“Against... the Bishops” 1639–1642... joyn your invisible might to doe worthy, and Godlike deeds” (597). For the
present, he imagines himself as an elegiac poet voicing the sorrows of contempo-
rary England, who, like the weeping Jerusalem in Lamentations, mourns as a mother
for her exiled Puritan children:
O Sir, if we could but see the shape of our deare Mother England, as Poets are wont to
give a personal form to what they please, how would she appeare, think ye, but in a
mourning weed, with ashes on her head, and teares abundantly flowing from her
eyes, to behold so many of her children expos’d at once, and thrust from things of
dearest necessity, because their conscience could not assent to things which the Bish-
ops thought indifferent. (585)The tract ends with a Millenarian prophecy that constructs the king, in his role as
head of church and state, as simply a placeholder for Christ, the “Eternall and
shortly-expected” Messiah King, who will put an end to all earthly tyrannies and
proclaim his own “universal and milde Monarchy through Heaven and Earth” (616).
In that Millennium he imagines a fierce vengeance for the vaunting prelates and
their supporters: they will be debased below the other damned, who will exercise a
“Raving and Bestiall Tyranny over them as their Slaves and Negro’s” (616–17). He
cries out in prophetic lamentation and prayer as he considers the immense obstacles
to the church’s reformation: “Tri-personall GODHEAD! looke upon this thy poore
and almost spent, and expiring Church, leave her not thus a prey to these importu-
nate Wolves.”^94 But then he imagines himself as bard celebrating and helping to
perfect the reformed society that will herald Christ’s millennial kingdom, where
there will be no earthly kings and yet all who have labored for the “Common good of
Religion and their Countrey” will exercise kingly rule, and a Miltonic bard will find
his highest poetic subject:
Then amidst the Hymns, and Halleluiahs of Saints some one may perhaps bee heard
offering at high strains to new and lofty Measures to sing and celebrate thy divine
Mercies, and marvelous Judgements in this Land throughout all AGES; whereby this great
and Warlike Nation instructed and inur’d to the fervant and continuall practice of
Truth and Righteousnesse, and casting farre from her the rags of her old vices may presse
on hard to that high and happy emulation to be found the soberest, wisest, and most
Christian People at that day when thou the Eternall and shortly-expected King shalt
open the Clouds to judge the severall Kingdomes of the World, and distributing
Nationall Honours and Rewards to Religious and just Common-wealths, shalt put an end
to all Earthly Tyrannies, proclaiming thy universal and milde Monarchy through Heaven
and Earth. (616)In The Reason of Church-governement Milton again presents himself as polemicist–
prophet–poet, but his emphasis here is on inspired testimony and teaching rather
than zealous denunciation or anticipated bardic celebration. He devotes only three