“Against... the Bishops” 1639–1642would reject Milton’s argument – anticipating Areopagitica – that religious contro-
versy itself is a positive good:
The reforming of a Church... is never brought to effect without the fierce encoun-
ter of truth and falshood together, if, as it were the splinters and shares of so violent a
jousting, there fall from between the shock many fond errors and fanatick opinions,
which when truth has the upper hand, and the reformation shall be perfeted, will
easily be rid out of the way, or kept so low, as that they shall be only the exercise of
our knowledge, not the disturbance, or interruption of our faith. (796)In Book II the term “reason” is virtually synonymous with spirit or purpose, as
Milton offers to demonstrate how prelacy opposes “the reason and end of the Gos-
pel.” Prelacy is a “church-tyranny,” whereas Christ took the form of a servant and
teacher. Its ceremonies are fleshly and polluted, “gaudy glisterings,” whereas Christ
established a spiritual ministry. Also, the prelates’ exercise of civil power – legal
jurisdiction, tithes, penalties, and torture – confounds the “economicall and paternall”
government prescribed in the gospel:
How can the Prelates justifie to have turn’d the fatherly orders of Christs household,
the blessed meaknesse of his lowly roof, those ever open and inviting dores of his
dwelling house... into the barre of a proud judiciall court where fees and clamours
keep shop... [using] begg’d and borrow’d force from worldly autority. (848–9)The civil magistrate under the gospel has power to punish only external evils –
“injustice, rapine, lust, cruelty or the like” – so as to maintain “the outward peace
and wel-fare of the Commonwealth” (835–6). The church has only spiritual power
over the inner man, which may involve pleadings, counsels, reproofs, and if neces-
sary excommunication, but touches “neither life, nor limme, nor any worldly pos-
session” (847). Milton’s own sense of vocation led him to understand the gospel
precept that all God’s people are “a royal Priesthood” as mandating an ecclesiastical
meritocracy whereby all ministerial functions (teaching, expounding scripture, dis-
cipline) “ought to be free and open to any Christian man though never so laick, if
his capacity, his faith, and prudent demeanour commend him” (844).
The tract concludes with the damage prelacy does to the state, and its redress.
Instead of the “perfect freedom” of the gospel (854), prelacy produces “perfect
slavery,” giving over “your bodies, your wives, your children, your liberties, your
Parlaments, all these things... to the arbitrary and illegall dispose of... a King”
(851). The solution, Root and Branch, Milton urges in two long literary passages.
The first is a romance allegory of prelacy as the dragon which must be slain by a
new St George – the worthies in parliament:
Our Princes and Knights... should make it their Knightly adventure to pursue &
vanquish this mighty sailewing’d monster that menaces to swallow up the Land, unlesse