“Between Private Walls” 1645–1649of republican theory, based both on biblical and classical sources, is a constant in
Milton’s political argument over the next decade. One biblical proof text, often
cited by royalists as validation for the king’s absolute power to do good or evil
without any right of resistance by the people, is 1 Samuel 8, which records the
Israelites’ desire for a king like other nations to replace the prophet–judge Samuel.
God granted their request after warning them of the great evils the kings they want
will inflict on them. Antiroyalists expounded the passage as validating a people’s
right to change even the government God had provided them, but also as rendering
God’s warning about the evils of monarchy, and his displeasure with the Israelites
for rejecting his own kingship for that of an earthly king. Milton makes both points
(202, 207), and also implies that God’s ancient government under the Judges has
some near conformity to the new English republic which recognizes only God as
king:
As God was heretofore angry with the Jews who rejected him and his forme of
Goverment to choose a king, so that he will bless us, and be propitious to us who
reject a king to make him onely our leader and supreme governour in the conformity
as neer as may be of his own ancient goverment; if we have at least but so much worth
in us to entertain the sense of our future happiness, and the courage to receave what
God voutsafes us: wherein we have the honour to precede other Nations who are
now labouring to be our followers. (236)Milton also interprets a New Testament text he will soon elaborate more fully:
Christ’s charge to the sons of Zebedee (Luke 22:25) not to seek dominion over
others as do the kings of the Gentiles, but rather to “esteem themselves Ministers
and Servants to the public” (217).
In Tenure, Milton’s republicanism has less to do with government structures than
with ethos. He does not demand the elimination of monarchy as such, nor does he
provide that the sovereign legislature be truly representative. Here, as later, he
cared less about the institutions of government than about protecting religious and
intellectual liberty and promoting what he and many others at this juncture re-
garded as the essence of a “free commonwealth”: government founded upon con-
sent, the rule of law not of men, governors who remain the servants of the people,
and government for the common good rather than in the interests of one or a
few.^146 But he also goes very far indeed in discrediting kings, in arguing the right of
the people to choose and change magistrates and governments at their pleasure, and
even in suggesting that republican government has special divine sanction. In these
terms he gives positive theoretical reinforcement to the English republic just then
being born.