“Our Expiring Libertie” 1658–1660manifest, that a magistrate can hardly err in prohibiting and quite removing at least
the publick and scandalous use therof” (254–5). This seems to mean that the mag-
istrate may prohibit Roman Catholic and Laudian public worship, though not gath-
erings in private. That prohibition seems to contravene Milton’s principle restricting
the magistrate to the natural order but, like some of his contemporaries, he assumed
that idolatry, like blasphemy, can be recognized as evil by the natural law. In De
Doctrina Christiana, though not here, he spells out the basis for that assumption: by
God’s general call partially renewing the natural faculties of intellect and will, all
humans can come to “a knowledge of the way in which he [God] is to be propiti-
ated and worshipped.”^121 Since Milton finds idolatry in all its forms so reprehensible
and enslaving to the human spirit, he easily assumes that it can be recognized as evil
by the light of reason.
The Likeliest Means (August, 1659) is partly written in the plain, unadorned lan-
guage of exegesis and argument, but with a much more liberal sprinkling of satire
and invective against hirelings. In it Milton undertakes to answer the arguments of
the tithe supporters and also of those who would substitute some other public main-
tenance. He begins by agreeing with them that a due maintenance of ministers is a
precept of moral law – “the laborer is worthy of his hire.” But he then critiques their
biblical proof texts and marshals all the evidence – biblical and historical – used by
the radical Independents and sects to argue that in gospel times such maintenance
must be wholly voluntary. As part of the ceremonial or judicial law, tithes are abol-
ished for Christians, so Old Testament precedents from Abraham and Melchizedek,
Jacob, or the Levites mean nothing; Christ, the apostles, ministers in the early church,
and “those Waldenses, our first reformers” (CPW VII, 308) subsisted by wholly
voluntary contributions; the history of the church in England proves tithes to be a
popish invention; and no other reformed church has retained them.^122 Nor may
some other form of public maintenance be substituted, because “it concerns every
mans conscience to what religion he contributes” and also because the magistrate is
restricted to the civil sphere (308). Characteristically, Milton assumes that scripture
and reason teach alike on this point: that it is against justice and equity to require a
man “to pay for what he never learnd, or approves not; whereby, besides the wound
of his conscience, he becoms the less able to recompence his true teacher” (309).
The rhetoric of Milton’s tract is unusual among tithe opponents for focusing less
on the wound to conscience than on “hirelings” and the evils they import into the
church: hire, he claims, is more damaging than persecution because it corrupts the
teachers. This is an effective rejoinder to those who argue that public maintenance
is needed to uphold and spread the gospel, but beyond that, Milton’s scathing terms
reveal the depths of his disdain for the clerical estate as such. The “Simonious
decimating clergie” make “unjust claim to other mens goods” (275). Judas was the
first hireling, and papists brought this corruption to England. The Presbyterian
divines, blinded by “covetousnes and rapine,” seize tithes by force and “make the
name of Christ accessory to violence” (296–7). Exacting fees for sacraments, mar-