“Between Private Walls” 1645–1649Be not thou silent now at length
O God hold not thy peace,
Sit not thou still O god of strength,
We cry and do not cease.
For lo thy furious foes now swell
And storm outrageously,
And they that hate thee proud and fell
Exalt their heads full high.
(Psalm 83:1–8)Lover and friend thou hast remov’d
And sever’d from me far.
They fly me now whom I have lov’d,
And as in darkness are.
(Psalm 88:69–72)Yet these psalms also sound an affirmative theme, an assurance that at last deliver-
ance will come and the Kingdom of God will be established in a repentant and
reformed Israel (and England.) Milton expands on that theme (sometimes without
italics), in language linking such reform to the – perhaps imminent – Millennial
reign of Christ the King:
To his dear Saints he will speak peace,
But let them never more
Return to folly, but surcease
To trespass as before.
Surely to such as do him fear
Salvation is at hand,
And glory shall ere long appear
To dwell within Our land.
...
Before him Righteousness shall go
His Royal Harbinger,
Then will he come, and not be slow.
His footsteps cannot err.^94Milton’s dismay and anger surely increased when parliament on May 2 com-
pleted passage of its long-debated “Ordinance for the Suppression of Blasphe-
mies and Heresies” – a red flag to the army Independents and sectaries who were
at that very moment fighting in its name. That law provided the death penalty for
atheism, anti-Trinitarianism, and other major errors (unless recanted), and im-
prisonment for lesser ones such as promoting Arminianism and Anabaptism, de-
nouncing Presbyterian church government, and denying the necessity of Sabbath
observance.^95 Milton himself held or would soon hold many of these views; he