“For the Sake of Liberty” 1652–1654gests either that he had an inside source or else that the episode was much talked of
in government circles:
There was recently printed here the Socinian Racovian Catechism. This was frowned
upon by the Parliament; the printer says that Mr. Milton had licensed it; Milton,
when asked, said Yes, and that he had published a tract on that subject, that men
should refrain from forbidding books; that in approving of that book he had done no
more than what his opinion was. (LR III, 206)On April 29, responding to vigorous agitation for and against tithes, parliament
began to investigate some alternative form of maintenance, but ordered the con-
tinuation of tithes until such alternative was in place.^35
Opponents of these measures pinned their hopes on Cromwell’s long record of
supporting broad toleration. In the vanguard of the opposition were Milton’s friends
Roger Williams and Henry Vane. Roger Williams, a proponent of complete tol-
eration, even of Catholics, Turks, and Jews, and complete separation of church and
state, had returned from America about December, 1651 to press some issues relat-
ing to his Narragansett Bay Settlements and remained until spring, 1654.^36 Vane’s
tolerationist principles led him to defend Anne Hutchinson in America and the
Socinian John Biddle in England.^37 Williams, Vane, and Milton probably had some
personal association in the spring of 1652. Williams directed his correspondents to
write him in care of Vane at Whitehall and probably began about this time to
exchange language lessons with Milton: he wrote to a friend that “It pleased the Lo:
to call me for Sometime and with some persons, to practice the Hebrew, the Greek,
Latine French and Dutch. The Secretarie of the Councell, (Mr. Milton) for my
Dutch I read [taught] him, read me many more languages.”^38 Milton’s interest in
learning Dutch was probably keenest while he was involved in the Anglo-Dutch
negotiations. The two men also discussed methods of learning language, a matter
that Milton had addressed in Of Education.^39 Milton had been associated with Vane
in the Council of State for three years, and probably referred chiefly to him when
he later praised some members of this council for “so well joining religion with
civil prudence, and yet so well distinguishing the different power of either, and this
not only voting, but frequently reasoning why it should be so” (CPW VII, 240). It
is easy to imagine these three discussing their common repugnance for the propos-
als under debate and how to oppose them. Williams set forth several pamphlets in
rapid succession: in The Fourth Paper Presented by Major Butler (c. March 30), he
quoted Cromwell’s famous declaration in the committee, “That he had rather that
Mahumetanism were permitted amongst us than that one of God’s children should
be persecuted,” and argued for “a true and absolute Soul-freedom to all the people of
the Land impartially; so that no person be forced to pray nor pay, otherwise then as
his Soul believeth and consenteth.”^40 In April, in The Bloody Tenet Yet More Bloody,
he restated his radical tolerationist and separatist principles, analyzing the 15 Propos-