“For the Sake of Liberty” 1652–1654I would have you leave the church to the church... and not permit two powers,
utterly diverse, the civil and the ecclesiastical... to undermine and at length destroy
each other. I would have you remove all power from the church (but power will
never be absent so long as money, the poison of the church, the quinsy of truth,
extorted by force even from those who are unwilling, remains the price of preaching
the Gospel). (678)On the vital matter of religious liberty he urges Cromwell to resist those (the pro-
ponents of doctrinal fundamentals) who “do not believe themselves free unless they
deny freedom to others” (679), and to side instead with those (like Williams and
Vane) who believe that “all citizens equally have an equal right to freedom in the
state” (679).
Reprising Areopagitica, Milton also urges Cromwell to enlarge personal liberty
and thereby promote republican virtue in the citizenry. He should reform the laws,
not by overturning the legal system itself or the Court of Chancery as some Barebones
radicals proposed, but by repealing laws that unnecessarily restrict freedom, that
forbid “actions of themselves licit, merely because of the guilt of those who abuse
them.” Laws, he insists, only curb wickedness, “but nothing can so effectively mould
and create virtue as liberty” (679). Cromwell should also abolish the licensing ordi-
nances that still hamper free inquiry and publication, those laws that Milton contra-
vened in allowing publication of the Racovian Catechism: “May you permit those
who wish to engage in free inquiry to publish their findings at their own peril
without the private inspection of any petty magistrate, for so will truth especially
flourish” (679). And, harking back to Of Education, he asks Cromwell to “take
more thought” for the education of the young, suggesting (without any details) a
merit system whereby access to public education is reserved for those who have
demonstrated their talent and commitment – “who have already acquired learn-
ing.” Whatever he has in mind, he does not want “the teachable and the unteachable,
the diligent and the slothful instructed side by side at public expense” (679).
In the peroration, Milton admonishes his fellow citizens to acquire the virtues
that alone can make them free within and thereby able to value and sustain a free
republic. Those in government must acquire, as Englishmen in the past did not, the
moral and political virtues necessary for the “arts of peace.” They must cast out
superstition, practice “true and sincere devotion to God and men,” expel avarice,
ambition, luxury, and all extravagance, “help those cruelly harassed and oppressed,”
and “render to every man promptly his own deserts” (680–1). If they instead fall
into royalist excesses and follies God will abandon them and others will rule them.
He urges citizens to exercise their vote worthily if they hope to retain it. Neither
“Cromwell himself, nor a whole tribe of liberating Brutuses” (682) could win lib-
erty a second time for a people that throw it over. Let them not send to parliament
delegates who buy votes with feasts, drink, and appeals to faction, or who are given
to violence, corruption, bribery, or embezzlement of state funds, or whose inner