SOURCE: "Milton: Political Beliefs and Polemical Methods, 1659-60," in PMLA, Vol. LXXIV, No. 3, June, 1959, pp. 191-207.

Milton's polemical tracts of the Puritan Revolution have long offered difficulty to scholars, and these difficulties are intensified in the eight pamphlets which he wrote during the chaotic closing years of the interregnum.¹ One problem concerns Milton's bewildering shifts of political allegiance among the various parties and models of government:² he first acquiesced in the protectorate of Richard Cromwell, then denounced protectorian government and eulogized the restored Rump Parliament and the commonwealth, then defended an army government which deposed the Rump, then demanded the Rump's return, then offered plans for perpetuating three different legislatures in power or about to come to power, and at one point proposed the establishment of a temporary monarchy or protectorate. Furthermore, during this brief period he restated two contradictory theories of government developed in earlier tracts—the popular-sovereignty theory, asserting the right of every free people to choose, alter, and depose their government, and an "aristocratic" theory justifying the "worthy minority" in imposing and perpetuating its rule over an "unworthy" majority. Also intensified is the ambiguity, long present in Milton's tracts, concerning the relation of regenerate to the civil government: Milton's ecclesiastical pamphlets of 1659 define a sharp separation of church and state in terms of their laws, concerns, and jurisdictions, but in other works of this period he appears to assert the contradictory doctrine that the "Saints" should enjoy special political privileges.

These confusions obscure Milton's beliefs during a period crucial to his development and have, beyond this, important ramifications for our total view of his thought and character. They have inspired, on the one hand, S. B. Lilijegren's view of Milton the Machiavellian, a crass hypocrite or at best a timeserver, and on the other, A. E. Barker's portrait of a politically inept Milton guilty of "illogicality rather than insincerity," as well as Ernest Sirluck's analysis of Milton as an able rhetorician, adapting his arguments, within limits, to the needs and rhetorical pressures of the moment, in close alignment with the position of the Puritan Center parties.³ Such confusions have also led to very diverse interpretations of Milton's last tract about political issues, The Readie and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (1660). In his edition of this tract E. M. Clark charges the model of government proposed with "utter impracticality."⁴ Howard Schultz calls it a naturalistic Utopia placing "civil power in the hands of substantial citizens without regard to their estate as Christians," Barker regards it as a theocracy modeled upon Christ's millennial government with his saints after the Last Judgment, and Don M. Wolfe identifies it with the program of the Fifth Monarchists, those millenarian extremists who sought to impose the millennial government immediately, by force.⁵

Assuming that an understanding of their polemical intention is of first importance in interpreting Milton's pamphlets, the present study analyzes them in relation to the political events and the extensive Puritan tract literature of the period.⁶ It concentrates upon Milton's pamphlets of 1659-60, since these present at once an epitome and an intensification of the major difficulties found throughout his prose; thus, a satisfactory explanation of their political theory and polemical method should help illuminate the entire structure and development of his thought.

I. Practical Polemics and Government Models

Who would cope with the political crises in 1659-60 had need to know how to tame a whirlwind. The Puritan coalition which united in the years following 1642 against king and Anglican Establishment—Presbyterians, Non-Separating Congregationalists, Separatists and other Sectaries, Parliamentarians, Leveller Democrats, and New Model Army soldiers—had long since disintegrated through internal conflict over the proper settlement in church and state. Upon this chaos Oliver Cromwell's protectorate had imposed an uneasy settlement through armed force and a policy of wide religious toleration, but with his death the storms of controversy again raged with ever-increasing violence. In the twenty months from Cromwell's death on 3 September 1658 to the restoration of Charles II in May 1660 government power changed hands six times, economic conditions steadily worsened, the populace manifested overwhelming dissatisfaction with Puritan rule, and the Royalists daily gained strength.⁷ My first contention here is that Milton's various government models and political arguments were drawn from and constantly adapted to the maelstrom of contemporary politics, that the contradictions in them were caused primarily by this conscious adaptation, and that the purpose of this adaptation was to preserve certain religious and civil liberties from every danger but especially from the permanent destruction awaiting them in a Stuart restoration.

The first two pamphlets, A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes (February 1659), and Considerations Touching the Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings out of the Church (August 1659), although primarily concerned with ecclesiastical questions, reveal also a striking reversal of attitude toward the protectorate.⁸ The first silently acquiesced in the protectorian government (which Milton had warmly supported at its initial establishment under Oliver Cromwell in 1654),⁹ but the second vigorously denounced it as a "short but scandalous night of interruption " in the nation's "peace and safety" (VI, 43). This reversal is plausibly explained by political and rhetorical considerations. Milton was probably already quite critical of the protectorate at the time of writing Of Civil Power, because of its failure to achieve full religious toleration and also because of its increasingly monarchical trappings;¹⁰ indeed, the fact that he addressed his tract to the recently convened parliament alone, at the very time most pamphleteers were fulsomely eulogizing the new protector, Cromwell's son Richard, offers negative evidence of this." But since Milton's primary concern in this tract was to defend religious liberty against the recently revived Presbyterian agitation for suppression of the "unruly" and "blasphemous" sects,¹² he would hardly wish to prejudice this cause by gratuitous reflection upon a government which as yet appeared to be firmly entrenched in the popular affection of the Puritans.

In addition, The Likeliest Means manifests a reversal of attitude toward the Rump Parliament. In 1654 Milton had applauded the overthrow of the Rump by Oliver Cromwell, describing that body as full of personal sins, self-seeking, and arbitrariness,¹³ but in this tract (written three months after the deposition of Richard and the restoration of the Rump Parliament by a coalition of Commonwealthsmen, Sectaries, and army officers), he declared anew for a commonwealth and hailed the Rump as the "authors, assertors and now recoverers of our libertie " (VI, 45). A sampling of the very widespread commonwealth enthusiasm in the spring and summer of 1659 illuminates this shift. The coalition restoring the Rump, though by no means agreed as to what they expected from it, hailed its return as a reaffirmation of the "good old cause" after an ignominious backsliding into the ways of a single person.¹⁴ The pamphleteers set forth numerous and diverse republican creeds and commonwealth models.¹⁵ And the Rump's supporters, republican in theory but afraid to risk new elections in the face of widespread Royalist sentiment, flooded the press with tenuous but enthusiastic arguments for the continuation in power of the flagrantly unrepresentative Rump (comprised of scarcely fifty members elected nearly two decades before).¹⁶ Milton's tract suggests his concurrence in this widespread hope for settlement through the Rump, though he probably retained some of his earlier reservations about that group and he certainly qualified his praise of them by a sober warning that their government could not endure unless they established religious liberty (VI, 45).

Milton's Letter to a Friend, Concerning the Ruptures of the Commonwealth (20 Oct. 1659)¹⁷ was addressed directly to the new political crisis, the army's deposition of the Rump on 12 October. Generals Lambert and Desborough, whose political ambition had sparked the coup, marshaled the support of a variety of factions united by little more than a preference for rule by "good and godly men." Their proposed models of government differed widely: the Wallingford-House party (comprised of army officers and supported by numerous Independents and Sectaries) desired some form of army-dominated Select Senate to institutionalize the army's conception of itself as protector of the people's civil and religious liberty against all governments and to exercise a veto over the popularly elected legislature;¹⁸ the millenarian Sectaries headed by Sir Henry Vane wished to share governing power between a more or less popularly elected representative of the people and a select group of the godly, giving the preponderance of power to the latter in consideration of the regeneration of their natural faculties through grace;¹⁹ and the Fifth Monarchy men desired to set up by force a type of the millennial government of Christ with his saints.²⁰ In this crisis, Milton endeavored to present the most satisfactory compromise possible under the circumstances. He argued, realistically, as did certain other peacemakers of the Center, that acceptance of the fait accompli was necessary to the very survival of the Puritan cause,²¹ since the army "only now have the Power" (VI, 104). Also, though he allowed the army claim that the Rump had failed to provide full religious liberty, he vigorously denounced the army coup as motivated by the "close Ambition" of certain officers (VI, 103-104), and declared that the best settlement would be the Rump's restoration with a mutual protective oath taken by both factions. However, as such a realignment was all but impossible, he set forth a compromise plan involving a single-chamber legislature composed of army officers and members of the Rump. This was exactly the composition of the army interim government, the Committee of Safety, installed two days after publication of the tract, and the resemblance certainly argues Milton's intimate knowledge of the army's intentions. But though this pamphlet clearly shows Milton's practical evaluation of possibilities, it indicates also his disposition to hold out as far as possible for his own ideals. Thus he ignored completely the army's Select Senate plans (and all other contrivances for a "godly" council to checkmate the legislature); he endeavored to contrive a legislature as similar as possible to the deposed Rump by arguing that it should contain as many members of the Rump as the army would admit, and that it should be perpetuated; and he added a provision for local community committees as a safeguard against oligarchy (VI, 105-106).

The next (perhaps unpublished) tract, "Proposalls of Certaine Expedients for the Preventing of a Civil War Now Feard,"²² can be dated from internal evidence between 22 October, when the Committee of Safety was instituted, and 26 December when the Rump was restored, and probably toward the end of that period. In this tract Milton completely withdrew his support from the army government and called unequivocally for the return and perpetuation of the Rump (XVIII, 3-4). Again contemporary conditions explain the shift: during November and December all of the army's frantic attempts to bring about a settlement ended in failure, and the ousted Rump (as the only vestige of a legally elected parliament that could be opposed to government by the sword) received support from the City of London, from public opinion exhibited in hundreds of petitions, from republican leaders who took up arms in its defense, and especially from General George Monk, Commander-in-Chief of the Army in Scotland, who marched into England to support its claims.²³ Under these steady pressures the officers were forced to give way, and on 26 December the Rump triumphantly re-entered the House of Commons for the third time. In this tract Milton again presented a plan apparently demanded by circumstances and in line with the movement of events, but again he introduced a modification—a proposal for perpetuating the Rump in order to eliminate the unsettlement caused by successive parliaments.

Next to appear was the first version of Milton's Readie & Easie Way,²⁴ a tract often labeled "utopian," but in fact endeavoring to deal directly with existing conditions by presenting two distinct plans. The first, set forth in the body of the tract, was evidently formulated between 4 and 21 February, at a time when speculation was rife as to what the enigmatic but very powerful Monk would do about settling the government. The Rump was trying desperately to enlist his continued support²⁵ and on 4 February sent out writs for filling up its numbers; some factions were agitating for restoration of Richard Cromwell,²⁶ while others were proposing Monk as protector or king.²⁷ And the royalist Presbyterians were deluging Monk with petitions which, disguised as appeals for the traditional rights of Englishmen to representative parliaments, demanded restoration of the secluded members of the Long Parliament or election of a new "full and free" parliament—either of which groups was expected to restore the king.²⁸ Milton's first plan was an effort to settle the government and avert the imminent danger of a Stuart restoration by the simple expedient of preserving the status quo, and was perhaps intended to answer Monk's order of 11 February that the Rump disband quickly to make way for a new parliament. Pointing out that chaos would attend parliamentary change, Milton urged instead perpetuation of the Rump after it was filled up through elections limited to persons "well-affected" to the commonwealth. He also sharply denounced the sentiment for rule by a king or protector (p. 29), and provided in his model that certain judiciary and educational powers be reserved to local committees of "nobilitie and chief gentry," endeavoring by this proposal of limited self-government to placate the groups so loudly demanding representation in a free parliament (p. 37).

The second plan, incorporated in the introduction to the work, was obviously added after Monk restored the secluded members on 21 February. It is implicit in Milton's declaration that the proposal outlined in the tract might be adapted to the new conditions with even better success, since parliament was now sitting "more full and frequent" (p. 9); these words, together with Milton's studied omission of any reference to the already voted resolution for calling a new parliament, constitute a clear suggestion to the newly restored Long Parliament to perpetuate itself—a suggestion made also at this time by other republican pamphleteers.²⁹ Milton had elsewhere denounced this dominantly Presbyterian Long Parliament as dangerous, dishonest, and intolerant,³⁰ but he evidently preferred its perpetuation to the dangers of electing a new, probably Cavalier, parliament even more certain to restore the king. Thus the pamphlet's political theory, calling as it does for rule of the "worthy" minority and perpetuation of a "Councel of ablest men" (p. 21), must be interpreted with the understanding that these terms refer, in practice, first to the Rump Parliament, none too virtuous in Milton's eyes, and then to the decidedly unworthy Long Parliament. It should be obvious from this that there is nothing of utopia in this tract, but that it is an eminently practical attempt to rescue the Puritan cause, if possible, from the ever-increasing perils besetting it.

Milton's letter to Monk, entitled The Present Means, and Brief Delineation of a Free Commonwealth, was probably written at the end of March.³¹ On 16 March the Presbyterian Long Parliament, which had hoped to bring about a Stuart restoration upon conditions safeguarding Puritan religion and rights but which had proved completely unable to agree upon such conditions,³² failed in its last-minute bid to prolong its ses sion and was forced by Monk to retire. Elections for a new parliament were promptly announced, and it was the general consensus that the laws excluding Royalists from voting for or sitting in it would not be enforced. The republicans and radicals, now desperate, implored Monk in a number of tracts to stand by his promise to support the Commonwealth,³³ and Milton's letter closely parallels the terms of this concerted appeal. It accepts the inevitable, substituting the coming new parliament for the Rump or the Long Parliament as a perpetual supreme council, and it urges Monk to save the commonwealth in the only way now possible—by limiting suffrage to the well-affected in accordance with the laws provided. Milton also makes increased use of Harringtonian ideas and language in this tract. He accepts rotation in the legislature though he had demurred to this in the preceding pamphlet, and, in terms similar to those of Harrington's proposal that one house debate and another vote upon legislation, he provides for ratification by local committees of laws passed by the supreme council (VI, 108-109)—feeling perhaps that at such a time supporters of a commonwealth should compromise on details of organization in the interest of a united front.³⁴

Brief Notes upon a Late Sermon, written between 2 and 20 April³⁵ was Milton's answer to Dr. Matthew Griffith's vehemently Royalist sermon preached on 25 March, The Fear of God and the King. In this tract Milton made a startling departure from his previous denunciation of single-person rule by conceding, reluctantly, that the people's debased state might require a temporary king or protector (chosen from among their own deserving statesmen) for "the space of a raign or two" (VI, 160). This statement is clarified by contemporary reports that Thomas Scot, Sir Arthur Haslerigg, and other republican leaders met with Monk during March to offer him such a role, declaring the temper of the people unsuited to a commonwealth at present, and asserting his worthiness to assume the protectorate.³⁶ It seems clear that Milton's tract, addressed to Monk and praising him as "the General who hath so eminently born his part in the whole action" (VI, 152), was intended to support these attempts to find in Monk an alternative to a Stuart restoration. Also surprising in this pamphlet is Milton's reassertion of the popularsovereignty argument declaring the natural right of every free people always to alter and change their government, for Milton's political tracts since 1651 had constantly defended the right of the worthy minority to impose their government upon the rest, and the four tracts just preceding this one had argued for perpetuation of such a government. Milton's basic attitude on this issue will be considered below, but it seems evident that the use of the popular-sovereignty argument was in part motivated by the rhetorical need to answer Griffith's assertion that monarchy is a "Fundamental Law" of the nation and therefore unalterable.³⁷ As Sirluck has shown, Milton often during the revolution met Royalist attacks upon the commonwealth and the regicide by use of this argument, despite its incompatibility with his support of "minority" governments.³⁸

Appearing during the troubled last days of April, the revised and much expanded edition of Milton's Readie and Easie Way is virtually the last piece of commonwealth polemic of which there is record. At this time there was widespread suspicion though as yet no certain knowledge that Monk was in negotiation with Charles; the new elections were tending, as expected, to a Cavalier interest; the pamphlet literature heaped ridicule upon all the Puritan leaders (placing Milton prominently among them);³⁹ and the Royalists were effectively winning Presbyterian cooperation in their restoration plans by extending to them rather hollow promises of forgiveness and of a liberal settlement of religious differences.⁴⁰ The now desperate republican-radical coalition endeavored to provoke an army uprising by publishing inflammatory tracts predicting loss of pay, corporal punishment, and loss of religious liberty for the soldiers if Charles returned,⁴¹ but soon the republican leaders abandoned this effort and began campaigning for seats in the new parliament which was to convene on 25 April.⁴² The last effort to save the Puritan cause was Lambert's ill-fated and short-lived revolt (10-22 April), supported in large part by the self-styled "Saints" of the Fifth Monarchy.⁴³

The changes in Milton's second version grew out of these conditions. In an expanded introduction, he voiced his expectation that the tract would appear in the midst of the elections or during the sitting of the new parliament and his hope that it would prove useful at this time; accordingly, he cast the new parliament as his perpetual legislature. He also dealt with certain criticisms leveled against his first version: to meet the charge of arbitrariness he made the local councils and the army guardians of liberty against any encroachments by the perpetual council. And, apparently in answer to a clever Royalist attack disguised as a Harringtonian criticism, The Censure of the Rota upon Mr. Miltons Book, Entituled, The Ready and Easie Way (26 March 1660), he again pointed out similarities between the two republican models, but insisted that his was more practical and more conducive to personal liberty (pp. 25-29, 39). Other changes came from his desire to influence those Puritan groups which yet might be able to turn the tide against the Restoration. Recognizing in the Presbyterians a possible force in the coming parliament, he omitted a lengthy passage on separation of church and state antagonistic to their theory (pp. 35-36) and added passages calculated to disgust them with the immoral, papistical court life to come (p. 16), to incite them to fear Royalist revenge for beginning the revolution (pp. 32-33), and to portray their sad future condition yoked in a church establishment with the Cavaliers—"these new fanatics of not the preaching but the sweating-tub, inspir'd with nothing holier then the Venereal pox" (p. 33). Also, like the other republican pamphleteers, he endeavored to incite the common soldiers to open revolt. And, as a revolt was even then being carried forth by Lambert and the Fifth Monarchists, he omitted a passage disparaging them and added several which appear to give direct support to the uprising, for example, the argument that "God's Remnant" is justified in using force to preserve religious liberty, and the declaration that he writes not to convince those who would yield to the wishes of the majority for restoration of the monarchy, but "to confirm them who yield not" (pp. 33-34).

In this last tract, then, Milton again threw his support behind the only remaining chance, but he was not deluded about the prospects. His clear-sighted despair is manifest in the opening passage, when he pleads for a little "Shroving-time" before the long "Lent of Servitude" in which to take leave of liberty (p. 9), and especially in the emotion-filled words of the much-expanded peroration: "Thus much I should perhaps have said, though I were sure I should have spoken only to trees and stones, and had none to cry to, but with the Prophet, O earth, earth, earth: to tell the verie soil it self what her perverse inhabitants are deaf to. Nay though what I have spoke, should happ 'n (which Thou suffer not, who didst create mankinde free; nor Thou next, who didst redeem us from being servants of men!) to be the last words of our expiring libertie"⁴⁴

Here must rest the case for Milton the practical politician, close to affairs and quite non-utopian in approach to political problems. It is evident from this discussion that his plans were consciously constructed and changed in accordance with immediate possibilities in a technically inconsistent but fundamentally coherent fashion, and that they were related, especially in 1660, to the plans and activities of certain factions within the Puritan Center and Left.

II. Aristocracy and Popular Sovereignty

However, despite this evidence that Milton's political thought was constantly affected by practical circumstances, it was based ultimately upon principle, not mere expediency. Like the army parties, Milton believed that preservation first of religious and then of civil liberty is the chief end of government,⁴⁵ taking precedence over any considerations of constitutional form or majority will. A second principle, also resembling army theory, was that government should be conducted by a virtuous aristocracy: the theory that the wise, good, and liberty-loving have the right to force their rule upon the "mad or strangely infatuated"⁴⁶ masses figures prominently in Milton's Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio, 1651 (VII, 62, 74), forms the basis for the entire argument of the Defensio Secunda, 1654 (VIII, 176), and provides the rationale for most of his government models of 1659-60. The aristocratic republicanism of ancient Greece and Rome also influenced this aspect of Milton's thought: appealing to classical theory he conceded that forms of government must change in accordance with the virtue of the people, but constantly declared the superiority, for a virtuous and liberty-loving people, of an aristocratic commonwealth with a supreme senate in some sense representative of and responsible to the citizens.⁴⁷

However, a problem arises in Brief Notes, for Milton here appears to contradict his aristocratic theory, asserting instead, as he did in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, 1649 (V, 14, 18), and occasionally in the Defensio (VII, 267-287) but not thereafter, the popular-sovereignty doctrine of the natural right of all free men to choose and change their government as they see fit. Given the evidence cited above that Milton carefully selected his arguments on the basis of rhetorical need, Barker's explanation of this discrepancy as mere confusion seems inadequate (p. xx). Accordingly, the question is raised whether Milton here was deliberately using an argument in which he no longer believed, thus manifesting what Liljegren has called the "Machiavellianism" so easily justified by the Calvinist in the service of God (pp. xvi-xix).

To investigate this problem it is necessary to examine closely the statement of the popular sovereignty argument in Brief Notes:

no law can be fundamental, but that which is grounded on the light of nature or right reason, commonly call'd moral law: which no form of Government was ever counted; but arbitrarie, and at all times in the choice of every free people, or thir representers. This choice of Government is so essential to thir freedom, that longer then they have it, they are not free…. for how could our forefathers binde us to any certain form of Government, more then we can binde our posteritie? (VI, 158-159)

The key to this passage is the phrase, "every free people"; it is decidedly ambiguous and perhaps intentionally so. When used by the Levellers and some other republican theorists, this phrase means the citizens of all the nations of the world without restriction, since, in Richard Overton's terms, "by natural birth all men are equally … born to like propriety, liberty, and freedom."⁴⁸ But Milton characteristically related this phrase to a conception of inner freedom, which was supported by his fundamental doctrine of Christian liberty—the liberty which flows from virtue and faith, and is dependent upon regeneration through grace.⁴⁹ And he had already applied the standard of inner freedom directly to the political scene in the Defensio Secunda, when he warned the English people.

know, that as to be free is precisely the same thing as to be pious, wise, just and temperate, careful of one's own, abstinent from what is another's, and thence, in fine, magnanimous and brave—so, to be the opposite of these, is the same thing as to be a slave; and … it comes to pass, that the nation, which has been incapable of governing and ordering itself, and has delivered itself up to the slavery of its own lusts, is itself delivered over, against its will, to other masters—and whether it will or no, is compelled to serve…. If it be hard, if it be against the grain, to be slaves, learn to obey right reason, to be masters of yourselves. (VIII, 249-251)

This passage strongly suggests that only those who have attained inner freedom can properly value or long maintain political liberty—and that they alone deserve it. Given such a principle one may read the passage from Brief Notes concerning the political liberty of "every free people" as applying in an absolute sense to those only who are "free" by this definition. Milton could use such a statement as an argument against monarchy because monarchy would keep those who could so qualify from choosing and changing their government. At the same time, the argument, so understood, is not inconsistent with the theory of rule by the worthy minority, since in 1659-60 the number of persons free in this sense seemed to Milton pitifully small.

There is a further problem in the fact that the right of the "free people" (even as so defined) to choose and change their government is drastically curtailed, and in a strict sense contradicted, by Milton's provision for a perpetual legislature. He was, however, aware of this difficulty and, especially in the Readie and Easie Way, made several efforts to meet it. First, his local governing committees gave some further opportunity to participate in government, not only to those who qualified as "free" by his definition, but also in general to the "nobilitie and chief gentry" (p. 37); this provision shows that Milton recognized in the citizens at large some right to political liberty, although only the "truly free" could claim it as an absolute right. Also, Milton often appealed to the local committees as safeguards against the supreme council, and indeed frequently hinted that the army might overthrow this "perpetual" legislature if it should act against freedom of religion or commonwealth government.⁵⁰ Since such provisions quite undermine the council's supreme authority and "perpetual" existence, it seems likely that Milton thought of this body merely as another temporary expedient, and that he himself might well have been the first to demand its liberalization once the threat of a Stuart restoration was removed. In any event, since Milton offered some means, however inadequate, for participation in and even overthrow of his perpetual government, the statement in Brief Notes that free men should always have the right to alter their government does not, as might appear, directly contradict his proposed model.

Thus one need not ascribe insincerity to Milton's rhetorical use of the popular-sovereignty argument in 1660, since according to his own understanding of the terms it did not essentially conflict with his aristocratic theory. At worst he was deliberately using an argument which, in the common usage, had more sweeping and more "democratic" connotations than he would give to it, without fully explaining the limits upon his understanding of the term "free men." There is a comparable disingenuousness in his appeal to the theory of rule by the wise and good in support of governments (the Long Parliament for example) which he did not regard as the epitome of virtue, but merely as the best that could be had under the circumstances. But this kind of disingenuousness few polemicists or practical statesmen have ever been able to avoid, and it is hardly enough to characterize them, or Milton, as unprincipled or Machiavellian.

III. Politics, Nature and Grace

Milton's provision in these tracts for rule by the virtuous, the truly free, the most worthy, points to the third major problem: Is Milton's aristocracy really an aristocracy of grace, and are his various government proposals really models for a theocracy ruled by regenerate "Saints" as Barker and Wolfe have suggested? This question of the relation of the orders of nature and grace, and of their social institutions, the church and the state, is the fundamental issue for Milton's political philosophy, as it is for much Puritan thought during the revolution.⁵¹ His ecclesiastical tracts of 1659 define a radical position on this issue: although, as Barker points out (pp. 217-259), these tracts do not take up the segregationist position held by the Levellers and Roger Williams, their argument advances far beyond that of the Center parties and defines quite distinct laws, purposes, memberships, and bases of jurisdiction for the two institutions, with very few areas of overlapping authority.⁵² However, if Milton's political theory in 1659-60 is to be identified with the millenarian theocratic position, this distinction is completely obliterated and a startling inconsistency (and most uncharacteristic tendency to fanaticism) is revealed at the very core of Milton's thought.

The few passages in Milton's writing which merely indicate expectation of the millennium in the near or distant future⁵³ do not bear upon this problem, since such expectation is common to Puritans of very diverse theological positions.⁵⁴ Rather, a first consideration might be whether, in terms of practical politics, Milton actually supported governments on the ground that they were composed of "Saints." In this connection it will be remembered that Milton often defended and even planned to perpetuate governments which in his view were far from saintly, e.g., the "self-seeking" Rump, the "intolerant" Long Parliament, and the "ambitious" army leadership (denounced as less honorable and faithful than the very heathen in the same tract that supported their government).⁵⁵ Nor, given this pattern of compromise with necessity, does the fact that Milton deleted a passage disparaging Lambert and the Fifth Monarchists from the second version of his Readie and Easie Way warrant the conclusion of Barker (pp. 278-280) that Milton came to accept millenarianism in the last days of the revolution. More probably, this deletion and the other evidences of support to Lambert in this tract are motivated simply by Milton's realization that Lambert's uprising constituted the only remaining chance of preserving Puritan power.

Nor is Milton at one with the millenarians in terms of political theory. In the first place, unlike the Fifth Monarchist extremists, he did not draw his model of government directly from a scripture pattern, though his many references to Israel's experience and to Christ's precepts as favoring commonwealth government give some appearance of this. But his distance from Fifth Monarchist theory can readily be seen from his proposal of a temporary monarchy in Brief Notes, whereas the Fifth Monarchists held that any form of single-person government was absolutely forbidden by God, being a usurpation of the place of Christ, the soon-to-be-expected King. Also, for Milton, the scripture references did not constitute the only basis for argument. His constant warnings to England to benefit from the experience of the Israelites who "much against the will of God had sought a King, and rejected a Commonwealth, wherin they might have livd happily under the Raign of God only, thir King,"⁵⁶ must be seen in conjunction with his rationalist belief that "the law of God does exactly agree with the law of nature,"⁵⁷ and his conclusion that both laws left the choice of a particular form of government free to the nations of mankind, though both clearly pointed out the superiority of a commonwealth form.⁵⁸ Also, to support his argument for a perpetual senate in the Readie and Easie Way, he referred not only to the precedent of the Jewish Sanhedrin but also to that of the Areopagus of Athens, the Ancients of Sparta, and the Senate of Rome (p. 24). And, to the observation that a commonwealth is "planely commended or rather enjoind by our Saviour himself, to all Christians," he linked the further argument that such a government has been "held by wisest men in all ages the noblest, the manliest, the equallest, the justest government."⁵⁹ Thus, unlike the Fifth Monarchists who would impose a model drawn from the order of grace upon the political state, Milton used his scripture references to reiterate, support, and apply unmistakably to Christians a model which he also defended as superior in terms of the natural order itself, maintaining by this approach his distinction between the laws and jurisdictions of the two orders.

Another consideration must be whether Milton, if not endeavoring the imposition of a Fifth Monarchist scripture model, was yet proposing with Sir Henry Vane, John Rogers, and other less fanatical millenarians that the "Saints" enjoy a proponderance of political power because the regeneration of their natural faculties by grace rendered them more worthy than others to rule. Milton appears close to this position in the Readie and Easie Way, when he characterizes the Royalist majority as "worthie indeed themselves … to be for ever slaves," and maintains the right of "God's Remnant" to defend their liberty by force if necessary, being "far worthier then by their means to be brought into the same bondage, and reservd, I trust, by Divine providence to a better end" (p. 19). Furthermore, as Barker points out (pp. 311-326), certain passages in Milton's De Doctrina closely resemble the millenarian justification for the rule of the Saints. These passages emphasize the corruption in man's natural faculties of understanding and will through original sin, and assert that the regenerate alone (because of their restored faculties and their consequent enjoyment of Christian liberty) can truly understand and properly value political liberty⁶⁰—in Milton's view the first qualification for political privilege. However, as a consequence of his Arminian theology, Milton believed that God offers to all mankind at some time a general call to salvation, which might cause a temporary enlightenment and restoration for a considerable period of time even in many who would finally prove unregenerate (XV, 345-364), and that even the regenerate, if they do not "continue to the utmost in the maintenance of faith and love," might finally fall from grace (XVI, 75-87). Thus, unlike the primarily predestinarian millenarians, Milton could not divide sharply between regenerate and unregenerate on the basis of restored faculties, or restrict the exercise of political privilege to a fixed group of "Visible Saints." Also, Milton makes clear in De Doctrina that moral goodness and virtue (and thus worthiness to exercise political rule) though most fully enjoyed by the regenerate are not impossible to natural man, since, despite original sin, "some remnants of the divine image still exist in us," as is evidenced by "the wisdom and holiness of many of the heathen" (XV, 209). Moreover, he constantly cited examples of the political wisdom of the ancients as directives to his Christian nation, and in the Readie and Easie Way he suggested purely natural means—practice in self-government at the local level and the carefully planned and widely diffused education of children—to increase virtue and thus the extent of political privilege in the citizenry (p. 38). Thus, in contrast to the theocratic millenarian position which completely subordinated the order of nature to the order of grace, Milton's theory viewed political privilege as the right of those who manifest certain virtues and dispositions, more prevalent indeed in the regenerate but possible also to natural man.

But neither is Milton's political theory wholly naturalistic, as Howard Schultz finds it to be.⁶¹ This is evident, as Woodhouse points out, when one compares him with the Levellers who completely segregated the laws and goods of the two orders, refusing to assert the superior claim of the order of grace when they decided issues relating to the natural order.⁶² Thus they were able to follow the implications of the popular-sovereignty theory to a fully democratic conclusion without compromising, as did most republicans, on the ground that a majority election would restore the king, thus threatening true religion. Milton, however, had the Christian humanist's disposition to relate harmoniously, not segregate, the orders: in his ecclesiastical tracts he assumed that their social institutions, the church and the state, might seek their separate goods with neither infringing upon the jurisdiction of the other. But Milton also designated religious liberty as the most important good for the state to achieve, thereby manifesting his further assumption that the civil government must serve the interests of true religion and the regenerate—at least that it must not actively harm them. Thus whenever, as in 1660, it became clear that the independence of the political order would directly threaten religion, Milton was forced to compromise the principle of distinct jurisdictions and bring religious considerations to bear upon political questions. Accordingly, he argued that "God's Remnant" who value religious liberty may preserve it by thwarting the will of the majority as regards political settlement, and he justified Puritan continuation in power on the ground that victory in the "trial of just battel," resulting from "divine condescensions" and "gratious answers," constitutes a divine mandate given, not indeed to the "Saints" as such, but rather to various groups who are God's instruments for the preservation of the regenerate and their liberties.⁶³ In making this compromise, Milton showed himself always a Christian first, but also a dedicated humanist endeavoring in each set of circumstances to preserve the goods of the natural order as far as possible without destroying the principal good, religious liberty.

The preceding investigation of Milton's polemical methods and political theory in 1659-60 has revealed neither an illogical and confused Milton nor yet a Milton completely consistent in his statements, neither a Machiavellian Milton nor yet a Utopian or millenarian Milton. Rather, these critical months show him to be an extremely practical, able, and realistic polemicist, whose method was to accept necessary compromise in the practical sphere of government models, to present whatever plan seemed best in a given set of circumstances, and to engage in occasional disingenuousness in the manipulation of arguments, but not to the extent of employing arguments irreconcilable with his basic principles. Also, despite his polemical compromises these last tracts reveal Milton's constant adherence to certain fundamental political principles: the belief that the ends of government (religious and civil liberty) should be placed above every other consideration, the judgment that an aristocratic commonwealth is the best form of government for a virtuous people, and the insistence that "inner liberty" (most fully realized by the "Saints" but attainable as far as political purposes require by others also) is requisite for the enjoyment of political liberty and self-government. Nor is Milton's political theory without its enduring wisdom, even though its terminology and theological underpinnings may have been supplanted. In its most basic human terms, Milton's fundamental insight regarding the political realm is that only those persons who have attained to a personal experience of freedom and who continually exercise a mature and morally responsible independence of thought and action can properly value or long maintain political or other external freedoms. This is an insight which retains remarkable validity as an interpretation of the constant experience of mankind with threats to human liberty, whether from dictators, from demagogues, or from the pressures of mass conformity. We can still recognize, as did Milton, a direct relationship between the experience of liberty as an inner, personal reality, and the will to preserve it in all the various external realms of political and social life.

Notes

¹ Research for the present study of these works was made possible by a grant from the American Association of University Women in 1953-54.

² Ernest Sirluck has called attention to several such shifts in his unpub. Ph.D. dissertation, "Milton and the Law of Nature" (Univ. of Toronto, 1948), pp. 9-56: In 1641 Milton found no fault with regal supremacy so long as the king supported the "one right discipline" in the church. In 1643-44 he recognized a government based upon parliamentary supremacy over the king. In 1649 he upheld the regicide, the newly established commonwealth without king or House of Lords, and the popular-sovereignty theory of government. In 1651 he reasserted this theory but also defended Pride's Purge (which excluded the majority of the representatives from the Commons and left the government in the hands of the remaining "Rump" Parliament) on the theory that the "better part" were worthy to rule the entire nation. In 1654 he denounced that Rump Parliament as having been justly deposed by Oliver Cromwell, indicated approval of the subsequent selection of the Little or Barebone's Parliament from among the Congregational and Sectarian churches (thus giving support to the theory of government by the "Saints") but approved as well of its dispersal for political ineptitude, and also waxed enthusiastic about Cromwell's protectorate.

³Studies in Milton (Lund, 1918), pp. xvi-xix; Milton and the Puritan Dilemma (Toronto, 1942), p. xx (a most illuminating study of Milton's relation to Puritan ideas and experience); "Milton and the Law of Nature," pp. 202-243.

⁴ New Haven, 1915, pp. xxxix. Subsequent references to this tract will be to Clark's very useful edition which presents both versions for easy comparison; references to Milton's other tracts will be to volume and page of the Works of John Milton, ed. Frank A. Patterson, Columbia ed., 18 vols. (New York, 1931-38).

⁵Milton and Forbidden Knowledge (New York, 1955), p. 147; Milton and the Puritan Dilemma, p. 288; Milton in the Puritan Revolution (New York, 1941), p. 287.

⁶ The validity of this assumption and method has been demonstrated by David Masson, Life of John Milton, 7 vols. (London, 1871-94); William Haller, Rise of Puritanism (New York, 1938), and Liberty and Reformation in the Puritan Revolution (New York, 1955); A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty, Being the Army Debates, 1647-49 (Chicago, 1951; first pub. 1938); and also the studies of Wolfe, Barker, and Sirluck. However, comparatively little scholarship has been devoted to the history and polemic of the final years of the revolution. The brief essays by C. H. Firth, "Anarchy and the Restoration, 1659-1660," Cambridge Modern History (New York, 1906), IV, 539-559, and Godfrey Davies, "The Army and the Downfall of Richard Cromwell," Huntington Lib. Bull., VII (San Marino, Calif., 1935), 131-167, and the more extensive analyses by F. P. G. Guizot, History of Richard Cromwell and the Restoration of Charles II, trans. Andrew Scoble, 2 vols. (London, 1856), and Godfrey Davies, Restoration of Charles II (San Marino, Calif., 1955) are extremely useful, but they do not deal with the tract literature in much detail. Also, Milton's tracts of this period have not received extended scholarly attention, though Masson, Clark, Barker, Wolfe, and Sirluck have discussed certain aspects of them.

⁷ Davies, Restoration of Charles II, pp. 355-363.

⁸Of Civil Power was registered on 16 Feb. and first advertised in the contemporary newsbook, the Publick Intelligencer, No. 163, 7-14 Feb. 1659, p. 221. More precise dating is not possible, as the tract is not contained in George Thomason's extensive dated collection of Civil War pamphlets (from which source I have, whenever possible, supplied month and date of appearance for tracts mentioned in this study). The Thomason Catalogue does list The Likeliest Means among works acquired in Aug. 1659, but does not assign a specific date; the first advertisement in the newsbooks is in Mercurius Politicus, No. 585, 1-8 Sept. 1659, p. 713. See J. Milton French, Life Records of John Milton (New Brunswick, N. J., 1956), IV, 253-254, 273-275.

⁹Defensio Secunda (VIII, 221-223).

¹⁰ He had criticized Oliver's government in regard to just these tendencies in Defensio Secunda (VIII, 229-239).

¹¹ "The government-regulated newsbooks from Sept. 1658 to Feb. 1659 reprinted lengthy excerpts of such eulogies and pledges of support from cities and counties all over the nation, from the army and navy, and from many Presbyterian and Congregational churches. Typical is the address from Bridgewater, Publick Intelligencer, No. 149, 23 Oct.-1 Nov. 1658, p. 922, which declared Richard's calm succession to be a great blessing, "as if the God of Israel again had set up a Joshua to compleat that work which his servant Moses had brought to so good an issue."

¹² An example is "The Humble Address of the Alderman, Recorder, Burgesses, Gentlemen, Ministers … Within the Town and Borough of Stamford in the County of Lincoln," which asks that "a Godly painfull preaching Ministry may have all due encouragement," that an effectual course may be taken "for the setling of Church government according to the word of God," and that "the suppressing of Popery, Heresy, Blasphemy, Prophaneness, and all designs for the subversion of Magistracy and Ministry … may be effectually endeavored" (Publick Intelligencer, No. 160, 17-24 Jan. 1659, p. 162).

¹³Defensio Secunda (VIII, 221-223).

¹⁴ See Edmund Ludlow, Memoirs, ed. C. H. Firth (Oxford, 1894), II, 73-76; Davies, Restoration of Charles II, Chs. v and vi.

¹⁵ The Harringtonian tracts of this period set forth the characteristic government machinery of James Harrington's Oceana (1656)—an agrarian law, a bicameral legislature with one house proposing measures and another voting, an annual rotation of parliament members and an elaborate secret balloting procedure—and manifested such faith in it that they saw no need to restrict the electorate to the "well-affected," as did most other republicans. See Harrington's Art of Lawgiving (1659), and Politicaster (Aug. 1659), and his followers' Proposition in Order to the Proposing of a Commonwealth or Democracie (14 June 1659), and Petition of Divers Well-Affected Persons (6 July 1659). The Levellers (relatively unimportant in 1659 and in part absorbed by the Harringtonians) manifested in a few tracts such as England's Safety in the Law's Supremacy (23 June 1659, pp. 12-14) their characteristic distrust of all government, their plan to protect the people from it by a fundamental constitution or "Agreement," and their model for an annually elected House of Commons.

¹⁶ For this position see A Declaration of the Well Affected to the Good Old Cause in the Cities of London, Westminster, and Southwark (2 May 1659); J[ohn] S[treeter], A Shield Against the Parthian Dart (22 June 1659); and A Model of a Democraticall Government (31 Aug. 1659).

¹⁷ The pamphlet is so dated in the Columbia MS.; there is no record of contemporary publication, the first edition being that of John Toland, in A Complete Collection of the Historical, Political, and Miscellaneous Works of John Milton (London, 1698), I, 779 ff. See French, Life Records, IV, 276.

¹⁸ The Derby Petition (Sept. 1659), in Sir Richard Baker, Chronicle of the Kings of England, continued by Edward Phillips (London, 1684), p. 655, contains an explicit statement of the army's view of its protective functions. And the army constantly set forth some variety of Select Senate plan—in their meetings with republicans before the recall of the Rump (Ludlow, Memoirs, II, 73-76), in their petitions to the Rump (Humble Petition of the Officers, May 12, 1659, pp. 10-11), and in their abortive plans for settlement after the Rump's deposition (Guizot, Richard Cromwell, II, 290-291). Cf. Davies, Restoration of Charles II, Ch. ix.

¹⁹ See A Needful Corrective or Ballarne in Popular Government (1659), attributed to Vane in a contemporary note on the title page of the Bodleian copy, and Vane's similar plans reported by the French Ambassador Bordeaux (Guizot, I, 185, 474-475). Aligned with this position were some Quakers, e.g., George Bishop, A Tender Visitation in Love (1659), and certain Baptists and Fifth Monarchy men, e.g., John Rogers, Diapoliteia (1659), pp. 76-77.

²⁰ Declaring that they would recognize "No King but Jesus," and calling for the substitution of Israel's laws for those of England, they often proposed a government similar to that of the Barebone's Parliament of 1653, or else a ruling Sanhedrin of 70 holy persons. See John Canne, A Seasonable Word to the Parliament-Men (10 May 1659), p. 5; [Peter Chamberlin], Declaration and Proclamation of the Army of God (9 June 1659), pp. 1-7; and John Eliot, Christian Commonwealth (26 Oct. 1659), preface.

²¹ This argument for reconciliation was used by several Non-Separating Congregationalist leaders including John Owen, Phillip Nye, Joseph Caryl, William Bridges, and Matthew Barker, and also by Ludlow and Vane. See William Clarke, Papers, ed. C. H. Firth, Camden Soc. (London, 1901), IV, 123, 185; Baker, Chronicle, p. 670; Ludlow, Memoirs, II, 139-170; and Archibald Johnston, Lord Wariston, Diary, ed. James D. Ogilvie (Edinburgh, 1940), III, 145-146.

²² This tract was printed from MS in the Columbia ed. of the Works, XVIII, 3-7; there is no record of contemporary publication but it is of course quite possible that published copies did not survive.

²³ This move began Monk's ambiguous and probably largely unpremeditated role in the Restoration. See Davies, Restoration of Charles II, Ch. x.

²⁴ Thomason dates this tract 3 March, though as French points out (Life Records, IV, 300) there is some evidence for publication in Feb. See Clark's edition (pp. vii-xvii) for a résumé of the internal evidence establishing the time of composition.

²⁵A Declaration of Many Thousand Well-Affected Persons, Inhabitants in and about the Cities of London and Westminster, 20 Jan. 1660, presents an example of the argument that the Rump's power should be continued because it alone could cope successfully with the crisis.

²⁶ See Calendar of the Clarendon State Papers (Oxford, 1932), IV, 425, 543—hereafter CCSP. Richard Baxter indicates in Reliquiae Baxterianae, ed. Matthew Sylvester (London, 1696), p. 216, that some moderate Presbyterians supported this agitation.

²⁷ Bordeaux reported that Monk was "believed to have come to London with the ambition of raising himself to a post similar to that held by the Prince of Orange" (Guizot, II, 351). A pamphlet entitled Pedigree and Descent of His Excellencie, General George Monk (3 Feb. 1660) gives evidence of a movement to prove his royal blood and hence his claim to the throne.

²⁸ For a collection of these petitions from cities and counties all over England see A Happy Handfull, ed. John Williams, 2 May 1660.

²⁹ An example is No New Parliament (12 March 1660), pp. 1-5.

³⁰ "The Digression," History of Britain (x, 319-321). Although this work was not published until 1670, and the digression not until 1681, it was begun about 1645 and finished before 1660; thus Milton's castigation of the Long Parliament was already on record at this writing. See J. H. Hanford, A Milton Handbook (New York, 1926), pp. 88-91.

³¹ Since this tract's proposal of a new parliament constitutes a complete shift in Milton's argument of the past few months for perpetuation of the parliament in power, it was doubtless written when the calling of a new parliament had become an absolute certainty, that is, sometime after the Long Parliament's adjournment on 16 March.

³² For reports of the various proposals see John Thurloe, A Collection of State Papers, ed. Thomas Birch (London, 1742), VII, 887; Robert Wodrow, History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1721), I, 8-12; and CCSP, IV, 653-658. Most popular were the Isle of Wight conditions subscribed by Charles I in 1648, which would give parliament command of the army and navy and the right to appoint principal officials, and would suspend Episcopal church government for three years while a synod settled controversial issues. More rigid plans called for forcible imposition of Presbyterianism upon the nation, and permanent banishment of the queen, Edward Hyde, and other members of the court. Still other Presbyterians wanted to recall the king without formal conditions, trusting in his generosity.

³³ Dated 23 March 1660 were N. D., A Letter Intercepted and Plain English to His Excellencie the Lord Monk and the Officers of the Army, both imploring Monk to define an unambiguous policy of support to the commonwealth, and also News From Brussels, a satire on the Royalist pamphleteers' portrait of Charles as a saintly, all-merciful Protestant king. An apparently contemporary note on the Bodleian copy of this last tract attributes it and An Alarm to the Officers and Soldiers of the Army (April [?] 1660) to the combined efforts of a group of republicans and radicals, including Sir Henry Vane, Thomas Scot, Major Salloway, Livewell Champman, and Marchamont Nedham, and some or all of these may well have constituted a coalition responsible for this flurry of radical pamphlets in late March and early April. Roger L'Estrange, who answered these pamphlets as soon as they appeared, believed Milton to be part author of Plain English and An Alarum—see his Treason Arraigned (3 April), pp. 2-3, Double Your Guards (5 April), and Physician Cure Thyself'(23 April). Milton's authorship is doubtful, but the resemblance of his polemic tactics in these weeks to the tactics employed in these radical tracts suggests his close sympathy with the group producing them.

³⁴ Interestingly enough, Sir Henry Vane also took over Harringtonian language and certain aspects of the Harringtonian model in his 1659 tract, A Needful Corrective or Ballance, perhaps also in an effort toward unity among commonwealth supporters.

³⁵ The terminus post quern is evident from Milton's reference to the sentencing of Griffith to the Tower on 2 April, and the terminus ante quern, 20 April, from Thomason's date for L'Estrange's reply to Milton, No Blinde Guides (Barker, p. 393).

³⁶ This meeting was alluded to in numerous tracts and letters, and described in detail in Baker's Chronicle, p. 693.

³⁷ Matthew Griffith, The Fear of God and the King (London, 1660), pp. 50-54.

³⁸ Sirluck's argument is summarized as follows: "The social contract was a suitable reply to the Royalists' cry of monarchy by divine right, but it led to the supremacy of the majority. Of what avail was it against the contention, levelled simultaneously from left and right and … indisputably true, that the Commonwealth was imposed, against the will of the majority in parliament and nation, by a minority possessing command of the army? To meet this attack Eikonoklastes hinted, and the first Defence developed, a new doctrine of 'divine right': the right of the regenerate to execute the will of God. In the first Defence this coexists, incongruously, with the social contract; in the Second Defence, although there are some verbal reminiscences of the earlier theory, the doctrine of the 'better part' in effect stands alone." See his review, "That Grand Whig Milton," MP, LII (Aug. 1954), 65).

³⁹ Scurrilous allusions to Milton's personal and political life appeared in such tracts as The Character of the Rump (17 March 1660), pp. 2-3; A Free Parliament-Letany (17 March 1660); William Collinne, The Spirit of the Phanatiques Dissected (24 March 1660), and others. For a collection of these references see W. R. Parker, Milton's Contemporary Reputation (Columbus, Ohio, 1940), pp. 98-103. Milton added several passages to his new version specifically answering such attacks (pp. 12-13, 33).

⁴⁰ In late April, a flood of Royalist "Declarations" appeared with this burden, from the "nobility, knights and gentry" of Essex, Oxford, Hertford, Kent, London, and elsewhere. For an investigation of the considerable amount of conscious deception in such Royalist propaganda see R. S. Bosher, The Making of the Restoration Settlement: The Influence of the Laudians (London, 1951), pp. 130-138.

⁴¹ See An Alarum, and Eye-Salve for the English Armie (1660).

⁴² Ludlow, Memoirs, II, 242, 251-252.

⁴³ See Davies, Restoration of Charles II, pp. 334-337.

⁴⁴Readie and Easie Way, p. 41. The italicized portion, except for the phrase "O earth, earth, earth, " is an addition to the second version.

⁴⁵ This definition of goals (the common formula of the Puritan cause) was utilized by Milton throughout his polemic. In 1659 his conception of religious liberty involved virtually complete Protestant religious toleration and also church disestablishment; he referred to it in the Readie and Easie Way as "This libertie of conscience, which above all other things ought to be to all men dearest and most precious" (p. 36). In the same tract he defined civil liberty as the enjoyment of civil rights, the due administration of justice, and the "advanc'ments of every person according to his merit" (pp. 37-39).

⁴⁶Readie and Easie Way, p. 17.

⁴⁷ Milton acknowledges Aristotelian influence in the Readie and Easie Way (p. 31), and refers frequently to the republican models of Greece and Rome as well as to those of modern Venice and the United Netherlands (pp. 24, 26, 29). See Z. S. Fink, The Classical Republicans (Evanston, 111., 1945), for a discussion of this indebtedness. The superiority of a commonwealth form is unequivocally asserted in the Readie and Easie Way (pp. 15, 20), and Brief Notes (VI, 160). Milton held this view since 1649, and his departures from it were more apparent than real. His support of Cromwell in 1654 was coupled with a plea to the people to make themselves worthy to elect parliaments, and with an instruction to Cromwell to share power with a council of able men (Defensio Secunda [VII, 229-235])—provisions which seem to envisage the protectorate as a kind of aristocratic commonwealth with unicameral legislature and council of state. His failure to recognize Richard's protectorate, his support of the army government as a second-best expedient only, and his extreme reluctance to propose a temporary monarchy have already been noted.

⁴⁸An Arrow Against All Tyrants (London, 1646), p. 3.

⁴⁹ This doctrine, a constant point of reference in Milton's prose, was fully developed in the theological work, De Doctrina Christiana, ca. 1658-60. (For dating see Maurice Kelley, This Great Argument, Princeton, 1941, pp. 8-71.) In De Doctrina (XVI, 153-155) Milton offers the following definition: "Christian liberty is that whereby WE ARE LOOSED AS IT WERE BY ENFRANCHISEMENT, THROUGH CHRIST OUR DELIVERER, FROM THE BONDAGE OF SIN, AND CONSEQUENTLY FROM THE RULE OF THE LAW AND OF MAN; TO THE INTENT THAT BEING MADE SONS INSTEAD OF SERVANTS, AND PERFECT MEN INSTEAD OF CHILDREN, WE MAY SERVE GOD IN LOVE THROUGH THE GUIDANCE OF THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH." Thus Milton favored few institutional restrictions so that the regenerate might use their liberty and thus develop in virtue.

⁵⁰Readie and Easie Way, p. 39; "Proposalls" (XVIII, 4).

⁵¹ A. S. P. Woodhouse has admirably schematized the various Puritan positions on this issue. The theocratic view merged or united the concerns, laws, and institutions of the two orders, giving complete dominance to the spiritual; in rigid Presbyterian theory this led to control of the state by the national church, and, in millenarian theory, to government by the "Visible Saints." The segregationist position, maintained by the Levellers and some Baptists, asserted the quite distinct concerns and laws of the two orders and their institutions, thus completely separating them so that church and state could not coerce or directly assist each other. The broad center position, occupied by Non-Separating Congregationalists, Independents, and most Sectaries, distinguished to some degree between the laws and concerns of the two orders and the functions of their institutions, but did not wholly segregate them. See "Introduction," Puritanism and Liberty, pp. 14-100.

⁵²Of Civil Power allows the civil authority to exercise some restraint over blasphemy, idolatry, and Roman Catholicism (pp. 10-11, 19-20), but evidently on the ground, in the first two cases, that these can be discerned as evil by the natural law itself, the law directing civil governments (p. 40). The Likeliest Means permits the magistrate to offer a certain, carefully defined financial aid to the church, but only out of what might be argued to be the church's own property, e.g., that expropriated by the state from the Roman Catholic Church at the Reformation (pp. 79-80).

⁵³Readie and Easie Way, p. 28; Tenure (V, 57); Defensio (VII, 127-128).

⁵⁴ See the sermons of the Non-Separating Congregationalists John Owen and Thomas Goodwin, cited in Geoffrey Nuttall, The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience (Oxford, 1947), p. 110; and the writings of the Independent, John Goodwin, e.g., AntiCavalierisme (London, 1642), pp. 31-34, and of the Leveller, John Lilburne, e.g., A Copie of a Letter (London, 1645), pp. 1-7. Even Richard Baxter, a moderate Presbyterian, expressed some sympathy with this expectation in A Holy Commonwealth (London, 1659), pp. 221-223.

⁵⁵Letter to a Friend (VI, 102-104).

⁵⁶Brief Notes (VI, 156). Cf. Readie and Easie Way, p. 15; Defensio (VII, 157).

⁵⁷Defensio (VII, 267).

⁵⁸Brief Notes declares (VI, 158, 160) that the law of nature does not prescribe forms of government, but that free commonwealths have always been considered best "for civil, vertuous and industrious Nations." Cf. Defensio (VII, 275-279). Readie and Easie Way (p. 32), referring to I Samuel viii, suggests that God's law offers the same freedom and reiterates the same preference, and Defensio (VII, 77) gives a fuller exegesis of this reference: "It appears by God's own witness that all nations and peoples have always possessed free choice to erect what form of government they will, and also to change it into what they will…. A commonwealth, moreover, in the opinion of God, was, under human conditions, a more perfect form of government than a monarchy, and more useful for His own people; for He himself set up this government."

⁵⁹Readie and Easie Way, pp. 15-16. The very tenuous argument making Christ a good Commonwealthsman is as follows: "God in much displeasure gave a king to the Israelites, and imputed it a sin to them that they sought one: but Christ apparently forbids his disciples to admitt of any such heathenish government: the kings of the gentiles, saith he, exercise lordship over them; and … are call'd benefactors. But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief as he that serveth…. That he speaks of civil government, is manifest…. And what government comes neerer to this precept of Christ, then a free Commonwealth." See Mark X. 42-45; Luke XXII. 25-27. Cf. Defensio, VII, 145-159.

⁶⁰De Doctrina (XV, 203-215; XVI, 153-163).

⁶¹Milton and Forbidden Knowledge, p. 147 (see n. 5, above).

⁶² For this comparison see Woodhouse, "Milton, Puritanism and Liberty," UTQ, IV (July 1935), 483-513.

⁶³Readie and Easie Way, pp. 14, 32-34.