“With Dangers Compast Round” 1660–1665insists that “we are therefore freed also from the decalogue [decalogo igitur ipso
quoque liberamur].”^159 Applying this conclusion to Sabbath observance and mar-
riage, he concludes as he did in the divorce tracts that charity – love of God and
one’s neighbor – often permits transgression of the written law since it fulfills in
spirit all the Law and the Prophets.^160 Milton develops an antinomian position care-
fully distinguished from the antinomianism of the Ranters by his continual appeal
to the law of reason and by his insistence that charity in fact dictates a higher moral
standard than the Law:
The substance of the law, love of God and of our neighbor, should not, I repeat, be
thought of as destroyed... [but] is now inscribed on believers’ hearts by the spirit.... It is not a less perfect life that is required from Christians but, in fact, a more
perfect life than was required of those who were under the law. The whole tenor of
Christ’s teaching shows this.^161
Echoing Areopagitica and Of Civil Power, Milton also draws out the political implica-
tions of the freedom won by “Christ our Liberator” from “coercion and legislation
in religious matters.”^162
Turning to the role of the visible church (chapters 28–32), Milton expands upon
the radical sectarian ecclesiology of The Likeliest Means. Discussing the sealing of the
covenant in the two recognized Protestant sacraments, baptism and the Lord’s Sup-
per, Milton describes them in conventional Calvinist terms: baptism is a symbol of
our death and resurrection with Christ, and the Lord’s Supper commemorates and
seals the benefits of Christ’s death to believers. Quite untypically, however, he sees
them as unnecessary if they cannot conveniently take place (557). On the issue of
infant baptism he stands with the Anabaptists: infants cannot profess their faith, or
undertake a covenant obligation, or pledge themselves to purity of life, so it is
“infantile reasoning” to suppose them fit for baptism, which initiates us into the
“rational, manly and utterly free service” of the gospel (547–8). He castigates Lu-
theran consubstantiation and especially Roman Catholic “transubstantiation... or
cannibalism” as “utterly alien to reason, common sense, and human behavior,” and
he ascribes continuing errors about the sacraments to faulty textual analysis, such as
a failure to recognize such words as “This is my Body” as figures of speech (554–5).
Defining the visible church (chapter 29) as the whole multitude of believers whose
only head is Christ, Milton judges that believers should join themselves “to a cor-
rectly instituted church,” but may refrain if they cannot “do so conveniently, or
with a good conscience” (568). After the Restoration many dissenters would find
that “inconvenient” if not impossible, and the difficulties would escalate for a blind
man. But Milton’s devaluation of public rites is more than pragmatic: not only after
the Restoration but also during the Interregnum, there is no record of Milton’s
formal membership in any parish or congregation.
Milton’s discussion of ministers breaks down all distinctions between clergy and