Notes to Chapter 163 Ibid., 72, 131, 110, 146–7. Other passages (pp. 9, 30, 32, 55, 98, 113, 126–8, 132, 135–
7) attack Milton’s antiprelatical and divorce tracts, ridicule the “prodigious Conjunc-
tion of a Latin Secretary and an English School-master,” and condemn Milton and Marvell
(“Nol’s Latin Clerks”) for using the sort of Italianate obscenity Milton defends in his
Apology.
64 Edward Phillips states that shortly before his death he “prepared for the press an answer
to... a Scurrilous Libel against him” but that it was “never publisht” (EL 76).
65 Andrew Marvell, The Rehearsall Transpros’d: The Second Part. Occasioned by Two Letters:
The first Printed, by a nameless Author, Intituled, A Reproof, etc. The Second Letter left for me
at a Friends House, Dated Nov. 3, 1673. Subscribed J. G. and concluding with these words, If
thou darest to Print or Publish any Lie or Libel against Doctor Parker, By the Eternal God I will
cut thy Throat (London, 1673). The work carries what looks like a mock license, dated
May 1, 1673 and thereby in conflict with the date of the second letter.
66 Ibid., 340–2. See chapter 12, pp. 409–10 for Marvell’s account in this passage of his first
meeting with Parker, an erstwhile Puritan who was a frequent visitor to Milton just
after the Restoration.
67 The typeface is reduced in the final eight lines of page 15 and on page 16, in order to fit
the text into 16 pages.
68 It was advertised in the Term Catalogue for Easter, 1673, licensed on May 6 (I, 135). It
has been suggested that Milton wrote after parliament’s adjournment, hesitating to in-
troduce himself into an ongoing parliamentary debate but hoping to influence the pas-
sage of a toleration Bill in the next parliament. However, I see no reason to suppose he
waited so long. Keith Stavely, “Preface,” CPW VIII, 412–13, 417 n.) dates the tract’s
composition after March 13 because he thinks the title echoes the King’s Proclamation
of that date, praising parliament for its concern “for the preservation of True Religion
established in this Kingdom.” But Milton’s title could have been supplied later to a tract
already underway, and in any case the term “true religion” and references to the growth
of popery were constants in the parliamentary debates throughout the session.
69 Milton’s comment that many sects, even anti-Trinitarians, may be incorporated within
a church coextensive with Protestantism may owe something to the treatises of John
Hales, especially his Golden Remains, 47–55; see note 49 and CPW VIII, 422–4. Milton
appeals especially to Articles 6, 19, 20, and 21 of the Thirty-nine Articles.
70 CPW VIII, 420. Cf. chapter 11, pp. 384–5.
71 Pages 3–4; CPW VIII, 418–19. Cf. James Egan, “Milton’s Aesthetic of Plainness, 1659–
1673,” The Seventeenth Century 12 (1997), 59; and Peter Auksi, Christian Plain Style: The
Evolution of a Spiritual Ideal (Montreal, 1995), 277–303. As Keith Stavely points out,
Milton almost certainly alludes to Edward Stillingfleet, A Discourse concerning the Idolatry
Practiced in the Church of Rome, as one who has recently defeated the Roman Catholics in
the “intangl’d wood” of councils and Fathers. Milton rejects that terrain, though as an
irenic gesture he tempers his usual scorn for arguments from antiquity, allowing their
usefulness to “Learned Men” (418).
72 CPW VIII, 424–6. Cf. De Doctrina, CPW VI, 554–5, 153–202, 544–50, 203–98 (esp.
214, 218), 189–90, 153–202. And see chapter 12, pp. 422–7.
73 For that argument, see chapter 11, pp. 385–6 and chapter 12, pp. 438–9.
74 Reuben Sanchez in “The Worst of Superstitions: Milton’s Of True Religion and Religious
Tolerance,” Prose Studies 9 (1986), 21–37, suggests that Milton would have supported full
Notes to Chapter 14