“Against... the Bishops” 1639–1642discreet our minds.” He also calls for martial exercises to “inure and harden our
bodies... to all warlike skil and performance,” a proposal no doubt prompted by
the growing likelihood of war, and with it the need for a citizen militia.
Then, Milton formally covenants with his countrymen to become a national
epic poet, though he supposes that will be possible only after the yoke of prelaty is
removed, “under whose inquisitorius and tyrannical duncery no free and splendid
wit can flourish” (820). He believes he has, or will then have, the requisite qualifi-
cations:
These [poetic] abilities, wheresoever they be found, are the inspired guift of God
rarely bestow’d, but yet to some (though most abuse) in every Nation;... Neither do
I think it shame to covnant with any knowing reader, that for some few yeers yet I
may go on trust with him toward the payment of what I am now indebted, as being
a work not to be rays’d by the heat of youth, or the vapours of wine... nor to be
obtain’d by the invocation of Dame Memory and her siren daughters, but by devout
prayer to that eternall Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and
sends out his Seraphim with the hallow’d fire of his Altar to touch and purify the lips
of whom he pleases: to this must be added industrious and select reading, steddy
observation, insight into all seemly and generous arts and affaires. (816, 820–1)This statement asserts that high poetry is not the product of youth, or stimulants, or
slavish imitation of the classics – Dame Memory and the Muses – but flows from an
inborn gift, arduous study, wide experience of life (which Milton’s present engage-
ment with political issues will help to supply), and, most important, divine inspira-
tion. Significantly, he insists on a close relation between learning and inspiration:
Milton as prophet is not a vessel for extempore enthusiastic testimony like some
radical sectaries; and Milton as bard is not a vehicle for the Platonic divine afflatus.
In Of Reformation and Animadversions he took on at times the prophetic voice of
zealous denunciation, apocalyptic prayer, and millennial vision, but not so here.
Perhaps for that voice he needed anonymity. Here he claims and seeks to exercise
the role of prophet–teacher, with a power akin to and perhaps surpassing that of the
pulpit, “to imbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of vertu, and public
civility” (816). Returning to immediate polemic issues, he ends this preface by
constructing himself in yet another role, a prospective minister forced by Laud and
the prelates from the vocation to which “I was destin’d as a child” and so with a
rightful claim to speak on church matters. While he had probably decided against
the ministry by 1637, he suggests here, partly for rhetorical effect, that the final
sticking point was the notorious “et cetera” oath of 1640^105 – still a burning issue:
Comming to some maturity of yeers and perceaving what tyranny had invaded the
Church, that he who would take Orders must subscribe slave, and take an oath withall,
which unlesse he took with a conscience that would retch, he must either strait purjure,
or split his faith, I thought it better to preferre a blameless silence before the sacred