“Our Expiring Libertie” 1658–16601659 and after are couched in a plain style markedly different from his earlier more
imagistic and elaborate prose, and exhibit what has been seen as his turn to a new
aesthetics of plainness.^117 But some distinctions are in order: the amount of, the
kind of, and the reasons for the plainer style differ in the several tracts, as do the
rhetorical and aesthetic effects produced by it. In these two treatises, offered as a
thoughtful, balanced examination of church order and of the Christian magistrate’s
proper stance vis-à-vis religion, Milton’s model is biblical plainness, a style that
embodies what the tracts argue, the accessibility of spiritual knowledge to any and
all. He ends Of Civil Power with a defense of such plainness as especially suited to
discourse on religious issues:
Pomp and ostentation of reading is admir’d among the vulgar: but doubtless in mat-
ters of religion he is learnedest who is planest. The brevitie I use, not exceeding a
small manual, will not therfore, I suppose, be thought the less considerable, unless
with them perhaps who think that great books only can determin great matters. I
rather chose the common rule, not to make much ado where less may serve. Which
in controversies and those especially of religion, would make them less tedious, and
by consequence read ofter, by many more, and with more benefit. (272)As Susanne Woods notes, one remarkable stylistic feature of these two tracts is the
repetition of certain key words: in the first tract “free” appears alone or in variation
28 times, “liberty” 24 times; in the second, versions of “free” appear 49 times,
“liberty” 10 times.^118 These repetitions insinuate the overwhelming value and im-
portance of the named qualities, as well as the impact of religious and ecclesiastical
freedom on producing a political culture that values liberty.
Of Civil Power (February, 1659) is Milton’s most thorough exposition and defense
of religious liberty and its concomitant, the almost complete exclusion of the Christian
magistrate from any responsibility toward religion. That position is based on a radi-
cal extension of the concept of Christian liberty. Most Protestants accepted that
Christian consciences must not be forced, but normally that protection was re-
stricted to those practicing “true” religion as defined by certain doctrinal funda-
mentals. Milton begins by accepting the restriction to “true religion,” but he proceeds
to define it not by doctrines but by method. Citing the accepted principle that for
Protestants the only ground of true religion is scripture interpreted by the private
conscience according to the Spirit’s illumination, he concludes that the Spirit’s
invisible action makes anyone’s judgment of another’s religion wholly impossible:
These [scriptures] being not possible to be understood without this divine illumina-
tion, which no man can know at all times to be in himself, much less to be at any time
for certain in any other, it follows cleerly, that no man or body of men in these times
can be the infallible judges or determiners in matters of religion to any other mens
consciences but thir own. (242–3)