fixed; political evil is the triumph of passion over reason. Milton begins as follows:

If men within themselves would be governed by reason, and not generally give up their understanding to a double tyranny, of custom from without, and blind affections within, they would discern better what it is to favour and uphold the tyrant of a nation. But, being slaves within doors, no wonder that they strive so much to have the public state conformably governed to the inward vicious rule by which they govern themselves. For, indeed, none can love freedom heartily but good men; the rest love not freedom but licence, which never hath more scope, or more indulgence than under tyrants. Hence is it that tyrants are not oft offended, nor stand much in doubt of bad men, as being all naturally servile. . . .89

Man is free by nature, being the image of God; soon Milton will say: being part of God. The just man is not subject to law. It is the corruption of man, the Fall, that made government necessary. And government comes from the people, who entrusted kings and magistrates with the prerogative of power in the public interest:

No man, who knows aught, can be so stupid to deny that all men were born naturally free, being the image and resemblance of God himself, and were, by privilege above all the creatures, born to command, and not to obey: and that they lived so, till from the root of Adam's transgression falling among themselves to do wrong and violence, and foreseeing that such courses must needs tend to the destruction of them all, they agreed by common league to bind each other from mutual injury, and jointly to defend themselves against any that gave disturbance or opposition to such agreement. Hence came cities, towns, and commonwealths. And because no faith in all was found sufficiently binding, they saw it needful to ordain some authority that might restrain by force and punishment what was violated against peace and common right.

This authority and power of self-defence and preservation being originally and naturally in every one of them, and unitedly in them all; for ease, for order, and lest each man should be his own partial

89 Prose Works, II, 2.

judge, they communicated and derived either to one, whom for the eminence of his wisdom and integrity they chose above the rest, or to more than one, whom they thought of equal deserving: the first was called a king; the other, magistrates: not to be their lords and masters, (though afterward those names in some places were given voluntarily to such as had been authors of inestimable good to the people,) but to be their deputies and commissioners, to execute, by virtue of their intrusted power, that justice, which else every man by the bond of nature and of covenant must have executed for himself. . . .90

...

A tyrant is therefore the prince who thinks this power vested in himself, and given for his own uses:

And surely no Christian prince, not drunk with high mind, and prouder than those pagan Cæsars that deified themselves, would arrogate so unreasonably above human condition, or derogate so basely from a whole nation of men, his brethren, as if for him only subsisting, and to serve his glory, valuing them in comparison of his own brute will and pleasure no more than so many beasts, or vermin under his feet, not to be reasoned with, but to be trod on; among whom there might be found so many thousand men for wisdom, virtue, nobleness of mind, and all other respects but the fortune of his dignity, far above him.1

The source of evil is here in the king's passions. They are inspired by Satan, the root of all evil passions, and it is a duty to resist such a king.

So that if the power be not such, or the person execute not such power, neither the one nor the other is of God, but of the devil, and by consequence to be resisted.

...

... A tyrant, whether by wrong or by right coming to the crown, is he who, regarding neither law nor the common good, reigns only for himself and his faction. . .

92

And Milton runs through history looking for proofs and examples. Then he turns to the Presbyterians and their priests, and declares that the source of evil in priests is 91 Ibid., II, 13. 92 Ibid., II, 17.

90 Ibid., II, 8-10.

ever

atry":

covetousness, which, worse than heresy, is idol

As for the party called presbyterian, of whom I believe very many to be good and faithful Christians, though misled by some of turbulent spirit, I wish them, earnestly and calmly, not to fall off from their first principles, nor to affect rigour and superiority over men not under them; not to compel unforcible things, in religion especially, which, if not voluntary, becomes a sin. . . .

I have something also to the divines, though brief to what were needful; not to be disturbers of the civil affairs, being in hands better able and more belonging to manage them; but to study harder, and to attend the office of good pastors, knowing that he, whose flock is least among them, hath a dreadful charge, not performed by mounting twice into the chair with a formal preachment huddled up at the odd hours of a whole lazy week. . . . It would be good also they lived so as might persuade the people they hated covetousness, which, worse than heresy, is idolatry; hated pluralities, and all kind of simony; left rambling from benefice to benefice, like ravenous wolves seeking where they may devour the biggest. .

...

But if they be the ministers of mammon instead of Christ, and scandalize his church with the filthy love of gain, aspiring also to sit the closest and the heaviest of all tyrants upon the conscience, and fall notoriously into the same sins, whereof so lately and so loud they accused the prelates; as God rooted out those wicked ones immediately before, so will he root out them, their imitators; and, to vindicate his own glory and religion, will uncover their hypocrisy to the open world. . . .93

Bad priests are the best supports of tyranny; and, following the natural bent of Milton's mind, the pamphlet begun against the King ends against priests - divines generally, not even particularly evil ones:

For divines if we observe them have their postures, and their motions no less expertly, and with no less variety, than they that practise feats in the Artillery-ground. Sometimes they seem furiously to march on, and presently march counter; by and by they stand, and then retreat; or if need be, can face about, or wheel in a 93 Ibid., II, 35-37.

whole body, with that cunning and dexterity as is almost unperceivable, to wind themselves by shifting ground into places of more advantage. And providence only must be the drum, providence the word of command, that calls them from above, but always to some larger benefice, or acts them into such or such figures and promotions. At their turns and doublings no men readier, to the right, or to the left; for it is their turns which they serve chiefly; herein only singular, that with them there is no certain hand right or left, but as their own commodity thinks best to call it. But if there come a truth to be defended, which to them and their interest of this world seems not so profitable, straight these nimble motionists can find not even legs to stand upon. 94

Poor creatures after all, these; and Milton mostly despises them; but as for those among them who dare stand against his ideas, here they be:

...

a pack of hungry churchwolves, who in the steps of Simon Magus their father, following the hot scent of double livings and pluralities, advowsons, donatives, inductions, and augmentations, though uncalled to the flock of Christ, but by the mere suggestion of their bellies, like those priests of Bel, whose pranks Daniel found out; have got possession, or rather seized upon the pulpit, as the stronghold and fortress of their sedition and rebellion against the civil magistrate. Whose friendly and victorious hand having rescued them from the bishops, their insulting lords, fed them plenteously, both in public and in private, raised them to be high and rich of poor and base; only suffered not their covetousness and fierce ambition (which as the pit that sent out their fellow-locusts hath been ever bottomless and boundless) to interpose in all things, and over all persons, their impetous ignorance and importunity? 95

Thus Milton stood by his own side. He was soon recognized as a useful ally by the heads of the government, and in March, 1649, became "Secretary for foreign tongues to the Republic. This title, and the modest functions appertaining thereto, soon became a mere pretext. Milton became, in the natural course of things, the 95 Ibid., II, 47.

94 Ibid., II, 45.

"Intellectual" on the side of the Republic, and directed the defence of the party in power against all attacks that came under the heading of letters.

The first attack was the Eikon Basilike in August. Milton was officially given the task to answer it. The importance of Milton's work for the Commonwealth can only be fully appreciated if we remember the fact that, in the reality of things, the republican government represented only a minority, that it ruled by force, and had against it the whole of European opinion. It was therefore essential for Cromwell and his collaborators to try to bring back public opinion to their side, at least in England; all the more essential since in theory they were republican and supposed to rule by the will of the people. Milton's task really was to educate the poor ignorant people of England, and impress favorably public opinion in Europe.

His Eikonoklastes came out in October, 1649. The book takes up and examines one by one the arguments and the facts of the Eikon Basilike. It teaches us but little that is new about Milton's thought and is really fit subject only for the historian. Milton's general ideas, however, are expressed with energy, particularly towards the end. We feel his anger- the republican anger-at the immense popularity of the Eikon Basilike, and mistrust of the people is already in Milton's mind. In 1649 already he feels that the masses are against him:

He bids his son "keep to the true principles of piety, virtue, and honour, and he shall never want a kingdom." And I say, people of England! keep ye to those principles, and ye shall never want a king. Nay, after such a fair deliverance as this, with so much fortitude and valour shewn against a tyrant, that people that should seek a king claiming what this man claims, would show themselves