Notes to Chapter 1they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty.’ ”
Marshall’s sermon is less militant than the text allows for, chiefly urging prayer, repent-
ance, and moral support as the “helps” presently required of English Puritans. But the
biblical text, repeated over and over again in the sermon, reverberates with a militancy
implied if not quite explicit.
71 Joseph Hall, et al.(?), A Modest Confutation (London, 1642).
72 Ibid., 36.
73 Ibid., A 3–A 3v.
74 An Apology (London, 1642). Its reference to the “miraculous and losseless victories” in
Ireland (CPW I, 927) seems to allude to parliament’s April 8 petition asserting that
recent English victories against the rebels obviated the need for the invasion the king
proposed to mount.
75 This tract and Reason of Church-governement were both published by John Rothwell;
Thomas Underhill published Milton’s first three pamphlets.
76 See Egan, “Creator–Critic,” 45–54, and Kranidas, “Style and Rectitude,” 237–48. He
judges Hall merely a “drawling versifier” in his poetic satires, according to the standards
he imbibed from his good education, “inur’d and season’d betimes with the best and
elegantest authors of the learned tongues, and thereto brought an eare that could meas-
ure a just cadence, and scan without articulating” (CPW I, 914–16).
77 Page 939. See Anselment, Betwixt Jest and Ernest, 85–93.
78 Pages 948–9. Cf. Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, IV.vi.9–10.
79 Page 920, italics mine. Though Milton also urges the king to prove “a true defender of
the Faith” in this matter, his hopes clearly rest with the parliament.
80 He cites as their accomplishments: laying tyranny “groveling upon the fatall block”
(Strafford’s execution), freeing us from the doctrine of tyranny (the king’s absolutist and
jure divino claims), releasing “the elect Martyrs” from prison, and abolishing the re-
quired liturgy (924).
81 The Confuter apparently inferred this character from Animadversions; see above,
pp. 132, 136. Milton asserts that the Confuter described him from “odde ends which
from some penurious Book of Characters he had been culling out and would faine
apply” (CPW I, 882–3). See Egan, “Creator–Critic,” 53.
82 Pages 883–4. He continues: “I could not... think I had that regard from them for
other cause then that I might be still encourag’d to proceed in the honest and laudable
courses, of which they apprehended I had given good proofe. And to those ingenuous
and friendly men who were evere the countnancers of vertuous and hopefull wits, I
wish the best, and happiest things, that friends in absence wish one to another.” This
seems a surprisingly positive comment on his university experiences (see chapter 2,
pp. 28–30), but Milton quickly proceeds to separate the fellows he here praises as friends
(Tovey? Mede?) from the “sicknesse” that now plagues both universities – their de-
spised curriculum and especially their increasingly Laudian politics.
83 Pages 885–6. The reference is to the Protestation of May 3, 1641, to defend Protestant-
ism against the encroachments of popery.
84 Masson (II, 402, 481) thought so, but Hanford rejects that reading in “Milton and the
Art of War,” in John Milton, Poet and Humanist (Cleveland, OH, 1966), 244. For Milton’s
contacts with military affairs, see Robert Fallon, Captain or Colonel: The Soldier in Milton’s
Life and Art (Columbia, Mo., 1984).
Notes to Chapter 5