“Our Expiring Libertie” 1658–1660“in much displeasure gave a king to the Israelites, and imputed it a sin to them that
they sought one” (1 Samuel 8). Christ contrasted the kings of the gentiles who
exerercise lordship over others with his own disciples who are rather to serve their
brethren (Luke 22:25–6) – with reference, Milton insists, to civil government (424).
A free commonwealth best follows Christ’s precept, “wherin they who are greatest,
are perpetual servants and drudges to the publick at their own cost and charges...
yet are not elevated above thir brethren; live soberly in thir families, walk the streets
as other men, may be spoken to freely, familiarly, friendly, without adoration”
(425).
Most important, a free commonwealth is best able to protect liberty of con-
science, which, Milton insists, “ought to be to all men dearest and most precious”
and clearly was to Milton: “who can be at rest, who can enjoy any thing in this
world with contentment, who hath not libertie to serve God and to save his own
soul, according to the best light which God hath planted in him to that purpose, by
the reading of his reveal’d will and the guidance of his holy spirit?”^129 The other
main goal of the Good Old Cause, civil liberty, is not now defined in the expansive
terms of popular sovereignty, as in Tenure, but as the securing of rights, linked to
merit: “the civil rights and advancements of every person according to his merit:
the enjoyment of those never more certain, and the access to these never more
open, then in a free Commonwealth” (458).
Some appeals are addressed to other republicans, especially those associated with
Harringon’s Rota Club. Milton answers their criticisms of his first edition and those
of the pseudo-Harringtonian Censure of the Rota,^130 by defending and expanding
upon his idea of a permanent Grand Council. From the first edition he repeats his
arguments for permanence: this council is the foundation of the state and it is dan-
gerous to move foundations; political theorists (he summarizes Bodin) argue that
making the whole senate successive endangers the Commonwealth; other sover-
eign councils were or are permanent: the Jewish Sanhedrin, the Areopagus in Ath-
ens, the Ancients in Sparta, the Senate in Rome, the Senate in Venice, and the City
Councils in the United Provinces “in whom the soverantie hath been plac’d time
out of minde” (436–7). Milton surely knew that these various senates and councils
differ widely from each other and from his own projected legislature; he cites them
as examples of permanence, not as close models. The English outcry for successive
parliaments he attributes in part to the “fickl’ness” arising from our “watry situa-
tion” – he still believes in climatic influence – but he trusts that “good education
and acquisit wisdom” may correct that “fluxible fault” (437). He meets the argu-
ment that perpetual senates have historically been balanced by some popular insti-
tution (Ephors, Tribunes, etc.) by claiming that such arrangements have been and
would again be a source of continuous power struggles.
But he now admits that the Grand Council might be susceptible to corruption or
arbitrariness, and so spells out more safeguards against those potential dangers.^131 In
accordance with the political theory of Tenure, he clarifies that the sovereign power