“The So-called Council of State” 1649–1652Milton’s peroration is addressed, not to Europe, but to “all Englishmen.” It of-
fers “my fellow citizens” the education he thinks they need. He challenges them to
refute Salmasius by their deeds as he has done by words, and thereby to prove
worthy of God’s great blessing in setting them free “from the two greatest evils in
human life, the most fatal to virtue, namely tyranny and superstition” (535). Spe-
cifically, he challenges his own party in government not to prove “as weak in peace
as you have been strong in war” (the characteristic flaw of the British according to
his History of Britain), but to continue to merit the praise due their famous acts, as
the first men to conquer, judge by legal process, and then execute their king. They
must now eschew “self-seeking, greed, luxury, and the seductions of success” as
well as “the desire to curtail the rights of others,” and must preserve freedom by
“justice, restraint, and moderation” (535). This sounds like innocuous advice to be
good, but Milton means it profoundly: only such a government, he thinks, can
overcome divisive religious conflicts and promote republican virtue in the citizenry,
thereby moving the country closer to the republican ideal.