Notes to Chapter 1
the people to his goverment, and doth administer the com-welth by the laws of the
same and by equity, and doth seeke the profit of the people as his owne.’ and on the
contrarie, ‘he that coms by force, breaks laws at his pleasure, maks other without con-
sent of the people, and regardeth not the wealth of the commons, but the advancement
of himselfe, his faction, and his kindred’ he defines for a tyrant” (CPW I, 443).
37 Also, from Stow’s examples, Milton concludes that kings “scarcely recognize them-
selves as mortals” save at their coronation when they are soliciting popular support, and
on their deathbeds when they confess “that they are wretched mortals” (CPW I, 431–
2).
38 See pp. 138–9.
39 The petition denied bishops’ jure divino claims; it allowed for compromise, but it also
prepared the way for further retrenchment of their powers.
40 [J]oseph [H]all, Episcopacie by Divine Right Asserted (London, 1640). The chief biblical
texts Hall and others cite to support the jure divino argument are directives for the Old
Testament high priests and Levites, and references in Paul’s epistles and the Book of
Revelation (chapters 2 and 3) to Titus, Timothy, and the “Angels” of the Asian churches,
all taken to be bishops.
41 [ J]oseph [H]all, A Humble Remonstrance to the High Court of Parliament (London, 1640
[1641]), 6; Thomason dates it January (1641). As concessions to his opponents, Hall
makes some place for “conceived” or individual prayer and preaching in the church
service and allows that continental reformed churches without bishops are true churches.
42 The Smectymnuans hint that they recognize Hall as author of the Humble Remonstrance
(pp. 71–2) from the similarity of the arguments here to those in the earlier tract. The
primary scripture texts cited for the Presbyterian system are 1 Timothy 5:17, 1 Corinthians
12:28, 1 Peter 5:1, and Romans 12:7–8.
43 CPW I, 966. The evidence for Milton’s authorship, summarized in CPW I, 961–5,
involves identical page references to editions of Holinshed, Speed, and Stow in the
Postscript and in Milton’s Commonplace Book, as well as parallels in phrasing and
diction, and what seems like an acknowledgment of authorship in Milton’s Animadver-
sions (CPW I, 730).
44 [Joseph Hall], A Defence of the Humble Remonstrance (London, 1641). He appended to it,
and translated from the Latin, two short pamphlets by Dr Abraham Scultetus of the
University of Heidelberg on the divine right of episcopacy. While preserving his ano-
nymity here, he virtually admits his authorship of the Remonstrance (p. 136).
45 It is, Hall says, “borrowed (for a great part) out of [Alexander Leighton’s] Sion’s Plea and
[Prynne’s] Breviate consisting of a rhapsodye of Histories” (159). In his Animadversions
Milton threw that charge back on Hall: “How wittily you tell us what your wonted
course is upon the like occasion” (CPW I, 730).
46 In April or May, 1641 Hall urged Ussher to “bestow one sheet of paper upon these
distracted times, showing the Apostolical origin of it [episcopacy], and the grounds of it
from Scriptures and the immediately succeeding antiquity. Every line of it, coming
from your Grace’s hand, would be... worth more than volumes to us.”
47 The treatise setting forth this proposal, The Reduction of Episcopacy unto the form of Synodical
Government received in the Ancient Church, was not printed until 1656. See Thomas Corns,
Uncloistered Virtue: English Political Literature, 1640–1660 (Oxford, 1992), 16–17.
48 Ussher, The Judgment of Doctor Rainoldes (London, 1641). The title alludes to a recently
Notes to Chapter 5