“Against... the Bishops” 1639–1642known and Hall and Ussher were older, established figures. But it is more than
convention. As he did in Lycidas, he again frets about having to write “out of mine
own season, when I have [not]... yet compleated to my mind the full circle of my
private studies” (807). Now he admits that he has a tendency to make such excuses,
being “too inquisitive or suspitious of my self and mine own doings” (804).
In drawing his self-portrait Milton emphasizes the burdens laid on him by his
several roles. Emphasizing the sound education and opportunities for study and
travel that have made him a learned scholar, he bears the heavy charge imposed by
the parable of the talents:
Remembring also that God even to a strictnesse requires the improvement of these
his entrusted gifts, [he] cannot but sustain a sorer burden of mind, and more pressing
then any supportable toil, or waight, which the body can labour under; how and in
what manner he shall dispose and employ those summes of knowledge and illumina-
tion, which God hath sent him into this world to trade with. (801)Now, however, the immediate use for his talents is much clearer than it was in
“How soon hath Time” or the accompanying “Letter” to his clerical friend: he
must help to overthrow the prelates and thereby advance reform.^99 He renders in
graphic dialogue the plagues of conscience he will forever suffer if he fails in this
crisis to give God some return for the unusual and unearned privilege of learning
granted to him:
I foresee what stories I should heare within my selfe, all my life after, of discourage
and reproach. Timorous and ingratefull, the Church of God is now again at the foot
of her insulting enemies: and thou bewailst, what matters it for thee or thy bewailing?
when time was, thou couldst not find a syllable of all that thou hadst read, or studied,
to utter in her behalfe. Yet ease and leasure was given thee for thy retired thoughts out
of the sweat of other men. Thou hadst the diligence, the parts, the language of a man,
if a vain subject were to be adorn’d or beautifi’d, but when the cause of God and his
Church was to be pleaded, for which purpose that tongue was given thee which thou
hast, God listen’d if he could heare thy voice among his zealous servants, but thou
wert domb as a beast; from hence forward be that which thine own brutish silence
hath made thee. (804–5)As a prophet called to testify and teach, he bears a special burden. Like Jeremiah
lamenting that he was born a man of strife and contention (Jeremiah 15:10), or John
of Patmos finding the Book of Revelation bitter in his belly (Revelation 10:9), or
Isaiah required against his will to blow the trumpet of God’s denunciation (Isaiah
58:1), he struggles against God’s call but finds his word “a torment to keep back”:
And although divine inspiration must certainly have been sweet to those ancient
profets, yet the irksomnesse of that truth which they brought was so unpleasant to