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written permission from the JHU Press. Why call a pamphlet against press licensing Areopagitica? Why cast it in the form of a speech? Modern scholarship has discovered in Milton's unusual title several possible references to older prose controversies, all less obvious from Milton's prose than the now well-known double allusion to an Athenian oration of Isocrates and to the Athenian journey of St. Paul. 1 Milton begins to explain the form and title of his tract in its opening pages, announcing that he "could name him who from his private house wrote that discourse to the Parlament of Athens, that perswades them to change the forme of Democraty which was then establisht" (489). Milton casts himself as Isocrates, the inventor (in Greek) of the form Milton adopts (in English): the ostensible public address, with all the grammatical and rhetorical trappings of delivered oratory (prefatory praise for its hearers, and vocatives: "Lords and [End Page 23] Commons . . . ."), but written, in the event, to be read rather than heard. But Milton is addressing what is effectively the highest court of appeal in England, rather than urging the reestablishment of such a court; Milton speaks to the Areopagus, rather than (as did Isocrates) of or about it. The dissimilarity has given rise to "ironic" or esoteric readings of Milton's document. 2 Edward Le Comte has persuasively suggested that Milton likens himself chiefly to St. Paul:
He who "from his private house wrote that discourse to the Parliament of Athens" does not get alluded to until page 3, and then never again--just the one sentence. Besides, he is just the first example of a private orator--Dion Prusaeus being another. But "Moses Daniel and Paul" are joined up further on as skillful in learning, and Paul especially singled out, not without a reference to that very chapter in Acts . . . that relates how Paul stood in the midst of Mars hill and said "Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious" . . . This is the accusation that Milton, with as much tact as he can manage, is directing at an English Parliament that has gone papistical on its restraint of the press. (123)
St. Paul "thought it no defilement to insert into holy Scripture the sentences of three Greek poets and one of them a Tragedian"; Milton has opened his own tract with sentences from a Greek tragedian (508). Milton, like Paul, addresses an assembly already full of controversy to explain to them how true religion may be sought. But standard editions of Areopagitica continue to downplay the Pauline parallels; scholars tend to note the New Testament allusion only in the course of unrelated arguments. 3 Le Comte himself foregrounds the Pauline presence in Areopagitica in the course of a larger argument about the relation of that prose tract to Paradise Lost, in which Milton's apostolic self-conception reappears.
More illuminating, however, than the obvious and already-noted broad parallels between Milton and the Apostle are the extra rhetorical points and energies Milton's tract gains if we read it (as his original audience, with the New Testament vivid in their memories, presumably did) with St. Paul's own speech to and at the Areopagus vividly in our minds. 4
Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city subject to idolatrie. Therefore he disputed in the Synagogue with the Jews, and with them that were religious, and in the market daily with whom soever he met. Then certeine philosophers of the Epicures, and of the Stoickes, disputed with him, and some said, What will this babler say? Others said, He semeth to be a setter forth of strange gods (because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection). And they took him and brought him into Mars strete, saying, May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is? For thou bringest certeine strange things to our ears: we would know therefore, what these things mean. For all the Athenians and strangers which dwelt there, gave them selves to nothing els, but either to tel, or to heare some newes. Then Paul stood in the middes of Mars strete and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. (Acts 17: 16-22) 5
Present-day readers should keep in mind at Acts 17:16 Milton's special revulsion against idolatry, his position--shared by other religious radicals--that idolatry, in the extended sense of putting things in the place of God, of worshipping actions and objects instead of God, was the root and symbol of the evils of the established churches of the time (Presbyterianism, as it turned out later, not excluded). 6 Paul's "spirit was stirred in him" (some modern translations have "revolted") by the Athenian pagans in the same manner as Milton's by the "linen decency" of the presumed-extinct Caroline Church. 7
But the polity of Athens included as a matter of law and custom the necessary first step toward a cure for its sins. Because the Athenians, for all that they were idolaters, not only tolerated but encouraged public debate, Paul could set out, in his speech before them, the principles of the creed of Christ and the argument against their continuing in idolatry.
Now when they heard of the resurrection from the dead, some mocked, & other said, We wil [End Page 24] heare thee againe of this thing. And so Paul departed from among them. Howbeit certeine men clave unto Paul, and beleved; among whome was also Denis Areopagita, and a woman named Damaris, and other with them. (Acts 17: 32-33)
The Geneva Bible glosses "Denis Areopagita" "Or a judge of Mars strete," emphasizing that Paul had won over at least one member of a state assembly (as Milton means to do). 8
On his title-page and elsewhere in the tract Milton is, as has been noted, both implying already-present likenesses between his England and ancient Athens, and asking Parliament to make England more like Athens by repealing the licensing act in order to encourage religious debate. 9 These analogies take on a new salience when seen in light of Paul's experience at Mars' Hill. Because they not only allowed all views to be aired but enjoyed the arguments which followed--because, in short, the Athenians could "discern . . . in what things perswasion only is to work" and desired to "Prove all things"--Paul not only made converts in Athens, but did so peacefully and without civil interference; the absence of state interference with Paul's mission in Athens is more striking when set against all the episodes of his being thrown in jail, run out of town, and interrogated by magistrates elsewhere in Acts--at Iconium (14:2), Thessalonika (17:2), and, above all, in Jerusalem. 10
Milton in Areopagitica and Paul at the Areopagus both cite pagan authors, and both mean to refute idolaters; Milton argues explicitly, what he takes Paul to have shown in his practice, that even bad or wrong books may be useful in the advancement of, specifically, religious truth. The books of magic burnt by Paul's Ephesian converts constitute, here, not only evidence but a limit-case--surely if there were a class of books the Bible prescribed to be burnt, it would include tomes of spells; and yet for Milton even these might have been "read . . . in some sort usefully"; moreover their owners chose to burn them. (514) With his next sentence the famous generalities about "good and evil" being "interwoven" begin; the magic books of Acts 19 are Milton's last specific example of un-Christian books that do not justify licensing. Those books belong in that position in Areo pagitica not only because they constitute a limit-case, but because--having been burnt by Ephesian converts, persons who had heard St. Paul when he "disputed daily in the schoole" (Acts 19:9)-- that example returns Milton to a more general question: what should we learn from St. Paul's example? What do St. Paul's words teach us to do?
Milton does not stop at the argument that un-Christian texts may be useful to Christians, as Epimenides' phrase proved useful to St. Paul, or as "others" might have used even spell-books; that argument is one of the first he marshals against book-licensing, placing "the examples of Moses, Daniel and Paul," and Dionysius Alexandrinus, and St. Basil, just after his historical demonstration that book-licensing was invented by Papists. Showing that Christian authors used pagan sources would not, anyway, automatically justify the liberty of unlicensed printing: a supporter of the licensing act might argue that the appointed licensers would not prohibit most secular literature, which the devout could still peruse and quote, but only the actively heretical or seditious. Even the stronger arguments that Paul would not have converted any Athenians if the Athenians had not cherished the freedom to argue--or that Paul was a heretic in the truth--might be answered: now that we know what the true religion is, we no longer need those liberties which proved of such tactical advantage to St. Paul. 11
One response to that argument (the argument that now we know the truth, so we can be sure to censor only falsehoods) might be to argue not the positive necessity for liberty of speech and printing, but rather the futility of a regime of censorship: this would be to demonstrate that press-licensing will fail tactically (it will not prevent the publication of "bad" books) or strategically (even if they can prevent the publication of "bad" books, the licensers will not thereby prevent treason or blasphemy, or save any souls, or increase the security of the state). And Milton does make those responses: he demonstrates that the licensers are unlikely to be able to do the job set out for them (because they would have to possess almost unimaginable scholarly abilities to understand, let alone judge, every book in England), and that if the object is to make everyone virtuous, the state will have to regulate even cakes and ale. 13 [End Page 25]
And who shall silence all the airs and madrigalls, that whisper softnes in chambers? . . . who shall be the rectors of our daily rioting [gluttony]? . . . Who shall regulat all the mixt conversation of our youth . . . ? . . . To sequester out of the world into Atlantick and Eutopian polities, which never can be drawn into use, will not mend our condition; but to ordain wisely as in this world of evill, in the midd'st whereof God hath plac'd us unavoidably. (524-6)
This is a funny excursus as well as an effective indictment of the pro-licensers' expectations; Locke made a similar point (that the moral policing of a whole nation would require much more than the expunging of explicit doctrinal deviation) at the start of his Letter Concerning Toleration.
But such a point, in Milton's context, isn't logically enough to win his case. Our imagined advocate of censorship might reply: Complete moral regulation of the citizenry would be a good idea, but it would be impracticable: let us at least ban immoral books. As Michael Wilding has put it, "it is no logic to say, if we suppress this we ought to suppress that, and since we cannot suppress everything we must suppress nothing" (29). 13 Arguments against any policy based solely on its ineffectiveness can only go so far: the defender of the policy in question can always answer At least it will do some small amount of good. One way to counter this argument for licensing might be to say, as Locke would, that the magistrate has no business deciding what constitutes true religion, much less enforcing its doctrinal decisions: to argue not only that the state should permit free discussion of religious topics, but in addition that it should not even endorse a side.
This argument for absolute separation--which Milton had made earlier, in the Reason of Church-Government--appears nowhere in Areopagitica. 14 In the atmosphere of 1644, as Ernest Sirluck has shown, Milton had to avoid the separationist argument in order to have even a chance of influencing Parliament; in late 1644, any move to repeal the Licensing Act would have required the cooperation of the Erastian middle party, the Presbyterian members of Parliament who wanted to place the English church under state rather than Assembly control (169-79). "It is difficult," as Nigel Smith has remarked, "to refute this insight into Milton's motivation, but we are still left wondering about the textual consequences of this aim" (104). Areopagitica permits its readers to believe the state responsible for the moral--that is to say, the religious--well-being of its citizens. "The primary argument of Areopagitica is concerned not with toleration" as such, Smith writes, "but with the necessity of freedom of the press for the better circulation of knowledge, so that the reformed 'truth' may be reconstituted" (105).
It is this positive, instrumental good of argument per se (and therefore of unlicensed printing) in the discovery and spread of right religion, on which Areopagitica rests its case; and it is this instrumental good of free debate that Milton's Pauline parallels support. St. Paul is not least a debater--he travels the ancient world to argue on behalf of Christ: the Geneva Bible describes Paul at Ephesus as "disputing and exhorting" (19:8); at Corinth he "disputed in the synagogue," and at Thessalonika "disputed . . . by the Scriptures" (17:2): Paul's speech at Athens becomes Milton's demonstration of the necessity of argument, of the deep connection between true faith and inquiry: "all mankinde," Paul tells the Areopagus, were made "of one blood . . . that they should seeke the Lord, if so be they might have groped after him, and found him, though doubtless he be not farre from every one of us" (17:26-7). For Milton, Paul's verbs prescribe continued, strenuous, inquiry--they describe a divine commandment to seek, reason, and choose. Milton explained later, in the prefatory epistle to De doctrina:
. . . we are ordered to find out the truth about all things, and the daily increase of the light of truth fills the church much rather with brightness and strength than with confusion. I do not see how anyone should be able or is able to throw the church into confusion by searching after truth, any more than the heathen were thrown into confusion when the gospel was first preached. (121)
The parallel between Milton and Paul with which (as its editor notes) the prefatory epistle concludes is the same parallel that reinforces the more famous tract, a [End Page 26] parallel between Paul, and the Paul in particular of Acts 17, and any Christian who seeks to advance faith by intellectual trials. Since "faith thrives by exercise," and "trial is by what is contrary," there can be no true faith without vigorous, continuing, dispute (515).
Arguing for the good of "searching" and "trial"--and, in the process, drawing quiet parallels between himself and Paul the disputant--Milton generates another series of analogies. The Protestant practice of trial for oneself, the rejection of implicit belief and obedience, affirms, shows that the Protestant faithful are adults: "For those actions which enter into a man . . . God uses not to captivate under a perpetual childhood of prescription, but trusts him with the gift of reason to be his own chooser" (513-14). But a licensing act makes it impossible for authors to prove themselves adult, even though having written a book ought to be regarded as a proof of maturity. A man who has written a book "takes himself to be informed," and authorship is "the most consummate act of his fidelity and ripeness," which makes it an additional, independent absurdity in licensing that a licenser may be "perhaps much . . . younger" than the author he is set to judge (532). The idea that a Protestant state might treat Protestant authors as other than mature inspires Milton to flights of sarcasm:
What advantage is it to be a man over it is to be a boy at school, if we have only scapt the ferular, to come under the fescu of an Imprimatur? if serious and elaborate writings, as if they were no more than the theam of a Grammar lad under his Pedagogue must not be utter'd without the cursory eyes of a temporizing and extemporizing licenser. (531)
"Christian liberty," Milton would write in De doctrina, makes Christians "sons instead of servants, and grown men instead of children": the condition of being mature and trustworthy, the freedom to read any book and to print almost any, and the general liberty the New Dispensation grants believers, are identified implicitly here also (537). The Protestant freedom (which ought to be granted all adult readers) to peruse unorthodox opinions, and to judge them for oneself, corresponds specifically to the Christian freedom from Old Testament restrictions on food and ritual, as announced, for example, in Paul's letter to Titus: "To the pure all things are pure, not only meats and drinks, but all kinde of knowledge whether of good or evill; the knowledge cannot defile, nor consequently the books, if the will and conscience be not defil'd" (512).
In the system of correspondences Milton's figurative language generates, the free English should be to those who live under licensing laws, as free adults are to slaves and children, as free Protestant nations are to Catholic nations, as Protestants generally are to Roman Catholics, as Athens is to Rome, and as the New Dispensation is to the Old Law and in particular to the old dietary laws: "when God did enlarge the universall diet of mans body . . . he then also, as before, left arbitrary the dyeting and repasting of our minds; as wherein every mature man might have to exercise his owne leading capacity" (513). These analogies advance Milton's theological argument, that licensing is inconsistent with reformed religion; and in doing so they place Milton, bringer of the good news about reading and publishing, in the role of Paul, who explained to his converts and to the early Christian communities that the old dietary laws did not apply. "What but a vain shadow else is the abolition of those ordnances . . . what great purchase is this Christian liberty which Paul so often boasts of . . . that he who eats or eats not, regards a day or regards it not, may do either to the Lord" (563).
The state has not only the opportunity but the positive duty to permit the publication of many (not all) bad books: it is, moreover, a patriotic duty, since continued open debate will provoke the discussion, and the consequent making-explicit of faith, which keeps England, "kindling her undazl'd" eagle eyes, in the forefront of Reformation (558). England merits praise above other nations not because it has already achieved the particulars of true religion, but because it has become a nation of students, "pens and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions . . . whetherwith to present . . . the approaching reformation; others as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement" (554), England is not Jerusalem or a New Jerusalem so much as a Christian Athens, one which is moreover still discovering in [End Page 27] what true Christianity consists, where a new Paul could, as in the old Athens, command an audience and "dispute... in the market daily" (Acts 17:17). England's studious disputatiousness is the more commendable because it flourishes in wartime, "disputing, reasoning, reading, inventing, discoursing, even to a rarity" even during battle and siege (557). The Athens whose appetite for news allowed Paul to convert idolaters and the Athens of Isocrates' address merge in Milton's rhetoric to suggest an ideal city of toleration and free argument (which the licensing orders now threaten). 15 Parliament is the Areo pagitical legislature (a flattering comparison) but England is also Paul's Athens, the booksellers' alleys its Areopagitical public space of debate: there are, in Milton's time and in England, latter-day Pauls preaching versions of Christianity truer and more accurate than those versions to which Parliament could give general assent--or, at the very least, the existence of one or more latter-day Pauls, advocates of the true religion who could be wrongly taken for heretics, is probable enough that the chance of it ought to affect Parliamentary lawmaking. That chance ought to convince Parliament to promote the open-mindedness of Pauline Athens (rather than of the Athens of Isocrates). The body of Osiris, a trope for truth itself, has not yet been reassembled; the work of gathering up its pieces, the work of Reformation, is still going on. 16
This is to say that in the view Milton already in Areopagitica took of Christianity, neither the state nor anybody else could be considered to know true religion: true Christians were by definition still "seeking," and part of the task of the state was therefore to get out of their way. Milton's central argument, that freedom to dispute is necessary if we are ever to discover (more of) the truth about God and Christ, entails both a vision of Reformation as incomplete (both in England and in Scotland; thus, an implicit putdown for the new presbyters) and a mission for "the magistrate" which is not purely secular. Far from keeping its nose out of churches simply because state and church serve separate ends, civil authority is to admit as one of its purposes (as, in fact, the highest purpose of all human institutions) the discovery and propagation of true religion; but, because we are fallen and must try truth by contraries, because we have no way to be sure beyond argument, and, perhaps, because we cannot know exactly what our beliefs are without arguing about them, government can best serve true religion through a policy of a toleration and near-total press freedom.
Here is the deepest of Milton's several answers to those who would deny the relevance of open-minded Athens--or of Acts 17--as an example for Christian England: the Areopagus full of attentive idolaters comes to represent, not only Milton's England (where he took Paul's part before Parliament-as-Athenian-council) but fallen humanity in general and in its best light: a crowd of inquirers, wayfaring (unsettled, and going, like Paul, on missions) or warfaring (in a struggle not yet over) Christians, defending even while discovering a God who remains, in part, unknown. 17 Truth, like Paul himself, may have seemed ugly or unlikely at first: that is why the state must allow us to hear it out: its "first appearance to our eyes . . . is more unsightly and unplausible than many errors, ev'n as the person is of many a great man slight and contemptible to see to" (565-66). 18 The state, if it will involve itself (as the Erastians in Parliament demanded) in religious matters, must realize that the body of truth is still being pieced together by argument, that truth can come from ugly sources; its role is not to dictate faith, but to establish the preconditions for true, explicit faith. The New Jerusalem will be the province of the End of Time; in the meantime, England, on the model of the most open, and least hostile to Christianity of ancient states, should make itself receptive to any possible St. Paul (including, of course, the author of Areopagitica itself). That quality of Milton's Protestant God of forever requiring individual discovery, rejecting our inherited and merely implicit faith, and forever remaining partly unknown to us in our fallen state, recalls the Athenian altar in Acts, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD, to which Milton's title may also refer us, and which the St. Paul himself had invoked in his earlier speech delivered to the Areopagus. 19
1. Merritt Y. Hughes connects the title to Jean de Meurs' De Areopago (1624)( 716). Joel Morvan adds that the figure and name of the Areopagus appeared in Milton's Animadversions as well as in several other pamph lets in the Smectymnuuan controversy (Notes & Queries 20:5, May 1973, 167-8).
2. E.g., Joseph Wittreich's, and Paul Dowling's Straussian reading: "In fine, the Puritans must learn about licensing from Milton's teacher Plato . . . . Milton says that the true purpose of licensing should be achieved by the art of legislating morals discussed in Plato's Laws." (66). Dowling argues that St. Paul can be no precedent because "Milton's rhetorical situation is almost the reverse of St. Paul's. Milton faces a Christian audience . . . St. Paul faces a philosophical audience [who] . . . rejected [his preaching] . . . because it seemed absurdly irrational . . ." (67). But St. Paul made converts at Athens; and (as I argue below) that the Athenians were more receptive to rational debate than many of Milton's Christian contemporaries is one of the points Milton's title is making.
3. For Ernest Sirluck the allusion to Acts 17 "is just possible" (486); Hughes' notes to the tract do not mention St. Paul at all. Le Comte sums up earlier critics' links between Milton and the Apostle (137). More recently, Thomas Kranidas has produced a compressed and cogent account of Milton's double allusion: "The rule of humane law under divine aegis had been founded at the Areopagus, at least for the Christian humanist. St. Paul had confirmed that dignity and linked it with the Christian dispensation in his shrewd, courteous speech" (175). Juanita Whitaker also mentions the Pauline allusion in passing: "The argument for intellectual liberty . . . is advanced by a presiding Miltonic theme . . . the Pauline conviction that every Christian is a warrior in God's army" (187).
4. Almost the only analysis of the Areopagitica to note explicitly that Milton and some of his intended readers must have known great swaths of the Bible by heart is Vincent Blasi's, addressed to an audience of lawyers and other non-Miltonists: "Milton read the Bible (in Hebrew and Greek) for several hours every day . . . Those of us who do not share his profound theological convictions may be able to profit from some features of his thought, and perhaps even employ them for our own purposes. But such a venture in intellectual scavenging must be undertaken with caution and awareness" (10-11).
5. In the King James Version, the word "Areopagus", which the Geneva Bible translates, actually appears in the text at 17:19: "And they took him and brought him unto Areopagus . . . ."
6. As Christopher Hill has noted, idolatry is in the Milton's later Christian Doctrine "the only heresy which might be prohibited by a magistrate" (261).
7. For "revolted" see, e.g., the New Jerusalem Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1990).
8. KJV has "Demetrius the Areopagite."
9. See, for example, Nigel Smith: "It is the very imitation of Athenian oratorical sound in print which communicates effectively the ideal of political life as it should be--supposedly democratic, liberal, able to comprehend more than one point of view . . ." (117-118). For the Athenian (not, for him, Pauline) function of the title, see David Norbrook: "The jaw-breaking title of Areopagitica makes more sense when the licensing con troversy is set in this wider context of reclaiming public space. 'Things concerned with the Areopagus': the reader's attention is directed away from legal minutiae and toward the constitution of ancient Athens" (15). For an extended analysis of the Greek-English parallel, starting with the bit of Euripides on the title page, see Kranidas: "By the end of the first full page of text the speaker has suggested a connection between English and Greek, and a contrast between England and Rome . . . The language of truth and reason and political vision is Greek-English" (177).
10. The editors of the Geneva Bible refused to decide, in their note on the noun phrase "Mars strete"--Areopagus--at Acts 17:19, whether Paul was on trial for impiety, or simply participating in a debate: the note reads "Where judgement was given of weightie matteres, but chiefly of impietie against their gods, wherof Paul was accused; or els was led thither because of ye retorte of people whose eares ever tickled to heare newes." My reading of Milton's allusions comports, obviously, better with the latter alternative, which seems to me closer to the literal text, the former being a false parallel with occurrences elsewhere in Acts; but even if we understand Milton or his audience as believing that Paul was being put on trial, the point would remain that the Athenians were exceptional in appreciating and encouraging debate, and that this debate both protected Paul from physical harm and produced both actual (Denis/Demetrius, Damaris, "certeine men") and potential converts.
11. Precisely this argument appears in Presbyterian tracts by Bishop Hall and others, where, as Sirluck demonstrates, it is the normal reply to the tolerationist point that Charles tried to suppress the views of the Presbyterians (92-107).
12. Dowling's argument that Milton intends to re commend the legislation of manners under cover of mocking it seems, to say the least, insensitive to Milton's tone. Nigel Smith avers: "Areopagitica is . . . a complete reversal of Plato's idea of a state which banished its poets, though one which needs the image of Plato's utopia and his version of virtuous self-control in order to define itself. Milton refuses Plato's analogy between city and soul, thus freeing the individual for action from Plato's rigid hierarchies" (116-17).
13. But Wilding continues: "And Milton's intention is to allow the emergence of these dangerous ideas, to educate the village dancers away from those village sports and form them into a revolutionary vanguard . . . Looked at in this way, the whole argument is in bad faith. It is strategic, decorative, rhetorical" (29). Leaving aside the question of whether the studious (if "warfaring") Christians Milton envisions are best described as a proto-Leninist workers' column, that the argument is not conclusive does not mean it has been put forward in bad faith; Milton here shows at least that the licensing order will do less for their cause than its proponents believe, and that much-reduced good is then weighed against the quite separate evils of prepublication censorship.
14. The earlier tract had been explicitly separationist: in it Milton had concluded, for example, "Thus therefore the minister assisted attends his heavenly and spiritual cure. Where we shall see him both in the course of his proceeding, and first in the excellence of his end, from the magistrate farre different, and not more different than excelling" (845). It is not hard to imagine, tactical considerations apart, that the climate of 1644 gave the Independent party more hope of active assistance from Parliament than it could have had years before, when Milton first attacked prelacy in print.
15. Could Milton's repeated references to "twenty" licensers, "an Oligarchy of twenty ingrossers," where Parliament had specified thirty-four, be a mistake for the oligarchic Thirty, who briefly dominated Athens (535, 558)? Sirluck's footnote to the Yale edition "can find no record to suggest" twenty licensers, and does not other wise gloss Milton's number. (535)
16. Elisabeth Magnus ties this notion that Reformation must make new discoveries to a supposed new, or newly significant, requirement that literary works be original, and to Milton's attack on the plagiarism of Sidney in the Eikon Basilike: "Milton is the great spokesman for a ra dical Protestant concept of originality . . . . Areopagitica combats censorship by connecting it to the passive imitation and appropriation of ideas and beliefs . . ." (88).
17. Sirluck's analyses of the dual, mutually-reinforcing theological and pragmatic grounds for the limits to and purposes of Milton's recommended toleration (his exclusion, for example, of Roman Catholic books) make the continuing insistences by, for example, John Illo that Milton is actually "intolerationist" unhelpful. Illo also fails to distinguish postpublication penalties (e.g. for blasphemy), which do not require a board of censors and do not prevent books from being "born," from prior restraint.
18. Sirluck notes here an allusion to Paul's description of himself in 2 Corinthians 10:10.
19. Or, to discard the familiar formulation and follow the Geneva version, "UNTO THE UNKNOWEN GOD" (Acts 17:23).
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http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/milton_quarterly/v032/32.1burt.html