“Against... the Bishops” 1639–1642treatises, his rhetoric is mainly directed to moderate Puritans and especially mem-
bers of parliament, to persuade them that the “Root and Branch” legislation must
pass. His basic argument is the fundamental Protestant principle that scripture alone
must determine all matters of religion, including liturgical practice and church gov-
ernment or “discipline.” He associates himself at this juncture with the Presbyterian
version of church government, arguing that it alone has scriptural warrant, but his
emphasis is much more on eradicating the bishops than on defending the Presbyte-
rian model; at least subconsciously he seems already less than comfortable with
Presbyterianism. He does not load his texts with biblical citations like most Presby-
terian controversialists, nor does he comment much on the biblical proof texts
commonly invoked to support the Presbyterian system, but instead appeals con-
tinually and often explicitly to the “spirit” of the gospel. By the standard of the
wholly spiritual, humble, and egalitarian ministry instituted by Christ he finds the
episcopal institution an abomination, meriting his almost visceral disgust. But his
concept of a ministry without coercive power or tithes or any function not open to
the laity, and his emphasis on all God’s people as prophets, distance him from
Presbyterianism, with its clerical authority, tithes, and repression of dissent. Milton
is moving, even at this stage, toward Independency.
Theologically Milton is still an orthodox Trinitarian and – at least nominally – a
predestinarian Calvinist: he prays to the Trinity and refers to Arius, Socinus, and
Arminius as heretics.^5 But his emphasis on the power of nations and individuals to
help realize providential history departs from the usual Calvinist insistence on God’s
control of individual lives, history, and the millennial moment.^6 Also, while Milton
still recognizes the king and still accepts the traditional concept of England as a
mixed commonwealth sharing power among king, lords, and commons, he insists
that parliament alone can reform church and state, thereby according it the prepon-
derance of power in the state and placing himself in the vangard of an emerging
English republicanism.
In these first tracts Milton confronted polemical challenges for which he was
only partly prepared by classical rhetorical theory and his university debates. Broad-
sides, newsletters, and especially the Marprelate papers of the 1588–9 afforded some
precedents, but England had as yet seen nothing like the outpouring of tracts in the
1640s, addressed to contemporary controversies.^7 Milton’s tracts participate in com-
mon polemical modes, looking especially to the example of Luther, Wyclif, and
Martin Marprelate,^8 but they are strikingly original in their imagistic exuberance,
their experimentation with genre and rhetorical style, and their sheer verbal en-
ergy. He also diverges far from contemporary norms of controversy in refusing to
marshal authorities and indicate them by marginal citation; Milton’s margins are
defiantly bare.^9 Milton sees and presents himself in these tracts as a learned scholar,
but one whose essential characteristic is an intellectual independence neither con-
strained by nor needing support from human authorities. That self-construction
will receive increasing emphasis over time. He also works out in these tracts a