“For the Sake of Liberty” 1652–1654the plea he at last voices: “Helpe us.” That couplet identifies the new foes with
biblical false prophets who are outwardly sheep but inwardly “ravening wolves”
(Matthew 7:15). And the contemptuous end rhyme underscores their animality,
pointing to the danger they pose by their persecutions (paw) and by their ravenous
appetite for public funds (maw): “Helpe us to save free Conscience from the paw /
Of hireling wolves whose Gospell is their maw.”
Milton’s sonnet “To Sir Henry Vane the younger,” presented to his statesman
friend on July 3, 1652,^48 is almost wholly in the panegyric mode, but its plea, while
left implicit, is as powerful. Paralleling the structure of the Cromwell sonnet, the
octave focuses on Vane’s valuable services in matters of war and the sestet on his
even more valuable service in peace to the cause of religious liberty. The sonnet
turns on the paradox set forth in its opening apostrophe, “Vane, young in yeares
but in sage counsell old.”^49 The first quatrain praises Vane’s parliamentary role as a
“Senatour” (Latin, senex, old), equal to those famous Roman senators whose firm-
ness counted for more than the Roman legions in withstanding invaders: “when
gownes not armes repelld” Pyrrus and Hannibal. The second quatrain treats Vane’s
war service: in diplomatic negotiations he could penetrate “the drifts of hollow
states hard to be spelld” (the pun on hollow/Holland credits him with recognizing
the supposed bad faith of the Dutch ambassadors before the war).^50 He also supplied
the military with Machiavelli’s crucial requirements for war, “Iron & Gold,” by
taking the lead in building the strong navy so vital in the Dutch war. The volta again
comes in the middle of line nine, marking the turn from war to peace but not yet
from past to present. The third quatrain compliments Vane for having already learned
“which few have don” the proper bounds of the two swords, “spirituall powre &
civill, what each meanes / What severs each.” That past knowledge is the basis for
the implicit plea in the last two lines, which function like a couplet but are not so
rhymed:
Therefore on thy firme hand religion leanes
In peace, & reck’ns thee her eldest son.The “young” Vane is, paradoxically, religion’s eldest son, and therefore bears pri-
mary responsibility for protecting her in the present crisis. Vane knows, and should
show others, that the 15 Proposals have it wrong, that religion can only be protected
if the magistrates leave it strictly alone.
Sometime in June Milton received and answered an admiring letter from the
Athenian scholar Leonard Philaras, then ambassador from Parma to the King of
France.^51 Praising Philaras for his scholarship and a liberal education worthy of the
ancient Athenians, he responds to Philaras’s quixotic suggestion that England help
free Greece from the Turks with a restatement of his core belief that, like any
people desiring freedom, the Greeks must first rekindle the spirit of liberty within
themselves. Philaras, he gracefully suggests, might inspire them to do so: