33 pages • 1 hour read
Areopagitica
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Free Will
The concept of free will is central to Milton’s argument. He insists: “I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be fun for, not without dust and heat” (350). For Milton, untried virtue is not virtue at all. If Parliament takes free will, which he believes is divinely given to humans, English citizens have no choice but to act virtuously. He compares books to food, claiming that “when God did enlarge the universal diet of man’s body, saving ever the rules of Temperance, he then also, as before, left arbitrary the dieting and repasting of our minds, as wherein every mature man might have to exercise his own leading capacity” (349). Without the dietary laws of the Old Testament, men have the option to eat anything they choose, and yet their health depends on making good choices. Similarly, a man can enrich his mind with reading. But unlike food, which has either a positive or negative effect on the body based on its own set nutritional properties, a good and moral person can use a blasphemous text in a way that is positive.
Milton fears that a society that is not afforded the free will to explore knowledge that is both pious and heretical will be full of dim-witted people who are not educated. He states: “…[W]e may as soon fall again into a gross conforming stupidity, a stark and dead congealment of wood and hay and stubble, forced and frozen together, which is more to the sudden degenerating of a church than many subdichotomies of petty schisms” (377). The constant ability to choose and think critically keeps the church alive rather than frozen. He argues that the search for truth is ongoing and that it requires a sharp, active mind to continue finding pieces of truth. Milton references Adam and Eve, arguing that Adam had to be tempted with the apple to make the choice to acquire knowledge, asserting that “he that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true warfaring Christian” (350).
Truth
Milton personifies Truth, “who, when she gets a free and willing hand, opens herself faster than the pace of method and discourse can overtake her” (354). He frames the pursuit of truth as the ultimate challenge and goal, and the licensing act is the antithesis of that goal. Milton describes the story of “the Egyptian Typhon with his conspirators, [and] how they dealt with the good Osiris. [They] took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds” (369). Milton is using multiple tactics in the telling of this story. Additionally, he is employing mythology from a pre-Christian culture, showing that even pagan religion can be repurposed without being blasphemous. Second, he is paralleling his idea of Christian-centered “truth” with that of Egyptian culture, illustrating the concept of a truth that is singular but broken into many pieces. Even heathen religions might hold shards of truth, justifying the right to continue studying them.
Milton’s formulation of “truth” is living and continually unfinished. For Parliament, the employment of the licensing act and the constant fear of schisms and the new formation of sects suggests that they view truth as a finite, finished doctrine that stands against an infinite number of false doctrines. Given the endless evolutions of religions over time, this seems rather short-sighted, although the credibility of this doctrine was certainly tied up in assertions of political power. Milton’s version of the “virgin Truth” is an absolute. She is unsullied, incorruptible, and universal. However, she is also unknowable, at least in totality. Milton marries religion and scholarship by asserting that true faith involves searching for truth and trusting that since truth is divine, it cannot really be degraded or perverted. Milton also describes the people of England as prophets, designed to be wiser, more discerning, and especially suited for this search for truth. Considering the political investment that Parliament had in the specific version of truth they espoused, it is unsurprising that they did not take to Milton’s arguments.
Divine Providence
Milton was an extremely religious person, but his approach to spirituality was much more philosophical than doctrine-oriented. He believed fiercely in the essential tenets of Christianity and in the existence of a single god, but he denounced systematized religious practices. For Milton, spiritual beliefs were the result of individual study and contemplation, although righteous beliefs fell under the Christian conception of God. Milton expressed suspicion of church officials, organized religion, and those claiming to speak for God. He fought against King Charles I and a monarchy that asserted rule by divine right. He wrote tracts against members of the clergy who doubled as government officials. Milton disparaged Catholicism and the papacy as a corrupt organization that ruled tyrannically and unscrupulously in the name of divine power. In Areopagitica, Milton argues that the key characteristic of divine providence is the endowment of free will rather than the imposition of restrictions. He points out: “Many there be that complain of divine providence for suffering Adam to transgress” (356), yet he insists that the divine gift of free will allows men to shape themselves into virtuous agents who choose righteousness rather than forcing their hands and actions. Divine providence, like Milton’s conception of truth, is unalienable and cannot be compromised. He asks: “For who knows not that Truth is strong next to the Almighty? She needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings to make her victorious, those are the shofts and the defenses that error uses against her power” (376). Divine will does not need men to enforce it—it persists regardless.
Unlock all 33 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By John Milton
