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Milton’s Churches

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Thomas N. Corns
Thomas N. Corns*
Affiliation:
Bangor University
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Extract

This essay considers both John Milton’s relationship to the churches he attended and his developing attitude to the Church of England and to the wider Protestant faith community, nationally and internationally. The objective is better to place Milton within the divisive and shifting religious politics of seventeenth-century England. Only incidental reference is made to his poetry; this is primarily a study of life records and his prose publications.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 48: The Church and Literature , 2012 , pp. 185 - 201
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2012

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References

1 Biographical information is drawn from Campbell, Gordon and Corns, Thomas N., John Milton: Life, Work, and Thought (Oxford, 2008), 7–18 Google Scholar; see also 386–92 for citation of the life-records and documents from which their narrative is drawn.

2 Ibid. 26–47, 392–6nn.

3 Ibid. 63, 400n.

4 Ibid. 67–8, 400nn, 88–102, 404–6nn; Jones, Edward, “‘Church-outed by the Prelates”: Milton and the 1637 Inspection of Horton Parish Church’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 102 (2003), 42–58 Google Scholar.

5 Philips, Edward, in The Early Lives of Milton, ed. Darbishire, Helen (London, 1932) 76 Google Scholar; Philips was Milton’s elder nephew.

6 John Taoland, in ibid. 193; Toland did not know Milton personally, though had some access to those who did.

7 Cyriack Skinner, in ibid. 34. Darbishire had attributed this anonymous manuscript account to Milton’s younger nephew, John Philips, though the attribution to Skinner now seems proven beyond reasonable doubt.

8 Ibid. 195.

9 Toland, John, ed., A Complete Collection of the Historical, Political and Miscellaneous Work of John Milton …to which is prefix’d the life of the author (‘Amsterdam’ [London], 1698)Google Scholar.

10 Campbell, and Corns, , John Milton, 193–4 Google Scholar.

11 Milton, John, Complete Prose Works of John Milton, gen. ed. Wolfe, Don M., 8 vols (New Haven, CT, 1953–82), 1: 822–3 Google Scholar [hereafter: CPW].

12 OED, s.v. ‘church’, n., C3, special combinations.

13 CPW, 1: 823 n. 161; the oath is sometimes known as the ‘Et Cetera’ oath.

14 Campbell, and Corns, , John Milton, 101 Google Scholar.

15 I conjecture a date of publication between late 1641, when for the first time the term ‘roundhead’ entered currency (OED, s.v. ‘roundhead’) and approximately 1643, when popular interest in the anti-prelatical campaign was on the wane.

16 ‘Smectymnuus’, An Answer to a Booke Entituled, An Humble Remonstrance (London, 1641), 92 Google Scholar.

17 Ibid. 90.

18 See esp. Tyacke, Nicholas, Anti-Calvinists:The Rise of English Arminianism c.1590–1640 (Oxford, 1997)Google Scholar.

19 Milton, John, An Apology against a Pamphlet Call’d A Modest Confutation (CPW, 1:942)Google Scholar.

20 Milton, John, Of Reformation (CPW, 1:560)Google Scholar.

21 Milton, John, The History of Britain (CPW, 5: 187–8)Google Scholar.

22 Milton, , Apology (CPW, 1: 704)Google Scholar.

23 Ibid. 703.

24 Campbell, and Corns, , John Milton, 125–7 Google Scholar.

25 Milton, , Church-Government (CPW, 1: 850)Google Scholar.

26 Ibid. 761.

27 Milton, , Of Reformation (CPW, 1: 527)Google Scholar.

28 Ibid.

29 OED, s.v. ‘Separation’, 4.

30 Hughes, Ann, Gangraena and the Struggle for the English Revolution (Oxford, 2004)Google Scholar; the term is used passim to denote the organized attempts by less radical puritans to resist toleration, to oppose Independency and more radical sects, and to bring the Church of England to a settlement on the Scottish Presbyterian model, enforced by the civil magistrate.

31 Milton, , Church-Government (CPW, 1: 787–8)Google Scholar; quotation at 788.

32 Hill, Christopher, Milton and the English Revolution (London, 1977)Google Scholar.

33 Wolfe, Don M., Milton in the Puritan Revolution (NewYork, 1941)Google Scholar.

34 Coffey, John, John Goodwin and the Puritan Revolution (Woodbridge, 2006)Google Scholar.

35 Aylmer, G. E., The State’s Servants: The Civil Service of the English Republic 1649–1660 (London, 1973), 279 Google Scholar.

36 ODNB, s.n. ‘Goodwin, John (c.1594–1665)’.

37 Milton, John, ‘On the New Forcers of Conscience under the Long Parliament’, line 20, in Complete Shorter Poems, ed. Carey, John, 2nd edn (London, 1997), 298 Google Scholar [hereafter: CSP].

38 Milton, John, ‘To the Lord General! Cromwell’, lines 13–14 (CSP, 329)Google Scholar.

39 Milton, John, ‘To Sir Henry Vane the Younger’, lines 10–11 (CSP, 331)Google Scholar.

40 Milton, John, Of Civil Power and Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the church (CPW, rev. edn, 7: 302)Google Scholar.

41 Ibid. 303.

42 Ibid. 304.

43 Milton, John, Paradise Regained, bk 2, lines 413–15; ibid., lines 27–8 (CSP, 460, 445)Google Scholar.

44 Milton, John, Of True Religion, Haeresie, Schism, Toleration, And what best means may be us’d against the growth of Popery (CPW, 8: 424–5)Google Scholar.

45 Ibid. 423.