“Teach the Erring Soul” 1669–1674Any such readiness must involve recognizing the legitimacy of Samson’s earlier
appeal to arms – and that of the English revolutionaries. Harapha declares Samson a
rebel covenant-breaker and murderer, echoing royalist denunciations of the Puri-
tans before and after the Restoration for rebellion, breaking the Solemn League and
Covenant, and regicide. Samson echoes the Miltonic justifications for those ac-
tions: natural law which always allows armed resistance to those enslaved – “force
with force / Is well ejected when the Conquer’d can” (1,206–7) – and a vocation
confirmed by divine mandate and evidenced by superior strength, recalling Milton’s
defenses of the Rump and the army in Tenure, the Defensio, and especially The
Readie & Easie Way.^138
I was no private but a person rais’d
With strength sufficient and command from Heav’n
To free my Countrey; if their servile minds
Me their Deliverer sent would not receive,
But to thir Masters gave me up for nought,
Th’unworthier they; whence to this day they serve.
I was to do my part from Heav’n assign’d,
And had perform’d it if my known offence
Had not disabl’d me, not all your force. (1,211–19)As Harapha retreats, revealed to be a “baffl’d coward” (1,237), the chorus’s ode
shows them sharing so intimately in Samson’s psychological recovery that – for a
moment – they imagine him charging forth to liberate them, and rejoice that God
“into the hands of thir deliverer / Puts invincible might / To quell the mighty of
the Earth” (1,270–2). But then, recalling Samson’s blindness and captivity, they
suppose that his must needs be the more usual form of heroism, the conquest over
self upon which he has been engaged, “Labouring thy mind / More then the work-
ing day thy hands” (1,298–9). Typically, they pose an either–or alternative, not
realizing that conquest over self must precede and can lead to the active heroism of
striking a blow for freedom.
The final agon between Samson, the Philistine officer, and the chorus explores
the claims and conflict of several kinds of authority: civil power, religious law,
conscience, and inward illumination. The officer, as a representative of civil power,
requires Samson to perform feats of strength at an idolatrous feast honoring Dagon
(1,311–15), analogous to the post-Restoration laws requiring dissenters to partici-
pate in the liturgy of an “idolatrous” Anglican church.^139 Samson provides a model
for life and action in such circumstances. While the fearful Danite chorus is dis-
posed to yield to civil power in everything, Samson refuses to prostitute holy things
to idols – in this case his divinely restored strength – on the basis of religious law:
“Our law forbids at thir Religious Rites / My presence” (1,320–1). He appeals as
well to the inner testimony of “my conscience” (1,334), and also to a proper self-
respect as he scorns to perform as their fool or jester or as a wild beast. Speaking