“With Dangers Compast Round” 1660–1665laity, as he insists that all believers may perform all offices relating to Christian
worship and practice. In the category of extraordinary ministers he places prophets,
apostles, evangelists, and others sent and inspired by God to establish or reform the
church “by preaching and by writing” – a definition that makes place for a Milton
(570). Ordinary ministers can be any (male) believers with the requisite gifts which,
as in The Likeliest Means, he sees emanating not from the universities but from
God.^163 Any believer can preach the gospel and so can certainly administer the less
important rite of baptism. As for the Lord’s Supper, it clearly “belongs to all believ-
ers, and... is not the particular right of any man or order of men” (573, 558).
Chapter 30, “Of the Holy Scripture,” might seem to be out of place,^164 but in
fact follows from the previous treatment of laity’s rights in the visible church. Re-
iterating the common Protestant principles that the scriptures are “both in them-
selves, and through God’s illumination, absolutely clear” in matters essential to
salvation, and that all sorts and conditions of men should read the scriptures, Milton
also claims that the gift of prophecy (or public teaching) is “promised to each indi-
vidual believer” (577–80). He expects that ministers will normally be men of learn-
ing, possessed of the usual requisites for public interpretation of scripture: “linguistic
ability, knowledge of the original sources, consideration of the overall intent, dis-
tinction between literal and figurative language,... comparison of one text with
another,” comparison with the so-called analogy of faith, consideration of anoma-
lies of syntax, and knowledge of when the single sense of scripture also incorporates
typology (582–3). But such learning is not essential to believers or even to minis-
ters. As in Of Civil Power, the individual Christian’s right to interpret scripture for
himself remains absolute: “Every believer is entitled to interpret the scriptures...
for himself. He has the spirit, who guides truth, and he has the mind of Christ.”^165
Milton’s careful attention to scripture passages in De Doctrina evidently reinforced
his awareness of the corruptions of the New Testament text, transmitted by “un-
trustworthy authorities” and set down in “a medley of transcripts and editions”
(588). He invokes this textual slippage to assert even more strongly than before that
the spirit of scripture (charity, liberty, reason) and not the mere letter is to be
followed: God, he speculates, may have allowed the written text to be corrupted to
convince us that “all things are eventually to be referred to the Spirit and the un-
written word” engraved upon the hearts of believers, which cannot be corrupted
(587–90). Citing 1 Timothy 3:15, he locates the church of the living God not in
the visible community but in the “hearts of believers.”
Chapters 31–2 describe particular churches as independent congregations, and in
terms that equate clergy and laity. A church is established by covenant of its mem-
bers (608); the election of ministers “is in the power of the people” who are to test
and judge their teachers (594); and a few members meeting in a private house (as
dissenters had to do after the Restoration) constitute a “self-contained and com-
plete church,” not subject in religious matters to any other authority (601). After
identifying the usual church officers (ministers, deacons, widows), Milton reprises