CHAPTER EIGHT: Poets Milton and Wither—Whole Man Dies in Death

The caliber and competence of some of the seventeenth-century champions of Conditionalism are impressive. We cite JOHN MILTON (1608-1674), greatest of English sacred poets, Latin secretary under the Commonwealth, and religious and political polemicist. He was educated for the church, and trained for holy orders at Christ’s College, Cambridge, showing remarkable literary talent. But upon graduation, alienated by the tyranny that he felt had entered the church, he contemplated the study of law. However, he turned instead for the next six years to the intensive study of literature, becoming conspicuously proficient in the classics, Latin and Greek. Along with these languages he obtained a good knowledge of Hebrew, French, and Italian. To this earlier period belong most of his Latin poems, ^{11) John Milton, Ad Patrem, L’Allegro, Id Penseroso, Comus, Lycidas.} famous for their classical elegance.CFF2 150.1

In 1638 Milton toured the Continent. He met many notables, such as Grotius, and Galileo, then a prisoner of the Inquisition. Returning to England, Milton began a private school in London. But at the time of the Long Parliament, in 1640, he was drawn into ecclesiastical and political disputes. He made a brilliant appeal for civic and religious liberty and church reform, writing Of Reformation Touching Church Discipline in England (1641) and The Reason of Church Government Urged Against Prelacy (1642). These were followed by Areopagitica, a masterful plea for a free press. About this time he first drafted the outline of his great epic poem Paradise Lost.CFF2 150.2

Picture 1: Milton, Wither
Left: John Milton (d. 1674), Greatest of English Sacred Poets—The Whole man Dies in Death.
Right: George Wither (d. 1667), English Poet and Satirist.
Page 151CFF2 151

As for his personal religious faith, Milton was an Anglican of Puritan leanings, then he became an Independent. He was decidedly not a freethinker or materialist, as charged by some. After the execution of Charles I and the establishment of the new Commonwealth in 1649 Milton was made Latin secretary to Lord Protector Cromwell and the Council of State, at Whitehall, serving throughout the turbulent period of the Protectorate. His political writings began at this time.CFF2 151.1

Three years later, in 1652, his sight gave way and he became totally blind but continued the duties of office of state, with the aid of assistants, until 1659. In 1660, at the Restoration, his prosecution was ordered, and he had to conceal himself in the home of a friend until the peril passed. In his blindness he sought consolation with his harp, and although he lived in darkness he became one of the bright lights of English literature. In 1655, under Cromwell’s instruction, Milton dictated the stern letter to the Duke of Savoy protesting the atrocities visited upon the Vaudois, or Waldenses, in the “Bloody Easter” massacre. Milton expressed his own personal feeling in his gripping sonnet, the opening lines of which read:CFF2 151.2

“Avenge O Lord thy slaughter’d Saints, whose bones
Lie scatter’d on the Alpine mountains cold,
Ev’n them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our Fathers worship’t Stocks and Stones ...” ^{22) Milton, “On the Late Massacher in Piemont,” Complete Poetical Works (ed. H. F. Fletcher) Vol. I, P. 43.}CFF2 152.1

It was at this same time that he began the actual writing of Paradise Lost, finishing it in 1665, and receiving for it the trifling sum of 18 Pounds. For splendor of concept and majesty of language it is one of the noblest poems in the English tongue, and its fame will endure as long as English literature shall last. Paradise Regained was completed in 1671.CFF2 152.2