the intent from the most probable signs or
marks. And as Hawkins goes on to argue, Interpretation is in truth a species
of equity, just as equity may be said to be a liberal interpretation of the law:
But in fact with no class of writings, nay, with no one writing, is it ever the case
that it is inadmissible to travel in search of the intent beyond the mere meaning
of the words. in practice the two processes are impossible to separate: and it is
hard to say where meaning in the sense of known and definite signification ends,
and implication or inference begins to be added to it. Ordinary language is full of
ellipses and ambiguities, which we solve unconsciously to ourselves by a reference to
intention; and in some kinds of writing and speaking suggestion is almost without
limit, and the meaning of the words bears a very small proportion to the amount of
meaning conveyed or hinted at. A law, therefore, which enjoined a perfect written
expression, would be impossible to be obeyed, and the command which gives rise to
the necessity of the letter, in a legal writing, must itself be interpreted according to the
spirit. ( Thayer, Preliminary Treatise on Evidence, 587)
A categorical fixation on securing the clarity and fixity of legal forms can
only achieve those ends at the cost of what the coronation oath aptly calls
discretion in mercy and truththe human actuality whose indefinite nature
Aristotle wisely distinguished from the objects of episteme and apodeixis,
as he distinguished the intelligence of phronesis from mathematical facility
(Nicomachean Ethics 6.79). But it is Hawkinss point that their achievement
is illusory, a specious and fleeting effect dispelled by the invariable contingency
of human meaning. For the intent of any human expression, and any legal
text, is circumstantial, probable, and as he observes with Milton, sociable,
charitable: we do not make sense or law in an inhuman void, but in the context
of other minds whose expressions we not only wish but are also morally
obligated to understand. And we do so by reference to the probable signs or
marks of that persons intentaccording to the spiritwhich necessarily
include but are not restricted to the mere words or facts at issue. On this
head, I would again invoke David Burrells always important correction in
our vulgar understanding of the term: for the medievals, he remarks, Spirit
referred not in the first instance to an unfamiliar mode of existence, but a
On the Principles of Legal Interpretation, with Reference Especially to the Interpretation

of Wills, in James Bradley Thayer, A Preliminary Treatise on Evidence at the Common Law (1898;
reprint, Fred B. Rothman, 1969), 577605, esp. 580.
168 Victoria Silver
capacity for relating on different levels and across the space-time parameters
of bodies. For Wittgenstein as well, meaning is a relation in every sense of
the word, and cannot be reduced to any one point, not even to the word itself.
It is for Milton too. Perhaps the most egregious example he gives of forcing
the scriptural text and conscience together is the Erastian account of a parable
from Luke, whose wonted incongruities distinguish between the ostensible
and figural, the literal and spiritual sense of its own expressions, and thereby
received or worldly value from that which obtains in the kingdom of heaven.
In the parable, a man invites many to a banquet who, when the time arrives
and the banquet is ready, make their excuses, too occupied with worldly affairs
to attend. Furious, he tells his servant, Go out quickly to the street and lanes of
the city, and bring in the poor and maimed and blind and lame (14:21). And
when places yet remain at the table, he says again, Go out to the highways and
hedges, and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled: For I tell
you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet (14:224).
It is significant that the context here is a banquet Jesus himself attends,
where he exhorts the guests not only to the exercise of humility in worldly
things, but to the charitable and equitable activity of dignifying the poor and
sufferinginviting them to supper over those with a worldly claim and means
to reciprocate in kind: For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just
(14:1314). Moreover, the following chapter immediately takes up the issue
dear to its Greek authors own heart, that of Christian universality, whose
opening verses relate the Pharisees disdain and suspicion of Jesus because he
admits to his company tax collectors and sinnersthose who on the Levitical
grounds of purity are excluded from religious community. The tradition
of Jesus tolerance in this regard, which the gospels subsequently inscribe,
justified the Pauline mission to the gentiles, whose apologist articulates the
issue in Romans and Galatians by his distinction between law and gospel.
Milton regularly invokes that distinction in Civil Power most extensively in
his account of Galatians allegory of the two Jerusalemsand his response to
the Erastian reading of Lukes parable reflects it in an unexpected manner:
but magistrates under the gospel, our free, elective and rational worship, are most
commonly busiest to force those things which in the gospel are either left free, nay
somtimes abolishd when by them compelld, or els controverted equally by writers
on both sides, and somtimes with odds on that side which is against them. By which
means they punish that which they ought to favor and protect, or that with corporal
punishment and of thir own inventing, which not they but the church hath receivd
command to chastise with a spiritual rod only. Yet some are so eager in thir zeal of
David B. Burrell, Knowing the Unknowable God (Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University
Press, 1986), 23.
forcing, that they refuse not to descend at length to the utmost shift of that parabolic
prooff Luke 14. 16, &c. compell them to come in. therfore magistrates may compell
in religion. As if a parable were to be straind through every word or phrase, and
not expounded by the general scope therof: which is no other here than the earnest
expression of Gods displeasure on those recusant Jewes, and his purpose to preferre
the gentiles on any terms before them; expressd here by the word compell. But how
compells he? doubtless no otherwise then he draws, without which no man can come
to him, Joh. 6. 44: and that is by the inward perswasive motions of his spirit and by his
ministers; not by the outward compulsions of a magistrate or his officers. (TCP, YP
7.2601)
Arbitrarily to fasten upon the one word compel, and thenwhile ignoring
the integral figuralism of parabolic discourse, as well as the general scope
of Jesus teachingsperversely to construe it in exclusive support of civil
compulsion, is not only an interpretive but a moral absurdity. In Miltons
eyes, it is a violence done to the scriptural text in order to enfranchise
worldly concerns and corporal means, and so exemplifies the Erastians willful
disregard of the different because spiritual and elective operation of religious
things. His own prophetic construction may appear equally tendentious to
some; but again, it gains credibility from the scriptural context and from the
historical circumstances of the gospels Greek composition, whose apostolic
author could be nothing else but a product of Pauline evangelism, and who
probably construed Jesus parable in that light, given its juxtaposition with
Luke 15.
Such tyrannizing over scripture and conscience as he ascribes to the
Erastian position is what moves Milton to desire that religion be not only
disestablished, but altogether uninstituted above the congregational level.
Only then, he believes, can humanity engage without constraint in the true
relations of the spirit:
To protestants therfore whose common rule and touchstone is the scripture, nothing
can with more conscience, more equitie, nothing more protestantly can be permitted
then a free and lawful debate at all times by writing, conference or disputation of what
opinion soever, disputable by scripture: concluding that no man in religion is properly
a heretic at this day, but he who maintains traditions or opinions not probable by
scripture; who, for aught I know, is the papist only; he the only heretic, who counts all
heretics but himself. (TCP, YP 7.249)
It is therefore appropriate that the epilogue to Civil Power comes from Miltons
own practice and experience of singularity, as described by Bishop Burnet in
his History of My Own Time:
John Goodwin and Milton did also escape all censure, to the scandal of all
people Milton had appeared so boldly, though with much wit, and great puri-
ty and elegancy of his Latin style, against Salmasius and others, upon that argument,
170 Victoria Silver
and had discovered so virulent a malice against the late king and all the family, and
against monarchy, that it was a strange omission if he was forgot, and an odd strain
of clemency if it was intended he should be forgotten; but he was not excepted out
of the act of indemnity. Afterwards he came out of his concealment, and lived many
years, much visited by all strangers, and much admired by all at home for the poems
he writ, though he was then blind; chiefly that of Paradise Lost, in which there is a
nobleness both of contrivance and execution, that, though he affected to write in blank
verse without rithm, and made many new and rough words, yet it was esteemed the
beautifullest and perfectest poem that was ever writ, at least in our language. (Burnet,
History, 1.2834)
9
Milton and Antitrinitarianism
Martin Dzelzainis
In 1687, the clergyman Stephen Nye initiated the so-called Unitarian Con-
troversy by publishing A Brief History of the Unitarians, Called also Socinians.
Bringing a cool simplicity to heated theological and patristic disputes, Nye
sought to minimize doctrinal differences between those rejecting the orthodox
account of the Trinity as comprised of three distinct personsthe Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spiritwho are nevertheless equally divine and one in
essence. According to Nye,
tis to be noted that the Arians and Socinians agree in their Doctrine concerning God,
that he is only one Person, the God and Father of our Lord Christ; but they differ
concerning the Son and Holy Spirit. The Son, according to the Arians, was generated
or created some time before the World, and in process of time, for great and necessary
causes, became incarnate in our Nature: The Holy Ghost (they say) is the Creature
of the Son, and subservient to him in the Work of Creation. But the Socinians deny,
that the Son our Lord Christ had any Existence before he was born of Blessed Mary,
being conceived in her by the holy Spirit of God: They say the Spirit is the Power
and Inspiration of God This difference notwithstanding, because they agree in the
principal Article, that there is but one God, or but one who is God, both parties
(Socinians and Arians) are called Unitarians, and esteem of one another as Christians
and true Believers.
The message was that Arians and Socinians should agree to differ on questions
such as whether the Son had pre-existed the Incarnation.
Another simplification was Nyes insistence on the Council of Constantin-
ople in 381 as the pivotal event in the history of the Christian church. Before then,
he argued, Christians were successively Nazarens (followers of the Apostles
Creed, which did not assert the godhead of the Son and the Holy Spirit), Arians,
and upholders of the position on the Father and the Son adopted at the Council
Stephen Nye, A Brief History of the Unitarians, Called also Socinians. In Four Letters, Written
to a Friend (n.p., 1687), 334.
172 Martin Dzelzainis
of Nicaea in 325. That is to say, Nye distinguishedcorrectlybetween the

Nicene Creed, which made the Son co-equal and co-eternal with the Father,
and the later Doctrine, that Son and Holy Spirit are the same God with
the Father, not only (as the Nicene fathers explained this matter) by Unity
of Wills, and specifical Identity or sameness of Substance, but by numeri-
cal or true Identity and sameness of Substance and Nature (Brief History,
p. 29). For although the Nicene Creed was specifically designed to counter
Arianism and thus insisted on the full divinity of the Son as begotten, not
made, and as of one substance with the Father, it made no comparable
assertions about the Holy Spirit and was therefore only binitarian. It was the
Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381 that took the further decisive step of
declaring that the Spirit proceeded from the Father and was also fully divine,
thereby asserting a truly trinitarian doctrine.
For more than a millennium, the enforcement of this doctrine by means
of terrible penal Laws had condemned those subscribing to one or other
of the pre-trinitarian formulas to a marginal or interstitial existence. But the
situation in the 1680s looked particularly bleak to Nye (Brief History, 2930):
now not only the Nazaren Faith, but the Arian and the Nicene (truly so called) are
no where openly profest in the Territories of Christian Princes and States; except in
a few Cities of Transilvania, and some Churches of the United Netherlands, in which
Countries Liberty of Conscience makes a part of their Civil Rights and Franchises. But
in the Turkish and other Mahometan and Pagan Dominions, where also the conquered
Provinces of Christians have Liberty of Conscience, the Nazaren and Arian Churches
are very numerous.
Why was this? One answer is that unlike Calvinists in Scotland or Lutherans
in Sweden, antitrinitarians never succeeded in capturing a state for them-
selvesnot that they would have wished to do so, given the pronounced
antimagisterial tendency in their social and political thought. More impor-
tant was the fact that throughout Europe the dogma they were rejecting
was underwritten by the power of the state. As Jaroslav Pelikan puts it, the
unchallenged theological hegemony of the doctrine of the Trinity, beginning
in the fourth century and ending in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
See Jaroslav Pelikan, Credo: Historical and Theological Guide to Creeds and Confessions of
Faith in the Christian Tradition (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), 229,
and YP 6.50.
See Stanislas Kot, Socinianism in Poland: The Social and Political Ideas of the Polish
Antitrinitarians in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Boston, Mass.: Starr King Press, 1957)
and Sarah Mortimer, Radical Heresy: Socinianism and Natural Law in the Early Seventeenth
Century, unpublished conference paper given at the Center for the Study of Books and Media,
Princeton University (March 2006). My thanks to Sarah Mortimer for permission to cite her
paper.
Milton and Antitrinitarianism 173
was basically coextensive with the willingness and ability of civil authorities
to go on enforcing it (Credo, 227). While Christian regimes that were not
committed to the enforcement of trinitarianism, like that of the Elector Karl
Ludwig, who ruled the Palatinate from 164980, did begin to appear in the
later seventeenth century, they were still the exception. Even Holland, the most
tolerant of the United Provinces, passed anti-Socinian legislation in 1653 which
was often invoked by a Dutch Reformed Church that was deeply hostile to
antitrinitarianism. Conversely, the reason why antitrinitarians could flourish
in Muslim states was because these had no investment in trinitarian dogma.
One place where antitrinitarianism did secure a foothold was Poland. Here
the 1573 Confederation of Warsaw guaranteed Protestants of whatever sort
equality with Catholics. The Minor Reformed Church was established at
Rakow in 1565, with its own library and a press. In the later sixteenth century,
its leading light was an Italian, Fausto Sozzini (15391604), better known by
his Latinized surname, Socinus, who was largely responsible for systematizing
antitrinitarian doctrines which were then given definitive statement in the
Racovian Catechism of 1605 by Valentin Smalcius, Johannes Volkelius (also
responsible for the 1608 translation from Polish into German) and Hierony-
mus Moscorovius (also responsible for the Latin translation of 1609) (see YP
6.612). With the later Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum (166692), compiled
by Socinian refugees in Holland, the Moscorovius translation of the Catechism
was a key text in disseminating antitrinitarianism throughout early modern
Europe, and nowhere more so than in England.
*
The public scrutiny of trinitarian and christological dogma initiated by Nye
came too late for John Milton, who it is widely agreed had become an Arian
or neo-Arian some years before his death in 1674. However, there is no
agreement about exactly how and when he arrived at these insights. The aim
of this essay is accordingly to retrace as far as possible his engagement with
antitrinitarianism, working backwards from the end of his lifethe period
when we can be relatively certain about his Arianism.
In England, antitrinitarianism was only decriminalized by the so-called Trinity Act of 1813.
See Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity
16501750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 313, 190, 195, 275, 277.
For this consensus, see especially Christopher Hill, Milton and the English Revolution
(London: Faber, 1977), 2956; Michael Bauman, Miltons Arianism (Frankfurt: Lang, 1987) and
John P. Rumrich, Miltons Arianism: Why it Matters, in Stephen B. Dobranski and John P.
Rumrich, eds., Milton and Heresy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 7592. The
label neo-Arian is Pelikans (Credo, 496).
The starting-point must be Miltons unpublished theological treatise, De

Doctrina Christiana, which, Barbara Lewalski suggests, was finished in all
essential respects in 165865, in tandem with Paradise Lost. For only in Book
1, Chapter 5, De Filio Dei (Of the Son of God), did Milton make absolutely
clear his view that the Son is not co-equal, co-eternal, or co-essential with the
Father (see YP 6.20380; CM 14.176356). His other, published writings on
religion were mostly concerned with ecclesiological topics such as episcopacy
and tithes, though occasional asideslike the glance at Arians as no true
friends of Christ in Of Reformation (1641), or the prayer addressed to the one
Tri-personall GODHEAD with which that work concludes (YP 1.534, 614; cf.
6.68)indicate his initial orthodoxy. However, in three tractsAreopagitica
(1644), A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes (1659), and Of True
Religion, Hresie, Schism, Toleration, And what best means may be usd against
the growth of Popery (1673)he did address liberty of conscience, an issue of
crucial importance to antitrinitarians, whose survival depended on toleration
or, at least, an absence of the political will to enforce orthodoxy.
The most immediately relevant of these works is Of True Religion, where
Milton like Nye is more interested in finding common ground than sharpening
differences. What all Protestants agree on as the main Principles is that the
Rule of true Religion is the Word of God only: and that their Faith ought not
to be an implicit faith, that is, to believe, though as the Church believes, against
or without express authority of Scripture. A Protestant is someone who works
out their faith on the basis of their own and not anothers understanding of
scripture, even if that understanding turns out to be mistaken. The content of a
belief, right or wrong, matters less than how it came to be held. This, rather than
the degree of mistakenness, is what differentiates heresy from error; Heresie
is in the Will and choice profestly against Scripture; error is against the Will,
in misunderstanding the Scripture after all sincere endeavours to understand
it rightly. On this view, the obstinate Papist, [is] the only Heretick, whereas
Lutherans, Calvinists, Anabaptists, Socinians, Arminians are merely liable
to err (YP 8.420, 421, 423). But this way of putting things also means that
Milton can defend groups like the Socinians without having openly to endorse
their characteristic beliefs; all he has to show is that their believers formed
them conscientiously. Adopting the same cool and impersonal tone as Nye,
he remarks that the
Arian and Socinian are chargd to dispute against the Trinity: they affirm to believe
the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, according to Scripture, and the Apostolic Creed;
as for terms of Trinity, Triniunity, Coessentiality, Tripersonality, and the like, they
Barbara K. Lewalski, The Life of John Milton (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 416.
reject them as Scholastic Notions, not to be found in Scripture, which by a general
Protestant Maxim is plain and perspicuous abundantly to explain its own meaning
in the properest words, belonging to so high a Matter and so necessary to be known;
a mystery indeed in their Sophistic Subtilties, but in Scripture a plain Doctrin. Their
other Opinions are of less Moment. They dispute the satisfaction of Christ, or rather
the word Satisfaction, as not Scriptural: but they acknowledge him both God and their
Saviour. (YP 8.4245)
Although Miltons own beliefs cannot be inferred from these remarks, their
upshot is clear: because Arians and Socinians base their opinions on scripture
they are good Protestants and, being such, should not be persecuted by their
co-religionists.
Miltons case for the toleration of antitrinitarianism ultimately rests on
the argument that for one Protestant to persecute another is a form of
self-contradiction since it negates their own main Principles. Somewhat less
predictably, he contrasts the persecution of nonconformists in England with
the toleration extended to Protestant minorities in some Catholic countries:
For if the French and Polonian Protestants injoy all this liberty among Papists,
he says, much more may a Protestant justly expect it among Protestants
(YP 8.4267). This was disingenuous. Milton in 1673 knew, and had known
for years, that Polish antitrinitarians were actually being persecuted. In the
first edition of The Readie and Easie Way (March 1660), Poland is one of the
examples Milton uses to illustrate the benefits of toleration and the costs of
persecution: I have heard from Polanders themselves that they never enjoid
more peace, then when religion was most at libertie among them; that then
first began thir troubles, when that king by instigation of the Jesuites began to
force the Cossaks in matters of religion (YP 7.382). A first wave of persecution
in Poland led to the destruction of Rakow in 1638 (at which point the
printing of Socinian works largely transferred to Holland). But in 1658 the
Polish Diet proscribed antitrinitarianism altogether, and the following year
brought forward the date by which Arians, Anabaptists, and Socinians had
to leave Poland to July 1660 (hence Polands absence from Nyes European
map of antitrinitarianism). Some evidently fled to England since sympathizers
like Thomas Firmin and John Knowles were collecting money for the relief
of banished Polanders in the early 1660s. What is intriguing therefore is
Miltons insistence that he learned about this persecution at first hand.
For a recent reading of the passage, see Michael Lieb, Milton and the Socinian Heresy, in
Mark R. Kelly and John T. Shawcross, eds., Milton and the Grounds of Contention (Pittsburgh,
Pa.: Duquesne University Press, 2003), 2603.
See [Stephen Nye], The Life of Mr. Thomas Firmin (London, 1698), 25, and Walter
H. Burgess, John Knowles and Henry Hedworth: Seventeenth Century Unitarian Pioneers,
Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society 5 (1931), 13.
Even before the diaspora began Milton was aware of Jesuit-inspired intol-
erance because it features in the Instructions for the Agent to Russia he drew
up in April 1657. The envoy, Richard Bradshaw, was to urge the Grand Duke
to accept the King of Sweden as a confederate on the grounds that he would
then be
secure from the feare of force or innovation on the Russian religion, it being no
principle of that protestant King to force consciences, as it is of the Polonian a Popish
King; and that the Muscovitish religion, a branch of the Greek church, is not so
different from the Protestant religion, as is the Popish and Polonian, which if it get
footing in his dominion by Polonian Jesuits, will not fail to work alterations. (YP 5.787)
By the mid-1650s, Poland was clearly in the Counter-Reformation camp and
bent on persecution.
However, Milton would have been more aware still that antitrinitarians
were under threat in Protestant England, as the proceedings against the most
prominent of them, John Biddle, showed. In March 1654, Miltons employ-
ers, the protectoral council, commissioned the Independent spokesman, John
Owen, to reply to Biddles Twofold Catechism (February 1654). Regarding
this as no less than a call from God to plead for his violated Truth, Owen
also incorporated a reply to the Racovian Catechism in his massive Vindiciae
Evangelicae. And in December 1654 the Barebones Parliament had Biddle
arrested and ordered his Twofold Catechism and Apostolical and True Opinion
Concerning the Holy Trinity (1653) to be burned. Although released in May
1655 following the dissolution of Parliament, he was re-arrested and charged
with denying the divinity of Christ. This placed Cromwell in a dilemma.
While a successful prosecution would alienate many of the godly, he could
not permit toleration to be stretched so farr as to countenance those who
denie the divinity of our Saviour, or to bolster up any blasphemous opinion
contrary to the fundamentall verities of religion. He quietly had the case
dropped and Biddle packed off to prison in the Scilly Isles.
The fundamentall verities were a different matter. Throughout the 1650s
attempts were made to define these and have them underwritten by the
For Miltons interest in Baltic affairs, see Martin Dzelzainis, Juvenal, Charles X Gustavus
and Miltons Letter to Richard Jones, The Seventeenth Century 9 (1994), 2534.
See H. J. McLachlan, Socinianism in Seventeenth Century England (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1951), 20212, and Blair Worden, Toleration and the Cromwellian Protectorate,
in W. J. Sheils, ed., Persecution and Toleration, Studies in Church History, 21 (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1984), 2045, 21822.
John Owen, Vindiciae Evangelicae or, the Mystery of the Gospell Vindicated, and Socinianisme
Examined (Oxford, 1655), sig. 3v .
W. C. Abbott, ed., Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, 4 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 193747), 3.834, quoted in John Coffey, Persecution and Toleration in
Protestant England 15581689 (Harlow: Pearson, 2000), 151.
civil power. Success for religious conservatives finally came with The Humble
Petition and Advice of 1657. Although the Confession of Faith outlined
in Article 11 was to be recommended to the people rather than made
compulsory, liberty of conscience was denied to Popery or Prelacy or to those
who did not profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His eternal
Son, the true God, and in the Holy Spirit, God co-equal with the Father and
the Son, one God blessed for ever. Nor would such who publish horrible
blasphemies be countenanced. This proscribing of antitrinitarianism may be
what prompted Milton to resume work on De Doctrina Christiana, in which
case we might see the treatise as a counter-statement of the fundamental
verities even though there was no possibility of its being published under the
Protectorate. Indeed, Article 11 probably contributed as much to Miltons
disenchantment with the Cromwellian regime as its increasingly monarchical
tendencies. If Milton (as seems likely) was following the same trajectory into
opposition as Sir Henry Vane the Younger, then he too would have concluded
that Cromwell was ayming at the Throne in spirituals as well as Temporals.
**
Yet things had turned out very differently with the previous attempt to impose
orthodoxy. This too was sparked off by a Socinian publication and headed by
Owen. On 10 February 1652, Owen appeared at the bar of the House together
with fourteen others and presented a Petition, with a Paper annexed; being a
Copy of a Warrant mentioned in the Petition, together with a printed Book
(CJ 7.86). The petition took exception to the recent London edition of the
Catechesis ecclesiarum quae in regno Poloniaethe Moscorovius translation
of the Racovian Catechism. The warrant was a copy of that issued by the
S. R. Gardiner, ed., The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 3rd edn.
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 4545. For the debates on Article 11, see Journals of the House
of Commons, 1819 March 1657, 7.5068; available online at http://www.british-history.ac.uk.
Hereafter cited as CJ.
Sir Heny Vane, The Proceeds of the Protector (so called) and his Councill against Sir Henry
Vane, Knight (London, 1656), 8.
It has not been noticed that there is a bibliographical puzzle about the edition of the
Catechesis tabled by the petitioners. When Gilbert Millington reported from the committee
appointed to investigate the work on 2 April, he produced a Collection of the principal
blasphemous Errors in that Book, and specified that the Deity of the Son is impugned from
Page 43 to Page 108; and yet, Page 7, he makes this mere Man the Author of the Christian
Religion (CJ 7.114). These page references do not match the British Library copy of the 1651
edition (E.1391[1]), which George Thomason dated March on the title page (he also crossed
out RACOVI and substituted Londinj); the statement said to be on p. 7 is found instead
on p. 6, while the chapter De Persona Christi, in which the deity of the Son is discussed,
Council of State on 27 January, ordering the Serjeant at Armes attending this

Councell to repaire to the House of William Dugard printer, and there to make
seizure of a certain impression of Bookes entituled Catechesis Ecclesiarum
Poloniae, and to require him to come forthwith to the Councell. Their
petition must also have invited a wider consideration of religious issues since
Parliament responded by setting up two committees; a larger one to consider
the Catechesis, and a smaller one to confer with the ministers and others about
proposals to establish a state church maintained at the public expense. On 18
February, the petitioners duly submitted fifteen proposals to the Committee
for the Propagation of the Gospel.
By seventeenth-century standards, the proposals were strikingly tolerant of
those dissenting from the Doctrine and Way of Worship owned by the State.
All persons were required to hear the gospel preached on the sabbathexcept
such persons as through scruple of Conscience do abstain. And no-one was
required to take the sacrament further then their Light shall lead them
([Owen et al.], Humble Proposals, 5). Shortly afterwards, however, Owen
submitted a supplementary set of fifteen fundamental principles framed
so as to exclude antitrinitarians in particular from toleration. With the
Catechesis fresh in their minds, the ministers further insisted that no persons
be suffered to Preach, or Print any thing in opposition to those Principles
of Christian Religion, which the Scripture plainly and clearly affirmes, that
without the beliefe of them salvation is not to be obtained ([Owen et al.],
occupies pp. 38100. But they do correspond closely to one of several editions issued with the
false imprint Racoviae 1609: the copy reproduced in Early English Books Online, STC20083.3
(= London: H. Lownes, 1614?). The relevant statement (Ipso Religionis Christian autore, qui
fuit homo divinus) is at p. 7 while De Persona Christi occupies pp. 41107. The Bodleian
Library catalogue lists two further copies with false 1609 imprints: 8 C 64 Th. Seld (= London,
R. Young, after 1635), and a duodecimo edition, Vet. A3 f.1636 (= England?, after 1640?), the
former of which is identical to STC 20083.3 while the latter is identical to E.1391[1] except that
it has a different title page and also lacks the Latin life of Socinus and catalogue of his works
appended in 1651 (i.e. E.1391[2]; what Milton probably licensed therefore was a reissue of the
sheets that made up Vet. A3 f.1636 with a new title page and the contents of E.1391[2]). Perhaps
lacking access to a specimen of E.1391[1], the petitioners substituted a version of the text as
printed in 1614/1635 or later.
J. Milton French, Life Records of John Milton, 5 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers
University Press, 194958), 3.157.
CJ 7.2589; the proposals were published on 31 March as The Humble Proposals of Mr.
Owen, Mr. Tho. Goodwin, Mr. Nye, Mr. Sympson, and other Ministers, who presented the Petition
to the Parliament (London, 1652: E.658[12]).
The fundamentals were not printed until 2 December 1652, in Proposals for the furtherance
and propagation of the Gospell in this Nation (London, 1653 [sic]: E.683[12]), 521. They certainly
existed by 30 March, the date of Thomasons copy of Roger Williams, The Fourth Paper Presented
by Maior Butler to the Honourable Committee of Parliament, for the Propagating the Gospel of Jesus
Christ (London, 1652: E.658[9]), which refers to them at p. 23.
Proposals, 5). To define fundamentals and then seek to foreclose public

discussion of them was only to double the provocation.
The response to the ministers scheme was a campaign in which Roger
Williams orchestrated the talents of, among others, Milton, Vane, and Mar-
chamont Nedham. Williams himself led the way with pamphlets advocating
unlimited toleration, the separation of church and state, and the disestab-
lishment of the ministry. Nedham supplied two anticlerical editorials for
Mercurius Politicus aimed at the Church Nationall Pretenders and also printed
a set of counter-proposals, possibly drafted by Biddle. Vane, who defended
Biddle in 1647, the antitrinitarian MP John Fry in 1651, and the Massachusetts
Socinian William Pynchon in 1652, supplied a treatise on idolatry he had
drafted a year earlier, Zeal Examined: Or, A Discourse for Liberty of Conscience
in Matters of Religion. For his part, Milton made two very precise inter-
ventions. The first was a sonnet To the Lord General Cromwell May 1652
On the proposals of certaine ministers at ye Committee for Propagation of
the Gospell. As Blair Worden has pointed out, Miltons plea to Cromwell
to Help us to save free conscience from the paw / Of hireling wolves (CSP
329, ll. 1314) is not addressed to someone who was a fellow opponent
of clerical intolerance (Worden, John Milton and Oliver Cromwell, 250).
Rather Milton is trying, if possible, to detach Cromwell from his protege
Owen, who had probably been acting with Cromwells approval. The second
was the sonnet Milton sent to Vane on 3 July 1652. After praising Vanes
achievements as a statesman, Milton turned to his unmatched insight into the
spheres of civil and religious liberty:
besides to know
Both spiritual power and civil, what each means,
What severs each, thou hast learned, which few have done.
The bounds of either sword to thee we owe;
Therefore on thy firm hand Religion leans
In what follows, I am deeply indebted to Carolyn Polizzottos excellent article, The

Campaign against The Humble Proposals of 1652, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 38 (1987),
56981, and Blair Worden, John Milton and Oliver Cromwell, in Ian Gentles, John Morrill
and Blair Worden, eds., Soldiers, Writers and Statesmen of the English Revolution (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998), 24452.
See Williams, The Fourth Paper; The Bloody Tenent Yet More Bloody (London, 1652:
Thomasons copy, E.661[6], is dated 28 April); The Hirelings Ministry None of Christs (London,
Printed in the second Moneth, 1652); and The Examiner Defended (London, 1652: Thomasons
copy, E.675[2], is dated 14 September).
Mercurius Politicus, no. 99, 229 April 1652, pp. 15536; no. 100, 29 April6 May 1652,
pp. 15768; no. 114 , 512 August 1652, pp. 17859.
See Henry Vane, Zeal Examined (London, 1652: Thomasons copy, E.667[15], is dated 15
June), Sig. Azr. For the attribution to Vane, see Polizzotto, The Humble Proposals, 579.
See George Sikes, The Life and Death of Sir Henry Vane, Kt. (n.p., 1662), 93.
In peace, and reckons thee her eldest son.
(CSP 331, ll. 914)
Polizzotto plausibly suggests that this was Miltons tribute to Vanes Zeal
Examined. If so, then it explains the alternative version of line 11 in the
Trinity Manuscript, Thou teachest best, which few have ever done (CSP
331; my emphasis), which only makes sense if Vane had published his views.
However, while there was virtually nothing in Vanes treatise to which Milton
would not have subscribed, hecharacteristicallydid not want to imply
any intellectual indebtedness to him and so substituted thou hast learned for
Thou teachest.
When the Committee for the Propagation of the Gospel reported in Febru-
ary 1653, the proposal to silence those who disagreed with the fundamentals
had been dropped (see CJ 7.259). The success of the radicals campaign was
also registered in The Instrument of Government (1653), the first protectoral
constitution, Article 37 of which declared that all such as profess faith in God
by Jesus Christ would not be restrained from, but shall be protected in, the
profession of their faith. The only exclusions were Popery and Prelacy and
those who, under the profession of Christ, hold forth and practise licentious-
ness (Gardiner, Constitutional Documents, 416). While Catholics, Anglicans,
and groups like the Ranters fell foul of the article, antitrinitarianswho could
after all profess faith in God by Jesus Christdid not. This respite proved
short-lived. Not only was Biddle imprisoned and prosecuted within months
but the Instrument itself was superseded by the markedly less tolerant Humble
Petition and Advice.
***
The parliamentary committee investigating the Catechesis worked much more
quickly. By 21 February, they had examined and re-examined Dugard, Francis
John Coffey argues that Miltons refusal of toleration for Catholics is profoundly puzzling,
since his close friends Vane and Williams had both argued at length for the toleration of idolaters
(Persecution and Liberty Revisited: The Case for Toleration in the English Revolution, Historical
Journal 41 (1998), 969). But there were clear limits to Vanes toleration: by excusing of Idolaters,
I doe not intend a necessary Toleration of Papists, much lesse of Priests and Jesuites, for though
they may not come within the Magistrates Cognizance, by their worshipping of Images or the
host in the Sacrament, yet they may as they maintain the Jurisdiction of a forreign power over
their Consciences, if that forreign power doe maintain Principles that are inconsistent with all
Magistrates and People that are not of his Religion. Now that the Pope doth so is most apparent,
for he doth not onely declare us all to be Hereticks, but likewise that such Hereticks ought to be put
to death when ever his Disciples have the power over them (Zeal Examined, sig. A3v ). This was
also Miltons view; as he puts it succinctly in A Treatise of Civil Power, if they [papists] ought
not to be tolerated, it is for just reason of state more then of religion (YP 7.254; cf. 2.565).
Gouldman, and a Mr Walley, and found the first two guilty of printing and
publishing the Catechesis. They had also examined Milton and unearthed
a Note under the Hand of Mr. John Milton, of the 10th of August 1650
(French, Life Records, 2.321; 3.157; CJ 7.114). No official record of Miltons
examination or of any finding against him survives, but on 24 February/5
March 1652 Liewe van Aitzema reported to The Hague on the state of religion
in the sister republic where, he said, they permit all exercise of religion which
does not err in the fundamentals and which is not papist, a point apparently
illustrated by the recent printing of the Catechesis:
This was frowned upon by Parliament; the printer says that Mr. Milton had licensed
it; Milton, when asked, said Yes, and that he had published a tract on that subject,
that men should refrain from forbidding books; that in approving of that book he had
done no more than what his opinion was. (French, Life Records, 3.206)
This strongly suggests that Milton in his capacity as licenser had authorized
Dugard and Gouldman to publish the Catechesis. The outcome on 2 April was a
vote finding the work Blasphemous, Erronious, and Scandalous and ordering
copies to be seized and burnt. How effective the order was in suppressing
it is unclear. In September 1652, a group of Presbyterian booksellers thanked
Parliament for showing its dislike of the Catechesis by causing a few that could
be taken to be burnt (my emphasis). The action was manifestly insufficient
in their view because there is no standing penal Law to deter men from
Writing, Printing and publishing the like for the future. This was illustrated
by the fact that since the execution of that Justice some have presumed to
publish the foresaid Catechism in English, in affront to the Parliament, and
chiefly to the Lord Jesus.
Most commentators agree that Miltons involvement with the Catechesis
is the key to determining when he abandoned the orthodox position on the
Trinity. For John P. Rumrich, it was the most concentrated and representative
episode in Miltons career as a religious controversialist. Nevertheless he
concedes that we simply do not know when Milton found himself convinced
by antitrinitarian arguments. Lewalski is similarly cautious: virtually all that
we can be sure of on this score is that Milton was orthodox in 1629, when
Votes of Parliament Touching the Book commonly called The Racovian Catechism (London,
1652: 669.f.16[45]), single sheet.
[Luke Fawne, Samuel Gellibrand, Joshua Kirton, John Rothwell, Thomas Underhill, and
Nathaniel Webb], A Beacon Set on Fire: Or The Humble Information of certain Stationers, Citizens
of London, to the Parliament and Commonwealth of England (London, 1652), 16. The English
translation was possibly by Biddle (see McLachlan, Socinianism, 1913); Thomasons copy of
The Racovian Catechisme (Amsterledam, 1652: E.1320[1]) is dated 8 July.
John P. Rumrich, Radical Heterodoxy and Heresy, in Thomas N. Corns, ed., A Companion
to Milton (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 150.
he wrote the Nativity Ode, and may have stayed so until August 1650. As she
suggests, it may have been attending to this licensing duty [that] prompted
Milton to begin to question Trinitarian doctrine. Likewise for Stephen B.
Dobranski, it is pleasing to speculate whether the incident of The Racovian
Catechism served as a catalyst for some of Miltons still inchoate heretical
opinions. However, he cautions against using his antitrinitarianism to gloss
his government licensing duties because this may be to oversimplify how
and when he came to accept such heretical opinions. For while Milton was
undoubtedly orthodox on the Trinity in the early 1640s it is also the case that
even in 1649 he was still referring publicly to the infections of Arian and
Pelagian Heresies .
Nevertheless, all these commentators find themselves in a kind of Catch-22:
for Milton to have licensed the Catechesis at all suggests a degree of sympathy
for antitrinitarianism; however, it was only exposure to the Catechesis which
made him think about these issues in the first place. In all this, two important
pieces of evidence have been overlooked. The first is the significance of the
date of Miltons note apparently authorizing publication of the Catechesis: 10
August 1650. For this was the day after Parliament had passed the Blasphe-
my Act (see CJ 6.4534). The Act was primarily aimed at suppressing the
Rantersantinomians who were thought to deny the necessity of Civil and
Moral Righteousness among men. Anyone maintaining, whether in words
or writing, him or her self, or any other meer Creature, to be very God,
or denying that heaven or hell or God had any external reality, was liable to
imprisonment for a first offence and banishment out of the Commonwealth
of England, and all the Dominions thereof for a second. However, this Act
was far less stringent than the 1648 Ordinance it superseded, which had pre-
scribed the death penalty for anyone who by Preaching, Teaching, Printing,
or Writing denied that God existed or maintained that the Father is not God,
the Son is not God, or that the Holy Ghost is not God, or that they Three are
Lewalski, Life, 253. Lewalski also remarks that by 1650, when he licensed the Racovian
Catechism, he showed some sympathy for the Socinians (424).
Stephen B. Dobranski, Licensing Miltons Heresy, in Dobranski and Rumrich, eds., Milton
and Heresy, 148, 154 (Dobranskis emphasis). The quotation is from Chapter XVI of Eikonoklastes
(Upon the Ordinance against the Common-Prayer Book): If then ancient Churches to remedie
the infirmities of prayer, or rather the infections of Arian and Pelagian Heresies, neglecting that
ordaind and promisd help of the spirit, betook them, almost four hundred yeares after Christ,
to Liturgie thir own invention, wee are not to imitate them, nor to distrust God in the removal of
that Truant help to our Devotion, which by him never was appointed (YP 3.5078). However,
it is residually unclear whether Miltons parenthetical remark is his gloss or represents the view
of the ancient Churches whose example wee are not to imitate.
Act Against several Atheistical, Blasphemous and Execrable Opinions, Derogatory to the Honor
of God, And destructive to Humane Society (London, 1650: E.1061[14]), 97980, 982.
not one eternall God. The 1650 Act simply ignored the heresies listed by the
Presbyterians in 1648; specifically, it did not proscribe antitrinitarian beliefs
as such. Whereas Miltons objections to the Ordinance partly explain why
he threw his weight behind the Armys purge of the Presbyterian-dominated
Long Parliament in 1648, the emphasis on the social and political rather than
doctrinal dimension of blasphemy in the Act passed by the Rump met with
his full approval. In 1659, he referred to it in A Treatise of Civil Power as
that prudent and well deliberated act August 9. 1650; where the Parlament defines
blasphemie against God, as far as it is a crime belonging to civil judicature, plenius ac
melius Chrysippo & Crantore; in plane English more warily, more judiciously, more
orthodoxally then twice thir number of divines have don in many a prolix volume.
(YP 7.2467)
Nine years on, what is striking is that the precise date of the Act has impressed
itself on Miltons memory. The reason for this is surely that he regarded
the passing of the Act as the green light for the licensing of the Catechesis.
Confident that the views that the work expressed were not officially proscribed,
Milton could authorize Dugard and Gouldman to publish it.
It is sometimes suggested that Milton was taking a risk in licensing such
a notoriously heretical text, but it would be more true to say that he was
careful to stay on the right side of the law. In gauging the position, Milton
must have been acutely conscious of the works heterodox contents. The
speed with which he responded to the passing of the Act also suggests that he
had had it on his desk for some time, awaiting a propitious moment for its
publication. But if Milton was eager to see the Catechesis in print at the first
opportunity, this throws a slightly different light on van Aitzemas report, in
which Milton appears chiefly concerned to justify his decision on the grounds
of its consistency with his published opinions on licensing. But this does
not warrant the conclusion that he had no personal investment in the work
itself. Although McLachlan suggests that Biddle was the prime mover behind
the publication of the Catechesis (as well as being responsible for the English
An Ordinance of the Lords and Commons Assembled in Parliament, for the Punishing of
Blasphemies and Heresies (London, 1648: E.437[29]), 12. For the passage of the Ordinance and
its relation to earlier drafts in 1646, see Ann Hughes, Gangraena and the Struggle for the English
Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 36784.
For Miltons animus against the Presbyterians and their failure to distinguish between the
spiritual and the civil sword, see the Digression to The History of Britain and Observations upon
the Articles of Peace (YP 3.31011, 326; 5.4467).
For the view that this positive reference to the Act remains a vexed and, arguably, a
contradictory moment in [Miltons] radical religious writing, see David Loewenstein, Treason
against God and State: Blasphemy in Miltons Culture and Paradise Lost, in Dobranski and
Rumrich, eds., Milton and Heresy, 180.
translation), it is entirely possible that Milton himself took the initiative,

and was as much its publisher as its licenser (see McLachlan, Socinianism,
18792).
What needs to be explained in fact is not why Milton licensed the work
but why it took so long for it to appear in print; as Dobranski points out, the
gap between licensing and publication was unusually prolonged (Licensing
Miltons Heresy, 143). There were however reasons to be cautious. The
Council of State had recently taken a recognizance from the printer and
publisher responsible for a work by the antitrinitarian John Knowles in July
1650, while in December W. Smith was executed at York for denying the
Deity, Arian-like. Moreover, when Biddle was prosecuted in 1654, this was
under the supposedly obsolete 1648 Ordinance (see Worden, Toleration,
2201). One explanation for the timing may even be that, rather than the
printing of the Catechesis sparking off Owens initiative, it was the other way
round: that advance notice of moves by the Independents prompted Milton,
Dugard, and Gouldman into action.
The second piece of evidence is provided by Milton himself in the preface to
De Doctrina Christiana when, in recounting how he departed from orthodoxy,
Milton stresses the importance not of works with which he sympathized but
of those with which he disagreed.
I devote my attention to the Holy Scriptures alone. I follow no other heresy or sect. I
had not even studied any of the so-called heretical writers, when the blunders of those
who are styled orthodox, and their unthinking distortions of the sense of scripture,
first taught me to agree with their opponents whenever these agreed with the Bible.
(YP 6.1234)
[De me, libris tantummodo sacris adhaeresco; haeresin aliam, sectam aliam sequor
nullam; haereticorum, quos vocant, libros perlegeram nullos, cum ex eorum numero,
qui orthodoxi audiunt, re male gesta scripturisque incautius tractatis, sentire cum
adversariis quoties illi sentiebant cum scripturis primo didici.] (CM 14.14)
We should take Milton at his word. In 1987, Michael Bauman drew attention
to this passage but omitted to speculate on the identity of those who are styled
orthodox, though it is noticeable that in his footnotes Bauman frequently cites
Zacharias Ursinus Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, remarking on
the coincidence between the views of Milton and those Ursinus summarized
in the course of objecting to them (see Miltons Arianism, 75, 102, 111, 114,
175, 190, 198). More recently, John Rogers has suggested that Milton was
Calendar of State Papers Domestic, 1650, p. 518; The Ranters Recantation (London, 1651:
Thomasons copy, E.620[10], is dated 20 December), 5. Smith was however also guilty of putting
in execution several illegal practises against the Parliament (ibid.).
responding directly to the arch-foe of the Arians, Athanasius. An alternative

and, I think, more plausible, candidate is the orthodox Lutheran theologian
Johann Gerhard (15821637), whose magnum opus, a stupendous nine-
volume collection of theological commonplaces, Locorum Theologicorum, was
published in Geneva in 1639. Not only was Milton in Geneva that year, but
we know he owned the Gerhard set and was reading it in the early 1640s since
he refers to it twice in Tetrachordon (1645). On each occasion, moreover,
Gerhard is deployed as an intermediate reference to the work of others (see
YP 2.688, 712).
The significance of this is that Gerhard regarded himself as a front-line
defender of orthodoxy against a multiple onslaught from what he called, in his
dedication of the first volume to Christian II, Duke of Saxony in April 1610,
those recent heretics in Transylvania, Poland and neighbouring regions, who
impugn the divinity of Christ and who can be called Samosatenians, Photinians
and Servetians. What had alarmed Gerhard above all was the publication the
year before of the Moscorovius translation of the Racovian Catechism. Since
his first volume was concerned with the scriptures and their interpretation,
the nature and attributes of God, the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, and the person
and office of Christ, he could not afford to ignore these heretics, whom he
most often labels neo-samosateniani, explicitly associating them with the
third-century monotheist Paul of Samosata (also singled out by Owen as the
most notorious Head and Patron of this madnes (Vindiciae, 4)). In the course
of refuting their heresies and blasphemies, Gerhard quotes exhaustively from
the Catechesis. In view of this, it seems likely that when Milton came to reflect
on those who are styled orthodox in the preface to De Doctrina Christiana,
Gerhard rather than Ursinusor, for that matter, Athanasiuswas the figure
he had uppermost in mind. And if this is the case, then it follows that Milton
was first prompted to question orthodox belief in the Trinity in the mid-1640s
when he encountered the Catechesis in Gerhards volume. Ironically, the very
work intended to stop antitrinitarianism in its tracks may well have brought
about its deeper penetration into English religious discourse.
See John Rogers, Miltons Arianism and the Exaltation of the Individual, unpublished
paper given at the Eighth International Milton Symposium, University of Grenoble (June 2005).
My thanks to Professor Rogers for permission to cite his paper.
The Yale editors annotation is inaccurate at this point: see Martin Dzelzainis, Authors
not unknown in Miltons Tetrachordon, Notes and Queries 243 (1998), 447.
Gerhard, Locorum Theologicorum, 9 vols. (Geneva, 1639), I, sig. iijb: recentiores illos
in Transyluania, Polonia & vicinis regionibus haereticos, qui Christi diuinitata impugnant &
Samosatenianos & P[h]otinianos & Seruetianos appellari posse.
10
Milton and Catholicism
Andrew Hadfield
For many in the 1640s, the concept of toleration was a source of considerable
anxiety and confusion. A series of works written by Independents argued a
strong case for their liberty to practise their chosen form of religion. They were
opposed with equal vigour by Presbyterians, eager to police the boundaries
of acceptable religious observation and church government. Such debates
inevitably raised further questions. How could anyone ever be sure that the
correct and proper limits had been applied and the desire to tolerate a range
of possible opinion was not a Trojan horse that would let in a horde of evil
heresies, causing further destructive debate and confusion? The test case was,
of course, Catholicism, and, as has often been noted, many of the treatises by
Independents arguing for their own liberties are notably vague about whether
an official acceptance of their divergent views would necessitate an equal
acceptance of the views of Catholics. Even such impassioned defenders of
liberty as William Walwyn and John Goodwin are unclearprobably delib-
erately soon the matter. Avoidance of this key issue is understandable, and
justifiable. Nearly thirty years later, after the Restoration, Charles IIs Declara-
tion of Indulgence (15 March 1672) stated that nonconformists could worship
publicly if they applied for the correct licence. The granting of liberties to pri-
vate worship for Catholics proved far more problematic and met a barrage of
resistance from Protestants, which led to the Test Act which became law on 29
March 1673. This required all office holders to swear to the Oaths of Allegiance
and Supremacy and to renounce the doctrine of transubstantiation.
A number of Presbyterian pamphlets examine the problematic nature of
the case for toleration, exploiting the fear of Catholicism in England in the
Anne Hughes, Gangraena and the Struggle for the English Revolution (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2004), 162 n. 87.
Ernest Sirluck, Introduction to Miltons Areopagitica, YP 2.85, 11213.
Keith F. Stavely, Preface to Miltons Of True Religion, YP 8.412.
Milton and Catholicism 187
1640s. None of these is more coherent and well reasoned than the anonymous
Anti-Toleration, Or a Modest Defence of the Letter of the London Ministers to
the Reverend Assembly of Divines (1646). The arguments put forward in this
work help to illuminate the nature of Miltons interventions in the debates
of the 1640s and 1670s, as well as his comments in his major poetical works.
Milton emerges as a consistent thinker, clear in his views that Catholicism was
the enemy of all the principles that the good old cause held dear. However,
this consistency is achieved because he defines Catholicism in a fluid manner,
as a cluster of problems and errors, enabling him to exploit a deep-seated fear
of popery, precisely the rhetorical strategy of the author of Anti-Toleration. If
Milton shares much with the Independents, he also has a great deal in common
with the Presbyterians, especially their views of the limits of toleration.
Anti-Toleration is a response to a pamphlet by the Leveller, William Walwyn,
Tolleration Justified, and Persecution Condemned (1646). Walwyn had based
his argument on the centrality of reason in religion, arguing that toleration of
a variety of opinions was justified because in the end reason would triumph,
allowing everyone to understand what was true and what was false: The more
horrid and blasphemous the opinion is the easier suppressed by reason and
argument, because it must necessarily be that the weaker the arguments are
on one side the stronger they are on the other; the grosser the error is the
more advantage truth has over it[.] It is this faith in reason that the author of
Anti-Toleration uses to unpack the arguments of Walwyns tract. The central
fear that it exploits is that toleration, and the pretended liberty of conscience,
will lead directly to the proliferation of heresy. The argument isone often
made in sectarian disputesthat liberty of conscience is a dangerous error
For examples of Presbyterian tracts opposing those of the Independents pleas for toleration,
see A Letter of the Ministers of the City of London, Presented the first Jan. 1645. to the Reverend
Assembly of Divines against toleration (1645); A Necessary and Seasonable Testimony Against
Toleration (1648); A Testimony of the Ministers in the Province of Essex, to the Trueth of Jesus Christ
and to the Solemn League and Covenant; as also against the errors, heresies and blasphemies of these
times, and the toleration of them (1648). See also the illustrated broadsheet, Proper Persecution,
or the sandy foundations of a general toleration (1646), and the analysis in Alexandra Walsham,
Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 15001700 (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2006), ch. 5.
On English anti-popery, see Peter Lake, Anti-popery: the Structure of a Prejudice, in
Richard Cust and Anne Hughes, eds., Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and
Politics, 16031642 (London: Longman, 1989), 72106.
William Walwyn, Tolleration Justified, and Persecution Condemned (1646), 8. For recent
comment on Walwyn and his place in debates on toleration, see Walsham, Charitable Hatred, ch.
5; Austin Woolrych, Britain in Revolution, 16251660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002),
4434.
Anon., Anti-Toleration, Or a Modest Defence of the Letter of the London Ministers to the
Reverend Assembly of Divines (1646), 5. All subsequent references in parentheses in the text.
188 Andrew Hadfield
that only serves to undermine church discipline. What appears to be a liberal

move leads to anarchy and even tyranny, the result of individual arrogance
and the appropriation of power.
In a hard-hitting polemical manoeuvre, the author claims that If Anti-
Toleration be the true cause of hypocrisie, then (which is very blasphemy to
utter) we shall make both God and Christ both in the Old and New Testament,
the Authors of hypocrisie, they being in both so strict against Toleration (8).
In essence, the author claims, Christianity is not a faith that is amenable to
the reason of the individual conscience. Citing Walwyns words, The more
horrid and blasphemous the opinion is the easier suppressed by Reason and
Argument, a counter-argument is made:
The matter of many blasphemous opinions depends not upon Reason, but faith, as
the Trinity of Persons, the Incarnation and Divinity of Christ, &c. How then can
these be confuted by Arguments, being themselves above Reason? And if you bring
Scripture for proof, they will be as ready to deny Scripture, as to deny the Trinity, &c.
Besides, a weak argument, and as strong affection, will prevail more then the strongest
Arguments in the world, where a man affects not what is propounded. (21)
The institution of the church, not reason, is seen to be the main bulwark
against the threat of chaosA tyranny is far better than an Anarchy (33).
Ironically enough, this argument was frequently used by Catholic apologists
against their Protestant counterparts, as a means of refuting arguments based
on the libertyand certaintyof the individual conscience. However, the
author of Anti-Toleration claims that it is the arguments of Walwyn and others
that risk undermining the church and state by failing to see that universal
toleration leads directly to heresy, the search for a common ground actually
serving to destroy any semblance of unity: He is so for Universals, that if I
might guesse at his Religion (if he have any at all) I should suspect him to be
a Catholike, and do mightily fear he is one of those croaking Frogs, sent out
of the mouth of the Beast, and false Prophet, to blow the coals of dissension
amongst us, Revel. 16. 13, 14 (35). How seriously the apocalyptic reference is
meant to be taken is unclear: but the link between the Independents and the
Jesuits is designed to play on the fears of the godly that the good old cause
will be fatally undermined if it is pushed too far.
Indeed, the fear that Catholicism might be tolerated actually predates the
central debates on toleration of Independent sects, a response not only to
More generally on pamphlet culture and polemic in this period, see Joad Raymond,
Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2003), ch. 8; The Literature of Controversy, in Thomas N. Corns, ed., A Companion to Milton
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 191210.
See, for example, William Allen, A Treatise made in Defence of the lawful power and authoritie
of Priesthood to remedie sinnes (1567), 768.
long-held fears about the role of Henrietta Maria leading to fears of popish
plots in the late 1630s, but also a means of rallying Protestant opinion
against the machinations of Charles as he sought to consolidate his power in
the face of the growing opposition from Parliament. William Castles The
Jesuits Undermining of Parliaments and Protestants with their foolish phancy
of a toleration, discovered and censured (1642) fits into a larger pattern of
English anti-Catholic rhetoric in the early modern period. The reprint of a
Catholic document pleading for toleration, along with the stern response of
the archbishop of Canterbury, has a similar aim, reminding readers that the
Gunpowder Plot followed soon after.
Miltons interventions in these complex debates should be seen as a
sustained attempt to work out some cardinal rules about the possibilities and
limits of toleration. Milton, as is well attested, was consistently opposed to
any toleration for Catholics. Areopagitica (1644) makes a clear case that
Catholicism cannot be tolerated, a line of argument that distinguishes Milton
from many other radical thinkers during the civil war. In a famous passage
Milton explains why the need to avoid a fugitive and cloisterd vertue (YP
2.515) does not extend to a desire to see Catholic writings re-enter the public
sphere:
Yet if all cannot be of one mind, as who looks they should be? this doubtles is more
wholsome, more prudent, and more Christian that many be tolerated, rather then all
compelld. I mean not tolerated Popery, and open superstition, which as it extirpats
all religions and civill supremacies, so it self should be extirpat, provided first that all
charitable and compassionat means be usd to win and regain the weak and the misled:
that also which is impious or evil absolutely either against faith or maners no law can
possibly permit, that intends not to unlaw it self. (YP 2.565)
Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 8,
8427; Woolrych, Britain in Revolution, ch. 7.
See Arthur Marotti, ed., Catholicism and Anti-Catholicism in Early Modern English Texts
(Basingstoke: Palgrave, 1999); Alison Shell, Catholicism, Controversy and the English Literary
Imagination, 15581660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Ethan H. Shagan, ed.,
Catholics and the Protestant nation: Religious Politics and Identity in Early Modern England
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005).
Anon., The Supplication of all the Papists of England to King James, At his first comming to
the crowne, for a tolleration of their Religion (1642).
See John N. King, Milton and Religious Controversy (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000), passim; Cedric C. Brown, Great Senates and Godly Education: Politics and Cultural
Renewal in Some Pre- and Post-revolutionary Texts of Milton, in David Armitage, Armand
Himy and Quentin Skinner, eds., Milton and Republicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1995), 4360.
For the wider issues and debate, see Nigel Smith, Literature and Revolution in England,
16401660 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), passim; David Loewenstein, Representing
Revolution in Milton and his Contemporaries: Religion, Politics and Polemics in Radical Puritanism
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
190 Andrew Hadfield
Areopagiticas aim is to persuade Christians that faith and reason reinforce each
other, together revealing a complete truth. They are not separate, sometimes
divergent entities, as, for example, the author of Anti-Toleration claims.
According to Milton, A man may be a heretick in the truth; and if he beleeve
things only because his Pastor sayes so, or the Assemby so determins, without
knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds,
becomes his heresie (YP 2.543).
Miltons position within the debates on toleration would seem to be clear
and distinct. The active use of reason, when allied to a strong and proper faith,
will answer all the questions that need to be asked. Differences between faiths
can be tolerated, as there are many things which cannot be known, either
because they are unknowable or because the answer to the questions posed
has not yet been discovered. Toleration can only be exercised when truth is
incomplete; it cannot be extended to errors, or heresies, which threaten to
undermine the truth. Areopagitica is both a plea for toleration and an attempt
to define its limits by resisting the notion that truth can ever be relative.
But what did Milton actually mean by Catholicism? What exactly did
he think was beyond the limits of toleration and why? Milton identifies a
series of bad practices and erroneous beliefs that he associates with Popery
throughout his writing career. He expresses a proper Puritan contempt
for prelacy in the church, devoting one of his first pamphlets, Of Prelatical
Episcopacy (1641), to the subject. He condemns the doctrine of purgatory
in Animadversions (1641) (YP 1.702). He condemns what he sees as the
Catholic transformation of the Eucharist into a cannibal feast in Christian
Doctrine (YP 6.554). In The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643) he
is scathing in his assessment of marriage regarded as a Papists Sacrament
rather than a human Society, a judgement that indicates a complicated and
wide-ranging understanding of popery or Catholicism as central to Miltons
imagination (YP 2.275). That there might be a circular logic at work in
Miltons thought would seem to be borne out by the concomitant judgement
that Catholic hostility to divorce was actually a means of encouraging licence
(YP 2.33943). Elsewhere Milton is severe on erroneous reading practices that
demand a literal apprehension against the direct analogy of sense, reason,
law, and Gospel (YP 2.431). Miltons most serious objections are equally
fundamental. Catholicism prohibits scripture (YP 8.437). The church is too
easy with its offices and instead of providing its flock with proper discipline
My discussion is indebted to John T. Shawcross, Connivers and the Worst of Super-

stitions: Milton on Popery and Toleration, Literature and History, 3rd series, 7.2 (1998),
5169; Raymond D. Tumbleson, Catholicism in the English Protestant Imagination: Nationalism,
Religion, and Literature, 16601745 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), ch. 2.
YP 1.61852. See also, Animadversions (1641) in YP 1.653735, at p. 680.
offers easy Confession, easy Absolution, Pardons, Indulgences, Masses Agnus

Deis, Reliques, and the like (YP 8.439). And, perhaps most significantly of all,
popery is equated with tyranny in A Defence of the People of England (1654),
making Catholicism an un-English practice (YP 4.397).
As this list makes clear, for Milton Catholicism was a variety of customs and
conventions rather than simply an institution. At the very far end of the scale
there was the abuse of proper religion by the papacy, which was a tyranny
seeking to impose its will on all independent nations. But Catholicism was
also a series of practices that had crept into every aspect of church government
under Charles, leaving England governed by a very un-English church which
practised a series of false rituals, promoted superstition instead of reason, and
sought to transform an active and engaged congregation into a passive and
pliant flock. As Peter Lake has put it, Puritans saw popery as the natural
religion for the fallen man. In the last book of Paradise Lost Michael gives
Adam a final vision of the future before he leaves the Garden of Eden. This
bleak and troubled description makes it clear that one of the challenges that
will haunt future generations will be the practical problem of sorting the godly
sheep from the antichristian wolves, a problem that cannot be confined to
institutional affiliations. Michael comforts Adam with the welcome news that
the Apostles will spread the word of God throughout the nations of the earth
and help win back the race of man to God. However, after their initial success:
Wolves shall succeed for teachers, grievous wolves,
Who all the sacred mysteries of heaven
To their own vile advantages shall turn
Of lucre and ambition, and the truth
With superstitions and traditions taint,
Left only in those written records pure,
Though not but by the Spirit understood
will they then
But force the spirit of grace it self, and bind
His consort liberty; what, but unbuild
His living temples, built by faith to stand,
Their own faith not anothers: for on earth
Who against faith and conscience can be heard
Infallible? Yet many will presume:
Whence heavy persecution shall arise
On all who in the worship persevere
Of spirit and truth[.]
(PL 12.50814, 52433)
Lake, Anti-popery, 80.

192 Andrew Hadfield
Milton does not make any attempt to distinguish between the enemies within
the church and those outside it, giving the reader a clear sense that the
oppressions, heresies, tyranny and blasphemies of Catholicism are a part of
the established Restoration Church of England. Indeed, the main goal of those
Anglicans restoring the church was to steer the fraught path between the Scylla
of popery and the Charybdis of sectarianism. Paradise Lost makes it clear
that the church has failed and that it now contains much of what it is supposed
to confront, so that there is less to choose between Anglicanism and popery
than there should be.
The representation of religion in Paradise Lost is a far cry from that
in Miltons early work, in the Latin poem In Quintum Novembris, a work
probably written to celebrate the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot in 1626,
and to give thanks for Englands deliverance from Catholicism. The devil in
that poem inspired the evil Catholic plot to overthrow the godly reign of King
James the Protestant peacemaker. The poem ends with proper order restored:
ab alto
Aethereus pater, et crudelibus obstitit ausis
Papicolum; capti poenas raptantur ad acres;
At pia thura Deo, et grati solvuntur honores;
Compita laeta focis genialibus ominia fumant;
Turba choros iuvenilis agit: quintoque Novembris
Nulla dies toto occurrit celebratior anno. (2206)
But meanwhile our Heavenly Father looked down on his people with pity and put a stop
to the Papists cruel venture. They are captured and hurried off to sharp punishments.
Pious incense is burned and grateful honours paid to God. There is merrymaking at
every crossroads and smoke rises from the festive bonfires: the young people dance in
the crowds: in all the year there is no day more celebrated than the fifth of November.
In contrast, in both Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained such simple and
straightforward divisions cannot be made with any confidence. Rather, the
poems deliberately refuse to make such distinctions, and constantly challenge
the reader to rethink his or her experience of the revolution of the 1640s and
1650s in the light of current religious and political developments. Satan, in
each work, is not simply the force behind the Pope as he is in In Quintum
Novembris.
Miltons representation of Catholicism is consistent: but the meaning of
the cluster of practices, images and doctrines that characterize Catholicism
John Spurr, The Restoration Church of England, 16461689 (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1991), 648, passim.
Tumbleson, Catholicism in the English Protestant Imagination, 645.
In Quintum Novembris, ll. 2206. Loewenstein, Representing Revolution, 203.
changes radically. In 1626 it is clear that Milton thinks that Catholicism

cannot be tolerated, a case made time and again throughout the 1640s in
the Antiprelatical Tracts, although the attack here is against the creeping
and underhand popery of the Laudian Church. The moral and theological
issues do not change but the contingencies of political events transform
circumstances so that the later major poems effectively acknowledge that
toleration and non-toleration are not easy choices to make because the enemy
is now within and has infected the godly. Milton was, of course, well aware of
the threat of international Catholicism to England after the outbreak of the
Thirty Years War in 1618as In Quintum Novembris and Observations on the
Articles of the Peace (1649) demonstrate. But he was consistently aware of
the need to balance an understanding of this external threat with a more
general sense of anti-popery, the fear that bad practices and the enemy within
would actually kill off the revolution. Read another way, Miltons aim was
always to defend Puritanism by purging the church of its Catholic elements.
The debates on toleration, as I have already suggested, are an important
context for our understanding of Paradise Lost. While he was working on the
poem, Milton wrote A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes: Shewing
that it is not lawful for any power on earth to compell in matters of Religion (1659),
a short and clear pamphlet designed to advise the new parliament on matters
of religion. The treatise makes the same case that Milton made early and late
in his career, that Catholicism undermines proper Christian liberty, because
of an inability to focus on scripture. Milton vigorously defends the possibility
of heresy; or, rather, seeks to argue that what some may think of as heresy
is actually just an understandable disagreement about the interpretation of
scripture between like-minded Christians. This argument is made in defence
of the pre-eminence of scripture over doctrine:
Seeing therfore that no man, no synod, no session of men, though called the
church, can judge definitively the sense of scripture to another mans conscience,
which is well known to be a general maxim of the Protestant religion, it follows
Thomas Corns, Miltons Antiprelatical Tracts and the Marginality of Doctrine, in Stephen
B. Dobranski and John P. Rumrich, eds., Milton and Heresy (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1998), 3948.
Sharon Achinstein, Milton and King Charles, in Thomas N. Corns, ed., The Royal Image:
Representations of Charles I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 14161. More
generally see Jonathan Scott, Englands Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability
in European Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), ch. 5. On the context of
the Observations see Joad Raymond, Complications of Interest: Milton, Scotland, Ireland, and
National Identity in 1649, Review of English Studies 55 (2004), 31545.
Achinstein, Milton and King Charles, 143.
William Riley Parker, Milton: A Biography, ed. Gordon Campbell (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 2nd edn. 1996), 519.
194 Andrew Hadfield
plainely, that he who holds in religion that beleef or those opinions which to his
conscience and utmost understanding appeer with most evidence or probabilitie in
the scripture, though to others he seem erroneous, can no more be justly censurd
for a heretic then his censurers; who do but the same thing themselves while they
censure him for so doing. For ask them, or any Protestant, which hath most authoritie,
the church or the scripture? they will answer, doubtless, that the scripture. (YP
7.2478)
Miltons pleas for toleration sound identical to those of many Levellers in the
1640s at this point in his argument, as he admits that persecution of error is
much less important than enabling Christians to satisfy their own consciences
by reading the Bible themselves and then engaging in the freedom of debate.
John Owen, in his eloquent defence of toleration and freedom of speech,
argued that not only was the attempt to suppresse any Opinions whatsoever
by Force for the most part fruitless, but that the Magistrate hath no warrant
from the Word of God, nor command, rule, or precept to enable him, to force
such persons to submit unto the truth as by him established, in those things,
wherein they expresse a conscientious dissent. Milton also defends Christian
liberty against a coercive norm imposed by the central authorities: I have
shewn that the civil power hath neither right, nor can do right by forcing
religious things (YP 7.262).
Where Milton and Owen differ is in their stated opinions about Catholi-
cism. Owen makes no mention of Catholicism, effectively side-stepping a
complex issue detrimental to his case. Milton, as usual, dismisses any case for
toleration of Catholicism as rapidly and brutally as he can:
[A]s for poperie and idolatrie, why they may not hence plead to be tolerated, I have
much less to say. Their religion the more considerd, the less can be acknowledged a
religion; but a Roman principalitie rather, endeavouring to keep up her old universal
dominion under a new name and meer shaddow of a catholic religion; being indeed
more rightly namd a catholic heresie against the scripture; supported mainly by a
civil, and, except in Rome, by a forein, power: justly therfore to be suspected, not
tolerated, by the magistrate of another countrey. Besides, of an implicit faith, which
they profess, the conscience also becomes implicit; and so by voluntarie servitude to
mans law, forfets her Christian libertie. (YP 7.254)
See also Parker, Milton, 5201; and Ch. 8 above.

See, for example, Independencie Gods Veritie: Or, The Necessitie of Toleration (1647);
Arguments for Toleration. Published for the satisfaction of all Moderate Men (1647).
John Owen, A Sermon Preached to the Honourable House of Commons, in Parliament
Assembled: With a discourse about toleration and the duty of the civill magistrate about religion,
thereto annexed (1649), 62, 912.
See also Nicholas McDowells comments on the difference between Miltons conceptions
of toleration and those of Richard Overton: Latin and Leveller Ideas: Pedagogy and Power in
the Writings of Richard Overton, The Seventeenth Century 18 (2003), 23051, p. 246.
Miltons emphasis here is on the issue of liberty, but the argument is the same
as that developed later in Of True Religion that Catholicism cannot be tolerated
because it forces its adherents to accept a dualand hypocriticalsystem of
obedience to sacred and secular powers. The polemical thrust of the argument
is that Parliament has concentrated on the heresies of the Independent sects,
but that these are either unimportant or actually justifiable differences of
interpretation that cannot be suppressed by force, as long as they derive from
the honest conscience of the believer. Instead, they must be solved through
the use of faith in line with right reason. Milton is advising Parliament not to
spend its time chasing windmills by trying to suppress legitimate differences
between Protestants and to concentrate on removing the intolerable threat of
Catholicism so that Christian liberty can be upheld.
One of the principal tasks that Milton set himself was to be able to distinguish
between what could be tolerated and what could not, and it is in the spirit
of this enterprise that we should read the stated goal of the opening sentence of
Paradise Lost, to justify the ways of God to men (1.26). Indeed, A Treatise of
Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes can be seen as an explicit recognition that
Miltons own work may contain controversial interpretations of scripture,
perhaps even errors. But it exists as part of a series of attempts to explain
Gods purposes by reading the Bible in the light of reason and faith and, in
doing so, defining what is legitimate and what not. In general terms, Satan can
be seen as attempting to establish an illegitimate power over sections of Gods
universe. His challenge to Gods hierarchy in heaven is carefully represented as
an attempt to overthrow an order based on right not hereditary rank, because
the Son is raised to his pre-eminent position above the other angels. Satan
claims that God is a tyrant, his first speech ending with the claim that God sole
reigning holds the tyranny of heaven (Book 1, line 124), a version of events
refuted by Abdiel when he confronts Satan who is planning his rebellion, as
told to Adam by Raphael (5.8269). As God explains, His Son is:
By merit more than birthright Son of God,
Found worthiest to be so by being good,
Far more than great or high; because in thee
Love hath abounded more than glory abounds,
Therefore thy humiliation shall exalt
With thee thy manhood also to this throne,
Here shalt thou sit incarnate, here shalt reign
Both God and man, Son both of God and man,
See Shawcross, Milton on Popery and Toleration, 57.

David Loewenstein, The Radical Religious Politics of Paradise Lost, in Corns, ed.,
Companion to Milton, 34862, at p. 354.
196 Andrew Hadfield
Anointed universal king, all power
I give thee[.]
(PL 3.30918)
Milton carefully explains that the Sons position is based on the legiti-
mateand logicalargument that he deserves to rule because he is best
suited to do so. After the failure of the war in heaven, Satan turns his
attention to corrupting earth, having first staged a debate in Pandemonium,
the devils parliament built under the command of Mammon. It is likely that
Pandemonium is represented as a parody of a gorgeous Counter-Reformation
building, possibly St Peters in Rome, which Milton saw in 1638. His attempt
to corrupt and conquer Adam and Eve is then seen in terms of more recent
Spanish attempts to establish an empire in the New World. In fact, the battle
for the control of the Americas in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries
was invariably seen in terms of a religious crusade by both English and Spanish
propagandists, an extension of the sectarian conflict in Europe. Even in the
broadest terms of plot development and narrative progress, the links between
Satans progress in Paradise Lost and Catholicism in Miltons pamphlets is clear.
Satans attempt to assert that he knows everything means that he exceeds the
role of the good pastor, a comparison that is there for the reader to make. He
tries to bully Eve into submission by pretending to know more than he does
or than could possibly be known, rather than admitting that certain things
can be known and some will escape the understanding of angels, fallen angels,
and human beings. His speech is only impregned / With reason (9. 7378),
a pretence of the real thing. But why does Eve fall? What is the nature of her
sin? On the simplest level we might see Eve as akin to the naive Christian
depicted in Areopagitica, who lapses into heresy because she does not trust her
own conscience but beleeve[s] things only because [her] Pastor sayes so (YP
2.543). Her error may start here, but the essence of her fall lies much deeper.
In actually believing that the apple can confer on Adam and her a divine status,
she has lapsed into what Milton invariably represented as the most serious,
and the most capacious of sins, idolatry, one that he not only associated with
Catholicism but used to define and characterize it. Indeed, Satans reference
Loewenstein, Radical Religious Politics of Paradise Lost, 354.

Parker, Milton, 1724.
David Armitage, John Milton: Poet against Empire, in Armitage et al., eds., Milton and
Republicanism, 20625.
Andrew Hadfield, Literature, Travel and Colonialism in the English Renaissance, 15401625
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), ch. 2; Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American
Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1982).
King, Milton and Religious Controversy, ch. 8.
to Eve as Queen may be designed to compare her to Henrietta Maria, accused

by many of being the principal Catholic influence at Charless court (see
above, 189). Her lines immediately preceding the Fall make the nature of
her sin clear to the reader:
Here grows the cure of all, this fruit divine,
Fair to the eye, inviting to the taste,
Of virtue to make wise: what hinders then
To reach, and feed at once both body and mind?
(9.7769)
And straight after eating the fruit Eve starts to actually worship the tree:
O sovereign, virtuous, precious of all trees
In Paradise, of operation blest
To sapience, hitherto obscured, infamed,
And thy fair fruit let hang, as to no end
Created; but henceforth my early care,
Not without song, each morning, and due praise
Shall tend thee[.]
(9. 795801)
Given how Milton represented Catholicism throughout his work, it is hard
to resist the conclusion that Eve is here represented as a Catholic, specifically
perhaps the erstwhile Catholic queen of England. The Fall may start as no
more than a form of pre-sin, akin to Raphaels pushing of the limits of
tolerated knowledge in Book 8. Satans tempting, however, transforms what
would have disappeared with proper advice into fully-fledged idolatry.
In his last work, Of True Religion, Hresie, Schism, Toleration (1673), written
to defend the extension of freedom of worship to nonconformists and prevent
the same rights being extended to Catholics, Milton provides a sharp and
straightforward distinction between true and false versions of the faith. The
treatise was an attempt to restate what Milton saw as the basic principles of the
godly revolution and to remind readers that in increasingly secularized times,
they should not lose sight of the biblical basis of their existence. On the one
side there are Protestants who see the truth:
True Religion is the true Worship of God and Service of God, learnt and believed from
the Word of God only. No Man or Angel can know how God would be worshipt and
servd unless God reveal it: He hath Reveald and taught it us in the holy Scriptures by
Shell, Catholicism, 14663; Sharpe, Personal Rule, 83742; Woolrych, Britain in Revolution,
passim.
For comment, see King, Milton and Religious Controversy, 157.
Tumbleson, Catholicism in the English Protestant Imagination, 623.
198 Andrew Hadfield
inspird Ministers, and in the Gospel by his own Son and his Apostles, with strictest
command to reject all other traditions or additions whatsoever. (YP 8.419)
Milton admits that not everything is known, or can be known, but sees
Protestants united by their common commitment to explicate the Bible, in
line with the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. Differences can be accepted, as
long as this basic principle is agreed. Catholics, however, cannot be tolerated
because their religion is founded on heresy and idolatry:
Let us now enquire whether Popery be tolerable or no. Popery is a double thing to
deal with, and claims a twofold Power, Ecclesiastical, and Political, both usurpt, and
the one supporting the other.
But Ecclesiastical is ever pretended to be Political. The Pope by this mixt faculty,
pretends right to Kingdoms and States, and especially to this of England, Thrones and
Unthrones Kings, and absolves the people from their obedience to them; sometimes
interdicts to whole Nations the Publick worship of God, shutting up their Churches:
and was wont to dreign away greatest part of the wealth of this then miserable Land,
as part of his Patrimony, to maintain the Pride and Luxury of his Court and Prelates:
and now since, through the infinite mercy and favour of God, we have shaken off his
Babylonish Yoke, hath not ceasd by his Spyes and Agents, Bulls and Emissaries, once
to destroy both King and Parliament; perpetually to seduce, corrupt, and pervert as
many as they can of the People. Whether therefore it be fit or reasonable, to tolerate
men thus principld in Religion towards the State, I submit it to the consideration
of all Magistrates, who are best able to provide for their own and publick safety. As
for tolerating the exercise of their Religion, supposing their State activities not to be
dangerous, I answer, that Toleration is either public or private; and the exercise of
their Religion, as far as it is Idolatrous, can be tolerated neither way. (YP 8.42930)
Catholicism is defined in two principal ways, mirroring the dual nature of its
political and ecclesiastical authority. First, as popery, an allegiance to the Pope,
whose aim is to enlarge his kingdom at the expense of the lawfully established
governments of independent nations. Second, as a form of idolatry, the
worship of inappropriate Gods and substitutes for God, enabling Milton to
make a link between the failure of the decent Christian who slavishly follows
his minister and does not exercise his reason actively enough depicted in
Areopagitica, and the falsehood promoted by the Catholics. In fact, Milton
argues, it is the duty of the honest Christian to expel their corrosive presence
from the ecclesiastic fold and body politic: we must remove their Idolatry,
and all the furniture thereof, whether Idols, or the Mass wherein they adore
God under bread and wine. True Christians must not dispute with Catholics,
but should place all their trust in Scripture (YP 8.4312). The short treatise
concludes with an exhortation to Protestants to set aside differences and read
Jameela Lares, Milton and the Preaching Arts (Cambridge: James Clarke, 2001), 172.
Scripture together in order to defeat the common enemy: Another means to

abate Popery arises from the constant reading of Scripture, wherein Beleivers
who agree in the main, are every where exhorted to mutual forbearance and
charity one towards the other, though dissenting in some opinions (YP 8.435).
The Bible always comes first and a failure to use it as the starting point for an
understanding of Gods universe is heresy, whether that failure is deliberate or
involuntary. Once this basic premise is accepted there can be toleration of
open debate.
Paradise Lost, in line with Miltons arguments in his prose works, notably
Of True Religion, can be seen as a work of intolerance as well as an impassioned
plea for tolerance. If at times Miltons arguments resemble those of the
Levellers and other Independents, elsewhere he seems more in tune with
the Presbyterians, eager to police the boundaries of true faith. For Milton
intolerance, though not persecution, could be justified because he believed
the right group of heretics and schismatics could be identified, the Catholics
who declared allegiance to a rival, hostile power, and whose religion was only
idolatry. Of course, it was ever possible that true Christians could lapse into
error and even heresy, and we witness characters in Paradise Lost very close
to the boundaries of intolerable belief without lapsing into sin. Nevertheless,
it was possible for the godly community to stop transgression. As faith was in
line with reason, correctly exercised, open debate would head off any possible
problems, which was why the boundaries of toleration could be extended so
widely to embrace all forms of Protestant belief. As long as the scriptures were
read and discussed, potential Catholic converts could be persuaded to remain
within the fold. And had Adam been able to advise Eve properly, the evil wiles
of Satan would have failed.
Regina M. Schwartz, Milton on the Bible, in Corns, ed., Companion to Milton, 3754.
On Miltons complex relationship with Presbyterianism, see Barbara K. Lewalski, The Life
of John Milton (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 2016, passim; John Rumrich, Radical Heterodoxy
and Heresy, in Corns, ed., Companion to Milton, 14156.
Part III
Poetry and Rhetoric
11
Toleration and Nationhood in the 1650s:
Sonnet XV and the Case of Ireland
Elizabeth Sauer
The Poor of Lyons, called Waldensians by their detractors, resided in the sev-
enteenth century in two Piedmontese valleys of the Alps bordering on Italy and
France. While granted toleration within defined geographical boundaries, the
Waldensians were not legally entitled to occupy the lower parts of the valley
of the Pellice or the open plain. In 1655 Carlos Immanuel II, Duke of Savoy,
at the instigation of his mother, Grand Duchess Christina of Lorraine, sent
an army of four thousand led by the Marquis of Pianezza from Turin to expel
the Waldensians from the regions outside the tolerated limits. Assisted by a
communal militia and Irish Catholics who had been oppressed under Oliver
Cromwells orders in their homeland, Pianezzas army in the name of Louis
XIV and Catholicism slaughtered the Waldensians in the Piedmontese Easter
massacre of April 1655. On 3 May, the marquis commemorated this civilizing
conquest by raising a cross as a sign of the faith and the might of his Royal
Highness (Audisio, Waldensian, 205). When news of the atrocity reached
them, the English, though divided along political and religious lines, conveyed
their solidarity for their ur-Protestant brethren, who had been slaughtered
or had fled to the wintry mountain wasteland. Cromwell himself declared a
day of humiliation, contributed generously to a collection of over 38,000 for
the victims, and produced letters of protest to European rulers. As well as
participating in the letter-writing campaign, Cromwells Latin Secretary, John
A different version of this essay, originally titled Tolerationism, the Irish Crisis, and Miltons
On the Late Massacre in Piemont , appeared in Milton Studies 44, ed. Albert C. Labriola,
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005. The essay is revised and reprinted by permission of the
University of Pittsburgh Press.
See Gabriel Audisio, The Waldensian Dissent: Persecution and Survival c.1170c.1570, trans.
Claire Davison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
For the phrase civilizing Conquest in Miltons writings on Ireland, see YP 3.304.
204 Elizabeth Sauer
Milton, was said to have drafted an address delivered by Cromwells envoy, the
mathematician and philosopher Sir Samuel Morland, to the court in Turin,
and he also composed On the late Massacre in Piedmont. As I demonstrate
in the following study of the poems dialogue with the conflictual cultural and
political milieu in which it was generated, Sonnet XV offers a tribute to the
Waldensians in Miltons native English tradition while advancing Protestant
nationhood and toleration at home and abroad.
Miltons response to the bloody assault on the Waldensians takes on new
meaning when set in relation to the controversial acts and expressions of
nation-building in Cromwellian England. Slavoj Zizek ascribes an ambiguous
and contradictory nature to the modern nation , which he defines as
a community delivered of the traditional organic ties, a community in
which the pre-modern links tying down the individual to a particular estate,
family, religious group, and so on, are broken. In a reformulation of Benedict
Andersons influential theory that the nation was from the start conceived in
language, not in blood, Zizek determines that nationhood cannot be reduced
to a network of purely symbolic ties: there is always a kind of surplus of the
Real that sticks to itto define itself, national identity must appeal to the
contingent materiality of the common roots, of blood and soil, and so
on. The crucial point, he avers, is to conceive both aspects in their intercon-
nection: it is precisely the new suture effected by the Nation which renders
possible the desuturing, the disengagement from traditional organic ties.
As Englands champion writer, Milton contributed substantially to the
forms of nationhood produced in conjunction with the imperatives and
the contingent materiality of blood and soil. In the historical narrative
on the Piedmont massacre, the discursive and symbolic constructions of
nationhood meet the material. The conjunction occurs as the colonization
Robert Thomas Fallon, Milton in Government (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 1993), 13951, argues for the attribution of Morlands speech to Milton. Cf.
Michael Lieb, Milton and the Culture of Violence (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 30 n.
27. Fallon concurs with the Columbia editors of CM about the suggestive parallels between the
sonnet and the speech to the duke, both composed at about the same time (143, 144). Barbara
K. Lewalski supports Fallons reading in The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography (Oxford:
Blackwell, 2000), 330, 664 n. 38.
No manuscript version of Sonnet XV exists. The only text of the poem is that of 1673. The
edition used here is Sonnet XV. On the Late Massacre in Piedmont, CSP 3423.
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nation-
alism (London: Verso, 1983, rev. edn. 1991), 145. Slavoj Zizek, For They Know Not What They
Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor (London: Verso, 1991), 20. Otherwise, Anderson and Zizek
address unrelated subjects and do not cite each others works.
Paul Stevens, Miltons Janus-Faced Nationalism: Soliloquy, Subject, and the Modern Nation
State, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 100.2 (2001), 24768. Stevens offers a brilliant
application of Zizek in his study of Milton, which complicates the differentiation between civic
and ethnic nationalisms (25668).
Toleration and Nationhood in the 1650s 205
of Catholic territory in Ireland re-emerges as a subject of heated discussion

in the kingdom, and as Englands confrontation with cultural, religious, and
political diversity reaches a climax. The new sutures Zizek associated
with the evolving nation stitch together the components of nations identity,
though they remain under stress. To replace organic ties, these sutures must
draw heavily on emotional binding, as illustrated in my reading of Miltons
On the late Massacre in Piedmont, in which the otherwise conventional turn
from octave to sestet is generated by an emotional onrush rather than being
allotted a formal space.
The result of situating Sonnet XV in the political and cultural milieu in
which it was producedone that highlights the Cromwellian governments
politics of religionis a new facet to the poems critical tradition and the work
it performs in the history of tolerationism and nationhood. The Miltonic
voice in the sonnet merges with those of the martyrs and of the nation, as
the verses resonate with Hebraic, Christian, journalistic, homely, nationalistic,
and apocalyptic imagery. At the same time, the outrage that marked the
historical and literary reactions to the Piedmont massacre provokes the cry for
divine retribution in the sonnet and offers a pretext for the reinforcement of an
imperialist ideology that materialized, among other ways, in the colonization
of Ireland and proposed transplantation of Irish Catholics. The first section
of this chapter, then, establishes a framework for interpreting Parliaments
reaction to the Piedmont massacre and to the corresponding EnglishIrish
crisis; the second historicizes the resolution Milton presents in the sestet,
specifically the advancement of the Reformation through the planting of
Protestantism in Catholic soils.
The vast majority of studies on Sonnet XV (more commonly known as Sonnet XVIII)
contextualize the poem in terms of the Judeo-Christian tradition; see, for example, John K.
Hale, Miltons Sonnet 18 and Psalm 137, Milton Quarterly 29 (1995), 91; John R. Knott,
The Biblical Matrix of Miltons On the Late Massacre in Piemont , Philological Quarterly
62 (1983), 25963; John S. Lawry, Miltons Sonnet 18: A Holocaust , Milton Quarterly 17
(1983), 1114; Kathryn Gail Brock, Miltons Sonnet XVIII and the Language of Controversy,
Milton Quarterly 16 (1982), 36; Charles E. Goldstein, The Hebrew Element in Miltons Sonnet
XVIII, Milton Quarterly 9 (1975), 11114; Joseph G. Mayer offers a dialectical reading of the
Sonnet in Doubleness in Miltons Late Sonnets, in Albert C. Labriola, ed., Milton Studies,
vol. 39 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001), 2649, esp. 419. On the Sonnets
dialogue with contemporary accounts, drawn from newsletters, journals, or political pamphlets,
see Miltons Sonnets, ed. E. A. J. Honigmann (London: Macmillan, 1966), 1646; Joad Raymond,
The Daily Muse; or, Seventeenth-Century Poets Read the News, The Seventeenth Century 10.2
(1995), 189218, esp. 20311; John T. Shawcross, A Note on the Piedmont Massacre, Milton
Quarterly 6 (1972), 36; Anna K. Nardo, Miltons Sonnets and the Ideal Community (Lincoln,
Nebr.: University of Nebraska Press, 1979), 1323; Lieb, Milton, 2932.
Miltons variations on the Petrarchan sonnet form resist the octavesestet division. The
section of the poem to which I refer in this sentence constitutes what Lewalski identified as the
206 Elizabeth Sauer
1. The Irish Crisis

English nationhood emerged in conjunction with a culture of toleration and,
paradoxically, a climate of intolerance and imperial ambition. Toleration
was a vexed term in the early modern era, and most often used pejoratively.
Debates on the concept and limits of toleration focused instead on liberty
of conscience, the aim of which was religious union. There hath been
much these dayes bygone concerning a general Toleration, and liberty of
Conscience, James Hay begins in his address to Parliament, which quickly
becomes a plea for uniformity in Religion: by granting too large a Toleration,
you dishonour God, and disorder the State. True liberty was not synonymous
with contemporary notions of liberalism but with the freedom to act according
to Gods laws.
Cromwells plea for religious unification in 1648 characterizes this early
notion of tolerationism: I profess to thee [Colonel Robert Robin Hammond]
I desire from my heart, I have prayed for it, I have waited for the day to see
union and right understanding between the godly people (Scots, English, Jews,
Gentiles, Presbyterians, Independents, Anabaptists, and all). The Protec-
tors promotion of the Protestant League in 16545 anticipates his strong
appeal in 1655 for Protestant unity: in condemning the Piedmontese mas-
sacre, Cromwell urges that warring Protestant parties by brotherly consent
and harmony unite into one (SP, YP 5.680). The realization of such a vision
necessitated the management of any threats to liberty of conscience or reli-
gious harmony. It also makes conceivable the link between events as seemingly
diverse as the English transplantation of Irish Catholics in the mid-1650s and
the Interregnum governments protestation against the atrocities committed
upon the Waldensians. The Irish crisis and the persecution of the Waldensians
are thus historically related insofar as these events, along with Englands
military alliance with France, dominated Cromwells agenda and Continental
politics in the mid-1650s. But they are also connected by virtue of the new
sutures of nationalism and by the debates about tolerationism, which made
possible Cromwells support of a culture of dissent; his anti-Catholicism in the
verses following the volta in the poem, which can be said to have a three-part structure: lines
14, 510a, 10b14.
Blair Worden, Toleration and the Cromwellian Protectorate, in W. J. Shields, ed.,
Persecution and Toleration, Studies in Church History, 21 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984),
20910; Collonel James Hays Speech to the Parlament upon the Debate concerning Toleration
([London,] 1655), 4, 5.
W. C. Abbott, ed., The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, 4 vols. (New York: Russell
& Russell, 1970), 1.677. Subsequent quotations from Abbotts edition are cited parenthetically
by volume and page number.
European theater; the proposed readmission of the Jews in the 1655 Whitehall
conference; his campaign against the Irish and war against the Spanish; and
the Rumps hostility toward English Levellers and Quakers. These apparently
contradictory positions were integral to the Interregnum governments politi-
cal, ecclesiastical, and imperial mission to advance the Reformation movement
with which notions of nationhood and tolerationism became entangled.
The various politico-religious campaigns of the Cromwellian government
were extensions of the century-long war against Popery, anti-Catholicism
having become entrenched in the rhetoric and practices of Englands nation
formation. The history of conflict with Catholicism generated what Joad Ray-
mond describes as a typology of accounts of atrocities against Protestants to
which narratives of suffering and persecution conformed to various degrees
(Raymond, Daily Muse, 208). Newsbook writers thus compared the Pied-
montese massacre to the oppression of the Cathars in France, to the slaughter
of Huguenots in Paris on St Bartholomews Eve 1572, and to the attacks on
Protestants by Catholic Irish rebels in 1641. The martyrologies from the Mar-
ian era also haunted the nations cultural imagination. John Foxes Actes and
Monumentsa 1563 version of the Book of Martyrsdocumented the history
of Protestant martyrdom and remained influential in Miltons day. Actes and
Monuments connects itself strongly to Miltons Sonnet through its accounts
of the Babylonian woe and through the idea that the blood of Marian martyrs
nourished the soil in which the seeds of the nation are planted. Stephen
Greenblatt explains that if Foxes book dwelt lovingly upon scenes of horror, if
it insisted again and again that beneath the institutions and symbolic language
of the Catholic Church lay mere power and violence, it was because the
revelation of such violence attacked that consensual unity for which More
went to the scaffold. At the same time, however, by encouraging their own
See Christopher Hill, Gods Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), 2623.
Historian John Marshall notes that the Waldensians had contact with the Huguenots and
had derived their confession of faith from that of the Huguenots in 1655 (Marshall, John Locke,
Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 55).
Marshall establishes the connections between the events in Piedmont and Ireland with reference
to J[ean] B[aptiste] Stouppes A Collection of the Several Papers Concerning the Bloody and
Barbarous Massacres of many thousands of Reformed, or Protestants dwelling in the Vallies of
Piedmont (London, 1655), 60.
John Foxe, Acts and monuments of matters most speciall and memorable, 3 vols. (London,
1641), vol. 2, 7.20123. The account of the persecuted Waldensians during the period 155561
includes a letter appealing to the Duke of Savoy for toleration (7.21011). On Foxe and national
election, see William Haller, Foxes Book of Martyrs and the Elect Nation (London, 1663), esp.
2248.
Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1980), 79.
208 Elizabeth Sauer
consensual unity, Actes and Monuments and the seventeenth-century Protes-

tant counterparts it inspired reiterated Cromwells call for brotherly consent
and harmony, thereby supplying some stitches for the sutures of the elect
nation.
In the age-old battle against Babylonian powers, the Waldensians, as the
original defenders of the Reformed Religion, resisted Catholic oppression
longer than any other of the English Protestant sectarians, who, in a demon-
stration of compassion and unity, now felt compelled to defend the cause of
their ancestral brethren. In combination with details of specific atrocities
and catalogues of individual martyrs, widely circulated journalistic reports of
the violence against the Waldensian women and children sparked a national
outcry for vengeance. Morlands 1655 speech to the Duke of Savoy, a version
of which was printed in his 1658 History, identifies details of the atrocities that
also informed Miltons sonnet. Those wretched creatures, complains Mor-
land, are now wandering, with their wives and children, houseless, roofless,
poor, and destitute of all resource, through rugged and inhospitable spots and
over snow-covered mountains what was not dared and attempted against
them? some infants were dashed against the rocks, and the brains of others
were cooked and eaten heaven itself seems to be astounded by these cries.
Blending his voice with the nation-wide appeal for justice, Milton calls out
not as a supporter of Independency nor as a harsh critic of Anglicanism
but as an enraged Protestant citizen forgetting for the moment, like most
Englishmen, the wars against the Irish and the massacres at Drogheda. The
speaker of Sonnet XV thus cries: Avenge O Lord thy slaughtered saints,
whose bones / Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold (Sonnet XV.
On the late Massacre in Piedmont, CSP 3423, ll. 12). The Waldensians
were Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that rolled / Mother with infant down
the rocks. Their moans / The vales redoubled to the hills, and they / To
heaven (710), the sonnet continues, offering further evidence of the shared
imagery on which political testimonies, martyrologies, journals, newsbooks,
and literary accounts all relied.
Mercurius Politicus, Numb. 257 (1017 May 1655) in Joad Raymond, ed., Making the
News: An Anthology of the Newsbooks of Revolutionary England, 16411660 (Moreton-in-Marsh:
Windrush Press, 1993), 283.
[The First Draft of Samuel Morlands Address to the Duke of Savoy, and his Mother],
Additional State Papers, Frank Allen Patterson et al., eds., The Works of John Milton, 18 vols.
(New York: Columbia University Press, 19318), 13.47981.
As far as I have determined, Don M. Wolfes Introduction in vol. 4 of Complete Prose Works
of John Milton is the only study on Milton that juxtaposesif only in passingthe 1655 events
at Piedmont with those in Ireland at this time (YP 4.273). See Marshall for late Restoration tracts
which connect the Waldensians, Huguenots, the Glorious Revolution, and the Irish Revolution
of 168891 designed to reinforce Protestant rule (John Locke, 8992).
One of the most popular and extensive histories of the massacre was
produced by a Swiss minister and friend of Milton, Jean Baptiste Stouppe.
Stouppes A Collection of the Several Papers (1655) lists in its subtitle the
nations involved in the tragedy: The Bloody and Barbarous Massacres by
the Duke of Savoys Forces, joyned therein with the French Army, and severall
Irish Regiments (Stouppe, Collection, title page). This triple alliance provides
an additional gloss on Miltons triple Tyrant (Sonnet XV, l. 12), validly
glossed by Miltonists as an image for the Pope and his three-tiered crown.
Of particular concern here is the unexpected reference to the participation of
the Irish in the assault. In his dedication to Cromwell in A Collection, Stouppe
observes that the slaughter of the Waldensians should enrage the Protector all
the more because this cruell action was chiefely executed by the Irish, as in
revenge to those who have driven them out of their own Country for the cruell
Massacres they there committed (Stouppe, Collection, 3; Abbott, Writings,
3.707). In listing alleged causes for the massacre of the Waldensians, Stouppe
cites and then dismisses the claim That the Reformed have cruelly murthered
the Catholiques in Ireland, and have wholly expelled them (Collection, 40); he
continues by observing that the Catholics revenge involves murther[ing] the
Reformed in Piedmont, and clear[ing] the State of them, to lodge the Irish in
their place. The Irish are described shortly thereafter as enraged rebels who
were justly banished out of their Country, for Massacring the Protestants
there (Collection, 41).
Stouppes estimation in To the Christian Reader that the dead Waldensians
numbered six thousand (Collection, A3v ) was a huge inflation of the actual
figure. The casualty rate was among the many aspects of A Collection
of the Several Papers that Stouppes critics disputed. A Short and faithfull
Account of the Late Commotions in the Valleys of Piedmont (1655) evaluates
Stouppes arguments without, however, dismissing them altogether. The
author concludes that Stouppes papers describe the punishment, and not
Among the critics who gloss line 8 accordingly are: Barbara Lewalski, Life, 353; Charles
E. Goldstein, Hebrew Element, 111; Anna K. Nardo, Miltons Sonnets, 133; Joseph G. Mayer,
Doubleness, 44; Michael Lieb, Milton, 34; Lieb notes Miltons previous reference: In Eandem
(In Proditionem Bombardicam), l. 3, CSP 36.
Compare Samuel Morland, who lists about 257 names of the massacred in The History of
the Evangelical Churches (London, 1658), 36279, and an additional 113 victims who died in
prison (3803). David Masson cites a figure of 300 in The Life of Milton: Narrated in Connexion
with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of His Time, 6 vols. (London: Macmillan,
187180), 5.39, while W. C. Abbott estimates two or three hundred (Writings, 3.707). Also
see Samuel Rawson Gardiner, History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate 16491656, 4 vols.
(New York: AMS Press, 1965), 4.185.
A Short and faithfull Account of the Late Commotions in the Valleys of Piedmont, with the
Dominions of the Duke of Savoy. With some Reflections on Mr. Stouppes collected Papers touching
the same businesse ([London], 1655).
210 Elizabeth Sauer
expresse the crime (Account, 6). Among the explanations for the slaughter
that he provides is the Waldensians denial to the Catholics of a Liberty
of Conscience, which entailed not permitting their Priests to say Masse,
but us[ing] many revilings and mockeries towards their Masse, and religious
people; as at La Tour, they dressed an Asse in a Monks habit (Account, 3).
A Short and faithfull Account, however, was no match for Stouppes popular
treatise, which was heavily steeped in anti-Catholic sentiment. On George
Thomasons copy of A Short and faithfull Account one mischievous reader
prefixed un to the word faithfull and added written by a papist to the end
of the title.
Still, as Stouppes history reluctantly suggests, the English government was
actively involved in denying a Liberty of Conscience to those outside the
faith, that is, those who opposed the Reformed Religion. When approached
by Morland about the Piedmont massacre, the Duchess Christina, mother of
Carlos Immanuel II, chastised the English government for doling out criticism
while persecuting Catholics at home. In the final period of negotiations
for the treaty between England and France in 1655, Antoine de Bordeaux-
Neufville reminded English commissioners of the persecution of Catholics in
England (Abbott, Writings, 3.718). But such public criticism was out of line;
as Samuel Gardiner explains, the doctrine that each prince was responsible to
no external Power for his treatment of religious questions arising in his own
dominions had not only been consecrated by the recent Treaties of Westphalia,
but was firmly rooted in the conscience of Europe (Gardiner, History of the
Commonwealth, 4.187). No foreign official as a result was entitled to chastise
Cromwell for his treatment of the inhabitants of his kingdom. Nevertheless,
the records of such judgements, particularly about the suppression of Irish
Catholics, are inscribed in the history of the Piedmont massacre and of
Protestant nationhood and toleration more generally.
From August 1649 to May 1650, Cromwell led an army against the
Irish, allegedly in retaliation for the 1641 Rebellion, anti-Catholicism having
been energized by first allegations and then legends of Irish rebellions and
massacres. Exposing the depths of his hostility, Cromwell accused the Irish
clergy of having ignited the early revolt: You are a part of Antichrist, whose
Kingdom the Scripture so expressly speaks should be laid in blood; yea in
the blood of the Saints (Abbott, Writings, 2.199). He probably derived his
views on the Irish from Sir John Temples The Irish Rebellion (1646), a
popular Protestant martyrology that presented a national myth hostile to
Gardiner, History of the Commonwealth, 4.189; Morland, History of the Evangelical Church-
es, 56880.
Raymond D. Tumbleson, Catholicism in the English Protestant Imagination: Nationalism,
Religion, and Literature, 16601745 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 11.
the Irish Catholics. The ongoing holy war against the Catholics in Ireland
would in turn avenge the innocent blood that hath been shed and also hold
forth and maintain the lustre and glory of English liberty in a nation where,
Cromwell insisted, we have an undoubted right to do it (Abbott, Writings,
2.205; Gentles, New Model Army, 372).
Ireland had long been a thorn in Englands side. For Milton and his contem-
poraries, Ireland obstructed the establishment of a Protestant, anglocentric
British nation. [W]hole massachers have been committed on [the kings]
faithfull Subjects (Tenure, YP 3.197), Milton reminds the readers of The
Tenure of Kings and Magistrates in defending Cromwells re-conquest of the
rebellious Irish in 1649. Then just over a month later on 28 March 1649,
Milton was appointed to advance the national cause by offering some obser-
vations upon the Complicacon of interest wch is now amongst the severall
designers against the peace of the Commonwealth. Observations upon the
Articles of Peace with the Irish Rebels served as a response to a January 1649
treaty between the kings lord lieutenant, James Butler, the Earl of Ormond,
and the Confederate Catholics of Ireland, a treaty that threatened the new
government. Milton refers to the Articles as one of the late kings Master-
pieces (Observations, YP 3.301) in anticipation of his iconoclastic reading of
Eikon Basilike in the same year. The main targets, however, are the authors
of the Articles of Peace and the Papist Rebels of Ireland (Observations, YP
3.300), whom he characterizes as barbarous, savage, uncouth, but, worst of
all, papistical in religious belief. Observations was in turn preoccupied with
a crucial phase of English domestic politics, a phase in a larger narrative of
national self-definition tied to questions of foreign policy and toleration.
Leaving the Irish ashamed / To see themselves in one year tamed,
Cromwell, Englands Gideon, returned victorious to England, where prep-
arations would begin yet again for the transplantation of the Irish and the
See T. C. Barnard, Crisis of Identity among Irish Protestants, 16411685, Past and Present
127 (May 1990), 529. Temple thus regarded the 1641 Rebellion in terms of a much larger
clash between Catholicism and Protestantism. See I. J. Gentles, The New Model Army in England,
Ireland and Scotland, 16451653 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 3712, 542 n. 126.
Public Record Office, Order Book of the Council of State, SP Dom 25/62, p. 125; Masson,
Life of Milton, 4.87, 98. Also see J. Milton French, ed., The Life Records of John Milton, 2 vols.
(New York: Gordian Press, 1966), 2.240.
See Wolfe, Introduction, YP 1.169. See also Willy Maley, Milton and the complication of
interests in Early Modern Ireland, in Balachandra Rajan and Elizabeth Sauer, eds., Milton and
the Imperial Vision (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1999), 15568.
Thomas N. Corns, Miltons Observations upon the Articles of Peace: Ireland under English
Eyes, in David Loewenstein and James Grantham Turner, eds., Politics, Poetics, and Hermeneutics
in Miltons Prose (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 12334.
Andrew Marvell, An Horatian Ode, in The Complete Poems, ed. Elizabeth Story Donno
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972; rpt. 1985), ll. 734.
212 Elizabeth Sauer
colonization of their country in the early and mid-1650s. Indeed, as Raymond

Tumbleson recently remarked, the blood of the martyrs was the seed of colo-
nialism (Catholicism, 40). The incursion into Ireland represented something
more than simply a foreign intrusion: inextricably entangled with the domestic
affairs of England, it involved the English at the most basic level as a Protestant
and imperial nation.
The Complicacon of interest in Ireland was translated in the case of the
Piedmontese massacre into what Cromwell called one common Interest in
which the cause of the all Protestants was at stake. Foreign correspon-
dence about the tragedy, political dispatches and state papers to which
Milton himself contributed, and the letters of protest he wrote, speak
of the fraternal bond between the English and the Waldensians, who
have been murdered or banished to a wintry wasteland for their refusal
to embrace the Roman religion (SP, YP 5.684701). Reformers in turn
identified the victims as ur-Protestants. Like his contemporaries, Milton
locates the Waldensians in the line of the early Christians: those Church-
es in Piemont have held the same Doctrin and Goverment, since the time
that Constantine with his mischeivous donations poysond Silvester and the
whole Church. Others affirme they have so continud there since the Apos-
tles (Eikon. YP 3.514). Having resisted Constantine, who marrd all in
the Church, as acknowledged even among men professing the Romish
Faith (Of Ref., YP 1.559), the primitive sect remained pristine and con-
stant throughout the centuries. Morlands History of the Evangelical Churches
(1658), modeled on Actes and Monuments, features the Waldensian mas-
sacre, while also quoting writers who attack the Catholic Church from
within. Morland highlights Petrarchs derisive comments on the Church
in various Petrarchan sonnets, including Sonetto 110, Fontana di dolore.
Milton translates the first five lines of the sestet in Of Reformation as fol-
lows:
Founded in chast and humble Povertie,
Gainst them that raisd thee dost thou lift thy horn,
Impudent whoore, where hast thou placd thy hope?
State Papers II, Letter 53, CM 13.169. Pene unam esse (13.168) is translated in the Yale
edition as cause common to all (SP, YP 5.688).
Also see Of Ref., YP 1.55960; Likeliest Means, YP 7.291, 306, 308. In the second reference
from The Likeliest Means, Milton mentions the author of the standard history of the Waldensians,
Peter Gilles, who produced Histoire Ecclesiastique des Eglises Reformees (Geneva, 1644).
Samuel Morland used similar images to those of Stouppe, and both his and Stouppes
discussions of the dukes motives reveal that his mother, Grand Duchess Christina, a grand-
daughter of Catherine de Medici, and the sister of Henrietta Maria, was the real force behind
the massacre.
In thy Adulterers, or thy ill got wealth?
Another Constantine comes not in haste.
(Of Ref., YP 1.559)
Petrarchs image of the papal court as Babylonan identification that
resonates throughout the Protestant literature of sufferingis in turn appro-
priated by Milton for his Petrarchan On the late Massacre in Piedmont,
which he converts into a memorial for the ur-Protestant martyrs.
Sonnet XV calls on God to avenge the slaughtered saints, whose bones
/ Lie scattered (12), reminiscent of Gods chosen who were dispersed by
their enemies. Morland likewise echoes this cry for justice and vengeance
throughout The History of the Evangelical Churches, from the title page on
which he connects the Waldensians with the martyrs under the throne of
God in Revelation 6:9: I saw under the Altar the souls of them that were
slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held; And
they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long O Lord, holy and true, dost
thou not judge and avenge our bloud on them that dwell on the earth.
In dialogue with contemporary accounts of the massacre and with biblical
prophecies (Psalms, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Revelation), Milton in Sonnet
XV develops an alternative genealogy for the contemporary heroes. As
defenders of the truth so pure of old (Sonnet XV, l. 3), the Waldensians
in their ancient fold (6), are reminiscent of Old Testament Israelites and
New Testament Christians who suffer for truths sake. Thus, while their
founder, Pierre Valdes, did not secede from Catholicism until 1179, Milton
sinks the sects roots (and thus Protestantism) in a more ancient tradition.
Essentially, he designs for the Reformed Religion a primitive history that
competes with the claims of Catholicism for an originary status. These ur-
Protestants spurned idolatry, the speaker declares, in appealing for their
preservation and inscription into heavenly records or the books of life
(PL, 1.361, 363): Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old / When all
our fathers worshipped stocks and stones, / Forget not: in thy book record
their groans / Who were thy sheep and in their ancient fold / Slain (Sonnet
XV, 36). Those who penetrate the sheepfold are the enemies of the Good
Shepherd. In Lycidas, they are corrupt clergy who Creep and intrude, and
climb into the fold (Lycidas, CSP 24356, l. 115), while in Paradise Lost the
In Of Reformation Milton translates the first five lines of the sestet of Petrarchs Sonnet 108,
which is numbered 110 in Morland History, who quotes the entire Sonetto (c3r ).
Morland, History, title page. Also see d2v and the final page of the Introduction.
John R. Knott refers to the Waldensians as Miltons best contemporary examples of
martyrdom in Suffering for Truths sake: Milton and Martyrdom, in Loewenstein and
Turner, eds., Politics, Poetics, and Hermeneutics, 163.
214 Elizabeth Sauer
poet-narrator compares Satan to a prowling wolf who steals his way into
Gods fold (PL, 4.183, 187). This first grand thief reappears as the lewd
hirelings of Miltons day (PL, 4.193); while in the case of the Waldensian
massacre, the bloody Piedmontese (Sonnet XV, l. 7) perform Satans part.
The rewriting of the Protestant history and specifically that of the Walden-
sians involved a typological identification with the elect of the Old Testament.
Anti-Catholic literature frequently cited the example of the Israelites libera-
tion from Babylon, their fall prophesying divine vengeance against the Roman
church. Stouppes Collection takes advantage of this Protestant interpretation
by casting the Waldensians as poor banished men, who like the faithfull of
old, are wandering in the wildernesses, in the Dens, in the Mountains and
in the clefts of the earth: That they might sing as those that returned from the
Babylonian Captivity, When the Lord turned again the Captivity of Zion, we
were like them that dream: Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our
tongue with singing (Stouppe, Collection, 434). Also drawing on Hebrews
11:378, Morlands History repeats the passages to describe the persecuted
Waldensians (Morland, History, b). Noting that the psalmist interspersed
divers bitter complaints throughout the whole Book of Psalms, Morland
invokes Psalm 137 to characterize the persecuted Waldensians as a chosen
people, who carry on the tradition of the exiled Israelites in Babylon: they
sat down and wept (as they had good reason) by the waters of Babylon, when
they remembered Sion (Morland, History, b2). The appeal of the Committee
for the Affairs of the Poor Protestants in the Valleys of Piedmont echoes this
popular sentiment, and the Committee implores God to raise up Sion upon
the Ruins of Babylon, hastening his work, and blessing the means to it.
Recalling the deliverance from Babylonian captivity, Miltons Sonnet cor-
respondingly refers to the Waldensians flight from the Babylonian woe (14).
Woe, which reverberates throughout the biblical texts (Isaiah 5:822; Luke
11:4252; Revelation 8:13), as it does in the poem, is ceremonial, melan-
cholic, and prophetic. The octaves end rhymes reinforce the elegiac nature
of the verses: bones, cold, old, stones, groans, fold, rolled, moans.
Sonically, then, the poem is dominated by the o sound which both begets
and sustains its avalanche. For the most part, the Sonnet is only Petrarchan by
virtue of its rhyme scheme. Through the enjambment of the word moans,
the poem in fact resists Petrarchan containment as the octave is melded to the
sestet, in which the sound and sense of sow and grow are checked by the
final woe. A seventeenth-century reader, susceptible to fears of international
Catholic conspiracy, would have received an additional emotional charge
Committee for the Affairs of the Poor Protestants in the Valleys of Piedmont (London,
1658), 4.
when reading Miltons concluding couplet, Joad Raymond maintains (Daily

Muse, 207).
2. Toleration at Home
Though sown in sorrow, the seeds take root and mature, ultimately yielding
a hundredfold crop. While the themes of dispersal and death predominate
in both the octave and the sestet, the latter focuses more on planting and
growing and enacts a final judgement on popery. Plant specifically denotes
the founding or establishing of a city, or more relevantly, a colony; 2 Samuel
7:10: I will appoint a place for my people and will plant them, that they
may dwell in a place of their own. Milton himself frequently uses the term
in reference to the planting of Christianity (PE, YP 1.651; Eikon., YP 3.490,
493), of faith (Areop., YP 2.567), of the gospel (History, YP 5.219), of churches
(Eikon., YP 3.518), and of colonies (History, YP 5.5). Such practices are most
controversial of course when they involve displacing or transplanting an
existing people.
The planting or colonization of Ireland in the mid-1650s through the
establishment of English plantations involved the transplanting or what Francis
Bacon had earlier called displanting of the natives, namely Irish Catholics.
While James Harrington recommended in The Commonwealth of Oceana
that Panopea (Ireland) be farmed out unto the Jews for payJews being
unlike Catholics marginally tolerable; and while Cromwell wrote to his son-in-
law Charles Fleetwood about settling Ireland with Piedmont refugees (Abbott,
Writings, 3.715), proposals resurfaced for the transplantation of Catholic Irish.
Of central concern was the segregation of Catholics in Connaught and Clare.
Vincent Gookin, Surveyor-General of Ireland, and Cromwellian MP in the
Irish Parliament, opposed forced transportations to Connaught in The Great
Case of Transplantation in Ireland Discussed ([January] 1655) and in The Author
and Case of Transplanting the Irish into Connaught Vindicated from the Unjust
Aspersions of Col. Richard Laurence (12 May 1655). Gookin produced the
latter in response to colonial fantasies of the Cromwellian Colonel Richard
Lawrence, who in The Interest of England in the Irish Transplantation (9
March 1655) staunchly supported the segregation of the Irish and the English
John K. Hale argues that Milton reserves some of the few positive references to Old
Testament Israelites found in his later works for these ancestral Protestants who fly the
Babylonian woe (Hale, England as Israel in Miltons Writings, Early Modern Literary Studies
2.2 (1996), 14).
James Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana, in J. G. A. Pocock, ed., The Political
Works of James Harrington (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 159.
216 Elizabeth Sauer
settlement of Ireland. Homeland security and the defence of English interests

become refrains throughout Lawrences work as he recounts in graphic detail
the atrocities committed by the Irish against the English, and insists that some
of the Irish should be removed out of some parts of Ireland, to make way for
the English Plantations, and if so, then a Plantation must be admitted to be
essential in order [to maintain] the security of the English interest and People
there (Lawrence, Interest, 16).
In his earlier work, Gookin already doubted the purity of the colonizers
motives. Acknowledging the failure to evangelize the Irish in their own
country, Gookin entertained the possibility that the English themselves might
be at fault: as if our business in Ireland was only to set up our own interests
and not Christs. Then, several months later in his lengthy refutation of
Lawrences argument, Gookin recommends a more civil form of colonization:
We may overspread them and incorporate them into ourselves, and so by
an oneness take away the foundation of difference and fear together we
have opportunities of communicating better things unto them. Gookins
solutions to the problems seem to accord with Miltons sowing of Protestant
seeds in Catholic territory.
Gookin did recognize the difficulties involved in the colonizing act: The
unsetling of a nation is an easy work; the setling of a nation is not, it has cost
much Blood and Treasure there (Great Case, 29). Some of his contemporaries
were, however, more critical of even such cautious and benevolent acts of
colonization, assimilation, and apartheid that Gookin advanced in dealing
with Irish Catholics and other religious detractors. Lord Cork, a pro-royalist
who was nevertheless involved with the new Cromwellian order and attended
the memorial in the city of Cork for the slain Waldensians, protested in 1658
against the wickedness of many of this nation to fetch poor Irish people out
of their beds and sell them into the Barbadoes. During the 1650s, Irish
priests, Tories, and vagrants were exiled to the colonies, including Jamaica
and Barbados, where the prices on their heads compare[d] unfavourably
Richard Lawrence, The Interest of England in the Irish Transplantation (London, 9 March
1655), 16. On the significance of planting, also see Mary Fenton, Hope, Land Owner-
ship, and Miltons Paradise Within , Studies in English Literature, 15001900 43.1 (2003),
15180.
Vincent Gookin, The Great Case of Transplantation in Ireland Discussed (London, [January]
1655), 3.
Vincent Gookin, The Author and Case of Transplanting the Irish into Connaught Vindicated
from the unjust Aspersions of Col. Richard Laurence (London, 12 May 1655), 41. See Mercurius
Politicus (1522 March 1655), 5197; (29 March5 April 1655), 5241.
Diary of Lord Cork, 18 January 1657/58, 14 July 1658, quoted in T. C. Barnard, Cri-
sis of Identity among Irish Protestants, 16411685, Past and Present 127 (May 1990), 72
n. 91.
with the prices for black slaves purchased by the West Indies planters. At
the same time that Cork decried such practices, he was also known to have
disagreed with a fellow magistrates ruling that a troublesome Quaker should
be imprisoned (Barnard, Crisis, 72). In general, however, the lament for
Englands own slaughterd SaintsQuakers, other dissenters, Catholics, and
Jewsfell on deaf ears.
Parliamentary newsbook accounts of the 1650s illustrate Englands nego-
tiation of cultural and religious differences in its management of such
international and domestic affairs. The Weekly Post of early August 1655
documents or impartially communicat[es] a range of foreign events, from
the great and lamentable Engagement between the English and the Spaniards
in the wake of the collapse of the Western design, to the inflamed relations
between England and France, to the subduing and taming of Ireland. The self-
congratulatory remarks on the subjection of Ireland are particularly revealing:
By Letters further from Ireland was certified, that the business of setling the Military
and Civil Affairs, and Course of Justice being now well over, the Lord Deputy Fleetwood
is preparing for England with all speed The Officers of the New Militia Troops in
every Country, have been feasted at White hall, and great expressions of joy there were
at the celebration thereof: May they not well laugh that wins? (Weekly Post, 1908)
As for the encounter between Protestant and Catholic forces in the European
theatre, The Weekly Post reports:
Mr. Moreland, Agent from his Highness, to the D. of Savoy, hath received his Answer,
and is returning towards England, he is expected suddenly. The poor Protestants are
still in Arms in the mountains and grow numerous, their brethren who fled returning
to them from all parts. And whilest the Dukes forces were spoyling of their harvest in
the valleys, they descended from the Hills, and after a hot dispute routed them, and
took many prisoners. (Weekly Post, 1910)
Between these news reports on international events is a section, titled

Quaking Intelligence, which marks George Foxs entrance onto the nations
political stage (19067). The newsbook characteristically links Fox with
sorcery, witchcraft, and Catholic priesthood. Victimized from the time of
their emergence by the governments policies and judicial system, the Friends,
called Quakers by their detractors, consciously recorded their experiences.
John W. Blake, Transportation from Ireland to America, 165360, Irish Historical Studies
3 (19423), 275. Colonization and conversion were part of the same mandate. Cromwell himself
proposed that upon being transported abroad, Irish girls would have to be restrained but Irish
boys could potentially be educated to be Englishmen, I mean rather, Christians, Thurloe, State
Papers, 4.234, 40; quoted in Blake, Transportation, 271 n. 3.
The Weekly Post, Numb. 283 (London, Tuesday 31 July to Tuesday 7 August 1655), 1905.
References following immediately are to this document and cited parenthetically by page number.
218 Elizabeth Sauer
Their testimonials as persecuted saints were written alongside the history of the
Waldensians tragedy in a Great Book of Sufferings. As sufferers for truths sake
as they publicly identified themselves, Quakers issued a counter-plea to forget
not and to record their trials in Gods book, as Miltons speaker urges for
the Waldensians (Sonnet XV, l. 5). Moreover, Quakers made connections
between various kinds of oppression in England and on the continent to
which Milton and governmental officials of his day turned a blind eye. False
Prophets, Anticrists, Deceivers, which are in the World (1655), the first work
of Margaret Fell, Foxs future spouse, exposes the hypocrisy of the English
who allegedly aided their fellows on the continent while persecuting the
Friends in their own country. Her addressees are the Heads and Governours
of this Nation, who have put forth a Declaration for the keeping of a Day
of Humiliation for the Persecution (as they say) of poor Inhabitants in the
Valley of Lucerna, Angrona, and others professing the Reformed Religion.
Fell emphasizes the emptiness of the governments fast to mark the event of
the Waldensians massacre, noting that the officials inner condition remained
unchanged and their correspondingly oppressive internal policies unaltered
(False Prophets, 17). Reminding Cromwell of his commitment to toleration,
Fell, in anticipation of the accounts in the Great Book of Sufferings, states:
And whereas you take it into your consideration, the sad persecution, tyrany and
cruelty exercised upon them, whom you call your Brethren, Protestants, and therein
do contribute and administer to their wants outwardly we who are sufferers by
a Law derived from the Pope, are willing to joyn, and contribute with you to their
outward necessities but in the mean time while you are doing this, and taking notice
of others cruelty, tyrany and persecution: turn your eye into your own bosoms, and
see what is doing at home. (False Prophets, 18)
Descriptions of the Friends suffering are interspersed throughout, justifying
Fells harsh accusations of the governments ironic alignment with popery:
Therefore honestly consider what is done, whilest you are taking notice of
others Cruelties abroad, lest you overlook what is done at home: for there
is much difference in many things between the Popish Religion and the
Protestant (as they call it) but in this persecution there is no difference (False
Prophets, 20). In an appeal she repeats throughout her Restoration writings,
Fell urges the English government to abandon its Popish law (False Prophets,
21) which oppresses those in the homeland.
In 1657 George Fox encouraged Quakers to present their sufferings to judges of assize,
and in 1658 he organized a system of recording sufferings which would be incorporated by
Ellis Hookes into the Great Book of Sufferings. But Quakers like Margaret Fell were already
documenting their trials before 1657.
Margaret Fell, False Prophets, Anticrists, Deceivers, which are in the World (London, 1655),
title page.
During the remaining years of the Interregnum, Royalists, Catholics, and

Quakers alike continued to expose the limitations of Cromwells policies on
civil liberty and religious toleration. Samuel Fishers The Scorned Quakers True
and honest account describes the silencing of the Quaker after this famous 17
September 1656 parliamentary sitting. Identified by both Margaret Fell and
himself as a sufferer for Truths sake, Fisher calls the magistrates to justice
and repentance. God, he warns, will seek to snap and suppress them, as the
old Israel their Type did upon Pharaoh and the AEgyptians, so that the more
ye slay them, the more they shall grow and multiply; & their Blood shall be the
Seed of that Church, that shall be called the Sion of the Lord (Scorned Quakers,
910). Here Tertullians statement The blood of the Christians is the seed
of a new life finds new ground in the testimony of a victim of Cromwells
policies. As Milton lamented the Waldensians fate and demanded revenge
for the slaughtered saints, whose bones / Lie scattered (Sonnet XV, 12), so
Fisher bemoans the Remnant of Jacob, left in the wilderness and scattered,
and shattered up and down in the dark and Gloomy day and every where
complained on, and accused by proud Hamans Generation that ever hated
them (Scorned Quakers, 31). The English governments denunciation of the
Piedmont massacre did not lead to greater toleration in the homeland. As well
as policing what was outside of the pale, Englands national self-fashioning
involved acts of internal colonization designed to suppress religious and
cultural difference.
The main accounts of the Piedmont massacre locate the slain Waldensians
in a providential narrative. Morland concludes his History of the Evangelical
Churches with images of the empty fields and barns of the Waldensians,
while also deploying the language that Peter sometimes used of the scattered
Churches in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. The evangelist
thereby assures the persecuted that God would reward their faithfulness in the
midst of trial (Morland, History, 709). Milton in Sonnet XV has a different type
of consolation in mind, one reminiscent of, but not specific to, the experiences
of Fisher and English dissenters generally. The Waldensians undergo a series
of conversions from faithful Israelites scattered by the enemy (Knott, Biblical
Matrix, 269) to New Testament martyrs, to ardent defenders of the Reformed
Religion. Their death is avenged through the advancement of the Reformation
Samuel Fisher, The Scorned Quakers True and honest Account, both why and What he should
have spoken on the 17th. day of the 7th. month 1656 (London, 1656).
Apologeticus, 50; A. S. P. Woodhouse and Douglas Bush, eds., A Variorum Commentary on
the Poems of John Milton, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), 2.440. Also see
Lawry, Miltons Sonnet 18, 1114.
Michael Hechter, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development,
15361966 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975), 9.
220 Elizabeth Sauer
as their remains are sown Oer all the Italian fields (Sonnet XV, l. 11) and
as the blood of martyrdom seeps into Catholic soils.
The concluding images in Sonnet XV combine the classical and biblical
accounts of regeneration: the legend of Cadmus, the Phoenician prince, who
grew an army of soldiers, which led to the founding of Thebes; Ezekiels
prophecy of the Israelite nation springing to life from dry bones (37:114);
the parable of the sower from the New Testament (Matthew 13:38; Mark
4:38; Luke 8:58). The martyred Waldensians blood and ashes (Sonnet
XV, l. 10) cry for vengeance in the sestet (much like Abels blood in Genesis
4). The blood of ritually slain animals described in Mosaic Law and the
ashes of sacrificed animals feature prominently in Hebrew rites as the agents
and seeds of atonement and purification. In the poem, the imagery of
blood and ashes applies to the Waldensians as sacrificial, slaughtered sheep.
The bones scattered on the Alpine mountains (Sonnet XV, ll. 12)
metamorphose into the blood and ashes sow[n] / Oer all the Italian fields
(ll. 1011) where they regenerate.
Italian fields is no innocent image: its significance anticipates the reference
to the Hesperian Fields where Saturn fled, as recorded in a catalogue of
the possessed and possessors of hell in Paradise Lost (PL 1.520). In Sonnet
XV, the image is topical and politically charged, marking the site both of the
tragedy and of a newly planted Reformation. Superimposed on the meaning
of the Italian fields is a biblically inflected typological reading of a transition
from the Valley of Dry Bones (Ezekiel 31) and the valley of the shadow of death
(Psalm 23) to the fields ripe for harvest (Matthew 9:378) and the field where
the kernel of wheat is planted and then dies to produce new life ( John 12:24).
Neither is it therfore true, Milton insisted in 1649, when he denounced
the violence associated with the tyranny of kingship, that Christianity is
planted or watred with Christian blood (Eikon., YP 3.490). But a few years
later, Tertullians famous adage serves as his consolation, conveyed by the
sowing and reaping trope from the New Testament that he adopts (Sonnet
XV, ll. 1013). Throughout his prose works Milton uses the term sowing
much more in a metaphorical than literal sense as he speaks about sowing
opinions (Judgement of Martin Bucer, YP 2.432), diversity (Colasterion, YP
2.751), spiritual things (Likeliest Means, YP 7.300), and sowing sedition or
dissension (Observations, YP 3.322; History, YP 5.392). In his most powerful
application of the term, he implores God to sow the seeds of vengeance,
resulting in the hundredfold regeneration of Protestantism Oer all the
Italian fields.
Charles E. Goldstein, Hebrew Element, 11213. On the Waldensians and the Israelites,
see Knott, Biblical Matrix, 25963.
Hundredfold (1. 13) refers to the growth of the fourth portion of seed cast
by the sower of the Synoptic Gospels, a portion divided into three categories,
yielding a hundredfold, sixtyfold and thirtyfold. The seed is the Word of God,
which is received in various ways, with the hundredfold yield being the most
fruitful. In accordance with St Cyprians interpretation of the parable of the
sower, the hundredfold harvest is the result of the incarnation of the Word as
blood through martyrdom. This transformation is effected by God through
the poet, the sower of the seeds, which, like books, are invested with a potencie
of life (Areop., YP 2.492). The meaning of sowing thus multiplies through the
words of the poem itself. Blood stains the path to the Promised Land while
the fertile language of Sonnet XV serves as seed for an ascent: hundredfold
is the hundredth word in the sonnet, leaving eleven words to complete the
sonnet. Presented in these terms, Miltons verse memorial of the tragedy
marks a transition from death and destruction to rebirth (Lieb, Milton, 29). At
the same time, by using a monosyllabic native English diction and Protestant
imagery, Milton Englished his Petrarchan sonnet, converting eroticism into
passion and turning his notes to a tragic lament for all Protestants.
Milton composed the Sonnet, as noted earlier, while participating in the
Cromwellian governments mission to spread the word about the Waldensian
crisis. In his capacity as Latin Secretary, Milton wrote letters of protest, which
were transmitted under Cromwells seal on 25 May 1655. His address to the
United Provinces describes the letter-writing campaign to European heads
of state, ranging from Protestant princes and magistrates to the (Catholic)
duke of Savoy and the king of France. A companion letter was directed to
Cardinal Mazarin. For reasons of political expedience more than anything
else, the correspondence to the French officials is gracious and cautious rather
than vindictive, the English government having been involved at this time in
negotiations with France to develop a military alliance against the Spaniards.
In a plea for Protestant solidarity, Cromwell explains to the Duke:
The first fruit, that of a hundred-fold, belongs to martyrs; the second, sixty-fold, is yours.
St Cyprian, The Dress of Virgins, Sister Angel Elizabeth Keenan (trans.), in Roy J. Deferrari, trans.
and ed., Saint Cyprian: Treatises (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1958), 49; Manfred Siebald,
Sower, Parable of, in David Lyle Jeffrey, gen. ed., A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English
Literature (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1992), 7324.
I am much indebted to John T. Shawcross for this observation about the Sonnet in our
correspondence (2002). Also see Shawcross, ed., The Complete Poetry of John Milton (Garden
City, NY: Anchor Books, 1963), 215 n. 6.
See Morland, History, 553.
An appeal directed at Cardinal Mazarin of France refers to an even closer bond between
this Commonwealth and the Kingdom of France, the initial bond having been established
through the negotiations for the November 1655 Treaty of Westminster; see SP, YP 5.7001 and
Charles Harding Firth, The Last Years of the Protectorate, 16561658, 2 vols. (London: Longmans,
Green, 1909; reissued New York: Russell & Russell, 1964), 1.268301; 2.177222.
222 Elizabeth Sauer
we acknowledge that we are joined with them, not only by the communion of
humanity, but also by the same Religion and indeed by a deeply felt fraternal bond,
[and thus] we have judged it impossible to satisfy our duty toward God, or brotherly
charity, or the profession of the same religion, if in this calamity and misery of our
brethren we are affected solely by a sense of grief and do not also exert all our efforts
to relieve, as much as in us lies, their many unexpected evils. (SP, YP 5.686)
The desired outcome of a united response to the assault on the Waldensians

is cast as a triumph for Protestant diplomacy designed to yield much fruit:
if the Duke of Savoy will allow himself to be appeased and prevailed upon
by the prayers of us all, we shall carry away a noble and plentiful harvest and
reward from this labor which we have undertaken (SP, YP 5.693), Cromwell
announces in his address to the Netherlands.
Under pressure from the international European community and in reaction
to the Waldensians recent military victories, the French government ordered
an end to the persecution and restored the Waldensians rights at the 1655
pacification of Pignerol (Abbott, Writings, 3.717). But within no time, the
Duke resumed his assaults on Protestants, prompting Cromwells intervention
again in 1658 (Fallon, Milton, 1501). In the meantime, the Cromwellian
government rejected the proposal to readmit the Jews, declared war on Spain
and the house of Austria, aggressively advanced the Western Design, extended
the transplantation policy in Ireland, and suppressed dissenters at home. Such
practices remind us of the exclusionary thinking that marked the origins of
elect nationhood. While retaining a strong commitment to free-will theology,
Milton too increasingly and paradoxically reserved his designation of the
chosen for the fit though few (e.g. Eikon., YP 3.33940). Though unrelated
in all other regards, the Grand Duchess Christina of Lorraine, Antoine de
Bourdeax-Neufville, Vincent Gookin, Lord Cork, and Samuel Fisher exposed
attitudes and incidents of English intolerance; but their words fell on stony
ground. At the same time, Margaret Fell identified the kinds of connections
between domestic and foreign policies on toleration which Milton and other
governmental officials disregarded in their response to the Irish and in their
ready assimilation of the Waldensians into a Protestant providential narrative.
In conclusion I have sought in this study to reread Sonnet XV in terms
of the Complicacon of interesta phrase applied to the supporters of the
Articles of Peaceimplicit in political, religious, and tolerationist policies
advanced by the Cromwellian government and championed by Milton in
John Marshall documents the fate of the Waldensians in the Restoration era when the Duke
of Savoy, Victor Amadeus II, ended toleration for the Waldensians in Piedmont, two months
after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (John Locke, 5593, 4012).
See Maley, Milton, 15568.
the 1650s. By studying Sonnet XV in the context of English cultural politics

of the day, we discover how the blood of the martyrs becomes the seed
of colonialism, thus capturing the imperial potential implicit in the acts
and expressions of reformation/regeneration. Having admitted them into the
(sheep)fold, Cromwell defended the cause of the Waldensians, and Milton
memorialized their sufferings in his political and literary canon. As English
colonizers proposed the planting of Protestants in Catholic Irish soils, Milton
grafted the Protestant nations outrage about the Piedmont massacre onto
an Italian poetic form and tradition. The rhetorical dexterity in fulminating
against the Catholics while justifying the colonization of the Irish and the
internal colonization of the sectarians and, in the same year, of the Jews
marked the agendas and writings of early modern nationalists. The chosen,
imperial nation generates and sanctions territorial imperatives of blood and
soil, while, as we have seen, sowing the seeds of intolerance abroad and at
home. Indeed the measure of the emerging nation lies, then as now, in its
foreign relations, tolerationist policies, and management of internal difference.
On Milton and Jewish readmission, see Don M. Wolfe, Limits of Miltonic Toleration,
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 60 (1961), 83446, and Elizabeth Sauer, Religious
Toleration and Imperial Intolerance, in Rajan and Sauer, eds., Milton and the Imperial Vision,
21430.
12
Toleration in Miltons Epics: A Chimera?
Sharon Achinstein
Where is toleration in Miltons great epic poetry? There are in Paradise Lost
and Paradise Regained, to be sure, as in Samson Agonistes, denunciations of
persecution and challenges to repressive ecclesiological regimes (PL 12.50840;
PR 2.446); defences of freedom of conscience (PL 3.195); and, especially,
applause for the lonely faithful who suffer for truths sake (PL 12.569; PR
3.604; 3.98). Although Samson Agonistes can be seen as engaging with the
controversies over dissent in the context of Restoration politics, it is notably
difficult to find an imaginative representation of toleration in this, or in his
other two great poems. Instead, in Samson Agonistes, the plight of Miltons
Israelite hero makes a case against religious oppression, against oppression of
the godly, at least. Samson wails the wail of the tortured, at the limit of his
tolerance: Much more affliction than already felt / They cannot well impose,
Protests against persecution have solidified the post-1660 dating of Paradise Lost, as links
between Milton and dissenting politics in the Restoration have been established by David
Loewenstein, Representing Revolution in Milton and His Contemporaries (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2001); Neil Keeble, The Literary Culture of Nonconformity in Later Seventeenth-
Century England (Leicester: University of Leicester Press, 1997); Laura Knoppers, Historicizing
Milton: Spectacle, Power, and Poetry in Restoration England (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia
Press, 1994); and my own Literature and Dissent in Miltons England (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003). On Samson Agonistes and dissent, see Christopher Warren, When Self-
Preservation Bids: Approaching Milton, Hobbes, and Dissent, English Literary Renaissance 37.1
(2007); Sharon Achinstein, Samson Agonistes and the Drama of Dissent, Milton Studies 33 (1996),
13358; Blair Worden, Milton, Samson Agonistes, and the Restoration, in Gerald MacLean, ed.,
Culture and Society in the Stuart Restoration: Literature, Drama, History (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995), 11136. On the significance of liberty of conscience arguments, see
Richard Greaves, Let Truth Be Free: John Bunyan and the Restoration Crisis of 16671673,
Albion 28 (Winter 1996), 587605; Gary De Krey, Rethinking the Restoration: Dissenting Cases
for Conscience, 16671672, Historical Journal 38 (1995), 5760. We know less about Miltons
career as a licenser for the press under Cromwell than we would like; see Martin Dzelzainis in
this volume, ch. 9.
This to put aside for a moment the question of holy war and terrorism; see Feisel G.
Mohamed, Confronting Religious Violence: Miltons Samson Agonistes, PMLA 120.2 (2005),
32740.
Toleration in Miltons Epics: A Chimera? 225
nor I sustain (SA 125758). Oppression, rather than breaking ones will or
spirit, becomes another kind of trial for the faithful, perhaps even a sign of
their election. When Samson declares, My trust is in the living God (SA
1140), he gives the response of the faithful to their tormenters, a testimony
to godly obedience. The Son in Paradise Regained, beset by Satans assaults,
endures terrors dire (4.31) with a calm placidity of faith: Who best / Can
suffer, best can do (PR 3.1945).
Looking at Miltons representations of toleration in his great epics helps us
to clarify what toleration might mean for Milton. This essay addresses how
poetry offered Milton a medium for expressing visions of tolerance. Indeed,
stacking up Miltons representations of tolerance in the great poems, we can
see more clearly how his vision differs sharply from a post-enlightenment,
secularist understanding. Some motivating questions are asked: Should we be
satisfied that Miltons denunciations of persecution and his diatribes against
priestcraft constitute a commitment to toleration? What about the wider
concepts of freedom of thought or tolerance of a variety of religions? Is the
ideal of freedom to argue, as powerfully asserted in Areopagitica, a principle
that is given realization in his great epics? Indeed, this essay shall explore
how a look to his great epics reveals Milton as a critic of both secularism
and tolerance in their many guises. Milton here emerges as a Christian fideist
who is attempting to brace against the modernity spoken by scepticism and
rationalism. Against the Satanic view that nothing is true; everything is
permitted, Milton writes to reinstate an intolerance of permissiveness. And
yet, his methodsa subtle literary engagement, an Intangling, as Stanley Fish
has called themoffer a procedural principle of tolerance. Satans perspective
is given a full airing, for example: but this process of airing views is nonetheless
temporally bound to earthly contingency, a temporary condition. Indeed, as
we shall see, in the many instances of free speech we overhear in the great
poems, in the many battles between truth and falsehood, the aim of freedom
of debate is freedom to demolish ones enemy. This is rather different from a
liberal defense of freedom of debate, or tolerance, as a goal in itself.
In his epics, despite protests against persecuting priests and magistrates,
there is, in fact, little imagining of what a tolerant society might look
like. While Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained are full of ethico-political
controversies, debates, and heterodox views, there are absent any positive
On Milton and martyrdom, see John R. Knott, Discourses of Martyrdom in English Literature,
15631694 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 15178.
Writes Nietzsche, quoting the motto of the Assassins, in On the Genealogy of Morals, 3.24,
tr. Walter Kauffman (New York: Random House, 1989), 150.
Stanley Fish, Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1971), 1.
226 Sharon Achinstein
representations of toleration of different faiths. Indeed, there are many visible

intolerances of Roman Catholic, pagan, and Jewish forms of worship (relics,
beads, / Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls, / The sport of winds (PL
3.4913); servile fear (PL 11.305). Absent, despite Miltons covert assertion
of heterodox theology, is advocacy of toleration such as had been found in
literary works by More or Erasmus. Variety of opinion, while a rallying cry in
his prose works, seems almost absent in the idealized portrait of the heavenly
community in Paradise Lost, where angels are bound in uniform obedience to
God. For God, unity is a sign of true obedience:
Under his great vicegerent reign abide
United as one individual Soul
For ever happy: him who disobeys
Me disobeys, breaks union, and that day
Cast out from God and blessed vision, falls.
(PL 5.60913)
In the heavenly community, only the Son may legitimately challenge God (PL
1.15066; 11.401); for the angelic society as a community at large, diversity
On Miltons heterodoxy, see Martin Dzelzainis in this volume, ch. 9; and corroboration with
his prose, where Milton goes out of his way to defend Arians and Socinians in Of True Religion
(YP 8. 4256); see Barbara Lewalski, To try, and teach the erring Soul , in Graham Parry and
Joad Raymond, eds., Milton and the Terms of Liberty (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002), 17590,
187; John Rogers, Milton and the Heretical Priesthood of Christ, in David Loewenstein and
John Marshall, eds., Heresy, Literature, and Politics in Early Modern English Culture (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006), 20320; Steven Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers: Poetry
and Materialism in Seventeenth-Century England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991);
John P. Rumrich, Miltons Arianism: Why it Matters, in Stephen B. Dobranski and John
P. Rumrich, eds., Milton and Heresy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 7592;
Michael Lieb, Milton and the Socinian Heresy, in Mark R. Kelley, Michael Lieb and John
T. Shawcross, eds., Milton and the Grounds of Contention (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University
Press, 2003), 23483; and David Loewenstein, Milton among the Religious Radicals and Sects:
Polemical Engagements and Silences, Milton Studies 40 (2001); on Miltons engagement with,
and resistance to, heterodox ideas of the fall, see William Poole, Milton and the Idea of the Fall
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
See John N. King, Milton and Religious Controversy: Satire and Polemic in Paradise Lost
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 89108; and for an excellent analysis that
contrasts Miltons attacks on pagan idolatry with Seldens treatment, see Jason Rosenblatt, John
Selden: Renaissance Englands Chief Rabbi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 7492. On
Milton and the Jews, see Douglas Brooks, ed., Milton and the Jews (Cambridge, forthcoming:);
and A. Guibbory, The Jewish Question and The Woman Question in Samson Agonistes:
Gender, Religion, and Nation, in Catherine Gimelli Martin, ed., Milton and Gender (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004), 184203. On Eastern religions, see Balachandra Rajan,
Banyan Trees and Fig Leaves: Some Thoughts on Miltons India, in Elizabeth Sauer, ed., Milton
and the Climates of Reading: Essays by Balachandra Rajan ( Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2006), 7282. Robert Markley, The destind Walls/Of Cambalu: Milton, China, and
the Ambiguities of the East, in Balachandra Rajan, and Elizabeth Sauer, eds., Milton and the
Imperial Vision (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1999), 191213.
can only be seen as rebellion. In Paradise Lost, Milton offers different territorial
spaces for confirmed differences: heaven and hell are geopolitical locations
that provide allegorization of ineradicable difference.
In his great epics, it seems, visions of tolerant societies elude Milton. But if
we are tempted to explain this as a function of his avowed avoidance of the
utopian impulse (to sequester into Atlantick or Utopian provinces), then a
look to his historical imagination in the poetry shows a refusal to imagine
positive diversity there as well. The look to the past, so frequently deployed
in early modern tolerationist thinkers in England, does not yield in Milton a
better, more tolerant society. While each of the two epics retells the history
of the True Church, there is little of the admiration of, or preference for, the
ancient Israelite modes by way of historical or comparative analysisoften
used to produce tolerationist precedent and example of interconfessional
debateon the order of Selden, who had in De Jure Naturali et Gentium juxta
Disciplinam Ebraeorum (1640) established a relation between natural and
Noachide laws, and whose work had influenced other radical independents
tolerationist thinking. Absent in his epics, too, was a nationalist view of
the ancient British past of a godly society of the Druids, in Areopagitica
seen as the source of all pagan wisdom (YP 2.5512). The Druids offered a
counter-history to the orthodox Anglican bid for the earliest and truest English
religious establishment, a counter-history favoured by John Selden, and the
Independent Peter Sterry, Cromwells chaplain, who wrote a poem imagining
the harmonious, Christian ideal, a model of nonconformist community. Sterry
described the Druids morall Friendship, founded upon Virtue, and regulated
by it, mutually uniting the Lights, and Loves of Soules, in their Ascent to the
Supreame Good. While Areopagitica praised the combat of ideas, singing
admiringly of the noisy and diverse city of London, in his epics, however,
positive representation of human difference and diversity is difficult to find.
On Paradise Losts geopolitical scheme ratifying difference, see Julie Stone Peters, A Bridge
over Chaos: De Jure Belli, Paradise Lost, Terror, Sovereignty, Globalism, and the Modern Law
of Nations, Comparative Literature 57.4 (2005), 27393, 277. As Neil Forsyth argues, this is
a difference Satan tries to ignore, in The Satanic Epic (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2003), 157.
See Rosenblatt, Selden, 161 (Henry Stubbes application of Seldens work to tolerationist
questions is discussed, 177, 1837). This leaves aside Miltons preference for Israelite over
Christian interpretations on divorce in his Divorce Tracts.
Peter Sterry, Of Divine Friendship, in Nabil I. Matar, ed., Peter Sterry: Selected Writings
(New York: Peter Lang, 1994), 178; and for Seldens use of the Druids to formulate a natural and
native religion in Analecton Anglo-Britannicon (1615) and in his commentary on Poly-Olbion,
see Reid Barbour, John Selden: Measures of the Holy Commonwealth in Seventeenth-Century
England ( Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 18994. Regarding the Druids, one must
compare Miltons shift from a positive vision of the Druids in Mansus, 42; Epitaphum Damonis,
16571; Areopagitica (YP 2.5512) and the Divorce Tracts (YP 2.231); but note his worries
There had been, of course, literary representations of tolerance in prior

works of literaturethink of Mores Utopia, for example, or Bodins Collo-
quium of the Seven, of which Milton allegedly had a surreptitious manuscript
by 1662or in any of a number of works comparing different faiths. But
while Miltons major epics are vivid in their denunciations of those who would
force consciences, they are not good places to look for explicit representations
of toleration of varying faiths. They do not imagine, as do Henry Burton
and Roger Williams, comparisons with Turkish toleration, for instance, or
fictionalize members of different faiths conversing openly. Unlike Grotius,
Milton does not attempt to refute or convert Jews and Muslims directly, nor
did he offer a Grotian, irenicist model of tolerance. The prudential or scep-
tical arguments for multi-faith tolerance offered by Miltons contemporaries
in Lycidas, 534; and outright hostility to the factious and ambitious Druid priests, uttering
direfull praiers in The History of Britain (YP 5.756); the shift in his epic hero from Arthur to
Adam may indicate a loss of favour of this social and religious vision. On the political vision of
Druids, see Nicholas Von Maltzahn, Miltons History of Britain: Republican Historiography in the
English Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 11315. Extending this attitude, Toland
satirizes and attacks Druids in his anti-priestcraft frenzy, History of the Druids (1726).
Louis I. Bredvold, Milton and Bodins Heptaplomeres, Studies in Philology 21 (1924),
399402.
On thinking with Turks about toleration, see Nabil Matar, The Toleration of Muslims in
Renaissance England, in J. C. Laursen, ed., Religious Toleration: the variety of rites from Cyrus
to Defoe (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), 129; on interconfessional dialogue, see Nabil Matar,
Anglo-Muslim Disputation in the Early Modern Period, in 14531699: Cultural Encounters
Between East and West, ed. Matthew Birchwood and Matthew Dimmock (Amersham: Cambridge
Scholars Press, 2005), 2943. The Royalist Alexander Rosss 1649 translation of the Quran, The
Alcoran of Mahomet, was published in England in 1649, but it ran into trouble with the Council
of State when printed and the printer was apprehended and copies of it seized; Ross himself
was examined; see Nabil Matar, Islam in Britain, 15581685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1998), 7681.
Intellectually comparable to Milton is the defender of liberty of conscience Charles
Wolseley, who in his work, The Reasonableness of Scripture-Belief (1672), specifically attacks
atheists, Epicureans, and Muslims (16773). Addressing Islam was also Hugo Grotius, True
Religion Explained (1632); and in his earlier 1611 ms., Meletius, the Arminian Grotius, in the
height of the Arminian controversy, defended tolerance on grounds of civil peace. See Hugo
Grotius, Meletius Sive De Iis Quae inter Christianos conveniunt epistola, critical edn. and tr.
Guillaume H. M. Posthumus Meyjes (Leiden: Brill, 1988).
Commercial arguments for toleration were included in those by Henry Robinson, Briefe
Considerations concerning the Advancement of Trade and Navigation (1641); Quaker William
Penn, The Great Case of Liberty of Conscience (1670), or his Englands Great Interest (1675), and
William Temple, Observations (1673), in praising the Dutch, e.g; or in the developing discourse
of interest that wished to accommodate diverse interests in a community, as in London Whig
Slingsby Bethels Present Interest of England (1671). See John Marshall, John Locke, Toleration,
and Early Enlightenment Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 1523; and
Jonathan Scott, Algernon Sidney and the Restoration Crisis (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1991), 133.
See Richard H. Popkin, Scepticism and Irreligion in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries, in Arjo Vanderjagt and Richard Popkin, eds., Skepticism and Irreligion in the
seem absent. Infallibility arguments, however, are the most powerful in his
attack on persecution, but not for a positive vision of multi-faith tolerance.
Michaels question, for on earth / Who against faith and conscience can be
heard / Infallible? (PL 12.52830) is Miltons strongest argument against
persecution as a presumption of an infallible knowledge of God. In his assault
on outward Rites and specious forms (PL 12.534), Milton did echo con-
temporary attacks on the imposture of organized religions, but his attacks on
imposture do not so much expose all religions as false as expose a false religion
as against the true one, Devils to adore for Deities (PL 1.73; cf 3.692; 4.122;
5.243; PR 1.4302). Satan himself voices something like the imposture the-
ory used by sceptics in the later seventeenth century to denounce ecclesiastical
power, in asking Eve about the interdiction on the Tree of Knowledge:
Why then was this forbid? Why but to awe,
Why but to keep ye low and ignorant,
His worshippers.
(PL 9.7035)
Satans assessment of false religion in a very real sense mirrors Miltons: but
his readers should know its a mistake to accuse God in this way. The only
means of adjudicating these impostor claims is through faith.
Rather than a various, combative pluralism, as imagined by his contem-
porary tolerationists, there is deep in Miltons great poetry, on the contrary,
a desire for a unity of Spirit, a bond of peace (YP 2.565), as he writes in
Areopagitica, citing Ephesians 4:3. When Adam praises his wife to Raphael, he
emphasizes the unity of the couple:
From all her words and actions mixed with love
And sweet compliance, which declare unfeigned
Union of mind, or in us both one soul;
Harmony to behold in wedded pair
More grateful than harmonious sound to the ear
Yet these subject not[.]
(8.6027)
For Milton, musical harmony becomes the model for that unity of spirit,
the married pair a paradigm for a community of the faithful. So, too, had
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 111; Alan Levine, ed., Early Modern
Skepticism and the Origins of Toleration (Oxford: Lexington Books, 1999).
On contemporary imposture literature, toleration and clandestine heterodoxy, see Richard
H. Popkin, The Third Force in Seventeenth-Century Thought (Leiden: Brill, 1992); Mark Goldie,
Priestcraft and the Birth of Whiggism, in N. Phillipson and Q. Skinner, eds., Political Discourse
in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
imagined Peter Sterry, but the Independent minister had ever insisted on the
variety within that unity; his manuscript poem, probably circulating in the late
1660s and -70s, evokes the ancient Druids loving pair Amasis and Adamas
as a harmony of a Richly Varied Unity, and Rich Varietys full Quire.
Miltons Adam, in recounting this marital harmony to Raphael, also comes
to the question of variety, but his words make it clear that diversity is not
an end in itself; one must make choices and exert preferences out of that
variety:
I to thee disclose
What inward thence I feel, not therefore foiled,
Who meet with various objects, from the sense
Variously representing; yet still free
Approve the best, and follow what I approve.
(PL 8.60711)
Out of multiplicity, then, choice: the experience of many perspectives is to
offer occasions for pursuing the good, de-liberation: tolerance that ends with
decision.
Musical harmony as a principle of concord is given full dramatic rendering
in Paradise Lost in the harmonious heavenly choir: No voice exempt, no
voice but well could join / Melodious part, such concord is in heaven (PL
3.3701). Within this angelic community, vocal unity is represented through
negative phrasing and the repetition of no voice no voice , a stylistic
move iterating one of Miltons most compelling tics, the negative prefixation,
possibly reflecting the Ramist logic that created oppositions and bifurcations
of thought. But here no voice no voice emphasizes the strong second
beat of the iambic individual angels participation, a regularity in rhythm that
ensures a harmony in a collection of every single voice: never simply an all.
When we look more closely, however, there seems an evasiveness to
describe the conditions of what, initially, appears an inclusive, freely voicing,
community. While the absence of exemption (No voice exempt) suggests
that nobody is cast off or excluded, on the other hand, we might say that
nobody is released from the obligation of joining in. The modifying clause,
however, makes it clear that it is in the first sense that we are to take the line.
But the sense of being controlled, of obligation, or even of being bound by law,
is still present. With the second clause, no voice but well could join, while
Matars dating (Peter Sterry, 11); Peter Sterry, Of Divine Friendship, in Matar, ed., Peter
Sterry, 193, 194.
On Miltons analogy between the angels musical harmony and social union, see Diane
Kelsey McColley, Poetry and Music in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge
clarifying the voluntarist basis of the inclusion, however calls that voluntarism
into question in another way. But well could join means that no voice could
do anything other than join, the voluntarism remaining an implicit, rather
than an explicit aspect; the line might mean, But well could [want to] join,
but we readers contribute the voluntarism here. The strained syntax, the
doubling that so often implies Miltons struggling for expression, establishes
with greater urgency the readers role in making the meaning solid, but we are
left, after all that work, wondering just how inclusive is this choir: could some
not jointhat is, were some unable to join? In what might that inability
consist? Or is it that some could not join well, that is, not make the harmony
required by the demands of music? Questions about capability and aptness,
we might say fitness and fewness, cluster around this passage that offers up
a model of community of harmonizing voices.
Adam and Eves simple worship suggests another vision of uniform com-
munity. Before taking their rest, with an originary perfection and unity, the
first humans offer their humble adoration to their maker, unanimous (PL
4.736, 72078). Milton takes care, as would be in keeping with his anti-
ceremonialist intention, and his attacks on the Book of Common Prayer, not
to be prescriptive in his realization of religious rites. When, upon awakening,
Adam and Eve pray in various style (PL 5.146), they testify to their own
personal relationships with God. To emphasize their individuality, and yet
to permit its remaining private, Milton draws attention to the diversity of
forms:
Lowly they bowed adoring, and began
Their orisons, each morning duly paid
In various style, for neither various style
Nor holy rapture wanted they to praise
Their maker, in fit strains pronounced or sung
Unmeditated, such prompt eloquence
Flowed from their lips, in prose or numerous verse,
More tunable than needed lute or harp
To add more sweetness[.]
(PL 5.14452)
This ambiguity about the speech situation of those who well could join echoes the
translation Milton gives to the title-page Euripidean quotation for Areopagitica. There, part of
the community, it is suggested, may not speak freely, but, whether this is by choice or not, is left
unclear. Milton there saw it as a sign of true liberty when those, Having to advise the public may
speak free, / Who neither can nor will, may hold his peace. There are, then, some silent ones:
Who neither can nor will,: perhaps exempt, as in the sense in the angelic choir in Paradise
Lost, or perhaps unable to join well.
On Miltons anti-ceremonialism here, see Achsah Guibbory, Ceremony and Community
from Herbert to Milton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 1902, 205, 217.
We are invited to consider the humble morning worship as an Ars Poetica

defense of a true mode of worship, and of poetryeach born of rapture and
adhering to a positive paradigm, variety, without compulsion. Yet clearly
there are rules here: the orderliness of blank verse; the rhetorical posture of
spontaneity; thus the protest against particular kinds of rules does not veer
into the wholly subjective. Various style does not prescribe, but allows for
an openness, one that may best reflect the copious bounty of the created
world they praise. Concord in Paradise Lost thus is not an ideal for its own
sake; it reflects the diverse commitments, obligations and choices made by
individuals. And concord can be abused: representing Satans Parliament of
Hell, Milton shows that debate can be the occasion for manipulation of the
weak, a false harmony, as Satan prevented all reply (PL 2.468).
Unlike Lipsius and other reformers, Bodin for instance, Milton does
not place as the highest priority concord or the civil peaceprinciples
which bolstered their advocacy of a uniform national church. The humanist
reformers argument for persecution was that it could better hold uniformity
and concord: that it was a necessary brace against disorder and chaos. Schism
would inevitably lead to sedition, it was thought, and for the magistrate to
fail to prosecute heresy and schism was thought to invite Gods judgment
on the whole community. On the contrary, Milton scorned some kinds
of pusillanimous unanimity as he defends freedom and even multiplicity of
opinion; in Areopagitica, his vision of an obedient uniformity is to be bought
at the cost of a dull ease and the cessation of our knowledge (YP 2.545); the
devils in Paradise Regained unanimous declare loyalty to Satan their dictator
(PL 1.111, 113); Adam finds in his solitude a unity defective (PL 8.425). A
truer harmony will result when truth is assiduously pursued, and not in the
forct and outward union of cold, and neutrall, and inwardly divided minds
(YP 2.551).
If Miltons epics are not good places to look for images of tolerant societies,
even more striking, given Miltons advocacy of a wide intellectual freedom
in Areopagitica, is the absence in these great poems of a full welcome to
unrestricted intellectual or religious positions. Miltons portrayal of freedom
of thought is epitomized in his 1634 Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle,
with the Ladys bold rebuke to her oppressor: Thou canst not touch the
freedom of my mind (Masque, 663). But in his later poetry, leaving aside the
question of abstract philosophical and scientific knowledge, vain presumption
Marshall, John Locke, Toleration, 2303. On Bodin, see Joseph Lecler, Toleration and
the Reformation, tr. T. L. Westow (London: Longman, 1960), 17985; Jean Bodin, Col-
loquium of the Seven about Secrets of the Sublime (Colloquium Heptaplomeres de Rerum
Sublimium Arcanis Abditis), tr. Marion L. D. Kuntz (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1975).
and idle theorizing (PL 2.5579; 8.1728; PR 4.286330), the toleration of

full diversity of opinion is shown to have its limits. Indeed, strife among the
ancient Israelite priests over matters of worship is condemned as leading to the
loss of the Jewish Temple (PL 12.3536). In Paradise Lost, though the fallen
devils unanimity is based upon a falsehood, Milton has some admiration
for it, as the poet leaps out of the poem to castigate human susceptibility to
disagreement:
O shame to men! Devil with Devil damned
Firm concord holds, men only disagree
Of creatures rational, though under hope
Of heavenly grace: and God proclaiming peace,
Yet live in hatred, enmity, and strife
Among themselves, and levy cruel wars,
Wasting the Earth, each other to destroy:
As if (which might induce us to accord)
Man had not hellish foes now besides,
That day and night for his destruction wait.
(PL 2.496505)
While in the toleration theory of John Locke, liberty of conscience provided
a basis for a defense of wide toleration of different forms of worship, this
was however not the same thing as extending tolerance to all possible
philosophical positions. In Paradise Lost, the loyal angel Abdiels fierce
rebuke to Satan shows that atheism, materialism, scepticism and the like,
are just out of the question (PL 6.1434). Keeping in mind the distinction
between freedom of worship and philosophical freedom, we will ask, how far
does Milton extend his ideal of liberty of conscience? Liberty of conscience
forms the basis of a Miltonic commitment to open debate and tolerance,
offering strikingly religious colours. Miltons chief philosophical-religious
concerns in Paradise Lost may be seen in the larger intellectual context of
the Restorationto write against atheism, Epicureanism, scepticism and
Hobbism. Like some who were seeking in the Bible a true story to combat
See Jonathan I. Israel, Spinoza, Locke and the Enlightenment Battle for Toleration, in Ole
Peter Grell and Roy Porter, eds., Toleration in Enlightenment Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge
For the importance of distinguishing tolerance from scepticism, see Richard Tuck, Scep-
ticism and Toleration in the Seventeenth Century, in Susan Mendus, ed., Justifying Toleration
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 2135; and, for the theological contexts of
this period, see Nicholas Tyacke, Arminianism and the Restoration Church, in Tyacke, Aspects
of English Protestantism, 15301700 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 32039;
John Spurr, The Strongest Bond of Conscience: Oaths and the Limits of Tolerance in Early
Modern England, in Harald Braun and Eward Vallance, eds., Contexts of Conscience in Early
materialist natural historiesfor instance, the tolerationist Matthew Hale,

who turned to the story of creation to prove through reasoned inquiry the
existence of GodMilton drew his readers attention to human creatureliness
in his battle against irreligion. As Adam recounts his first moments to
Raphael in Paradise Lost, he acknowledges the self-evidence of a Creator
behind the creation (PL 8.278). Miltons monism ought not, then, to be
equated with the more radical positions of materialism or Spinozism; indeed,
the ontology and ethics of Paradise Lost do depend upon a God above
nature, as represented in the special qualities humans share with, but that
are different from, animals. Miltons representation of the natural world
may reflect a heterodox vitalism and monism, and his echoing Lucretius
may engage with a dangerous Epicureanism, but he does not write God
out of the picture in approaching Nature. As John Leonard has put it,
Miltons Paradise Lost is, among other things, an attempt to come to
terms with the new darkness visible . Against Epicurean arguments,
Milton offers a divine first cause, though he does not produce a theory
of providential intervention and action; nor is spirit wholly distinct from
matter.
Modern Europe (London: Palgrave, 2004), 15165; Martin Sutherland, Peace, Toleration and
Decay: The Ecclesiology of Later Stuart Dissent (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2003); B. R. White,
The Twilight of Puritanism in the Years Before and After 1688, in O. Grell, J. I. Israel and N.
Tyacke, eds., From Persecution to Toleration: The Glorious Revolution and Religion in England
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 30730; R. K. Webb, The Emergence of Rational Dissent, in
K. Haakonssen, ed., Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-Century Britain
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 1241.
Matthew Hale, The Primitive Origination of Mankind, Considered and Examined According
to the Light of Nature (1677).
Karen Edwards, Milton and the Natural World: Science and Poetry in Paradise Lost
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 6481, subtly shows how Miltons poem
evokes self-evidence but also experimentalism in its arguments from the natural world.
See Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers; and Rachel J. Trubowitz on Miltons alleged
monism in Body Politics in Paradise Lost, PMLA 21.2 (2006), 388404; Catharine Gimel-
li Martin, The Ruins of Allegory: Paradise Lost and the Metamorphoses of Epic Convention
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), brilliantly explores the consequences of these
incommensurabilities for signifying practices, 33940.
Norman Burns, in assessing Miltons monism, cautions us that we should not equate
mortalism with secularism, Christian Mortalism from Tyndale to Milton (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1972); see also, B. J. Gibbons, Richard Overton and the Secularism
of the Interregnum Radicals, The Seventeenth Century 10.1 (1995), 6375. On Milton and
Lucretius, see Philip Hardie, The Presence of Lucretius in Paradise Lost, Milton Quarterly
29 (1995), 1324; and David Quint masterfully shows the Christian Milton wrestling with
Lucretius materialist and random cosmology in Fear of Falling: Icarus, Phaethon, and Lucretius
in Paradise Lost, Renaissance Quarterly 57 (2004), 84781.
John Leonard, Milton, Lucretius, and the Void Profound of Unessential Night , in
Kristin A. Pruitt and Charles W. Durham, eds., Living Texts: Interpreting Milton (London:
Associated University Presses, 2000), 198217, 212.
Indeed, the very experience of material beings was an essential component

of their freedom, conceived of as liberty of conscience, as had argued the
anti-Calvinist libertines, those who rejected ecclesiastical discipline in the
Netherlands a generation earlier on those grounds. Milton is silent on
the Cartesian distinction between mind and body and seems relative-
ly uninterested in the avant-garde philosophical discussions taking place
across international intellectual circles involving the legacies of Descartes and
Spinoza. The resistance of Milton and others on the grounds of conscience
was not because conscience was an inalienable right; its ownership was not to
the humans in whose breasts conscience operated, but to God. While it was a
property of being humanone that significantly distinguished humans from
beastshowever it did not belong to the human. The distinction between
human and beast is significant, however (PL 4.754; 8.38392, 594): the con-
science that grounds that distinction may indeed prevent a true tolerance
from becoming operant in Milton. Conscience for Milton was something
different to that for Locke, who aligned conscience with human judgment, as
in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, where conscience is nothing
else but our own Opinion or Judgment of the Moral rectitude or pravity of
our own actions. Lockes was a human faculty, humanly administered. Not
so for Milton. Conscience was not simply a matter of individual decision,
but part of a relationship with God: it was not simply an action but an
embrace of obedience: his umpire conscience (PL 3.195) is what God places
in each breast. Whilst his God is above nature, Milton is, however, reluctant
to emphasize the spiritual and immediate, providential interference of God.
Although for Luther, conscience became the central feature of human
experience, the experience of civil disorder in early modern Europe tempered
attachments to absolute liberty of conscience. Luthers support of the use of
force against the 1525 Peasants Revolt, for example, or Calvins defense of
Servetus execution allowed for a powerful magistrate to punish heresy. The
Dutch reformers rejected the use of violence and force against heresy, preferring
public debates and freedom of speech. It was in the Dutch experience, argues
Martin Van Gelderen, that religion began to be seen as a private matter,
with the state assuring peace though not unity. Some Dutch reformers, thus,
Benjamin Kaplan, Calvinists and Libertines: Confession and Community in Utrecht,

15781620 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). On Miltons body-thinking, in addition to Turner,
above, see the extraordinarily subtle essay by Michael Schoenfeldt, Commotion Strange:
Passion in Paradise Lost, in Gail Kern Paster, Katherine Rowe and Mary Floyd-Wilson, eds.,
Reading the Early Modern Passions (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 4367.
Compare, then, Milton with Richard Overton, Mans Mortalitie, as described brilliantly by
Erica Fudge, Perceiving Animals: Human and Beasts in Early Modern English Culture (Basingstoke:
Macmillan, 2000), 15266.
John Locke, Essay, ed. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 70.
moved past Luther and Calvin to expand the notion of liberty of conscience
to a principle of the autonomy of self-governance. Tolerance is good for the
mean time: and we might say that Miltons contribution to tolerance is to
defend the openness during the mean time.
Freedom of thought in Milton is, then, quite simply, not a secular principle.
Although any thought may be entertained in Paradise Lost, Evil into the mind
of God or man / May come and go, so unapproved, and leave / No spot or
blame behind (PL 5.11719), the freedom of thought is permitted so that
the thinker can correctly arrive at the mind of God and to obey (PL 3.1034;
5.52040). With his occasions for debate in both Paradise Lost and Paradise
Regained all too often breaking into the absolutes of truth and falsehood, it is
clear that argument and discussion only take you so far. In his exclusion of
Roman Catholic printed works from his general freedom advocated for the
press in Areopagitica and in Of True Religion, Milton applies the Aristotelian
principle: against them who deny Principles, we are not to dispute (YP 8.432).
In Paradise Lost, this is echoed in Abdiels ending his conversation with Satan:
his back he turned (PL 5.906). Theres just no point in arguing further: end
of conversation.
Miltons own methods nonetheless positively invite the confrontation with
error, in his romance model of acquiring virtue, that Areopagitical principle of
knowing truth by its opposite. As Milton put it in Areopagitica, the knowledge
of good is so involvd and interwoven with the knowledge of evill, and in so
many cunning resemblance hardly to be discernd what wisdome can there
be to choose, what continence to forbeare without the knowledge of evill? (YP
2.514). The principle of good versus evil, of trial by what is contrary (2.515),
and the metaphors of warfare may only lead to a hardening of opinioninto
fixed binariesand this conversational logjam becomes evident in the great
confrontation in Paradise Lost where Abdiel outs Satans blasphemy, and in
Paradise Regained, where the emergence of the Sons divinity is at the exposure
of Satans utter fraudulence. Humanist disputation, but not for the sake of
argument: for the sake of an active Faith.
Yet the strategy of knowing truth by falsehood requires a phenomenological
tolerance of such falsehood. Miltons literary habit of surprise, operating at
both the verbal and the conceptual levels, unmasks the (merely) conventional
uses of language, revealing how the everyday usage is too lax. In his joy in
exchanging the figural and literal uses of language, and in his use of tense and
mode, Milton reveals that the first sense has no real substance and that there is
Martin, Van Gelderen, Liberty, Civic Rights, and Duties in Sixteenth-Century Europe and
the Rise of the Dutch Republic, in Janet Coleman, ed., The Individual in Political Theory and
Practice (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 99122, 117; and see Cables essay below.
a second, deeper, truth to be made out of it, when care is taken to understand.
In the pursuit of truth, therefore, the proliferation of opinion, even error, does
not worry Milton. As Fish puts it, the burden of his song is interpretative
freedom, the freedom of a will whose choices are unconstrained by a deity who
will nevertheless pass judgment on them. Interpretative freedom is therefore
at once a glory and a burden.
In his great poetry, Milton achieves the effect of freedom of debate by his
many representations of dialogue, and the final section of this essay explores
the speech situations in which variety of opinion is welcomed. Jesus prefers
words over force, verbal exchange considered both more humane and more
heavenly than persecution (PR 1.221):
By winning words to conquer willing hearts,
And make persuasion do the work of fear;
At least to try, and teach the erring soul
Not wilfully misdoing, but unaware
Misled;
(PR 1.2226)
However, the Son does indeed reserve the right to use force, the stubborn
only to subdue, he adds (PR 1.226).
Miltons epics present dialogues not solely between enemy combatants
however (as in the romance model), but in those situations where genuine
communication and mutuality seem possible (Adam and Raphael, Adam and
Eve, for instance, and even Milton and his reader). Freedom to discuss is part
of that fit conversation, the foundation upon which a good marriage might
be laid, or the basis of a good author/reader relationship. Such friendly
debates might become heated: the image of his city-dwellers in the activity
of reformation gives that there of necessity will be much arguing, much
writing, many opinions (YP 2.554): and unlike Thomas Edwards, Milton
seems not to mind that noise, so long as it serves the higher purpose of
humans creation. Free discussion, debate, even disagreement, characterize
Adams relationship with Raphael, as Milton defends their freedom of thought
at the start of Book 9, where Miltons language invites that of permission to
utter freely:
No more of talk where God or angel guest
With man, as with his friend, familiar used
To sit indulgent, and with him partake
Stanley Fish, How Milton Works (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), 508.
See Thomas Luxon, Single Imperfection: Milton, Marriage and Friendship (Pittsburgh:
Duquesne University Press, 2005), 5793, on fit and unfit conversations.
Rural repast, permitting him the while
Venial discourse unblamed:
(PL 9.15)
Miltons voice merges with Adams as the freedom to discourse unblamed is a

latitude offered in the tolerant spaces of right inquiry for both the first human
and those after him; may I express thee unblamed? (PL 3.3). As Stanley
Fish has suggested, Paradise Lost educates not simply through exposition but
through a dramatic re-enactment of the process of learning. As the plot of
education is both mimetically and experientially projected from these poems,
the activities of author, character and reader become one and the same,
especially here in the opening of the ninth book; Milton soon follows this
blameless moment with a shift to tragic (PL 9.6), where blame will all too
soon be apportioned.
Debate makes visible even a human difference of opinion with God; it might
be said that Adams dialogue with God verges on criticism of his Creator. As
Adam reports to Raphael his request to God to give him a mate, he stresses the
permissiveness with which God tolerates his (seeming) dissent: I with leave of
speech implored I emboldened spake, and freedom used / Permissive, and
acceptance found (PL 8.377, 4345). Milton goes out of his way to emphasize
the freedom of his speech situation. Adams questioning Gods ways is of
course part of the plan; as it turns out, it is the only means by which God
can test Adams reasoning ability. Adams resistance is predicated on a truth
that he recognizes: he was made for more than solitude, and his dissidence is a
testimonial of his proper self-understanding, his obedience to Gods creative
direction.
On the other hand, in the instance of the married couples disagreements,
we observe that dissonance threatens to open up a dangerous weakness. Eves
obedience to Adam is enjoined to inhibit disagreement within the household
and to maintain proper obedience to God. Adams permission (PL 9.378),
Joan Bennet has argued, was just too permissive. Their dispute in the garden
before the Fall leads to all-out verbal warfare: Thus they in mutual accusation
spent / The fruitless hours, but neither self-condemning, / And of their vain
contest appeared no end (PL 9.11879). Just as disagreements within the
household between husband and wife can lead to a substantial diminishment
of freedom, so too disagreement is shown to have been responsible for the
collapse of Israelite religion (PL 12.3536), and the shattering of Hebrew
strength. Miltons choosing to close Book 9 with this interminable argument
Joan Bennet, Reviving Liberty: Radical Christian Humanism in Miltons Great Poems
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), 111, 115.
becomes a necessary act of closure, a formal resolution as divine fiat instead

of a substantive agreement. Repentance and grace follow.
Freedom of speech was to become for later philosophes, like Bayle and
Toland, a pillar of toleration. In Miltons own lifetime it was seen as such, by
Martin Clifford, for example, who in 1674 wrote, for there cannot certainly
in the World be found out, so mild and so peacable a Doctrine, as that which
permits a difference in Beliefs; for what occasion can any man take to begin a
quarrel, when both he himself is suffered quietly to enjoy his own Opinion,
and his own opinion is this, that he ought to suffer others to do the same.
In Miltons writing there is much to lead us in that direction. His image
of the collective project of reconstructing truth in Areopagitica recommends
freedom of inquiry, and disagreement among the inquirers, as necessary
to the task. However, in Miltons great epics, public debate rarely leads to
that long-sought concord; rather, it seems to offer occasion for hardening
positions, for taking sides, for flushing out the enemy and testifying to ones
faith. Abdiel may not win his argument in the court of Satanic popular
opinion (hostile scorn5.904), but his words merit Gods favour; Samsons
discussion with Dalila leads to a violent impasseMy sudden rage to tear
thee joint by joint (SA 953); disputation with the Son does not convince
the justSatans dazzling performances and dramatic recreations are all
failed rhetorical attempts as the Son remains unmoved (PR 3.386; 4.109).
While Milton is one to encourage the chance for talk, in his poetry, he
seems most interested in those moments where debate and discussion break
down. The talking allows for the occasion of exposure of devotion or
its opposite, the making public what had been secret. The apostate Satan
asks the Sons permission to talk at least (1.485), and the Sons response
to that request offers what may be Miltons most generous support for
toleration:
Thy coming hither, though I know thy scope,
I bid not or forbid; do as thou findst
Permission from above; thou canst not more.
(PR 1.4946)
John Toland, Tetradymus, 223. On Toland and freedom of speech as the basis for toleration,
see Stephen H. Daniel, John Toland: His Methods, Manners, and Mind (Kingston: McGill-Queens
University Press, 1984), 170; and Justin Champion, Republican Learning: John Toland and the
Crisis of Christian Culture, 16961722 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003).
Martin Clifford, A Treatise of Humane Reason (1674), 1112.
On the new speech situations in the early modern public sphere, see David Norbrook,
Areopagitica, Censorship, and the Early Modern Public Sphere, in Richard Burt, ed., The
Administration of Aesthetics: Censorship, Political Criticism and the Public Sphere (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 333.
That permission, that laxityeven the freedom given to Satan to roam and
to speak blasphemy, is granted by God.
Thus God seems to offer a kind of tolerance of error. As with the Jews,
who had fallen into idolatry, Jesus lets them be, rejecting Satans urgings that
he do his work to save them:
No, let them serve
Their enemies, who serve idols with God.
Yet he at length, time to himself best known,
Remembring Abraham by some wondrous call
May bring them back repentant and sincere,
And at their passing cleave the Assyrian flood.
(PR 3.4316)
In the meantime, then, tolerance: But I endure the time, till which expired,
the Son gestures, wearily, Thou hast permission on me (PR 4.1745).
Miltons choice of the dramatic moment in the life of Christ in Paradise
Regained reveals the transcendence of his approach: while this deity is very
much a human, the moment of his assumption of special status is mysteri-
ous, eternal, not logically or naturally developing from action in the world.
In Paradise Lost, God is as if here; there is a distance. Gods presence in
the world, however, would be acknowledged by the redeemed, rather than
becoming an activating ordinance. Belief in this transcendent God involved
an ecclesiology of the invisible church, a wholly spiritual reality, not to be
confused with any particular organization or structure. It is why Milton
on toleration is so difficult to assess. The invisible church, a consequence
of Gods grace, comprised the elect, the saved, the fit and few. Concrete
buildings, set prayers, and uniformity of worship are the expressions of a
visibilist ecclesiology. C. J. Sommerville has seen the move from commu-
nal to private faith with the decline of magic over the long early modern
period; in particular, he finds a shift in emphasis from divine immanence
to transcendence. If Laudian ecclesiology insisted on the immanence of
God through the beauty of holiness, the nonconformists theology insisted
on the otherness of God, who will rescue the fallen world from sin, but
who, in the mean time, permits it. Miltons millennialist view explains the
Boyd Berry has seen God as a permissive parent in Process of Speech: Puritan Religious
Writing and Paradise Lost (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 2367; yet contrast
Empsons disagreeable God, Miltons God (London: Chatto & Windus, 1965), 1323.
See also John Spurr, English Puritanism, 16031689 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998),
1856.
C. J. Sommerville, The Secularization of Early Modern England: From Religious Culture
to Religious Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 1932; and Sutherland, Peace,
Toleration, 1920, for his excellent analysis of these broader theological orientations.
experience of a sinful here-and-now by an overarching divine plan: in ancient

days, when God
at last
Wearied with their iniquities, withdraw
His presence from among them, and avert
His holy eyes; resolving from thenceforth
To leave them to their own polluted ways[.]
(PL 12.10610)
In contrast to secularizing visions of tolerance, then, a Miltonic defense of
toleration does not only come out of the conception of freedom to judge, but
out of his ideal of the church as invisible. A paradise within is a strong
statement in support of the invisible church, and the principle of charity, or
pity, makes it clear why poetry might be a desirable means of its expression,
offering the future through the present, conserving the contingency of the
present through its gaze towards the end of time, inviting the reader to
participate in that vision in all its fragility. Tolerance was to be a brace against
unbelief, vital for civil society to protect the court of conscience, the invisible
church. Eschatological expectation did not simply lead away from the worldly
projects of state building, social formation and domestic harmony, however.
Unlike Bunyans Christian who flees wife, children and city for an individual
journey of redemption, Miltons great epics imagine the social and political
dimensions of personal actions. A republic, as Milton argues in his prose
tracts, is the best mode of governance in which to encourage liberty, the
conditions of which depend upon individual virtue and communal obligation.
Although Milton does not use the language of building the Kingdom of God
on earth, his millennial expectation allowed that church and state should
be entirely separate. Just as the censors monopoly over freedom of thought
degraded the being of humans to slaves, so too, the alienation of faith through
intermediaries or the imposition of ritual and duties by a professional clergy
demeaned the experience of true faith, made it a slave. The enslavement was
not simply due to external impositionwhether of tyrants, priests, or even
Godhowever. Milton pictures that slavery as a consequence of the failed
will: invited slavery, welcomed from within by the mismanagement of the
bodily passions (Accuse not nature, she hath done her part; / Do thou but
thine, and be not diffident / Of wisdom, Raphael teaches Adam (PL 8.5613;
cf. 11.5212, 634): a lesson needed even before the Fall.
Contra Stephen R. Honeygosky, Miltons House of God: The Invisible and Visible Church
(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993).
See Quentin Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998), on the political side.
Is the God justified, in the end, then, not a tolerant God: loving, yes;
merciful, yes; just, yes (or no, if you are William Empson or a Romantic
reader)? Or is Milton blinded by his ages fanatical anti-popery? I take neither
option to be the most productive for continuing our reflection on Milton and
toleration, as this volume has asked us to do. To Justify the ways of God
to men: the purpose of Miltons poetry is to recommit to an understanding
with the eyes of faith; to experience the causes of human liability to err; and
to proceed with a cautious and hard-won virtue through to a life of faith and
self-management and political life through reasoned action and self-discipline.
One consequence of this is a wholly ethical program to combat the intolerances
of error and superstitiona program like that of many secularists in the early
modern period. The poems tolerationist concerns are primarily ethical: how
to live until God speaks otherwise. In his goal of separating church and
state, in seeking an Independent ministry, Milton argues not for the sake of
the state, for secular politics, but in order to protect belief and worship from
coercion by worldly authorities. In Christs wandering and temptation in the
wilderness in Paradise Regained, Milton imagines not only the drama of the
Son, but also of his followers, aroused by expectation of their Saviour. Secular
politics, including toleration, could only ever have a provisional character. Yet
that sense of provisionality enlarged the scope of toleration far beyond the
questions of human worship.
Because Gods judgments are temporally deferred, in Miltons vision, what
mattered to humans had to be in the here and now. Milton protects the ends
of Gods mission by constructing a field of human endeavour in which men
and women may form communities, worship, marry, and even divorce, and,
above all, come to know themselves and to flourish. Milton presents a vision
of tolerance from within Christianity, but he also expands the boundaries of
permissible thoughts (and access to them) in defending a split between the
contingent secular and the sacred to-come.
On rational religion, more generally, see John Spurr, Rational Religion in Restoration
England, Journal of the History of Ideas 49 (1988), 56385.
In this, William Kolbrener, Miltons Warring Angels: A Study of Critical Engagements
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 39, on the irrelevance of politics to Milton, is
acute.
13
Intolerance and the Virtues of Sacred
Vehemence
Paul Stevens
One of the most obvious elements that disturbs Miltons popular reputation
as a liberal and his more particular reputation as an advocate of toleration is
the violence of his language. Apart from his antipathy to Catholicism, it is the
ferocity of his rhetoric that is most unsettling. As Don M. Wolfe pointed out
years ago, Miltons early prose writings are marked by a style rarely equaled
in violence among Puritan pamphleteers. In its vehemence, it is precisely
the kind of language that Miltons contemporary Roger Williams associated
with those who were opposed to toleration. Analyzing the toleration debate of
16434, Williams reflects on the way both sides wrote in a marvellous different
stile and manner. The Arguments against persecution in milke, the Answer for
it (as I may say) in bloud. It seems something of a paradox then that when
Milton does write against persecution he does it so dramatically in blood.
In the first of his anti-prelatical tracts, his May 1641 pamphlet Of Reforma-
tion, for instance, even as Milton looks to the end of prelacy and the imminent
liberation of conscience, his imagination dwells on the violent humiliation of
the bishops:
[They] shall be thrown downe eternally into the darkest and deepest Gulfe of HELL,
where under the despightfull countrole, the trample and spurne of the Damned, that
Don M. Wolfe, Introduction, YP 1.113. See also Thomas N. Corns, Uncloistered Virtue:
English Political Literature, 16401660 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); Sharon Achinstein, Mil-
ton and the Revolutionary Reader (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Michael Lieb,
Milton and the Culture of Violence (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994); David Norbrook, Writ-
ing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics, 16271660 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1999); John N. King, Milton and Religious Controversy: Satire and Polemic in Paradise
Lost (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); David Loewenstein, Representing Revolu-
tion among Milton and his Contemporaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); and
Thomas Kranidas, Milton and the Rhetoric of Zeal (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2005).
Roger Williams, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution (London, 1644), 18.
244 Paul Stevens
in the anguish of their Torture shall have no other ease then to exercise a Raving and
Bestiall Tyranny over them as their Slaves and Negros, they shall remain in that plight
for ever, the basest, the lowermost, the most dejected, most underfoot and downe-trodden
Vassals of Perdition. (Of Ref., YP 1.61617)
This often quoted passage is remarkable for the intensity of the writers desire
to punish, to subject and exclude those people whose views and behavior he
considers intolerablean intensity registered in the repetition of so many
insistent terms of dejection. When read in the context of the whole pamphlet,
however, the violence of the bishops future punishment is clearly a projection
of Miltons own present, very personal feelings of subjection and exclusion.
The outburst is not so much prophetic as confessional or expressive. The
central purpose of the bishops political science, he complains in an earlier
part of the tract, is not to educate the nation but to mould the sufferance
and subjection of the people, especially people like himself, to the length of
that foot that is to tread on their necks (Of Ref., YP 1.571). In a way that
reveals his cultures proto-racist sense of what degradation means, as he feels
himself trodden down, so he feels himself no better than an African or a slave,
a member of the accursed generation of Ham, an impure ethnic. His rage is
palpable: gravest and worthiest ministers live under a regime of spiteindeed
the people of God themselves
redeemd, and washd with Christs blood, and dignifyd with so many glorious titles of
Saints, and sons in the Gospel, are now no better reputed then impure ethnicks, and
lay dogs; stones & Pillars, and Crucifixes have now the honour, and the almes due to
Christs living members; the Table of Communion now become a Table of separation
stands like an exalted platforme upon the brow of the quire, fortifid with bulwark, and
barricado, to keep off the profane touch of the Laicks, whilst the obscene, and surfeted
Priest scruples not to paw, and mammock the sacramentall bread, as familiarly as his
Tavern Bisket. And thus the people [are] vilifid and rejected (Of Ref., YP 1.5478)
The rhetorical resources of scripture, the Apocalyptical visions of damnation
and the Levitical imperatives of purity and pollution, allow Milton ample scope
to articulate and legitimize a range of extreme emotions. Most importantly,
the intensity of the first passage quoted, even as it constitutes a displacement
of the rage so evident in the second, emphasizes the radical nature of the
discontinuity between Miltons very real commitment to liberty of conscience,
the essential freedom to be searching, trying, examining all things (Of Ref.,
YP 1.566), and the violence of his reaction against those who would deny him
that freedom. Far from being an isolated example, there is evidence to suggest
that this discontinuity might well be a constant.
See Paul Stevens, Leviticus thinking and the Rhetoric of Early Modern Colonialism,
Criticism 35.3 (1993), 44161.
Intolerance and the Virtues of Sacred Vehemence 245
Over thirty years after the publication of Of Reformation, at the central

moment of Miltons last publication, the July 1674 edition of Paradise Lost,
the rebel angels are made to suffer a fate similar to that of the bishops.
In a poem whose ending is still difficult not to read as an exhortation to
quietism, an encouragement to put aside the world and pursue a paradise
within thee, happier far (PL 12.587), Gods epic poet, Raphael, exults in the
violent triumph of the Son. This, according to Alastair Fowler, is the principal
image of the poem (PL, pp. 259, 3767 n.) and is directly related to the
fate of the bishops in the anti-prelatical tracts since it is in fact a rewriting
of the violent triumph of Zeal over the Scarlet Prelats in Miltons 1642
pamphlet An Apology (AP YP 1.900). In the poem, the Son of the living God,
assuring his Father whom thou hatst, I hate (PL 6.734), ascends the chariot
of paternal deity, changes his countenance into one of terror, and drives his
flaming vehicle directly into the ranks of his enemies, crushing the helmed
heads of the now defenseless rebels, thrones and mighty seraphim [lying]
prostrate (PL 6.8245, 83941). For a present-day audience Miltons violence
continues to disturb and with the impact of the atrocities of September 11,
2001, still fresh in American and other Western minds, its significance has
moved center-stage.
One of the most incisive and eloquently argued accounts of the rela-
tion between the September 11 atrocities and Miltons violence is Feisal G.
Mohameds recent PMLA essay Confronting Religious Violence: Miltons
Samson Agonistes. Mohameds essay is distinguished by its forceful refusal to
draw a line between the violence of Miltons biblical hero and that of September
11s Islamic hijackers. Most importantly, the essay refuses to distance Milton
himself from that violence. It deconstructs the apparently bitter clash between
John Carey and Stanley Fish over the virtue of Samsons massacre to show how
Fish no more than Carey can finally bring himself to believe that the author of
one of the Wests most cherished artifacts (Mohamed, Confronting Religious
Violence, 338), the subtle-minded poet Milton (336), could ever truly look
favorably on Samsons final action (329). For that atrocity, so it is claimed, is
profoundly alien to the cultural norms of the Wests humanist traditions. The
essay demurs, insisting that, on the contrary, Milton could indeed valorize the
violent destruction of his enemies, and it does so by drawing attention to his
association with various traditions of spiritual militarism, most influentially
perhaps that of defeated republicans like Henry Lawrence and Sir Henry Vane.
From these heroes of the Good Old Cause Milton might have learned that the
violence of spiritual resistance, says Mohamed, is not a necessary evil at odds
Feisal G. Mohamed, Confronting Religious Violence: Miltons Samson Agonistes, PMLA,

120.2 (2005), 32740.
246 Paul Stevens
with the teaching of Christ but it is rather an expression of the spiritual peace
bestowed on the elect by the Mediator (333). The temptation to derogate this
tradition and associate Milton with skeptical humanism rather than religious
enthusiasm is then almost wilfully anachronistic (337).
The very real virtue of Mohameds intervention is that it establishes the
orientalist biases of even the best of critics, especially as they contribute,
however unwittingly in the case of Fish, to the extraordinarily dangerous
process of cultural polarization now at work in the world. This is a significant
achievement. In the course of making this major polemical strike, however,
Mohameds essay almost inevitably produces its own collateral damage. Two
interrelated problems immediately come to mind. First, in successfully trans-
forming what at first sight had seemed like such a facile analogy between New
Yorks twin towers and Samsons twin pillars into something worth discussing,
Mohameds essay inadvertently encourages the popular misconception that
September 11 was primarily an act of religious violence. Despite its tentative
dissolution of the divide between religion and politics, especially in its allu-
sions to the republicanism of Lawrence and Vane, the essays emphasis on
confronting religious violence occludes the degree to which September 11 was
a political act. It effectively obscures the degree to which it was not simply
a matter of religious zeal, an other-worldly or, from a secular point of view,
highly irrational act of destruction, but a brutally pragmatic action, rooted in
specific material grievances, however poorly articulated, and directed towards
effecting specific this-worldly changes. It was a detestable act, but it was a
political act. On 31 January 1947, after Jewish terrorists had committed a series
of detestable outrages including the destruction of the King David Hotel in
Jerusalem killing over 90 people, Winston Churchill addressed the House of
Commons and sought to provide a context for the extreme violence of the
Jewish Lechi (Stern gang) and Etzel (Irgun) groups against his own country-
men and women. This required extraordinary courage not only because his
audience was so hostile but because the same terrorists had murdered his own
close friend, Walter Guinness, Lord Moyne, a few years before in 1944. To
howls of derision, Churchill made it clear that the terrorists crimes, however
heinous, however revolting, were not acts of utter mindlessness but political
acts whose extremism was rooted in present-day desperation, and that it was
incumbent on all sides to understand the causes of that desperation. Speaking
of the Etzel terrorist, Dov Gruner, who under sentence of death had refused all
entreaties to plead for a pardon, Churchill insisted: The fortitude of this man,
criminal though he be, must not escape the notice of this House. No matter
Speech of 31 January 1947, Hansard, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, 8 vols.
(London: Heinemann, 197188), 8.296. Gilbert overstates the case in his speech Churchill and
what one thinks of Churchills intermittent and somewhat naive Zionism, his
determination to understand the intolerable seems remarkable. We now find
ourselves in Churchills position, but whether we will have the intelligence
and courage not to dismiss September 11 as an act whose violence was merely
religious remains to be seen.
The second problem is more immediate to the central issue of the present
essaythat is, to the discontinuity between Miltons rival desires for tol-
eration, on the one hand, and for the violent exclusion and humiliation of
those who appear to oppose it, on the other. Driven by the inadequacy of
the analogy between September 11 and Samson, Mohameds essay tends to
confuse the issue by taking Miltons violence at face value. In many cases there
is an obvious and incontrovertible relation between Miltons articulations of
violence and actual events. But in others there is not. Qualifying an argu-
ment similar to Mohameds back in 1996, David Norbrook worried about
the dangers of taking Samson Agonistes too literally and urged his readers to
remember that the drama offers debate, not certainty. He asked in some
disbeliefwas Milton really calling for a guerrilla squad to pull down the
Theatre Royal on its courtly patrons? (Norbrook, The True Republican, 5).
One of the weaknesses of contemporary historicist criticism, as Norbrook
seems to have been aware even then, in its moment of triumph, and especially
now as its become normal science, is its in-built tendency to flatten out
important rhetorical or formalist distinctions and treat all articulations as
consciously direct or indirect political speech acts. The truth is that Miltons
rhetoric of violence is complex. It is subject to both considerable synchronic
and diachronic variationthat is, while it comprehends a confusing range of
different registers and functions, every bit as expressive as pragmatic, it also
evolves over time in terms of sophistication. With experience and in response
to various external political pressures, not to mention his own ambitions,
Milton becomes more selective and reflective in the application of this kind
the Middle East, delivered to the Churchill Society for the Advance of Parliamentary Democracy,
Toronto, 18 November 2003, but the central notion of Churchills desire to understand the
intolerable remains valid. An important corrective to Gilberts tendency to idealize Churchill as
a Zionist is the Israeli scholar Michael Cohens Churchill and the Jews, 2nd edn. (London: Frank
Cass, 2003).
David Norbrook, The True Republican: Putting the Politics Back into Milton, Times
Literary Supplement (2 February, 1996), 46, p. 5.
By historicist criticism I do not simply mean new historicismI mean a general shift to
a complex set of critical practices that embraces both the new historicism at one pole and the
more empirical forms of criticism so powerfully informed by the work of Habermas and Skinner
at the other. All these practices are predicated on the central historicist principle that the past is
another country, that is, that it constitutes a discrete culture related to but ultimately different
from our own.
248 Paul Stevens
of rhetoric. Most importantly, the great poems of the 1660s and -70s prove
a watershed. Released from the immediate, adversarial pressures of writing
polemical pamphlets, if not from the desire for political engagement, they
provide Milton with the opportunity to distill and reflect on many things, not
least his own vehemence. In Samson Agonistes, for instance, religious enthu-
siasm, vehemence, or zeal is no longer the unproblematized heroic virtue of
the anti-prelatical tracts but something much more ambivalent. In a way that
seems more than a little ironic the force that incites Dalila to betray Samson
is, according to the Godly hero himself, zeal: But zeal moved thee; / To please
thy gods thou didst it (SA 8956). Indeed, religious enthusiasm is even more
fully ironized as the spirit of frenzy that urges the Philistines to call in haste
for their destroyer (SA 16758). As Samson suspects, the mere sight of him
will move the Philistines to ragenot least, he says with all the disdain of a
skeptical humanist, the well-feasted priest then soonest fired / With zeal (SA
141920).
In this essay, I want to emphasize the expressive as opposed to the purely
pragmatic or political significance of Miltons rhetoric of violence. That is, I
want to consider what kind of action that rhetoric is meant to produce, but
only in relation to the often intensely conflicted feelings that generate it. I want
to do this in order to come to a better understanding of Miltons intolerance.
At the same time I want to suggest how his rhetoric of violence seems to
develop into something less obviously at odds with his rival commitment to
liberty of conscience. The argument falls into three parts: first, an analysis of
the defense of vehemence in Miltons discursive struggle against the bishops in
16412, then, of the conflicted reassertion of that vehemence in his pamphlet
arguments against the king in 164951, and, finally, a discussion of the almost
complete lack of vehemence in the final polemical writings of 16734. Most
importantly, I want to suggest, albeit briefly, how the old Milton adapts to the
new political reality of the 1670s. It is true that he never really writes against
persecution in milk, but the blood, despite or because of Samson Agonistes and
Thomas Kranidass learned and unusually acute Milton and the Rhetoric of Zeal fails, for
whatever reason, to discuss the ironization of zeal in Samson Agonistes.
The terms are, of course, those of M. H. Abrams in The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic
Theory and the Critical Tradition (1953; rpt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), esp. 329.
Useful as Abrams distinctions are, there is much more to be done in terms of rethinking
formalist approaches to Milton. Milton studies remains largely innocent of the new culturally
inflected formalism emerging out of discourse analysis which is beginning to have such an impact
in Shakespeare studiessee, for example, Lynne Magnusson, Shakespeare and Social Dialogue
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) and David Schalkwyk, Speech and Performance
in Shakespeares Plays and Sonnets (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). See also J. L.
Austin, How to do Things with Words [1962], 2nd edn. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1975) and Gillian Brown and George Yule, Discourse Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983).
especially after 1672, does become less evident, more mediated or etiolated,
and certainly less disruptive. Let me begin with the tension between expressive
and pragmatic functions in the anti-prelatical tracts.
Sacred Vehemence and the Struggle for Identity

Consider the two examples with which we began. The destruction of the
bishops in Of Reformation and the rebel angels in Paradise Lost may reveal a
similar expressive animus, but they are hardly the same in terms of pragmatic
designthat is, what kind of action they are meant to produce as opposed
to what kinds of feeling generated them. Both the texts in which these violent
passages occur are in some sense concerned to produce revolution, to effect
moral or social change, but they are separated by several degrees of immediacy
both from each other and from quotidian political practice. Of Reformation
is obviously much closer to the heat and dust of political life than Paradise
Lost. It is a strident, albeit belated, intervention in a highly charged political
debate. Its overall purpose is to join with a group of Presbyterian ministers
known as Smectymnuus in effecting the reformation of church government
and ending episcopacy. According to Thomas Corns, the pamphlet demands
a root-and-branch extirpation of episcopacy at a moment when the anti-
prelatical movement appeared to be running into the sand of compromise
(Corns, Uncloistered Virtue, 1617). Its rhetoric of violence has both an
explicitly pragmatic as well as a powerfully expressive purpose: its practical
aim is to arouse emotion, or what Milton routinely calls vehemence, and
galvanize resistance to those whose collapsing power continued to linger on.
Looking back on the pamphlet over a decade later, Milton emphasizes the
excitement of the occasion, the tracts optimism and moment of opportunity.
Early in 1641, he says in the Second Defence of 1654, all mouths were opened
against [the bishops], these events thoroughly aroused me and I saw my
momentI perceived that men were following the true path of liberty and
that from these beginnings, these first steps, they were making the most
direct progress towards the liberation of all human life from slavery (Second
Defence, YP 4.6212). The excitement, the exhilaration and expectancy of
these months, says Hugh Trevor-Roper, is audible to us still.
Paradise Lost is clearly different. Its not an excited intervention, but a
gravely reflective, self-consciously literary artifact, an epic poem written out
of the experience of defeat whose aims are not only moral and social but
explicitly aesthetic. If its rhetoric of violence has any pragmatic purpose, it
Hugh Trevor-Roper, Catholics, Anglicans, and Puritans (London: Fontana, 1989), 250.
250 Paul Stevens
is only very doubtfully vehement or immediately revolutionary. Obviously,

some people could read it that way, but it is significant that Miltons censors
did not, and even a reader as hostile to the Good Old Cause as Miltons
royalist contemporary John Beale seems less impressed by the poems politics
than its artistic achievement: You will joyne with mee to whisper in a smile,
he writes to John Evelyn in November 1668, that he writes so good verse,
that tis pity he ever wrote in prose. As innumerable modern critics have
suggested, the specific violence of Book 6 itself is too schematic, cartoon-like,
or burlesque, too self-defeating to be taken literally; it is written in a style
that is certainly visually striking but simultaneously suggestive of Miltons
weariness with the spiritual militarism or tedious havoc of his great original,
Spenser (PL 9.30). The Sons military triumph could and still can be read
to emphasize its political continuity with the violence of Of Reformation and
its immediate source in the Apology, but doing so means ignoring so much.
The poetic passage is in fact so imaginatively mediated, with so many carefully
plotted caveats or register markers, that its distanced, figurative quality seems
inescapable. Over and again, for instance, Raphael urges Adam to remember
the context, that his epic story is a fiction, that the war in heaven is merely
a figurative accommodation: Immediate are the acts of God, more swift /
Than time or motion, but to human ears / Cannot without process of speech
be told, / So told as earthly notion can receive (PL 7.1769). The difference
between the articulation of violence in Of Reformation and Paradise Lost is
then considerable. Most importantly, that difference is governed by both the
degree and kind of instrumental control, pragmatic or aesthetic, which each
text exercises over the writers emotional animus.
Quoted by Nicholas von Maltzahn in Laureate, Republican, Calvinist: An Early Response

to Milton and Paradise Lost (1667), Milton Studies 29 (1993), 189. Norbrook argues that Beale
felt the publication of Paradise Lost to be a forceful, and deeply unwelcome, act (Writing
the English Republic, 467), but in so doing he downplays Beales reaction to the poem as an
aesthetic achievementalthough it is not as wonderfull as his earlier poetry, he says, it is still
excellent (quoted in von Maltzahn, Laureate, 185). Even when his negative feelings for the
poem matured, they were focused on its religious rather than political effects: he came to feel
that the blasphemies of Miltons devils beget a Bad, or afflict a good Spirit (December 1670,
qtd. von Maltzahn, Laureate, 193). See also William Poole, Two Early Readers of John Milton:
John Beale and Abraham Hill, Milton Quarterly 39.2 (2004), 7699.
See, for instance, the classic accounts in Arnold Stein, Answerable Style (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1953), 1737, and J. B. Broadbent, Some Graver Subject: An Essay
on Paradise Lost (New York: Schocken, 1960), 21834. According to von Maltzahn, the war
in heaven is central to Miltons profound critique of original violence, of what the poet calls
outward or worldly or fleshlie force (The War in Heaven and the Miltonic Sublime,
in Alan Houston and Steve Pincus, eds., A Nation Transformed: England after the Restoration
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 1545).
On register variation, see M. A. K. Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan, Language, Context, and
Text (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 2943.
In Cornss formidably acute and highly influential account of Miltons

forensic rhetoric in the anti-prelatical tracts, control, especially in the early
tracts, is rarely an issue. Milton almost always seems to be in command.
He is remarkably stable, extraordinarily knowledgeable and perceptive in
his understanding of the dynamics of the political debate, full of guile and
always calculating, deliberately antagonizing his adversaries and reassuring
the revolutionary readerall in order to construct his own imagined, textual
community. Fascinating as Cornss argument is, it is difficult not to feel that
he overestimates Miltons judgment and credits the early tracts, if not The
Reason of Church-Government, with the kind of mastery that Milton himself
happily assigns to them when he looks back over the period in the Second
Defence: I brought succor to the ministers who were, as it was said, scarcely
able to withstand the eloquence of this bishop, and from that time onward,
if the bishops made any response, I took a hand (Second Defence, YP 4.623).
This is not what he said at the time, and his recurrent tendency to solipsistic
self-congratulation does not fit well with the image of a writer skilled in his
ability to subordinate self-representation to the construction of community.
What Thomas Kranidas calls his impropriety or just how lax or ill-conceived
control in Miltons early writings could be is best seen from his defense of
vehemence.
By vehemence Milton means what we have been calling his rhetoric of
violencethat vehement vein of throwing out indignation, or scorn upon
an object that merits it (AP, YP 1.899). In his 1634 Ludlow Masque, Milton
idealizes that vehement strain as sacred vehemence, an inspired form of
eloquence beyond reason, quite literally beyond control. In the Ladys response
to Comus it appears as the power of Orpheus reducing the world to harmony,
separating the true from the false, and, most importantly, destroying the
latter. The Lady doesnt try to convince Comus of his error, but should she
try, so she claims, the uncontrolled worth of her virtue would kindle my
rapt spirits / To such a flame of sacred vehemence that dumb things would
sympathize and the brute earth itself would shake until all thy magic structures
Cornss narrowly defined partisan reader is not quite the same as Sharon Achinsteins much
broader, culturally significant, revolutionary reader, but they are clearly related. See Achinsteins
important Milton and the Revolutionary Reader, and for textual communities, see also Elizabeth
Sauers recent Paper Contestations and Textual Communities in England, 164075 ( Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2005).
In the Apology, Milton made it clear that he had no doubts about the ministers ability or
eloquence: I had no fear but that the authors of Smectymnus were prepard both with skill
and purpose to returne a suffizing answer (AP, YP 1.872).
According to Kranidas, Milton was regularly criticized for improprietyhis vehemence
routinely violated the expectations that his initially elegant and erudite style would raise in a
reader (Milton and the Rhetoric of Zeal, 159).
252 Paul Stevens
reared so high, / Were shattered into heaps oer thy false head (Masque,
7928). In this Michael Lieb hears a premonition of Samson destroying the
temple of Dagon and evidence of Miltons commitment to what he calls
regenerative violence (Milton and the Culture of Violence, 1068, 25863).
This may be so, but when sacred vehemence is translated from poetry into
the everyday world of pamphlet literature, its locutions often seem bathetic
and its recorded effect is anything but regenerative. In his Animadversions of
July 1641, Milton imagines himself as the Lady and Joseph Hall, then bishop
of Exeter, as Comushe identifies himself with those who have wrought up
their zealous souls into such vehemencies, as nothing could be more killingly
spoken against a false dissimulator like Hall (Animadversions, YP 1.663).
Unlike the Lady, Milton does try to convince his adversary, or at least show
him the error of his ways, but the resulting vehemence turns out to be an
incongruous mix of violent insults and self-indulgent biblical reveries. Doe
not think to Perswade us of your undaunted courage by misapplying to your
selfe the words of holy David, he admonishes Hall, and then, with the kind of
chutzpah that few of whatever constituency would find easy to take, he silently
assigns himself the role of Moses in Exodus 32 (Animadversions, YP 1.665). In
a direct address, speaking for the English nation, he patiently explains to God
where He is likely to go wrong: shouldst thou bring us thus far onward from
Egypt to destroy us in this Wildernesse though wee deserve; yet thy great name
would suffer in the rejoycing of thine enemies, and the deluded hope of all thy
servants (Animadversions, YP 1.706). The response of Bishop Halls defender
in the Modest Confutation of early 1642 is well-known: Miltons vehemence,
his violent satire, makes him seem no better than a grim, lowring, bitter fool
and those flights of fancy that transcend his violence may be astounding but
they are also perceived as long, tedious, theatrical, and big-mouthed. John
Bramhall felt much the same. Speaking about Milton the following year as the
novice who wrote Of Reformation, he concludes: It was truely said by Seneca,
that the most contemptible Persons ever have the loosest tongues.
If one accepts Cornss argument, then these responses only prove his
contention that Milton doesnt really want to convince his adversaries, merely
consolidate his own imagined constituency. At some points this is clearly
true, but at others its not. Besides ignoring the lack of control implicit in
A Modest Confutation of a Slanderous and Scurrilous Libell (London, 1642), sig. A3. For
more on the theatricality of Miltons style, see Paul Stevens, Discontinuities in Miltons Early
Public Self-Representation, Huntington Library Quarterly 51.4 (1988), 26080, and Miltons
Janus-Faced Nationalism: Soliloquy, Subject, and the Modern Nation State, Journal of English
and German Philology, 100.2 (2001), 24768.
John Bramhall, The Serpents Salve, or, a Remedie for the Biting of an Aspe (London,
1643), 212.
Miltons risk-taking and self-absorbed insensitivitieswhat Milton himself

later refers to as the perception in him of some self-pleasing humor of vain-
glory (RCG, YP 1.806)Cornss argument shows little interest in Miltons
own explanation of what his ferocious rhetoric was meant to do. The most
sustained and direct defense of vehemence comes in Miltons final anti-
prelatical tract, his Apology of April 1642. He is responding to the anonymous
Modest Confuters charge that Violence hath been done to the person of a
holy, and religious Prelat (YP 1.897). Miltons first reaction is to shrug it off.
But then in order to satisfie any conscionable man, that is, any reasonable
person, he offers a painstaking defense founded on three principal grounds.
First, he appeals to the received authority of classical prescription and biblical
precedent. Christ, for instance, often deployed bitter and irefull rebukes
not so much to teach as to leave excuselesse those his wilfull impugners
(AP, YP 1.899900). Second, he reasserts his overall pragmatic or political
design. In times of opposition, he insists, the coole unpassionate mildnesse of
positive wisdome is not enough to damp and astonish the proud resistance
of carnall, and false Doctors (AP, YP 1.900). But dominating all is the third
groundlegitimation drawn from his own particular, emotional needs. In
this, he effectively offers an expressive theory of composition whose emphasis
on the outpouring of feeling, the legitimacy of the public articulation of
private emotion, Romantic poets would not have found unwelcome. Since
no man is forct wholly to dissolve that groundwork of nature which God
created in him, he says, no man should feel reluctant to express his peculiar
passion: the choleric man, for instance, may rightly expell quite the unsinning
predominance of his anger, for each radicall humour and passion wrought
upon and corrected as it ought, might be made the proper mould and
foundation of every mans peculiar guifts, and vertues (AP, YP 1.900). He
invokes the example of Luther who, often offending his own constituency, his
friends and favourers, with the uncontrolled fiercenesse of his spirit, found
he could not moderate his rhetoric without reaping the gleeful contempt of his
adversaries (AP, YP 1.901). More importantly, he could not write effectively
at all without the energy he drew from his ardent spirit (AP, YP 1.901).
Luther clearly speaks for Milton. His vehemence, his sanctifid bitternesse,
may be pragmatic but it is also deeply and necessarily expressive, and that
expressiveness is often violently out of control. As Milton himself confesses in
the Reason of Church-Government, the ardency of my mind often leads him
astray (RCG, YP 1.830).
What makes this lack of control so significant is the degree to which it
reveals Miltons struggle for what we would call self-realization or identity.
The articulations of violence in the anti-prelatical tracts do constitute a series
of political speech acts but the perlocutionary force of those acts is far less
254 Paul Stevens
arresting than their primary, illocutionary power. That is, they call attention
to themselves less as a series of directives than as a set of utterances both
performing and measuring the intensity of Miltons struggle for a specific
sense of being. Milton is clearly a calculating polemicist; both his use of
biblical rhetoric and his revival of the old Marprelate-like conventions of
religious satire, especially in Animadversions, do suggest something of the
extent to which the particular style of the tracts is a politically directed act
of social invention. But neither what might be called Leviticus thinking nor
what John King calls controversial merriment captures the individuality or
distinctiveness of that invention. As Corns points out while considering
what Milton means by the ardency of his spirit, Writing of such introversion
appears rarely in contemporary controversy (Uncloistered Virtue, 33). At the
climax of his defense of vehemence in the Apology, Milton reveals how its
articulations of violence, in the uncontrolled worth of his imagined virtue,
constitute a self-realizing performance.
As Milton insists on the need to astonish, magically to freeze his adversaries
through the power of words, just as Shakespeare and Orpheus do, he personifies
vehemence as the mighty warrior Zeal:
then Zeale whose substance is ethereal, arming in compleat diamond ascends his fiery
Chariot drawn with two blazing Meteors figurd like beasts resembling two of those
four which Ezechiel and S. John saw, one visagd like a Lion to expresse power, high
autority and indignation, the other of countnance like a man to cast derision and
scorne with these the invincible warriour Zeale shaking loosely the slack reins drives
over the heads of Scarlet Prelats, and such as are insolent to maintaine traditions,
brusing their stiffe necks under his flaming wheels. (AP, YP 1.900)
Immediately before he utters this powerful speech, Milton pleads with his
readers that I may have leave to soare a while as the Poets use (AP, YP 1.900).
This plea does many things, not least it serves as a marker to indicate a change
in registerthat is, a shift towards the less pragmatic, more aestheticized
representation of violence whose culmination we see in the ascent of the
Son in Paradise Lost. Although, as I have suggested above, the register of
the two representations is not the samethe ascent of Zeal still occurs in a
political pamphletthe plea does make it clear that the violence of Zeal is
not to be taken at face value. Milton doesnt really want to see the bishops
heads crushed. At the time of publication, they were no longer a threat: all
of them were excluded from Parliament and most of them were in prison.
In April 1642, England may have been heading for civil war, but the anti-
prelatical debate was no longer anywhere near the eye of the storm. What
See Stevens, Leviticus Thinking and King, Milton and Religious Controversy, 122.
Milton wants in this passage, as the plea and so much else in the Reason of
Church-Government and the Apology suggest, is to join the Laureat fraternity
and realize his talent as national poet (AP, YP 1.891). And here, for a moment,
as he expresses his longing to be such a poet, he becomes one.
A little later in the pamphlet Milton describes the actual execution of the
Earl of Strafford the previous year as a publick triumph, an act of violence
that had the practical effect of reviving the fainted Common-wealth (AP,
YP 1.919), but even this is not quite the unmediated celebration of violence
it might at first seem. For almost immediately Milton reproduces it as the
central act of another prose poema fantasy in which Straffords actual
courage and dignity are caricatured in an allegory of tyranny groveling upon
the fatall block (AP, YP 1.924) and in which the author betrays his enormous
pleasure not in violence but in his own extraordinary power with words. After
ridiculing the Modest Confuters attempt to praise Parliament, he announces
his intention to show him how it should be done in a pleasing fit or song:
because it shall not be said I am apter to blame others then to make triall
of my selfe, and that I may after this harsh discord touch upon a smoother
string, awhile to entertaine my selfe and him that list, with some more pleasing
fit, I shall show the Confuter what he might have better said in their praise
had he possessed my skills (AP, YP 1.922). If the violent humiliation of
the bishops in Of Reformation functions as a displacement of Miltons own
sense of exclusion and subjection, so here a year later the highly fictional
representation of Straffords execution and the bishops bloody rout at the
hands of Zeal measures the degree to which he feels free to assert himself
as the individual he would really bea poet of power and high authority
enabled by what he perceives as Englands new-found toleration to search, try,
and examine all things in order to write a work doctrinal and exemplary to a
Nation (RCG, YP 1.815). My point is that while the articulation of vehemence
in the anti-prelatical tracts does little or nothing to damp and astonish the
bishops, it does a great deal to enable John Milton to channel his rage, to
build a proper mould and foundation out of his own violent emotions for his
peculiar guifts, and vertues. As Kranidas suspects, the chief virtue of sacred
vehemence is energy, power and high authoritywhat Machiavelli means
by virtu.
At the same time, this does not mean that Milton had lost interest in the
anti-prelatical cause, that he was opposed to actual violence, or that his violent
rhetoric did not contribute to a heightening of political tensions. It means
that the articulations of violence in these political tracts are consistently more
expressive than pragmatic. There are, however, many occasions, especially in
the regicide tracts, when its the other way around, when Milton is lethal,
perfectly literal in his advocacy of violence. But even then the outward, political
256 Paul Stevens
intent of his writings is not easily detached from the internal, emotional work
they are doing, and this brings us to the heart of his intolerance.
Cursed Neuters and the Struggle for Community

On the same day, 23 February 1642, that Englands dejected king said
farewell to his wife, Henrietta Maria, at Dover, later galloping along the
cliffs to keep her ship for France in sight as long as possible, the rebellious
House of Commons crowded into St Margarets Chapel, Westminster, to
hear a series of fast sermons. The mood was tensethe insurgency in
Ireland raged on and war in England seemed a real possibility. The first and
most famous sermon was delivered by Stephen Marshall, one of Miltons
Smectymnuan friends. His sermon, Meroz Cursed, is remembered for its
advocacy of the most uncompromising and brutal violence. Despite its
plain style and almost complete lack of introversion, the sermon frequently
reproduces moments that Milton would recognize as sacred vehemence.
In Marshalls remorselessly repetitive, logically circular process of speech,
he offers his listeners zealmotives and incentives to inflame your hearts
(Marshall, Meroz Cursed, 25); he sets out to arouse their rapt spiritscurse
the inhabitants of Meroz, continue to curse them, vehemently curse them, never
leave cursing them (5). In its deliberative determination to show why Christian
men and women should not refrain from shedding blood, the sermon stands
as a compelling piece of evidence for Feisal Mohameds indictment of our
forgetfulness about the Wests long history of religious violence. It also stands
as a remarkable example of seventeenth-century Leviticus thinking.
The sermon defines the church of Christ as a levitical community, that is,
it reproduces the church in the image of biblical Israel, a national community
separate to God and outside whose boundaries all is deformed, uncleane,
and [in] every way vain (38). The force of Marshalls sermon is directed
against all those who would be both of the community and outside it, all
those who in time of opposition would be neutralas Marshall insists, the
Lord acknowledges no neuters (22). The principal example of those who
would be neutral, cold neuters, spiritually barren, is that of the inhabitants of
Meroz in the Song of Deborah, Israelites who refused to join the nation in its
war against Canaan: Curse ye Meroz (said the Angell of the Lord) curse ye
Stephen Marshall, Meroz Cursed, or A Sermon preached to the Honourable House of Commons
at their late Solemn Fast (London, 1641/2).
The sermon willfully forgets what Roger Williams considers one of the principal sources of
religious intolerancethat ancient Israel is proved figurative and ceremoniall, and no patterne
nor president for any Kingdom or Civill state in the world to follow (The Bloudy Tenent, a2v ).
bitterly the inhabitants therof, because they came not to the helpe of the Lord
( Judges 5:23 quoted Marshall, Meroz Cursed, 1). For Marshall the meaning
of this verse is unequivocalyou are either of the community or against
it, you are either blessed or cursed, and being cursed, whether you are an
enemy or a neutral, means being destroyed. In hammering home the point,
Marshall reverses the transumptive power of the New Testament, assimilating
the Gospels argument of grace back into the Old Testament curse: This text
curses all of them who came not to help him it is a certaine rule, for it is
Christs rule, he that is not with me, is against me (23). Paradoxically for a
Christian minister, the true meaning of the New Testament is revealed in the
Old. Jeremiah, for instance, is invoked to amplify what it means to be against
Christ: Cursed is he that does the worke of the Lord negligently; cursed is everyone
that withholds his hand from shedding of bloud ( Jeremiah 48:10, quoted 10).
Psalm 137 is then invoked to show how those who do the work of Christs
church diligently are blessedwhatsoever that work might be, good or evill
(16): Blessed is the man, says the preacher, that thus rewards Babylon, yea,
blessed is the man that takes their little ones and dashes them against the stones
(Psalm137:89, quoted 11). Marshall is no ancient Israelite, but a humanist
educated, Protestant scholar. He knows full well that he is literalizing biblical
poetry and advocating atrocity:
What Souldiers heart [he reflects] would not start at this, not only when he is in hot
bloud to cut downe armed enemies in the field, but afterward deliberately to come into a
subdued City, and take the little ones upon the speares point, to take them by the heeles
and beat out their braines against the walles, what inhumanity and barbarousnesse
would this be thought? Yet if this worke be to revenge Gods Church against Babylon
[he insists], he is a blessed man that takes and dashes the little ones against the stones.
(Marshall, Meroz Cursed, 1112)
The climactic Yet is a Pilate-like abdication of responsibilityits not my

choice, says Marshall, but that of the Word. That is, obedience to the letter
of scripture, a tolerationist like Roger Williams might argue, is an evasion of
ones responsibility to read according to the light of the Spirit. In February
1642, as war looms and the Commons contemplates horror in Ireland, as
Marshall slyly identifies Henrietta Marias father, Henri IV, the architect of
the great tolerationist Edict of Nantes, with what it truly means to be a cursed
To the extent that tough-minded inhumanity becomes the measure of our virtue, Marshalls
exhortation anticipates such speech acts as that of Heinrich Himmler at Posen in October 1943:
Most of you men, he said to his soldiers, know what it is like to see 100 corpses, or 500
or 1000. To stand fast through this and, except for cases of human weakness, to have stayed
decent This is an unwritten and never-to-be written page of glory in our history (quoted in
Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History (London: Pan, 2001), 660).
258 Paul Stevens
neuter (Meroz Cursed, 345), intolerance had found its most authentic voice.
The effect of Marshalls sermon was electrifying and Parliament ordered its
immediate publication.
The ruthlessly pragmatic determination of Miltons Smectymnuan ally to
incite terrour (20) provides an obvious precedent for Samson Agonistes. In
both texts, the Spirit of God moves believers to commit what we would
consider atrocities: Marshalls exhortation to revenge against Meroz and
Babylon clearly has much in common with the Choruss understanding of
Samsons revenge against Gaza: O dearly-bought revenge, yet glorious! (SA
1660). But things are not so straightforward. Milton either heard Meroz Cursed
or read it soon after its publication, since he appears to allude to it at the
opening of the Apology in Aprilnothing could be more unlike a Christian,
he says, [than] to be a cold neuter in the cause of the Church (AP, YP
1.868). According to Hugh Trevor-Roper, the relationship between Milton
and Marshall went deep; they were in collusion, Marshall quoting Milton in
his sermons and Milton so taken with Meroz that Marshalls advertisement
for a singer who would set forth the nations triumphs in an elegant and lofty
verse explains Miltons announcement of his poetic vocation in The Reason
of Church-Government ( Trevor-Roper, Catholics, Anglicans, and Puritans,
2556). However unlikely this is, there seems little question of the sermons
immediate impact on Milton. Even so, as David Loewenstein has recently
emphasized, Miltons most memorial response to Marshalls text is one of
anger and contempt (Loewenstein, Representing Revolution, 18090). Seven
years later, its levitical style turns out to be all a sham and it becomes clear
that the enthusiasm of sacred vehemence can be dangerously misleading.
The single most famous act of violence that Milton openly advocated was,
of course, the execution of the king. About two weeks after that memorable
scene at Whitehall on 30 January 1649 Milton published his defense of
the execution, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. This pamphlet ushered
in a series of publications over 164951 in which the pragmatic advocacy
or defense of violence seems to dominate, if not eliminate, any expressive
function the representation of violence in the text might have. The Tenure
itself seems to have little or nothing of the explicit introversion so evident in
the anti-prelatical tracts. Its focus is outward and active. It is determined to
instruct, to explain the sovereignty of the law, its constitution as an agreement
either framd, or consented to by all, and the complete reasonableness of
holding the king accountable to it by subjecting him to a faire and opn tryal
See Paul Christianson, Reformers and Babylon: English Apocalyptic Visions from the Ref-
ormation to the Eve of the Civil War ( Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978), 183, and
Anthony Fletcher, The Outbreak of the English Civil War (London: Edward Arnold, 1981), 3445.
(Tenure, YP 3.199, 237). Composed over the course of the trial and execution,
the pamphlets style is characterized by a sense of practical urgencywe
should not hesitate to act, he insists, for the Common-wealth nigh perishes
for want of deeds in substance, don with just and faithfull expedition (Tenure,
YP 3.194). And yet despite its pragmatic clarity, the text is highly emotional.
The enormity of the issue and Miltons conflicted response to it is evident in
the tracts assimilation of Marshalls Meroz into Shakespeares Macbeth.
The intense opposition of so many Presbyterian ministers to the trial
and execution of the king clearly unnerved Milton. In the Serious and
Faithfull Representation of 18 January 1649, 47 Scots and English ministers
had disclaimed, detested, and abhorred the proceedings against the king,
identifying them with the wicked and bloody Tenents and Practices of
Jesuites. This was too much for Milton. Overwhelmed by a sense of betrayal,
he uses the Tenure to transform his former allies, these vehement preachers
and Pulpit-firebrands (Tenure, YP 1.243), including the author of Meroz
Cursed, into the grotesque forms of the weird sisters in Macbeth. These
juggling fiends, says Macbeth, who palter with us in a double sense are no
longer to be believed because while they keep the word of promise to our
ear, they break it to our hope (V.viii.1722). That is, once their promises
create hope in us, they break them. Just as the equivocations of these witches
misled Macbeth, Milton feels, so the violent rhetoric and false vehemence of
these ministers have misled himthey have juggld and palterd with the
world, they have bandied and born armes against thir King, devested him,
disannointed him, nay cursd him all over in thir Pulpits and thir Pamphlets, so
much so that they have engaged sincere and real men, beyond what is possible
or honest to retreat from (Tenure, YP 3.191). The emotional intensity of the
analogy is such that it is wildly overdetermined. Guilt suffocates everyone.
The figures of Macbeth and his wife suffuse both the Presbyterian ministers
and the kingall united in their despised Scotchness. While the king is a
man of blood who has polluted the land with the slaughtered carcasses of so
many thousand Christians destroyd (Tenure, YP 3.214), the ministers appear
like Lady Macbeth unable with all thir shifting and relapsing to wash off the
guiltiness from thir own hands (Tenure, YP 3.227). But most importantly,
Recent attention to the presence of Shakespeares Macbeth in the Tenure is largely the result
of Martin Dzelzainiss Milton, Macbeth, and Buchanan, The Seventeenth Century 4 (1989),
5566, and his edition of John Milton: The Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1991), esp. ixxix.
A Serious and Faithfull Representation of the Judgments of the Ministers of the Gospell in the
Province of London (London, 1641/2), 11.
All quotations from Shakespeare are from Macbeth, ed. Robert S. Miola (New York:
Norton, 2004).
260 Paul Stevens
beside the bloody king and the paltering divines, it is Milton himself who is
Macbeth. He is the tragic hero who took Marshalls injunction to moral clarity
and levitical violence at face value, who endud with fortitude and Heroick
vertue feared nothing but the curse of Meroz, the curse writtn against
those That doe the worke of the Lord negligently. He is the person of noblest
temper who has been betrayed by these paltering ministers to the danger of
destruction with themselves (Tenure, YP 3.1912). We must go on, he argues,
for we have already gone beyond what is honest or possible to retreat from.
The insistent pragmatic force of the Tenure conceals enormous emotional
distressa sense of confusion and anger not only at the Presbyterians but at
the hard reality of his complicity in actual as opposed to imagined or distant
violence. For all his vehemence, Milton is no Spenserno colonial undertaker
who can experience the immediate horrors of guerrilla war, cast a cold eye
on the starving as so many anatomies of death, and dismiss them with the
summary judgment that they themselves had wrought their terrible fate.
Miltons response to Marshalls betrayal is critical. Martin Dzelzainiss
anodyne charaterization of it as Milton trying to embarrass the Presbyterians
(Dzelzainis, Milton, Macbeth and Buchanan, 55) does scant justice to its
expressive force. Milton reasserts the zeal of Meroz Cursed. To the degree that
Presbyterian ministers are willing to plead for the king, to become backsliders,
hazarding the welfare of the whole Nation for one whom so oft they have
tearmd Agag (Tenure, YP 3.193), to the degree that they have become a new
set of hirelings importuning Parliament for the re-establishment of Tithes and
Oblations (Tenure, YP 3.241), they have become a faction, an excrescence like
the bishops wen in Of Reformation to be cut off or rooted out. And just as the
bishops were weeded out seven years earlier, so will God root out them thir
imitators, visiting upon thir own heads that curse ye Meroz, the very Motto
of thir Pulpits, wherwith so frequently, not as Meroz, but more like Atheists
they have blasphemd the vengeance of God, and [traducd] the zeale of his
people (Tenure, YP 3.242). At this point, it becomes clear that the violence
of Miltons intolerance is a function of his unusually intense commitment to
communitybut community in a very specific sense.
The coherence and integrity of his imagined community, the community
he so often identifies with the English nation as a metonym for all those
seeking liberty of conscience, is essential to his own most powerful sense
of who he is. As I have argued elsewhere, this is so because the idealized
national community is so obviously made in his own image and likenessit
is a Nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit,
Edmund Spenser, A View of the State of Ireland [Dublin, 1633], ed. Andrew Hadfield and
Willy Maley (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 102.
acute to invent, suttle and sinewy to discours, not beneath the reach of any
point the highest that human capacity can soar to (Areop., YP 2.551). This
mutually enabling identity of self and community is the principal point of
all those unusual things he would venture and divulge to us in the 1642
pamphlets (RCG, YP 1.808). In the Apology, for instance, as he announces the
assimilation of individual identity into community, it becomes clear just how
much community is a part of his own imaginary world. He feels compelled,
so he says, to respond to the Modest Confuter not for personal reasons, but
because I conceavd my selfe to be now not as mine own person, but as a
member incorporate into that truth whereof I was perswaded (AP, YP 1.871,
my emphasis). That is, the I may be assimilated, but the assimilated I only
exists, we are reminded, in the writers conceiving mind. This is solipsism of a
high order, and part of Miltons greatness lies in his ability to reflect on it and
eventually satirize his own egotism, most graphically in the figure of Satan.
Because Milton is incorporated into the community he first came to imagine
in the early 1640s, any threat to it is routinely overestimated as a material
threat to his identity, and accordingly elicits the most extreme, albeit verbal,
reaction. This explains his fascination with Gibeah and the strange story of
the rape of the Levites wife in Judges 1921. It is a story of apostasy, of
those within the sacred community, the Benjaminites, so betraying its defining
principles that only excision and the bloody re-membering of the community
can resolve the harm its done. The polluted wifes dead body is dismembered
and its several parts dispatched to all the other tribes of Israel. Only when
the tribes come together to destroy their own apostate kin is the nation truly
re-membered. Both Irish rebels (Eikon., YP 3.482) and English rakes (Paradise
Lost [1667], 1.499505) are at some point identified with the Benjaminites
or sons of Belial. They are abominations to be purged, just as the bishops
and Presbyterians are seen at one time or another as malignant tumors to be
excised. My point is, however, that Miltons rhetorical violence often achieves
its most desired effects not in the actions it imagines but in the words that
express those actions. That is, his rhetorical violence is almost always as
expressive as pragmatic. If the violence of the anti-prelatical tracts performs
Miltons struggle for individual identity, then that of the regicide tracts enacts
the struggle to reintegrate that identity with its idealized community. Both
stand as testaments to the virtu of the heroic writer.
This, it seems to me, is a crucial context for Samson Agonistes. The register
of the text is clearly marked out as a poem not a pamphlet, a classical tragedy
whose pragmatic design is simultaneously moving in a number of different
directions. Its political purpose relies on its only likely readers being sufficiently
See Stevens, Miltons Janus-Faced Nationalism.

262 Paul Stevens
well educated to understand that its intention is not so much mass-murder

as resistance. At the same time, its overall pragmatic design is emphatically
aesthetic: as Milton patiently explains in his distinctive reworking of Aristotle,
its aim is temperance and delightto purge the mind of [pity and fear,
or terror] and such-like passions, that is to temper and reduce them to just
measure with a kind of delight, stirrd up by seeing or reading those passions
well imitated (SA, CSP 355). In this, the poem is meant to act out the
expressive theory of composition by which Milton justified sacred vehemence
in the Apology the aesthetic power of Samson Agonistes comes from the
poets ability to channel his rage, to build a proper mould and foundation
out of his violent emotions in order to realize his peculiar guifts, and vertues
(AP, YP 1.900). At the heart of Miltons tragedy is a terrible sense of shame. The
tumours of a troubled mind (SA 185) register the existential disintegration of
being, the separation of self from self and community. Samson is at variance
with himself. The poems violent catastrophe both measures and performs
the reintegration of that identitythis is evident from the way Samson
explains his growing self-confidencewhatever may happen, of me expect
to hear / Nothing dishonourable, impure, unworthy / Our God, our Law,
my nation, or myself (SA 14235). Samsons self-confidence is confirmed in
his fathers joyous conclusion that Samson hath quit himself / Like Samson
(SA 170910). There is a degree, then, to which the poem is an end in
itselfnot only do apt words have power to suage / The tumours of a
troubled mind (1845) but in this case they do so by enabling Milton to
realize the poetic identity he had mapped out for himself so many years before
in the anti-prelatical tracts. The poems violence is a testimony to Miltons
virtu. It is true that the poem is a speech act part of whose perlocutionary
force is politicalit is a poem about resistance. But much more so its power
is illocutionaryit enables Milton to temper his zeal and come to terms with
the national community which in 1671 appeared to have deserted him. Things
were, however, about to change.
Vehemence Etiolated and the Struggle for Comprehension

Nothing demonstrates the success of contemporary criticisms historicist
orientation more succinctly than the fate of Miltons last pamphlet, the 1674
Declaration, or Letters Patent. Until very recently Miltons decision to translate
and publish the Latin Diploma Electionis S.R.M. Poloniae, a text announcing the
election of John Sobieski King of Poland, was considered incomprehensible.
As late as 1982, Maurice Kelley was willing to agree with J. M. French to the
effect that [n]o satisfactory explanation for his [Miltons] having performed
this unusual task at this period in his age has been offered (Preface to
LP, YP 8.442). For most scholars in the early 1980s, largely preoccupied
with the need to relate Milton to high theory and only dimly aware that
the energies unleashed by the new historicism might lead to something other
than even more post-structuralist theory, Miltons intentions in publishing the
Letters Patents must have seemed supremely unimportanteven the historian
Christopher Hill seems to have missed the point. Only in 1995, after new
historicism had begun to coalesce with more rigorously empirical forms of
historical inquiry, did Nicholas von Maltzahn quite brilliantly make what now
seems the obvious connection. The translation was Miltons oblique way of
commenting on the exclusion crisis. The pamphlet offered aid and comfort
to those Englishmen and women who wished to exclude the Catholic Duke of
York from succeeding his brother Charles II as King of Protestant England,
and it did so by proposing the merits of elective kingship. The ramifications
of this interpretation shed considerable light on the etiolation of vehemence
in Miltons final pamphlets.
The conventional way of representing the story of Miltons life is that its
terminus ad quem was the Restoration, the end of the Republic, and the
experience of defeatthe world turned upside down in Hills words. Both
the quietest and resistance-theory accounts of Miltons final years accept this
point. In the quietest account, given new life in Derek Woods passionately
argued Exiled from Light (2001), Milton turns from politics to religion, from
hoarse disputes to the paradise within happier far. In the resistance-theory
account, now canonized in Barbara Lewalskis magisterial Life (2001), Milton
struggles on to the end, defeated but unconquered, his resistance manifesting
itself in a thousand minor subversive speech acts. As Lewalski makes clear,
Miltons final years were in fact quite longthe fourteen or so years from
May 1660 to November 1674 amounted to over a quarter of his total adult life
span. During that period a great deal happened in the political life of the three
kingdoms. Most importantly, the Restoration settlement showed its fragility,
the exclusion crisis began, and events began moving rapidly, albeit erratically,
At the 1985 dinner of the Milton Society of America in Chicago, for instance, Stanley Fish,
in the process of deconstructing Of Prelatical Episcopacy, urged his audience not to be intimidated
by the ascendency of Derrida: Come on, were Miltonistswe can handle this stuff.
See Christopher Hill, Milton and the English Revolution (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977),
21920.
Von Maltzahn, The Whig Milton, 16671700, in David Armitage, Armand Himy, and
Quentin Skinner, eds., Milton and Republicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1995), 231.
Derek N. C. Wood, Exiled from Light: Divine Law, Morality, and Violence in Miltons
Samson Agonistes ( Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001).
Barbara K. Lewalski, The Life of John Milton (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001).
264 Paul Stevens
towards a new revolution, the Glorious Revolution of 16889. For many

the climax of that revolution was the Toleration Act of spring 1689formal
toleration was limited, but the act began the long process of reintegrating
Protestant dissenters into the national community. They were not allowed full
inclusion into the Church of England, or comprehension as it was called,
and certain civil disabilities remained, but with the effective end of the penal
laws and complete freedom of worship dissenters were granted more liberty
and recognition than they had experienced since the end of the Republic.
The nations religious life between the Restoration and the Toleration Act was
dominated by the struggle for comprehension. What distinguishes it from
the earlier struggles of the 1640s and -50s is the powerful aversion among
most English people to violent civil strife, and what the expressive force of
Miltons last pamphlets indicate more than anything else is his own struggle
to understand and adapt to this new reality.
Over the course of 16723 English Protestants achieved a momentary
national solidarity in their opposition to Charles IIs March 1672 Declaration
of Indulgence granting limited toleration to both Protestant dissenters and
Catholic recusants. Many dissenters, including Milton, felt enormous alarm
that the states indulgence to them would simultaneously compel their tol-
eration of false religion in its most egregious form, indeed, in its defining
form of popery. As Parliament forced the king to cancel the Declaration
a year later in March 1673, bonfires blazed and Londoners danced in the
streets, Milton published Of True Religion, and the heir to the throne was
outed as a Catholic. According to the Test Act of 29 March 1673 which
followed the cancellation, all office-holders were now required to take the
Eucharist according to Anglican rites. The high-church Anglican John Eve-
lyn spoke for many Protestant nationalists when he expressed his outrage
at the Duke of Yorks refusalthe Duke gave exceeding griefe & scandal
to the whole Nation; That the heyre of it, & the sonn of a Martyr for the
Protestant Religion should apostatize; What the Consequences of this will
be God onely knows, & Wise men dread. That the three kingdoms now
had a Catholic heir was to dominate national politics for the next fifteen
years. One radical solution was to switch from a hereditary to an elective
monarchy and the obvious example of this, an example that became topical
The importance of this term is made clear in Elizabeth Sauers fine article, Miltons Of True
Religion, Protestant Nationhood, and the Negotiation of Liberty, Milton Quarterly 40 (2006),
119.
See Mark Kishlansky, A Monarchy Transformed: Britain, 16031714 (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1996), 2923; and Tim Harris, Revolution: The Great Crisis of the British Monarchy,
16851720 (London: Allen Lane, 2006), 3502.
The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. E. S. de Beer, 6 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), 4.7.
in May 1674, was the election of John Sobieski as John III of Poland. Milton
published his account of the election, the Letters Patents, in July 1674, the same
month that he brought out the second edition of Paradise Lost.
What is most relevant about the pamphlet to the present argument is the
paradox of Milton extolling the virtues of one Catholic king to exclude the
succession of another. The paradox is most immediately resolved, however, by
the pamphlets pragmatic emphasis on the convenience of elective succession
and by its expressive longing for a national heroa Samson, a Cromwell, or
a Monck (at least up until May 1660), someone, as Milton explained to Henry
Oldenburg back in December 1659, who would not compile a history of our
troubles but one who [would] happily end them (Private Correspondence, YP
7.515). The curious resemblance between Sobieskis climactic act of heroism
at the siege of Chocimum (Fall 1673) as it is related in the Letters Patents and
that of Charles IIs illegitimate son, the Protestant Duke of Monmouth, at the
siege of Maastricht (21 June 1673) as it was celebrated in all kinds of popular
displays might be meant to suggest that Englands Sobieski was already at
hand. In almost exactly the same way that Monmouth, accompanied on foot
by the young John Churchill and at the head of a handful of grenadiers,
stormed one of the Dutch defenses key batteries, so what is most to be
admired, says Miltons text, is that Sobieski on Foot at the head of the
foot-forces made thorough and forced his way to the Battery, hazarding his
life devoted to God and his Countrey (LP, YP 8.449). Equally important,
the resolution of the paradox is predicated on two further pointsrespect
for national difference implicit in notions like the Law of Nations (TR, YP
8.431) and admiration for Polands idealized reputation as a place of religious
toleration. As Milton explains in Of True Religion, the spiritual (as opposed
to institutional) comprehension he seeks in the three kingdoms is no greater
than that already experienced by Protestants in the tolerationist states of
France and Poland, states in which toleration had been legally established
the previous century by the Edict of Nantes (1598) and the Confederation
of Warsaw (1573): For if the French and Polonian Protestants injoy all this
liberty among Papists, Milton says, much more may a Protestant justly
expect it among Protestants (TR, YP 8.4267). In effectively allowing the
fundamental freedom to disavow all implicit Faith (TR, YP 8.426) and thereby
the binding authority of institutionalized religion, Sobieski as the head of this
tolerationist state is being identified with Henrietta Marias father, Henri
See Paul Stevens, Miltons Renunciation of Cromwell: The Problem of Raleighs

Cabinet-Council, Modern Philology 98.3 (2001), esp. 38992.
See Paul Stevens, Miltons Letters Patents and the Duke of Monmouth, paper presented at
the MLA Annual Convention, Philadelphia, December 2006.
266 Paul Stevens
IVbut neither he nor Sobieski are now to be considered cold neuters. In the
Letters Patents and in Miltons wildly idealized Poland, religious violence has
been exiled. Miltons text can still dwell on cruel slaughter and the way the
desperation of the Turks whetted [the Christians] valour (LP, YP 8.449), but
the violence has been dispatched to the borders, and directed outwards against
European Christianitys traditional enemies, infidel Turks and other oriental
heathensall those peoples Milton could not bring himself to imagine in
the Tenure as real nations, that is, nations subject to Laws, human, civil, and
religious (Tenure, YP 3.215). In Miltons struggle for comprehension, for a
new national community, sacred vehemence has little or no place within its
boundaries.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Of True Religion. As the idealized
national community of tolerationist Poland is defined in opposition to
Turks and Tartars, so the ideal national community of tolerationist England is
defined in opposition to Catholicism. And both are defined in opposition to the
intolerant state of affairs in contemporary Restoration England. Boundaries do
not disappear, but the register in which they are articulated shifts dramatically.
In Of True Religion, Milton comes closer than ever to writing against
persecution in milk. As he considers how best to root out the Romish Weed
(TR, YP 8.417), he explains his proposals without violence and with all kinds
of moderate qualification. First, ever willing to observe international law,
he emphasizes that by popery he means only as it exists in our Natives,
and not Forreigners who are Privilegd by the Law of Nations (TR, YP
8.431). Second and more importantly, less than two years after the publication
of Samson Agonistes, he is explicit in his rejection of religious violence:
corporal punishment, or fines stand not with the Clemency of the Gospel,
he supposes. Judicial violence is only permissible if the actions of Catholics
endanger the security of the State (TR, YP 8.431). The etiolation, diffusion,
or draining away of vehemence may have many causescensorship and
Miltons relative weakness before the formidable power of the Anglican state
are obvious contendersbut what Ive been trying to suggest by focusing
on the expressive function of Miltons texts is something else. The popular
demand for the cancellation of the Declaration of Indulgence, that God had
givn a heart to the people (TR, YP 8.417), also gave a heart to Milton
and accelerated the convergence of two powerful developments. First, the
For recent work on Of True Religion, see Elizabeth Sauer, Miltons Of True Religion;
Nicholas von Maltzahn, Milton, Marvell, and Toleration, paper delivered at the Canada Milton
Seminar II, Toronto, April 2006 and printed in a revised version in this volume, ch. 5; and
Paul Stevens, How Miltons Nationalism Works: Globalization and the Possibilities of Positive
Nationalism, in David Loewenstein and Paul Stevens, eds., Early Modern Nationalism and
Miltons England ( Toronto: University of Toronto Press, forthcoming 2007).
self-realization of identity in the completion of the great poems of 166771,

that is, the fulfillment of his spiritual vocation, made vehemence or ardency of
spirit less necessary or compulsive. And second, the new struggle for spiritual
comprehension within the Anglican state made it self-evidently ineffective.
The challenge that faced Miltons admirers in 1688, says von Maltzahn, was to
transform Milton from a republican to a Whig moderate enough to applaud
the Revolution Settlement (Whig Milton, 242). My point is that in terms
of vehemence or religious enthusiasm, if not so many other things, he was
ahead of them. The emergence of a more moderate Milton owes something
to Miltons own adaptability. It encourages his admirers, both then and now,
to see the degree to which he was struggling to move beyond the kind of
polarization that increasingly disfigures our own world and to look at his
enduring commitment to liberty of conscience and its truly open-ended
dialogism free from the intolerance, vehemence, and virtu that ironically and
disturbingly made so much of its actual expression possible.
14
Secularizing Conscience in Miltons
Republican Community
Lana Cable
The problem with toleration, for a freedom of conscience advocate like

John Milton, is that toleration and freedom of conscience imply disparate
and even opposed conceptual realms. Toleration is necessitated by temporal
uncertainty and the variables that distinguish human beings one from another:
the objective in practice of toleration is civil concord. By contrast, freedom
of conscience is necessitated by the unchanging certitude that is presumed to
characterize the realm of the divine: the objective in permitting freedom of
conscienceas Milton sees itis not civil concord but oneness with eternal
God. Thus, to the extent that seventeenth-century visionaries of faith pursued
the interests of free conscience in the political arena, toleration might supply
logistical support for journeying from the temporal to the eternal realm. But
the temporal objectives of toleration provided only an intermediate staging
area for the visionary of faith, an ethical space that facilitated sorting, stocking
and repacking of the spirit for its move onward to a higher end. In effect,
toleration as a virtue was most prized by devout freedom of conscience
advocates when it was practiced by someone else; whereas striving toward
divine union was work one took up by and for onself. At the same time,
freedom of conscience was prized enough by tolerationists to warrant their
putting up with diverse viewpoints, but only so long as proponents of those
viewpoints did not disturb the peace.
The preceding analysis greatly oversimplifies historical reality, of course.
Milton himself moved continually between temporal and eternal frames
of reference in order to construct arguments that pertained to toleration.
Moreover, what toleration could signify early in the century, as when
the moderate Anglican Henry Jacob published An Humble Supplication for
Toleration and Libertie in 1609, bore little resemblance to what it signified
eight decades later, when the 1689 Bill of Toleration was finally passed. But
Secularizing Conscience and Republican Community 269
this dramatic change of signification for the word was political rather than
conceptual. Duality of ethical referencethe temporal realm of toleration
versus the eternal realm of free conscienceshould be kept in mind for
examining toleration throughout the decades that bound Miltons literary and
political world, because it was the potentially contradictory values of these two
realms that made seventeenth-century ethical debates intractable.
Ready and Easy Non-toleration

Classical republican thinkers, including Milton, struggled to reconcile tem-
poral and eternal realms by bringing the valuational force of a transcendent
verity down to earth in secular form, testing their proposals by what Blair
Worden terms a politics of virtue. Despite disparate agendas and ideolog-
ical incoherence among leaders in the movement, the republican politics of
virtue strives to anchor ethical life outside of self-serving claims for individual
freedom, so as to pursue practical reforms that would also promote common
interest in universal human good. Thus if republican virtue meant different
things at different times, it nevertheless always in Wordens view asserted
mans capacity to shape his destiny on this earth. Yet exactly how that destiny
might be shaped mattered a great deal, since the changeable definitions of
republican virtue meant more than different things: they could mean con-
tradictory things, as demonstrated by even a limited sampling from Miltons
sonnets. There we find Margaret Ley, who praises her fathers noble virtues
so truly that she herself is judged by all others to possess them (Sonnet X. To
the Lady Margaret Ley, CSP 2901); but we find also the unnamed virgin of
Sonnet IX whose growing virtues cause others to fret their spleen (Sonnet
IX, CSP 2912). And this virtuous provocation to spiteful resentment seems
innocuous when compared to the virtue of General Cromwell, whose glorious
way of blood crowns him with Worcesters laureate wreath (To the Lord
General Cromwell, CSP 3289); or to the virtue of General Fairfax, whose
bloodletting also brings / Victory home. Yet it is virtue as well that leads Henry
Vane to resist bloody recourse, by judging What severs civil from religious
power and what each means (To Sir Henry Vane the Younger, CSP 3301).
Nor is virtue defined by Milton only in political and religious terms. The vir-
tuous judgment of Edward Lawrence produces intimate conviviality: a neat
repast of Attic taste, with wine whose delights are best honored by sparing
Blair Worden, Marchamont Nedham and English Republicanism in David Wootton, ed.,
Republicanism, Liberty, and Commercial Society, 16491776 (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1994), 467.
270 Lana Cable
[t]o interpose them oft (Sonnet XVII, CSP 344). Virtuous judgment might
also dispel the dark mood of Cyriack Skinner, whose deep thoughts Milton
would drench / In mirth so that his friend will measure life Toward solid
good rather than fret so much about politics (Sonnet XVIII, CSP 3456).
What the sonnet portraits tell us about Miltons classical virtue is that it can
be invoked as a standard in a variety of cases, but neither virtue itself nor what
it validates can be defined. Indeed, virtues practical role as a transcendent
verity for upholding human good depends in the sonnets on temporal circum-
stances that could as easily produce harm: resentment, bloodshed, arbitrary
rulings, overindulgence, neglect of duty. The ethical force of a politics of virtue
amounts to little more than a gesture made by ambiguous outward signs.
The politics of virtue nonetheless served multiple republican interests
by providing a secular rhetoric for prosecuting reform in ecclesiastical and
political institutions alike. Seventeenth-century English activists were creating
their own role in the extended European and transatlantic Machiavellian
moment: they too sought political ways of bringing historical contingency
under control. Yet to control contingency by invoking a transcendent secular
verity was not necessarily easier than controlling it by religious doctrine:
temporal and eternal realms remained difficult to reconcile. For example, on
the eve of the 1660 Restoration, when Miltons hope for a free commonwealth
was about to be dashed, he proclaimed a standard of virtue that over fifteen
years earlier he had defined as essential to republican government. That
standard was to be maintained by the discipline outlined in Of Education
and meant to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know
The complementary variety of Miltons sonnet portraits leads Anna Nardo to read them as
comprising a new kind of sonnet sequence, not one integral work of art, but rather, Miltons
ideal of the New Jerusalem A living, inclusive community. See Anna Nardo, Miltons Sonnets
and the Ideal Community (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1979), 5. The
skeptical tenor of the present study should not be interpreted as questioning the genuineness of
Miltons optimism in imagining a community such as Nardos analysis brings to life.
Although what Martin Dzelzainis calls the moral economy of Miltons republican common-
wealth demands cultivation of the virtues by rulers and ruled alike, the resulting virtuous circle
leaves virtue itself still undefined. See Miltons Classical Republicanism in David Armitage,
Armand Himy and Quentin Skinner, eds., Milton and Republicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995), 324. Nigel Smith compares Miltons undefinable classical virtue with
that of populist republican John Streater, who similarly emphasizes the heroic spirit or ethos of
liberty rather than the fine details of its implementation: see Popular Republicanism in the
1650s, in Armitage et al., Milton and Republicanism, 13755; citation, 149.
J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic
Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975). David Wootton discusses
the centrality of historical contingency in Pococks analysis and explains the historical shift
whereby republican focus on the politics of virtue, liberty and rights mutates into focus on
utilitarian economics: see his introduction, The Republican Tradition: From Commonwealth
to Common Sense in Wootton, ed., Republicanism, Liberty, and Commercial Society, 16491776
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994), 141.
God aright to imitate him, to be like him by possessing our souls of

true vertue (Of Ed., YP 2.3667). Possessing our souls of godlike virtue by
his method would outrank classical models, Milton argued, because unlike
those ancient and famous schools of Pythagoras, Plato, Isocrates, Aristotle, his
own educational program would be equally good both for Peace and warre
(Of Ed., YP 2.4078). A perfect indifference to historical contingency would
be cultivated in future leaders of the commonwealth, by drilling them in
alternating doses of aesthetic refinement and soldierly violence. The specifics
of Miltons plan are instructive to recall. At regular daily intervals, the students
are to be taken up in recreating and composing their travaild spirits by means
of music known for its power over dispositions and manners, to smooth and
make them gentle (Of Ed., YP 2.40911). But this regulated gentleness is
to be broken off two hours before supper by a sudden alarum or watch
word, to be calld out to their military motions of embattailing, marching,
encamping, fortifying, besieging and battering (Of Ed., YP 2.411). The great
merit of the academys oscillating regimen is that it will produce graduates
capable of exercising their godlike virtue without concern for what calls it into
action (equally good both for Peace and warre). They will be unconcerned
because transcendence above historical contingency is the express purpose in
possessing our souls of true vertue. The stability achieved by such a discipline
might on the face of it seem valuable. But indifference to cause is indifference as
well to consequence: a leadership disciplined in transcendent virtue detaches
itself from actual human experience.
In the years that followed Miltons writing Of Education, it was actual
experience that led freedom of conscience advocates themselves to bridge the
divide between temporal and eternal realms. As they pressed for legislation to
ensure freedom at least for their own godfearing and godseeking consciences,
their claims on behalf of individual spiritual sovereignty gradually acquired
secular definitions, in the form of legally defensible rights of citizenship, such
as freedoms of speech, press and association. This is not to suggest that sec-
ularizing of conscience amounted to an identifiable or self-declared political
movement. Secularizers of conscience would have formed as disparate a com-
munity as tolerationists, had either been thought of in specifically communal
terms. That disparateness helps to explain the uproar created by Charles II
when he tried to harness toleration under the 1672 Declaration of Indulgence.
The declarations ostensible evenhandednesstoleration of Catholics as well
Richard Greaves illuminates the history of activism by Restoration religious radicals

whose nonconformity threatened primarily because of the popular appeal of political causes
couched in religious terms. See Richard L. Greaves, Secrets of the Kingdom: British Rad-
icals from the Popish Plot to the Revolution of 16881689 (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1992).
272 Lana Cable
as Protestant nonconformistswas perceived by the opposition as camouflage

for rule by fiat: the kings indulgence would leave free conscience beholden
to the kings pleasure rather than protected by law. Such a toleration and
such a freedom would have been slavery to a neo-Roman republican, Quentin
Skinner argues: a state or nation will be counted as living in slavery if its
capacity for action is in any way dependent on the will of anyone other than
the body of its own citizens.
This is why even cancelling the Declaration of Indulgence and agreeing
to the 1673 Test Act that excluded Catholics from power did nothing to
redeem Charles from charges of popery: the fundamental debate was not
about religious belief but political power, in a struggle toward government
by law rather than edict. Meanwhile, in the minds of many republicans,
the politics of virtue would yield ultimately to a politics of vested materi-
al interest and utilitarian economics. Indeed, tolerationist republicans like
Henry Neville and other Harringtonians saw classical Roman virtue as
a marker of ancient Romes poverty, not of its freedom; therefore, any
political reforms that also aimed at prosperity would have to confront cor-
ruption by addressing first the economic interests of all citizens, including
Catholics.
For Milton, however, not even collapse of the republican cause deterred
his belief that temporal political hopes could be made to conform to a
transcendent ethical ideal. In The Readie and Easie Way to Establish A Free
Commonwealth, Miltons conception of republican virtue rises not only above
peace and war but also above the people whose support is required to make
the commonwealth free: most voices ought not alwaies to prevail where main
matters are in question; there being in number little vertue (REW, YP
7.415). A curious thing happens to secular republican virtue in this argument.
First, Milton disdains the greater number of people for their little vertue, yet
he acknowledges the need for virtue to be instilled in each of them. For now it
is not just the peoples leaders who require transcendent virtue, but the people
themselves: their corrupt and faulty education must be reformed, in order to
make them fittest to chuse (REW, YP 7.443). Miltons concern for fitness to
choose thus puts a reformist edge on classical virtue. But rather than propose
educational reforms to cultivate that virtue, he subordinates virtue to a trait
that is clearly oriented to the realm of the transcendent divine. He gives priority
to faith: faith not without vertue, temperance, modestie, sobrietie, parsimonie,
Quentin Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1998), 49.
See Blair Worden, Republicanism and the Restoration, 16601683 in Wootton, ed.,
Republicanism, Liberty, and Commercial Society, 13993; Neville references, 14452.
justice; to place every one his privat welfare and happiness in the public
peace, libertie and safetie (REW, YP 7.443). The traits that accompany faith
and animate its presence both in the argument and in the world are ancillary,
not definitive or necessary. Faith may place happiness in circumstances
like public peace and safety, but faiths happiness does not depend on these.
In the civil realm of Miltons commonwealth, republican virtue is only one
of a string of handmaids to faith, who travels not without them, but who
does not really need them because her goals are not the same as theirs. Faith
trumps contingency, whereas qualities like temperance, modesty, sobriety and
parsimony merely cope with it. As with the perspective held by free conscience
on toleration, divine faith makes use of these qualities only in the temporal
realm. This is why the chosen Patriots among Miltons faithful population
have so little actual governing to do that most of thir business will be in forein
affairs (REW, YP 7.443). Miltons ready and easy way requires the people
to have already established themselves as a free commonwealth: a collection
of citizens so like-minded that the need for toleration, or government itself,
disappears. Yet he calls for that commonwealth at a moment of temporal
crisis in which not even he can identify which citizens might be fittest to
chuse.
Judging from the temporal evidence he offers in The Readie and Easie Way,
those fit citizens may be hard to identify because they dont exist. Milton
berates the citizenry for failing to choose; he maintains that only a select few
have a right to choose; he insists that it is not too late to choose. But then
he condemns the people when they do choose, for they choose free trade
(the forein or domestic slaverie of a rotten march into luxurie (REW, YP
7.462)) rather than free conscience. Their choice crystallizes for Milton the
problem with toleration, for in his eyes, choosing toward mere temporal ends
cancels freedom of conscience. Fully to explain why, perhaps even to himself,
will require him to compose an epic poem around the question: the cosmology
of Paradise Lost sets out the complete rationale whereby God, not temporal
circumstance or contingency, is the reference point for exercising freedom
of conscience. Not free, what proof could they have given sincere / Of true
allegiance, constant faith or love (PL 3.1034), God asks, and neither the
question nor the answer has to do with historical contingency. As he writes The
Readie and Easie Way, Milton either does not fully recognize or does not wish
to reveal how completely his free commonwealth depends not on republican
ideas, nor on a system of laws, nor on procedural guarantees for free election
Miltons program of transcendent education for the elite was expressly designed, acccording
to Cedric Brown, to save the multitude from this kind of self-enslavement: see Great Senates
and Godly Education, in Armitage, Himy, and Skinner, eds., Milton and Republicanism, 4360.
274 Lana Cable
by fit choosers of well-trained leaders. Without explicitly saying so, Milton

defines his free republican commonwealth as a contradiction in terms: secular
theocracy.
This contradiction is not resolved in The Readie and Easie Way. How a
commonwealth could address historical contingency without answering either
to history or to contingency is not so much rationalized by Milton as it is
rhetorically juggled. Since we could not serve two contrary maisters, God and
the king (REW, YP 7.411), elimination of the king logically turns common-
wealth service over to the remaining master. But rather than considering the
implications of theocracy, Milton hedges by introducing an alternative pair
of contrary masters conformable to secular republican principles: or the
king and that more supreme law, sworn in the first place to maintain, our
safetie and our libertie the law of nature only, which is the only law of laws
truly and properly to all mankinde fundamental; the beginning and the end
of all Government (REW, YP 7.41113). With natural law (sworn in the first
place and newly reasserted) as the only law of laws, divine law seems to have
been left outside the governmental framework. Yet after broadening the reach
of safety and liberty by supreme law to encompass all mankinde and all
Government, Milton backtracks. If Parliament and the people will throughly
reforme they must begin with church reformation (if they throughly intend
it) to evangelic rules, as opposed to ecclesiastical canon rules, which he
defines as meer positive laws, neither natural nor moral (REW, YP 7.413).
Thus Milton slips natural law neatly under the domain of evangelism, but he
does it discreetly enough to leave himself free to invoke at his rhetorical or
ideological convenience the authority of either religious or secular absolutes:
an evangelical God or natural law or liberty of conscience, whichever best
serves the polemical need of the moment. As a result, Miltons claims for
commonwealth freedom in Readie and Easie Way turn out to be not only both
eternal and temporal, but also both universal and exclusionary, sometimes
within a single sentence. He rails against new injunctions to manacle the
native liberty of mankinde; turning all vertue into prescription, servitude, and
necessitie; yet before reaching a stop, he baptizes mankinds native liberty and
virtue by deploring the great impairing and frustrating of Christian libertie
(REW, YP 7.445). The secular values of temporal liberty and virtue have both
been rescued by Miltons argument, but you still have to be a Christian to
deserve them. And his closing words may carry exclusion even further as he
distinguishes between men who are temporalists (ther will want at no time
who are good at circumstances) and men who are eternalists (who set thir
mindes on main matters I finde not many). The man he ultimately does
find is Jeremiah, who also had only trees and stones and soil to hear his cry
that all the earths perverse inhabitants are deaf (REW, YP 7.4623).
Exclusion and Deliberative Pathos

Miltons exclusionary rhetoric in The Readie and Easie Way is impassioned,
but the concerns that gave rise to it were neither imaginary nor merely
partisan. From 1660 until the 16889 revolution, debates over what can and
cannot be tolerated continued in the Protestant reform mode of squaring
off over what from a distance might look like differences of religious faith,
primarily Protestant versus Catholic. But the debate was not over religious
doctrine, nor could practicing toleration to accommodate differing spiritual
beliefs settle the issue. During the long-running crisis over who would succeed
Charles II, for example, 95 per cent of the pamphlet literature did not even
deal with the Catholic Duke of York or the particular threat that would be
posed by his ascending the throne. The primary debate was rather over the
current arbitrary policies of Charles II and his abuse of Parliament, a concern
that was variously figured as the threat of popery to Protestantism, or the
threat of kingly authority over parliamentary government. During the reign
of Charles I it had been arbitrary rule, not transubstantiation, that polemicists
had in mind when they branded the kings practices popery. So when
Charles II displayed similar arbitrariness, it was not only religious radicals
who charged him with popish tyranny. Recent reassessments of Restoration
political history demonstrate that beneath the profligacy and scandal that
inspired literary satire during the later Stuart reign, there thrived a culture
of power abuse that until recent decades has been largely overlooked. In
his two-volume study of republican martyr Algernon Sidney, Jonathan Scott
traces the parallels between events that led to rebellion against Charles I
and events that alienated Parliament and polarized society by the end of
1680. There was good reason to fear that the reign of Charles II could lead
to history repeating itself. Conflict with Parliament over finances, repeated
suspension of sessions, foreign influence over the king that included but
did not stop at religious influence: all these parallels raised in the minds
of those who had experienced it the specter of civil war and another lurch
into extreme government. That Charles was beholden to the French Catholic
king who had harbored him in exile was no secret to the parliamentary
opposition or to controversialists who before and after the Popish Plot
My treatment of events related to the Exclusion Crisis is indebted to Jonathan Scott,

Algernon Sidney and the Restoration Crisis, 16771683 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1991). The statistics regarding the response in controversial literature to the succession issue
may be found on p. 21. Subsequent page references appear in the text of my argument. For a
full history of the republican thinking and political actions that involve Sidney, see Jonathan
Scott, Algernon Sidney and the English Republic, 16231677 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1988).
276 Lana Cable
kept anti-Catholic sentiment stirred up. But in late 1678, at the height of
alarm over the Popish Plot, it was revealed to Parliament that their repeated
prorogations during the 1670s had been the result of a secret deal made between
Charles II and Louis XIV. The French king was paying Charles substantial
sums of money to keep Parliament out of session and thus excluded from
influence over European Protestant affairs. The public outrage sparked by this
revelation revived and consolidated republican power behind the managed
confrontation over parliamentary rights that culminated in the Commons
passing the long-debated bill of exclusion (Scott, Restoration Crisis, 346,
6472). The Exclusion Crisis was not simply an effort to keep Catholic
King James from ascending the throne: it was rather a growing conviction
in Parliament, particularly in the lower house, that the repeated episodes of
conflict with Charles II were proving arbitrary government to be inextricable
from Stuart monarchy.
Yet the revival of republican power created a ripple of concern that the
Good Old Cause could also revive, along with its entailments. Since the
City of London and House of Commons were now united in resistance to
arbitrary government, the rhetoric coming from both echoed the polarizing
rhetoric of the old radicalism. Quickly the House of Lords and the king moved
to quash the threat. The exclusion bill was defeated in the upper house, and
Charles reminded the public that their last experience of arbitrary gov-
ernment had in fact come not from a royal, but from an out-of-control
parliamentary power (Scott, Restoration Crisis, 45). Less than two months
after the Commons passed their bill, Charles dissolved their session and con-
vened a new parliament, pointedly in Oxford rather than London. Yet public
memory of arbitrary government included a popish monarchy as well as a
military junta: the citizenry knew from experience that models of government
in themselves provided no guarantee against repressive rule. The polarization
that resulted from the revival of republicanism amounted to a battle over
whose absolutism is less arbitrary and unaccountable. Events surrounding the
Exclusion Crisis demonstrated that the essential forces contributing to political
conflict in 1680 differed little from those of 1660 or 1640, except that those
who feared arbitrary rule now seemed to be running out of options. Historical
contingency had exposed the fallacy of appropriating transcendent veri-
tiesfaith, virtue, divine rightin the hope of imposing order on temporal
conditions.
Since identifiable political parties emerged from the turmoil of the Exclusion
Crisis, it is often assumed that partisanship defined the conflict. But this
assumption depends on clearly delineated alternative principles of governance,
according to which the relative merits of contrasting agendas can be considered
and determined. Modern notions of partisanship are too far evolved and
contrived to describe the party experience of the 1670s. Party loyalties were
not only not hardened; they didnt exist: To a large extent, and with the
important exception of some hardliners on both sides, 1678s whigs were
1681s tories (Scott, Restoration Crisis, 47). The dilemma created by
having no clear ideological perspective for dealing with political conflict
crystallizes the challenge for both toleration and freedom of conscience.
Secularizing conscience meant choosing well in an ethical space left confused
or even vacant by failed efforts of leaders and institutions to meet their own
expectations. For a visionary of faith like Milton, this did not defeat free
conscience so long as the concept of a divine absolute remained accessible,
as in the cosmology for choosing that he built into Paradise Lost. That John
Dryden would have seen fit to treat this cosmology as a mere matter of style,
hopelessly out of date, makes pragmatic sense in the political context, as
does his wish to bring the ethical power of that cosmology under temporal
control by tagging Miltons lines. Whether or not Paradise Lost would have
had the popular appeal required to make it a subversive force in revaluing
republican ethics of conscience during the 1670s is beside the point, although
the poems capacity for such influence is demonstrated by its reception
among later republican theorists like Thomas Jefferson. But for secularizing
consciences set adrift by the turbulence of later Stuart political culture,
the elusiveness of ethical anchorage for public decision-making could be
daunting.
For Milton, this political dilemma is reflected more by his treatment
of free choice in Samson Agonistes than it is in Paradise Lost or Paradise
Regained, where ethical footing is unambiguously secured by representing
the transcendent realm of the divine. While obviously no secularizer himself,
Samson dramatizes the experience of deliberative anxiety that would have
been familiar to Restoration secularizers of conscience, regardless of whether
they were secularizers by design, as pragmatists in a changing temporal world,
or by inadvertence, as collateral damages in the wars of truth. Miltons
dramatization of the anxiety and tragic potential of politically significant
choices depends in Samson Agonistes on avoiding mimetic treatment of the
divine. The world in which we witness Samsons struggles over free conscience
insists on remaining temporal. Samsons deliberative impasse prior to entering
the Philistine arena is familiar, and as Stanley Fish has shown, his protracted
debate with himself over sacred versus profane acts simply surrenders to the
word yet. Yet that he may dispense with me or thee catapults Samson out
of reasoning discourse, or into higher reality, or both, depending on how
See Hugh Jenkins, Jefferson (Re) Reading Milton, Milton Quarterly 32.1 (March 1998),
328.
278 Lana Cable
you choose. Readers who look to Samson hoping to comprehend human

choices that provoke cataclysm in the political arena naturally want to know
more about what leads him to disjoin rational analysis from claims on a divine
absolute. The question of whether or not this discontinuity of thought makes
Miltons Samson a terrorist continues to stir passions in academic circles.
But the more psychologically revealing question remains not whether Samson
is or is not a terrorist, but rather, what exactly is it that leads him to make
that leap from the temporal realm of rational analysis into a supra-rational
or sub-rational or non-rational, possibly non-existent realm, one definable in
temporal terms only as relinquishment of will itself?
A moment of insight into Samsons apparent discontinuity of thought, and
evidence of the familiarity with which Restoration political culture confronted
deliberative anxiety, comes from a jarring but revelatory juxtaposition. The
Duke of Buckinghams Prince Volscius (who like Miltons Samson also appears
in 1671) deliberates not on sacred versus profane spiritual acts, but, rather, on
a fashionably secular surrogate, action for honor versus action for love. Like
Samson reading the import of his divine strength through the status of his
hair (How slight the gift was (SA 59)), Volscius reads the import of his own
ethical dilemma through the dressing of his lower limbs:
Sometimes with stubborn honour, like this boot,
My mind is guarded, and resolvd to dot:
Sometimes, again, that very mind, by love
Disarmed, like this other leg does prove.

What shall I do? what conduct shall I find
To lead me through this twilight of my mind?
Much as Samson does in the tragic twilight of his own mind, Prince Volscius
in a bathetic parody of tragic bewilderment finds himself mocked by the
flimsiness of the ethical principle he seizes on to sort out his dilemma. Merely
to think about donning his war boots is enough to remind Volscius of the
pleasures of leaving them off, just as Samsons recollected glories of strength
inevitably plunge him into reliving the shame of giving away his secret.
Stanley Fish, Question and Answer in Samson Agonistes, Critical Quarterly 11 (1969), 254;
Spectacle and Evidence in Samson Agonistes, Critical Inquiry 15 (Spring 1989), 578.
See John Carey, A Work in Praise of Terrorism? September 11 and Samson Agonistes,
The Times Literary Supplement, 6 September 2002, 1516; see responding articles by Joseph
Wittreich, David Loewenstein, Michael Lieb and Stanley Fish in Albert Labriola and Michael
Lieb, eds., Milton in the Age of Fish: Essays on Authorship, Text, and Terrorism (Pittsburgh:
Duquesne University Press, 2006).
George Villiers, The Rehearsal, in Brice Harris, ed., Restoration Plays (New York: Modern
Library, 1953), 35; the cited passage is in Act 3, Scene 5.
Despite their distance from each other in dignity and genre, Samson and
Volscius share a common burden: their capacity for reason obliges each of
them to use reasoning, even if limits in their knowledge or understanding
run them into a deliberative dead end. It is the deliberative dead end that
marks Samsons forsaking of reason altogether, surrendering to an unknown
will whatever he possesses both of his deliberative faculties and of his own
free will. Prince Volscius, unable to discover by deliberation much of a will
in the first place, free or fettered, hobbles off the stage, one boot off and one
on, fed up with having to make ethical choices at all. In short, no sooner
do Samson and Volscius each face dilemmas that require consideration of
what ethical choosing actually means, than both heroes start casting about for
ways to be rid of their freedom to choose. In narratives that function less as
deliberative process than as deliberative pathos, Samson and Volscius alike
finish by trading in the demands of rational analysis for a refund of their
purchase on absolutes.
Deliberative pathos dramatizes the inward experience of conflict between
temporal and eternal realms of value. It maps the affective territory of freedom
of conscience, the emotional contours of a mental activity that Milton all too
casually in Areopagitica equates with reason. By the time of the Restoration,
the territory of free conscience had come to include not just the private
domain of individual intellectual and spiritual life, but also the public domain
of every act of civic choice: free conscience meant future-shaping in all its
promise and its peril. In that context, Miltons talismanic reason is but
choosing (Areop., YP 2.527) offered a beacon that illuminated only the
smoothest parts of a treacherous landscape. The landscapes treacherousness
grew increasingly familiar to those of Miltons republican community who
survived him to witness the Exclusion Crisis. The turmoil of 1680 made
especially poignant the on- and off-stage agon of trying to merge temporal and
eternal realms into a single liberating concept of secular republicanism. The
struggle yielded two broad categories of analysis. Political analysis examined
relations between temporal and eternal frameworks for ethical authority in
the community; while psychological analysis examined individual conflicts
between instinctive, life-affirming personal drives on the one hand and civic
duty on the other.
Intolerable Virtue
By coincidence or by design, Nathaniel Lees Lucius Junius Brutus was first
performed three weeks after the republican-sponsored bill of exclusion had
been passed by the House of Commons and thrown out by the House of Lords.
280 Lana Cable
Lees dramatic study of the founding of the Roman republic opened in the first
week of December 1680 to high acclaim. After no more than six performances
the play was shut down, about three weeks before a still defiant House of
Commons was itself shut down. Yet the time was ripe for Lees play not merely
because the Popish Plot, the Exclusion Crisis, and debates over toleration
kept English minds focused on republican ideas about free conscience and the
rule of law. Lees powerful affective tragedy was timely because the political
situation generated extraordinary psychological tension with its experience
of intolerable political choosing. Lees tragedy wrenches because we witness
the human machinations behind a secularized individual conscience being
sucked into and destroyed for an ideologically constructed political cause,
also secular, but of dubious value. Because the play was suppressed by the
Lord Chamberlain for containing Scandalous Expressions & Reflections vpon
ye Government, critical convention has largely followed the courts lead
in placing Lee among Whig constitutionalists and anti-monarchists. But if
a good many 1678 Whigs really were the Tories of 1681, Lee would surely
have been one of that bewildered and disconcerted number, particularly in
light of his subsequent collaborations with Dryden. Appearing at the height
of the Exclusion Crisis, Lucius Junius Brutus is best viewed as a reflection on
the political turmoil itself, with its polarizing conflicts over arbitrary rule,
and its exploration of the despair that an increasingly ungovernable temporal
realm must have generated in a secularized, idealistic individual conscience.
Viewed not as polemic, but as an examination of deliberative pathos, the
play provides comfort to no political party. Lee in fact depicts rationales
for both republican and monarchical allegiance. But to Lee and to the play,
more important than what people think in politics is how they think: political
Comprehensive historical, biographical and critical commentary on Lee and his play are
provided by J. M. Armistead, Nathaniel Lee (Boston: Twayne Publishers, G. K. Hall & Co., 1979).
See especially The Playwright and His Milieu, 1731, and Providential Surgery: Lucius Junius
Brutus, 13043. Armisteads reading of the play as a study in republican psychology of hybrid
moral vigor that favors superhuman law over savage prerogative (1323) is supported by
Antony Hammond, The Greatest Action: Lees Lucius Junius Brutus , in Antony Coleman
and Antony Hammond, eds., Poetry and Drama 15701700 (London and New York: Methuen,
1981), 17385. But analysis of political psychology leads others to explore the private psychology
of Lees hero. Joyce MacDonald reads Brutuss triumphal paternalism through the sovereign
masculinity of the Exclusion Crisis in Public Wounds: Sexual Bodies and the Origins of the
State in Nathaniel Lees Lucius Junius Brutus, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 32 (2003),
22944; and J. Peter Verdurmen finds Brutuss sadism to be politics-cancelling in Lucius Junius
Brutus and Restoration Tragedy: the Politics of Trauma, Journal of European Studies 19.2 (1989),
8198.
John Loftis, Nathaniel Lee: Lucius Junius Brutus (Lincoln, Nebr.: University of Nebraska
Press, 1967). The citation is from the Introduction, xii; subsequent references to lines in the
play are identified in the text.
analysis and psychological analysis combine to expose the reckless trafficking

in transcendent ethical values that underpins temporal order.
For Lees Brutus, merely founding a constitutional polity is not enough to
liberate Rome. To create perfect freedom for the people, he must invest his
republican constitution with the ethical status of a divine absolute. His ideal
Roman republic makes demands similar to the demands Miltons Samson
ascribes to God: unwavering submission of all mortal attributes, including
individual reasoning and free will. By sacrificing to the free Roman republic
every last vestige of his own humanity, by actually breaking with human
identity in the name of the virtuous ideal, Brutus thinks he can obliterate
contingency and circumstance, and with these, constitutionalisms dependence
on fallible human reasoning and choice. At the hands of Brutus, deliberative
process and deliberative pathos alike go down to defeat. His final speech is
delivered from a senate chamber mired in gore: headless bodies and the blood
of innocents and guilty alike surround him as he makes a prayer to Jove that
is also a final proclamation: the entire world, he believes, has finally achieved
a state of absolute virtue, perfect liberty and everlasting peace.
This shocking denouement is the logical outcome of Brutuss contradictory
principle of republican liberty: it must be simultaneously temporal and eternal.
His vision for Roman freedom is a utopian steady state that, like Miltons
self-governing free commonwealth, could in fact work as easily under monar-
chical rule as under republican rule, since rule itself is not needed. But in
order to achieve the idealized stasis he desires, Brutus must induce others to
consign to free republican Rome whatever might contribute to the condition
of deliberative pathos. The ingredients of that pathos include every experience
and sensory perception and field of reasoning choice that citizens might
regard as the natural realm of free conscience and individual will: emotional
attachments, domestic virtues and responsibilities, personal hopes, fears or
ambitions. The resulting consignment of individual will to the remote ethical
absolute that Brutus labels Roman virtue forms the eternal principle on which
his idealized republic is to stand.
This consignment of individual will is elaborated most fully in Brutuss
dealings with his virtuous son Titus. Tituss value to Brutus lies not in
how the youth might contribute to republican governance with his virtuous
character, but rather in how his virtue can be appropriated to republican
symbolism. Brutus inventories Tituss virtues with meticulous detachment:
sweet manners, open air, clear brow, manly plain dealingit is impossible
for Brutus not to love Titus. But Titus registers Brutuss detailed scrutiny as
draining him of personal identity, dissolving his natural being in order to
screw him to a performance that will strip him of humanity. Yes, Titus,
responds Brutus, pleased by his sons quick insight: I find our genii know
282 Lana Cable
each other well (II.2923). To embody the absolute virtue of the free Roman
republic, he wants possession of Tituss virtuous soul: If thou art mine,
thou art not Teramintas (II.328). Language conventionalized by heroic play
love-and-honor conflicts leads some critics to underestimate the demand that
Titus banish his beloved. But how far we are from Prince Volscius territory
is shown by the affective detail that Lee builds into the fight for Tituss soul.
When Brutus demands that his son answer to thausterity of my virtue
(II.309), Titus responds with a cry of human identity eviscerated: Conscience,
heart, and bowels, / Am I a man? Have I my flesh about me? (II.3467).
The scene is as graphic a staging as we might imagine of the definition Roger
Williams gives to forcing of conscience: soul rape. It is Brutus alone who
claims that his demand serves a higher good and that every other concern
must all be lost when honor, / When Rome, the world, and the gods come to
claim us (II.3801). What Titus tells Teraminta after the assault has nothing
to do with honor, world or gods: My father wrought me up, he confesses, I
know not how, to swear I know not what, / That I would send thee hence
(II.4824).
When Titus first yields to Brutus, then betrays him to save Teraminta, and
finally recoils from his betrayal, the effect on Brutus is surprisingly complex.
Tituss failure to be absolute for Roman virtue leaves Brutus momentarily
bereft of device: Im at a loss of thought, and must acknowledge / The
councils of the gods are fathomless; / Nay, tis the hardest task perhaps of
life / To be assured of what is vice or virtue (IV.2758). This moment of
ethical uncertainty is his only genuinely deliberative moment in the play, an
admission of the contingency without which there can be no human meaning,
and because of which there will always be pathos. But since being at a loss is
intolerable for Brutus, he moves quickly to restore his drive toward the ethical
absolute. Like Samson, he turns his deliberations on the axis of a yet. He
devises a way for the councils of the gods not to be fathomless: Yet after all I
justify the gods, / And will conclude theres reason supernatural / That guides
us through the world with vast discretion (IV.2935). Not only will Brutus
himself justify the gods; he will conclude their supernatural reason in such a
way as to convert his sons failure into a pattern of his own virtue. Brutus will
represent Tituss death sentence as if it had been determined not by himself, but
by a cosmic justice machine turned by the very hand of Jove (IV.509). Brutuss
move to fix Titus as a symbol of his own virtue by his sons beheading will once
again be mocked by circumstance, but not before the executions symbolism
is imbedded in republican record: Roman justice makes no distinction of
Samuel L. Caldwell, ed., The Complete Writings of Roger Williams, 7 vols. (New York:
Russell & Russell, 1963), 3.182.
persons, in life or in death. Ultimately, Titus spurns appropriation of his

identity to Roman symbolism by having the loyal Valerius fulfill a promise
made to him earlier. With a sword, not the executioners axe, Valerius runs
the young man through, robbing Brutus of his transcendent symbol of Roman
justice.
Lees spectacle of ordinary human virtue sacrificed to the greater good of a
free republic argues that nothing of value survives absolute rule, and nothing
heroic comes of transcending what is human. Nevertheless, the urge toward
absolutism and transcendence persisted in secular republican ideology and
iconography. Pierre-Narciss Guerins 1793 painting La Morte de Brutus, in
the Museum of the French Revolution at Vizille, depicts the slain Roman
republican hero being carried off the battlefield by his compatriots. The
painting upset revolutionaries, many of whom would have preferred to see
Brutus heroically astride a rearing stallion, to convey the virtuous fortitude
of the new republic. Instead, Guerins Brutus is obviously dead: his skin is
ghastly pale and drawn, his head lolls, and his limbs are stretched and nearly
disjointed by the weight of his body as his friends struggle to lift him out of
the fray. Critics who thought the painting too morbidly realistic apparently
overlooked how its appropriation of divinity mimes another work of art.
With great care, Guerin painted his dead Brutus to evoke the iconic power of
Michelangelos Pieta. Since in Eikonoklastes Milton excoriated appropriation
of Christian imagery to confer divinity on Charles I, he might have been
equally disturbed to see this tactic used to promote republican ideals. But
the evidence of his own ambiguous trafficking between temporal and eternal
realms in republican politics suggests that we will never be sure.
15
Milton, Islam and the Ottomans
Gerald MacLean
That Milton himself seldom referred directly to Islam, to Muhammad, or

to the Ottomans, the scourge of God as they were commonly known,
should not lead us to presume that he was either ignorant of, or entire-
ly indifferent to, the crucial place that they had come to occupy in the
seventeenth-century debates concerning religious toleration, political free-
dom and national identities. Taking a lead from Arab-Islamic responses
to Milton that have focused on his treatment of Satan, I will suggest that
Miltons unorthodox treatment of ancient sources has made him attractive
to a variety of Muslim thinkers who recognize in Miltons literary works
an attitude toward religious toleration remarkably in line with their own
traditions. Of Ottoman statecraft in this respect, Geza David has observed
that, while it would be an exaggeration to speak here of religious tolera-
tion in the modern sense, Christianity in the Balkans continued to thrive
during the Ottoman occupation of the sixteenth century: new churches
were built, Christian art flourished, church leaders retained the right of
taxation and of jurisdiction in religious and civil law. In many areas of
the Balkans, large contingents of Christian soldiers guarded strategic areas,
outnumbered Muslim troops, and never once initiated anti-Ottoman move-
ments. In the secular sphere, traditional taxes on the sale of wine and
on pigs slaughtered for Christmas were permitted to continue unabated
under Ottoman administrators who drank no wine nor ate any pork.
Indeed, to western Europeans of Miltons era who were accustomed to
monarchies which attempted to impose uniformity of faith, the legal and
My thanks to Sharon Achinstein and Elizabeth Sauer for invaluable comments on earlier drafts
of this essay, and to audiences at Sussex, Reading, and Cambridge for challenging questions.
Geza David, Administration in Ottoman Europe, in Metin Kunt and Christine Woodhead,
eds., Suleyman the Magnificent and His Age: The Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern World
(London: Longman, 1995), 7190.
Milton, Islam and the Ottomans 285
religious pluralism of the Ottoman Empire was among its most striking
features.
Toleration and the Ottomans

May not Christians be ashamed to be taught of a Turke?
William Bedwell, 1615
Consider, for instance, the anxiety that accompanied the recognition that
the Ottomans were more tolerant of religious differences than the rulers of
European Christian states, such as the Habsburgs, French, and Venetians,
who sought to impose religious uniformity. In 1529, Martin Luther uttered
a half-truth when noticing: some praise the Turks government because he
allows every one to believe what he will so long as he remains temporal lord, yet
this reputation is not true, for he does not allow Christians to come together
in public. In fairness to Luther, he probably did not know that Mehmed
II (r. 145163), known in the west as the Conqueror, allowed the Genoese
community of Galata to trade, travel, own property and worship as they
pleased following his capture of Istanbul in 1453 despite the fact that they had
assisted in the citys defence. Next year, far from preventing Christians from
gathering to worship, Mehmed had George-Gennadios Scholarius installed
Patriarch of the Orthodox Church; a position left vacant for many years
under the Byzantines. Mehmeds motives were to repopulate the city with
skilled Anatolians of the Greek faith, but this was not the act of a despot
seeking to expel, persecute or convert Christians. Jean Bodin is often cited for
observing:
The great emperour of the Turkes doth with as great devotion as any prince in the
world honour and observe the religion by him received from his ancestours, and yet
detesteth hee not the straunge religions of others; but to the contrarie permitteth every
man to live according to his conscience: yea and that more is, neere unto his pallace at
Colin Imber, Ebus-Suud: The Islamic Legal Tradition (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 1997), 6.
Martin Luther, On War Against the Turk, 1529, cited by Daniel Goffman, The Ottoman
Empire and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 110.
Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 13001481 (Istanbul: Isis Press, 1990), 158, citing E.
Dallegio dAllesio, Le texte grec du Trait, conclu par les Genois de Galata avec Mehmet II, le 1er
juin, 1453, Hellenika 11 (1939), 11524.
Philip Mansel, Constantinople: City of the Worlds Desire, 14531924 (1995; rpt. Har-
mondsworth: Penguin, 1997), 910.
286 Gerald MacLean
Pera, suffereth foure divers religions, viz. That of the Jews, that of the Christians, that
of the Grecians, and that of the Mohametanes.
Bodin was not far off the mark. Certainly by modern standards, the Ottoman
state was discriminatory, imposing higher taxes on non-Muslims living within
its borders than on Muslims, and dictating unenforceable sumptuary laws.
But by contemporary standards the Muslim treatment of Jews and Christians
was relatively tolerant and liberal.
When Milton was born, information about Ottoman attitudes and policies
toward non-Muslims was widely available in English as well as other European
languages. Often employed by Anglo-Protestant writers as a stick to beat
Roman Catholicism, the argument that the Ottoman sultan was less intolerant
than the Pope took several different forms even as it was reiterated throughout
Miltons lifetime. William Biddulph, an English chaplain in Aleppo, was by
no means ecumenical in his outlook and was consistently worried that he
would be spiritually contaminated by contact with Jews, Muslims, pagans,
Roman Catholics and members of the Eastern Christian communities. But in
his Travels (1609), published a year after Miltons birth, even he felt impelled
to concede:
I hold it better for Merchants and other Christians to sojourne and to use trade and
trafficke amongst Turkes then Papists; for, the Turke giveth libertie of conscience to
all men, and liketh well of every man that is forward and zealous in his owne religion.
But among the Papists no man can buy and sell, unlesse hee beare the markes of the
beast as S. John foretold, Revelation 13:17.
In Istanbul three years later, preaching at the funeral of Anne, Lady Glover,
the first English ambassadorial wife to reside in Pera, William Forde used the
occasion to denounce the Pope in no uncertain terms. The Turke, he declared,
permitteth Christs Gospel to be preached; the Pope condemneth it to the
racke and inquisition; who is the better man? Later English travellers who
wrote of visiting Ottoman lands, such as George Sandys (1615) and Henry
Blount (1636), also reported on Ottoman toleration of other religions.
Jean Bodin, The six Bookes of a Commonweale, trans. Richard Knolles (London: G. Bishop,
1606), 6.537. The Ottomans had no palace at Pera.
Hugh Goddard, A History of ChristianMuslim Relations (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 2000), 68.
See Matthew Dimmock, New Turkes: Dramatizing Islam and the Ottomans in Early Modern
England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005) for a recent assessment.
William Biddulph, The Travels of certaine Englishmen (London: Thomas Haveland for
William Aspey, 1609), 601.
William Forde, A Sermon Preached at Constantinople (London: Edward Griffin for Francis
Constable, 1616), sig. A2.
For Sandys, see James Ellison, George Sandys: Travel, Colonialism and Tolerance in the
Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002), 767.
Among his reasons for travelling, Blount listed the desire to witness for himself
the sects which live under the Turkes, as Greekes, Armenians, Freinks, and
Zinganaes, but especially the Jewes. Throughout the century this coexistence
of so many potentially antagonistic communities within Ottoman society
fascinated early British visitors for whom the establishment of mosques,
synagogues or Orthodox churches in London, Dublin or Edinburgh would
have been inconceivable. At the same time, Ottoman toleration, combined
with the appeal of turning Turk, proved so compelling that, in 1612,
three thousand British mariners were living and working in the Ottoman
regencies of North Africa and refused to return. For men of humble
origins, freedom of religion may have been less important than access to
wealth and status, but for Hugh Holland, the Westminster-educated poet
and sometime fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, living in the Ottoman
Empire provided liberty to practise the Roman Catholicism to which he had
converted.
It was, however, not only chaplains, travellers, mariners and converts with
direct experience of the Muslim world who acknowledged that the Ottomans
permitted liberty of conscience. Nor was the Pope the exclusive target of
reproof since the same case would be made against bishops, and later the
Presbyterians; that they too should be ashamed to be less Christian in their
policies than the Ottomans. For the Baptist Leonard Busher writing in 1614, the
Turks exemplified how governments should respect individual conscience.
Bushers pamphlet Religions Peace catalogued numerous reasons why religious
persecution contravened Christian belief and has been hailed as the earliest
treatise known to be extant on the great theme of liberty of conscience.
Busher addressed himself to King James and the Princely and right Honorable
Parliament:
Henry Blount, A Voyage into the Levant (London: John Leggatt for Andrew Crooke,
1636), 2.
On 4 Feb. 1612, the Venetian ambassador in London, Antonio Foscarini, wrote to
the Doge and Senate after consulting with Lord Salisbury: Council has resolved to grant
an universal pardon to the pirates subjects of his Majesty, as has been asked for in their
name by ten of them who are now in Ireland. The Prince has lent his authority to this
scheme as he wishes to see the mariners of this Kingdom augmented by those who are
now buccaneering and whose number is put down at three thousand men, Calendar of
State Papers: Venetian, Vol. XII: 16101613, ed. Horatio F. Brow (London: Stationery Office,
1905), 283.
Holland eventually returned to England where, in the words of Thomas Fuller, he grumbled
out the rest of his life in visible discontentment, The History of the Worthies of England, ed. John
Nichols, 2 vols. (London: Rivington et al., 1811), 2.267; see S. G. Culliford, Hugh Holland in
Turkey, Modern Language Notes 69.7 (November 1954), 48993; and Louise Guiney, Recusant
Poets (London: Sheed and Ward, 1938).
So Edward Bean Underhill, editor of Tracts on Liberty of Conscience and Persecution,
16141661 (London: J. Hadden, 1846), 6.
288 Gerald MacLean
I read that a Bishop of Rome would have constrained a Turkish Emperor to the
Christian faith, unto whom the emperor answered, I beleeve that as Christ was an
excellent Prophet, but he did never (so far as I understand) command that men should
with the power of weapons bee constrained to beleeve his law; and verily, I also do force no
man to beleeve Mahomets law. Also I read that Jews, Christians, and Turks are tolerated
in Constantinople, and yet are peaceable, though so contrary the one to the other. If
this be so, how much more ought Christians not to force one another to Religion?
and how much more ought Christians to tolerate Christians when as the Turks do
tolerate them? shall we be lesse mercifull then the Turks? or shall we learne the Turks
to persecute Christians?
A year after Bushers pamphlet appeared, the Arabic scholar William Bedwell
echoed Bushers words in an ironic reversal, asking: May not Christians be
ashamed to be taught of a Turke? Bedwells book, Mohammedis Imposturae:
that is, A Discovery of the Manifold Forgeries, Falshoods, and horrible impieties
of the blasphemous Seducer Mohammed (1615), was the earliest serious attempt
to explicate Islam for English readers. Yet Bedwell was so far from being an
apologist for Islam that the modern Arabist Alastair Hamilton notes how his
object [was] not to understand Islam, but to attack it and expose it to ridicule
while showing that the Quran is inadequate for salvation and to prove the
importance of translating the Gospels into Arabic. Despite hostility to Islam,
Bedwell conceded that Christians might have something to learn from the
Turke.
For his part, Busher found further lessons to be learned from Ottoman
precedent and shifted his attack beyond bishops to include intolerant Protes-
tants. In listing reasons against religious persecution, he turns the Ottoman
example into a sliding scale of blame, invoking Pauls letter to the Romans,
2:13, to show that Protestants who prosecuted other Christians were worse
than Papists, Turks or pagans. Fourteenthly, he writes
because the burning, banishing, hanging, and imprisoning of men and women,
by Protestants, for difference of Religion, do justifie the burning, banishing, and
imprisoning of men and women, by the Papists, for difference of religion, even as the
Papists doe justifie the Turks and Pagans in such like cruelty and tyranny; wherein
now is the Protestants more mercifull then the Papists, or the Papists then the Turks?
Wherefore as the Papists (when they complain of the Turks and Pagans, for their
bloody persecution) doe therein condemn themselves, because they are found to do
the same, yea worse, for it is greater tyranny for one Christian to force & kil another,
then for Turks and Pagans to kil a christian [sic] for that is no such great wonder,
Leonard Busher, Religions Peace: Or, A Plea for Liberty of Conscience (London: John
Sweeting, 1646), 6. My thanks to David Loewenstein for drawing my attention to this work.
William Bedwell, Mohammedis Imposturae (London: Richard Field, 1615), sig. G2.
Alastair Hamilton, William Bedwell the Arabist, 15631632 (Leiden: Brill, 1985), 689.
seeing it is a paganish part, who have no better knowledge, but Christians should
have better knowledge and more mercy then to play the pagans against christians: So
also the Protestants, when they complain of the Papists for their bloody and beastly
persecution, doe therein condemn themselves, seeing they doe the same, for which
they blame others, and so are rebuked of the Scripture, which saith, Therefore thou art
inexusable O thou man, whoseover thou art that blamest another, for in that thou judgest
another, thou condemnest thyself, for thou that judgest doest the same things: and thinkest
thou this O human (that judgest them which do such things, and thou doest the same)
that thou shalt escape the judgment of God? (Religions Peace, 1213)
Published in Amsterdam in the year of the Addled Parliament, Bushers tract

was ignored by the king and the Members of Parliament to whom it was
addressed. But among radical sectarians it was not forgotten. In the spring
of 1646 it was reprinted just as the Westminster Assembly was preparing to
proclaim the Confession of Faith that, to the horror of Milton and others,
would establish Presbyterianism in England. Even as Milton was composing
his sonnet On the New Forcers of Conscience to expose how the envy,
tricks and plots of the Westminster divines rendered New Presbyter but
old Priest writ large, Bushers lesson from the Ottomans found new life.
The Independent preacher Henry Burton, whose earlier writings were known
to Milton, was probably responsible for the reissue of Religions Peace. It
appeared with a new epistle To the Presbyterian Reader signed H.B. that
explicitly aimed to include not only the Papists and Laudian bishops of
Bushers initial attack, but also my Brethren in the Presbyterian way who
were currently assembled in Westminster and needed to be warned that this
Nation will never be happy till liberty of Conscience be allowed (sig. A3v ).
Citing examples from Ottoman history to highlight Christian hypocrisy was
not restricted to radical preachers and theologians. In 1656 Francis Osborne
noted how Ottoman Practise [was] not so bad as some Christians, instancing
the French Massacre; the foulnes of which story hath not yet been matched by
Mahumet, or any of his disciples. In 1660 the Cambridge Platonist Henry
Morewho had been at Christs College at the same time as Miltondevoted
entire sections of his Explanation of The grand Mystery of Godliness to show
The title-page license by John Bachiler is dated 1 April, while George Thomason dated
his copy on 25 April. A copy was listed in the library of Miltons friend, Nathan Paget; see
Christopher Hill, Milton and the English Revolution (1977; rpt. London: Faber, 1997), 494.
Christopher Hill argues that Milton aimed Areopagitica at Parliament in hopes of persuading
them to reject the Westminster Assembly and suggests that he drew upon earlier writings by
Burton, among others; see Milton, 1501.
See C. Edmund Bosworth, The Prophet Vindicated: A Restoration Treatise on Islam and
Muhammad, Religion: A Journal of Religion and Religions 6.1 (1976), 112.
Francis Osborne, Politicall Reflections upon the Government of the Turks (London: Thomas
Robinson, 1656), 115, 117.
290 Gerald MacLean
how Muhammad was far more orthodox in the main points of Religion then
the above-named Impostours, namely the Quaker David George, and the
Familist Henry Nicolas. Further instances of citing Ottoman toleration to
chastise Christians appeared throughout the century, but it is an argument
that Milton never made.
Milton, Islam and Arab-Islamic Criticism

Miltons references to Islam and the Ottomans tend to be oblique, learned,
illustrative, polemical, incidental and surprisingly stereotyping. Allusions to
the East in his poetry are of the exoticizing kind which, by Miltons era,
had begun replacing the expressions of fear and loathing characteristic of
the medieval period when Christian recognition of the obvious material
superiority of the Muslim ruling peoples had created an inferiority complex
towards the Muslim world (Bosworth, Prophet, 1, 2). Although Arabic was
taught in his day at Cambridge, and an English version of the Quran appeared
in the pivotal year of 1649, Miltons writings might seem to suggest that he
was less than profoundly interested in Arabic, Islam, or the Ottomans.
Perhaps, then, it is not entirely surprising that the recent resurgence of
interest in Englands intellectual and cultural relations with the Muslim world
during the early modern period has continued to pass Milton by. Focused
instead on Shakespeare and the largely imaginative theatrical representations
of Turks, Moors and Jews, recent studies have demonstrated that Renais-
sance Englandand Europe generallywas far more deeply preoccupied
and influenced by Islamic and eastern cultures than previous generations
cared to admit. But they have so far had little to say about Milton: the
forthcoming Milton Encyclopedia is entirely silent on Islam, Muhammad and
the Ottomans. Can it be that Milton, perhaps the most learned, engaged,
and copious writer of his generation on topics political and religious, really
had nothing of interest to say about Islam and the Muslim world?
Throughout the 1640s, Milton was very much a public figure who was
paid to be in the know. In March of 1649, the year The Alcoran of Mahomet
appeared, he was appointed Secretary for the Foreign Tongues by the Council
of State only some weeks after publishing The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates
in February. Spending much of that year writing Eikonoklastesa work that
revisits the issue of idolatry that had been so crucial for establishing the
Henry More, An Explanation of The grand Mystery of Godliness (London: John Flesher for
W. Morden, 1660), 155. My thanks to Sarah Hutton for drawing my attention to this work.
http://www/bangor.ac.uk/english/MiltonEncyclopedia/full-list-headwords.htm when ac-
cessed on 1 November 2005.
trade agreements between Elizabeth and the Ottomanscan Milton have

been unaware of the furor throughout the spring and summer following plans
to publish an English Quran? What are we to make of Miltons seeming
silence? Was he not at all concerned or interested by the publication of an
English translation of the Quran in that signal year of 1649?
In the only scholarly study of Milton and Islam to be published, John
Milton and the Arab-Islamic Culture, Professor Eid Abdallah Dahiyat of the
University of Jordan writes: there is no concrete evidence that Milton read
the Quran. Nonetheless, Dahiyat reminds us, Milton could have learned a
great deal about Islam and the culture of Muslim peoples from reading works
such as Richard Knolless General History of the Turks (1603), George Sandyss
Relation of a Journey (1615), and Andrew Mores Compendius History of the
Turks (1660) as well as Samuel Purchass Hakluytus Posthumous. Why Dahiyat
selects these works is not clear: we know Milton was interested in Purchas, but
Mores summary history, published in the year of the Restoration by which
time Milton was blind, is an intriguing choice. Dahiyats point, however, is
well taken: Milton must have been reasonably well informed about the history
and current state of the Ottoman Empire.
According to Dahiyat, Miltons relation to Islam has been at the centre
of disagreement and even controversy among Arab-Islamic scholars, critics
and writers for some time, his treatment of Satan in Paradise Lost receiving
particular attention. What these writers share is a desire to assimilate Milton
into their own projects and agendas. On one hand there are those like Luwis
Awad, the distinguished scholar and former professor of English literature at
the University of Cairo, who in 1967 declared Miltons works to be entirely in
accordance with the teachings of Islam:
When we read Paradise Lost, we feel that Milton is a devout Muslim. This is reflected
in his rejection of Prelates and their mediation between God and His creatures. You
also find Milton as a lover of life on earth. He interprets the Bible in practical and
personal ways. He advocates divorce and considers man superior to woman. He also
hates the rituals of church and the icons. He draws on the Old Testament, not the New
Testament. For these reasons, I have already said that Milton was not Christian, but
rather a pious Muslim. (Cited in Dahiyat, Milton, 68)
I cannot imagine what Milton would have made of this enthusiastic claim
on his devotions and loyalties, but fashioning Milton in the critics own
The Alcoran of Mahomet (London: [np], 1649) was published 7 May 1649. On the
contemporary controversy, see my Before Orientalism? Islam, Ottomans, and Moors in the
English Renaissance, Review 22 (2000), 22947.
Eid Abdallah Dahiyat, John Milton and the Arab-Islamic Culture (Amman: Shukayr and
Akasheh, 1987), 70.
292 Gerald MacLean
image is an approach that has also been adopted by numerous Christian and
Jewish scholars for their own purposes: according to Paul Stevens, Stephen
Greenblatt has even tried to make Milton an American. Numerous Arab
critics, often with political or aesthetic rather than religious motives, have
launched attempts to assimilate Milton by finding Arabic sources for those
aspects of Miltons poetry that they most admire; many have suggested that
Milton was indebted to the Risalatu-al-qhufran (Epistle of Forgiveness) by
the great Arab poet Abu al-Ala al-Maarr(9731057 CE) (Dahiyat, Milton,
705).
Satan has regularly been at the centre of such attempts to assimilate Milton.
According to Dahiyat, the Romantic belief that Satan was Miltons energetic
and rebellious hero greatly influenced many twentieth-century Arab writers,
intellectuals, poets, and critics. A Lebanese philosopher, Omar Farrukh, went
so far as to claim that Milton had been directly influenced by the Quranic
account of Satan, and that Paradise Lost offered readers an echo of what is said
of the devil in the Quran (cited Dahiyat, Milton, 70). Writing in 1948, Farrukh
was not alone in wanting to link Miltons Satan with the Quranic version.
Mahmud al-Khaff, writing in 1946, considered Paradise Lost to be the story
of Iblis who rebelled, while S.afa Khulus. , former professor of Arabic at the
University of Baghdad writing in 1957with Suez no doubt very much in his
thoughtsargued that Satan was Milton himself, Milton the revolutionary
(Dahiyat, Milton, 7885). Such responses to Milton are hardly idiosyncratic.
Inspired by Shelleys reading of Miltons Satan as a revolutionary hero, Abas
Mahmud al-Aqqad, one of the most outstanding twentieth century Arab
writers, wrote an entire book, Iblis (1969), that re-examines the history of the
devil with Miltons Satan ever before him. Rather than finding evidence that
Milton ever read any Arabic poetry or the Quran, Dahiyat discovers that Arab
poets have written about Satan, the revolutionary hero, with the Romantic
understanding of Miltons text in mind (Dahiyat, Milton, 8095). Based on
Paradise Lost and al-Maarrs Risalatu-al-qhufran, the Iraqi revolutionary
poet Jaml Sudqi az-Zahaw wrote his highly praised Thawreh fil Jahum (A
Revolution in Hell) in 1931 claiming that, like Milton, he wrote the poem
after failing to stage a revolutionary war on earth (cited in Dahiyat, Milton,
82). Al-Aqqad also composed several poems based on Miltons Satan that
promoted the need for rebellion against tyranny.
Paul Stevens, Milton and the New World: Custom, Relativism, and the Discipline of
Shame, in Balachandra Rajan and Elizabeth Sauer, eds., Milton and the Imperial Vision
(Pittsburg: Duquesne University Press, 1999), 90111; ref. to Greenblatt, p. 90. As Stevens
points out, the most sustained efforts to make Milton an American appear in J. Martin Evans,
Miltons Imperial Epic: Paradise Lost and the Discourse of Colonialism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1996).
The history of Arab-Islamic critical response to Milton is the history of

attempts by academics, writers, critics and poets, to make Milton their own.
How can we understand this affinity, this attraction? What we are to make
of this desire for Milton? What is the significance of this project, common
among Arab-Islamic writers of widely different views, to refashion Miltons
imaginative writing as an integral part of their own religious, political and
poetic endeavors? The question does seem especially important at a time when
there are those in positions of considerable authority who would insist that
these things are impossible and cannot be; that the Islamic and Christian
traditions and world views are not simply incompatible, but inevitably locked
into a clashing conflict with no common grounds: certainly no shared interest
in understanding the nature of evil. Dahiyat may be right to dismiss many of
their claims on scholarly grounds, but that does not mean we should ignore
or dismiss these writers eagerness to make Milton speak to them, with them,
and even for them. That desire, which crosses an enormous but evidently
bridgeable divide, is itself a fact that must not be ignored or forgotten. And
it is equally important, I think, to take these writers enthusiasm seriously,
regardless of its aims or purposes. However misguided or misinformed some
of these efforts might seem in a scholarly context, the desire they express is
powerful evidence that writers schooled in the Islamic tradition can and do
recognize common cause with the Christian tradition; at least with Miltons
often revolutionary version of it. What made them want Milton to be part of
their own story must be of interest and importance if we are to continue the
endeavor of making clear that, in the early modern period, as today, there were
and are numerous points of contact between and among Christians, Jews and
Muslims that are in the process of being erased but should not be forgotten.
Satan and Iblis

One recurrent point of contact, one site where readers of Milton from the
Arab-Islamic world most often find Milton telling them a familiar story, is the
Quranic version of how envy transformed Iblis into Satan and directly led to
the temptation and fall of Adam and Eve from Paradise. Dahiyat insists that
Miltons sources for his treatment of Satan in Paradise Lost did not include
the Quran, but rather included the Old and New Testaments, the books of
the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, Talmud, Targums, as well as classical
mythology. Dahiyat writes: There is no concrete evidence that Milton read
the Quran (Dahiyat, Milton, 70). But absence of evidence has never been
evidence of absence. So in these extraordinary times, when any signs of
attraction or agreement or affiliation between the Arab-Islamic world and
294 Gerald MacLean
the Christian West are worth supporting and pursuing, I propose to pursue
a counterfactual question: What if Milton did read the 1649 Alcoran? What
would he there have found out about the Islamic Satan?
Satan shows up often in the Quran, but only nine times is he also named
Iblis, and on these I will focus. The English Alcoran of 1649 translates both
Satan and Iblis as Devil, but the distinction is worth noting. Iblis, from
Arabic roots suggesting desperation and rebellion, is (like Lucifer) the name
of the heavenly member who is thrown out and renamed Satan, from Arabic
roots suggesting perversity and enmity. The first time Iblis is named in the
Quran occurs early on in Surah 2, Al Baqarah ( The Cow or Heifer) when
Allah describes commanding the inhabitants of Heaven to bow before Adam.
The passage is given thus in the 1649 translation:
Remember thou, that we said to the Angels, Humble yourselves before Adam; they all
humbled themselves, except the Devil: He was already proud, and in the number of the
wicked. We said unto Adam, Dwell thou and thy wife in Paradise, and eat there what
thou likest, but approach not that Tree, least thou be in the number of the unjust. The
Devil made them to sin, and depart from the Grace in which they were; then we said
to them, descend you enemies one to another, you shall have a dwelling upon Earth,
and goods wherewith to live for a time. (Surah 2:34, in Alcoran, 4)
In this translationwhich was rendered into English from a French trans-
lationthe first Devil who exceptionally refused to bow to Adam from
pride, is named Iblis (desperation and rebellion) and the second Devil who
leads mankind astray is named Satan (perversity and enmity). A further
point which the 1649 translation obscures is that Iblis was also exceptional
because he was not an Angel but a Jinn, as a later Surah makes clear. All
the Angels humbled themselves, in other words, but not so Iblis, who was
no Angel but a Jinn who had been specially elected to Heaven for his piety
(Yusuf Al, Meaning, 25 n. 49). Apart from the heavenly origins it gives to
Adam, the Quranic account is otherwise much in line with Miltons version of
eventsAll seemed well pleased, all seemed, but were not all (Surah 5:617).
Satans envy causes him to seek revenge on Adam and Eve by deceiving them
into eating from the forbidden tree, resulting in their expulsion from and the
wasting of Paradise.
Iblis next appears in Surah 7, Al Araf ( The Heights) which provides a fuller
explanation of how his refusal to bow in Heaven directly causes Adam and Eve
to lose Paradise. Allah is complaining to mankind about human ingratitude. I
give the passage at length since the other Iblis passages provide variant versions
of this basic narrative.
Abdullah Yusuf Al, The Meaning of the Holy Quran: Tenth Edition (Beltsville, Md.:
amana, 2003), 25 n. 52.
We gave you your habitation on the Earth, and there bestowed on you what was
necessary for your nourishment; but few of you are grateful to me. We created and
formed you, and commanded the Angels to worship Adam, which they performed,
except the devill [Iblis], to whom we said, what hindred thee to worship Adam when
we commanded thee? He answered, I am better then he, thou hast created me of fire
and hast created man of the mire of the earth; then said we to him, depart out of
Paradise, it is not the habitation of the proud, thou shalt be in the number of them that
shall be laden with ignominy; the devill [Satan] answered, let me alone untill the day
of the Resurrection of the dead; wherefore hast thou tempted me? I will seduce men
from the right way, I will hinder them on the right hand, and on the left, and on all
sides, to believe in thy Law, and the greatest part of them shall be ungratefull: we said
to him be gone out of Paradise, thou shalt be abhorred of all the world, and deprived
of my mercy; I will fill hell with such as shall follow thee. O Adam dwell with thy wife
in Paradise, and there eat of whatsoever shall please thee, but approach not that Tree,
lest thou with thy wife be in the number of the unjust. The devill [Satan] tempted
them and dispoyled their bodies of their vestments of grace; he said to them, God hath
forbidden you to eat of the fruit of that Tree that you may not be Angels, or eternall;
he sware that he spake the truth, and filled them with ignominy, because of their
pride. They knew their nakedness, having eaten of that fruit, and to cover themselves,
took leaves of Paradise; their Lord called them, and said Depart out of Paradise, ye
enemies of each other, you shall inhabit the earth, untill the time appointed. (Surah
7:1122, 245; Alcoran, 912)
Those who are more familiar with Paradise Lost than with Miltons poly-
glot sources will no doubt recognize how and why so many Arab-Islamic
readers of Milton have found his ways of thinking amenable to their own.
Ibliss initial break arises from envy of Adam, leading to the double fall,
the causal link between the expulsion of Satan, the expulsion of Adam
and Eve, and the devastation of Paradise. In seeking revenge by tempt-
ing Adam and Evethe objects of his envyto disobey on promise
of becoming immortal, the Quranic Satan proceeds from motives and
employs strategies remarkably similar to those of Miltons Satan. Attributing
human suffering and death to a sequence, or working through, of human
motivesenvy, pride, revengethat were first diabolically personated and
acted out in Heaven by Iblis becoming Satan, the Quran and Paradise
Lost (esp. 5.65765) have rather more in common than either has with
Genesis.
In Surah 15, Al Hijr (named for a valley), the tale of Ibliss expulsion is
retold including Satans promise to seek revenge on mankind, but this time
he admits that there will be those whom he will fail to tempt from obedience;
Allah replies: this is the right way, thou hast no power over the righteous who
follow my Law, but only over the Infidels, for whom hell is prepared (Surah
15:414; Alcoran, 160). The same emphasis appears in Surah 17, Al Isra ( The
296 Gerald MacLean
Night Journey). Some will be saved after all, but so far not a word about any
except Satan being expelled from Heaven.
In Surah 18, Al Kahf ( The Cave), the importance of Iblis being a Jinn and
not an Angel becomes clear, or perhaps more arcane and obscure, and the
point is entirely lost in the 1649 translation, which gives:
Thy Lord is unjust to none; Remember thou that we commanded the Angels to
prostrate themselves before Adam, and that they humbled themselves, except the
Devill, who was in the number of the Angels, he disobeyed his Lord; nevertheless
Adam and his posterity have obeyed him, although he is their open enemy, and
particularly of the Infidels. (Surah 18:4950; Alcoran, 181)
A more accurate translation, that of Abdullah Yusuf Al helps:

not one will thy Lord
Treat with injustice.
Behold! We said
To the angels, Bow down
To Adam: they bowed down
Except Iblis. He was
One of the Jinns, and he
Broke the Command
Of his Lord.
Will ye then take him
And his progeny as protectors
Rather than Me? And they
Are enemies to you!
Evil would be the exchange
For the wrongdoers!
(Surah 18:4950; Yusuf Al, Meaning, 722)
In addition to specifying that Iblis was a Jinn, this translation also corrects
1649 by making it clear that the progeny or posterity belong to Satan and not
to Adam. According to Peter J. Awn, what is at issue is that orthodox Judaic
and Islamic theology agree that Angels cannot sin, so Iblis has to be denied
angelic status. Originally a Jinn named Azazil/Azazel (or Harith), Iblis was
elevated to Heaven on account of his great piety, though some commentators
think his sincerity was always in question. The other thing angels cannot do
is reproduce among themselves, but having started out a Jinn, Iblis retained
his carnal nature. This verse from Al Kahf is used to suggest that Iblis not
only refused to bow to Adam but that he also gave way to his carnality while
Peter J. Awn, Satans Tragedy and Redemption: Iblis in Sufi Psychology (Leiden: Brill,
1983), 27.
still in Heaven to produce the progeny that Allah is warning us not to take
as protectors. In this reading which is based on commentaries by Al Tabar
and Al Baydawi, Iblis is so excited by his desperate rebellion that he becomes
filled with passionate desire, his lust produces progeny, and his children are
the armies of devils who roam creation fomenting evil, and they stand forth as
living witnesses to Iblis radical difference from the Angels (Awn, Satan, 28). As
in Miltons account, the sexualized Satan of Sufi commentaries brings with him
from Heaven those who later become false gods and inspire mankind to evil.
Iblis appears four more times in the Quran. We can read of how he tempted
Adam in the garden, how Iblis and his hosts will be thrown into the fires of
hell, how some will sin without his needing to tempt them, and be reminded
once more that he was expelled from Heaven for refusing to bow to Adam.
Clearly the Quranic version is not quite Miltons vision of things, though
there are numerous and remarkable points of contact where Miltons learned
and unorthodox approach to reinterpreting the Old Testament and other
ancient sources makes him attractive to Arab-Islamic readers and writers. Like
the Sufi commentators, he too wanted Satan to leave Heaven with diabolic
followers already in tow (PL 5.6689, 710), and he liked the idea of Satanic
sexuality being spontaneously stimulated at the moment of rebellion; though
he reserved the moment when Satans carnality gives birth for other purposes,
and he defied old-fashioned orthodoxies about angels to provide Satan with
his diabolic entourage.
Among them appears a cherub tall named Azazel who holds aloft Satans
imperial ensign in Book 1. Alastair Fowler is doubtless correct to associate
the name with the chief of the fallen Angels in the apocryphal apoca-
lypse The Book of Enoch, though he is obliged to admit that, since Enoch
was not directly accessible to Milton, the poet would have had to rely
on other secondary sources. Fowler favours Christian commentaries on
the cabbala since, in this tradition, Azazel figures as one of four stan-
dardbearers in Satans army, and this fits nicely with what we otherwise
know of Miltons interest in Judaic tradition and history and his know-
ledge of Hebrew (Fowler, ed., PL, p. 93 n.). Sensibly, Fowler suggests that
Milton could have learned of Azazel from the Old Testament, and from
writings on the Christian cabbala by Johannes Reuchlin, Archangelus of
Borgo Nuovo, and Robert Fludd that Milton is known to have consulted.
But since cabbala is really esoteric, this chain of authorities begs the very
question it seeks to answer: what were Reuchlin, Archangelus and Fludd
using for their sources when enquiring into the secret traditions of Jew-
ish mysticism? Since Islam took much of its angelology from that very
Judaic tradition, I suspect it would not be too difficult to discover among
their common sources that the Jinn, whose piety raised him to Heaven
298 Gerald MacLean
until he was expelled, and the standardbearer in Satans army, are closely
related.
By Way of Conclusion
While Milton wrote nearly nothing about Islam and very little about the
Ottomans, this does not allow us to imagine that he was uninformed or even
uninterested. Indeed, Miltons relative silence on topics that many in England
considered urgent, suggests a tactical negligence rather than indifference. For
Milton, Islam did not require refutation, much less toleration. Milton evidently
found nothing in Islam that needed disputing or even deserving of attention
since it could all be accounted for in the more general history of imperialism
that followed the expulsion of Satan from Heaven, as told in pre-Quranic
sources. Milton may not have read the Alcoran of 1649, and we know he knew
no Arabic, yet it is easy to understand why so many different writers from the
Arab-Islamic world should find so much affinity with Miltons views on how
the world became the place it is. In revising the story of the double fall for his
own purposes, he seems to have come close to reproducing key elements of
the Quranic version of how evil entered into the human world. The question
then follows: how can we be sure that Luwis Awad was wrong to claim that
Milton was, in many respects, a pious Muslim?
Afterword
Ann Hughes
It is not surprising that some of the approaches in this impressive and diverse
collection are familiar to a historian of the mid-seventeenth century while
others are less so. In recent decades, to their great benefit, historians have
become more engaged with the methods of literary scholars, alert to issues
of language, genre and audience, as literary scholars have enthusiastically
embraced historicist methods. Indeed Paul Stevens, in one of the most
stimulating essays in this volume, finds it necessary to warn against over-
enthusiastic evocations of historical context, reminding us that poems and
pamphlets have varying relationships with the heat and dust of political life.
These wide-ranging essays have much to contribute to historians under-
standing of toleration in early modern England. In the first place, they broaden
the topic by stressing (as in the essays by James Turner and Nigel Smith) that
it is not simply about religious toleration within a Christian, or even more
narrowly a Protestant framework, and that it was a European-wide con-
cernboth in theory and in practiceas well as an issue for England, or the
Atlantic archipelago. Within a European framework, neither English ideas
nor English practice appear particularly advanced when compared to the Unit-
ed Provinces, Poland-Lithuania or indeed the Balkan areas under the political
control of the Turks. A full account of toleration must consider other creeds
and other peoples ( Jews, Turks, Muslims, Native Americans); and encompass
attitudes to behaviour more broadly as well as to religious belief. Milton, in
his famous autobiographical passages in the Second Defence connected all
aspects of human life, under the rubric of liberty, rather than toleration:
asking myself whether I could in any way advance the cause of true and substantial
liberty, which must be sought, not without, but within, and which is best achieved,
not by the sword, but by a life rightly undertaken and rightly conducted. Since, then,
I observed that there are, in all, three varieties of liberty without which civilized life is
scarcely possible, namely ecclesiastical liberty, domestic or personal liberty, and civil
liberty. (YP 4.624)
300 Ann Hughes
Within the specific discussions of religious freedom, liberty is usually seen as a

narrower concept than toleration; toleration was a term of abuse deployed by
Presbyterians, and then deployed unashamedly by radicals such as Walwyn,
and, less often, by Milton. On the other hand, recent discussions of repub-
licanism have argued for liberty as an overarching justification for political
resistance and change. This volume is most welcome in its aspirations to con-
nect the republican Milton with the Milton who, albeit ambiguously, argued
for religious liberty.
Turner, Silver, and Rosenblatt consider broader intellectual and social
currents underlying Miltons contribution to toleration, but most contributors
focus quite appropriately on religious toleration. Like these contributors,
historians have conceptualized toleration as a theme within both intellectual
and social history, the emergence both of an idea, and of acceptance of practical
coexistence. ( This is not to suggest that there are no connections between
ideas and behaviour, but it is to suggest that theories do not map directly on to
practice or vice versa.) Within the history of ideas, the growth of toleration is
associated with both religious scepticism and religious heterodoxy, but it is not
reducible to them. There is an obvious connection between holding heterodox,
outlawed ideas, particularly in the case of Milton and his contemporaries,
anti-trinitarian ideas, and a commitment to free-thinking or more general
toleration. However, this might be a pragmatic, temporary stance, pending
some future admission into the ranks of the orthodox, or the powerful. Miltons
condemnation of the Presbyterians as persecuted critics of orthodoxy turned
persecutors is discussed in several essays while Roger Williams, as Thomas
Corns shows, had a clear understanding of the limits of Congregationalist
liberty. As Cromwell said, Liberty of conscience is a natural right; and he that
would have it ought to give it, having liberty to settle what he likes for the
public. Indeed, that hath been one of the vanities of our contests. Every sect
saith, Oh give me liberty. But give him it, and to his power he will not yield it
to anybody else. Sharon Achinstein vividly shows that Miltons own hostility
to persecution did not always imply a commitment to toleration, and that
freedom of debate might mean freedom to demolish ones enemy.
Milton illustrates the complex connections between the intellectual heresies
summed up as Socinianism and the political and religious ferment of the
See, for example, Quentin Skinner and Martin van Gelderen, eds., Republicanism: A Shared
European Heritage, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
John Coffey, Persecution and Toleration in England 15581689 (Harlow: Longman, 2000);
Alexandra Walsham, Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 15001700
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006).
Cromwells speech to Parliament 12 September 1654, from Ivan Roots, ed., Speeches of
Oliver Cromwell (London: Dent, 1989), 51.
Afterword 301
mid-seventeenth century. Miltons anti-trinitarianism, as Dzelzainis and von

Maltzahn show, located him within elite European intellectual currents and
was shared, in England, by Anglican Socinians, men who were politically
moderate or even conservative. On the other hand, Socinianism divided
Milton from Goodwin, as Arminianism united them. As von Maltzahns very
illuminating comparison between Marvell and Milton shows, no neat checklist
of opinions or stances in specific political circumstances can be used to label
individuals radical or moderate. Von Maltzahn also shows liberty of conscience
was by no means identical to a modern liberal notion of toleration. It might
again be seen as a transitional stance, the freedom to engage in a variety of
ways in a collective discovery of Christian saving truths. In Thomas Corns
account, Roger Williams might more easily argue for complete toleration
because he had a much more limited vision than Milton of the potential
of civil power for moral and religious regeneration. For Williams, religious
diversity was no threat to civil authority; for Milton, believing in politics as
a moral and virtuous endeavouror, in Achinsteins discussion because of
his overwhelmingly ethical and religious frameworkcorrupt and erroneous
opinions were fatal.
The aim of freedom of speech, or liberty of conscience, might thus be
unity, not diversity. But, on the other hand, there were those, including
sometimes Milton, who spurned the paranoia and horror with which the
heresy hunters, described by David Loewenstein, contemplated toleration,
and accepted division as normal. William Walwyn wrote, All times have
produced men of severall wayes, and I believe no man thinkes there will be
an agreement of judgement as longe as this World lasts: If ever there be, in all
probability it must proceed from the power and efficacie of Truth, not from
constraint. Robert Lord Brooke, whose example was evoked in Areopagitica,
wrote in 1642 that it is clear in Reason, that Divisions, Sects, Schisms, and
Heresies must come. There were, Brooke argued, alternative approaches to
division and error: the forced Unity of Darknesse and Ignorance as found
in Spain, or, and much to be preferred, the United Provinces who let every
Church please her selfe in her owne way, so long as she leaveth the State
to her selfe I wishe heartily, men would remember, that even Nature her
selfe as much abhors a forced violent Union, as a Rent or Division. In
Areopagitica, Milton claimed Brooke as a worthy and undoubted patron of
The classic statement of this argument is Blair Worden, Toleration and the Cromwellian
Protectorate in W. J. Sheils, ed., Persecution and Toleration, Studies in Church History, 21
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1984).
William Walwyn, The Compassionate Samaritane (1644), 53.
Robert Greville, Lord Brooke, A Discourse Opening the Nature of that Episcopacie, which is
Exercised in England (London, 1642), 88, 901.
302 Ann Hughes
this argument, a man who had sacrificed his life and fortunes to the church
and commonwealth, approaching sects and schism with a meekness worthy
of Christ himself. These relaxed attitudes contributed along with the more
developed intellectual positions discussed throughout this volume to a view
that it was possible to tolerate doctrines regarded as evil or erroneous, and, as
Brooke and Goodwin argued, to separate religious and civil authority. Miltons
stance within this framework is elusive, or perhaps simply contradictory. He
paraphrases Brooke: He there exhorts us to hear with patience and humility
those, however they be miscalld, that desire to live purely, in such a use
of Gods ordinances as the best guidance of their conscience gives them,
and to tolerat them, though in some disconformity to our selves. Again
in the well-known passage on building the temple, astutely analyzed by
David Loewenstein, Milton seems to share the acceptance of difference, or
to develop a complex understanding of truth as diverse. Yet it is worth
noting that perfection, the goodly and the gracefull symmetry is made up
of many moderat varieties and brotherly dissimilitudes that are not vastly
disproportionall (Areop., YP 2.555). This does not suggest the toleration of a
wide range of difference; it is much easier to associate this pronouncement with
the more circumscribed position suggested in the essays by Corns, Sauer, and
to some extent Achinstein; and to assimilate it with the account of Cromwell
and the congregational independents by Blair Worden, referred to by von
Maltzahn.
If, however, as James Turner insists, we should think about process, about
moves towards practical coexistence rather than theoretical pronouncements
of principle, a different Milton emerges. David Loewenstein emphasizes the
sheer bravery in resisting the dehumanizing, violent rhetoric of the heresy
hunters, men who did not shrink from actual violence against those who
affronted their unitary view of religious truth. This Milton insisted that
freedom of thought could lead to being a heretic in the truth, if that truth
was accepted unthinkingly. Turners location of Areopagitica within libertine
currents which held that virtue was only possible alongside the knowledge
and survay of vice again suggests that Milton could conceive of the long-term
coexistence of conflicting opinions and behaviour, that he could imagine
pluralism.
This volume thus gives us many different Miltons. He looks different in
different historical contexts, in writing in different genres and from different
points of view. We have a tolerant Milton and a Milton who opposes toleration
and secularism; a Milton who appeals to natural law or to the principles of
equity; a Milton prone to Pauline absolutism and the exclusionary rhetoric of
an English Protestant nationalist as well as a Milton who accepts openness and
uncertainty while rejecting restrictive binaries. The volume as a whole, and
Afterword 303
certainly the contributions by Stevens and Achinstein, stress the ambiguities

or contradictions in Miltons arguments on toleration. But within some essays,
the stress on complexity is qualified by a need to come to some final judgement
on Milton, to excuse or justify him, according to some pre-existing idealized
standard drawn sometimes from a view of seventeenth-century possibilities,
sometimes from modern liberal criteria. Many of the contributors share a
personal identification with Milton which is rarely exhibited by historians.
Miltons violent rhetoric sits uneasily with his liberal reputation; his views of the
Turks are surprisingly stereotyped, and unlike Williams and Selden amongst
other contemporaries he never uses the Turkish argument for toleration.
His attitudes to Catholics (and sometimes to Presbyterians) require uneasy
justification. Andrew Hadfield, distinctive in this company, sees Milton (as
indeed he saw himself) as remarkably consistent, not least in his opposition
to Catholicism as a false religion, or a force for political oppression rather than
a religion at all. Silver, in contrast, argues that a sense of human fallibility,
and a belief in notions of equity, were grounds for exempting all religion,
including Catholicism, from the purview of the civil power. Sauers account
of his denunciations of Catholic persecution can be contrasted with Stevens
discussion of how a later Milton praised one Catholic ruler, John Sobieski
(in 1674), in order to forestall the accession of another. Historians are less
likely to be disappointed by Milton, or, on the other hand, less prone to
want to approve, and thus driven to justify or explain. For historians, the
pamphlets inevitably loom larger than the poems, as they probably did to
Miltons own contemporaries before 1660. This Milton was by turns from
16412, a polemicist who was ostensibly part of the Puritan mainstream,
a scandalous proponent of divorce, a public servant, a learned if abusive
defender of regicide and the English republic on a European stage, and an
intemperate and ultimately unavailing opponent of the restoration. He is an
interesting and illuminating figure, but he does not dominate a historical
narrative as he does a literary canon, albeit that writing and reading are forms
of action, as the introduction here insists.
The profound identification with Milton at once drives the subtle insights
and illuminating arguments contained in these essays, but it also, at times,
cuts across the emphasis on complexity, political and religious context, and
generic choice which is also present within most contributions. The assumed
self-definition of the historian as more detached, however compromised, may
have something to offer here. Milton resists all attempts to categorize or
co-opt him, and perhaps historians are in the end more at ease about this.
Christopher Hill is perhaps an exception: Milton and the English Revolution (London: Faber,
1977).
304 Ann Hughes
On the other hand, these literary scholars are much less squeamish than
most historians now are about appealing to grand narratives of liberalism and
modernity, or drawing on Milton to address contemporary problems, and
this is to be welcomed. Of course Miltons life and writings cannot provide
instruction for us today, blueprints or naive lessons from the past to the
present. The essays in this volume force us, in the spirit of the introduction,
to take from Miltons towering and complex imagination, a commitment to
grapple with our own dilemmas. All of the essays have something to offer here,
and I can only pick out some of the insights most striking to me: Macleans
account of parallels, adaptations, and appropriations of Miltons Satan by
Islam; Loewensteins discussion of how Milton sought to develop a complex
vision of truth; Stevens riveting analysis of the various utterances of rage
and violence in Miltons writings. The quest for a community in which truth,
virtue, and liberty were fostered underlay Miltons promotion of freedom
of speech, and perhaps a vision of toleration, but his political and religious
stance might also qualify tolerance, promoting denunciation, contempt and
writing in blood against bloody persecution. We inhabit a world where
the potential conflicts between commitment and openness, engagement and
tolerance, truth and diversity are unresolved. The questioning of the value of
privacy prompted by von Maltzahns comparison of Marvell and Milton, the
regret at the narrowing expectations of conscience as an individual matter
are, without risk of anachronism, still relevant today.
Index
Biblical references are in canonical order.
Abbott, W. C. 176n, 206, 209, 209n, 210, antiprelatical tracts 18, 100, 101, 126, 127,
211 128, 129, 133, 134, 136, 143, 162, 193,
Abrams, M. H. 248 243, 245, 248, 249, 2535
absolutism 25, 40, 126, 127, 278, 283, 302 see also pamphlets
Achinstein, S. 7n, 15n, 18, 33n, 65n, 74, Apocrypha. Book of Enoch. English. 297
74n, 102, 102n, 193n, 243n, 251n, 300, Apologeticall Narration, Humbly Submitted
301, 302, 303 to the Honourable Houses of
Act of Supremacy 1534/1559 11, 148 Parliament, An (Nye) 801
Act of Uniformity 1559 11, 13, 98, 148 Apostles 133, 134, 191
Actes and Monuments (Foxe) 207, 208, Apostolical and True Opinion Concerning the
212 Holy Trinity (Biddle) 176
Adam: Arcadia (Sidney) 118
in Islam 294, 295, 297 Aretino, Pietro 108, 109, 11011, 113,
Milton on 35, 108, 112, 113, 120, 1224, 11415, 118, 119, 120
156, 191, 195, 196, 199, 22931, Modi (sonnets) 113
232, 234, 2378, 241, 250, 293 Ragionamenti 112, 114
see also Eve Arianism 95, 1267, 1712, 173, 1745,
adultery 107, 135, 139, 140, 166 182
Alcoran of Mahomet 294, 295, 296, 298 Aristotle 101, 137, 150n, 1634, 236, 262
see also Quran Arminianism 27, 28, 42, 77, 83, 98, 127,
Allah 294, 295, 2967 135, 154, 174, 184, 301
Allen, William 188n Armistead, J. M. 280n
America see USA Armitage, David 16n, 189n, 196n, 270n,
Anabaptists 11, 24, 27, 29, 37, 58, 127, 174, 273n
175 Ashton, Robert 155n
Anderson, Benedict 204, 204n Athanasius 93, 95, 184, 185
Anglican Church 144, 264 atheism 8, 29, 30, 32, 35, 159, 233
see also Church of England; High Aubrey, John 87, 90, 90n, 103
Anglicanism Audisio, Gabriel 203n
Anglicans 126, 180, 192, 208, 227 Austin, J. L. 248n
anti-authoritarianism 52, 53, 59, 67 Awad, Luwis 291, 298
anti-Catholicism 2, 14, 17, 214 Awn, Peter J. 296, 296n, 297
Cromwell and 2067, 210 Aylmer, G. E. 155n
England 207, 276
see also Catholicism Bacon, Francis 155n
anti-popery 2, 7, 193, 242 Bacon, Friar Roger 137
anti-priestcraft 2, 102 Baillie, Robert 54
Anti-Toleration, Or a Modest Defence of the Baker, J. H. 146n,147, 148
Letter of the London Ministers baptism 26, 38, 48, 135
(Anon) 1878, 190 Baptists 29, 32, 38, 287
anti-trinitarianism 9, 17, 18, 25, 29, 35, 37, Barbeyrac, Jean 18, 130, 132, 135, 139n,
39, 42, 48, 154, 17185, 301 140, 140n
Antinomism 13, 127, 154 Science of Morality 131
306 Index
Barker, Arthur E. 14n, 23n Bible. N. T. Hebrews. English.
Barnard, T. C. 211n, 216n, 217 11:1 159
Barradori, Giovanna 5n 11:378 214
Barrow, Henry 11 Bible. N. T. Revelations. English.
Bauman, Michael 173n, 184 6:9 213
Baxter, Richard 91 8:13 214
Bayle, Pierre 239 13:17 286
Beale, John 250 19 79
Bedwell, William 288, 288n, 289 Bible. O. T. Genesis.English. 295
Beelzebub see Satan 2:18 127
beliefs 956, 107 4 220
Bennett, Joan 238, 238n Bible. O. T. Exodus. English.
Berry, Boyd 240n 3:6 60
Bethel, Slingsby 228n 32 252
Bible: Bible. O. T. Numbers.English.
carnal sex in 117, 119 11:29 82
divorce in 139 35 82
interpretation of 28, 167, 194, 1989, Bible. O. T. Deuteronomy. English.
2334 17 129
see also New Testament; Old Testament 24 143
Bible. N. T. Matthew. English. Bible. O. T. Judges. English.
22:2333 60 5:23 257
5:14 81 19:2 139
5:44 61, 63 1921 261
7:15 62 Bible. O. T. 1 Samuel. English.
9:378 220 8 129, 130
13 79 12:1415 129
13:38 220 Bible. O. T. 2 Samuel. English. 7:10 215
19:6 133 Bible. O. T. 2 Kings.English. 11:17 129
19:8 134 Bible. O. T. Psalms. English. 137 257
22:39 166 Bible. O. T. Isaiah.English. 5:822 214
Bible. N. T. Mark. English. 4:38 220 Bible. O. T. JeremiahEnglish. 48:10 257
Bible. N. T. Luke. English. Bible. O. T. Ezekiel. English. 31 220
8:58 220 Biddle, John 1, 23, 29, 33, 155, 176, 179,
11:4252 214 180, 1834
14:1314 168 Biddulph, William 286
14:214 168 Birchwood, Matthew 228n
15 169 bishops 287, 288
Bible. N. T. Acts of the Apostles. English. punishment of 2435, 248, 249, 254,
5:379 52 255, 261
26:5 36 Blake, John W. 217n
Bible. N. T. Pauls Epistle to the Romans. blasphemy 32, 578, 70, 110, 117, 135, 159,
English. 288 166, 176, 177, 185, 188, 192, 240
Bible. N. T. Corinthians. English. in law 152, 153, 154
11:18 67 Blasphemy Act 1648 154
15:9 62 Blasphemy Act 1650 13, 153, 182, 183
Bible. N. T. Galatians. English. 1:13 62 Blount, Charles 8, 31
Bible. N. T. Ephesians. English. 4:3 229 Blount, Henry 286, 286n, 287, 287n
Bible. N. T. Colossians. English. 3:11 134 Blum, Abbe 73, 73n
Bible. N. T. Titus. English. Bodian, Miriam 34n
1:16 55 Bodin, Jean 25, 232, 232n, 2856, 286n
3:1011 56 Colloquium Heptaplomeres 25, 113, 228
Bible. N. T. 2 Peter.English. 2:1 67 Book of Common Prayer 12, 29, 39, 231
Index 307
Book of Martyrs and the Elect Nation Campion, Edmund 11
(Foxe) 207 canon law 151, 154, 163
books 121 see also law
licensing of 312, 110, 116, 119, 1834 Carew, Thomas 111, 114
Bordeaux-Neufville, Antoine de 210, 222 Carey, John 245, 278n
Bossuet, Jacques-Benigne 38 carnality 11516, 297
Bosworth, Edmund C. 289n, 290 Castle, William 189
Boyle, Richard, 2nd Earl of Cork Castlemaine, 1st Earl of see Palmer, Roger,
(16121698) 216, 217, 222 1st Earl of Castlemaine
Bracton, Henry de 1478, 161 Catechesis Ecclesiarum quae in Regno
Bradshaw, Richard 176 Poloniae (Moscorovius) 1778, 1803
Bramhall, John 252, 252n Catholicism 2, 7, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 37, 40,
Braun, Harald 233n 43, 83, 94, 110, 136, 188
Bredvold, Louis I. 228n England 33, 38, 95, 1456, 160, 1867,
Bremer, Francis 75, 76 189, 215, 217, 219, 266, 2712, 286
Broadbent, J. B. 250n intolerance of 723, 75, 226
Brock, Kathryn Gail 205n Miltons antipathy to 7, 18, 32, 967,
Brooke, Humphrey 50n 110, 126, 1645, 18699, 236, 243,
Brooks, Douglas 2n, 226n 303
Brow, Horatio F. 287n see also anti-Catholicism; anti-Popery;
Brown, Cedric C. 189n, 273n anti-priestcraft; Milton, and
Brown, Gilliam 248n Catholics
Bruno, Giordano 32, 108, 111, 112n, Cavalier Parliament (16607) 33, 87, 116,
11315, 118 155
Il Candelaio 112 Cecil, William 11
Coelum Brittanicum 114 censorship 523, 72, 84, 107, 108, 109, 112,
Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante 11112, 116, 117, 250
112, 11415 Champion, Justin 2n, 8, 8n, 239n
Brutus 2813 Chaplin, Gregory 142n
Bryan, Sir Francis 116 Charles I, King of England 12, 13, 14, 24,
Bucer, Martin 84 99100, 112, 138, 189, 191, 197, 256,
Bunyan, John 155, 162, 241 258, 275
Burgess, Walter H. 175n Charles II, King of England 33, 87, 89, 95,
Burleigh, Michael 257n 98, 145, 164, 186, 263, 264, 271, 2756
Burnet, Gilbert, Bishop of Salisbury Charron, Pierre 30
History of My Own Time 16970 Cherniak, Warren 90n
Burns, J. H. 135n Chillingworth, William 29
Burns, Norman 9n, 234n Christ 42, 60, 82, 93, 128, 131, 132, 185,
Burrell, David 1678, 168n 188, 242, 245, 253, 257
Burrough, Edward 70n on divorce 133, 1412
Burt, Richard 239n as God, denial of 37, 176
Burton, Henry 228, 289 parables of 789
Bush, Douglas 219n Christianity 35, 36, 40, 86, 137, 168, 173,
Busher, Leonard 297, 288n 178, 215, 242, 266, 284, 299
Butler, Samuel 90 Christians 24, 29, 30, 34, 41, 126, 134, 136,
Butterwick, Richard 25n 171, 190, 194, 198, 212, 213, 274, 286,
288, 292, 293
persecution of 131, 288
Cable, Lana 18, 110n sects 667
Caldwell, Samuel L. 282n church 41, 117, 165, 188
Calvinism 27, 28, 75, 76, 80, 92, 94, 98, 102, attendance 12, 26, 79
103, 132, 136, 172, 174, 135, 236 government 26, 80, 186, 191, 248
Campbell, Gordon 76n, 101n invisible 240, 241
308 Index
church (cont.) conversion 25, 34, 76, 77
and state, separation 76, 84, 145, 1601, Coornhert, Dirck Volkerstzoon 27, 32, 43
179, 2412 Defensio Processus de non Occidendis
Church of England 11, 36, 37, 38, 76, 79, Haereticis 27
97, 264 Cork, Earl of see Boyle, Richard
Restoration 33, 192 Corns, Thomas 7, 17, 74n, 83n, 181n, 188n,
as state church 12 193n, 211n, 243n, 249, 251, 251n, 253,
see also High Anglicanism 254, 300, 301, 302
Christianson, Paul 258n Cotton, John 78
Churchill, Sir Winston 2467 Council of Nicea 137, 1712
Cicero 130, 150n, 152, 164 Counter-Remonstrants see Calvinism
civil power 72, 134, 1767, 194 Counter-Reformation 176, 196
Civil War (England) 32, 51, 78, 275 Cousins, A. D. 91n
Clarendon, 1st Earl of see Hyde, Edward, 1st Cranford, James 60, 60n
Earl of Clarendon Creppell, Ingrid 6n
Clark, Stuart 37n Cressy, David 4, 4n, 46n, 48n, 65n
clergy 30, 39, 50, 58, 59, 74, 96, 210, 213, Cretensis: or a Briefe Answer to An Ulcerous
241 Treatise 49, 54, 55
Clifford, Martin 239, 239n Cromwell, Oliver, Lord Protector 12, 87,
Coffey, John 3n, 7, 7n, 8n, 10n, 12n, 15n, 100, 145, 146, 155, 176, 177, 179,
30n, 51n, 54n, 57n, 102n, 176n, 180n 2036, 208, 210, 21112, 215, 218,
Coleman, Antony 280n 219, 2213, 265, 269, 300, 302
Coleman, Janet 236n cultural polarization 246
Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism Culverwel, Nathanael 131, 134, 135, 135n
(Ursinus) 184 Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light
common law 145n, 146, 151, 154, 159, 161, of Nature, An 131, 134
162, 167n Cust, Richard 187n
see also law
commonwealth 2723, 281 Da Costa, Uriel 34, 34n
of England 33 Dahiyat, Eid Abdallah 291, 291n, 292
freedom 274 Daille, Jean 94
Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania 24, Danby, Earl of see Osborne, Thomas, 1st
25, 26, 40, 299 Earl of Danby
community 261, 262, 266 Daniel, Stephen H. 239n
complications of interest 2223 Danson, Thomas 94
comprehension 264, 265, 266 David, Geza 284, 284n
English church 89, 91, 1445, 267 Davies, Godfrey 50n
national church 98 Davies, L. A. 96n
Condren, Conal 91n Davis, J. C. 4n, 12n
Confederation of Warsaw 1573 173, 265 De Beer, E. S. 264n
Confession of Faith see Westminster De Krey, Gary S. 3n, 13n, 224n
Confession of Faith de las Casas, Bartolome 25
conformity 11, 25, 39, 95, 146 De Partitione Oratoriae (Cicero) 150, 152
congregationalism 845 De Vivo, Filippo 32n
conscience 10, 13, 42, 52, 113, 160, 162, Declaration of Breda (1660) 33
1634, 166, 168, 169, 228, 235, 280 Declaration of Indulgence (1672) 1314, 98,
individual 26, 104, 130, 151, 194, 287, 164, 186, 264, 266, 271, 272
304 Deferrari, Roy J. 221n
liberty of 2, 3, 10, 12, 1516, 27, 37, 46, DeJean, Joan 113n
58, 77, 91, 956, 153, 174, 177, 187, Denck, Hans 25
188, 206, 210, 233, 235, 236, 241, Descartes, Rene 148n, 235
243, 244, 248, 2601, 267, 2689, Meditations 148
271, 273, 277, 279, 280, 287, 300, 301 Dickson, Donald R. 32n
Index 309
Dimmock, Matthew 228n, 286n Epicureanism 43, 233, 234
disestablishment of church and state 2, 12, episcopacy 12, 73, 174, 249
401, 179 Episcopius, Simon 27, 27n, 28
dissent 1314, 159, 224, 206 equity 17, 18, 1479, 1512, 160, 161, 162,
dissenters 12, 13, 152, 155, 217, 222 164
divine law 101 Erasmus, Desiderius 92, 93, 94, 95, 102,
divorce: 167, 226
Milton on 23, 48, 76, 81, 83, 84, 87, 103, Erastianism 11, 152, 163, 166, 168, 169
109, 127, 131, 133, 140, 141, 303 Erastians 1356, 159, 160, 162, 166
incompatibility as grounds for 140 Euripides 117, 120, 143
Pufendorf on 140 Alcestis 143
St Paul on 132 Europe 13, 29, 76
see also Christ on Ottoman Empire and 345
Dobranski, Stephen B. 2n, 15n, 70n, 83n, Protestantism in 42, 276
103n, 173n, 182, 182n, 184, 193n, 226n religion of 38, 40
Doctor and Student (St. Germain) 14950, Evans, J. Martin 16, 16n, 292n
150n Eve 35, 111, 120, 121, 123, 124, 125, 1967,
Dohm, Burkhard 25n 199, 207, 229, 231, 237, 238, 293, 294,
Druids 227, 230 295
Dryden, John 277, 280 see also Adam
Dugard, William, printer 178, 1801, 183 Evelyn, John 250, 264
Dunn, John 3n Everard, Robert 38
Durham, Charles W. 234n Exclusion Bill crisis 276, 279, 280
Dutch Reformed Church 267, 173
Dzelzainis, Martin 7, 18, 88n, 90n, 129n, Fagius, Paul 84
176n, 185n, 224n, 226n, 259n, 270n, faiths 37, 98, 128, 144, 1589, 160, 161,
301 162, 163, 165, 179, 197, 199, 210, 226,
228, 229, 240, 241, 242, 268, 2723,
Edict of Nantes (1685) 33, 40, 257, 265 277, 2845
Edward VI, King of England 11 and reason 190, 195
Edwards, Karen 234n Fallon, Steven 9n, 204n, 222, 226n, 234n
Edwards, Thomas 45, 45n, 46, 48, 48n, 49, Familists 38, 127, 290
50, 53, 54n, 55, 58, 58n, 60, 61, 62, 66, Fell, Margaret 218n, 222
75, 112, 237 False Prophets, Anticrists, Deceivers,
Gangraena 456, 50, 54, 57, 60, 63, 66 Which are in the World 218
Elizabeth I, Queen of England 11, 24 Fenton, Mary 216n
Elliott, Emory 78, 78n Ferguson, Margaret W. 73n, 74n, 142n
Ellison, James 286n Festa, Thomas 110n, 120, 120n
Elton, G. R. 10n Fifth Monarchists 42, 162
England 76, 173, 208, 210, 216, 256, 299 Filmer, Robert 148
and France 210, 221 Fincham, Kenneth 12
Irish crisis 205 Firmin, Thomas 175
nationhood 206 Firth, C. H. 153n, 154, 155n, 221n
Protectorate 145, 155 Fish, Stanley 5n, 74, 74n, 110n, 225, 225n,
Revolution 46, 56, 79, 86, 95 237, 237n, 238, 245, 246, 263n, 277,
Enlightenment 1, 17 278n
in England 96 Fisher, Samuel 219, 219n, 222
free-thinking 8, 25, 92 Fleetwood, Charles 215
enquiry: Fletcher, Anthony 59n, 258n
freedom of 910, 18, 36 Flint, K. 31n
religious 104 Floyd-Wilson, Mary 235n
epic poetry 225, 2278, 232, 237, 239, 241, Forde, William 286, 286n
248, 249, 250, 261, 267 fornication 139140
310 Index
fornication (cont.) Goodwin, John 17, 46, 47n, 49, 49n, 50,
see also marriage 50n, 516, 56n, 57, 57n, 61, 63, 646,
Forsyth, Neil 227n 69, 186, 301, 302
Fowler, Alastair 245, 297 Catalogue, or Black Bill 545
Fox, George 21718 Imputatio Fidei, or, A Treatise of
Foxe, John 207n, 208, 212 Justification 50, 51
France 33, 39, 90, 94, 112, 206, 217, 221, M.S. to A.S. with A Plea for Libertie of
275 Conscience 53, 56, 57
freedom of thought in 8, 10 Sion-Colledg Visited 55
massacre in 289 Theomachia; or The Grand Imprudence of
Protestants in 37, 265 Men Running the Hazard of Fighting
religion of: divided 40; unified 24, 130 Against God 523
Wars of Religion 59; Gookin, Victor 215, 216, 216n, 222
see also Huguenots; Waldensians Author and Case of Transplanting the Irish
Franck, Sebastian 25 into Connaught Vindicated, The 215
free will 17, 26, 42, 48, 222 Great Case of Transplantation in Ireland
free-thinking 31, 86, 93, 102, 112 Discussed, The 215
freedom 225, 241 gospels 126, 133, 134, 136, 143, 160, 1689,
intellectual 232 178, 257, 288
interpretative 237 Gouldman, Francis 1801, 183
of speech 72, 194, 235, 238, 239, 271, Greaves, Richard 224n, 271n
301, 304 Greenblatt, Stephen 207, 207n, 292n
of thought see thought, freedom of Gregory, Brad S. 39n
see also conscience, liberty of Grell, Ole Peter 10n, 14n, 233n, 234n
French, J. Milton 103n, 178n, 181, 211n, Greville, Robert, 2nd Baron Brooke 301n,
262 302
Fry, John, MP 179 Grotius, Hugo 6, 18, 28n, 12930, 130n,
Fulton, Thomas 128, 128n, 129, 132 131, 132, 134, 1357, 139, 139n, 140,
143, 167, 228, 228
Annotationes in Libros Evangeliorum 139
Galilei, Galileo 32, 113
De Antiquitate Reipublicae Batavicae 137
Garasse, Father Francois 112, 113n
De Jure Belli ac Pacis Libri Tres 130, 135,
Gardiner, S. R. 61n, 177n, 180, 209n, 210,
136, 140
210n
Gruner, Dov 2467
Geneva 18, 26, 185
Guibbory, Achsah 15n, 68n, 226n, 231
Gentile, Giovanni 113
Guiney, Louise 287n
Gentles, I. J. 211, 211n
Gulliford, S. G. 287n
George, David 290
Gunpowder Plot 11, 189, 192
Gerhard, Johann 185, 185n
Gibbons, B. J. 234n
Gibson, William 98n Haakonssen, K. 234n
Gilbert, Martin 246n, 247n Hadfield, Andrew 7, 18, 196n
Glorious Revolution (16889) 33, 2634 Haereseo-Machia 48, 48n, 49, 67
God 135, 140, 144, 145, 161, 185, 182, 188, Halbertal, Moshe 129, 129n
191, 221, 234, 240 Hale, John K. 205n, 215n
belief in 31, 177, 180 Hale, Matthew 234, 234n
kings and 1312 Hales, John 29, 42, 94, 94n, 103
Milton on 1589, 2334, 268, 273 Haller, William 14n, 50n, 207n
unjust 11213 Halliday, M. A. K. 250n
Goddard, Hugh 286n Hamilton, Alexander 288, 288n
Goffman, Daniel 285n Hammond, Antony 280n
Goldie, Mark 3n, 13n, 76, 77n, 98n, 135n, Hardie, Philip 234n
229n Harrington, James 15, 16n, 215, 215n, 272
Goldstein, Charles E. 205n, 209n, 220n Commonwealth of Oceana, The 215
Index 311
System of Politics 15 Honigmann, E. A. J. 205n
Harris, Tim 3n House of Commons 89, 95, 246, 256, 276,
Hasan, Ruqaiya 250 279, 280
Haskin, Dayton 128, 128n House of Lords 95, 276, 279
Hawkins, F. Vaughan 167 Houston, Alan 250n
Hay, James 206 Howe, John 92
Hebraism 6, 136 Hughes, Anne 4, 4n, 5n, 38n, 45n, 55n, 75,
Hebrew philology 137, 140 75n, 186n, 187n
Hebrews 159, 161 Huguenots 33, 345, 40, 130, 135
Hechter, Michael 219n St Bartholomews Eve massacre of
Henri IV, King of France 2656 (Paris) 207
Henrietta Maria, Queen (wife of Charles I, Hull 88, 92, 93
King of England) 112, 189, 197, 256, humanism 6, 135, 232, 236, 245, 246
257 Humble Petition and Advice 177, 180
Henry VIII, King of England 1011, 116, Humble Proposals of Mr. Owen, The (Owen
118 et al.) 1789
heresies 29, 356, 67, 117, 120, 152, 166, Hunter, Michael 8n
174, 183, 187, 188, 190, 193, 195, 196,
198, 199, 232, 300 Iblis see Satan, and Iblis
in England 39, 4571 idolatry 29, 41, 135, 160, 163, 164, 179, 196,
in law 1524 1978, 213, 240, 290
punishment of 578, 235 Illo, John 2n, 73
heretics 37, 75, 135, 185 Imber, Colin 285n
hunters of 54, 56, 623, 302 Imerti, Arthur D. 113
Herford, C. H. 111n imperialism 16, 18, 205, 207, 212, 223, 298
heterodoxy 1, 8, 17, 32, 38, 60, 81, 83, 225, imposture theory 229
234, 300 Independency 32, 36, 38, 46, 50, 51, 53, 56,
Milton and 84, 152, 183, 226 59, 61, 62, 77, 81, 94, 101, 127, 176,
in Areopagitica 1078 184, 186, 187, 1889, 199, 208, 302
within Protestantism 107 indigenous Americans 25
High Anglicanism 87, 91, 98, 99 Ingram, Robert G. 98n
see also Church of England Inquisition 24, 32, 34, 108, 152, 163
Hill, Christopher 12n, 42, 64n, 155n, 173n, insurgency 165, 159
207n, 263, 263n, 289n, 303n The Instrument of Government (1653) 180
Hill, Thomas 68n Interest of England in the Irish
Himy, Armand 189n, 270n, 273n Transplantation, The
Hirst, Derek 155n (Lawrence) 21516
historicism 263 Interregnum:
History of the Evangelical Churches of the England 23, 32, 39, 57, 59, 207, 219
Valleys of Piemont, The intolerance 1, 2, 27, 30, 32, 43, 50, 70, 107,
(Morland) 208, 212, 213, 214, 219 108, 109, 110, 176, 179, 206, 209, 223,
Hobbes, Thomas 6, 90, 95, 131, 152, 161, 225, 226, 242, 248, 256, 260, 267
233 against Catholics 13, 17, 18, 33, 37, 723,
Leviathan 131 75, 164, 199, 205, 210, 211, 226
Holdsworth, William 145, 145n, 155n, 158, by Catholics 113
160n colonization and 2045, 21112, 216,
Holland 267, 136, 173, 175 223
Holland, Hugh 287 in England 21112, 217, 222, 223, 258
Holstun, James 8n see also heresies; Jews; violence, rhetoric
Holy Roman Empire 40, 160 of; Waldensians, persecution of
Holy Spirit 95, 96, 163, 172, 177, 1823, Ireland 42, 207
185 transplantation of Catholics to 206, 215,
Honeygosky, Stephen R. 241n 222
312 Index
Ireland (cont.) Kenyon, J. P. 162n, 164n
Protestants in 73, 207 Kinbote, Charles 130
segregation of 21516 King, John N. 15n, 189n, 196n, 197, 226n,
violence in 334 243n, 254
Irish Rebellion 60, 78 king 274
Irish Rebellion, The (Temple) 21011 execution of 2589
Irwin, Terence 150 kings (in Bible) 12931
Islam 345, 137, 284, 288, 290, 291, 292, Kishlansky, Marky 264n
297, 298 Klinger, Markus 110n
Iblis in 294, 295 Knights, Mark 14n
see also Satan, and Iblis Knoppers, Laura Lunger 46n, 224n
Israel 78, 82, 256, 261 Knott, John R. 205n, 213n, 219, 225n
Israelites: Knowles, John 175, 184
liberation from Babylon 214 Kolbrener, William 242n
priests, strife among 233 Kot, Stanislas 172n
Israel, Jonathan 8, 8n, 14n, 118, 173n, Kranidas, Thomas 243n, 248n, 251, 251n
233n, 234n
Italy 312, 40, 112 La Court, Pieter de 28, 28n
Labriola, Albert C. 203n, 205n, 278n
Jacob, James R. 9n Lacey, Douglas 13
Jacob, Margaret C. 8, 8n, 9n Lake, Peter 12n, 38n, 187n, 191, 191n
James, Duke of York (16331701) 263, Lamont, Willie 91, 91n
264, 275 Landes, Joan B. 46n
James I, King of England (James VI, of Lares, Jarneela 198n
Scotland) 11, 24, 80, 192, 287 Larmore, Charles 16
James II, King of England 33 Laud, Archbishop William 12, 33, 73, 95,
Jefferson, Thomas 131, 277 138
Jeffrey, David Lyle 221n Laudian church 26, 58, 83, 92, 162, 240
Jehlen, Myra 80n Laurence, Ann 36n
Jenkins, Hugh 277n Laursen, John Christian 10n, 25n, 30n,
Jesuits 26, 37, 112, 176, 188, 259 228n
Jesus 60, 978, 166, 1689, 177, 180, 237, law:
240 civil 41, 84, 1469, 152, 162
Jews 24, 27, 29, 301, 345, 60, 126, 134, international 266
136, 140, 215, 226, 240, 286, 290, 292, see also canon law; common law; natural
293 law
conversion of 228 Lawrence, Edward 269
divorce and 1334 Lawrence, Henry 245, 246
persecution of 217, 223 Lawrence, Richard 21516, 216n
prejudices against 34 Lawry, John S. 205n
readmission to England of 13, 207, 222 Laws and Customs of England (1275)
Jonson, Ben 111, 111n, 119 (Bracton) 147, 147n
Jordan, W. K. 11n Le Clerc, Jean 28
Judaism 137 Lecler, Joseph 10n, 11n, 232n
theology of 296, 297 Lee, Nathaniel 27983
Lucius Junius Brutus 27983
legal theory 18
Kaplan, Benjamin J. 4n, 235n
Legate, Bartholomew 39
Keeble, N. H. 13n, 15n, 33n, 88n, 91, 91n,
Legouis, Pierre 89n
224n
Leonard, John 234, 234n
Kelley, Mark R. 103n, 226n
Leti, Gregorio 28
Kelley, Maurice 9n, 262
Levellers 57, 62, 194, 199, 207
Kelly, Mark R. 175n
Levine, Alan 229n
Kendrick, Christopher 73
Index 313
Lewalski, Barbara K. 23n, 75, 75n, 128n, MacCulloch, Diarmid 47n
136n, 142, 174, 174n, 181n, 182n, MacDonald, Joyce 280n
199n, 204n, 205n, 206n, 209n, 226n, Machiavelli, Niccolo 255, 270
263, 263n MacLean, Gerald 19, 224n
lex scripta 148, 159, 161, 162 magistrates, and religion 53, 67, 76, 80, 85,
liberalism 5, 14, 15, 72, 74, 86, 104, 243, 153155, 15962, 163, 166, 168, 219,
301, 304 225, 232
in England 17, 206 Malatesti, Antonio 113
libertinism 4, 1718, 34, 37, 75, 119, 120, Maley, Willy 222n
162, 235, 302 Mansel, Philip 285n
writing 6, 10910, 11213 Marchant, Ronald A. 92n
liberty 31, 43, 130, 158, 299 Margalit, Avishai 129, 129n
Christian 1945 Markley, Robert 226n
of individual 145 Marotti, Arthur 189n
New World 131 marriage 48
and Protestantism 41 Grotius on 139
religious 50, 104 Milton on 127, 156, 190
liberty of conscience see conscience, liberty Pufendorf on 1402
of Licensing Ordinance regulation of 107
(1643/1645) 66, 1078, 156 Marshall, John 3n, 23n, 26n, 27n, 29n, 37n,
see also books, licensing 46n, 68n, 207n, 208n, 222n, 226n,
Lieb, Michael 26n, 103n, 175n, 204n, 205n, 228n, 232n
209n, 221, 226n, 243n, 252, 278n Marshall, Stephen 68n, 101, 256, 256n, 257,
Limborch, Philippus van 28, 28n 257n, 258
Lipsius, Justus 27, 232 Meroz Cursed 25660
Politicorum Libri Sex 27 Martin, Catherine Gimelli 142n, 226n,
Liu, Tai 51n 234n
Locke, John 2, 18, 24, 31, 38, 40, 74, 86, martyrology, Protestant 21011
148, 233, 235 Marvell, Andrew, Revd (c.15851641)
Essay Concerning Human (father of Andrew Marvell) 923, 95
Understanding 235 Marvell, Andrew 17, 39, 43, 8695, 95n,
Letter Concerning Toleration, A 40, 94, 96, 96n, 103, 104, 211n, 304
131 Account of the Growth of Popery and
Locorum Theologicorum (Gerhard) 185 Arbitrary Government, An 90
Loewenstein, David 7, 15, 15n, 17, 26n, Last Instructions to a Painter 89
41n, 64n, 68n, 183n, 189n, 192n, 195n, Miscellaneous Poems 93
196n, 211n, 213n, 224n, 226n, 243n, Mr. Smirke: or the Divine in Mode 94, 95,
258n, 266n, 278n, 301, 302 96
Loftis, John 280n On Mr. Miltons Paradise Lost 87
London 104, 227, 276 Rehearsal Transprosd, The 87, 88, 89
congregations 845 Rehearsal Transprosd: The Second
as new Jerusalem 80, 81, 82, 83 Part 87, 90, 94
Long Parliament 72, 83, 154, 156, 183 Remarks Upon a Late Disingenuous
Louis XIV, King of France (16381715) 33, Treatise 91, 92
40, 221, 276 Short Historical Essay 91, 94, 94n, 95, 96
Lucifer see Satan Upon Appleton House 93
Lucretius 43, 234 see also Milton, Paradise Lost
Lutaud, Olivier 59n Mary I, Queen of England 11, 39
Luther, Martin 84, 132, 158, 160, 161, 235, Massachusetts Bay colony 76, 78, 79
236, 253, 285, 285n Masson, David 80, 81n, 103, 103n, 164,
Lutheranism 27, 98, 174, 185 209n
Luxon, Thomas 142n, 237n Matar, N. I. 35n, 227n, 228n
314 Index
materialism 4, 9, 233, 234 Of True Religion, Haeresie, Schism,
Mayer, Joseph G. 205n, 209n Toleration 2, 14, 28, 90, 967,
McColley, Diane Kelsey 230n 99100, 144, 164, 174, 195, 197,
McDowell, Nicholas 15n, 194 199, 236, 264, 265, 266
McEachern, Claire 102n On the New Forcers of Conscience Under
McKay, Derek 35n the Long Parliament 53, 76, 99, 102,
McLachlan, H. J. 26n, 176n, 183, 289
184 Paradise Lost 2, 16, 43, 889, 98, 99, 107,
Medieval Spain 24 120, 137, 143, 145, 170,173, 192,
Melanchthon, Philipp 84 193, 195, 199, 21314, 220, 224,
Mendus, Susan 128n, 233n 2257, 230, 231, 233, 234, 236, 238,
Mennonites 24 245, 249, 250, 254, 261, 264, 273,
Holland 26 277; Abdiel in 144, 15960, 162,
millenarianism 789, 81, 82, 240 195, 233, 236, 239; Christ in 240;
Milton, John: Marvell on 87, 88; Raphael in 122,
Animadversions 190, 252, 254 156, 195, 197, 229, 230, 234, 237,
An Apology 245, 250, 253, 254, 255, 258, 238, 241, 245, 250; Satan in 19, 35,
261, 262 144, 292, 293, 295. See also Adam;
Areopagitica 1, 9, 30, 31, 36, 41, 5253, Eve; God, Milton on
7274, 81, 835, 103, 10725, 127, Paradise Regained 2, 16, 97, 192, 224,
156, 165, 174, 189, 190, 196, 221, 2256, 232, 236, 240, 242
225, 227, 229, 236, 239, 261, 279, Poems (1645) 2, 99, 103n
3012; heresy in 4950, 6371; Private Correspondence 265
dignity of labour in 823; vision of Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio (First
new Jerusalem in 812; idea of Defence) 130, 131
religious truth in 51, 69 Pro Se Defensio 117, 118, 120
Colasterion 220 Prolusiones 114, 120
De Doctrina Christiana 2, 36n, 98, 159, The Readie and Easie Way to Establish a
174, 177, 185, 190 Free Commonwealth 27,175, 272,
Declaration, or Letters Patent 262, 263, 273, 274, 275
265, 266 The Reason of Church-Government
A Defence of the People of England 191 645, 119, 133, 251, 253, 255, 258
Defensio Regia pro Carolo 131 Samson Agonistes 2, 2245, 247, 248,
Defensio Secunda 87, 99, 101, 114, 136, 258, 2612, 266, 277
249, 251, 299 Second Defence of the People of England 1,
Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce 1, 75, 127
100, 103, 107, 114, 127, 128, 131, Sonnets (1640s) 100; On the New
132, 133, 1368, 140, 143, 156, 190 Forcers of Conscience 53, 53n, 67,
Eikonoklastes 98100, 118, 212, 220, 221, 99, 102; Sonnet IX: To A Virtuous
283, 290 Young Lady 269; Sonnet X: To The
History of Britain 98100, 220 Lady Margaret Ley 269; Sonnet XI
In Quintum Novembris 192, 193 99; Sonnet XII: On the Detraction
Judgment of Martin Bucer 84, 220 76, 99; Sonnet XV: On The Late
The Likeliest Means 2, 220 Massacre in Piedmont 18, 99,
Lycidas 83, 143, 213 2045, 208, 209, 2145, 21920,
Masque (at Ludlow Castle) 232, 2512 221, 222, 223; Sonnet XVII 270;
Observations Upon the Articles of Peace 2, Sonnet XVIII 270; To Sir Henry
85, 193, 211, 2223 Vane the Younger 17980, 269; To
Of Education 36, 127, 270, 271 the Lord General Cromwell 100,
Of Prelatical Episcopacy 190 179
Of Reformation 73, 101, 174, 21213, Tenure of Kings and Magistrates 1,
243, 245, 249, 250, 255 99100, 129, 211, 258, 259, 266, 290
Index 315
Tetrachordon 84 , 99, 127, 134, 142n, England 89, 92, 93
143, 185 natural law 4, 6, 17, 18, 37, 101, 132, 135,
Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical 136, 140, 141, 143, 227, 274
Causes, A 2,18, 36, 84, 144, 145, see also law
152, 154, 15960, 162, 164, 165, Nayler, James 33, 85, 155
168, 169, 174, 183, 193, 195 Nazianzen, Gregory 96
see also Catholicism, Miltons antipathy Nederman, Cary J. 10n, 24n, 25n, 30n
to; divorce, Milton on; God, Milton Nedham, Marchamont
on; heterodoxy, Milton; marriage, Mercurius Politicus 179
Milton on; persecution, Milton on; Nelson, Holly 32n
Petrarch, Miltons sonnets in style Netherlands 39, 222, 235
of; popery, Milton on; Presbyterians, Neville, Henry 272
Milton on; Satan, Milton on; New England 76, 7981, 82, 85
violence, rhetoric in Milton New Testament 66, 78, 133, 136, 188, 213,
Minor Reformed Church 173 219, 220, 257, 293
minorities 345, 38 rejection of divorce 1389
Mohamed, Feisal G. 224n, 245, 245n, 246, New World 16, 17, 25, 50, 196
247, 256 Nichols, John 287n
monarchy 2645 Nicolas, Henry 290
monism 136, 143, 234 Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle) 149, 150,
monotheism 153, 185 167
Montaigne, Michel 30, 59, 147n, 151 Nidditch, H. 235n
Essays, The 148 Noachide laws 135, 138, 227
On Experience 147 Noah 135
Monmouth, Duke of see Scott, James nonconformists 13, 33, 98, 164, 186
morality 28, 40, 116, 132, 140, 146, freedom of worship of 197
154 indulgence of 14
More, Alexander 117, 118 legislation against 155
More, E. S. 51n persecution of 165, 175
More, Henry 28990n Protestant 34, 91, 272
Compendius History of the Turks 291 religious 33
Explanation of The Grand Mystery of Norbrook, David 15, 15n, 74, 74n, 239n,
Godliness 28990 243n, 247, 247n, 250n
More, Saint Sir Thomas 226, 228 Nye, Philip 80, 81, 83
Morland, Sir Samuel, 1st Baronet 204, 208, Nye, Stephen 171, 171n, 1724, 175, 175n
209n, 21213n, 214, 219, 221n Brief History of the Unitarians, Called also
Morrill, John 59n, 78, 78n Socinians, A 171, 172, 173
mortalism 48, 154 Nyquist, Mary 73n, 74n, 142n
Mortimer, Sarah 172n
Mosaic Law 30, 42, 133, 136, 143, Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy 186
220 Old Testament 61, 78, 82, 136, 188, 213,
Moscorovius, Hieronymus 173 214, 257, 293, 297
Moses 82, 138 orthodoxy 91, 136, 174, 177, 1812, 184,
Mueller, Janel 15n, 70n 185
Muslims 19, 29, 301, 345, 134, 137, 173, Osborne, Francis 289, 289n
228, 286, 290, 291, 293, 298 Osborne, Thomas, 1st Earl of Danby 87, 99
religious toleration 24, 287 Ottoman Empire 35, 284, 288, 289, 290,
191, 298, 299
Nardo, Anna K. 205n, 209n, 270n religious pluralism in 2847, 290
nation state 24, 36 Overton, Richard 29, 57n, 235n
nationhood 334, 20323 Owen, John 94, 176, 176n, 1779, 184, 185,
national church 38, 47, 80, 232 194, 194n
316 Index
paganism 29, 34, 134, 136, 226, 286 Pincus, Steve 250n
Pagden, Anthony 25n, 196n Plato 109, 117, 1201
Pagitt, Ephraim 75, 75n Pocock, G. A. 96, 96n, 157, 157n, 270n
Palmer, Herbert 1001 poetry see epic poetry
Palmer, Roger, 1st Earl of Castlemaine 89, Poland 10, 18, 25
89n, 90, 95 anti-trinitarianism in 173, 175
pamphlets 46, 51, 66, 121, 179, 193, 248, persecution in 1756
249, 259, 275, 287 religious toleration in 2656
Leveller 187 Poland-Lithuania see Commonwealth of
of Milton 2, 196, 243, 248, 252, 255, 261, Poland-Lithuania
263, 265 Polizotto, Carolyn 179n
Presbyterian 1867 Pollmann, Judith 27n
see also antiprelatical tracts Poole, Kristen 15n
papacy 144, 160, 162, 163, 164, 191, 213 Poole, William 9, 9n, 226n, 250n
Avignon 152 Poor Men of Lyons see Waldensians
Parker, Samuel 88, 90 popery 18, 177, 180, 275
Parker, William 156n Marvell on 90
Parker, William Riley 193n, 194n, 196n Milton on 967, 99100, 187, 1901,
Parr, Richard 133, 133n 1989, 266
Parry, Graham 15n, 83n, 226n persecution of Quakers and 218
Parson, Robert 11 wars against 207
partisanship 2767 Popish Plots (167981) 13, 189, 2756,
Paster, Gail Kern 235n 280
Patrick, Simon 94n Popkin, Richard H. 228n, 229n
Patterson, Annabel 14n, 24n, 73, 88n, 96n Popple, William 40, 94, 94n, 95
Patterson, Frank Allen 208n Porter, Roy 10n, 233n
Pauline implications 56, 66, 67, 126, 127, Potter, Harold 1501, 151n, 152
131, 134, 143, 160, 168, 169, 302 predestination 29, 50, 79
Peace of Augsburg (1555) 40 prelacy 81, 83, 1012, 177, 180, 190, 243
Peace of Westphalia (1648) 40, 210 Presbyterians 1, 12, 17, 32, 36, 38, 42, 47,
Peasants Revolt (1525) 235 52, 53, 58, 646, 75, 76, 81, 834,
Pelagians 127, 182 845, 91, 92, 126, 138, 144, 181, 183,
Pelikan, Jaroslav 172, 172n, 173n 186, 187, 199, 249, 261, 287, 300
Penn, William 228n London 48, 51, 55
Pepys, Samuel 13, 13n Milton on 98102, 127, 303
persecution 45, 14, 163 mobilization of 81
in Bible 30 opposition to trial and execution of
of Catholicism 11, 13, 39, 113, 165, 180 king 259
in name of Jesus 40 writers 54
Milton on 224, 225, 2289, 2489, 300 press:
In Poland 175 control of 59
religion in England and 8 Presbyterian 5960
Presbyterian clergy 58 liberty of 2, 3, 23, 31, 65, 84, 236, 271
see also intolerance; heretics priestcraft 8, 31, 77
Peters, Julie Stone 227n see also anti-priestcraft
Petrarch: propaganda 63, 66, 6770, 76
Miltons sonnets in style of 21214, 221 Protestant League 12, 206
Petronius 110, 111, 116, 118, 119 Protestantism 2, 10, 13, 14, 24, 26, 30, 31,
Pettegree, Andrew 3n 32, 33, 36, 37, 456, 56, 69, 73, 75, 76,
Phillipson, N. 229n 89, 978, 145, 160, 163, 164, 165, 174,
Piedmont crisis (Italy) 7, 13, 210, 212, 214, 175, 186, 188, 1978, 2058, 210, 212,
219, 223 213, 214, 216, 2202, 268, 275, 288,
see also Waldensians, massacre 302
Index 317
persecution 11, 39, 40, 41, 207 as private matter 26, 86, 164, 186, 231,
Pruitt, Kristin A. 234n 2345, 240
Prynne, William 102 reason in 187, 190
Pufendorf, Samuel [von] 18, 140, 140n, 141 truths of 51, 57, 61
De Jure Naturae et Gentium 131, 140 unity of 14, 24, 26, 37, 49, 58, 69, 98
Puritanism 9, 12, 14, 29, 33, 38, 39, 42, 65, Religious Peace (Busher) 287, 288
76, 78, 79, 83, 84, 190, 191 Remer, Gary 6n
England 80, 82, 95, 98, 102, 193, 303 Republic (Plato) 117
Puritan Revolution 92 republicanism 6, 14, 15, 18, 423, 157, 241,
Pynchon, William 179 246, 270, 273, 279, 283
English 74, 88, 263, 264, 266, 268, 276;
Quakers 12, 13, 29, 323, 37, 38, 43, 70, 73, collapse of 272
85, 207, 21719, 290 liberty and 281
persecution of 389, 85, 155 secular 279, 283
Questier, Michael 38n virtue and 273
Quint, David 16, 16n, 234n Restoration 2, 13, 33, 38, 233, 278
Quran 288, 290, 291, 294, 297, 298 English 43, 85, 88, 989, 109, 155, 186,
in English 291 2634, 266, 270, 275, 303; church
Satan in 292, 295, 296 91; church settlement of 94; second
Iblis and 293 867, 99
politics 224
writings 218
rabbinic scholarship 137, 138, 140 Rhode Island 76, 85
Racovian Catechism 1, 23, 29, 1034, 173, ribaldry 114, 116, 118
176, 177, 181, 182, 185 Robinson, Henry 228n
radical sectarianism 47, 59, 65, 66, 289 Rogers, John 9, 9n, 184, 185n, 226n
see also sectarianism Roman Catholics see Catholicism
radicalism 12, 160 Roman Church see Catholicism
persecution and 39 Rome 26, 281, 282
political 9 and Church of England 83
sectarian 4 classical 272
see also dissent; names of individual Court of 90
radical groups and radicals republican 280
Rait, R. S. 153n, 154 Root and Branch Petition 1640 12, 121
Rajan, Balachandra 9n, 16n, 211n, 223n, Rosenblatt, Jason 6, 6n, 18, 137n, 226n,
226n, 292n 227n, 300
Ranters 73, 85, 153, 154, 1623, 180 Ross, Alexander 228n
rationalism 225 Rovira, James 110n
Raymond, Joad 15n, 65n, 83n, 188n, 193n, Rowe, Katherine 235n
205n, 207, 208n, 215, 226n Royalists 219, 250
reading 115, 119, 120 Ruar, Martin 26
recusancy 165, 264 Rump Parliament (1648) 12, 85, 145, 207
Recusancy Laws 1581 11 Rumrich, John P. 2n, 9n, 15n, 70n, 83n,
Recusants 11 103n, 173n, 181, 181n, 182n, 193n,
Reformation 24, 29, 37, 40, 61, 83, 134, 199n, 226n
142, 152, 205, 207, 21920 Rutman, Darrett B. 81n, 83
Reformed Religion 208, 210, 213, 218, 219
Rehearsal, The (Villiers) 278n
Relation of a Journey (Sandys) 291 sacred vehemence 248, 2516, 258, 266,
religion 16, 55, 64, 68, 70, 97, 130, 146, 158, 267
164, 174, 205, 206, 287, 300 Salomon, H. P. 34n
anarchy and 49, 534 Samson 224, 225, 245, 246, 247, 248, 252,
controversy over 17, 55, 108, 110 258, 262, 268, 277, 2789, 281, 282
diversity of 107, 134, 181, 230, 301 see also Milton, Samson Agonistes
318 Index
Sanchez, Reuben Marquez 97n secularism 4, 18, 289, 30, 36, 40, 80, 99,
Sandys, George 286 118, 197, 225, 242, 271, 274, 277, 278,
Sassoon, I. S. P. 34n 302
Satan 111, 160, 163, 199, 214, 239, 292, 298 Selden, John 6, 18, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135,
denial of creator 1612 137, 137n, 138, 138n, 140, 143, 227,
equality 144, 1567 227n, 303
heaven 1589, 1956; expulsion from Analecta Anglobritannica 137
298 De Jure Naturali et Gentium Juxta
and Iblis (Islam) 2946, 297, 304 Disciplinam Ebraeorum 131, 135,
Milton on 163, 1923, 197, 199, 225, 137, 138, 227
229, 232, 236, 240, 261; Muslin Historie of Tithes 133, 138
responses to 284 Mare Liberum 137
outrage of 1578 Uxor Ebraica (Hebrew Spouse) 140
theophany of 159 separatists 12, 27, 29, 41, 56, 58, 59, 61, 62,
see also Milton, Paradise Lost 63, 65, 127
Sauer, Elizabeth 7, 9n, 13n, 16n, 18, 34n, September 11 245, 246, 247
59n, 70n, 97n, 112n, 114n, 119, 120n, sexuality 9, 10, 18, 107, 110, 1168, 120
139n, 158n, 211n, 223n, 224n, 226n, Sevelle, Max 80n
251n, 264n, 266n, 292n, 302 Shagan, Ethan H. 189n
Savoy, Duke of (Carlos Immanuel II) 203, Sharpe, Kevin 83n, 189n
208, 209, 221, 222 Shawcross, John T. 103n, 175n, 190n, 195n,
Savoy Declaration (1658) 36 205n, 221n, 226n
scepticism 7, 30, 489, 56, 59, 67, 78, 112, Sheils, W. J. 32n, 176n, 301n
153, 225, 228, 233, 300 Shell, Alison 189n, 197n
Schaeffer, John D. 110n Shields, W. J. 206n
schisms 56, 60, 64, 67, 68, 69, 152, Shuger, Debora 102n
232 Sidney, Algernon 148, 275
schismatics 35, 37 Sidney, Sir Philip 113, 118
see also separatists Siebald, Manfred 221n
Schochet, Gordon 13n Silver, Victoria 67, 18, 300
Schoenfeldt, Michael 235n Simpson, Percy 111n
Schwartz, Regina M. 199n Sirluck, Ernest 73, 82, 101n, 186n
Scilly Isles 176 Skinner, Cyriack 270
Scorned Quakers True and Honest Account, Skinner, Quentin 15n, 17, 189n, 229n,
The (Fisher) 219 241n, 247n, 270n, 272, 272n, 273n
Scotland Smalcius, Valentin 173
Calvinists of 76, 172 Smectymnuus 76, 81, 1012, 249, 256, 258
Kirk of 153 Smith, Nigel 8, 8n, 15, 15n, 26n, 31n, 32n,
violence in 33 34n, 41n, 64n, 189n, 270n, 299
Scott, James, 1st Duke of Monmouth Sobieski, John, King John III of Poland
(16491685) 265 (16741696) 262, 2656, 303
Scott, Jonathan 7n, 11n, 193n, 228n, 275n, Socinianism 24, 256, 28, 32, 35, 93, 94,
275n 95, 96, 102, 103, 171, 173, 174, 175,
scriptures 378, 50, 52, 57, 96, 98, 120, 126, 177, 3001
128, 129, 130, 133, 154, 158, 159, 163, anti-Socianism 173
1656, 1689, 174, 175, 178, 185, 190, see also anti-trinitarianism
193, 195, 1989, 244, 257 Sola Scriptura 97, 198
reading 41, 43, 53 Sommerville, C. J. 240, 240n
sexuality and 1078 Sommerville, J. P. 135, 135n
Second Anglo-Dutch War 13 soteriology 76, 80
sectarianism 45, 56, 63, 68, 85, 109, 152, Sozzino, Fausto (Socinus) 25, 173
187, 192, 196, 208, 223 Spain 13, 24, 196, 207, 217, 221, 222, 301
see also radical sectarianism speech 256
Index 319
acts 262, 263 tithes 152, 174
political 247, 2534 Toland, John 31n, 945, 95n, 228n, 239,
situations 237 239n
Spenser, Edmund 117, 260n Christianity Not Mysterious 95
Faerie Queene, The Book I 356 toleration see conscience; freedom;
View of the State of Ireland, A 260n intolerance; liberty; religion: diversity;
Spinoza, Baruch 30, 30n, 31, 234, 235 republicanism; thought, freedom of
Spitzer, Leo 143n Toleration Act (1689) 14, 264, 2689
Spurr, John 3n, 192n, 233n, 240n, 242n Tolmie, Murray 51n
St. Augustine 37 Toomer, G. J. 137n
St. Cyprian 221 Trevor-Roper, Hugh 92, 92n, 102, 103n,
St. Germain, Christopher 14950, 150n, 249, 249n, 258
152, 158 Trexler, Richard C. 114
St. Jerome 117, 118 Trinity 26, 96, 171, 1725, 181, 182, 185
St. Paul 36, 55, 56, 62, 109, 128, 132, see also anti-trinitarianism
1345, 160, 166 Trubowitz, Rachel J. 9n, 234n
St. Peter 52, 67, 134 Trumbach, Randolph 34n
St Peters of Rome 196 truth 36, 40, 69, 147, 190, 2367, 302
state church 54, 56, 82, 178 by falsehood 225, 236
see also Church of England Tuck, Richard 7n, 26n, 128n, 135, 135n,
Stavely, Keith 164, 186n 137n, 233n
Stein, Arnold 250n Tumbleson, Raymond D. 190n, 192n,
Sterry, Peter 227, 227n, 230, 230n 197n, 210, 212
Steuart, Adam 53, 53n Turkey 228, 266, 288, 290, 299, 303
Stevens, Paul 5, 16n, 18, 24n, 68n, 204n, Turner, James 9, 10, 299, 300, 302
244n, 252n, 254n, 261n, 265n, 266n, Turner, James Grantham 6, 9n, 17, 34n,
292n, 299, 303, 304 41n, 64n, 108n, 112n, 142n, 211n, 213n
Story, Joseph 149, 149n Twofold Catechism (Biddle) 176
Stouppe, Jean Baptiste 20910 Tyacke, Nicholas 14, 14n, 233n, 234n
Collection of the Several Papers, A 209,
214 Underhill, Edward Bean 287n
Strafford, Earl of see Wentworth, Thomas, United Provinces 24, 28, 173, 221, 299, 301
1st Earl of Strafford Unitarianism 35, 93, 94, 155, 171
Strier, Richard 103n Ursinus, Zacharias 185
Stubbe, Henry 8 USA 24, 74, 78
Sutherland, Martin 234n, 240n Utopia (More) 228
Synoptic Gospels 221
see also gospels
Valdes, Pierre 213
Talmud 32, 117, 135, 293 Vallance, Edward 233n
Taylor, Alan 85n van Aitzema, Liewe 181, 183
Temple, Sir William 28, 228 Van Gelderen, Martin 235, 236n
terrorism 2456, 278 Vanderjagt, Arjo 228n
Tertullian 36, 219, 220 Vane, Sir Henry 7, 88, 100, 177, 177n, 179,
Test Act (1673) 87, 186, 264, 272 179n, 180, 245, 246, 269
Testimonie to the Truth of Jesus Christ, A 55 Zeal Examined: Or, A Discourse for Liberty
Thayer, James Bradley 167n of Conscience in Matters of
theology 910, 42, 104, 116, 127 Religion 179, 180
Thirty Years War 40, 75, 78, 193 Veil, Charles Marie de 38
Thirty-Nine Articles 1563 11 Verdurmen, J. Peter 280n
Thomason, George 100, 104, 210 Vicars, John 50n
thought, freedom of 8, 1718, 30, 31, 236, Vindiciae Evengelicae (Overton) 176, 185
241, 277 violence 56, 38, 39, 256
320 Index
violence (cont.) Westminster Assembly of Divines 36, 50,
civil strife and 264 61, 67, 80, 83, 98100, 137, 138, 289
compulsion by human authorities 53 Westminster Confession of Faith 13, 36n,
religious 2456, 256, 266 177, 289
of rhetoric in Milton 243, 245, 247, Wharton, Philip, 4th Baron Wharton 89, 91
24850, 2556, 303 Whig history 2, 15, 16, 17, 24, 76, 267, 280
tyranny of kingship as 220 White, B. R. 234n
virtue 281, 283 Whitelocke, Bulstrode 138, 138n
classical 272 Wightman, Edward 39
politics of 269, 2701 Wilding, Michael 74, 74n, 82
Vitoria, Francisco 25 William III, King of England 33
Volkelius, Johannes 173 Williams, Bernard 56, 56n
Volpone (Jonson) 119 Williams, G. H. 26n
von Maltzahn, Nicholas 2n, 7, 15, 15n, 17, Williams, Roger 7, 8, 23, 29, 49n, 7480,
39n, 87n, 88, 88n, 89n, 91n, 92, 94n, 81, 82, 84, 85, 179, 228, 243, 243n,
228n, 250n, 263, 263n, 266n, 267, 301, 256n, 257, 282, 282n, 300, 301, 303
302, 304 Bloudy Tenent, of Persecution, for Cause of
Conscience 745, 77, 78, 79, 82, 84
Christenings Make Not Christians 77, 77n
Waddington, Raymond B. 118n Key Into The Language of America 77
Waldensians (Piedmont) 13, 40, 208, 216, Winstanley, Gerrard 589, 59n
218, 220, 222, 223 Winthrop, John 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83
Massacre of (1655) 2036, 20710, 212, Wittgenstein, Ludwig 168
214, 221 Wittreich, Joseph 73, 278n
persecution, end of 222 Wolfe, Don M. 2n, 101, 208n, 211n, 223n,
Walkerm, George 50 243, 243n
Walsham, Alexandra 2, 3, 3n, 4n, 10n, 11n, Wolseley, Charles 228n
30n, 40n, 69n, 187n Wood, Anthony 87
Walwyn, William 17, 29, 47, 47n, 49, 50, Wood, Derek N. C. 263, 263n
53, 56, 5758, 58n, 59n, 60n, 62, 63, Woodhouse, A. S. P. 14n, 219n
646, 186, 187n, 188, 300, 301, Woolrych, Austin 187n, 189n
301n Wootton, David 8n, 270n, 272n
Compassionate Samaritan, The 58 Worcester House Declaration 91
Demurre to the Bill for Preventing the Worden, Blair 7, 7n, 12n, 176n, 179, 179n,
Growth and Spreading of Heresie, A 184, 206n, 224n, 268, 269n, 272n,
57 301n, 302
Prediction of Mr. Edwards His Conversion Wotton, Sir Henry, Provost of Eton 42, 103
and Recantation 62 Wycliffe, John 25, 84
Tolleration Justified, and Persecution
Condemned 187
York, Duke of see James, Duke of York
Writings 57, 57n, 59n, 60n, 63n
Young, Thomas 81, 101
Wars of Religion 78, 152
Yule, George 248n
Warren, Christopher 224n
Yusuf Ali, Abdullah 294, 294n, 296
Webb, R. K. 234n
Webster, Tom 3
Weekly Post 217, 217n, 218 Zagorin, Perez 51n, 67n
Wentworth, Thomas, 1st Earl of Zizek, Slavoj 204, 204n, 205
Strafford 255 Zurbuchen, Simone 15, 15n, 16n

Milton and Toleration: Contexts and Debates

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MILTON AND TOLERATION

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Notes on Contributors vii

2. Milton and the European Contexts of Toleration 23

6. Libertinism and Toleration: Milton, Bruno and Aretino 107

Sharon Achinstein is Reader in Renaissance Literature at Oxford University, and

Martin Dzelzainis, Professor of English, Royal Holloway, University of London, has

AP Apology against a Pamphlet

works. Like many thinkers of his day, he promoted a philo-Hebraic cultural

Stephen B. Dobranski, Licensing Miltons Heresy, in Stephen B. Dobranski and John P.

Alexandra Walsham, Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 15001700

conscience, natural law, equity, materialism, libertinism, rhetoric, secularism,

awareness of pluralism and its threats to a particular, ideologically charged,

argued for toleration of idolators. His multiple commitments, along with

Coffey, Puritanism and Liberty, 969.

Did Miltons unorthodox views contribute to a theory of toleration? James

With his defense of freedom of inquiry, Milton comes to arrive at a radical

Head of the Church of England, Henry authorized the persecution of Catholics

Quoted in W. K. Jordan, The Development of Religious Toleration in England, 4 vols.

from Protestant separatists, who would challenge monarchical jurisdiction,

Laws in matters Ecclesiastical, against whatsoever sort of Non-Conformists

Coffey, Puritanism and Liberty, 969, 984.

being protected in a democracy. However, he saw the necessity of a national

The organization of our volume reflects the multi-dimensional approach to the

James Harrington, A System of Politics, in J. G. A. Pocock, ed., The Commonwealth of Oceana

religious controversy. In doing so, he advances the concept of a pan-European

analysis of Miltons language depends on a distinction between the expressive

the largely tolerationist Arian Arminian John Milton

Milton is customarily presented as an apologist for religious and political

Annabel Patterson, Early Modern Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

Ideas of tolerance were in circulation long before the seventeenth century,

Christ resembles the Catholic position, despite their fundamentally different

Catholics as well as Protestants within his boundaries of toleration. Spinozas

See below, 401.

See below, Elizabeth Sauers essay in this volume, Ch. 11.

Miltons redefinition of heresy in Of Education and Areopagitica as choice

YP 2.396, 527. YP 7.247.

To Augustine belonged the most influential statement in support of the

Marshall, John Locke, chs. 56; Walsham, Charitable Hatred, 409.

towards religious alterity and the transgression of customary religious behavior

Nicholas von Maltzahn, An Andrew Marvell Chronology (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005),

Alexandra Walsham, Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity, and Confessional Polemic in

he is only a relative tolerationist. Liberty is consistent with Protestantism,

is tolerable: what is tolerable in a marriage, or hell, for instance. Hence

YP 7.380. YP 7.383. YP 3.325.

See below, Nicholas von Maltzahns essay in this volume, Ch. 5.

1. Monstrous Toleration and the Growth of Heresies

followed by fractious religious diversity and the explosion of heresies, was

Thus a large number of London Presbyterian ministers in 1648, anxiously

fear, and varying degrees of intolerance. By situating Areopagitica in relation to

2. John Goodwin: Heresy, Independency, and the Struggle

by a vision of England as a terrain of religious as well as ideological warfare.

would stimulate the multiplication of heretics and sects by casting a spirit

Titus 1:1213; see Cretensis, title page and 50.

strident war of words that vocal proponents of toleration found themselves

See Bernard Williams, Tolerating the Intolerable, in Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline

specter of spreading heresies, he suggested, should preach soundly from

3. William Walwyn: Toleration and The Power of Persecuting

anticipates Gerrard Winstanleys analysis of a sinister clergy power during

See also Writings, 184.

Moreover, the anathematizing nick-names he has so stridently and indiscrim-

4. John Milton: Toleration and Fantastic Terrors of Sect

prelates or Presbyterians: those terrible names of Sectaries and Schismaticks