“Against... the Bishops” 1639–1642tines, and Politicians. Book I develops an argument against the Antiquarians, those
who justify episcopacy from the testimony of the church Fathers. It asserts, first,
that scripture identifies bishops with presbyters “elected by the popular voyce,
undiocest, unrevenu’d, unlorded” (549); second, that the patristic texts are often
contradictory and even heretical; and finally, that the Fathers themselves made scrip-
ture (not their own writings) the only guide for Christians. Invoking an ancient
axiom, Milton contrasts his appeal to scripture with the bishops’ appeal to custom:
“Custome without Truth is but agedness of Error.”^90 Casting himself as a humanist
critic of rhetoric, he sets the “sober, plain, and unaffected stile of the Scriptures”
against the stylistic fustian of the Fathers: the “knotty Africanisms, the pamper’d
metafors; the intricat, and involv’d sentences,” the “crosse-jingling periods” (568),
taking that stylistic depravity to be a sign of vacuity and deceit. The Libertines he
dismisses in a single paragraph, claiming that they fear Presbyterianism because it
would discipline their lust, licentiousness, and drunkenness.
Book II deals with the Politicians, those who argue that bishops are necessary to
the English monarchy – “No bishop, no king.” A new, long exordium contrasts
debased modern politics which promotes the subjection and rape of the people,
with the true art of politics – “to train up a Nation in true wisdom and vertue”
(571). To the argument that episcopacy is best suited to the English monarchy,
Milton counters with his major proposition in Book II, that it has rather tended to
the destruction of monarchy. From Constantine’s time onward bishops have chal-
lenged kings and usurped secular power. Laudian policy forced thousands of Eng-
lish people into exile abroad, depopulating and weakening the nation. The
“Spanioliz’d Bishops” (587) fostered alliances with hated Spain, turned Charles against
the Dutch and other natural Protestant allies, and promoted a fraternal war with the
Scots. Also, by their “idolatrous erection of Temples beautified exquisitely to out-
vie the Papists” the prelates have wasted the public treasury and deprived schools,
ministers, and the poor of proper support (590). Moreover, by assaulting the peo-
ple’s liberties and property, they provoke popular commotions that undermine the
king. Denying the structural analogy royalists drew between bishop and king in
their respective spheres, Milton argues that the reformed church government is in
fact closest to the English “mixed” monarchy, and he formulates that governmental
ideal in proto-republican terms:
There is no Civill Goverment that hath beene known... more divinely and harmoni-
ously tun’d, more equally ballanc’d as it were by the hand and scale of Justice, then is
the Common-wealth of England: where under a free, and untutor’d Monarch, the
noblest, worthiest, and most prudent men, with full approbation, and suffrage of the
People have in their power the supreame, and finall determination of highest Affaires.
Now if Conformity of Church Discipline to the Civill be so desir’d, there can be
nothing more parallel, more uniform, then when under the Soveraigne prince Christs
Vicegerent... the godliest, the wisest, the learnedest Ministers in their severall charges