Notes to Chapter 185 See chapter 2, p. 43.
86 See chapter 1, pp. 12–13; chapter 3, p. 68. His biblical allusions are to 1 Corinthians
6:13; 13:7; 2 Corinthians 11.2; Revelation 14:1–5.
87 Pages 890–2. Reason of Church-Government also includes a long passage on due self-
esteem that offers a revealing insight into the basis of the rigorous self-discipline Milton
here describes: “He that holds himself in reverence and due esteem, both for the dignity
of Gods image upon him, and for the price of his redemption... accounts himselfe
both a fit person to do the noblest and godliest deeds... and would blush at the
reflection of his own severe and modest eye upon himselfe, if it should see him doing or
imagining that which is sinfull though in the deepest secrecy... this honourable duty
of estimation and respect towards his own soul and body... will leade him best to this
hill top of sanctity and goodnesse above which there is no higher ascent but to the love
of God” (CPW I, 842). See Richard Strier, “Milton against Humility,” in Religion and
Culture in Renaissance England, eds. Claire McEachern and Debora Shuger (Cambridge,
1997), 258–86.
88 See Thomas Kranidas, The Fierce Equation: A Study of Milton’s Decorum (The Hague,
1965), 13–71; and Thomas Corns, The Development of Milton’s Prose Style (Oxford, 1982).
89 Keith Stavely, The Politics of Milton’s Prose Style (New Haven, Conn., and London,
1975), 1–53, argues that Milton’s tracts had little political effect, chiefly because of their
exalted poetic texture; for a counterargument, see David Loewenstein, Milton and the
Drama of History (Cambridge, 1990), 1–34.
90 CPW I, 561. The axiom, somewhat altered, is from Cyprian’s 74th Epistle.
91 Pages 599–600. This comparison is reinforced later as Milton compares Presbyterian as-
semblies of ministers to parliament: in both, the king is denominated the Head, but in
parliament “he can do nothing alone [or] against the common Law,” and in assemblies
“neither alone, nor with consent against the Scriptures” (606). Mueller, “Contextualizing
Milton’s Nascent Republicanism,” 267, underscores Milton’s daring in employing lan-
guage of the three estates, which had been banned as treasonous since 1606, and had all
but vanished from English political discourse until 1640. Mueller compares Milton’s lan-
guage to that of Scottish and English republican theorists, especially Henry Parker in The
Case of Shipmoney (London, 1640), who pointed to the movement throughout Europe
toward “republists, or to conditionate and restrained forms of government” (pp. 7–8).
92 Page 590. For the pervasive pattern of monstrous generation and birth, commonly
invoked by royalists against Puritans but here turned against the prelates’ claims of
legitimate patriarchal descent, see Kristen Poole, Radical Religion from Shakespeare to
Milton: Figures of Noncomformity in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2000), 124–46.
93 CPW I, 583. Milton terms it a revision of Menenius Agrippa’s tale (reported in Livy,
Historia, III, 20v) of the revolt of the other members of the body against the belly.
Henry Parker, Case of Shipmoney, revises the import of the fable to argue that, since the
king as the belly receives heat from all, he should distribute nourishment to all (p. 20).
94 Page 614. He images England’s troubles in the trials of the Israelites in the desert and the
terrors of Apocalypse: her enemies “stand now at the entrance of the bottomlesse pit
expecting the Watch-word to open and let out those dreadfull Locusts and Scorpions, to
re-involve us in that pitchy Cloud of infernall darknes” (614).
95 Chapters 3, 4, and 5 in Book I.
Notes to Chapter 5