Chapter II: Second Section (1)

MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH THE ANARCHY: MAY 1659--FEB. 1659-60.

_FIRST STAGE OF THE ANARCHY, OR THE RESTORED RUMP_ (MAY--OCT. 1659):--FEELINGS AND POSITION OF MILTON IN THE NEW STATE OF THINGS: HIS SATISFACTION ON THE WHOLE, AND THE REASONS FOR IT: LETTER OF MOSES WALL TO MILTON: RENEWED AGITATION AGAINST TITHES AND CHURCH-ESTABLISHMENT: VOTES ON THAT SUBJECT IN THE RUMP: MILTON'S CONSIDERATIONS TOUCHING THE LIKELIEST MEANS TO REMOVE HIRELINGS OUT OF THE CHURCH: ACCOUNT OF THE PAMPHLET, WITH EXTRACTS: ITS THOROUGH-GOING VOLUNTARYISM: CHURCH-DISESTABLISHMENT DEMANDED ABSOLUTELY, WITHOUT COMPENSATION FOR VESTED INTERESTS: THE APPEAL FRUITLESS, AND THE SUBJECT IGNORED BY THE RUMP: DISPERSION OF THAT BODY BY LAMBERT.

_SECOND STAGE OF THE ANARCHY, OR THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE INTERRUPTION_ (OCT.--DEC. 1659):--MILTON'S THOUGHTS ON LAMBERT'S COUP D'ÉTAT IN HIS _LETTER TO A FRIEND CONCERNING THE RUPTURES OF THE COMMONWEALTH_: THE LETTER IN THE MAIN AGAINST LAMBERT AND IN DEFENCE OF THE RUMP: ITS EXTRAORDINARY PRACTICAL PROPOSAL OF A GOVERNMENT BY TWO PERMANENT CENTRAL BODIES: THE PROPOSAL COMPARED WITH THE ACTUAL ADMINISTRATION BY THE _COMMITTEE OF SAFETY_ AND THE _WALLINGFORD-HOUSE COUNCIL OF OFFICERS_: MILTON STILL NOMINALLY IN THE LATIN SECRETARYSHIP: MONEY WARRANT OF OCT. 25, 1659, RELATING TO MILTON, MARVELL, AND EIGHTY-FOUR OTHER OFFICIALS: NO TRACE OF ACTUAL SERVICE BY MILTON FOR THE NEW _COMMITTEE OF SAFETY_: HIS MEDITATIONS THROUGH THE TREATY BETWEEN THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT AND MONK IN SCOTLAND: HIS MEDITATIONS THROUGH THE COMMITTEE-DISCUSSIONS AS TO THE FUTURE MODEL OF GOVERNMENT: HIS INTEREST IN THIS AS NOW THE PARAMOUNT QUESTION, AND HIS COGNISANCE OF THE MODELS OF HARRINGTON AND THE ROTA CLUB: WHITLOCKE'S NEW CONSTITUTION DISAPPOINTING TO MILTON: TWO MORE LETTERS TO OLDENBURG AND YOUNG RANELAGH: GOSSIP FROM ABROAD IN CONNECTION WITH THESE LETTERS: MORUS AGAIN, AND THE COUNCIL OF FRENCH PROTESTANTS AT LOUDUN: END OF THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE INTERRUPTION.

_THIRD STAGE OF THE ANARCHY, OR THE SECOND RESTORATION OF THE RUMP_ (DEC. 1659-FEB. 1659-60):--MILTON'S DESPONDENCY AT THIS PERIOD: ABATEMENT OF HIS FAITH IN THE RUMP: HIS THOUGHTS DURING THE MARCH OF MONK FROM SCOTLAND AND AFTER MONK'S ARRIVAL IN LONDON: HIS STUDY OF MONK NEAR AT HAND AND MISTRUST OF THE OMENS: HIS INTEREST FOR A WHILE IN THE QUESTION OF THE PRECONSTITUTION OF THE NEW PARLIAMENT PROMISED BY THE RUMP: HIS ANXIETY THAT IT SHOULD BE A REPUBLICAN PARLIAMENT BY MERE SELF-ENLARGEMENT OF THE RUMP: HIS PREPARATION OF A NEW REPUBLICAN PAMPHLET: THE PUBLICATION POSTPONED BY MONK'S SUDDEN DEFECTION FROM THE RUMP, THE ROASTING OF THE RUMP IN THE CITY, AND THE RESTORATION OF THE SECLUDED MEMBERS TO THEIR PLACES IN THE PARLIAMENT: MILTON'S DESPONDENCY COMPLETE.

With what feelings was it that Milton found himself once more in the employment of his old masters, the original Republicans or Commonwealth's-men? That there may have been some sense of awkwardness in the re-connexion is not unlikely. Had he not for six years been a most conspicuous Cromwellian? Had he not justified again and again in print Cromwell's _coup d'état_ of 1653, by which the Rump had been turned out of power, and which the now Restored Rumpers, and especially such of their leaders as Vane, Scott, Hasilrig, and Bradshaw, were bound to remember as Cromwell's unpardonable sin, and the woeful beginning of an illegitimate interregnum? He had justified it, hardly anonymously, in his Letter to a Gentleman in the Country, published in May 1653, only a fortnight after the fact (Vol. IV. pp. 519-523). He had justified it a year later in his _Defensio Secunda_ of 1654, published some months after the Protectorate had actually begun. In that famous pamphlet, he had, amid much else to the same effect, made special reference to Cromwell's Dissolution of the Rump in these words addressed to Cromwell himself: "When you saw delays being contrived, and every one more intent on his private interests than on the public good, and the people complaining of being cheated of their hopes and circumvented by the power of a few, you did what they themselves had so often declined to do when asked, and put an end to their Government" (Vol. IV. p. 604). Rumpers of tenacious memories cannot have forgotten such published utterances of Milton, while the fact that he had for some years past been an Oliverian, a Protectoratist, a Court-official for Oliver and Richard, was patent to all. Yet, now that the old Rumpers were restored to power, the survivors of the original "few" whose dissolution by Cromwell he had publicly praised and defended, here was Milton still in his secretaryship and writing the first foreign letters they required.

How was this? It is hardly a sufficient answer to say that it is quite customary for officials to remain in their places through changes of Government. On the one hand, Milton was not a man to remain in an element with which he could not conscientiously accord; and, on the other, the Rumpers were rather careful in seeking public servants of their own sort. Thurloe was out of the general Secretaryship; and one of the first acts of the restored House was to punish Mr. Henry Scobell, Clerk of the Parliament, for having entered, the fact of Cromwell's Dissolution of the House on April 20, 1653, in the Journals tinder that date. They ordered a Bill to be brought in for repealing the Act by which Scobell held the Clerkship.[1] The truth, then, is that Milton was not, on the whole, displeased by the return of his old friends to power. Though he had justified Cromwell's dissolution of the Rump and had become openly an Oliverian at the beginning of the Protectorate, he had never ceased to regard with admiration and affection such of the old Republicans as Vane, Bradshaw, and Overton. It had probably all along been a question with him whether the blame of their disablement under the Protectorate lay more with themselves or with Oliver. Then, as we have abundantly seen, there is reason for believing that before the end of the Protectorate his own Oliverianism or Cromwellianism had become weaker than at first. The Miltonic reserves, as we have called them, with which he had given his adhesion to the Protectorate even at first, had taken stronger and stronger development in his mind; and, whatever he found to admire in Cromwell's Government all in all, the whole course of that Government in Church matters had been a disappointment. Milton wanted to see Church and State entirely separated; Cromwell had mixed them, intertwined them, more than ever. Milton wanted to see the utter abolition in England of anything that could be called a clergy; Cromwell had made it one of the chief objects of his rule to maintain a clergy and extend it massively. Whether this policy might not yet be reversed had been one of Milton's first questions with himself after Cromwell's death; and his _Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes_, addressed to Richard's Parliament, had been a challenge to that Parliament not to shrink from the great attempt. In that treatise, it is not too much to say, Milton had shaken hands again with the old Republican party. In the preface to it he had dwelt fondly on his former connexion with them, on his recollection especially of the speeches he had heard from some of them in the old Councils of State of the Commonwealth, when he had first the honour to sit there as Latin Secretary, and listen to their private debates. What clearness then, what decisiveness, in such men as Vane and Bradshaw, on that "important article of Christianity," the necessary distinctness of the Civil from the Religious! Ah! could those old days be back! He had written as if those days had not been satisfactory, as if the dispersion of his old masters of those days had been necessary; but, in so writing, had he not been too hasty? So he had been asking himself of late; and though, as Richard's Latin Secretary, and writing under his Protectorate, he had not said a word against the established Protectoral Government, he had expressed generally his conviction that England would never be right till either those charged with the Government should be men "discerning between Civil and Religious" or none but such should be charged with the Government. Now, however, in May 1659, he might speak more plainly. Richard's Government had been swept away;--Richard's Parliament, which he had addressed, was no more in being; and, by a revolution which he had not expected, and in which he had taken no part, the pure Republic, with the relics of the Parliament that had first created it, was again the established order. All round about him the men he respected most were exulting in the change, and calling it a revival of "the Good Old Cause." Without pronouncing on the change in all its aspects, he could join in the exultation for a special reason. Would not the restored Republican Parliament and their Councils of State see it to be part of their duty to assert at last the principle of absolute Religious Voluntaryism?

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals, May 19, 1659.]

This representation of Milton's position at the time of the restoration of the Rump is confirmed by a private letter then addressed to him. The writer was a certain Moses Wall, of Causham or Caversham in Oxfordshire, a scholar and Republican opinionist of whom there are traces in Hartlib's correspondence and elsewhere.[1] Milton had recently written to him, sending him perhaps a copy of his _Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes_; and this is Wall's reply--written, it will be observed, the very day after Richard's abdication:--

[Footnote 1: Worthington's Diary and Correspondence, by Crossley, I. 355 and 365.]

"Sir,

"I received yours the day after you wrote, and do humbly thank you
that you are pleased to honour me with your letters. I confess I
have (even in my privacy in the country) oft had thoughts about
you, and that with much respect for your friendliness to truth in
your early years and in bad times. But I was uncertain whether your
relation to the Court (though I think that a Commonwealth was more
friendly to you than a Court) had not clouded your former light;
but your last book resolved that doubt.

"You complain of the non-progressency of the nation, and of its
retrograde motion of late, in liberty and spiritual truths. It is
much to be bewailed; but, yet, let us pity human frailty. When
those who had made deep protestations of their zeal for our
liberty, both spiritual and civil, and made the fairest offers to
be the asserters thereof, and whom we thereupon trusted,--when
these, being instated in power, shall betray the good thing
committed to them, and lead us back to Egypt, and by that force
which we gave them to win us liberty hold us fast in chains,--what
can poor people do? You know who they were that watched our
Saviour's sepulchre to keep him from rising [soldiers! see Matthew
XXVII. and XXVIII.]. Besides, whilst people are not free, but
straitened in accommodations for life, their spirits will be
dejected and servile; and, conducing to that end [of rousing them],
there should be an improving of our native commodities, as our
manufactures, our fishery, our fens, forests, and commons, and our
trade at sea, &c.: which would give the body of the nation a
comfortable subsistence. And the breaking that cursed yoke of
Tithes would much help thereto. Also another thing I cannot but
mention; which is that the Norman Conquest and Tyranny is continued
upon the nation without any thought of removing it: I mean the
tenure of land by copyhold, and holding for life under a lord, or
rather tyrant, of a manor; whereby people care not to improve their
land by cost upon it, not knowing how soon themselves or theirs may
be outed it, nor what the house is in which they live, for the same
reason; and they are far more enslaved to the lord of the manor
than the rest of the nation is to a king or supreme magistrate.

"We have waited for liberty; but it must be God's work and not
man's: who thinks it sweet to maintain his pride and worldly
interest to the gratifying of the flesh, whatever becomes of the
precious liberty of mankind. But let us not despond, but do our
duty; God will carry on that blessed work, in despite of all
opposites, and to their ruin if they persist therein.

"Sir, my humble request is that you would proceed, and give us that
other member of the distribution mentioned in your book: viz. that
Hire doth greatly impede truth and liberty. It is like, if you do,
you shall find opposers; but remember that saying,_'Beatius est
pati quam frui,'_ or, in the Apostle's words, James V. 11.
[Greek: Makarizomen tous hypomenontas] ['We count them happy that
endure']. I have sometimes thought (concurring with your assertion)
of that storied voice that should speak from heaven when
Ecclesiastics were endowed with worldly preferments, _'Hodie
venenum infunditur in Ecelesiam'_ ['This day is poison poured
into the Church']; for, to use the speech of Gen. IV. _ult._,
according to the sense which it hath in the Hebrew, 'Then began men
to corrupt the worship of God.' I shall tell you a supposal of
mine; which is this:--Mr. Durie has bestowed about thirty years'
time in travel, conference, and writing, to reconcile Calvinists
and Lutherans, and that with little or no success. But the shortest
way were:--Take away ecclesiastical dignities, honours, and
preferments on both sides, and all would soon be hushed; those
ecclesiastics would be quiet, and then the people would come forth
into truth and liberty. But I will not engage in this quarrel. Yet
I shall lay this engagement upon myself,--to remain

"Your faithful friend and servant,

"M. Wall.[1]

"Causham: May 26, 1659."

[Footnote 1: Copy in Ayscough: MS. in British Museum, No. 4292 (f. 121); where the copyist "J. Owen" (the Rev. J. Owen of Rochdale) certifies it as from the original. It was printed, not very correctly, by Richard Baron, in 1756, in his preface to his edition of the _Eikonoklastes._]

Here, from a man evidently after Milton's own heart on the Church question, we have Milton's welcome back into the ranks of the old Republicans. And more and more through the five months of the first Restoration of the Rump (May 7--Oct. 13) the friends of "the good old cause" had reason to know that Milton was again one of themselves. It happens, indeed, that we have no more letters of his for the Restored Rump Government than the two of May 15, already quoted, which he wrote for the restored House, and which were signed by Speaker Lenthall. Those two letters close the entire series of the known and extant State-Letters of Milton. He and Marvell, however, were still in their Secretaryship, drawing their salaries as before; and of the completeness of Milton's re-adherence to the Republican Government there is evidence more massive and striking than could have been furnished by any number of farther official letters by him for the Rump or its Council.

Milton, had not judged wrongly in supposing that the question of Church-disestablishment would now be made part and parcel of "the good old cause." We have already glanced at the facts (p. 466), but they may be given here more in detail:--Hardly had the Rump been reconstituted when petitions for Disestablishment, in the form of petitions for the abolition of Tithes, began to pour in upon it. One such, called "The Humble Representation and Petition of many well-affected persons in the counties of Somerset, Wilts, and some parts of Devon, Dorset, and Hampshire," was read in the House on the 14th of June. The petitioners were thanked, and informed that the House resolved "to give encouragement to a godly, preaching, learned ministry throughout the nation, and for that end to continue the payment of Tithes till they can find out some other more equal and comfortable maintenance for the ministry, and satisfaction of the people; which they intend with all convenient speed." That day, accordingly, in a division of thirty-eight Yeas (Carew Raleigh and Sir William Brereton tellers) to thirty-eight Noes (Hasilrig and Colonel White tellers) it was carried, by the Speaker's casting vote, to refer the question of some substitute for Tithes to a Grand Committee. On the 27th of June, there having been other petitions against Tithes in the meantime, signed by "many thousands," the House came to a more definite resolution, which they ordered to be printed and published by the Judges in their circuits. It was "That this Parliament doth declare that, for the encouragement of a godly, preaching, learned ministry throughout the nation, the payment of Tithes shall continue as now they are, _unless_ this Parliament shall find out some other," &c. As the word _unless_ had been, substituted for the word _until_ without a division, it is evident that the House had gone back in their intentions in the course of the fortnight, and were less disposed to commit themselves to any serious interference with the Church Establishment as left by Cromwell. The disappointment to the petitioning thousands must have been great. Still, the question had been raised, and might be regarded as only adjourned. What was wanted was continued agitation out of doors, more petitioning and more pamphleteering.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates.]

It was in this last way that Milton could help. As advised by his friend Moses Wall, he had been busy over that second Disestablishment tract which he had promised; and in August 1659 it appeared in this form: _"Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church. Wherein is also discourc'd of Tithes, Church-fees, Church Revenues; and, whether any maintenance of ministers can be settl'd by law. The author J.M. London, Printed by T.N. for L. Chapman at the Crown in Popes-head Alley,_ 1659." The volume is a very small octavo, and contains eighteen unnumbered pages of prefatory address to the Parliament in large open type, signed "John Milton" in full, followed by 153 pages of text.[1]

[Footnote 1: Copy in Thomason Collection, with date "Aug." marked on title-page--month only, no day.]

The Address to the Parliament deserves particular notice. The following is the main portion of it, with two phrases Italicised:--

"Owing to your protection, Supreme Senate, this liberty of writing
which I have used these eighteen years on all occasions to assert
the just rights and freedoms both of Church and State, and so far
approved as to have been trusted with the representment and defence
of your actions to all Christendom against an adversary of no mean
repute, to whom should I address what I still publish on the same
argument but to you, whose magnanimous counsels first opened and
unbound the age from a double bondage under Prelatical and Regal
tyranny, above our own hopes heartening us to look up at last like
Men and Christians from the slavish dejection wherein from father
to son we were bred up and taught, and thereby deserving of these
nations, if they be not barbarously ingrateful, to be acknowledged,
next under God, _the authors and best patrons of Religious and
Civil Liberty that ever these Islands brought forth?_ The care
and tuition of whose peace and safety, _after a short but
scandalous night of interruption,_ is now again, by a new
dawning of God's miraculous Providence among us, revolved upon your
shoulders. And to whom more appertain these Considerations which I
propound than to yourselves, and the debate before you, though I
trust of no difficulty, yet at present of great expectation, not
whether ye will gratify, were it no more than so, but whether ye
will hearken to the just petition of many thousands best affected
both to Religion and to this your return, or whether ye will
satisfy (which you never can) the covetous pretences and demands of
insatiable Hirelings, whose disaffection ye well know hath to
yourselves and your resolutions? That I, though among many others
in this common concernment, interpose to your deliberations what my
thoughts also are, your own judgment and the success thereof hath
given me the confidence: which requests but this--that, if I have
prosperously, God so favouring me, defended the public cause of
this Commonwealth to foreigners, ye would not think the reason and
ability whereon ye trusted once (and repent not) your whole
reputation to the world either grown less by more maturity and
longer study or less available in English than in another tongue:
but that, if it sufficed, some years past, to convince and satisfy
the unengaged of other nations in the justice of your doings,
though then held paradoxal, it may as well suffice now against
weaker opposition in matters (except here in England, with a
spirituality of men devoted to their temporal gain) of no
controversy else among Protestants."

This is, unmistakeably, a public testimony of Milton's re-adhesion to the Rumpers, with something like an expression of regret that he had ever parted from them. After all, he could call them "the authors and best patrons of religious and civil liberty that ever these Islands brought forth"; and, with this renewed conviction, and remembering also their former confidence in himself, especially in the Salmasian controversy, he could now congratulate them and the country on their return to power. But is not the Address also a recantation of his Oliverianism? To some extent, it must be so interpreted. It seems utterly impossible, indeed, that the phrase "_a short but scandalous night of interruption_" was intended to apply to the entire six years of the Cromwellian Dictatorship and Protectorship. That had not been a "short" interruption, for it had exceeded in length the whole duration of the Commonwealth it had interrupted; and it would be the most marvellous inconsistency on record if Milton could ever have brought himself to call it "scandalous." Who had written the panegyric on Cromwell and his actually established Protectorship in the _Defensio Secunda?_ Who had been Oliver's Latin Secretary from first to last, and penned for him his despatches on the Piedmontese massacre and all his greatest besides? The likelihood, therefore, is that "the short but scandalous night of interruption" in Milton's mind was the fortnight or so of Wallingford-House usurpation which broke up Richard's Parliament and Protectorate, and from the continuance of which, with all the inconveniences of a mere military despotism, the restoration of the Rump had seemed a happy rescue. But, though this single phrase may be thus explained, the tone of the whole address intimates far less of gratitude to Oliver dead than there had been of admiration for Oliver living. And the reason at this point is most obvious. Was it not precisely because Cromwell had failed to fulfil Milton's expectation of him, in his sonnet of May 1652, that he would deliver the Commonwealth from the plague of "hireling wolves," calling themselves a Clergy--was it not because Cromwell from first to last had pursued a contrary policy--that it remained for Milton now, seven years after the date of that sonnet, to have to offer, as a private thinker, and on mere printed paper, his own poor _Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church?_ It was not in a pamphlet on that subject, wherever else, that Milton could say his best for the memory of Cromwell.

After some preliminary observations connecting the present treatise with its forerunner; Milton opens his subject thus:--

"Hire of itself is neither a thing unlawful, nor a word of any evil
note, signifying no more than a due recompense or reward, as when
our Saviour saith, 'The labourer is worthy of his hire.' That which
makes it so dangerous in the Church, and properly makes HIRELING a
word always of evil signification, is either the excess thereof or
the undue manner of giving and taking it. What harm the excess
thereof brought to the Church perhaps was not found by experience
till the days of Constantine; who, out of his zeal, thinking he
could be never too liberally a nursing father of the Church, might
be not unfitly said to have either overlaid it or choked it in the
nursing. Which was foretold, as is recorded in Ecclesiastical
traditions, by a voice heard from Heaven, on the very day that
those great donations of Church-revenues were given, crying aloud,
_'This day is poison poured into the Church'_ [Note the
adoption of the anecdote from Mr. Wall's letter]. Which the event
soon after verified, as appears by another no less ancient
observation, that 'Religion brought forth wealth, and the Daughter
devoured the Mother.' But, long ere _wealth_ came into the
Church, so soon as any _gain_ appeared in Religion, HIRELINGS
were apparent, drawn in long before by the very scent thereof
[References to Judas as the first hireling, to Simon Magus as the
second, and to various texts in the Acts and Epistles proving that
among the early preachers of Christianity there were men who
preached 'for filthy lucre's sake,' or made a mere trade of the
Gospel] .... Thus we see that not only the excess of Hire in
wealthiest times, but also the undue and vicious taking or giving
it, though but small or mean, as in the primitive times, gave to
hirelings occasion, though not intended yet sufficient, to creep at
first into the Church. Which argues also the difficulty, or rather
the impossibility, to remove them quite, unless every minister
were, as St. Paul, contented to teach _gratis:_ but few such
are to be found. As therefore we cannot justly take away all Hire
in the Church, because we cannot otherwise quite remove Hirelings,
so are we not, for the impossibility of removing them all, to use
therefore no endeavour that fewest may come in, but rather, in
regard the evil, do what we can, will always be incumbent and
unavoidable, to use our utmost diligence how it may be least
dangerous. Which will be likeliest effected if we consider,--first
what recompense God hath ordained should be given to ministers of
the Church (for that a recompense ought to be given them, and may
by them justly be received, our Saviour himself, from the very
light of reason and of equity, hath declared, Luke X. 7, '_The
labourer is worthy of his hire'_); _next,_ by whom; and,
_lastly,_ in what manner."

In this passage and in other passages throughout the Treatise it is clear that Milton's ideal was a Church in which no minister should take pay at all for his preaching or ministry, whether pay from the state or from his hearers, but every minister should, as St. Paul did, preach, absolutely and systematically _gratis_, deriving his livelihood and his leisure to preach from his private resources, or, if he had none such, then from the practice of some calling or handicraft apart from his preaching. Deep down in Milton's mind, notwithstanding his professed deference to Christ's words, "_The labourer is worthy of his hire,_" we can see this conviction that it would be better for the world if religious doctrine, or in fact doctrine of any kind, were never bought or sold, but all spiritual teachers were to abhor the very touch of money for their lessons, being either gentlemen of independent means who could propagate the truth splendidly from high motives, or else tent-makers, carpenters, and bricklayers, passionate with the possession of some truth to propagate. This, however, having been acknowledged to be perhaps an impossibility on any great scale, he goes on to inquire, as proposed, what the legitimate and divinely-appointed hire of Gospel-ministers is, from whom it may come, and in what manner. The general result is as follows:--I. The Tithes of the old Jewish dispensation are utterly abolished under the Gospel. Nearly half the treatise is an argument to this effect, and consequently for the immediate abolition of the tithe-system in England. Here Milton lends his whole force to the popular current on this subject among the friends of "the good old cause," advocating those petitions to the Rump of which he has spoken in his preface. But he goes farther than the abolition of tithes. He will not allow of any statutory substitute for tithes, any taxation of the people in any form for the support of Religion. The only substitute for tithes which he discusses specifically is compulsory church-fees for ministerial offices, such as baptisms, marriages, and burials. These, as well as tithes, he utterly condemns; and he winds up this part of his inquiry thus: "Seeing, then, that God hath given to ministers under the Gospel that only which is justly given them (that is to say, a due and moderate livelihood, the hire of their labour), and that the heave-offering of Tithes is abolished with the Altar (yes, though not abolished, yet lawless as they enjoy them), their Melchizedekian right also trivial and groundless, and both tithes and fees, if exacted or established, unjust and scandalous, we may hope, with _them_ removed, to remove Hirelings in some good measure." II. It is maintained that the lawful maintenance of the ministry can consist only in the voluntary offerings of those they instruct, whether tendered individually, or collected into a common treasury for distribution. The flocks ought to maintain their own pastors, and no others are bound to contribute for the purpose. But what of poor neighbourhoods that cannot maintain pastors and yet need them most sorely? Milton has unbounded confidence that these will be overtaken and provided for by the zeal of pious individuals, or by "the charity of richer congregations," taking the form of itinerant missions. "If it be objected that this itinerary preaching will not serve to plant the Gospel in those places unless they who are sent abide there some competent time, I answer that, if they stay there for a year or two, which was the longest time usually staid by the Apostles in one place, it may suffice to teach them who will attend and learn all the points of Religion necessary to salvation: then, sorting them into several congregations of a moderate number, out of the ablest and zealousest of them to create elders, who, exercising and requiring from themselves what they have learnt (for no learning is retained without constant exercise and methodical repetition), may teach and govern the rest: and, so exhorted to continue faithful and stedfast, they may securely be committed to the providence of God and the guidance of his Holy Spirit till God may offer some opportunity to visit them again and to confirm them." The only concession Milton will make is that, in cases of urgent necessity, application may be made to magistrates or other trustees of charitable funds for aid in these temporary and itinerant missions. For the rest, it will be seen, it is with difficulty that he allows the existence of a permanent pastorate anywhere. If there is to be a body of men in the community making a business of preaching, and if in towns and populous neighbourhoods congregations choose to retain the services, for life or for an indefinite period, of particular ministerial persons selected from this body, and to erect handsome buildings convenient for such services, well and good, or rather it cannot be helped; but the picture most to Milton's fancy is that of an England generally, or at all events of a rural England, without any fixed or regular parish pastors or parish-churches, but each little local cluster of believers meeting on Sundays or other days in chapel or barn for mutual edification, or to be instructed by such simple teaching elders as may easily, from time to time, be produced within itself. Add the itinerant agency of more practiced and professional preachers, circulating periodically among the local clusters, to rouse them or keep them alive; and nothing more would be needed. There would be plenty of preaching, and good preaching, everywhere; but, as most of it would be spontaneous by hard-handed men known among their neighbours, and working, like their neighbours, for their ordinary subsistence, the preaching profession, as a means of income, would be reduced to a minimum. In a Church so constituted there would still be hirelings, especially in large towns and where there were wealthy congregations; but the number of such would be greatly reduced. III. Under the third head of the "manner" of the recompense to ministers, where there is any recompense at all, the substance of Milton's remarks is that the purely voluntary character of the recompense must be studiously maintained. It must be purely an alms, an oblation of benevolence. Hence it should never take the form of a life-endowment, or even of a contract conferring a legal title to demand payment. The appearance of a minister of the Gospel in a law-court to sue for money supposed to be due to him for his ministerial services, even by promise or agreement, is spoken of with disgust. Were it the understood rule that there could be no recovery by a minister even of his promised salary, would not that also tend in some degree to keep Hirelings out of the Church?

The pamphlet, it will be seen, is more outspoken and thoroughgoing than its forerunner. It contains also more of those individual passages that represent Milton in his rough mood of sarcastic strength, though none of such beauty or eloquence as are to be found in his earlier pamphlets. The following are characteristic:--

_Mr. Prynne's Defences of Tithes_:--"To heap such unconvincing
citations as these in Religion, whereof the Scripture only is our
rule, argues not much learning nor judgment, but the lost labour
of much unprofitable reading. And yet a late hot Querist for
Tithes, whom ye may know, by his wits lying ever beside him in the
margin, to be ever beside his wits in the text,--a fierce Reformer
once, now rankled with a contrary heat,--would send us back, very
reformedly indeed, to learn Reformation from Tyndarus and Rebuffas,
two Canonical Promoters."[1]

[Footnote 1: The reference is to Prynne's _Ten Considerable Queries concerning Tithes, &c., against the Petitioners and Petitions for their Total Abolition_: 1659.]

_Marriages and Clerical Concern in the same_:--"As for
Marriages, that ministers should meddle with them, as not
sanctioned or legitimate without their celebration, I find no
ground in Scripture either of precept or example. Likeliest it is
(which our Selden hath well observed _I. II. c. 28. Ux. Heb._)
that in imitation of heathen priests, who were wont at nuptials to
use many rites and ceremonies, and especially judging it would be
profitable and the increase of their authority not to be spectators
only in business of such concernment to the life of man, they
insinuated that marriage was not holy without their benediction,
and for the better colour made it a Sacrament; being of itself a
Civil Ordinance, a household contract, a thing indifferent and free
to the whole race of mankind, not as religious, but as men. Best,
indeed, undertaken to religious ends, as the Apostle saith (1 Cor.
VII. '_In the Lord_'); yet not therefore invalid or unholy
without a minister and his pretended necessary hallowing, more than
any other act, enterprise, or contract, of civil life,--which ought
all to be done also in the Lord and to his glory,--all which, no
less than marriage, were by the cunning of priests heretofore, as
material to their profit, transacted at the altar. Our Divines deny
it to be a Sacrament; yet retained the celebration, till prudently
a late Parliament recovered the civil liberty of marriage from
their encroachment, and transferred the ratifying and registering
thereof from their Canonical Shop to the proper cognisance of Civil
Magistrates" [The Marriages Act of the Barebones Parliament; in
accordance with which had been Milton's own second marriage: see
ante p. 281, and Vol. IV. p. 511].

_Sitting under a Stated Minister:_--"If men be not all their
lifetime under a teacher to learn Logic, Natural Philosophy,
Ethics, or Mathematics, ... certainly it is not necessary to the
attainment of Christian knowledge that men should sit all their
life long at the foot of a pulpited divine, while he, a lollard
indeed over his elbow-cushion, in almost the seventh part of forty
or fifty years, teaches them scarce half the principles of
Religion, and his sheep ofttimes sit the while to as little purpose
of benefiting as the sheep in their pews at Smithfield."

_Congregations for mutual Edification:_--"Notwithstanding the
gaudy superstition of some devoted still ignorantly to temples, we
may be well assured that He who disdained not to be laid in a
manger disdains not to be preached in a barn, and that by such
meetings as these, being indeed most apostolical and primitive,
they will in a short time advance more in Christian knowledge and
reformation of life than by the many years preaching of such an
incumbent,--I may say such an incubus ofttimes,--as will be meanly
hired to abide long in those places."

_A Reflection on Cromwell for his Established Church:_--"For
the magistrate, in person of a nursing father, to make the Church
his mere ward, as always in minority,-the Church to whom he ought
as a Magistrate (Isaiah XLIS. 23) '_to bow down with his face
toward the earth and lick up the dust of her feet,_'--her to
subject to his political drifts and conceived opinions by mastering
her revenue, and so by his examinant Committees to circumscribe her
free election of ministers,--is neither just nor pious: no honour
done to the Church, but a plain dishonour."

_University Education of Ministers:--State of the Facts:_
"They pretend that their education, either at School or University,
hath been very chargeable, and therefore ought to be repaired in
future by a plentiful maintenance: whereas it is well known that
the better half of them, and ofttimes poor and pitiful boys, of no
merit or promising hopes that might entitle them to the public
provision but their poverty and the unjust favour of friends, have
had the most of their breeding, both at School and University, by
scholarships, exhibitions, and fellowships, at the public
cost,--which might engage them the rather to give freely, as they
have freely received. Or, if they have missed of these helps at the
latter place, they have after two or three years left the course of
their studies there, if they ever well began them, and undertaken,
though furnished with little else but ignorance, boldness, and
ambition, if with no worse vices, a chaplainship in some
gentleman's house, to the frequent imbasing of his sons with
illiterate and narrow principles. Or, if they have lived there [at
the University] upon their own, who knows not that seven years'
charge of living there,--to them who fly not from the government
of their parents to the licence of a University, but come seriously
to study,--is no more than, may be well defrayed and reimbursed by
one year's revenue of an ordinary good benefice? If they had then
means of breeding from their parents, 'tis likely they have more
now; and, if they have, it needs must be mechanic and uningenuous
in them to bring a bill of charges for the learning of those
liberal Arts and Sciences which they have learnt (if they have
indeed learnt them, as they seldom have) to their own benefit and
accomplishment. But they will say 'We had betaken us to some other
trade or profession, had we not expected to find a better
livelihood by the Ministry.' This is what I looked for,--to
discover them openly neither true lovers of Learning and so very
seldom guilty of it, nor true ministers of the Gospel."

_University Education of Ministers not Necessary_: "What
Learning, either human or divine, can be necessary to a minister
may as easily and less chargeably be had in any private house ...
Those theological disputations there held [i.e. at the
Universities] by Professors and Graduates are such as tend least of
all to the edification or capacity of the people, but rather
perplex and leaven pure doctrine with scholastical trash than
enable any minister to the better preaching of the Gospel. Whence
we may also compute, since they come to reckonings, the charges of
his needful library; which, though some shame not to value at £600
[equivalent to £2000 now], may be competently furnished for £60
[equivalent to £200 now]. If any man, for his own curiosity or
delight, be in books further expensive, that is not to be reckoned
as necessary to his ministerial either breeding or function. But
Papists and other adversaries cannot be confuted without Fathers
and Councils, immense volumes and of vast charges! I will show them
therefore a shorter and a better way of confutation: _Tit. I._
9; 'Holding fast the faithful Word as he hath been taught, that he
may be able, by sound doctrine, both to exhort and to convince
gainsayers,'--who are confuted as soon as heard bringing that which
is either not in Scripture or against it. To pursue them further
through the obscure and entangled wood of antiquity, Fathers and
Councils fighting one against another, is needless, endless, not
requisite in a minister, and refused by the first Reformers of our
Religion. And yet we may be confident, if these things be thought
needful, let the State but erect in public good store of Libraries,
and there will not want men in the Church who of their own
inclinations will become able in this kind against Papists or any
other Adversary."

No Parliament that England ever saw, not even the Barebones Parliament itself, could have entertained for a moment, with a view to practical legislation, these speculations of the blind Titan in all their length and breadth. Disestablishment, Disendowment, Abolition of a Clergy, had been the dream of the Anabaptists and Fifth Monarchy men of the Barebones Parliament. Even in that House, however, the battle practically, and on which the House broke up, was on the question of the continuance of Tithes, and it is dubious whether some in that half of the House which voted against Tithes would not have been for preserving a Church Establishment or Preaching Ministry by some other form of state-maintenance. Nor can one imagine, even in those eager and revolutionary times, an utter disregard of that principle of compensation for life-interests which any Parliament now, contemplating a scheme of Disestablishment, would consider binding in common equity. The old Bishops, and the Prelatic Clergy, indeed, had been disestablished without much consideration of life-interests; but the procedure in their case had been of a penal character, and it is unlikely that it would have been equally unceremonious with the new clergy of Presbyterians and Independents, allowed generally to be orthodox. From any hesitation on that score Milton is absolutely free. He sees no difficulties, takes regard of none. It is not with a flesh-and-blood world that he deals, a world of men, and their wives, and their families, and their yearly incomes, and their fixed residences and household belongings. It is with a world of wax, or of flesh and blood that must be content to be treated as wax. It is thought right to disestablish the Church: well, then, let the Clergy go! Abolish tithes; provide no substitute; proclaim that, after this day week, or the first day of the next year, not a penny shall be paid to any man by the State for preaching the Gospel, or doing any other act of the ministry: and what then? Why, there will be a flutter of consternation, of course, through some ten thousand or twelve thousand parsonages; ten thousand or twelve thousand clerical gentlemen will stare bewilderedly for a while at their wives' faces: but do not be too much concerned! They will all shift very well for themselves when they know they must; the best of them will find congregations where they are, or in other places, and will work all the harder; and, if the drones and dotards go threadbare and starve for the rest of their lives, that is but God's way with such since the beginning of the world! Be instant, be rapid, be decisive, be thoroughgoing, O ye statesmen! What are vested interests in the Church of Christ?

As the Restored Rumpers had already decreed that an Established Church should be kept up in England, and had gone no farther on the Tithes question than to say that Tithes must be paid, as by use and wont, until some substitute should be provided, it is not likely that, however long they had sat, Milton's views would have had much countenance from them. There were individuals among them of Milton's way of thinking on the whole; but he had probably made a mistake in fancying that he had materially improved his influence, or the chances of his notions of Church-polity, by his public re-adhesion to the Rump. In fact, the continued existence of the Rump was more precarious than he had thought. In August 1659, while his pamphlet was in circulation, Lambert was away in the north, suppressing the Cheshire Insurrection of Sir George Booth; in the next month discontent with the Rumpers and their rule was rife in Lambert's victorious northern Brigade; and in the beginning of October London was again in agitation with the rupture of the hasty alliance that had been patched up between the Republicans and the Wallingford-House Council of Army Officers. It was on the 12th of October that the Rump defied the Army by cashiering Lambert, Desborough, Berry, and six other officers; and on the 13th Lambert retaliated by his _coup d'état_, filling the streets with his soldiery, catching the Rumpers one by one as they went to the House, and informing them that it was the will of the Army that they should sit no more. Thus had begun that "Second Stage of the Anarchy" which we have called _The Wallingford-House Interruption_.

Of Milton's thoughts over the change effected by Lambert's _coup d'état_ we have an authentic record in a letter of his, dated "October 20, 1659" (i.e. just a week after the _coup d'état_), and addressed to some friend with whom he had been conversing on the previous night. It appears in his works now with the title "_A Letter to a Friend, concerning the Ruptures of the Commonwealth: Published from the Manuscript_."[1] Who the Friend was does not appear; but the words of the Letter imply that he was some one very near the centre of affairs. "Sir," it begins, "upon the sad and serious discourse which we fell into last night, concerning these dangerous ruptures of the Commonwealth, scarce yet in her infancy, which cannot be without some inward flaw in her bowels, I began to consider more intensely thereon than hitherto I have been wont,--resigning myself [i.e. having hitherto resigned myself] to the wisdom and care of those who had the government, and not finding that either God or the Public required more of me than my prayers for those that govern. And, since you have not only stirred up my thoughts by acquainting me with the state of affairs more inwardly than I knew before, but also have desired me to set down my opinion thereof, trusting to your ingenuity, I shall give you freely my apprehension, both of our present evils, and what expedients, if God in mercy regard us, may remove them." At the close of the Letter he says, "You have the sum of my present thoughts, as much as I understand of these affairs, freely imparted, at your request and the persuasion you wrought in me that I might chance hereby to be some way serviceable to the Commonwealth in a time when all ought to be endeavouring what good they can, whether much or but little. With this you may do what you please. Put out, put in, communicate or suppress: you offend not me, who only have obeyed your opinion that, in doing what I have done, I might happen to offer something which might be of some use in this great time of need. However, I have not been wanting to the opportunity which you presented before me of showing the readiness which I have, in the midst of my unfitness, to whatever may be required of me as a public duty." The expressions might suggest that the friend who had been talking with Milton was Vane or some one else of those Councillors of the Rump who still sat on at Whitehall consulting with the Wallingford-House Chiefs as to the form of Government to be set up instead of the Rump (ante pp. 494-495). It may, however, have been some lesser personage, such as Meadows, back from the Baltic this very month. In any case, the letter was meant to be shown about, if not printed. It was, in fact, Milton's contribution, at a friend's request, to the deliberations going on at Whitehall.

[Footnote 1: It was first published in the so-called Amsterdam Edition of Milton's Prose Works (1698); and Toland, who gave it to the publishers of that edition, informs us that it had been communicated to him "by a worthy friend, who, a little after the author's death, had it from his nephew"--i.e. from Phillips.]

He does not conceal his strong disapprobation of Lambert's _coup d'état_. Indeed he takes the opportunity of declaring, even more strongly than he had done two months before, how heartily he had welcomed the restoration of the Rump. Thus:--

"I will begin with telling you how I was overjoyed when I heard
that the Army, under the working of God's holy Spirit, as I
thought, and still hope well, had been so far wrought to Christian
humility and self-denial as to confess in public their backsliding
from the good Old Cause, and to show the fruits of their repentance
in the righteousness of their restoring the old famous Parliament
which they had without just authority dissolved: I call it the
famous Parliament, though not the harmless, since none
well-affected but will confess they have deserved much more of
these nations than they have undeserved. And I persuade me that God
was pleased with their restitution, signing it as He did with such
a signal victory when so great a part of the nation were
desperately conspired to call back again their Egyptian bondage
[Lambert's victory over Sir George Booth]. So much the more it now
amazes me that they whose lips were yet scarce closed from giving
thanks for that great deliverance should be now relapsing, and so
soon again backsliding into the same fault, which they confessed so
lately and so solemnly to God and the world, and more lately
punished in those Cheshire Rebels,--that they should now dissolve
that Parliament which they themselves re-established, and
acknowledged for their Supreme Power in their other day's _Humble
Representation_: and all this for no apparent cause of public
concernment to the Church or Commonwealth, but only for
discommissioning nine great officers in the Army; which had not
been done, as is reported, but upon notice of their intentions
against the Parliament. I presume not to give my censure on this
action,--not knowing, as yet I do not, the bottom of it. I speak
only what it appears to us without doors till better cause be
declared, and I am sure to all other nations,--most illegal and
scandalous, I fear me barbarous, or rather scarce to be exampled
among any Barbarians, that a paid Army should, for no other cause,
thus subdue the Supreme Power that set them up. This, I say, other
nations will judge to the sad dishonour of that Army, lately so
renowned for the civilest and best-ordered in the world, and by us
here at home for the most conscientious. Certainly, if the great
officers and soldiers of the Holland, French, or Venetian forces
should thus sit in council and write from garrison to garrison
against their superiors, they might as easily reduce the King of
France, or Duke of Venice, and put the United Provinces in like
disorder and confusion."

He adds more in the same strain, and calls upon the Army, as one "jealous of their honour," to "manifest and publish with all speed some better cause of these their late actions than hath hitherto appeared, and to find out the Achan amongst them whose close ambition in all likelihood abuses their honest natures against their meaning to these disorders,"--in other words, to disown and denounce Lambert. But, having thus delivered his conscience on the subject of the second dismission of the Rump, he declares farther complaint to be useless, and proceeds to inquire what is now to be done.