University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Prophecy and the politics of authority in seventeenth-century revolutionary Britain

(USC Thesis Other)

Prophecy and the politics of authority in seventeenth-century revolutionary Britain

PDF

Download

Open document

Flip pages

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content PROPHECY AND THE POLITICS OF AUTHORITY IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY
REVOLUTIONARY BRITAIN

by

Rochelle Susan Goodman

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(ENGLISH)

May 2010

Copyright 2010 Rochelle Susan Goodman

ii
Epigraph

Glendower: At my nativity
The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes
Of burning cressets, and at my birth
The frame and huge foundation of the earth
Shak’d like a coward.

Hotspur: Why, so it would have done
At the same season if your mother’s cat had
But kitten’d, though you yourself had never been born.

William Shakespeare

iii
Dedication

For Josh, soul of my soul

iv
Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Tony Kemp, Bruce Smith, and Moshe Lazar,
spirited, generous, and learned men
I am also indebted to Flora Ruiz, who took care of me
when I really needed it.
And a special thanks to Michelle Har Kim, who shepherded me through the submission
process, which is an education in itself.

v
Table of Contents

Epigraph ii
Dedication iii
Acknowledgements iv
Abstract vi
Introduction: Prophecy and Politics 1
Introduction Endnotes 38
Chapter One: James Nayler and Quaker Subjectivity 43
Chapter One Endnotes 118
Chapter Two: Hobbes’ War on Prophecy in Leviathan 133
Chapter Two Endnotes 170
Chapter Three: Cromwell the Providential Prophet 178
Chapter Three Endnotes 234
Chapter Four: Paradise Regain’d as Satire 247
Chapter Four Endnotes 331
Bibliography 348

vi
Abstract

During Britain’s civil war era, prophecy comprised the rhetorical means by which
certain religio-political groups legitimized their efforts to seize power, based on claims of
election and the attendant right to determine God’s will on earth. In seventeenth-century
Britain, the Holy Spirit became the vehicle for political empowerment par excellence.
This dissertation investigates prophetic discourse in terms of its political function during
a time when the issue of political authority was a focus for interrogation and debate. The
Introduction provides a brief history of prophetic discourse as an intellective mode that
characterized British mentality for centuries, and found its most potent manifestation in
the Puritans’ self-sanctioned ability to speak for God. Chapter One discusses the
Quakers’ appropriation of the Holy Spirit, which gave them license to judge their Puritan
rulers. Chapter Two analyzes Hobbes’ attack on prophecy in Leviathan, in which he
eliminates the possibility of election by various rhetorical strategies. Chapter Three
examines Cromwell’s rise from obscure minor gentry to Lord Protector through his
exploitation of providentialism, that is, the right and duty of every Puritan saint to read
God’s cosmic plan in personal and national events. And Chapter Four treats Milton’s
Paradise Regain’d as a cynical commentary on the political opportunism and self-interest
concealed in the postures of righteousness adopted by both the Royalists and the
Roundheads during the Revolution.

1
Introduction: Prophecy and Politics

Britain’s revolutionary era was marked by an explosion of prophetic discourse of
all kinds, a ubiquitous and complicated phenomenon that resists comprehensive analysis
regarding the ways in which different prophetic genres were utilized by various religio-
political parties; however, it is possible to discuss prophetic discourse as a mode of
thought that characterized British mentality for centuries, and eventually found its
greatest opportunity for expression in the middle decades of the seventeenth century. It is
also possible to investigate types of prophetic genres in terms of their political function at
a time when the issue of political authority itself was under sustained inquiry concerning
both its origins and representations. During the civil war era, prophecy constituted the
rhetorical means by which particular groups legitimized their efforts to seize power,
based on claims of election and the concomitant right to determine God’s will on earth.
In seventeenth-century Britain, the Holy Spirit became the vehicle for political
empowerment par excellence.
A history of prophetic discourse will demonstrate just how susceptible the British
mind had become to it by the seventeenth century. I term it “a” history instead of “the”
history, because I am commencing with a particular form that would itself be used to
initiate and justify important political and military action for centuries: the political
prophecy, first made popular by Geoffrey of Monmouth. Rupert Taylor, in his seminal
work on the political prophecy in Britain, while acknowledging that some vaticinal
literature did exist before Geoffrey’s time, asserts that “The credit of really introducing
the political prophecy into England belongs to Geoffrey. . . . His three books, The Book

2
of Merlin, the Historia Regum Brittaniae, and the Vita Merlini are each of great
importance in English literature.”
1
Lesley A. Coote, in her expansion upon Taylor’s
study, basically echoes this sentiment, contending that “If Geoffrey did not introduce the
political prophecy to England, he was vitally important in enhancing its popularity.”
2
An
Oxford scholar, ordained priest, and consecrated bishop, who died in 1154,
3
Geoffrey
was largely responsible for initiating a discourse of secular prophecy that exerted a
profound influence over actual affairs of state in Britain for centuries; as Taylor informs
us, “The life of Political Prophecy in England extended from the early twelfth century to
the late seventeenth century. This endurance in vigor and strength for so long a time was
caused by a constant and continual interest. The type made its appearance under the
auspices of men of authority, and throve under the encouragement of the mighty.”
4

Taylor goes on to say that this discourse had rooted itself so deeply in the minds of the
British that they became proverbial for their
love of secular prophecies and . . . belief in them. “The inglishmen gifis ferme
credit to diverse prophane prophecies of Merlyne, and til uthir corrupit
vacitanaris, to quhais ymaginet verkis thai gyve mair faitht nor to the prophesie of
Ysaye, Ezechiel, Ieremie, or to the evangel,” contemptuously wrote the author of
The Complaint of Scotland in 1549. . . . Commines in France sixty years earlier
had made a similar taunt against the English when he insinuated, in his account of
the meeting between Louis the Eleventh of France and Edward the Fourth of
England, that the English were provided with a prophecy for every occasion. The
evidence sustains the taunts of the foreigners, for prophecies were both powerful
and popular.
5

By the politically tumultuous fifteenth century, political prophecies had become
entrenched as a toy and prop of the ruling classes to the point that, whether or not specific
kings and nobles believed in these prophecies per se, they didn’t hesitate to exploit their
propagandistic potential to justify political and military action. Tayler reports that

3
Edward the Fourth consulted prophecies when in doubt . . . and on the strength of
a doubtful threat in one sent a brother to execution. . . . Noblemen, if they
belonged to the great political houses . . . collected prophecies relating to the
fortunes of their families or kept books containing prophecies concerning the
history of the realm. . . . Ambassadors prefaced their addresses or pressed their
claims with quotations from suitable prophecies. . . . Books of prophecies were
chained to desks in many libraries, and regarded with respect and veneration.
6

The fight between the great houses especially resulted in the increased use of political
prophecy to sanction claims to the throne and muster support from both the aristocracy
and commoners; Coote relates that “the dynastic struggles of the fifteenth century led to
prophecy’s use as a partisan tool. This was particularly evident during the years
surrounding the deposition of Richard II in 1399, and in the political conflicts of the Wars
of the Roses.”
7
The significance of political prophecy as a discourse that both motivated
and underwrote decisions and actions of the greatest consequence in Britain cannot be
emphasized enough; far from having been merely entertainment, as it is still often
thought of, political prophecy was, for the ruling classes, the premier language of
subjugation and acquisition. As Coote asserts, “Political prophecy is not a game, nor is it
a code or a form of intellectual exercise, and it is most certainly not unimportant. In fact,
it is vital to our understanding of English politics in the later Middle Ages.”
8

For those who require clarification as to what political prophecy actually is,
Taylor’s definition, though simple, is more than adequate to the purpose: “The term
political prophecy needs no explanation as to its general import. Everyone will
understand it as applying to any expression of though, written or spoken, in which an
attempt is made to foretell coming events of a political nature.”
9
Taylor gives us to
understand that “The events predicted in these literary prophecies concern either the
personal career of the king—and the nation only incidentally as it is represented by the

4
king,—or the national interests of the people as a whole.”
10
Furthermore, according to
Taylor, “the usual literary political prophecy reads very much like history written in the
future tense.”
11
Political prophecy’s most important and distinctive feature was the
absence of specific human referents; Taylor instructs that it often employed “animals and
birds instead of men and women. . . . This amounts, really, to little more than giving
animal names to men and women. This vaticinal method may be called Galfridian, for it
is used extensively for the first time by Geoffrey of Monmouth in The Book of Merlin.”
12

Taylor, however, lists in all ten methods of what he calls “prophetic disguise”
13
common
to different prophetic tracts by various (and often anonymous) authors, such as the use of
“arbitrary names, by which is meant the adoption of certain arbitrary symbols,”
14
as well
as “accidental designation, or the use of names derived from some incident in the life of
the individual referred to, or from some peculiarity in manners, person, name, surname,
or arms.”
15
These disguises were in great part what gave political prophecy its
remarkable longevity, in that prophecies could be recycled endlessly to refer to any
number of individuals throughout the centuries. In addition, this infinite flexibility of
allusion was accompanied by a cavalier attitude toward the actual incidents narrated in
the prognostications themselves: for as Taylor observes, “The life of a prophecy . . . was
not limited to a few years following its production. . . . A popular prophecy was not
allowed to die. Fulfillment of various episodes in it was expected and announced on the
slightest occasion,”
16
and any portion of a “prophecy that had proved untrue was revised
so as to conform to historical fact,”
17
in order to preserve belief in predictions contained
in it regarding the outcome of events that had yet to occur. As I have already stated, this
inexhaustibly plastic “poetry” exerted enormous pressure on British politics; as Taylor

5
judges, political prophecy “if not directly responsible for countless rebellions and
insurrections at least was a potent factor.”
18
Thus it was that Geoffrey of Monmouth
helped to inaugurate a secular discourse in the early Middle Ages that quickly inculcated
itself in the minds of the British as a genuine mode of prophecy that was ceaselessly
deployed to instigate and manage enterprises that shaped the political destiny of all of
Britain. Taylor argues that, such was the almost instant popularity of Geoffrey’s Merlin,
his “fame as a prophet had become universal in Western Europe and The Book of Merlin
was known either through quotations or by general repute.”
19

In 1485 the future Henry VII was able to capitalize on the centuries-old reverence
for Merlin in his battle against Richard III for the English throne; Russell Rutter, in an
article discussing William Caxton’s politically well-timed publication of Morte Darthur,
explains in a neat summary of his argument that
Between 1475 and 1484, Caxton issued a series of books that made available the
essence of the Arthurian story and lifted up King Arthur as a standard against
which Richard III was found wanting. A week before Henry’s landing in England
and three weeks before Bosworth, Caxton issued the Morte Darthur, complete
with a prologue that reviewed the evidence for Arthur’s historicity and set forth
his achievements. Caxton lived and worked in Westminster within sight of the
center of power, and could scarcely have failed to witness Richard of Gloucester’s
usurpation. . . . Caxton’s books bear witness to his interest in Arthurian story,
Merlinic prophecy, and the ideals of chivalry, and his original writings show that
he interpreted these in both moral and sociopolitical terms. This essay urges,
then, that Caxton published the Morte Darthur to support Henry Tudor’s bid for
the throne, that in his prologue to this book he created a fiction that, by refuting
objections to Arthur’s historicity, enabled him to enter the discourse of power and
thus strengthen the validity of Henry’s Arthurian claim.
20

Rutter proposes that during the last couple of years that Caxton had been issuing his
Arthurian narratives Henry Tudor turned to account his Welsh ancestry, remarking that
the search had long been on for a mab dragon, a son of prophecy, who would
restore Wales and the British people to their former greatness. . . . During the

6
reign of Richard III, attention was focused on Henry Tudor, who seemed to fulfill
British hopes that one day the victorious red dragon would expel from England
the Saxons and Normans who had wrested it long ago from its rightful British
owners.
21

Of course Henry’s advantageous origins worked in close conjunction with Richard III’s
burgeoning reputation for self-interest, arrogance, and betrayal, for he had, in Rutter’s
words, not only “alienated or murdered practically all of his—but also Henry’s—
legitimate rivals,”
22
hence boosting Henry’s popularity immeasurably with lords and
gentry alike as a serious contender for the English throne.
23
And since Richard had made
little effort to compensate for his savage tactics of usurpation and domination, for Rutter,
an increasingly large segment of Caxton’s reading public had become certain that
Richard III, for all his energy, was a non-starter who possessed no clear title to the
throne, no resources except theirs with which to conduct the business of
government, and no direct heir or likelihood of producing one once Queen Anne
was dead. Coexisting with the British hope of eventual deliverance was the rather
more immediate hope that someone would finally supplant Richard.
24

Rutter theorizes that,
If Geoffrey gave first and most compelling form both to the legend of King
Arthur and to the prophecies of Merlin, William Caxton first gave them printed
form and thereby disseminated them at a moment critical to hundreds, even
thousands, of English readers. . . . When he issued Morte Darthur, Caxton
entered the political arena . . . to mobilize support for Henry Tudor, who for the
moment was no less than the Arturus redivivus.
25

Caxton used his political savvy to coordinate the publication of Morte Darthur with
Henry’s attack on Richard as a means of generating support for what was another
usurper, with even less right to the throne than the man he would overthrow, and who had
until recently been, as Rutter phrases it, “too puny a threat to merit sustained attention.”
26

Furthermore, Henry’s incorporation of motifs of the Arthurian legends into his
public persona greatly facilitated his transition from political upstart to royal savior:

7
Rutter tells that “Henry had to transform the act of seizing power into the state of
appearing to possess it by right. To accomplish this feat, he needed a tradition, a mythos
that enjoyed the acceptance of the culture into which he had inserted himself.”
27
Thus,
for purposes of political stability, the Arthurian persona that Henry had appropriated with
Caxton’s help in order to “fight an uphill battle to rid England of Richard III,”
28
he clung
to for as long as it was expedient to do so; citing Kenneth Burke, Rutter claims that “For
at least a few years after his accession, he continued to press his identity as the new
Arthur because the patina of Arthurian greatness would provide ‘a historical and cultural
ratification of a contemporary order’ that, as a newcomer, he so much needed.”
29
To this
end, Henry went so far as to name his eldest son Arthur who, had he lived, would have
ruled as Arthur II, “a dream ironically recalled in 1502 by the banner of Cadwallader . . .
placed over the hearse of this ill-fated boy.”
30
In view of the evidence that Rutter
marshals in defense of his thesis, I find it easy to believe him when he states:
It is in fact difficult to explain the host of Arthurian allusions connected with
Henry VII as the result of anything other than political purposes. What better
book could Caxton have issued in the summer of 1485 than one that celebrated
the deeds of King Arthur and, in its famous prologue, canvassed the prospect that
one day an Arthurian monarch would return to make everything right? If ever
chivalry bade fair to merge with daily life and prophecy to take more concrete
form than every before, it was when a king with Arthurian credentials came riding
out of the west of England to rid the kingdom of a ruler who had come to be
regarded as little more than a recreant knight.
31

Abetted by Caxton’s publication of Morte Darthur, Henry Tudor, a political underdog
with a weak claim to the English throne, was able construct for himself a public persona
of Arthurian virtue, based on little more than the exploitation of his Welsh ancestry, as
well as the participation in such superficial displays as “marching under the Red Dragon
of Cadwallader,”
32
tactics that not only helped him gain the English throne but convince

8
even commoners, whose lives were in no way materially improved by Henry’s accession,
that it was his by right, that he was, to quote Rutter, “destined to rule.”
33
The prophetic
literature disseminated by Geoffrey and those like him had, by the late fifteenth century,
so firmly established itself in the minds of the British as a collective mode of thought
that, with relatively little encouragement, it was able to materialize a mythical champion
at a critical moment in British politics. Political prophecy had become, for those residing
at the center of power, a mighty ideological agent for constructing socio-political reality.
Ironically however, it was during the reign of Henry VIII that political prophecy
was suddenly subject to widespread use as a form of popular protest; that is to say it was
embraced by the politically disenfranchised as a means of engaging in public discourse
and articulating their dissatisfaction with contemporary individuals, institutions, events,
and conditions. In the 1530s socio-political reality had become a debatable issue; the
opened Pandora’s Box of competing discourses that was the English Reformation could
count among its escapees political prophecy, and a genre that was once the property of
the government as a tool of propaganda had been turned into a weapon of dissent.
Sharon L. Jansen, in her investigation of prophecy and popular protest, teaches us that
The state papers of Henry’s reign include a surprising number of stray copies of
prophecies, of references to mysterious prophecies heard or read or reported, of
trials and examinations of men and women who . . . were caught spreading
prophecies, and even of prophecies duly collected by the King’s government,
reinterpreted, and then offered as support for Henry’s political and religious
reforms.
34

Jansen recounts that, by the time Henry VIII had obtained his divorce from Katherine of
Aragon, executed Anne Boleyn, married Jane Seymour, and effectively ended his
allegiance to the pope in 1536, political prophecy was being wielded

9
by a very different class of person than Geoffrey of Monmouth. . . . By the 1530s,
those who chose the weapon of prophecy were those who had few other weapons
to hand. . . . [T]hose who found an element of power in the authority of prophecy
used it in a kind of desperate attack against authority — the authority of King and
parliament. In this war against authority, prophecy appealed to a higher and older
authority — the authority of tradition.
35

Jansen cites such examples of persecuted prophets as Rhys ap Griffith, who was executed
1531 for supposedly spreading seditious prophecy concerning the unification of Scotland
and Wales that would result in the conquest of England,
36
the celebrated nun Elizabeth
Barton, otherwise known as the “Holy Maid of Kent,” a former serving-girl who
prophesied extensively against Henry’s divorce, and was arrested in 1533 and executed in
1534,
37
and vicar John Hale, who was hanged in 1545 for declaring, among other things,
that “the Kyng was accursed of Godes owne mouth,”
38
and that “the mariage betwene the
Kinge and Quene was vnlefull.”
39
Jansen also discusses the vital role political prophecy
played in the “Pilgrimage of Grace,” a series of riots and rebellions originating in the
north of England involving some 40,000 people that arose in response to, among other
things, the dissolution of monasteries, and were far more threatening to the Henry’s
regime than historians generally acknowledge;
40
Jansen indicates that, between the
Pilgrimage of Grace and threats of a Catholic invasion from several countries, political
prophecies attacking the government multiplied exponentially, which led to numerous
arrests and executions of alleged prophets.
41
Summing up governmental reaction to this
flood of poetic subversion that issued from unhappy Catholics, as well as displaced
Catholic clergy, who had been “cut away from their traditional place in the social
order,”
42
and thus deprived of “their privileged place in the power establishment,”
43

Jansen remarks that its endeavors to prosecute such prophets were “tireless.”
44

10
Laws passed during Henry VIII’s reign targeting political prophets further testify
to just how dangerous Geoffrey’s descendents had become to established authority: in
1534 Parliament passed the Treasons Act, allowing the government greater scope
regarding the detainment, investigation, and punishment of offenders. Jansen comments
that, as a result of the new act, “Those accused were to be examined and held, while all
depositions were to be forward to either the Council or to [Thomas] Cromwell directly.
Almost no one and nothing seems too insignificant to have come to official attention.”
45

And in what Jansen calls “a final effort, the government passed in 1542 an act ‘Touchyng
Prophecies uppon Delcaracion of Names, Armes, Badges, and etc,’”
46
which focused on
political prophecy in all of its disguises, that is to say “armes, feldes, beastes, fowles, or
other such lyke things accustomed in armes, cognisaunces, badges, or signettes, . . . or
lettres of the name of the King or of any other persone.”
47
The act promised that
offenders would “suffre suche paynes of deathe, forfaictures or landes, goodes, and
catalls as in cases of felonye at the comen lawe is determyned and appointed, without
priveledge of clergie or sancturie to be allowed to theime or any of theime.”
48
But
despite the government’s efforts to eradicate popular use of political prophecy via such
threats, it continued to plague not only Henry VIII but also subsequent (Protestant) Tudor
monarchs; Harry Rusche, in an article analyzing the connection between prophecy and
propaganda during the Civil War, reports in a footnote that on two separate occasions
Edward VI enacted a similar law against prophecy, that was later reenacted by Elizabeth
I, also on two separate occasions.
49
Rusche points out just how conscious and fearful
Edward’s government was of the intimate connection between political prophecy and
popular unrest:

11
The opening statement of the statute passed by Edward is interesting, in that it
acknowledges that the inherent political and propaganda value of prophecies was
recognized and that the law was aimed at ending their usefulness as a potential
means of arousing people to rebellion by instilling in them false hopes and
confidence. ‘An Acte against fonde and fantasticall Prophecies’ begins:

Where nowe of late . . . divers evill disposed parsons, mynding to stirr and
move sedicion disobedience and rebellion, have of their perverse minds
feyned ymagined invented published and practysed dyvers fantasticall and
fonde Propheseyes, concerning the King’s Majestie dyvers honorable
parsons gentlemen and commons of this Realme, to the great disturbance
and perill of the King’s Majestie and this his Realme . . .

The law specifically prohibits writing, printing, singing, speaking and publishing
prophecies applied to ‘any fild beasts fowles badges and such lyke things’ found
in coats of arms; it also forbids the prophesying of ‘bludshed or warr, to the intent
thereby to make any rebellion insurreccion discencion, loss of lyfe or other
disturbaunce within this Realme.’
50

The problems of reformation and succession ignited by Henry VIII, which were
compounded by those of order and obedience on the part of large segments of the
populace staunchly opposed on several counts to, what were after all, completely self-
serving changes on the king’s behalf, continued well into the reign of Elizabeth I;
51
as
Jansen realizes,
At issue were questions of authority, of legitimate power and its exercise, and of
the right — or duty — of resistance to power used or abused. Political prophecies
challenged the government’s answers to these questions. They were a serious part
of this public debate, part of popular resistance to royal power. . . . Prophecy
offered a legitimacy to resistance.
52

And although political prophecy in Elizabeth’s time appears to have posed a relatively
serious threat in terms of its ability to instigate popular unrest, another form of prophetic
discourse arose—one that in the 1640s would amass enough power to overthrow
monarchy itself.

12
Howard Dobin, in his investigation of political prophecy in late Tudor and early
Stuart Britain, emphasizes its enduring importance as a potential revolutionary tool,
commenting that “The authorities of the Elizabethan regime struggled to control and
contain the radically subversive power of these ubiquitous prophecies with their
indeterminate interpretations.”
53
Though Dobin insists that political prophecy
“maintained a tremendous credibility through the English Civil War,”
54
ironically he
himself provides an excellent introduction to a mode of prophecy that would far surpass
political prophecy as a means of contesting royal power, in that it eventually furnished its
proponents with the rhetorical impetus that they required to topple the monarchy and
behead Charles I:
Puritans used the verb prophesy to mean “interpret scripture.” Francis Bacon, in
1604, describes the Puritan exercise “called prophesying: which was this: that the
ministers within a precinct did meet upon a weekday in some principal town . . .
then every minister successively, beginning with the youngest, did handle one
and the same part of scripture.”. . . These weekly gatherings began as an attempt
to educate local clergy through collective Bible study and preaching exercises;
however, in the 1570’s, as these sessions gained energy from increasing Puritan
protest, the prophesyings became objects of great controversy. . . . The Queen
viewed the prophesyings as antiepiscopal and potentially schismatic; she ordered
first Archbishop Matthew Parker and later Archbishop Edmond Grindal to
suppress them. Although Grindal agreed to prohibit participation by the laity and
direct attacks on doctrine or the state, he refused to halt the prophesyings.
Instead, he defended the practice and his greater allegiance to God while
reminding Elizabeth that she was only mortal. In 1577, the Queen herself
prohibited prophesyings by royal letters to the bishops. For Elizabeth, the
“guarantee of stability was the conformity of all her subjects, whatever their
private opinions, in uniform religious observance.”
55

Geoffrey F. Nuttall, in his brief-but-edifying investigation of the Holy Spirit in relation to
Puritanism, asserts that, although these earliest instances of “prophesying” were
“essentially expositions of Scripture,”
56
they were “dependent upon a conviction of the
presence and activity of the Holy Spirit in men’s hearts.”
57
Elizabeth understood the

13
subversive power latent in what seemed to many to be a politically innocuous activity, a
power that became increasingly operative as the Puritans collectively gained in fiscal and
political strength; Nuttall locates in Elizabeth’s attempts to squelch what was in the
beginning little more than an inspired clerical exercise the very origins of that stiff-
necked militancy which ultimately would be the monarchy’s undoing: “It was such
treatment which caused Puritans to despair, and created Separatism, in which, from the
first, ‘prophesyings’ were accepted as a natural and regular part of the worship of God.”
58

Thus, Puritan prophesying as a religious practice included, almost from its inception, an
element of political resistance, which would only grow stronger until prophesying
metamorphosized into what Steven N. Zwicker calls, in his study of the conscious
deployment of literature as a means of supporting specific political programs from the
execution of Charles I through the Glorious Revolution, “prophetic politics,”
59
which
would justify “the triumph of the saints.”
60

Dobin himself describes the process by which Puritans would employ prophecy to
define themselves as a spiritual aristocracy in order to supersede a nobility that refused to
cater to their financial and religious interests, explaining that Puritan prophesying
demonstrates how the distinction between prophecy as divinely inspired utterance
and prophecy as exegesis of scripture disappeared as the Reformation redefined
the prophetic enterprise. Nonconformist preachers freely called themselves
prophets, claiming that the spirit gave them utterance when interpreting scripture;
it was only a small step more to claim that such interpretive power was the direct
gift—or even that the utterance was the direct voice—of God.
61

This “small step” would have drastic implications in terms of endowing the Puritans with
the confidence to war upon Charles I, and install themselves as the dominant religio-
political interest in Britain until the Restoration. The Puritans’ intensifying focus on the

14
Holy Spirit as the means of deliverance from monarchical authority involved its use as a
medium of revelation, allowing them to express their seditious agenda in terms of divine
inspiration; Nuttall maintains that “increasingly it was borne in upon radical Puritans that
the age in which they lived was ‘the age of the Spirit’. It is probable that this issued
simply from their own insistence on the centrality of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit,
combined with the current reawakening of an historic sense.”
62
Nuttall recognizes the
Holy Spirit’s intimate connection to the Puritans’ conception of themselves as “living in a
remarkable age, a new age,”
63
in which they would play a most important role. What
Dobin says about political prophecy has even greater application to its triumphant
competitor: “English history . . . became the stuff of providential design . . . providing the
means to forecast the destined glory of the nation.”
64
As far as concerns the specific use
of prophecy as a challenge to established religious and political authority, what began in
the 1530s as a failed Catholic objection to the changes wrought by the Reformation
eventually found success in the following century as an extreme Protestant critique of
those changes. The Puritans would turn to their political advantage the “deeply rooted
. . . tradition of vaticination that had over the centuries penetrated the Englishman’s habit
of mind,”
65
to borrow Rusche’s formulation of this phenomenon: Puritan providentialism,
appropriating from millennial thought concern with the ways in which contemporary
human activity reflects divine history, contrived a prophetic alliance between political
“partisanship and eternity.”
66
As Dobin realizes, “Sacred history was made secular by
reading God’s work into the specific national and political events of the day. Conversely,
secular history was made sacred—imbued with redemptive and even eschatological
significance.”
67
Providentialism was the perfect rhetorical vehicle for rebellion, around

15
which the Puritans would coalesce in order to bring about their aborted rule of saints.
The Puritans’ proprietary relationship with the Holy Spirit allowed them to persuade
themselves that it was their duty as saints to “judge the world.”
68

Though Paul Christianson, in his study of the impact of the apocalyptic tradition
upon Protestant thought from the Reformation to the eve of the Civil War, fails to refer to
providentialism by name, he does discuss it, understanding that what made it far superior
to political prophecy as a subversive force was not only the fact that it “carried the added
weight of an immediately apparent divine sanction,”
69
hence increasing its authority
immeasurably, but also that it was premised on the appealing “combination of retribution
for enemies with the creation of a new order of righteousness.”
70
While Dobin avers that
political prophecy would also eventually begin to concern itself with Britain’s place in
cosmic history,
71
providentialism allowed the Puritans to fantasize that they were fighting
against monarchy as God’s specially-appointed agents in a domestic holy war that
entitled them to rule as a perfected sinless minority over the rest of their countrymen, a
fiction that gave providentialism what Christianson refers to as an “explosive
potential”:
72
“People who view the church and society in which they live in black and
white terms, who convince themselves that their cause will triumph despite seeming odds
against it . . . make formidable friends or foes, hopeless compromisers or moderates.”
73

The seemingly innocent exegetical practice that worried Elizabeth would in the next
century develop into a form of sacral militancy that licensed and encouraged radical
Puritanism; the socio-politically self-interested interpretation of providential design,
grounded in a sure possession of the Holy Spirit, not only authorized Puritans to revolt,
but endorsed their desire to govern, as such possession ensured that they were of the

16
elect, and thus fit to do so. About the Holy Spirit as guarantor of the Puritans’ political
and military ventures in terms of their self-sanctioning ability to transform virtually all
phenomena, both social and natural, into divine capital of some kind or another, as well
as its concomitant function as underwriter of their collective sainthood, Nuttall writes that
“there is a certain largeness and elasticity which makes it capable of being used as a
permanent foundation for theological superstructures, however these may alter with
men’s changing thought-forms, mental disciplines, insights, interests, and concerns.”
74
In
an age when the source of political authority had become a hotly contested matter, the
Puritans deployed the Holy Spirit as the means by which they ratified their revolt and
validated their violent elevation to power; Nuttall stresses that Puritans saw their political
ideals “as springing directly from the spiritual principle which was central to their faith
and experience.”
75
The enculturated will to prophesy, the discursive bequest of Geoffrey
of Monmouth, had fused with the Puritans’ (attempted) monopoly of the Holy Spirit as
their unique indwelling possession, producing a rhetoric of rebellion powerful enough to
unseat Charles I and deprive him of his head.
David R. Como, in his intelligent and finely-nuanced examination of both
Puritanism and its antinomian competitors in the decades leading up to the Civil War,
positions Puritanism “not as a homogeneous ideology, but as a fractured landscape, a
community in which distinctive and in some senses, competing visions of right religion
vied for the attentions of a laity whose imaginative universe was shaped and sustained
through incessant engagement with the Christian scriptures.”
76
Como’s perceptive
assertion notwithstanding, what did unite the Puritans was their corporate reliance on the
Holy Spirit, especially as a tool for manifesting their version of God’s will on earth; as

17
Como himself observes, “the organ or agent that was assumed to lead individuals to truth
and to create a sense of holy unity among professors was taken to be the spirit of God.”
77

And although this idea of the Holy Spirit as the “instrument that would lead professors to
a single undeniable set of truths,”
78
Como admits “failed to accord with reality,”
79
as an
implement of liberation it could not have been more successful. Keith Thomas, whose
landmark work on magical systems of belief in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
Britain has been a theoretical staple of early-modern scholarship for nearly four decades,
expounds that “so long as theories of divine right were invoked in support of the status
quo, it remained important for any reformer to prove that God was on his side. He could
do this by extracting moral and political recommendations from those parts of the Bible
which appeared to justify his point of view.”
80
And Blair Worden, in a singular piece that
actually undertakes to analyze providentialism as a ubiquitous discursive phenomenon
during the revolutionary era, especially as it pertains to Puritan politics, relates that
Puritans “gave themselves wide interpretive room in their emphasis on the role of the
Spirit . . . and their acknowledgement that providence must ultimately be subordinated to
Scripture can seem to pull in the opposite direction from their eagerness to remind men
that God worked wonders not only in the Bible but in events around them.”
81
So
essential was providentialism to the Puritan political landscape that it engendered a
contradictory split between theology and practical affairs: Worden points out that
the same Puritans who were informed by the clergy of their congenital inability to
comprehend providences were also told by them of their inescapable obligation to
do so, of the charge of atheism that would be levelled against them if they omitted
that endeavour, and of the dreadful wrath and destruction which failure would
awaken in the Almighty. In general they were much more alive to their duty than
to their incapacity.
82

18
Worden argues that Puritan politicians were conditioned to override the Calvinist
injunction against attempting to read the Eternal Mind in temporal matters, contending
that failure to interpret divine intervention was “the most fundamental of political errors.
For whatever calculations he might make, there was one perception which dwarfed all
others: that to ignore or disobey God’s will was to invite the likelihood of retribution and
disaster.”
83
The prophetic habit of thought that was the Puritans’ cultural inheritance they
transformed into a compulsion, for it was the surest proof of election; as Worden attests,
“The saint, as God’s instrument on earth, was both specially equipped and specially
obliged to discern providences.”
84
The Puritan personality had everything invested in the
correctness of its prophecies, and required that they be “self-fulfilling”—in fact, it might
even be said that providentialism was the Puritan personality’s defining characteristic.
After five centuries, prophetic discourse had come to delineate subjectivity.
For the Puritans were unable to maintain an exclusive hold on prophetic discourse
or the Holy Spirit that legitimized it: members of the disgruntled lower classes that had
sacrificed themselves for the parliamentary cause, but did not benefit from the change in
regime, broadcast their own version of prophecy, also premised on election through
descent of the Holy Spirit, that they might contest the government of the Commonwealth
(and later the Protectorate) as did their Puritan overlords the monarchy. These radical
sectarians engaged in what I call “prophetic one-upmanship,” inasmuch as they professed
to experience unmediated revelation; unlike their Puritan rivals, who were (theoretically
at least) limited by scripture, sectaries insisted that were granted direct access to the
Divine Mind. As Thomas notes, a form of prophecy that might supersede conventional
scriptural interpretation if necessary could not be refuted in a textual battle:
85

19
Such considerations help to explain why visions and revelations were so
prominent during the troubled years of the Interregnum. The claim to divine
inspiration was an accompaniment to radical politics with which only such
uncharacteristically sophisticated figures as the Leveller leaders could afford to
dispense. . . . [T]he overwhelming majority of those who claimed divine
authority for their utterances were seeking authority for a political or social
program.
86

Unmediated revelation was the (ultimately futile) sectarian solution to Puritan
oppression, the means by which radicals would attempt to compensate for their
powerlessness. As mentioned previously, radical prophesying, like Puritan
providentialism, was warranted by the Holy Spirit, and correspondingly also formed the
core of sectarian religious experience. The sectarian self-validating celebration of the
Holy Spirit and the attendant license to prophesy were the most important of what Como
posits as being “the peculiar cultural practices that were at the heart of puritan religiosity
[which] contained within them the seeds of ideological fragmentation and
radicalization.”
87
And while Como traces the trajectories of these practices in isolation
from the socio-political pressures that I believe are in fact responsible for them, he does
comprehend that, despite the eagerness with which radicals embraced these aspects of
Puritan spiritism and adapted them to their own requirements, “they were without
question merely borrowing and amplifying tendencies that were evident among the most
conservative and order-obsessed members of the godly community.”
88
Thus, the Puritans
faced challengers from the lower-classes that must have appeared to them as distorted
and disturbing mirror images, which they would be forced to repudiate and suppress by a
variety of stratagems in order to maintain their grip on the nation.
Of all the dozens of groups of sectaries that plagued Puritan government during
the Interregnum, the Quakers were by far the most threatening as far as concerns both

20
sheer determination and numbers. Furthermore, and just as important as their militancy
and size, the Quakers, as a religio-political association possessing a radical reforming
agenda, organized themselves completely around the Holy Spirit in terms of belief,
membership, and participation, which infuriated their Puritan enemies to no end; it is no
coincidence that Nuttall eventually examines the Quakers’ politically strategic cooption
of the Holy Spirit, perceiving that, especially during the decade between 1650-1660,
the Quakers and the Puritans counted each other their bitterest opponents; and,
although in a time of fierce controversy disputes over minor matters often rage
with a fury out of proportion to their importance, it is clear that there was
something in Quakerism which was genuinely contrary to the Puritans’, even to
the radical Puritans’, beliefs and which excited keenest antipathy.
89

Nuttall depicts this intense feud between Puritans and Quakers over the extent and
capabilities of the redeeming function of the Holy Spirit as being purely theological in
nature; however, the points that he judges to have come most frequently under dispute
directly concern matters of election and contemporary revelation, determining that they
involved “The relation between the Holy Spirit and the Word of God in Scripture,” “The
question whether spiritual revelations and inspirations had been an extraordinary
dispensation and had ceased, or had been an ordinary dispensation and still continued,”
and “The question whether or not the presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit involved
intellectual infallibility and moral perfectability.”
90
Since members of the Puritan power-
structure had not only situated their exercise of political authority in an official adherence
to conservative positions on these interrelated issues, but had in fact devised the very
terms of the issues themselves, it should come as no surprise that Quakers would, as a
means of empowering themselves, adopt opposing attitudes on all counts. Accordingly,
Nuttall apprises us that, in contrast to the Puritans, Quakers were “convinced” that all

21
people had the Holy Spirit within them, and so believed in universal infallibility and
perfectablity, held that unmediated revelation was still possible, and therefore considered
the divine verities contained in their prophesying to be as authentic as those truths
revealed in the words of the prophets who composed the Old and New Testaments;
91

Nuttall observes that, over the point of the Quaker’s prophecies competing with scripture
in particular, “there was considerable misunderstanding. The Puritans accused the
Quakers of setting up the Spirit against the Word. The Quakers replied that they were
not guilty of such a charge, because they possessed the same Spirit as inspired those who
gave forth the Word.”
92
Again, although Nuttall views these debates in terms of doctrine
only, legislating in this case that the Quakers’ insistence that they were also approved by
God to speak in His name was “clearly erroneous,”
93
the practical result was that the
Quakers had licensed themselves to judge their Puritan rulers. Replicating the Puritans’
reliance upon the Holy Spirit as the sponsor of their right to govern, and tailoring the
Spirit’s conveniently nebulous powers to suit their subversive program, the Quakers
depicted themselves as a rival group of saints who possessed the same rhetorical
impeccability as their targets, and used it unhesitatingly to further their political goals.
The Puritans could not confine to themselves the political uses of the Holy Spirit.
The tragic story of Quaker preacher James Nayler, who was illegally tried and
brutally punished by Parliament, ostensibly for riding into the city of Bristol in an
imitation of Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, illustrates perfectly just how threatening an
ordinary individual, without the attributes of wealth and power, could become to
government during the Interregnum, simply by mastering prophetic discourse and
employing it as a medium of political resistance. Nayler, who before his arrest ranked

22
equal with, or even above, Quaker founder George Fox in terms of preaching popularity
and pamphlet production, reenacted Christ’s Palm Sunday Advent with a small band of
followers in an attempt to assert his authority over Fox and assume leadership of the
movement; however, instead of attaining ascendancy over Fox, Nayler was promptly
seized and sent to London, where Parliament spent several weeks debating the exact
nature of his crime and deliberating over the conditions of his punishment, when it in fact
had seemingly far more pressing issues to address. Chapter One analyzes the qualities
that made Quakerism simultaneously very attractive to the politically disenfranchised,
and particularly menacing to the Puritan power structure, via Nayler’s meteoric rise
within the movement, as well as his attempted coup, with its disastrous consequences.
An examination of Nayler’s fluency in the Quakers’ specific version of the doctrine of
the Holy Spirit regarding salvation, infallibility, and, above all, prophetic dispensation,
yields a comprehensive program of dissent, conflating sainthood with an
uncompromising militancy that manifested itself as a fanatical, sweeping iconoclasm.
Moreover, Quaker sainthood actually celebrated the difficulties of disenfranchisement as
the very conditions of election, and so transformed them into the necessary features of
radical agency. Quaker conversion meant the personality’s blanket assimilation of an
extensive reforming agenda; that is to say that redemption entailed a literal
reconfiguration of the subject into a site of an all-encompassing resistance. And for the
Quakers themselves, deprived of the material advantages that Puritans paraded as
evidence of sainthood, the surest proof of election lay in the notorious, uncontrollable
shaking that would seize them during meetings.

23
In a culture in which the crucial identities of the elect and reprobate had for a time
been determined solely by the Puritans according to their standards, Quakers were able to
institute and disseminate a competing inventory of virtues in an attempt to pilot the
discourse of salvation and thus the socio-political authority that it conferred. Licensed by
God to go forth and fulminate against Puritan society in His name, Quakers of both
genders, in person and in print, fearlessly spread their hostile analyses of all aspects of a
social order that, to their thinking, profited them little if at all. The Quakers’ main
objective was to terminate Puritan hegemony regarding the ability to manufacture
religious truth in order to justify a particular form of subjugation; realizing that the
Puritan discourse of election and Puritan power relations were mutually reinforcing,
Quakers sought to sever that corroboration by circulating an alternative vision of society
that painted its Puritan beneficiaries as the tyrants that they in fact were. So it was that
the Quaker account of sainthood was at the same time the blueprint for an infinitely
rebellious subjectivity. Virtually all of Nayler’s pamphlets are actually instructions on
how to “convert” oneself instantaneously into an intrepid site of subversion, a place of
pure protest, through a recognition of the inner existence of the Holy Spirit, and Nayler’s
faculty for duplicating radical subjectivities possessing identical revolutionary agendas
constituted the real reason behind Parliament’s frenzied extra-legal attack on him. Nayler
represented to Parliament the true precariousness of the Puritan stance as the premier
interpreter of God’s will, a posture that operated as the ideological mystification of a rule
based on military might; and ironically, in its hysterical persecution of Nayler, Parliament
would itself unmask its jure divino facade, and expose the real power from which it
derived its authority.

24
Thomas Hobbes, anxious over the potent combination of election and prophecy in
terms of its unlimited anarchic potential, especially when it became the property of the
politically disenfranchised, sought to undermine its authenticity; in his English edition of
Leviathan, published in 1651 during the height of sectarian expansion, Hobbes executes
what I term a rhetorical guerilla war, inasmuch as he attacks the features of prophetic
discourse obliquely from various angles throughout the book in ways that, superficially at
least, appear to be isolated from one another, an approach that permits him to demolish
its credibility over the course of the text without that goal appearing to be his objective.
Chapter Two examines Hobbes’ diverse strategies of attack on prophetic discourse in
Leviathan involving complicated and clever blends of humanist polemic, scriptural
exegesis, theology, calculated redefinition, and his famous materialism, as well as his
special technique of deliberately launching contradictory remarks from different points in
the text intended to trouble each other as a means of generating skepticism in readers’
minds. Hobbes’ modus operandi is so sophisticated and subtle that he apparently still
fools many scholars into believing that, regarding his keen interest in all facets of
revelation, he is actually an orthodox Christian conducting a free investigation of
scripture that he might clear up erroneous thinking—but Hobbes’ real purpose is a
destructive one, in that he wishes to eliminate prophecy as the sine qua non of political
authority for any person except the sovereign, wishing to restrict it to him alone.
Establishing the monarch as the sole legitimate prophet, Hobbes stipulates that only the
monarch may determine God’s will on earth; in this manner Hobbes means to stabilize a
nation besieged by burgeoning religio-political factionalism. Leviathan is not a nostalgic
salute to monarchy so much as a manual on how to institute and maintain permanent

25
domestic peace, and Hobbes enjoins that the surest way to accomplish this end is to
require that the populace worship the sovereign outright as God’s chosen religio-political
instrument; thus Hobbes makes the activity of determining acceptable attitudes toward all
religious and political matters the unique privilege of the sovereign. Hobbes’ program of
civil stasis depends upon the government’s premeditated promotion of rule jure divino to
the status of sheer ideology, removed from any real religious feeling whatsoever.
Hobbes acquires his main ideas regarding his self-appointed task of divesting his
contemporaries’ claims to divine illumination of their socio-political clout by discrediting
prophecy in scripture (hence abolishing its current validity) from his former mentor
Francis Bacon. Hobbes applies Bacon’s deep suspicions of abstract thinking, the
immaterial, religion, and the reality of God, to his own specific design of demonstrating
that a supposedly impartial examination of scripture fails to affirm the plausibility of the
circumstances that comprise the conditions of immediate revelation, namely election and
communication with the supernatural. Concerning this first prerequisite, Hobbes argues
that, because the spiritual realm is on all counts absolutely discontinuous with the
material realm, we can never be the recipient of a divine attribute or substance, and
therefore possession by the Holy Spirit should at most be considered a metaphor denoting
ownership of a variety of human traits and behaviors that we deem estimable. And as a
further precaution against the possibility of using the concept of possession by the Holy
Spirit as a means of socio-political ascendancy, Hobbes proceeds to evacuate these
human characteristics and modes of conduct of semantic stability, hence depriving the
idea of any fixed meaning whatsoever. Confining possession by the Holy Spirit to the
self-referential domain of language, Hobbes strips it of its socio-politically empowering

26
function. Moreover, to ensure that no opportunist attempt to profess sanctification via
donation of the Spirit, Hobbes goes so far as to assert that even Christ was completely
severed from God, and that all of His qualities and accomplishments that we deem
remarkable were simply products of His own unaided effort, the implication being that if
Christ Himself had no congress with God, neither could anyone else.
Dispatching the possibility of perfection via a gift of the Spirit, a precondition of
the right to speak for God, Hobbes also interrogates all species of supernatural contact:
relying upon the primacy of his unqualified division of eternal and temporal domains,
Hobbes progressively debars all manner of revelation as recounted in scripture, whether
involving God, angels, visions, dreams, or any combination thereof. Robbing scripture of
precisely that element which defines it as scripture, that is, the undeniable proof of the
presence of the supernatural in the mortal sphere of existence, because it exceeds the
constraints of a thoroughly Baconian material, mechanical universe, Hobbes is able to
prohibit use of the Bible as a weapon for revolt. Accordingly, Hobbes inveighs against
all those who would resort to prophecy as a means of political elevation, condemning
them outright as frauds, and more importantly, dangers to the state, clearing the way for
the sovereign as the supreme prophet, who alone is permitted the excuse of divine
revelation as a method of exerting absolute dominion over the populace. And that no
individual may again exploit scripture as justification for either contesting the monarch’s
iron rule or usurping his authority, Hobbes makes the Bible the monarch’s sole property,
and its interpretation his royal prerogative: hence, in the perfect Hobbesian theocracy, the
production of religious truth is restricted to the government, and a vacuous state-
mandated faith becomes the political opiate of the masses.

27
While Hobbes discreetly refrains from leveling accusations against any
particular individual for employing prophetic discourse as a device for catapulting
himself into the seat of political power, the paradigm for this tactic was the man who,
though not a sectarian, would, two years after the publication of Leviathan, forcibly bring
about the end of the Commonwealth, and establish a military dictatorship with himself at
its head as Lord Protector: Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell’s mastery of the language of
Puritan providentialism, in terms of portraying himself as a modest and much-
beleaguered saint who had been chosen by God to interpret His will on earth, surfaced
near the beginning of the Civil War, when he was just a captain of cavalry; repeatedly
and eloquently attributing the success of his military ventures to God, Cromwell
gradually was able to identify himself with his own pronouncements, and thus came to be
perceived by others as actually manifesting providential design. Chapter Three
investigates Cromwell’s astounding ascent from relatively obscure country gentleman to
the most powerful man in Europe through the medium of prophetic discourse. Cromwell
not only employed it to gain political power, but also to confound his opponents and
enemies by slicking over his ruthlessness with a patina of verbal piety so thick that even
today it evidently mystifies numerous biographers and historians, who readily defend his
self-interested political machinations as being prompted by the sincere belief that he was
simply executing God’s cosmic plan as he understood it. Furthermore, in order to hold to
their opinion of Cromwell as a man who honestly envisioned himself as a prophet, these
same scholars are quite willing to excuse a tremendous amount of historical evidence
testifying to his and his military regime’s widespread unpopularity. And even more
disturbing than the current uncritical celebration of Cromwell as the self-appointed savior

28
of Britain is the fact that it frequently appears to be motivated by a thinly-concealed
conservative agenda: admirers ignore documentary proof regarding the contradictory
relationship between Cromwell’s words and his actions in favor of their own
unsubstantiated opinions in order to justify particular religio-political programs. The
utter opacity of Cromwell’s language, steeped as it is in providential rhetoric, functions
as a blank screen upon which scholars not only project their own fantasies concerning the
extent and nature of his self-proclaimed religiosity, but also their personal incentives.
Cromwell demonstrates vividly that the study of history is never a harmless pursuit.
It is no coincidence that providentialism’s most famous practitioner was
simultaneously the person who most benefited from it in terms of temporal success. For
Puritans, the self-representation of religious virtue had become a prerequisite for public
office, and Cromwell emerged from the wars able to parley the combination of his
outstanding military record and prophetic persona into a political career that made him
the most feared man in Europe. In his official letters to Parliament detailing his military
victories, Cromwell not only assigned all of the glory to God, but would draw subtle
parallels between himself and the greatest deliverers from the both the Old and New
Testament; by these rhetorical maneuvers Cromwell was in time able to transform his
obligatory providential exclamations of gratitude into assurances of his prophetic
standing. Moreover, Cromwell partnered his program of written propaganda with the
ploy of recruiting men of various religious persuasions from even the lowest socio-
economic strata and managing them as if he were their religious leader instead of merely
their military commander, deliberately cultivating an atmosphere of toleration that
produced an unconquerable congregation of fighting fanatics who were willing to die for

29
him. And to further bind his soldiers to him, Cromwell eventually supplemented his
supposed commitment to “liberty of conscience” with calls for drastic socio-economic
reform that never materialized. By the end of the revolution Cromwell dominated both
Parliament and the army via his prophetic persona; and growing increasingly frustrated
with Parliament’s inability to govern the nation according to his desires, in 1653
Cromwell officially set himself up as Lord Protector over what had already, under his
supervision, become a military state. The Protectorate was not only the most expensive
regime that the country had ever experienced, progressively draining the financial
resources of the whole of the British Isles, but also one of the most repressive. As Lord
Protector, Cromwell lived in royal splendor, wielding far more power, both domestically
and internationally, than the king that he had displaced, but staunchly protested during
lengthy harangues to Parliament that he shouldered the burden of ruling Britain against
his own wishes, that he was only carrying out the objectives of a God whose will he
could not deny, a fiction he maintained until his death in 1658.
Yet, despite Cromwell’s enduring reputation for devotion, throughout his life he
abstained from all discussion of spiritual matters; his legendary enthusiasm was confined
to voicing conventions of the providential discourse that had helped to propel him into
the center of national politics. It would appear that, for Cromwell, his very public
providentialism comprised the extent of religion as he required of it; one might say that,
because of its emphasis on performance, Cromwell’s religion epitomized Puritanism after
it had degenerated into a political force bent on accumulating as much wealth and power
as possible. And it is through the lens of the self-serving nature of Cromwell’s prophetic
persona that we should view his insistence upon religious freedom, which was actually

30
nothing more than a poor attempt to disguise real relations of power that fooled none of
his contemporaries: Cromwell would (within limits) allow the populace to worship as it
pleased, provided that it would submit without protest to all of his endless political,
military, and financial demands—in this way Cromwell meant to cheat his subjects of
employing religious oppression as an excuse to revolt, while inflicting upon them a costly
and tyrannical government that they detested. Under the pretense of toleration, Cromwell
was simply demonstrating that, as master of a standing army of about sixty-thousand
men, he could impose upon the county whatever suited him. Due to the speciousness of
his scheme of religious pluralism, Cromwell never outlined it in any detail, retreating into
vague generalities that gave no indication as to how it was to manifest itself in society,
except as an automatic acquiescence to the socio-political status quo. Yet, in the interest
of preserving Cromwell’s legacy as the great liberator, historians and biographers
continue to celebrate his confusing abstractions as evidence of his genuine interest in
fashioning a diverse Christian culture, deliberately construing their own inability to
decipher Cromwell’s obscure language as being suggestive of the truly visionary. The
providential rhetoric responsible for Cromwell’s rise has proven resilient enough to guard
his reputation over the centuries, allowing admirers to perpetuate the myth of the
altruistic Puritan prophet for reasons of their own, at the price of historical accuracy.
With the end of the Protectorate, prophecy, as a medium of political
empowerment and social protest, belonged to the sectaries, people who, because of their
socio-economic standing, perhaps incited even a greater fear in Royalists than the
Puritans actually responsible for the civil wars. As Margery A. Kingsley discusses in her

31
sophisticated work on the Puritan prophet as a cultural trope during the Restoration and
early eighteenth century,
By 1660 prophecy had become for royalists not only a reminder by a symbol of
insurrection, civil turmoil, and violence, best pursued and degraded wherever it
could be found. It did not seem to matter much that the radical prophets of the
1640s and 1650s were not the men responsible for either the outbreak of war in
1642 or the execution of Charles I, not did it seem to make a difference that the
prophets themselves had frequently been persecuted by the Commonwealth.
Their rhetorical insistence upon the power of the prophetic word to transform
existing social structures, together with their relative vulnerability, was itself
sufficient to render them the sign of internal discord.
94

Puritans as a group had repudiated the prophetic discourse by which they sanctioned their
bid for power, which left the radicals, whom the Puritans themselves feared, to suffer the
consequences for continuing to employ that rhetoric. But if the Restoration government
didn’t hesitate to persecute radical prophets, prophetic discourse itself was subject to
strategies of cultural appropriation as part of an effort to “reconsolidat[e] monarchical
authority,”
95
using the figure of the Puritan. Kingsley correctly explains that the civil
wars had “created glaring disruptions in two crucial arenas intrinsically linked . . . the
theorization and justification of political authority and the understanding of the authority
and nature of representation”;
96
and prophetic discourse, largely responsible for these
“glaring disruptions,” was recuperated as part of a “new postwar conservative
aesthetics.”
97
Kingley is referring to the deployment of satire, which served the purpose
of attacking prophecy as a mode of thought, while simultaneously using it to “redefine”
98

Restoration society, and she provides a sensitive interpretation of its function:
Postwar writers sought almost fetishistically to transform, not eliminate, their
prophets, and they never abandoned the political and social potential promised by
a prophetic tradition even while continually, obsessively, reworking its
implications. Thus even as they call into question the prophet’s ability to uphold
and execute earthly or divine law, Butler’s Hudibras and his divinely inspired

32
squire also reenact and reembody the physical and ideological battles of the
1640s, which are left unresolved and without closure. Dryden’s public depiction
of the equally Presbyterian Shadwell—“the last great prophet of tautology”—
links prophecy and bathos at the very moment at which the terms of earlier civil
conflict threatened to replay themselves in the Exclusion Crisis, ultimately
transforming the prophetic voice into something neither submissive, not fully
contained, but rather (reluctantly) exposing the weakness of social constructs and
social institutions based upon those alternatives.”
99

Kingsley proposes that one of the main purposes of these satires is to locate in the
character of the prophet the non-dialogic and absolutist, in order that Restoration society
might configure itself as one of accommodation, compromise, and indetermination:
“these writings sought . . . to shape the way that period defined authority, obedience, and
difference according to new deliberately nonpolar formulations.”
100
The Puritan prophet
represents, as Kingsley puts it, “a concept of social and political order based upon the
ability to assert absolute, objective, exclusionary, and ultimately arbitrary distinctions
between friend and foe, self and other,”
101
which allows for an implied royalist
rationalism, toleration, and inclusiveness. Conscious of the role that “human textual
authority [had come to play] in the creation of a stable community,”
102
satirists
aesthetisized prophetic discourse in order to place its power in service of what Kingsley
calls “the poetics of political reconstruction.”
103
Thus, as Kingsley observes ironically,
“even while the belated prophets of the Restoration and early eighteenth century were
financially persecuted, whipped, and imprisoned . . . the perceived ability of the prophetic
text to define a causal relationship between representation and social order was itself
attractive to those who sought to generate order out of seeming chaos.”
104

The satire, as a rhetorical weapon of the monarchy, represented an ideological
push to remove prophetic discourse from the political arena, and position it as a purely

33
literary phenomenon; thus it can be said to have operated as a strategy of the
“containment of the opposition,”
105
despite Kingley’s assertions to the contrary.
Kingsley, citing N. H. Keeble, believes that, in the case of the Puritan prophet, “political
defeat was the condition of cultural achievement,”
106
—yet this supposed “achievement”
consisted of mocking the very means by which the Puritans had overturned established
government and set themselves up as the political elite of the nation—a situation that they
could not have appreciated. The Puritans had not only revealed themselves to be just as
greedy and corrupt as the regime that they had ousted, but even worse, they were reviled
as being hypocrites and frauds: as Hirst remarks regarding the failure of Puritan rule,
“‘the glorious cause of the people of God’ had come to look too much like self-seeking
under a shell of piety. There were certainly grounds for the caricature so often drawn of
hypocrites.”
107
Hirst quotes an unnamed radical as saying “It’s now the common word,
when any one speaks of a false dissembler and treacherous faith-breaker, ‘There’s a
saint’, they say.”
108
Whatever Kingley wishes to think, the satirizing of the Puritan
prophet was only an achievement for the restored government, and must have been a
humiliation for the Puritans.
Milton, for one, was so humiliated and angry by the way that events had played
out, and had left him to wander, sightless and disillusioned, amidst the rhetorical debris
of his own prophetic prattle, that he wrote his own satire on the revolution: Chapter Four
treats Paradise Regain’d, considered by most scholars to be Milton’s faithful expansion
on the Temptation of Jesus by Satan in the wilderness, as a cynical commentary on the
battle for supremacy between the Royalists and the Roundheads. Milton interpolates into
his rendition of the Temptation what I call “wayward textual elements” that not only

34
resist incorporation into the gospel story, but in fact transform it into a bitter treatise on
the political opportunism and self-interest that lurked behind the providential rhetoric
employed by both sides during the civil wars. The most notorious of these “wayward
textual elements” are grammatical blunders situated at key points in Paradise Regain’d,
when Milton has the narrator, through various strategies of syntactical uncertainty, briefly
confuse the Son of God and Satan, and by extension the contrary metaphysical domains
that they both stand for and inhabit. Milton complements these disturbing transpositions
by different means throughout the text, many of which I explore in some depth,
especially the two famous pairings from classical literature: Hercules and Antaeus, and
Oedipus and the Sphinx. While most critics assume that these combat similes are
intended to embellish the outcome of the final temptation on the pinnacle, when the Son
stands on His own without visible help and Satan falls in surprise, they in fact intensify
the effect of the conflations, due to the nature of the classical characters themselves, as
well as the manner in which they are presented. To begin with, neither pair consists of a
dichotomy respecting its narrative function of enhancing that moment in the poem when
the Son and Satan are allegedly distinguished from one another in the most profound and
all-encompassing way, for Hercules and Oedipus themselves are vexed personifications
of evil, having been doomed by the gods to commit the most horrific crimes against their
own family members. A close examination of classical tragedy demonstrates that, to the
extent that both Hercules and Oedipus suffer arbitrarily from celestial hostility, they are
intended to invoke Satan, and not the Son.
Furthermore, as I mention above, the narrator’s method of introducing the combat
similes, highlights the fact that the similes are meant to destabilize any moral/hierarchic

35
imperative at work in Paradise Regain’d: not only does the narrator present these couples
via their “less-good” appellations (to use “double-speak”), he omits Oedipus’ name
entirely. While this oversight may not be especially problematic regarding the classical
characters themselves, as they possess no ontological status, when considered in relation
to the Christian characters it becomes exceedingly so. In addition, to employ the mythic
to describe the real casts doubts on that reality—does the narrator feel the Son and Satan
to be just another fictional duo? Bearing such questions in mind, how are we to
understand his parenthetical aside that he is simply “compar[ing] / Small things with
greatest”?
109
When regarded in tandem with the conflations especially, these combat
similes erase completely the absolute theological and doctrinal opposition of the Son and
Satan, and equally important, if not more so, question their very existence. Moreover, if
we follow the Oedipal myth, we encounter Oedipus’ hypocritical warring heirs,
Polyneices and Eteokles, identical twins who put the population of Thebes at risk in order
to satisfy what comes down to an irrational hatred of one another, and in doing so please
the brutal god Ares, who both incites and presides over their conflict. The brothers
exemplify best what Milton is trying to express in merging together the Son and Satan in
Paradise Regain’d: namely that, in Milton’s world, there is no struggle between good and
evil, only the collision of self-interested forces in opposition, with each side proclaiming
its own righteousness while denouncing the other as epitomizing wickedness, but in truth
interchangeable in their ruthless ambition. God Himself provokes this clash for reasons
of His own, irrespective of the grief that it causes His creation. The Son and Satan as
exchangeable adversaries symbolize the rivalry between the Puritans and the Royalists,
which yielded little of lasting impact except for a profound distrust of representations of

36
piety and inspiration, and the reestablishment of a pro-monarchical literary culture that
exploited that distrust for profit. Baudrillard’s definition of parody that Kingsley applies
to her conception of satire neatly fits Milton’s project in Paradise Regain’d, in that his
poem makes “obedience and transgression equivalent.”
110

In Paradise Regain’d’s long critical history we come across only three individuals
who account for its unruly material in their analyses, and to whom I am indebted
concerning my own exploration of the poem: William Kerrigan, Christopher Grose, and
Neil Forsyth; their studies on the text’s self-resistant features demonstrate the extent to
which scholars are prepared to ignore these features in order to venture ideologically-
closed interpretations in service of an orthodox canonical agenda. Even after the
publication of the work of these men, we still encounter limited critiques of the poem that
focus on a restricted number of textual components, such is the pressure on scholars to
conform their readings of Paradise Regain’d to one that supports an image of Milton as a
properly submissive (if unhappy) Protestant who still clung to a vision of himself as a
prophet of the Republic years after that dream had died, buried beneath the rubble of the
Protectorate as well as the edifice of the restored monarchy. I determine an important
reason for this lingering tradition of constraint to be the poem’s powerful opening
invocation, which seduces unwary readers into believing in the infallibility of Milton’s
narrator; as Jan Wojcik and Raymond-Jean Frontain argue in their introduction to a
collection of essays on prophetic poems in western literature, “a poet we deem
prophetical is one who can muster the mechanics of prophetic language adroitly enough
so that a goodly number of readers declare his voice to be inspired with compelling if
unpleasant truths.”
111
Riding on the coattails of his reputation as a prophet of the

37
Revolution, Milton has his epic voice elegantly marshal the conventions of appealing to
the Holy Spirit for inspiration in seeming sincerity, but that voice demonstrates
repeatedly that either the request was denied, or simply a poetic convention—the narrator
makes too many errors in judgment in his amplification on the gospel story of the
Temptation to convince an astute reader that he possesses divine authorization—hence,
the tale that he tells is meaningless, except in terms of failure. For Paradise Regain’d is
just a poem, which is all that Milton ever intended that it should be: not a sentimental
salute to dead ideas, but a cynical epitaph for the death of ideals. Milton had learned in
the saddest way that it is presumptuous and arrogant to speak for God, and we can look
upon Paradise Regain’d as the poet’s grudging admission that the British will to
prophesy, Geoffrey’s legacy, was a self-sanctioning discursive practice that expressed
only human desire, not divine direction. No longer could people channel the Holy Spirit
for purposes of socio-political advancement. The next chapter examines the Quakers,
one of the last religio-political organizations from the revolutionary era to do just that in
their own serious but failed bid for power.

38

Introduction Endnotes

1
The Political Prophecy in England (1911), pp. 8-9. Taylor mentions that, regarding the prophecies
contained in The Book of Merlin, “either Geoffrey forged the material, or . . . he translated them” (p. 25)—
but determining which theory is true is impossible.

2
Prophecy and Public Affairs in Later Medieval England (2000), p. 50.

3
The Political Prophecy in England, p. 9.

4
Ibid., p. 83.

5
Ibid., p. 85.

6
Ibid., pp. 85-86.

7
Prophecy and Public Affairs, p. 237.

8
Ibid., p. 238.

9
The Political Prophecy in England, p. 2.

10
Ibid., p. 90.

11
Ibid., p. 2.

12
Ibid., p. 4.

13
Ibid., p. 5.

14
Ibid., p. 5.

15
Ibid., p. 5.

16
Ibid., p. 89.

17
Ibid., p. 89.

18
Ibid., pp. 132-133.

19
Ibid., pp. 140-141.

20
“Printing, Prophecy, and the Foundation of the Tudor Dynasty: Caxton’s Morte Darthur and Henry
Tudor’s Road to Bosworth,” Prophet Margins: The Medieval Vatic Impulse and Social Stability (2004), p.
124.

21
Ibid., p. 124.

22
Ibid., p. 123.

39

23
Ibid., p.123.

24
Ibid., p. 124.

25
Ibid., pp. 134-135.

26
Ibid., p. 123.

27
Ibid., p. 135.

28
Ibid., p. 135.

29
Ibid., p. 135.

30
Ibid., p. 145.

31
Ibid., pp. 142-143.

32
Ibid., p. 145.

33
Ibid., p. 145.

34
Political Protest and Prophecy Under Henry VIII (1991), p. 5.

35
Ibid., p. 19.

36
Ibid. pp. 28-29.

37
Ibid., pp. 25-26.

38
Ibid., p. 37.

39
Ibid., p. 38.

40
Ibid. p. 41.

41
Ibid., pp. 39-56.

42
Ibid., p. 149. Commenting upon the angry dispossessed Catholic clergy, Howard Dobin, in his study of
prophetic discourse in the sixteenth century, Merlin’s Disciples: Prophecy, Poetry, and Power in
Renaissance England (1990), points out that, ironically, “The priest who once derived authority from his
hierarchical office as ‘a member of a corporate enterprise of salvation’ must now lay claim to what he once
condemned as heretical and blasphemous: a strictly private and self-validating legitimacy . . . through such
marginal figures as Merlin” (p. 41). Stressing the intimate connection between repudiated Catholicism and
the surge in political prophecy, Dobin instructs that “Immediately after the break with Rome, such
prophecies plagued Henry’s reign as Catholic dissent appropriated Merlinic rhetoric to predict the King’s
imminent downfall” (p. 39).

43
Ibid., p. 149.

44
Ibid., p. 153.

40

45
Ibid., p. 36.

46
Ibid., p. 60.

47
Ibid., p. 60.

48
Ibid., pp. 60-61.

49
“Prophecies and Propaganda, 1641 to 1651,” The English Historical Review (1969), pp. 753-754.

50
Ibid., p. 754.

51
Political Protest and Prophecy Under Henry VIII, p. 153.

52
Ibid., p. 153.

53
Merlin’s Disciples, p. 26.

54
Ibid., p. 26.

55
Ibid., p. 28.

56
The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience (1946), p. 77.

57
Ibid., p. 76.

58
Ibid., p. 77.

59
Lines of Authority: Politics and English Literary Culture, 1649—1689 (1993), p. 21.

60
Ibid., p. 21.

61
Merlin’s Disciples, p. 29.

62
The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience, p. 104.

63
Ibid., p. 102.

64
Ibid., p. 54.

65
Prophecies and Propaganda, p. 752.

66
Lines of Authority, p. 3.

67
Merlin’s Disciples, pp. 54.

68
The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience, p. 120.

69
Reformers and Babylon: English Apocalyptic Visions from the Reformation to the Eve of the Civil War
(1978), p.6.

70
Ibid., p. 7.

41

71
Merlin’s Disciples, p. 54.

72
Reformers and Babylon, p. 7.

73
Ibid., pp. 7-8.

74
The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience, p. 176. Nuttall’s work involves investigating Puritan
reliance on the Holy Spirit in religious terms, and largely ignores its advantageous socio-political
ramifications; however, he occasionally makes a remark that demonstrates he was to some extent aware
that, in seventeenth-century Britain, the religious was political.

75
The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience, p. 134.

76
Blown by the Wind: Puritanism and the Emergence of an Antinomian Underground in Pre-Civil War
England (2004), p. 31.

77
Ibid., p. 440.

78
Ibid., p. 440.

79
Ibid., p. 440.

80
Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971), p. 139.

81
“Providence and Politics in Cromwellian England,” Past and Present (1985), p. 91.

82
Ibid., p. 77.

83
Ibid., p. 99.

84
Ibid., p. 71.

85
Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 139.

86
Ibid., pp. 139-140.

87
Blown by the Spirit, p. 439.

88
Ibid., p. 440.

89
The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience, p.151.

90
Ibid., p. 155.

91
Ibid., pp. 155-163.

92
Ibid., p. 156.

93
Ibid., p. 156.

94
Transforming the Word: Prophecy, Poetry, and Politics in England, 1650–1742 (2001), p. 15.

42

95
Ibid., p. 17.

96
Ibid., p. 17.

97
Ibid., p. 23.

98
Ibid., p. 23.

99
Ibid., p. 23.

100
Ibid., p. 26.

101
Ibid., p. 80.

102
Ibid., p.22.

103
Ibid., p. 23.

104
Ibid., pp. 22-23.

105
Ibid., p. 17.

106
Ibid., p. 16.

107
Authority and Conflict: England, 1603 – 1658 (1986), p. 362.

108
Ibid., p. 362.

109
Paradise Regain’d, The Poetical Works of John Milton (1961), IV.563-564.

110
Transforming the Word, p. 130.

111
“Introduction: The Prophet in the Poem,” Poetic Prophecy in Western Literature (1984), p. 15.

43
Chapter One: James Nayler and Quaker Subjectivity

Riding backwards without a saddle, he was paraded through the city of Bristol,
then scourged publicly from the Market to the Tailors’ Hall in a procession made up of
disciples, gawkers, and grieving Bristol Friends. After that he was transported back to
Bridewell Hospital in London, where he was incarcerated until autumn of 1659, when
after Richard Cromwell’s abdication Parliament released all Quakers from prison. Before
his Bristol humiliation, he had in London already endured a strange series of excruciating
and degrading torments, being twice pilloried, whipped through the streets from the
Palace Yard to the Exchange, as well as having his tongue bored through with a hot iron
and a “B” (for blasphemy) burnt into his forehead.
1
Perhaps even willingly, leading
Quaker James Nayler had come up against Parliament, with calamitous results. It had
tried and sentenced him illegally, which hadn’t seemed to bother the majority of its
members; in fact many of them had felt his punishment to be too mild, and wanted him
executed. Nayler had incurred Parliament’s wrath by riding into Bristol with a small
group of devotees imitatio Christi on October 24, 1656, as a “sign.” In torrential rain and
knee-deep mud, a small, bedraggled group of women and men had reenacted Christ’s
Entry into Jerusalem, with Nayler in the starring role. From existing accounts, the tiny
spectacle must have appeared to observers more pathetic than inspiring or frightening—
and in reality nothing too unusual. That the whole of Britain during that time was rife
with self-styled prophets and saviors roaming about is a well-documented phenomenon.
Christopher Hill merely voices a commonplace when he explains that “The Civil War
period gave forum to what was almost a new profession – that of the prophet, whether

44
interpreter of the Bible or of the stars.”
2
By 1656 however, Parliament was highly
sensitized to the disruptive potential of these “mechanic preachers” and “madmen” and,
the official policy of tolerance notwithstanding, wanted them silenced.
But despite being harassed and punished in various ways, few other prophets
suffered such public mortification and agony as did James Nayler. In Mabel Richmond
Brailsford’s view, Nayler “suffered in his body all out of proportion with his offences.”
3

(As far as concerns experiencing physical torture, the only other sectarians on record as
having done so were Ranter Jacob Bauthemley, who had his tongue bored through for
publishing “The Light and Dark Sides of God,”
4
and early seventeenth-century
antinomian John Traske who, according to David Como, was sentenced by the Star
Chamber on June 19, 1618, “to be fined, whipped, pilloried, branded, to have his ears
nailed to the pillory, and then to be committed to jail at the pleasure of King James.”
5
) It
was Nayler’s prominence in the fledging Quaker movement that made him the ideal
target; felling him was indeed intended (and taken) as a blow to the entire group. Calling
him “The spokesman of political radicalism,”
6
Hill’s explanation is that “none of the
others seemed so dangerous. Most were holy imbeciles. . . . But Nayler was a leader of
an organized movement which, from its base in the North, had swept with frightening
rapidity over the Southern counties.”
7
Comparing the “hysterical savagery” of Nayler’s
trial to the “civilized decency of the Whitehall debates,” Hill surmises that “The M. P.s in
1656 were frightened—frightened of what they believed to be the Quaker threat to
magistracy and ministry, to a state church and the stability of the social order.”
8
Yet
there may be other motives for Parliament’s vicious and illegitimate attack on a man who
seemingly did little more than head up an unauthorized version of a Corpus Christi skit.

45
As Leo Damrosch insists at the very beginning of his study on the early Quakers, “What
actually happened at Bristol was never in doubt, but its significance proved to be
endlessly disputable.”
9
“The ‘sign’ (to use the Quaker term) that Nayler and his
companions exhibited at Bristol condensed into a single symbolic act an immense
complex of overlapping and competing values and beliefs.”
10
I would suggest that
Parliament’s reactionary response to the performance was in fact an expression of rage
stemming from political impotence. Nayler, more than he realized, represented to
Parliament its own fading power to fix the political subject; that is to say, in Nayler,
Parliament was forced to recognize its inability to maintain secure psychological
dominion over those whom it most dreaded. The ruling elite could not contain through
religious ideology the destructive political forces it had itself unleashed years earlier via
that same ideology, and reacted with all the frustration Nayler’s pointlessly brutal
sentence implied. In multiple ways, Nayler’s Bristol entry was perceived as a direct
assault on both the city and the nation. And while those in control of the country may
have refrained from taking his life outright from fear of making him into a martyr, or
contravening their own laws too egregiously, as William Bittle believes,
11
they retaliated
by permanently etching their hatred onto his person and breaking the spirit that had
impelled him to portray Christ in the first place.
James Nayler interests me not so much as a particular human being, but as an
example of just how threatening the individual could become in the years leading up to
the Restoration. And what I intend by the term “individual” is not simply any one
person; rather I refer specifically to an obscure subject who managed to break away from
the indistinct, bullied, and for the most part socially-immobilized multitude and transform

46
himself, without rank, money, property, or a university education, into a figure of
authority strong enough to contend with superiors in possession of all four. Nayler was
such an individual. In keeping with his life’s trajectory, the facts of his existence before
becoming a Quaker are few; his biographers recount basically the same story, often
expanding imaginatively on certain details to suit their own needs, and thus it has
assumed an oddly regressive and self-referential character. Bittle (who takes much of his
material wholesale from Brailsford), somewhat unconsciously summarizes how writers
have shaped Nayler’s history over the last century especially:
It is a cliché to write of those living in the seventeenth century that ‘little is known
of his early life.’ Hackneyed as that expression might be, however, it is in
Nayler’s case unfortunately only too appropriate. During a life which spanned
some 43 years, it is only the last eight, the period of his public prominence, about
which a great deal may be said with certainty. From what little is known with the
help of some judicious conjecture and surmise, the picture of a middle-income
farmer, moderately well-educated and with a passionate interest in both the
parliamentary cause and in religion, emerges.
12

Nayler’s years of public prominence coincided with a program of religio-political self-
authorization that he had adopted, one currently in circulation among radicals and that
composed the foundation of Quaker thought. Doctrinal at its core, this program
functioned as a kind of liberation theology, and assumed the form of a specific discourse,
that of the Holy Spirit. Nayler had mastered this discourse to “perfection” (not an
accidental word-choice!) and it in turn had propelled him to the forefront of the Quaker
movement. According to Brailsford, “The indwelling of God in the heart of man had
been from the first the central fact of Nayler’s preaching—the fact, which, exaggerated
and distorted by his followers, was to become the rock on which his life was wrecked.”
13

Furthermore, she claims that from Nayler’s first meeting with Quaker founder George

47
Fox, this doctrine had become “the spring of all his thoughts, words, and actions.”
14

Nayler’s complete assimilation of this principle of the Inner Light as well as its many and
significant socio-political ramifications, combined with his superior speaking and writing
skills, accounted for his astounding success as the Quakers’ celebrity mouthpiece. Hill
cautions that “We should perhaps look to economics rather than to religion, for the rise of
individualism”
15
—but we must also investigate the role discourse plays in this
development.
Or rather, we need to consider how the gradual emergence of a discursive arena
contributed to the evolution of the individual as a recognizable category, particularly in
terms of opposing forces of subordination. Sectaries like Nayler used the discourse of the
Holy Spirit to re-inscribe their subjectivity to empower themselves that they might fight
what they saw as an all-encompassing socio-political oppression and misery. If Nayler’s
Bristol entry was, as Hill conceives of it, one of those “heroic gestures” that stands for a
whole age of struggle because it charges “the longer, slower, profounder changes in
men’s thinking”
16
with significance, part of the reason could be that in depicting Christ,
Nayler literally embodied the growing contest between groups of people to determine
identity and meaning via language. The resort to violence dispelled any pretence of
voluntarism and threw into clear relief the reality that there was no government jure
divino without brute force to back it up. So testifies Marvell in his advice to Cromwell:
Still keep thy sword erect:
Besides the force it has to fright
The spirits of the shady night,
The same arts that did gain
A power, must it maintain.
17

48
While all thorough examinations of radical antinomianism entail a discussion of
the emancipating power of the Holy Spirit, they tend to overlook the actual circumstances
of its conceptual transmission, which were invariably linguistic. The systematized and
therefore consistently repeatable experience of conviction relied upon verbal or print
communication to accomplish its work of deliverance from the relentless anxiety and
guilt Calvinist doctrine imposed on society, and resistance to those institutions that both
sponsored and benefited from the distress they produced. Hence it was as a rhetorical
phenomenon more than even a religious one that the discourse of the Holy Spirit was able
to operate so well as a vehicle for interactive individual and group transformation.
Virtually all sectarian leaders were to some extent not only fluent in the language of
universal salvation, but also engaging and persuasive speakers and writers, and Nayler
was no exception. An oft-mentioned (because sole surviving) early example of Nayler’s
innate hortatory prowess occurs during his tenure in the New Model Army when, as did a
great many soldiers, he took up preaching; related third-hand, it involves a parliamentary
officer who, sometime after participating in the Battle of Dunbar, came upon Nayler
preaching to the people, but with such power and reaching energy as I had not till
then been witness of. I could not help staying a little though I was afraid to stay,
for I was made a quaker, being forced to tremble at the sight of myself. I was
struck with more terror before the preaching of James Nayler than I was before
the Battle of Dunbar, when we had nothing else to expect but to fall prey to the
swords of our enemies.”
18

Although no external evidence exists that might verify this story, divulge the contents of
Nayler’s message, or describe his oratory style, the fact that he was promoted to
quartermaster during the term of his military service attests to his intelligence, charisma
and suasive talents; responsible for the provisioning and lodging of at least one troop of

49
cavalry, Nayler would have had to ingratiate himself with the local populace at every
stop, plus act as liaison between it and his superiors. At his trial Major-General Lambert
would testify to Nayler’s competence, declaring him to have been “a very useful person
—we parted with him with great regret,” and that “He was a man of very unblameable
life and conversation.”
19
Bittle remarks that even Nayler’s “avowed enemy” John
Deacon concedes that he was “a man of exceeding quick wit and sharp apprehension,
enriched with that commendable gift of good oratory with a very delightful melody in his
utterance.”
20
Unfortunately there are no extant records of Nayler’s speaking style, yet
that he quickly became the most prolific writer of Quakerism’s neoteric phase provides
ample proof of his expertise in wielding words and ideas in order to advance and defend
its agenda: Bittle puts Nayler’s total pamphlet production between the years 1652 to 1656
at 47—36 of them his own work and 11 more in collaboration with others.
21
His
pamphlets were instrumental in his downfall, for whether or not one thinks that spiritual
experience can be conveyed in writing, through print it is disseminated and legitimized.
22

In a society where religious and socio-political issues were thoroughly entangled and
protest was conducted mostly in religious terms, to borrow Barry Reay’s appraisal of
seventeenth-century revolutionary Britain,
23
Nayler’s forceful and relentless blasts
against existing power structures made him a target some years before Parliament got
him. Virtually all of his pamphlets were salvos aimed at society in general or in hostile
exchanges with ministers bent on discrediting him and the Quaker movement itself.
Inquiring into why leaders such as Nayler were able to able to convince so many as well
as aggravate so many more, Hill (though he doesn’t do so in any depth) suggests that we
turn to the pamphlet literature of the 1650s to “discover what all the fuss was about.”
24

50
And when we do, we shall find in Nayler’s a potent mix of religious mysticism and
political subversion that appears to have been capable of effecting extreme and uniform
changes in personality. Reay faults academic analyses of mid-seventeenth-century
radicalism for robbing it of its “passion and urgency”
25
—a defect I’ll try to escape in
mine. By interpreting Quaker exploitation of the discourse of the Holy Spirit (a form of
prophetic discourse, as I elsewhere call it) as a desperate bid for empowerment, worth,
and autonomy in a despotic society, we can catch at its passion, urgency—and anger.
Though Reay estimates that Quakers at their most numerous comprised fewer
than 1% of the population,
26
they were the most cohesive, best organized, and thus most
threatening of all the radical religious groups to come into existence before the
Restoration. Reay considers them to have been “the most successful as well as the most
radical of the Revolution sects,” and citing Hugh Barbour, reckons that at times it must
have seemed as if “the whole of England would turn Quaker”—that “Not one county
escaped the effects of Quaker proselytizing.”
27
Reay even claims that alarm at the
movement’s rapid growth and uncompromising defiance brought about a shift in public
opinion that led to the Restoration: “hostility towards Quakerism persuaded many to look
to the monarchy as the only salvation from social and religious anarchy. In other words,
hostility towards the Quakers contributed to the restoration of the Stuarts.”
28
The
relationship between these achievements and the discourse of the Holy Spirit cannot be
overemphasized. As with other sects Quakers had, as previously mentioned, embraced
the by-then institutionalized reliance on individual divine guidance as their governing
precept.
29
Quoting Rufus Jones, Brailsford remarks that in the seventeenth century belief
in the “still, small voice” had become “a veritable contagion,”
30
and by the time Fox had

51
seized upon the idea of unerring internal direction it had, beginning with the Familists in
the sixteenth century, long been common sectarian property.
31
Damrosch, citing Claire
Disbrey, understands that “Fox did not teach his followers a new set of concepts for
talking about a universal experience; he introduced them to a new institution.”
32
Bittle
sees the Quaker appropriation of “spirit” as having led historians to locate its ancestry
among several sectarian groups:
Within the context of the sectarian movement, Quakers are usually identified,
with varying degrees of accuracy, with the Seekers, Ranters, Familists, and
Behmenists. Behind all these sects lies the fundamental importance of the ‘spirit’.
. . . Possession of the Holy Spirit, once gained and maintained, provided guidance
for an individual to live and act. The logical outcome of such an attitude is that
possession of the Holy Spirit can bring perfection in this life.
33

Because, to use Bittle’s words, to Quakers the Light “represented the direct voice of
God”
34
it was seen as incontrovertibly superior to all other types of authority; Damrosch
tells us that “the Quakers claimed that direct inspiration, commonly described as
irradiation by the inner Light, gave them unmediated knowledge of Truth,” dubbing it
“the sine qua non for all religious authority whatsoever.”
35
Through close attention to the
inner light and its guarantee of redemption the Quakers offered the ultimate doctrinal
challenge to Calvinism’s policy of double pre-destination and its manifold socio-political
consequences. In the seventeenth century the “escape-route from theology was
theological” Hill jokes
36
—and too the (attempted) escape from socio-political oppression.
For the Quakers perfectibility meant that, as all people were possessed of the Holy Spirit,
the Second Coming had “always already occurred,”
37
releasing them not only from sin,
but automatic obedience to earthly authority and convention. For the propertied and the
institutions that both supported and depended upon them, the implications were as

52
disturbing as they were obvious: in a status-stratified society the Light was the great
equalizer, both in this world and the next.
38
Almost all sects predicated resistance and
demands for change upon “Democra[tic] salvation,”
39
and the early Quakers mobilized
this inherited combination of ideas in sophisticated and strategic ways.
40

In John Stachniewski’s uncompromising examination of the subjectivity of the
damned he depicts Calvinism as both a harsh, far-reaching instrument of social discipline
and its rationalization.
41
Citing Hill’s observation that “The Calvinist emphasis on
predestination and discipline had tried to carry hierarchical social subordination and
national thought-control over into the modern world,”
42
Stachniewski repeatedly
emphasizes how, for the Puritans, the division of rich and poor, the rulers and the ruled,
came to mean the division between the elect and the reprobate
43
—or in Hill’s pithy
language: “Gospel for the godly, Law for the ungodly.”
44
(Hill accuses Richard Baxter in
his “hysterical pamphlet” The Holy Commonwealth, of the “utmost naivete” for
automatically equating “the godly and the propertied class, the ungodly and the lower
orders.”
45
) Even Michael Walzer, who states outright in the preface of his revisionist
investigation of Puritan militancy, that his “only object is to make Puritan Radicalism, so
unattractive to my contemporaries, humanly comprehensible,” concedes that applied
Calvinism “was a method rather than a comfort” aimed in great part at curtailing the
freedoms and pleasures of the multitude, who of course “would not find their way to
heaven.”
46
The Puritans used Calvinism’s moral authoritarianism to legitimize and
extend social controls in as many ways as possible, and Walzer admits that had they
succeeded as they had hoped, the result would have been “the Puritan terror.”
47
As a
social process focused on using the state as a tool of repression, the Puritans ensured that

53
politics and religion were more entwined than ever.
48
Speaking of religious organization
as the most effective means of supervising the masses during the “long-continuing
economic, social and psychological crisis of the sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries,” Hill comments that Calvinism was “the most familiar form in which this
discipline and direction was exercised for political purposes.”
49
To coerce the un-
propertied and disenfranchised members of society to internalize the spurious equation of
material hardship and eternal damnation in order to make them all the more malleable to
the dictates of their supposed social/spiritual betters was the desired end of Puritan rule;
the universal grace that belief in the ubiquitous presence of the Holy Spirit offered not
only provided psychological relief from the eschatological implications of this
presumably indisputable Calvinist formula but, through such immunization, allowed for a
critical inspection of those establishments that profited by its perpetuation. And most
importantly, it gave people the confidence to articulate competing versions of their socio-
political realities, as well as possible remedies. As Damrosch emphasizes, “the idea that
anyone at all was free to hear the voice and go forth to prophesy lay at the heart of the
antihierarchical threat.”
50
Hill observes that ruling Puritans shared Charles I’s conviction
that “Religion is the only firm foundation of all power,” and considered preserving
subordination an important function of the church;
51
in such a climate perfectibility was a
dangerous political weapon, and seen as such, as it freed Quakers “to preach, judge,
condemn, and act in God’s name, all the while claiming His unquestionable authority.”
52

Writing on the formation of the subject and its simultaneous absorption into
existing power structures, Judith Butler theorizes that “‘Subjection’ signifies the process
of becoming subordinated by power as well as the process of becoming a subject,” both

54
of which depend “on a discourse we never chose but that, paradoxically, initiates and
sustains our agency.”
53
Agency, however, when designating resistance to subjugation,
can be thought to “exceed[s] the power by which it is enabled. One might say that the
purposes of power are not always the purposes of agency. To the extent that the latter
diverge from the former, agency is the assumption of a purpose unintended by power.”
54

Discourse is as important to resistance as it is to subjection, in that agency, specifically as
“the assumption of a purpose unintended by power,” must involve the selection of
another discourse. That of the Holy Spirit fulfilled this function for the Quakers, and
whether or not one agrees with the idea that the assumption of any purpose unintended by
power automatically equals subversion, this was indeed their situation. Butler articulates
the Althusserian-like concept that “If conditions of power are to persist, they must be
reiterated; the subject is precisely the site of such reiteration”
55
—and the exact same
statement can be made about conditions of resistance—that they too must be reiterated,
that “the subject is precisely the site of such reiteration.” And discourse informs the
content of this reiteration. We will come to appreciate the significance of the standard
complex of beliefs and behaviors that Nayler defends in his pamphlets, as well as grasp
the importance of the standardization itself, which serves as a legitimizing force; that is to
say that, as regards any particular type of subjectivity, since reiteration is a condition of
actuality, the specific group of features that go into its making must be (relatively) stable.
In one way or another Nayler’s pamphlets advertise the customary attributes of Quaker
sainthood, the reality of which are underwritten by the authority of the printed word
itself. In this sense to read one pamphlet is to read just about any of them.

55
For example, in “THE Power and Glory of the LORD, Shining out of the
NORTH, OR THE Day of the LORD Dawning,” published in 1656, Nayler lists on the
cover three basic features that comprise a Quaker, which he later expands upon in
separate but intertwined sections: firstly, “With a Warning to the People of England of all
sorts, not to oppose Christ in his Kingdom”; secondly, “Shewing also the way how al
flesh comes to know the Lord and fear him, by his terrible shaking the earthly part in
man, witnessed by the holy men in Scripture”; and thirdly, “With a Word to the Serpents
Seed, or Ministers of Anti-Christ, or Man of Sin, wherever he is found.” Taken together
they situate the Quaker in relation to the rest of English society. To begin with, an
examination of the prime tenet of Quakerism is in order, which allows for the (re)creation
of the subject: namely, that the Kingdom of God, meaning Christ, exists within all those
who choose to recognize Him.
56
Relying heavily on New Testament sources, Nayler
describes Christ variously as the Spirit, the way, the light, and a voice within,
57

metaphors that he returns to obsessively throughout the entire pamphlet, especially that of
light, which he often employs in conjunction with the opposing metaphor of darkness, to
represent other analogic pairs of sight and blindness (or at times hearing and deafness),
righteousness and iniquity, and salvation and damnation. Knotting them together almost
synecdochically, Nayler attaches them to the same state of being. More than merely
stand for one another, the physical, psychological, behavioral, and eternal signify
different aspects of the Quaker concept of the state of justification, or alternatively,
reprobation. Moreover, he engineers this association not through organized discussion,
but by repeated invitations to conversion, which are interspersed throughout the text.

56
For instance, weaving together a sophisticated mixture of biblical and his own
figurative language, Nayler exhorts his readers to “take heed and turn from your deceit, &
come forth you children of darkness, and come into the light, where there is no occasion
for stumbling, and make it appear you are the children of the light, by loving it; and make
it appear you love the light, by bringing your deeds to it to be proved, that all your work
may be works of the light.”
58
As Christ is the light, to come into the light is to join Him;
borrowing the simple metaphors of light and darkness from Ephesians 5:8, to which he
refers specifically, Nayler applies them to the act of conversion, an achievement he
makes seem joyous and easy. Taking his cue from the Apostle’s command to “walk as
children of light,” Nayler distills conversion into simple physical images: a turning away
from deceit, which Nayler equates with darkness, and a moving toward the light of
truth—deceit is something palpable that can be left behind outside oneself in the
darkness, or with it. The language of this lure both resonates with and builds upon
metaphors of Christ that Nayler, citing in order John 14:6, 1:9, and 8:12, uses in many of
his pamphlets as a conceptual matrix that he will rope together with other ideas in
different combinations: “as he is the Way, so he is the Light; I am the light of the world,
and lighten every one that cometh into the world, he that followeth me shall not walk in
darkness, but shall have the light of life.”
59
Nayler’s phrase “where there is no occasion
for stumbling” plays poetically on the above, continuing his physical rendering of
conversion by making literalized metaphors out of Christ’s self-references. On the path
in the light, it is impossible to falter. And I choose to see Nayler’s rather enigmatic
clause “and make it appear you are the children of the light, by loving it” as a call for his
readers to manifest themselves as one with Christ by loving Him: for as the Apostle

57
pronounces: “now are ye light in the Lord.” Neither exclusionary nor censorious, Nayler,
with his direct address in the second person, stages salvation as immediate and
spontaneous as child’s play, a far different presentation from that of the Puritan minister,
whose art consisted of, in Walzer’s words, dramatizing its “difficulty and hardship.”
60

Even when being denunciatory, Nayler still promotes a picture of salvation as
easily attainable, a matter of clear and simple prioritizing: “death reigns in you, because
you will not come to Christ, who is the light, that you may have life, and your destruction
is of your selves, and God is just, and your condemnation is this, that light is come into
the world, and you love darkness rather than light, because your deeds are evil.”
61
Basing
his reproach on John 3:19 Nayler, again forthrightly confronting his readers in the second
person, concentrates on the stark dichotomy of the light of Christ and eternal life and the
darkness of everlasting death, now advancing salvation primarily in terms of choice:
either one loves darkness, or the light. Nayler accentuates the elementary nature of the
decision, tendering it as self-evident, in that reprobation is to elevate endless death and
self-destruction above enduring bliss for the sake of indulging in what he a few lines
down disparages as “ungodliness and worldly lusts.”
62
In Nayler’s perception of spiritual
condition, the temporal and timeless intersect in a certain manner of personal conduct
(which he elsewhere defines); passing sentence, he threatens that “you read your
condemnation in every sin you commit.”
63
Nayler reminds the reader that “God is just,”
because the choice to repent is a free one, open to all; underlying his accusations are
Christ’s promises “That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal
life” (John 3:15-16). And toward the end of the pamphlet Nayler, addressing himself
specifically to ministers, advises them to

58
profess no more but what you are, that God may have glory by you, and take
delight to dwell in you: for this is the day of your visitation, if you will own it: the
day of Salvation from al sin and unrighteousness, the day wherein all the children
of the Lord shall be angels of the Lord, and great shall be their peace, in
righteousness shall they be established, and they shall be far from oppression,
Isa.54.13.14.
64

This time Nayler points up the most politically empowering formulation of Quaker
justification, namely that, more than beatify, God actually deifies the people who choose
Him; that is to say they not only possess the ability to act in their own benefit but also to
be instantly well-rewarded for taking the initiative. And as he always does, Nayler
submits salvation as being both democratic in its application and immediate in its effects.
That he extends this offer to ministers in particular is telling as it can also be construed as
a warning as well as a critique: ministers should be mindful of what conversion can
accomplish in terms of franchising the masses, and therefore to beware of settings
themselves above those they seek to constrain. All “children of the Lord,” irrespective of
status, shall be “angels” equally—and we should view this word more as “avatars.”
Furthermore, Nayler’s choice of the verb “profess,” unmistakably sarcastic in
intent, reinforces the double-edged quality of his overture, in that the word exuded
multiple anti-clerical connotations to anyone at all schooled in religious controversy. To
begin with, it meant taking vows, especially Catholic ones, and the insult would have
been impossible to miss—not only did factional opponents charge each other with being
or behaving like papists so regularly that doing so seemed de rigueur, Nayler made it his
business to madden his Puritan antagonists by accusing them of congregating in “Idol
Temples,” engaging in “Heathenish customes,” and taking advantage of “poor ignorant
people,”
65
that is, the very behaviors that they themselves had formerly leveled at their

59
High Church persecutors. Additionally, the verb was associated with professional status,
also anathema to sectarians in general and Quakers especially, as they believed that
formal education was in no way connected with a person’s ability to understand scripture
correctly or perform as true “Servants to Christ”
66
—these things being gifts of the Holy
Spirit. Speaking specifically of Paul, Nayler fumes:
the knowledge of Gospel, he had it not of man, not by man, nor was he taught it,
but by the revelation of Jesus Christ; but what Rule walk you by, who must have
them by such a pitch of Learning,and so many years at Oxford or Cambridge, and
then to study so long in books and old Authors? And all this is to know what
unlearned men, Fisher-men, Plow-men & Herdmen did mean when they spoke
forth the Scriptures.
67

How then could ministers lay claim to being spiritually superior to those possessing
knowledge through direct revelation? To profess no more than what one is then, is to
admit absolute parity under influence of the Spirit. And though Nayler’s deprecation of
university training was part of a larger antipathy toward the state church that bears closer
scrutiny, for the moment we may sum it up using Hill’s soppy line that “for seventeenth-
century radicals the religion of the heart was the answer to the pretensions of the
academic divinity of ruling-class universities.”
68
Ester Gilman Richey, tracing the rise of
prophetic controversy, locates in the works of Lancelot Andrewes, written near the
beginning of the seventeenth century, a focus on restricting prophecy to the university
educated, who were submissive to the Church of England and James I.
69
According to
her, even at that time the discourse of the Holy Spirit was being appropriated by a variety
of groups, some quite radical, to legitimize their socio-political agendas; preceding
Hobbes by several decades, Andrewes thought it an
intentionally deceptive ploy to obtain a position of absolute authority over all who
ha[d] preceded them, from the prophets of the Bible to the Spirit of God himself:

60
‘Their Spirit not subject to the spirit of the Prophets, nor of the Apostles neither, if
they were now alive; but bear themselves so high . . . as if this Spirit were their
underling, and their ghost above the Holy Ghost.’
70

What requires emphasis at this point is that in Nayler’s writing the immediacy and
power of Quaker justification is intimately bound up with a way of thinking that covers a
range of social, political, and religious topics that are themselves bundled together; to be
convinced is at the same time to acknowledge formally and adopt as one’s own a certain
contrary stance toward the rest of society. Freeing people from the casuistry of Puritan
theology was coupled with the substitution of an alternative and all-encompassing
“outlook” touching matters temporal and eternal, unencumbered by the problematics of a
complex doctrine. It would be more precise to say that Nayler helped people to free
themselves, in that he gave an unusually powerful and public voice to long-standing
hostilities. Nowhere in this pamphlet (or any that I have read) does Nayler offer process
in terms of theology—we are never supplied with an economy of salvation—only its
assurance and consequences. Nayler is a preacher looking to gain adherents, not a
theologian; he has plenty to say about the fruits of justification, but nothing about its
mechanics—his appeal in this respect is purely emotive. And I have excised only
portions of particular sentences, as all have a tendency to run on hypnotically, replaying
what turns out to be a few ideas over and over again, like a chant.
71
Nayler’s prose style
is typical of Quaker rhetoric, which Damrosch, citing Hill, informs us as being almost “a
stream of consciousness”; referring to an article by Jackson I. Cope, “Seventeenth-
Century Quaker Style,” Damrosch outlines the goal of what he designates “a deliberate
program” which was, in contrast to Calvinism’s discursive mode of persuasion, “to
interweave scriptural terms and metaphors in order to overwhelm resistance by endless

61
variations on a few key words. The inward Light could not be demonstrated or even
described; it could only be witnessed.”
72
The “incantatory”
73
rhythms would have
created a sense that the words were corroborating what the reader already knew
74
—and
as I have already said, this actually was the case—the people most susceptible to Nayler’s
allure were of the millions for whom, to use Hill’s take on the plight of the commons
during the Interregnum, the revolution in which they believed and for which they fought
had done absolutely nothing in the way of economic improvement.
75
And not only were
people no better off materially, regardless of religio-political affinities, they were, as Hill
attests, bitterly conscious of it:
So far indeed were London Levellers and the rank and file of the New Model
Army from fighting to make a world safe for capitalist farmers and merchants to
make profits in that they protested loudly when they realized that such a world
was in fact coming into existence. ‘It is evident,’ declared Overton, ‘a change of
our bondage is the utmost intended us.’ ‘Great men in the City and Army have
made you but the stairs by which they have mounted to honor, wealth, and
power,’ added Walwyn. ‘The only quarrel . . . is . . . whose slaves the people
shall be.’ Sexby told the Grandees that they would ‘have had fewer under your
command’ if the rank and file had been forewarned what the outcome would be.
76

In such a climate of utter disappointment Quaker conversion held tremendous attraction,
which Damrosch puts very succinctly:
In any case when a person was “convinced,” by Fox or anyone else, it was not a
question of learning something he or she didn’t already know. Every one of the
distinctive Quaker beliefs or attitudes was already current. . . . What was new for
Nayler and people like him was the realization that an actively charismatic
movement might replace their former passivity and isolation, and that a mood of
rooted pessimism could be transformed into its opposite.
77

Nayler attempts to approximate or generate a mystical experience for the reader,
striving to effect in her or him a state of justification in order to bring forth a changed
subject; Cope, quoting Isaac Penington, realizes that for Quakers, the function of

62
language was to “bring men to a knowledge of things beyond which words can utter.”
78

What neither Cope nor Damrosch discuss is that while Nayler employs the incantatory
mode for the purposes Cope describes, the business of “exhorting and encouraging fellow
saints toward eternity,”
79
he simultaneously imprints them with a ready-made worldly
agenda. One might even say that these new subjects are comprised of the agenda itself.
If “the light that guides into the way and keeps in the way is within,”
80
over the course of
his pamphlet Nayler insinuates into the reader/subject what “the way” should be in terms
of complementary socio-political attitudes and actions—that is, he furnishes instruction
in how to perform “Quakerness” while delivering a religious experience. For Quaker
leaders religious transformation was intended to create rebellious subjects; for instance,
Cope mentions Edward Burrough’s use of the incantatory style in relation to his notable
piety,
81
whereas Hill cites Burrough as admitting that the Quaker preacher was “a sower
of sedition, or a subverter of the laws, a turner of the world upside down, a pestilent
fellow.”
82
To convert was to subvert—and what comes down to literary style made up in
great part the means. During that time people saw the Bible as a source of theopathy, and
Quaker writing unashamedly endeavored to duplicate scriptural effect. In a pamphlet
attacking Quakers, “THE QUAKERS QUAKING” (1656), Jeremy Ives accurately
discerns how Quakers sought “to raise up the honour of their own Pamphlets”
83
to that of
scripture; running down a list of titles, many by Nayler, including “Love to the lost,” “A
discovery of the wisdom from beneath,” and “The power and glory of God shining out of
the North,” Ives wonders if “Whether these Titles which they give these books, are not
equipollent to the Title we give the Scriptures, viz. The Word of God?”
84
eventually
complaining that their “designe . . . is, to do by the Scriptures, as Judas did by Christ, viz.

63
betray them with a kiss, even by making men believe they do own the Scriptures, when
indeed it is, that they may have the fairer opportunity to crucifie them in the croud of
their pernicious Pamphlets?”
85
Exciting religious emotion in readers was central to the
Quakers’ transmission of their socio-political agenda—conviction involved enrolling in a
program of dissent spanning multitudinous aspects of culture.
Through his language Nayler makes “Quakerness” an organic condition, in that
the redeemed subject is restructured into a totality of interconnected traits that supersede
its previous formation, deriving its coherence from the “Spirit,” which also unifies it with
other “Saints,” past and present.
86
As we have already begun to see, Nayler provisions
this subject with powerful and interrelated precepts that all derive from possessing “the
light of Christ in you”: “And this light is not a Chapter without you, in a Book, but it is
that light that revealed that to the Saints in their several measures, which they spoke
forth, and which thou readest in the Chapter; and this light being minded will lead to the
perfect day, which declares all things as they are.”
87
Not only would illumination by the
Holy Spirit “shew you al your sins and wickednesses and lead you out of them,”
88
as we
know, for Quakers it was the means by which one could correctly interpret scripture; as
did their Puritans opponents, Quakers looked to scripture for affirmation of their own
beliefs, and in this way were able to outmaneuver controls secured by the conventional
interpretations of the Bible—a neat adaptation of the Puritans’ reliance on scripture to
escape the authority and routine that they themselves had once found oppressive.
89
Since
Quakers believed themselves to be, as Damrosch puts it, “the direct conduits of the same
Spirit that had originally inspired the authors of the Bible,”
90
they reenacted the Word in
the ways that they chose. This concept of infallible participation in continuous revelation

64
fueled Quaker prophetic discourse, that is, the supernatural talent to “declare[s] all things
as they are,” permitting Quakers to represent personal testimony as impersonal
prophecy.
91
For example, defending himself, Fox, and other leading Quakers against a
variety of accusations brought by Ives in his same pamphlet called “THE QUAKERS
QUAKING,” Nayler in his reply, titled “WEAKNES above WICKEDNES, AND
TRUTH above SUBTILTY” (1656), affirms Ives’ allegation that Quakers believe
themselves God’s official messengers: “we say we are immediately sent of God, which is
a truth in them who are so sent so to say,”
92
but rather wittily denies that they are, in Ives’
language, “full of great swelling and lying words,”
93
firing back that “the lie is thine own
till thou prove the contrary.”
94
Even more outrageously, Nayler, responding to Ives’
charges that Fox not only “professeth himself to be the Eternal Judge of the World” as
well as “the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” but also that “The Saints shall judge the
World,”
95
confirms all of it, defiantly confessing that “what George saith herein we own,”
and a few lines down declaring that “where Christ speaks in Male or Female, he is what
he testifies himselfe to be; if thou canst receive it thou may.”
96
Nayler articulates this
sentiment repeatedly, as in “THE Power and Glory,” asserting that “though you cannot
bear it to be judged by the Spirit of Christ where it is in his people, which judgeth all the
world, and al things: yet you cannot escape.”
97
In the same pamphlet skirmish with
Nayler, Ives accuses Quakers of lying and boasting in their claims to be perfect and
without sin, stating that according to their own words, “They own perfection, but do not
boast of it,” and provides this analogy: “If any man should by word or writing, or both,
publish his estate to the world, that he is thus and thus rich, would not your selves call
him a proud boaster, especially if he shall boast of that he never had?”
98
In response

65
Nayler flings over these words: “yet do we own perfection and believe in it, which is not
that we never had as thou falsly sayest, but as we have received Christ, so we have
received perfection in whom all selfe boasting is excluded.”
99
Such intransigence was
infuriating; as Damrosch says, the Quakers’ “posture of superiority and their prophetic
wrath made them outstandingly offensive to the majority of their contemporaries.”
100

By embracing disenfranchisement, Nayler is able to re-present it as a necessary
feature of radical agency. To be one in spirit with Christ was to access tremendous self-
sanctioning power directly, without the necessity of going through temporal channels of
authority—and actually required disregarding and denigrating them; in this way Quakers
turned the attributes of subordination entirely to their benefit. As such perfectionism was
the ultimate slap in the face to Puritan rule, as it allowed for an absolute and
uncompromising theo-political self-transformation that converts used to translate all of
their material disadvantages into signs of election; what is more, it permitted them at the
same time to impersonalize their hostilities and challenges, in that they could ascribe
whatever they said or did to Christ working through them.
101
To this end, in “THE Power
and Glory,” Nayler reverses the self-serving standards of justification and reprobation of
the propertied classes; in one typical run-on sentence he castigates them, railing:
And when you should hearken to the light of Christ in your conscience, then you
joyn with the deceit to make covers for your iniquities, and say it is but as your
place and state requires, as though God had given out his Law with respect of
persons, and had given you a toleration to abuse the Creature, and live in your
lusts more then others, because you have more of the earth, or a greater power
committed to your charge amongst men then others, not considering that the
Heathen exercise these things; but the Saints, the greater power, the more humble,
and the more careful to walk as examples to others, that so may exalt him whose
Ministers they are, and not themselves in pride; and this is to be truly honorable,
and herein have all the faithful been honoured.
102

66
As he does elsewhere Nayler usurps important Puritan terms and their attaching
categories, such as the words “Saints” and “Ministers” and those to whom they refer; for
Damrosch such appropriations became one of the main reasons Puritans felt Quakers
needed to be suppressed, as they “seemed to parody and subvert the most important
truths.”
103
Relying upon Foucault I posit that it was in their capacity to dissolve further
the Puritans’ hegemonic power to produce truth that the real threat of these semantic
acquisitions lay.
104
Because of intensifying struggles over the control of signification,
especially in regards to determining the identities of the elect and reprobate, the rulers
and the ruled, all aspects of prophecy and perfectibility became, to borrow Conal
Condren’s take on the seventeenth-century’s attitude to language in general, “a
theoretical preoccupation, a challenge, a threat and a political issue.”
105
Pirating the
discourse of salvation, Quakers moved through society as a distinct group of fearless and
socio-politically self-propelled individuals. The act of piracy was of itself intimidating
and unwelcome evidence of power. Analyzing the problem of agency pertaining to the
formulation of the subject, Butler raises what she deems a “cultural and political
predicament, namely, how to take an oppositional relation to power that is, admittedly,
implicated in the very power one opposes”;
106
the Quaker response to this dilemma was
to commandeer the language of religious truth while maintaining a hostile front to those
who considered themselves to be its rightful owners. For Quakers, subjectivity/agency
consisted “in opposing and transforming the social terms” that created them
107
via
prophetic discourse. In his rendition of the fight for control of the discourse of election
and the power it conferred, Damrosch brings in Hobbes, who perceives what Damrosch
calls the “filial relationship between the radical groups and orthodox Calvinism (which

67
was indeed an ‘ism’)”: as Hobbes pronounces, “there was not so dangerous an enemy to
the Presbyterians as this brood of their own hatching.”
108

And if the class antagonism in the above passage by Nayler is not apparent
enough on its own, he refers in the margin to James 5:1-3, and 5: “Go to now, ye rich
men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you”; “Your riches are
corrupted, and your garments are motheaten”; “Your gold and silver is cankered; and the
rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye
have heaped treasure together for the last days”; and finally, “Ye have lived in pleasure
on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.”
In further support of his categorical switching Nayler also draws from Matthew 20:25-27
as well as Luke 22:26. And while this time he omits actual quotations, anyone interested
would have either known them by heart or to look them up. Affirming a long-held
opinion, and supporting it with examples, Damrosch thinks that Quakers in general
viewed the Bible as a “now-dated expression of the same Spirit that continued to inspire
living persons”;
109
however I feel their relationship to scripture was more complicated
than the Quakers themselves were either willing to admit or realized, in that they found it
invaluable to their arguments, especially when elevating themselves and/or attacking
authority. Quakers took scripture as the living Word when they could turn its socio-
political destructive potential to their needs, which was very frequently if not all the
time.
110
For instance, reviling the established ministry as a tool of Antichrist, Nayler
announces that he is “moved from the letter, for the simple ones sake, who have been
long deceived by you, to give some discoveries to your selves and all who will see whose
Ministers you are,”
111
and proceeds to make a series of accusations supported by Old and

68
New Testament references. And when Nayler queries “Do you suffer and are hated, and
have all manner of evil spoken on you falsly for the name of Christ?”
112
he relies on
Christ’s words in Matthew 5:11: “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you and
persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake,” not only
sanctifying poverty and recalcitrance but vaunting them as being among the premier
qualities of the elect. Quakers derived their supreme self-confidence from paralleling and
equating their lives with those of Old Testament prophets, and especially Christ, St. John
the Baptist, and the apostles, particularly in their more stubbornly militant aspects, and
creating and fortifying these analogies would have been impossible without the extensive
use of scripture. In the seventeenth-century, Hill points out, “the Bible was the source of
virtually all ideas; it supplied the idiom in which men and women discussed them,”
113

and not more so than during the revolutionary era. The Holy Spirit was the means by
which Quakers, as other radicals, could marshal scripture to their defense in a flexible
and wide-ranging manner, using it exactly the way that they desired to critique
institutions and people they found inimical to their goals. The Holy Spirit and the Bible
together allowed Quakers to express their problems with their society, as well as provided
them with a rhetorically unassailable weapon of resistance.
Quakers called the seat of obduracy conscience; for them divinity resided in and
controlled the conscience. To Nayler, “if you take heed to this light to obey and love it;
then it . . . will bring you to exercise a pure conscience in the fear of God.”
114
Opposed to
all rhetorical sources of socio-political resistance, Hobbes has desperately cynical words
to say about conscience: “men, vehemently in love with their own new opinions (though
never so absurd,) and obstinately bent to maintain them, gave those their opinions also

69
that reverenced name of Conscience, as if they would have it seem unlawfull, to change
or speak against them; and so pretend to know they are true, when they know at most, but
that they think so.”
115
For Quakers the conscience was the both the legitimized and
legitimizing site of dissent: “Oh that there was such a heart in you, to lay aside all your
own wils and carnal consultations, and to take Counsel in the Spirit of the Lord, and be
guided by his pure light shining into your conscience, which would bring you into the
fear of the Lord.”
116
Fox, in a pamphlet published jointly with Nayler in1653, entitles his
part “A WARNING TO the Rulers of England Not to usurp Dominion over the
Conscience, nor to give forth Lawes contrary to that in the Conscience.” In “THE Power
and Glory” Nayler, on the attack, demands of the reader “are you Subject to the Kingdom
of Christ, which is in the Spirits of his own, whereby he rules the conscience, and brings
them to obey him in his commands?”
117
The Quaker conscience, with it very regulated
dictates and demands, dominated Quaker subjectivity.
118
The conscience is what roused
them to engage in behaviors directed at what Foucault calls “the external visage” of
power—that is, the local mechanisms that produced power’s “real effects”
119
—which
were the ministry and magistracy. Examining why Quakers had the governing classes so
alarmed, Reay quotes Edward Butler, MP for Poole, as lamenting that their “principles
and practices are diametrically opposite both to magistracy and ministry; such principles
as will level the foundation of all government into a bog of confusion.”
120
Althusser, in
his famous demonstration of interpellation via Christian ideology, ironically fails to take
into account the ways it can be mobilized as a means of resistance:
121
the Puritans
themselves had set the example for their sectarian antagonists by pitching conscience as
the driving force for their own religio-political stance which was originally, as Walzer

70
describes, “oppositional . . . and their primary task was the destruction of traditional
order.”
122
As they did with scripture, in an organized and aggressive manner the Quakers
had turned the Puritans’ own best weapon against them. Crying out “O you people of
England! how long ere you be obedient to the Kingdom of Jesus Christ!”
123
Nayler is
really asking how long before they submit to rule by the Quaker community. The
historical apocalypse would arrive at some point, but Nayler’s role as prophet was to
encourage what Damrosch calls “an atemporal spiritual apocalypse,”
124
which manifested
itself as a rigorous and relentless program of conscientious objection. Damrosch explains
that “Christ’s return had already happened for those who could understand it,”
125
and this
special comprehension authorized them to target what they saw as the most immediate
representatives of oppression and injustice, “divinity and law”;
126
to this end Nayler in
“THE Power and Glory” fulminates: “is there any reason to limit the Spirit of Christ that
it shall not discover the man of sin wherever he is, who must be destroyed and revealed
by the brightness of his coming in his Saints, and by the sword of his mouth?”
127
It
should be obvious by now that Nayler considered himself to be that “sword” in a class
war conducted in religious terms.
128
Sarcastically spinning off of Matthew 20:26-27 and
Galatians 5:24 he vents an undisguised hatred of privilege:
And is this the Saints practise you speak of, to exalt your selves one above the
other, . . . to be proud and covetous, to live in the lusts of the flesh, sporting and
gaming, and calling it recreation, living in excess of apparrel and diet, spending
the creatures on your lusts, when your brethren want food and raiment, causing
others to labour in wants, that they may bring it to you to spend on your lusts and
vanity?
129

This kind of mesmeric invective, with its barrage of virulent staccato clauses and phrases,
would have inflamed those who already shared Nayler’s opinions and enraged its targets.

71
The Quaker conscience created and sustained an ideological outlet for long-festering
resentments in those from whom society expected only silent submission, and their
daring public articulation in print demonstrated as nothing else could the liberating and
protective effects of perfection. Elaborating on Isaiah 9:6-7 by way of Ezekiel 21:27,
Nayler threatens outright: “And you that are in power, minde the promise of the Father, at
the coming of Christ to his Kingdom, I wil overturn, overturn, overturn, til it come into
his hand whose right it is, and upon his shoulders shall the government be
established.”
130
Why Nayler neglects to cite Ezekiel I don’t know—unless the phrase
“overturn, overturn, overturn” had firmly passed, as Hill maintains, into the common
idiom of revolution, and Nayler’s failure of reference was his way of underscoring the
verse’s contemporary political meaning.
131
Such vehemence would have found only too
eager an audience; a page later Nayler again thunders that if certain conditions were not
met, “I declare unto you this day, from the Word of the Lord, that he will overturn you,
and raise up his Kingdom another way.”
132
Nayler was busy converting on an
unprecedented scale an army of activists licensed by their individual consciences in
pursuit of common goals; no wonder there were at this time, Damrosch reports, greater
and more violent attempts to suppress Quakers.
133
What Nayler advertised was a theo-
political way out of the “bondage to sin and unrighteousness,”
134
and thousands of people
were taking it. They were tired of their “social function,”
135
as Hill phrases it.
By campaigning against the clergy, Quakers were attacking the ideological
stronghold of oppression, in that collectively ministers were allied with and supported by
the propertied interests to whom they catered theologically, socially, and politically. The
church was, more than ever, the “organ for imposing and maintaining a consistent

72
outlook.”
136
In a fractious society without a police force, penal system, or much in the
way of entertainment (Bittle states that “England during the Interregnum was singularly
lacking in entertainment”
137
), ministers were largely responsible for maintaining civil
peace, and used religion as a powerful coercive. Reay stresses how acutely aware ruling
parties were of the political and social necessity of religious orthodoxy; among Reay’s
supporting quotations, Robert South’s assessment could not be plainer: “If there was not
a Minister in every Parish, you would quickly find cause to encrease the number of
Constables.”
138
And what Hill quotes Hugh Peter as advising to Parliament in 1646
concerning the theo-politically precarious situation in Wales, ten years before Nayler’s
fiasco, seems apropos to the basic function of the ministry in general: “What you have
gotten by the sword must be maintained by the word.”
139
Sensitive to the attractions of
antinomianism and it disruptive potential, in the same year Thomas Edwards in
Gangraena lectures the clergy about making constituents impervious to seduction by
sectaries: “The Ministers seeing such damnable heresies &c. and things come to this
passe, must looke more narrowly, watch more diligently over their flocks then ever, to
keepe them from heresies and schismes, and make account tis their duty, and their
speciall work in these times, to attend more to that part of their Ministry that concerns
Doctrine, and convincing of Errour, then heretofore.”
140
Two pages later, Edwards again
admonishes that “Ministers in our times may bee a meanes to prevent and suppresse the
errors, heresies, and schismes; they must not only often preach against them, but should
set themselves against all the ways by which Errours are come in, and are further coming
in upon us, and oppose them by preaching, writing.”
141
For the masses of the population
the church was not a place that offered consolation but imposed control, and like all

73
Quakers Nayler cannot not heap enough opprobrium upon clergymen; throughout “THE
Power and Glory” he hurls at them abuse after abuse. Working from Christ’s
denunciation of false prophets in Matthew 7:22-23, he chastises: “All your hirelings are
strangers to Christ, and he knows them not; for though they prophesie in his name, and in
his name cast out devils, yet if they be workers of iniquity, Christ knows them not, and
such know not Christ.”
142
Continuing with Matthew 23.6-10, Nayler later rants “as for
your Ordinances you cry up so much, are these they to set up a proud man called by you
master, having the highest place in the Idols Temple, preaching always from a verse of
another mans condition, but not fulfilled in himself, raising Points, reasons, objections
and uses, a divination of his own brain, but not from the mouth of the Lord.”
143
Nayler
decries the spiritual emptiness of Puritan sermons which were, using Damrosch’s phrase,
“elaborately rhetorical,”
144
and to Quakers designed to mystify instead of enlighten. And
defending perfectibility and its blessings, Nayler, assails ministers yet again:
And now you are forced (least the man of sin should fall) to tell the same people
to whom you have been all this while talking against sin, impurity and
imperfection, that they must never look while they are here to overcome sin, the
world, and the devil, nor ever come to purity and perfection; and thus you labour
to keep a hold for the man of sin as long as people live, and so perswade them to
leave the work of redemption and freedom till after death, or you know not when,
and thus encourage people to spend their days in foly and leave the world with
torment and horror at their death.
145

Exposing the logical binds in which clergymen enwrap their parishioners, Nayler accuses
them of working for the devil. For Nayler they are evil as they not only confuse and
delude people, but actively promote their damnation by misrepresenting the conditions of
salvation, which through “pure light of the Spirit convinceth those who will own it.”
146

74
In contrast to the “Ministers of Antichrist” who hold their positions through
“carnal Laws”
147
Nayler posits Quakers as being the true messengers of God’s word,
for all that was ever sent out by Christ to preach the Gospel, was called by him
alone, without the consent of earthly powers: neither stood they to the judgment
or Tryal of any men or powers as from them to receive order whether to preach or
forbear, but by his authority alone by whom they were sent, to whom alone they
were to give accompt of their Ministry, with joy or sorrow; and in this work they
denyed all the Learning and Wisdom of the World.
148

Here Nayler gives us the rhetorical crux by which prophetic discourse ratified itself: that
Christ could still summon anyone into His service just as reported in the New Testament,
and those so deputized need no other confirmation or accreditation. In its own way the
logic of this assertion was irrefutable, and belief or disbelief depended upon whether or
not one thought the age of direct revelation had passed—which always came down to
personal opinion—an opinion that by mid-century invariably formed part of a complex of
other opinions, thoughts, and beliefs that situated an individual theo-politically as
somewhere within the establishment or outside of it.
149
Hill argues that (broadly
speaking) social division, sin, a limited elect, and an ordained, paid ministry preaching up
hellfire and damnation to the commons comprised the conservative agenda; conversely,
social and spiritual equality, perfectibility, and a free, open ministry featured part of the
radical program.
150
As already discussed, direct revelation as a hallmark of early Quaker
doctrine held an irresistible appeal in that it gave carte blanche to its recipients to do and
say anything without fear. And because the Quakers’ concept of egalitarianism included
women (up to a point), they too, if inspired by the Spirit, could travel and preach just as
did the men, practices which offended the vast majority of their contemporaries, but
helped to swell the Quakers’ numbers.
151
Contemning a calling dependent upon payment

75
Nayler praises the “Ministers of the Spirit” who alone are capable of “the raising up of
the Spirit in others.”
152
More than most of the official clergy, many Quakers, just as their
self-appointed scriptural forebears, did indeed “live by faith, not taking thought for
tomorrow, not what to eat and what to put on. . . . as the Lords Lillies.”
153
Sustained by
Matthew 6:25-34, Nayler, in his campaign for Quaker empowerment, configures material
necessity as a precondition of holiness, constructing out of the characteristics of
domination a subject who draws its very strength from them.
At the center of the Quaker hatred of clergy lay the tradition of tithing; Puritans
had ejected their High Church opponents “but not their financial arrangements” as
Damrosch puts it,
154
who neatly summarizes why Quakers found tithes so objectionable:
they represented the most burdensome form of taxation that the majority of people
(as opposed to big property holders) had to pay; they were incompatible with
religious liberty, since they had to be paid to the established church even if one
did not belong to it; and by securing the power of that church establishment, they
constituted a major obstacle to religious as well as political reform. Moreover,
ever since the Reformation a large part of the tithe had been transferred from the
church to “lay impropriators,” which meant in many cases the money directly
supported the gentry or aristocracy rather than the church. This was a question
therefore not just of local abuses but of an entrenched economic system on a
national scale.
155

For those who felt victimized by these institutions that they were forced to support
against their will, tithing was anathema; although the attack on tithes was common to all
radicals,
156
Reay contends that of the revolutionary sects Quakers “were among the most
unrelenting opposers of tithes,” intimating that for many people Quaker resistance to
tithing was a main reason for conversion.
157
Quakers not only organized petitions against
tithes but arranged support for parliamentary candidates who might be sympathetic to
their cause.
158
Based on information he obtains from the Public Record Office, Reay’s

76
opines that “Quakers formed the vanguard of popular agitation against tithes;”
159
they
were complained about with “almost monotonous regularity” as being
among the hard core who had ‘not onely refused to pay any manner of Tythes . . .
but doe pswade others to wth draw & subtract their Tythes likewise’; ‘givinge out
in speeches that now noe tythes, duties or customary payments for tythes in any
kinde are not due nor ought to be payd at all. . . And thereby have alsoe diswaded
divers others . . . from paying of any tythes.’
160

As to be expected, Nayler taps deeply into popular hostility against tithing, angrily
questioning “you Rulers of the Nation,”
And for your Tythes, Augmentations, and set benefits, when did ever God require
any such thing from any Magistrates under the Gospel? & doth it serve for any
other end, but to hold up an idle loytering Ministry, one pulling another out of
places, and setting themselves in their stead, that they my heap up riches and live
in their lusts, all running greedily after the wages of Balaam for gifts &
rewards?
161

Nayler backs up his rage against tithing and clergymen with references to Zechariah
11:4-5 and Ezekiel 22:25, comparing ministers to shepherds who sell their flocks to
slaughter and praise God, saying “Blessed be the LORD; for I am rich,” and to prophets
who, “like a roaring lion ravening the prey” have not only “devoured souls” but “have
taken the treasure and precious things.” The analogies are obvious and denunciatory
violence unrestrained. Once again, at this moment in the text Nayler does not openly
incorporate these verses, but they would have been recognized or available, as would his
inclusion of the seer Balaam, who despite knowing God’s will concerning the people
Israel, contrives to have the Moabite women seduce them into worshiping their god Baal-
peor, and is eventually slain in the subsequent retaliatory war (Numbers 22:5-31:16).
Nayler’s selections from the prophets both reinforce and resonate with his own

77
antagonism, as does the military menace lurking within the story of Balaam, providing
his reading public with a potent and unifying expression of resentment and vengeance.
Included in the attack on tithing was the assault on the universities, the main
function of which, Hill states, “was generally agreed to be the production of parsons” for
the established church.
162
Moreover, the universities’ existence depended largely upon
tithes; so not only did tithes provide livings for the younger sons and poorer relations of
the propertied but helped in great part to finance the institutions that educated them
163
—
an education that upheld and catered to their self-interested economic and spiritual class
distinctions. Hobbes (of course!) admires the universities for this very reason, and
concerned about Catholic and sectarian influence, advises on the last page of Leviathan:
For seeing the Universities are the Fountains of Civill, and Morall Doctrine, from
whence the Preachers, and the Gentry, drawing such water as they find, use to
sprinkle the same (both from the Pulpit, and in their Conversation) upon the
People, there ought certainly to be great care taken, to have it pure, both from the
Venime of Heathen Politicians, and from the Incantation of Deceiving Spirits.
164

Universities were essential as the source (playing off of Hobbes) of, in Hill’s language, a
“uniformly trained ministry capable of receiving instructions from above, to act as a
relatively united opinion-forming body” that acted as a “central control over the thoughts
of the masses”; thus the state church, universities, and tithes stood or fell together,
165
a
fact of which everyone was highly conscious, especially the sectaries. Being forced to
bear the financial burden of a religious and social system that in no way benefited them,
one that they found punitive and oppressive, could not have been more repugnant and
galling. For Quakers, repudiating a university educated ministry was one move in their
battle against a situation that they found intolerable all across the board; frequently
reminding readers that scripture was inspired by God in certain individuals, irrespective

78
of their condition, Nayler provokes feelings that for a great many need little provocation.
Pulling from 2 Peter 1:12, “Wherefore I will not be negligent to put you always in
remembrance of these things, though ye know them, and be established in the present
truth,” he praises the Quakers’ self-authorized ministry: “holy men of God spoke forth
the Scriptures as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, without carnal learning; and holy
men by the same Spirit read and understand them again, not by carnal learning & natural
tongues.”
166
And damning the entire ministry as reprobate, Nayler also references I
Corinthians 2:14: “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for
they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually
discerned.” Several pages later he again howls out his opposition to state clergy as
preaching persecution for pay:
And can you ever keep the Ministers of Antichrist out of places (who will
conform to any thing for gain) so long as they can have you to feed them with
money? And will not you be found guilty of keeping up the hirelings that the wo
is to, and them that hold them up, and whom Christ is come to discover and cast
out. . . . And when you leave all that say they are Christs Ministers to Christs
maintenance set down in the Gospel, then it will appear who have run unsent, and
have not profited the people.
167

Correctly laying the problem of “hirelings” on the “Rulers of the Nation,” Nayler plays
up the double meaning of “profit,” making it clear that “the people” are shut out of their
mutually beneficial financial and spiritual relationship. Most importantly, Christ has
appeared to judge and oust them in the Quakers themselves—or perhaps primarily in the
person of Nayler himself.
Nayler’s attacks on the ministry were not confined to print; he assumed his part in
the Quakers’ “guerrilla war against the clergy,” as Reay terms it, as did his cohorts
interrupting or abusing ministers, or arriving at churches beforehand in order to ambush

79
waiting congregations.
168
These raids were not without their dangers, however: in
anticipation of Quaker forays into a particular area, ministers and their congregants
would routinely assault them and then try to have them jailed under a variety of pretexts.
Quakers were also frequently set upon by random angry mobs for no immediately
discernable reason. Damrosch discusses that to begin with, the act of wandering itself
contradicted current principles of collective order on multiple levels, automatically
branding Quakers as transgressive and insubordinate, therefore making it difficult for
them to escape suspicion and hostility. Add to that the threat of Quaker proselytizing,
and the likelihood of violence escalated.
169
While recounting such stories is beyond the
scope of my project, Brailsford, Reay, Bittle, and Damrosch provide reports of Quaker
beatings and humiliations involving Nayler and others, as well as tales of lengthy
imprisonments under vile and at times life-threatening conditions; free Quakers would
even volunteer to substitute for cohorts languishing sick in jail if allowed to do so—and
we should attribute this kind of unflinching courage and commitment to the tremendous
and lasting power of conviction. In emulation of their biblical antecedents, Quakers were
prepared to undergo virtually any trial to spread their revolutionary message to the nation,
and as they did with all adversity, construed persecution as evidence of divine favor—and
nothing garnered more than laying into ministers. In “THE Power and Glory” Nayler
charges England’s reprobate with hypocritically celebrating in scripture behaviors that
they unhesitatingly condemn when actually confronted with, especially the habit of
disrupting services, a “transgression of your Law, and you say it breeds distraction in
your Churches: but what Churches are they which will be so soon distracted? And what
people are those Churches made up of, who no sooner here one deliver the Lords

80
Message in a peaceable way, but they are all one fire, beating, buffeting, cursing, searing,
and haling them to prison?”
170
Of course the message was not always delivered in a
“peaceable way”—but that constituted the appeal—to be able to stride into any church
and denounce the proceedings in the name of the Lord; on the next page, alluding to Acts
16:19-21, Nayler invites the reader to
try whether that Spirit act in you, which led the Apostles and Saints into the
Temple and Synagogues daily, there to dispute against all Idolatrous worships,
and to hold out to the people the true substance, and thereby gathered the Church
into God, in the Spirit, there to meet and worship, or that Spirit that was in them
who persecuted the Saints for so doing.
171

As we have seen before, Nayler submits a stark choice of roles, searching for those
dissatisfied and unhappy individuals who are angry and despairing enough to pick the
one that will let them convert hopeless lives into meaningful existences through active
and continuous protest against a religio-political caste system that works only to their
disadvantage. Nayler holds out to his readers an offer of imaginative transformation, one
that he himself has already undergone: (in this instance) to live as another Paul and Silas,
and challenge that system with divine approval, no matter what the personal outcome. To
be subjects in the Kingdom of Christ is to follow him “through persecution, mockings
and death,”
172
and wandering into strange towns to heckle the local clergy the surest way
to prove one’s citizenship. Nayler underwrites this guarantee with a nod to Revelation
7:14: “These are they which come out of great tribulation and have washed their robes,
and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” Nayler’s combination of scripture and
his own cant produced a rhetoric designed to encourage action, action that was charged
with a significance capable of sending and sustaining people out on perilous missions, no
matter the consequences.

81
The Quaker attack on magistracy was as aggressive as that on ministry, and was
comprised of a flagrant disregard of the customary signs of respect owed magistrates as
well as the purposeful slighting of orders and prohibitions. The Quakers’ stance toward
magistracy was a highlighted aspect of their antipathy to hierarchy in general—an
obvious example of their total rejection of “the hegemony of the elite,”
173
as Reay says.
England’s rigidly patriarchal culture demanded immediate and energetic recognition of
its innumerable distinctions of rank and class, and failure to comply as regards the lower
orders elicited anger as well as fear.
174
Among other behaviors, the Quakers’ refusal to
remove their hats when expected, especially in court, their absolute unwillingness to
swear oaths when required, their use of “thee” and “thou” to superiors, and their
insistence on addressing them by their first names instead of their titles were militantly
egalitarian in intent, and taken as serious challenges to civil order. Reay argues that the
“socially iconoclastic Quakers” alarmed everyone who had a stake in maintaining the
status quo;
175
and as Damrosch observes, “In a profoundly politicized culture the
specifically confrontational tactics of the Quakers were obviously political.”
176
Again,
the historians I use supply a variety of illustrations, ranging from courtroom altercations
to family disputes, that demonstrate how these behaviors, despite being grounded in
either the authority of personal revelation or that of scripture, were motivated by class
antagonism and educed responses that were even more antagonistic. Giving in “THE
Power and Glory” as he does a full articulation of what “Quakerness” should be, Nayler
takes to task those who in his mind only pretend to walk by the “golden Rule,” pointedly
asking “Are ye no respecter of persons in all your dealings?”
177
Referring to James 2:1
and 9, Nayler harangues: “My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the

82
Lord of glory, with respect of persons,” and “But if ye have respect to persons, ye
commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors.” And justifying his thoughts
with 2 Samuel 23:3, “The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me, He that
ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God,” as well as Isaiah 56:1, “Thus
saith the LORD, Keep ye judgment, and do justice: for my salvation is near to come, and
my righteousness to be revealed,” Nayler lectures the “Rulers of the Nation” to “take
heed how you step into the throne of Christ, or exalt your selves in his Kingdom, and
mind what power you are betrusted with by the Lord & be faithful in that, as the
Ministers of God to whom you are to accompt; you are to punish sin in whom it is,
without respect of persons.”
178
Progressing from the issue of equal treatment to impartial
judgment, Nayler touches on a sore topic closely related to magistracy—the complete
lack of parity under the law, which conformed to social station and therefore favored
propertied interests. For Nayler, a truly “Christian Magistracy” should “minde the
commands of Christ”
179
—when this wasn’t at all the case. Aside from punitive
legislation, the poorer classes suffered more than ever from expensive legal procedures
and outright tampering that offered no protection from “gentlemanly oppression,” to
borrow Hill’s oddly ironic phrase.
180
Judges and lawyers were, overwhelmingly, from
the wealthier orders and would not go against members of their own strata. Furthermore,
legal knowledge was still encoded in Norman French and Latin, preventing the
uninitiated from understanding how laws operated in their communities, rendering them
all the more vulnerable to unjust treatment. With law as with religion, the situation was
unashamedly arranged to benefit the prosperous and titled, and according to Hill, for this
reason sectarian leaders were as critical of the law and legal profession as they were of

83
the established church and its ministry; tellingly he mentions Fox as remarking that the
law should be “drawn up in a little short volume, and all the rest burnt.”
181
The Quakers
resisted most disciplinary features of civil order as much as they could without
committing acts of physical violence, and their contempt for magistracy should be seen as
a front line in their battle against an entire society rigidly coordinated by subjugation; Hill
comments that when Quakers congregated by the thousands despite the prohibition of
magistrates, it’s easy to understand why M. P.s thought they would “overrun all, both
ministers and magistrates,” spotlighting Nayler’s position that “magistrates are not to be
obeyed when they command that which God forbids.”
182
And both Bittle and Damrosch
relate an episode that supposedly took place in Lancashire County in 1653, in which
Nayler and Fox stood accused in a petition by a great many people of “broaching
opinions tending to the destruction of the relations of subjects to their magistrates, wives
to their husbands, children to their parents, servants to their masters, congregations to
their ministers, and of a people to their God.”
183
Damrosch contends that these
accusations survive because Nayler and Fox quoted the petition in order to refute it
184
—
but all things considered it appears that they not only wished to be perceived as
possessing such a subversive agenda, but also the power to execute it.
185
Whether made
up, exaggerated, or exact, this complaint accurately sums up the comprehensive nature of
the Quakers’ design on the social order; they indeed deserved their reputation of being
anarchic and levelling in scheme. Foucault hypothesizes that political power is war
continued by other means, and its role perpetually to re-inscribe relations of domination
through social institutions, structured economic inequality, language, and even “the
bodies themselves of each and everyone”;
186
Quakers like Nayler made it their life’s

84
work to articulate these re-inscriptions and militate against them to their utmost, short of
armed conflict (which would have been useless)—Quaker language and behavior were
calculated to disrupt and thus call attention to the automatized character of the verbal and
physical gestures of domination and subordination, and in the process expose them as
being both arbitrary and artificial. Though Damrosch admits that the Quakers’
maintained a political agenda, he still somehow believes that their practices show that
they rejected their world rather than sought its transformation;
187
I suggest instead that
they defined themselves through opposition to their society, and at least before the
Restoration, strove to make it over in their collective image. I think they understood that
power comes from below, and therefore felt they need only amass enough adherents to
effect a revolution—after all, it’s not as if they possessed means to wage insurrection by
any other way.
If it appears that I have wandered far from my examination of the discourse of the
Holy Spirit, remember that it was the medium by which Quakers were able to impact
their world to the degree that they did, as they made it a charter for all of their doings,
which extended well beyond the anti-social activities already covered. In addition to
these stretched a whole range of bizarre and shocking behaviors dictated by the Holy
Spirit on an singular basis, including prolonged fasting, miracles, public nudity, weird
outfits, self-mutilation, and strange histrionics; Reay observes that “Extravagant behavior
and perfectionist claims became the badge of divine approbation, symbolically setting the
Quakers apart from the ungodly.”
188
But even more disturbing to everyone than these
kinds of particularized “signs” was the quaking from which they derived their name, and
which they themselves understood as the surest indication of salvation, due its wholly

85
spontaneous nature. For Quakers, trembling and shaking constituted, in Reay’s language,
the “outward manifestation of the inward workings of the power of God.”
189
If the
Puritan elect were, at least in theory, supposed to continuously interpret ambiguous clues
throughout their lifetime in order to determine their eternal fate, Quakers automatically
recognized their saintly condition as it was confirmed by an entirely involuntary
response, for which they had biblical authority.
190
It is important to see that the Quakers’
trembling and groaning was, as with all of their emblems, a way of bypassing Puritan
estimations of divine approval by setting up another standard of eligibility that was
impossible to disprove: if Puritans took success in political, military, and business
ventures as evidence of supreme affection,
191
Quakers competed by flaunting complete
loss of bodily control as the most conclusive instantiation of God’s love.
Damrosch demonstrates that, because of the apparent authenticity of their
ecstasies, Quakers were forced to defend themselves against repeated accusations of
diabolicalness, and chooses to cite Francis Higginson, who assumes that such behavior,
especially in northern rustics, could not be learned or imitated and therefore must be
inspired by demonic powers:
It is an utter impossibility for any man, especially women, that never knew what
belonged to stage-playing, and young children, to feign such swoonings,
tremblings, palsy motions, swelling, foaming, purging, such great and horrid
screeching and roarings; yea common modesty would restrain any man or woman
that are themselves from such uncleanly excretions as do often accompany these
sordid trances. Surely it must needs be some black art that works so turbulently
on men’s spirits or bodies, and conjures them into such surprises.
192

Damrosch points out Higginson’s interesting reference to the theatre as ultimate proof of
quaking’s fiendish nature—that, having never seen actors perform, Quakers must be
playing out roles dictated by the prince of darkness.
193
If Quakers could not be attacked

86
for insincerity, they could be damned for sorcery or possession. In “THE Power and
Glory” Nayler defends the sanctified character of quaking, ripping out of both the Old
and New Testaments dozens of quotations one after another, spanning four pages, to
support his contention that “but search the Scriptures, and you shall find that the holy
men of God do witness quaking and trembling, and roaring and weeping, and fasting and
tears; but the world knows not the Saints conditions.”
194
As does Higginson and a
multitude of others, Ives, again in the same pamphlet named earlier, “THE QUAKERS
QUAKING,” counters Nayler’s onslaught of biblical references, admitting that as far as
concerns “quaking, shaking and trembling: it is true, that some good men do say thus of
themselves; as “Heb.I2.2I. Ezek.I2.I8. Jer.33.9. Acts 9.6. Psal.II9.6. and many other places.
To all which I answer, first, This doth not prove that all were good that did quake and
tremble: for the devils were quakers and tremblers, James 2.I9.”
195
Cleverly highlighting
James’ statement that devils also believe in God and tremble, Ives proceeds to further
rebut Nayler’s argument by limiting the range of behaviors that make up in his mind
“legitimate” quaking; insisting that “None of the Saints of old did ever foam at the mouth
in this their trembling; but some of you do, as many are able to witness, and as your
selves cannot deny,” Ives questions “Whether such kind of trembling that is accompanied
with foamings, do not rather argue a man to be possess’d with the devil, then with the
Spirit of God?”
196
In his eagerness to identify Quaker trances with the diabolical instead
of the divine, Ives implies that the fact children also were subject to such frenzies fails to
meet the biblical pattern Nayler himself sets up, asking “Whether young children did ever
foam at mouth, quake, swell and tremble, in the Saints meetings?”
197
Finally Ives
somewhat weakly suggests that the idea that “every one that quakes and trembles is a

87
Saint of God and doth it by the impulse of the Spirit of God” is not in itself a good
argument;
198
but if Ives is referring to quaking as a sign of physical illness, he wisely
doesn’t say—for his purposes, to label Quakers as being sick is not as powerful an
argument as to denounce them as being demonic. In Nayler’s same response directed at
Ives, “WEAKNES above WICKEDNES,” he ignores Ives’ challenges, commenting only
that “the lyar proves to be the lyar, whilst the Innocent are silent.”
199
Given the purely
interpretive nature of the contest, Nayler need not expend energy and ink defending
further that which Ives cannot with any certainty disprove.
200

For some reason Damrosch restricts contention over the status of quaking to the
theological, merely remarking that “As so often, a fundamental disagreement about the
nature of religious experience was at stake”;
201
however, given the fact that the Quakers
rested their entire program of opposition upon absolute surety of their holy standing, we
would do better to see this conflict as being an irresolvable clash of discourses centered
upon the body as the privileged site of sacred truth. For Quakers, the spontaneous
behaviors from which they derived their name were the very material and thus to them
undeniable consequences of possession by the Holy Spirit: they used their entranced,
helpless bodies as unqualified evidence of the godly authority with which they invested
themselves. Insensible, brute corporeality may be said to have produced the authority
that Quakers depended upon to legitimize all of their practices; as such the redeemed
Quaker subject began and ended with the “low body”
202
—a body that Quakers configured
as a divinely appointed vessel—which was an assertion that, like all of their assertions
about “Quakerness,” no one could refute with any certainty. For Quakers the soul was
not “the effect and instrument of a political anatomy,” not “the prison of the body”;
203
in

88
a wonderful reversal the unconscious body became the soul’s liberator. Quaking is as
clear an example as any of Althusser’s notion of the “material existence of an ideological
apparatus,”
204
just not a state-supporting one, hence the battle between rival groups over
the prerogative to determine its source. And if it appears that I carelessly jumble together
Althusser and Foucault, both of these theorists are ultimately concerned with combating
power and its effects, and we see in Quakers people who put up an intelligent fight, by
not only taking the attributes of power and making them work to their benefit, but
founding their battle on a location beyond power’s reach: the uncontrollable body.
Resistance itself derives from power, Foucault is fond of telling us
205
—but be that as it
may, resistance was the Quaker subject’s organizing principle—one could even say its
raison d’être, a resistance codified in the succussive body. It formed the basis of all
Quaker political critique, and the thoroughness with which Nayler defends it reflects an
acute understanding of the stakes involved. Quaking was the radical answer to the
concept of government jure divino that began with the monarchy and continued with the
Protectorate. Damrosch and Brailsford quote at length Hume and Carlyle, who both
dismiss Parliament’s attack on Nayler as being unreasonable and a waste of time: Hume
considers it remarkable that “parliament thought that the matter deserved their
attention,”
206
and Carlyle refers to it derisively as the “James Nayler Parliament”: “To
Posterity they sit there as the James Nayler Parliament. Four hundred gentlemen of
England . . . assembled from all Counties and Boroughs of the Three Nations, to sit in
solemn Debate on this terrific phenomenon: a mad Quaker fancying or seeming to fancy
himself, what is not uncommon since, a new Incarnation of Christ.”
207
Yet their
belittlement of Parliament’s anxiety over Nayler reflects an historical tradition that

89
glosses the past instead of depicting it with any accuracy (as well as some Scottish
sniggering). (Brailsford puts the total number of achievements at two: “the trial and
sentence of a distracted Quaker, and the famous Petition and Advice presented to the
Protector, the second act being the direct outcome of the first.”
208
) Nayler was head of a
movement that frightened people who were vested in contemporary power structures, and
Parliament felt that it had good reason to capitalize on the chance to take him down.
Nayler’s portrayal of Christ was of itself an aggressive display of power calculated to
antagonize opponents—from within the Quaker movement more than from without—
though just how antagonistic, and ultimately to whom, Nayler probably had no idea.
Historians and biographers agree that Nayler’s disastrous entry into Bristol was
ultimately the result of a battle between him and Fox for control of the movement, but
differ in their opinions regarding such issues as Nayler’s mental condition at the time of
his reenactment, and to what extent he was coerced into participating by a group of ardent
female followers, the chief one being Martha Simmonds, sister of Giles Calvert and wife
of Thomas Simmonds, both leading publishers of Quaker pamphlets—and they all
invariably discuss the one question specifically in relation to the other. Disentangling
everyone’s opinions concerning Nayler’s responsibility in the contest of prophets, as well
as analyzing their possible significances, would take many pages in themselves and, for
purposes of my work, constitute a lengthy and unnecessary digression, but I shall outline
a few of them in brief: to begin with Damrosch firmly believes that Nayler, though
“deeply distressed” was not deluded, and that blaming the women is simply a means of
explaining away Nayler’s own mistakes;
209
Christine Trevett, whom I have not yet
referenced, argues that because Nayler was probably unbalanced to begin with, his

90
admirers were not solely responsible—and highlights the fact that among them were men
as well as women;
210
Bittle, without stating definitively whether or not he considers
Nayler to have been mentally unwell, engages in a great deal of speculation concerning
Nayler’s inner turmoil during the months leading up to Bristol, but implicitly lays the
blame on his coterie, observing that although “the constant prodding of adoring followers
had convinced Nayler that the Inner Light burned a bit brighter in him than in other men.
It is possible that even with this conviction he might not have sought to exalt his own
position,”
211
finally judging that Nayler’s relationship to his “own role in the sign seems
to have been one of passive acceptance”;
212
Ronald Matthews, another biographer whom
I have not yet mentioned, claims confusedly that while all mystics “are never wholly
normal psychologically,” Nayler was against his will “thrust into the assumption of
divinity by the unwelcome enthusiasm of a handful of women”—especially Simmonds,
whom he labels Nayler’s “evil genius”;
213
and Brailsford, casting Simmonds as “the
villain of this piece” whose goal was to cause the final breach between Nayler and Fox,
paints Nayler as being the mentally and physically debilitated victim of this “half-crazy
woman.”
214
However, precisely pinning down the exact character of Nayler’s agency
regarding the Bristol procession seems to me to be an impossible task, not least because
he was a fanatic who thought himself possessed of the Holy Spirit, and lived during a
pre-secular era of religious extremism (that is to say, chances are a great many people
from that historical moment would seem to us fanatical despite how they appeared in
relation to others from the same moment; the fact is that we do not possess a means of
gauging their sanity—anymore than we possess a means of gauging our own!). Applying
contemporary standards of psychological hygiene to such a one as Nayler can yield little

91
insight into his decision-making process. Damrosch, for instance, concedes that it is
“extremely difficult to know to what extent he planned or anticipated the reenactment of
Christ’s entrance into Jerusalem,” yet stoutly maintains that, irrespective of the lack of
information, while Nayler impersonated Christ, he did not actually believe himself to be
Christ, “except in the sense that Christ was present (in “measure”) [in him] as in all of the
saints”
215
—as if this distinction should be construed as evidence of sound mental health
or, more importantly, in any way have mitigated the fear and antipathy he induced in
those who wanted him silenced—when for them the very threat came from the personal
power and authority that he had amassed from behaving as if he contained within himself
the indwelling Spirit. Suffice it to say that, regardless of other possibilities, in taking on
the role of Christ, Nayler was making a bold political statement about himself as a
Quaker and a leader of Quakers. (For some reason, when offering motives for Nayler’s
Bristol performance, scholars sometimes accumulate explanations without resolving them
against one another: for example Damrosch emphasizes the display’s spiritual aspect,
interpreting it as “the daily taking up of the cross that was commonly evoked as mere
metaphor, but that needed to be internalized and lived as a potent sign,” yet ignores
Nayler’s challenge to Fox that he himself understands as being the reason for it.
216
In
addition Bittle, who posits that Nayler’s own leadership success in combination with his
deteriorating relationship with Fox had convinced him that he should be undisputed
leader, and likewise connects this break directly with Bristol, nine pages before suggests
that Bristol was the result of Nayler’s debates with Ives, who had doubted the validity of
Nayler’s calling, thus “providing Ives with the desired ‘sign,’ both of his own calling and
that of the Quakers in general”;
217
what is more, both of these reasons conflict with

92
Bittle’s conception of Nayler as being only a passive participant in the whole business. It
could be that these unreconciled interpretations are the result of the complexity of the
situation being investigated, its historical distance, of minds intent on pursuing all
avenues of thought without synthesizing them, or of some combination thereof.)
All of my sources relate the fight between Fox and Nayler, as well as Nayler’s
ensuing retaliation, in more or less a similar manner, via a focus on the same series of
events, and provide their own particular historical and theatrical embellishments,
digressions, and elisions. I’ve so far traced this shape to Brailsford (who may get it from
George Whitehead, Nayler’s first Quaker biographer, and compiler of his writings, as she
does quote Whitehead to a great extent); not only is the story itself entertaining, the
permutations it undergoes in subsequent (re)tellings are also quite interesting, as is
discovering unacknowledged debts to previous narrators. But Bristol is what now
concerns me, and Nayler’s unfortunate decision to storm it in a way that, far from
seeming innocuous, could not have appeared more menacing to all interested parties.
The city itself was not chosen haphazardly; Damrosch presents a summary of Bristol’s
significance in terms of being a Quaker haven:
The leading seaport and commercial center in the west, it had developed a strong
Quaker community, which excited strong resistance since the local leaders were
generally royalist in sympathy. When the activities of the Quakers began to alarm
persons in authority, their main support against repression came from the Puritan
army. . . . In 1654 a correspondent wrote to Fox, “We have here in Bristol most
commonly 3,000 to 4,000 at a meeting. The priests and magistrates begin to rage
but the soldiers keep them down.” From the point of view of orthodox Calvinists,
the Quaker presence was an embarrassing scandal
218

Damrosch fails to disclose the royalists’ religious affiliations, so it is impossible to
ascertain from his account if whether or not they comprised the same group as the

93
Calvinists—the point is that resident Quakers were numerous enough to excite great
unease among Bristol’s leading citizenry no matter what their (official) beliefs. In a look
at the geography of early Quakerism, and reporting independently of any connection to
the Nayler debacle, Reay figures that Quakers composed 5.6 percent of Bristol’s total
population, which according to his statistics, made it the single most infiltrated city in the
entire nation as far as density. Furthermore, the Quakers had, despite hostility from the
Common Council, acquired enough political clout through influential converts (among
them garrison commanders) to reduce substantially the amount of persecution
219
—all of
this accomplished, Brailsford assures us, in only two years.
220
Damrosch notes that in
such a tense environment Quakers readily obeyed Fox’s injunction that none attend
Nayler’s triumph,
221
and Brailsford informs us that they held a Meeting for Silence
during the very hour of the procession’s arrest.
222
(It is typical of this story that scholars
vary in certain details: for example Brailsford thinks that Fox traveled to Bristol in person
expressly to warn the city’s Quakers against Nayler,
223
whereas Damrosch relates that
Fox had communicated with them by letter.
224
And Bittle skirts making an unqualified
pronouncement, indicating that either the Bristol Quakers were repulsed by the spectacle
or that Fox had poisoned them against Nayler, concluding vaguely that such unanimity
“suggests direction.”
225
) In a sad ironic turn, Nayler the Christ King, ignored by his own,
immediately attracted the attention of the authorities, first in Bristol, and then in London.
In addition to grounds already addressed as to why Parliament dealt so harshly
with Nayler, there were other, symbolic elements at play concerning the city of Bristol
itself that to my knowledge have not yet been covered by anyone, elements I believe
could only have served to exacerbate the trial’s punitive emotional atmosphere. During

94
the first civil war, initially parliamentarian Bristol, the most important port in England
after London, had been the site of a royalist victory in July 1643 under forces led by
Prince Rupert of the Rhine, nephew to King Charles I through his sister Elizabeth.
Although Parliament regained Bristol in September 1645, the memory of its loss must
have still rankled, which in conjunction with military converts might account for the
army’s support of Quakers to the aggravation of city leaders.
226
Yet intersecting with and
building upon Parliament’s unhappy remembrance of that humiliating and distressing
forfeit must have been the consciousness of the political meaning that Christ’s Entry into
Jerusalem had accumulated over the last few centuries, as monarchs had routinely
portrayed Christ when making civic entries in celebration of major events, such as
coronations, weddings, and military triumphs. Christ the King had long been the
ideological property of the sovereign; in assuming the role, Nayler of course was
asserting his capacity as a political leader, inasmuch as he was convinced that Christ
existed inside him to an outstanding degree—but probably unbeknownst to him he was
also depicting an English monarch—a figure even more frightening in any real sense to
Cromwell’s Puritan Parliament than Nayler as Quaker alone. Whatever Nayler’s entry
was eventually made to construe, lurking within the hysteria it generated was most likely
the feeling that he had attempted to force once-captured Bristol into a submissive position
simply from partaking in that specific reenactment as well as from being a Quaker rebel
of some reckoning. Via his impersonation of Christ coming to claim His city, Nayler had
bound up in himself Quaker leader and English king, a most unfortunate combination.
In his study of royal entries Gordon Kipling investigates the ways in which
Christ’s Advents figured into means of portraying the monarch as the embodiment of a

95
program of political ideas, and analyzes several such processions in terms of spectacle in
relation to religio-political significance.
227
Contradicting his own disclaimer that political
ideas appear in his book “only as secondary considerations” to his interest in royal entries
as a serious art form,
228
Kipling does engage in a great deal of speculation concerning
their highly politicized character. The essence of Kipling’s complex and detailed
argument is that princes entered
cities transformed into earthly or celestial Jerusalems. Reflecting one or more of
the liturgical modes of Advent, they come in humility bringing redemption or
they come in majesty bringing judgment. . . . As a general rule, the liturgy of
Christ’s Advent provided the civic triumph with its most prominent idea—an idea
that was at once widely understood, well defined, and yet flexible enough to
inspire a variety of approaches.
229

Regardless of the particularities involved concerning event and mode, when playing
Christ the monarch invariably took possession of the city, which was one way or another
always configured feminized and supplicating. In fact possession was very often
dramatized explicitly as the union of “royal bridegroom and city bride as deliberate
allusions to the union of Christ and his Church in the New Jerusalem”; not surprisingly,
according to Kipling “The Advent of the Bridegroom became one the most popular
versions of the medieval civic triumph.”
230
And though Kipling cautions us “That the
weight of evidence suggests . . . that Palm Sunday adventus did not serve as the general
prototype for civic triumphs,” a page earlier he observes that “Some civic triumphs
certainly did take this approach,” or incorporated easily recognizable features, such as the
greeting “Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini”;
231
at any rate, Parliament reacted to
the idea of an Advent with Nayler in the lead role rather than a particular version. For
instance, Damrosch quotes Welsh MP Griffith Bordurda as declaring that Nayler’s riding

96
into Bristol “was a horrid piece of pageantry and impostery, but how to call that
blasphemy in him I know not.”
232
Even disguised by elaborate symbolism as well as
equally elaborate theatricality and stagecraft, the political significance of these kinds of
dominant-subordinate roles is too obvious to require much in the way of explication—
indeed the very concept of a royal entry presupposes both the irresistible power of the
anointed sovereign as well as the acquiescence of the abject citizenry. The king always
already “came to his throne as a political Christ—as an Anointed One,” and, with his
participation and consent, his subjects celebrated the major events of his life in a
“‘material embodiment’ of an ideal political order”
233
—the key word being “ideal.” The
sovereign-as-Christ was himself a literalized metaphor in that he expressed in his person
a transcendent political reality that could be neither ignored nor refused; and nothing
drove home the literalness of that metaphor as did a royal entry, which forced people into
a communal worshipful submission, irrespective of personal sentiment. In Kipling’s
words, for subjects “As the coming of the king is like the Advent of Christ, so their
reception of their political lord is like the reception of their Saviour.”
234
These
prearranged epiphanies gave the fullest public expression possible to the concept of
government jure divino. Kipling instructs us that the epiphanic conflation of Christ and
monarch took place at the liturgical level, as it “partly derives from the coincidence that
the technical terms for princely receptions—adventus, parousia, and epiphany—became
the names of liturgical concepts as well. Readers of the Vulgate found, for example, the
Second Coming described in precisely the same language usually reserved for the
receptions of Roman emperors.”
235

97
But importantly, Kipling gives us to understand that subjects regularly articulated
their own demands of the monarch through the very acts of devotion that formed part of
these civic celebrations, and shows that this custom of admonishing the sovereign
manifested itself in virtually all entries regardless of country, England being no
exception. Drawing on contemporary accounts of the elaborate gifting incorporated into
the London “‘reconciliation’ triumph” of Richard II, Kipling lets us know that, by
offering the king “a seemingly endless series of chalices, crowns, and altarpieces . . . the
citizens of London explicitly recognize and acclaim Richard’s identity as the earthly
image of Christ the King, but at the same time their gifts explicitly confront him with the
self-sacrificial implications of the role that he demands to play.”
236
Though of course
Elizabeth I could not play Christ in an overt manner, Kipling also makes much of the
gifting that occurred during her London coronation triumph of 1559, commenting that
“The author of the Quenes Maiesties Passage repeatedly considers the exchanges
between Queen, pageant actors, and citizens to be ‘signes’ and ‘ymages’ which must be
‘noted’, ‘considered’, and interpreted for what they ‘shewed’ about the character of the
new Queen.”
237
Kipling describes Elizabeth’s entry as including so many symbolic acts
of gifting designed to elicit particular responses that she seemed “to move through the
city from one such presentation to another,” and concentrates his attention on what he
considers to have been the show’s “central epiphany”: the presentation to the queen of an
English instead of a Vulgate Bible by Truth, which cut to “the very heart of the most
essential religious and political divisions of the time.”
238
Intent on wringing from the
queen an unambiguous avowal of commitment to her Protestant subjects, citizens refused
simply to give a knight of her entourage the Bible and allow her to proceed, which is

98
what she at first attempted to have them do; instead, in a series of dramatic moves
calculated to make Elizabeth declare herself the enthusiastic champion of the Protestant
cause, they forced her to show her political hand: “as soone as she had receiued the
booke, kyssed it, and with both her handes held vp the same, and so laid it vpon her brest,
with great thankes to the citie thefore.”
239
Kipling explains that Elizabeth’s shrewd
capitulation to the role of Protestant savior was immediately authorized in writing by the
(anonymous) author of the city’s official account of the entry as proof that she was queen
“by gods appointing,” and also includes chronicler Richard Grafton’s concurring
statement that “Tyme had nowe once again restored vnto us Goddes veritye whereby the
dregges of Papistry, might bee put away.”
240

Gifting, however, was not the only means through which subjects condescended
to coerce or instruct their rulers; David Bergeron in his study of Elizabeth’s coronation
entry chooses to focus on the last pageant, which depicted Deborah surrounded by six
advisors from the three estates; Bergeron interprets the tableau as portraying the idea that
“the ruler must seek wise counsel from a range of people, including commoners.”
241
Or
when London celebrated the return of a victorious Henry V from the Battle of Agincourt,
Kipling emphasizes that the string of pageants arranged for the king’s entertainment
welcomed him to heaven “by virtue of his faithful service to the Lord rather than by right
of his own earthly glory,” and which culminated in a solar representation of God that
outshone the resplendent but merely mortal king.
242
Kipling analyzes their meaning:
The humbling of Henry’s worldly glory before the dazzling celestial glory of the
Lord here underlines the homiletic strategy of this Third Advent Triumph. On the
one hand, the King enters his earthly city triumphantly, the proud sovereign of his
people. On the other hand, he enters spiritually the city of paradise as the humble
subject of the King of Heaven. The pageantry of the civic triumph thus performs

99
a similar chastening function for the King as the funeral liturgy does for the
worshipper: by mortifying one’s mortal pride it makes one worthy of heaven.
Henry enters London as Christ once entered Jerusalem, in a ‘poor and simple
manner, conforming to the state of humilation’.
243

In royal entries monarchs played God’s Chosen, but not in a free and undirected manner;
and we might look at these cautionary stratagems as the most authentic element of the
idealized dramatic dialogue between sovereign and people. Even in a case like that of
Henry V, who in Kipling’s eyes “required no such therapeutic beating. The theme of the
pageantry reflected his own pious attitude towards Agincourt, after all,”
244
the reprimand
was significant because it came from his subjects. Scholarship indicates that if the
populace was put in the position of celebrating a fallible being as divinely appointed
ruler, it was determined to display its knowledge of the difference; Kipling tells us that
For the purposes of Henry VI’s entry into London, its portrait of a 12-year-old
Christ ‘full of wisdom and the grace of God’ could not help but suggest a parallel
to the 11-year-old child-king. If he were to fulfil England’s hopes for a messianic
ruler, as these pageants suggest, then he had best imitate the young Christ, who
began to manifest himself almost exactly at Henry’s time of life, ‘advanced in
wisdom, and age, and grace with God and men’ (Luke 2: 52).
245

Not even a child escaped censure—for it was the only time that people were allowed to
protest publicly against the imposition of sovereignty—especially sovereignty as divinely
mandated. And although Bergeron asserts that “The overtly religious presentation loses
ground in the period 1559-1604;”
246
that is from Elizabeth I to James I, arrogant James
still suffered through speeches from such classical characters as Electra, who lectured the
king (to no avail) that
Thy court be free
No lesse from envie, then from flatterie;
All tumult, faction, and harsh discord cease,
That might perturbe the musique of thy peace.
247

100
James I’s entry may not have been overtly religious—for several possible reasons—but
we do know that both he and his son (whose entry took place in Edinburgh, not London)
retained the concept of Christ the King as their own personal property.
Drifting toward Bristol in the rain and mud with his little group of disciples, intent
on flaunting his superiority to Fox in front of the resident Quaker community, Nayler had
to have been entirely unaware of the ominous figure he would represent to Parliament: a
plebian Quaker king come to seize the city yet again. Moreover, Nayler’s reenactment
was executed without invitation, and without engaging in any kind of symbolic dialogue
with Bristol’s citizens; that is, not only without their permission, but without
experiencing the rebukes that came encoded within such religiously-themed triumphs.
Leaving aside all issues pertaining to Quakerism and the Holy Spirit, to come as Christ
the King activated on its own a complex of hatred and fear; after all, Parliament had rid
itself of an anointed monarch only a few years back, and was struggling with a
recalcitrant ruler, massive unpopularity, and the very real threat of late Charles’ exiled
heir. Invoking that metaphor of unyielding political power was the worst thing Nayler
could have done. Knoppers, in her look at the iconographic difficulties of depicting
Cromwell visually and verbally as Lord Protector—who was a new type of English ruler,
ideologically at least, if not in any practical sense—claims that even Cromwell’s
somewhat low-key London triumph avoided allusions to divine-right monarchy,
celebrating instead “a new civil state based, at least ostensibly, on the will of the
people.”
248
Usurping a role reserved for royals, Nayler had unwittingly dared to do that
which even the Lord Protector would not, and once Nayler had passed through Ratcliff
Gate with his followers noising their adoration
249
his doom was sealed.
250

101
I am not suggesting that Parliament punished Nayler excessively and extra-legally
for blasphemy because it could not do so for treason; rather I mean to say that Nayler, in
impersonating the King of Kings, had confronted Parliament with the full political
ramifications of claiming to be possessed of the Holy Spirit, which rendered irrelevant to
its members any distinctions between containing Christ and being Christ—and thus it
didn’t matter if Nayler and devotees were able to distinguish under interrogation between
what Damrosch terms Nayler’s “corporeal self and the divine spirit within.”
251
Damrosch
highlights segments of the injurious Bristol report later used by Parliament that are
notable for how Nayler as well as members of his group position him, if not exactly as
Christ, as a figure so like Him through witty but maddening wordplay, simultaneously
allusive and evasive, that the two are inextricably linked without being completely
identified with each other. For example, when asked “Art thou the only Son of God?”
Nayler cleverly responds that “I am the Son of God, but I have many brethren,” and while
Damrosch enjoys pointing out the clausal and theological contradiction,
252
the fact is
Nayler not only fails to deny being Christ, he in addition intimates that there awaits an
entire army like him. And replying to the question “Are thou the unspotted Lamb of
God, that taketh away the sins of the world?” Nayler answers elusively “Were I not a
lamb, wolves would not seek to devour me,”
253
and though Damrosch focuses on the
biblical reference, Christ’s words to the original seventy, from Luke 10:3: “I send you
forth as lambs among wolves,” once more we see that Nayler does not dismiss being, in
this instance, a Christ-like figure, and again hints inferentially at possessing numerous
cohorts. And Damrosch provides excellent evidence that Simmonds for one could match
Nayler in the slipperyness of her comebacks: to begin with, she testifies that “she knew

102
James Nayler formerly; for he is now no more James Nayler, but refined to a more
excellent substance,” a statement that strategically differentiates between spiritual
sublimation and outright deification;
254
plus, when demanded if “that Spirit of Jesus,
which thou sayest is in Nayler, make him a sufficient Jesus to others,” Simmonds subtly
replies that “I tell thee, there is a seed born in him, which above all men I shall (and every
one ought to) honour,” indicating that Nayler had within him a divine spark instead of
being the “unique reincarnation of Christ ”—yet one can detect in Simmond’s language
the idea that Nayler seems to possess more godhood, qualitatively and/or quantitatively,
than any other Quaker.
255
If Nayler did not believe himself to be Christ, which is what
Damrosch, Bittle, Matthews, and Brailsford
256
all conclude, he still behaved with
supreme confidence in his godly authorization, which made him just as dangerous, if not
more so; for it was apparent to all concerned that, rather than dealing with a man they
could dismiss as a lunatic or a fraud, they were facing a charismatic individual who was
as intelligent as he was fearless. Brailsford admiringly recounts that Nayler, standing up
to his committee examiners, was “as sharp as though he were trying conclusions with a
bench of Richard Baxters,” and tenders an example: “Being asked about assuming the
title of the fairest of ten thousand, says the diarist [Thomas] Burton, ‘he shifted it notably
thus: he that as a greater measure of Christ than 10,000 below him is the fairest of
10,000.’ An ingenious reply which drew the comment from Lord Strickland: ‘I never
heard so much pride and arrogancy as this person instanced in his pleasant answer.’”
257

Brailsford insists that Nayler’s “statement was full and clear, and seems to the unbiased
mind to offer no loophole for his condemnation”
258
—as if such an assessment means
anything when compared to what was really “in the dock”—which among other things

103
were, as Hill correctly perceives, both “the whole Quaker movement . . . and the
government’s religious policy too.”
259
Parliament recognized just how dangerous Nayler
was, both in himself and the frightening revolutionary possibilities he represented. Was
Nayler a hypocrite? A liar?—no, to Parliament he was something far more menacing—a
zealot in charge of legions of zealots.
Sweetly, Brailsford eulogizes Nayler for his “high type of bravery which rises in
the presence of danger,” and (somewhat ironically) establishes him in a sequence of
praiseworthy martyrs that includes Charles I:
It was only eight years ago . . . that Charles himself had here faced his avenging
subjects, and many of the men now sitting in judgment upon Nayler had taken
part in that memorable scene when the life of the unhappy King hung in
thebalance. Whatever had been his faults of judgment, the “mad Quaker,” who
now stood before them to take his trial, was not unworthy in courage and dignity
of a place in that great succession.
260

Matthews sentimentally thinks that for posterity “it is the Parliament that tried him, and
not Nayler, that stands at the bar”;
261
and Reay dubs Parliament’s retribution “The
Passion of Nayler.”
262
Though Damrosch, like Reay, refrains from overtly describing the
members of Parliament as a group of blood-thirsty Pharisees, he titles his chapter on
Nayler’s trial and punishment “Trial and Crucifixion,” which implicitly evokes the
“Christological parallels”
263
that he sets forth as objects of analysis, and thus
contaminates his show of objectivity. These summations can be lumped with those of
Hume and Carlyle in terms of mischaracterizing the entire situation and its players. It is
easy to look back and discover “Christological parallels” in the persecution of the lone
and helpless by the many and powerful, a circumstance that makes for great drama—but
this is history. That Parliament would expend its time and energy not only on

104
prosecuting Nayler but devising (to its collective mind) the perfect punishment, instead of
concentrating on other, seemingly more pressing problems, indicates its perception of the
extent of the Quaker threat, personified in its leader, and the danger of toleration in
general. Restating Hill, Bittle stresses that “Clearly the concern was for the Quaker
movement as a whole, and Nayler was a symbol of that movement. Quakerism was the
real defendant, as was the principle that many believed had spawned it – the liberty of
conscience provided by the Instrument.”
264

The Second Protectorate Parliament that Cromwell opened on September 17,
1656 was not composed of a particularly happy or politically unified group of men;
Christopher Durston, in his book on the disastrous rule of major-generals in relation to
godly government, claims that “even after the substantial purge of early September, many
of those who took their seats displayed little enthusiasm for the government and its
objectives.”
265
Broadly speaking, the remaining members of Parliament were well aware
of the nation’s rapidly-growing displeasure with Cromwell’s high-taxing military regime
and his abandonment of all republican pretence,
266
irrespective of how each felt about the
situation; and more specifically, a great many members were chafing, along with the rest
of the country, against Cromwell’s almost universally hated rule of major-generals,
which after Nayler’s trial would be brought to an end by the voting down of a militia bill
that was to have provided them with a permanent source of revenue through which they
could fund their rule.
267
Furthermore, members were preoccupied with figuring out how
to finance a war against Spain.
268
And wending its way through all these issues was the
specter of the ever-present and vexing problem of religious toleration, which to
Damrosch, quoting Blair Worden, owed its existence mostly to “the difficulty of stopping

105
it”
269
—but Nayler would provide Parliament with an opportunity to vent its frustration.
Brailsford tells us that “In spite of its careful purging, this second and last Parliament of
Oliver Cromwell’s was composed of many warring and irreconcilable elements, upon
which the prisoner acted as a touchstone.”
270
(Rewording Brailsford, Damrosch proceeds
to describe the Parliament of 1656 as a “potentially uncooperative body, and one that
would welcome a test case on the issue of religious toleration.”
271
These kinds of
restatements contribute to what I have called the regressive quality to Nayler’s story.)
The length of the debates over Nayler’s guilt, and especially over his sentencing, derived
not so much from incompetency, or the need to rehash the same material to no point, but
from the difficulty of inducing these opposing voices to speak in unison about a case of
the utmost importance, not only because of divergent opinions concerning Nayler’s
punishment, but also because of a profound lack of surety over process. Through
Nayler it swiftly became apparent that the 1653 Instrument of Government, upon which
the Commons based its authority, was disturbingly unclear as to the extent of its legal
powers; Damrosch remarks that “The now-abolished House of Lords formerly had the
right to sentence certain malefactors, but it was far from certain whether that right had
passed to the Commons, and even if it had, whether it was applicable in this case.”
272

Though they concentrate on different aspects of Nayler’s trial, both Bittle and
Damrosch think of it as catalytic in terms of exposing deficiencies in the Instrument of
Government as well as the Protectorate itself. Bittle informs us that after the
cumbersome fifty-five member committee assigned to investigate Nayler had completed
its task, the debate “occupied the majority of Parliament’s time for three weeks and
involved some 103 speakers,” breaking down “almost immediately upon the question of

106
procedure”
273
that further hampered the chances of any neat and speedy resolution. As
Bittle sees it, Parliament was faced with three fundamental questions pertaining to issues
of legality: “should it accept the report of the committee and by doing so establish
Nayler’s guilt, or should it first hear him in his own defense; was there a law to cover
Nayler’s offense; should it proceed legislatively by passing a bill of attainder or a law ex
post facto to cover the offense, or judicially after the manner of the now defunct House of
Lords?”
274
While Parliament stumbled over the problem of sequence regarding the
establishment of Nayler’s guilt, it was determined to find him guilty; however, it was also
confronted with the difficulty of definition in that the articles of the Instrument were
devised in such a way as to make prosecuting Nayler impossible, unless it was for, as
Damrosch writes, either “‘civil injury and actual disturbance of the public peace’ . . . or
else for the practice of ‘licentiousness.’”
275
In addition there was the sticky problem of
penalty; Damrosch explains that “The Blasphemy Act prescribed no greater punishment
than six months in prison for a first offense and banishment for later ones. This must
have seemed inconveniently lenient, and still more awkwardly, the 1653 Instrument of
Government could be supposed to have superseded the Blasphemy Act with still milder
penalties.”
276
Parliament’s main concern was how to negotiate the constraints it was
under due to the Blasphemy Act as well as the Instrument of Government; Damrosch
describes the reasoning by which members were able to circumvent all obstacles,
including Cromwell himself:
Parliament would have to develop new rules as it went along, either by acting as a
judicial body (though there was much doubt about the constitutionality of doing
so) or by creating new legislation to meet the case (though many members
disliked the expedient of post facto punishment under a law that had not yet
existed when the offense was committed). To act as a legislative body would

107
require Cromwell’s concurrence, which it was well known he would be reluctant
to grant. The only alternative, and the one that was settled on in the end, was to
regard this Parliament as a judicial body and to punish blasphemy according to
criteria defined by itself.
277

Furthermore, since the existing penalties were not stringent enough to satisfy the majority
of members, Parliament reserved the right to impose new ones more to its liking,
278

which it of course did. Damrosch feels that underscoring Parliament’s fixation with
making an example of Nayler was the pressing need to “relegitimate the precarious new
establishment’s sense of itself as aligned with the true order of the universe”
279
—which
meant squashing all discourses that disseminated competing versions of that order—and
radical prophetic discourse was one of the most threatening, especially because of the
Protectorate’s unpopularity. The major-generals had together accomplished little except
to reveal how resistant most of the nation was to conforming to their standards of godly
behavior,
280
and Parliament had to do something that would reinforce the idea of the
Protectorate as being divinely mandated (at least to itself!), despite the un-Puritanical but
politically expedient presumption of claiming to know God’s will; William Lamont, with
a touch of elegant irony, articulates this paradoxical dilemma nicely: “Bound up
inseparably with the concept of ‘Godly Rule’ was confidence in the ability of read the
Mind of God: to know the type of rule that would be pleasing to him. . . . Strictly
speaking there is no reason why this should be so. It was, after all, a central tenet of
Calvinism that God was Inscrutable.”
281
However else this combat of saints can be made
to signify, undeniably the stakes involved the right to speak for God and thus to rule in
His name, and Parliament used Nayler to help ensure that this privilege remained with the

108
Protectorate, as the authority it bestowed was the means by which the government could
rationalize its militarism.
282

Foucault’s theory that power cannot be exercised except through the production
of truth
283
is especially relevant in that, from the outset of the trial, members of
Parliament had no qualms about yoking together religious and political language to
advance a self-serving agenda anymore than did Nayler himself. To control God’s
discourse is to be able to generate a truth that is as powerful as it is specific; in a
theocracy no truth is simultaneously more powerful and specific than speaking in God’s
name—nothing can assault it or vitiate its strength. For example, Damrosch outlines
Major-General Phillip Skippon’s tirade against Quakers, which opened the debate:
Their great growth and increase is too notorious, both in England and Ireland;
their principles strike both at ministry and magistracy. Many opinions are in this
nation (all contrary to the government) which would join in one to destroy, if it
should please God to deliver the sword into their hands. Should we not be as
jealous of God’s honour as we are of our own?
284

Damrosch considers Skippon’s speech instrumental in setting up “the profoundly
ambiguous terms of the entire inquiry” as “Ostensibly it is a defense of God’s honor
against blasphemy, but the subtext is always the threat to established government if too
much toleration were allowed.”
285
I argue that the sense of danger is not subtextual but
actually the political component of a feeling of religious insecurity; the two are
interpenetrating in ways that secular minds have trouble fathoming. The foes of the
regime do not possess the glorious truth, only “opinions”—yet God might be willing to
allow them political ascendancy, if members fail to condemn Nayler—that is to fail to
make sure that God is satisfied and Parliament vindicated, which to Skippon is the same
thing. Damrosch does come around to saying as much on the next page: “As always, the

109
religious arguments are felt to support the political ones; indeed, political arguments are
religious ones.”
286
And citing Mosaic law, Major-General Boteler was for stoning Nayler
to death (as were many others), and provided the same obviously political reason as
Skippon: “They [the Quakers] are generally despisers of your government, contemn your
magistracy and ministry, and trample it under their feet.”
287
(Since the much-resented
rule of major-generals was dedicated to promoting a more godly society, those who were
able to get themselves elected to Parliament were quite vested in quashing the Quakers
through Nayler.) Colonel Robert Wilson also stressed the Quaker’s threat to the socio-
political order: “These vipers are crept into the bowels of your commonwealth, and the
government too. They grow numerous, and swarm all the nation over; every county,
every parish. I shall turn quaker too, but not in that sense.”
288
To rehearse more
members’ arguments concerning why Nayler should be punished would be both tedious
and pointless—after weeks of frustrating and exhausting argument, Parliament would do
what it had intended to do all along, which was to find Nayler guilty of blasphemy in an
attempt to neutralize him and the Quaker movement. It had no choice in the matter, as
the power to designate the heretical, one of the most important weapons in the arsenal of
religious truth, could not be allowed to slip from its grasp. Damrosch intelligently
evaluates heresy “as a competing value-system whose status as heresy is a function of the
power structure that keeps it below ground. When it surfaces, stimulated by a period of
open debate, it manifests itself as heresy, or at least is so defined by those who reject
it.”
289
The Quakers had for years promulgated such a competing value-system, one that
was powerful enough to be self-legitimizing, for though it had been contested repeatedly
throughout the country during that period of time as being heretical, it had so far proven

110
itself capable not only of surviving, but thriving under conditions of persecution, as it
configured abuse as displays of divine approbation. And up until Nayler’s trial (and for
some time after) this value-system had shown itself so strong it could neither be
eradicated nor driven underground, because it was founded, as was the Puritans’, on the
ability to speak for God. The battle of saints was ultimately a struggle for the sacred
megaphone. It’s no coincidence that MP Mr. Downing regarded the entire House,
according to Brailsford, as “God’s executioners.”
290

And the protracted dithering over Nayler’s punishment in great part resulted from
worrying about the difference between making an example of him and martyring him,
which many members were afraid would happen if he were sentenced to death;
Damrosch puts forward Colonel Thomas Cooper as foreseeing the negative repercussions
that would arise from Nayler’s execution: “I would have you use some endeavour to
suppress the growth of them [the Quakers] in general. If you take this man’s blood, you
do certainly lay a foundation for them. Instead of taking away Quakerism, you establish
it.”
291
There is some evidence that Nayler indeed sought martyrdom—or at least desired
to be seen as a martyr figure; Brailsford refers to passages from Burton’s diary in which
Nayler volunteers statements concerning his understanding of his participation in the sign
that, more than simply repudiate all feelings of personal glory, convey the idea that he
had acted completely against his own will at God’s command. For instance he exclaims:
“I do abhor that any honour due to God should be given to me as I am a creature. But it
pleased the Lord to set me up as a sign of the coming of the Righteous One. And what
has been done as I passed through the towns, I was commanded by the Lord to suffer
such things to be done by me, as to the outward, as a sign, not as I am a creature.”
292

111
Note the agentless passive construction “And what has been done,” as well as the clause
“I was commanded by the Lord to suffer such things to be done by me”; Nayler’s initial
and unqualified (“I do abhor”) disavowal of the pleasure of recognition is complemented
at the grammatical level by a strenuous denial of agency. Moreover, Nayler reinforces
this denial through the infinitive “to suffer,” which accentuates the uncontrollable nature
of his actions—as if he is a helpless and pained witness to behaviors he cannot govern.
Even more explicitly, Nayler insists that “There was never anything since I was born so
much against my will and mind as this thing, to be set up as a sign in my going into these
towns, for I knew that I should lay down my life for it. I was set up as a sign to summon
this nation and to convince them of Christ’s coming. The fulness of Christ’s coming is
not yet, but He is come now.”
293
Not only does Nayler once again reject both eminence
and agency, he appears to ask for martyrdom as a means of expressing the extent of his
reluctance as well as of substantiating his prophetic vision of himself as the spiritual
advance guard, so to speak, of Christ’s Second Coming. Taking his cue (and some of his
material) from Brailsford, Damrosch also inserts into his rendition of the trial Nayler’s
protestations to Parliament of being under holy compulsion, and his surety of martyrdom,
as in this assertion: “It was the Lord’s will, to give it into me to suffer such things to be
done in me; and I durst not resist it, though I was sure to lay down my life for it.”
294
This
resort to the excuse of the involuntary as a means of authenticating the presence of the
indwelling Spirit is as we know characteristic of the Quaker concept of election; we can
think back on earlier discussions of conscience and its directives, signs in general, and
especially the phenomenon of physical quaking. But to Parliament the involuntary
element was precisely the most threatening aspect of prophetic discourse as it manifested

112
itself in Quakerism, in that it was impervious to reasoning, intimidation, or threats.
Brailsford despairs that
the prejudices of his judges had been already enlisted by his conscientious refusal
to salute them: ‘Not a cap to you!’ cried the irrepressible Mr. Downing to his
fellow-members after the prisoner had retired. ‘Yet he will take cap, knee, kisses,
and all reverence,’ and this argumentum ad hominum went far to blot out any
good impression Nayler may have made by his explanation.
295

As she does consistently throughout her narrative, Brailsford ignores the political
implications of one farmer defying hundreds of the most powerful men in the nation, and
doing so in all calmness and humility. Though some members were more sympathetic to
Nayler than others, it was impossible for his explanation to make a good impression on
them—what Brailsford sees as an ad hominum attack was a quite reasonable response to
the personification of a threat that came before the Protectorate had amassed enough time
and stability to translate itself into a blessed state of being (that is, disseminate its own
specific discourse of government jure divino—though given the regime’s unpopularity, I
doubt that this ever would have happened), as it was still apparent to everyone that it held
sway only through the army. Rhetorical contests could not be tolerated, for it was
frighteningly obvious to Parliament that the truth was up for grabs; the power to control
God and thus ground meaning had at this juncture been reduced to who wielded the
sword. And Parliament would defend that power by humiliating and torturing Nayler,
then shutting him away.
Nayler was denied the martyrdom he seemed to have been requesting and,
languishing in Bridewell, had time to reconsider his Bristol exploit, which in Damrosch’s
language, “came at a particularly inopportune moment in their [the Quakers’] struggle to
win greater toleration”;
296
both Brailsford and Damrosch tell of Nayler’s grief over the

113
trouble he had caused the movement, expressed in a series of letters written during his
imprisonment.
297
Damrosch, referring to a short pamphlet that in his opinion constitutes
Nayler’s fullest attempt to interpret his fall from grace, “To the Life of God in All”
(1659), cites passages in which Nayler admits that he succumbed to a failure of judgment
brought on by privileging his followers’ adulation over his attention to the Spirit, as in the
following:
but when I reasoned against his tender reproof, and consulted with another, and so
let the creatures into my affections, then his temple was defiled through lust, and
his pure Spirit was grieved, and his pure Spirit was grieved, and he ceased to
reprove, and he gave me up, and his light he withdrew, and his judgment took
away; and so the body of death and sin revived again, and I possessed afresh the
iniquities of my youth, and that which had of old been buried arose and stood
against me, and so the temple was filled with darkness and the power of death,
and my heart with sorrow, and Satan daily at my right hand to tempt me farther to
provoke the Lord, and to take away my life.
298

Damrosch comments that “The God who could enter Nayler could also withdraw,
precipitating his fall into the merely carnal condition, that Paul, that great theorist of
dualism, lamented so passionately”
299
—but more interestingly, we might ponder the
disturbing implications of such impermanence, which no one else seems to do. The fact
that Nayler, the most politically aggressive Quaker leader, who based his authority on
firm possession of the indwelling Spirit, could be corrupted and led astray, undermined
the entire foundation of Quaker subjectivity, especially as put forward by Nayler himself,
which was that, once redeemed, always redeemed, that sin was eternally eradicated—and
if this were not the case, among other questions, how could Quakers claim exemption
from laws meant to govern the rest of fallen humanity?—or for that matter, believe
themselves to be better equipped to rule than those already in power? Though this is

114
impossible to determine, I wonder if Nayler experienced episodes of quaking after the
Spirit had withdrawn from his person.
Yet despite the damage Nayler had done to the Quaker movement, both in terms
of division within and persecution from without, almost immediately after his release
from Bridewell his persuasive talents were once again in demand. Nayler’s eloquent
penitence reestablished his prominence, though to his sorrow Fox would have nothing to
do with him. Brailsford recounts that
By the end of October, about a month from the time of his release from Bridewell,
he was addressing great meetings in London, and strangers who flocked to hear
him went away convinced of the truth of his message. While still under the cloud
of Fox’s censure, he seems to have recovered his position as the Friends’
spokesman, and through the autumn and winter his pen was busy on public
matters.
300

Bittle confirms that “Although Nayler was again the leading preacher in London, Fox
made no move to see him.”
301
Eventually a reconciliation of sorts between the former
rivals took place in which Nayler kneeled to Fox, though Bittle contends that Fox had
forgiven him nothing;
302
and Damrosch thinks that a few months after their meeting Fox,
threatened by Nayler’s resurgent popularity, sent him on a fateful journey home to visit
his family in Yorkshire, as on route he was bound and robbed, and died.
303
Both
Brailsford and Bittle castigate Fox for his treatment of Nayler; Brailsford finds it difficult
to forgive Fox for “the unrelenting harshness he showed Nayler in this crisis of his
fortunes,”
304
and Bittle especially takes a vengeful attitude toward Fox’s behavior,
condemning it unqualifiedly as “a mark on the character of George Fox”:
305

Stirred by Nayler’s move to supplant him, Fox’s animosity accompanied him to
the grave. Although Fox emerged from the schism as the undisputed leader of the
movement and consented to a public show of reconciliation for the sake of unity,
he was never able truly to forgive Nayler, whose significance receded in the

115
histories of the movement. In his journal, written years afterwards, references to
Nayler are extremely limited, and, while Fox lived, no edition of Nayler’s works
appeared in print.
306

But in Fox’s defense, why anyone would expect him to feel differently about Nayler, a
man who not only repaid friendship, opportunity, and fame with betrayal, but whose
personal ambition injured the movement that Fox had inaugurated, and to which he had
devoted his entire being, mystifies me. Rehabilitating Nayler and celebrating his
achievements as Quaker proselytizer is indeed laudable, but it need not come at the
expense of Fox who, whatever his faults, had given meaning, worth, and a mission to the
lives of thousands of people. And one should be generous to Fox, for in a way Nayler
has the last word: ironically the oft-repeated final speech attributed to Nayler, supposedly
issued from his death-bed, anticipates the Quakers’ eventual retreat into pacifistic
isolation and repudiation of their early wild antinomianism:
There is a Spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong,
but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end: Its Hope is to
outlive all Wrath and Contention, and to weary out all Exaltation and Cruelty or
whatever is of a Nature contrary to it self. It sees to the End of all Temptations:
As it bears no Evil in it self so it conceives none in Thoughts to any other: If it be
betrayed it bears it; for its Ground and Spring is the Mercies and Forgiveness of
God. Its Crown is Meekness, its Life is Everlasting Life unfeigned, and takes its
Kingdom with Intreaty and not with Contention, and Keeps it by Lowliness of
Mind. In God alone it can rejoice though none else regard it, or can own its Life.
It’s conceived in Sorrow, and brought forth without any to pity it: nor doth it
murmur at Grief and Oppression. It never rejoyceth, but through Sufferings; for
with the World’s Joy it is murthered. I found it alone being forsaken; I have
Fellowship therein, with them who lived in Dens, and desolate places in the Earth,
who through Death obtained this Resurrection and Eternal Holy Life.
307

While Brailsford and Bittle assume this speech to be Nayler’s without question,
Damrosch voices some skepticism: “the cadences do not sound much like his and seem
too artfully contrived for a dying man; if he did indeed express some version of these

116
remarks, somebody else must have edited them afterward.”
308
If these last words are
indeed Nayler’s, they signal a complete rejection of his activism of only a few years
before; gone are all traces of the angry prophetic militancy that had shaped his former
literary personality, which has been replaced by the humility of someone who hopes to
acquire in the next world what has been denied him in this one. Intriguingly, however,
despite employing Christian sentiment and terminology, Nayler’s religious affiliation
remains unclear in that he fails to mention Christ throughout, and in the last sentence
makes the notably un-Puritanical verbal assumption of a guaranteed eternal salvation.
Who are they, with whom Nayler has “Fellowship”?—prophets? apostles?—and who is
Nayler himself, who “through Death obtained this Resurrection and Eternal Holy Life”?
Yet what appears to be no mystery to anyone is that Cromwell (Damrosch calls
him an “ambiguous figure”
309
), who did not enjoy summoning Parliaments anymore than
his predecessor Charles I, in Hill’s language, “made political use of the Nayler case to
manoeuvre the Army into accepting Parliament’s Petition and Advice, a constitution
which established something like the traditional monarchy and state church, and
drastically limited the area of religious toleration.”
310
Bittle insists that Cromwell has
been unfairly criticized for his behavior concerning Nayler’s trial and punishment as
being “too little too late,” arguing that “it is difficult to see what action he could have
taken at that time which would have been effective”;
311
but fails to perceive that
Cromwell let Parliament do what it wanted with Nayler to play up his inability to control
it, issuing a much-after-the-fact warning to Parliament-suspicious army officers stating as
much, summarized by Burton:

117
It is time to come to a settlement, and lay aside arbitrary proceedings, so
unacceptable to the nation. And by the proceedings of this Parliament, you see
they stand in need of a check, or balancing power (meaning the House of Lords,
or a House so constituted) for the case of James Nayler might happen to be your
own case. By their judicial power they fall upon life and member, and doth the
Instrument enable me to control it?
312

Though Bittle gives Cromwell the benefit of the doubt, he does understand that “The
House had unilaterally tried and sentenced a man without a law and without any clear
constitutional authority to do so. It was an action which was not to pass unnoticed.”
313

After Nayler’s London scourging, Cromwell, petitioned to remit the remaining portion of
Nayler’s punishment, refused to do so, but even before his message to the army officers,
had used the request as an opportunity to put Parliament on the defensive, slyly querying
“Having taken notice of a sentence by you given against one James Nayler, albeit we do
abhor such wicked opinions and practices, we, being interested in the government, desire
to know the grounds and reasons how you proceeded herein without our consent.”
314

Using Nayler as leverage, Cromwell was able to get all concerned parties to agree to the
Humble Petition and Advice, which diluted the power of the Commons by reestablishing
an Upper House, and made him king in all but name—and while Damrosch assumes that
Cromwell refused the actual title of king because he feared the army’s resistance,
315
by
retaining his current title he was able to evade the constraints of monarchic convention.
316

Like Nayler, Cromwell himself claimed that he derived his authority from God.
317

118

Chapter One Endnotes

1
Mabel Richmond Brailsford, to whom later historians are much indebted, writes of Nayler’s punishment
in great detail in her biography, A Quaker From Cromwell’s Army: James Nayler (1927), pp. 147-156;
interestingly, no one depicts Nayler’s punishment in quite the same way.
2
Change and Continuity in 17
th
-Century England (1991), p. 60. Hill says virtually thing the same thing in
The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution (1972): “In England the
revolutionary decades gave wide publicity to what was almost a new profession—the prophet, whether as
interpreter of the stars, or of traditional popular myths, or of the Bible,” p. 73.

3
A Quaker From Cromwell’s Army, p. 176.

4
The World Turned Upside Down, p. 176.

5
Blown by the Spirit: Puritanism and the Emergence of an Antinomian Underground in Pre-Civil-War
England (2004), p. 139.

6
The World Turned Upside Down, p. 199.

7
Ibid., p. 200.

8
Ibid., pp. 294-295.

9
The Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus: James Nayler and the Puritan Crackdown on the Free Spirit (1996), p.
1.

10
Ibid., p. 2.

11
James Nayler 1618 – 1660: The Quaker Indicted by Parliament (1986), p. 161.

12
Ibid., p. 2.

13
A Quaker, p. 146.

14
Ibid., p. 40.

15
Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution—Revisited (1997), p. 299.

16
The World Turned Upside Down, p. 310.

17
“An Horation Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland” (1650), (ll.116-120). Marvell’s rather
unsubtle critique of Cromwell has as a source Lucan’s unflattering picture of Caesar in his satiric epic
Pharsalia. While this is not the time and place for a lengthy comparison, observe that, like Caesar, whose
“courage had no thought of / standing still; he only blanched at a bloodless victory” (I.144-145), “So
restless Cromwell could not cease / In the inglorious arts of peace” (ll.9-10). Also note Marvell’s modeling
of the self-restrained courage of Charles I at his execution (ll.57-64) on that of Pompey’s at his
assassination (VIII.613-636, 665-666), and especially the explicit comparison between Charles’ “comely
head” (l.63) and “the stern beauty of . . . [Pompey’s] sacred visage” (VIII.664)—both being in similar
instances that “bleeding head” (l.69) which founds “The Capitol’s first line” (l.68). In addition Marvell
calls Cromwell “the Wars’ and Fortune’s son” (l. 113), which echoes Lucan’s portrait of Caesar as

119

Fortune’s favorite (IV.121), for whom “everything goes / to advance . . . [his] destiny” (IV.143-144). And
like Lucan’s Caesar, who plunders “Saturn’s treasury temple” (III.115), and despoils a sacred grove
(III.399-452), Marvell’s Cromwell “palaces and temples rent” (l.22), ultimately outdoing Caesar himself in
ruthlessness: “And Caeser’s head at last / Did through his laurels blast” (ll.23-24). Laura Lunger Knoppers,
in her work on the problematics of representing Cromwell, Constructing Cromwell: Ceremony, Portrait,
and Print, 1645—1661 (2000), claims that, among other things, “Marvell engages and directly rebuts what
Milton would call the ‘detractions rude’ of satire on Cromwell, and in particular the attacks on Cromwell as
Machiavellian hypocrite” (p. 53). Obviously she didn’t read Pharsalia (or chose to ignore it!)—and if the
“Ode” remained unpublished (p. 53), Marvell had good reason to leave it so. I do like Knoppers’ book and
rely on it later in this chapter, but I strongly disagree with her reading of the “Ode.”

18
A Quaker, p. 33; James Nayler 1618 – 1660, p. 5; The Sorrows, p. 83.

19
A Quaker, p. 35; The Sorrows, p. 17.

20
James Nayler 1618 – 1660, p, 3.

21
Ibid., p. 176.

22
Damrosch tells us that “Since Quaker prayers and sermons were supposed to be spontaneous, they were
never written down in advance and very rarely afterward” (The Sorrows, p. 82).

23
The Quakers and the English Revolution (1985), p. 1.

24
The World Turned Upside Down, p. 187.

25
The Quakers and the English Revolution, p. 44.

26
Ibid., p. 27.

27
Ibid., p. 11.

28
Ibid., p. 81.

29
Ibid., pp. 7-8, 14, 34.

30
A Quaker, pp. 41, 40.

31
The World Turned Upside Down, p. 22. In her article “Heresy, Orthodoxy, and the Politics of Religious
Discourse” (1988), Janet E. Halley asserts that the Family of Love’s “most specific and enduring influence”
was on the Quakers (p. 304), and that leader Hendrick Niclae’s works were published in translation by
Giles Calvert (p. 303), who, though Halley doesn’t say, was along with Thomas Simmonds a major Quaker
publisher.

32
The Sorrows, p. 245.

33
James Nayler 1618 – 1660, pp. 25-26. For those who are interested in Quaker antecedal groups, Bittle
in his bibliography provides an extensive list of scholars who have written on the subject. Also, in his
study of early seventeenth-century antinomianism Como identifies several other groups that appear to have
influenced the Quakers, but points out the Grindletonians specifically as “an ideological precursor to the
Quaker movement” (Blown by the Spirit, p. 324), explaining that “Together, the ravages of time and

120

competition from Quakerism appear to have ensure that there would be no third generation to perpetuate
the gospel of Roger Brearley. Yet this masks the fact that even as Quakerism put a nail in the coffin of the
Grindletonians, so too Quakerism was almost certainly the unwitting progeny of Grindletonian divinity”
(pp. 323-324).

34
Ibid., p. 2.

35
The Sorrows, pp. 70, 75.

36
The World Turned Upside Down, p. 147.

37
The Sorrows, p. 169.

38
James Nayler 1618 – 1660, p. 38.

39
Intellectual Origins, p. 342.

40
In his chapter “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” from his book Lenin and Philosophy and
Other Essays (1971), Althusser postulates that ideologies “whatever their form (religious, ethical, legal,
political), always express class positions” (p. 159); this appraisal neatly fits the situation of sectaries in
England during the 1640s and 50s. Everything I have read so far regarding sects admits of, in Hill’s
language, “the intimate connexion of radical religious ideas and radical politics” (Intellectual Origins, p.
339).

41
The Persecutory Imagination: English Puritanism and the Literature of Religious Despair (1991), p. 62.

42
Ibid., p. 54.

43
Ibid., pp. 77, 152-153, 182, 195, 250.

44
The World Turned Upside Down, p. 125.

45
Ibid., p. 135.

46
The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics (1965), pp. ix, 252, 216.

47
Ibid., p. 226.

48
Intellectual Origins, p. 334.

49
Change and Continuity, pp. 201-202.

50
The Sorrows, p. 75.

51
The World Turned Upside Down, p. 79.

52
James Nayler 1618 – 1660, p. 30. Much has been written on Puritan attempts to altogether subjugate the
hated, feared, and damned “multitude,” which included the lower and middle orders of society and were
therefore at the mercy of what Stachniewski calls “the menacing volatility of the economy from the late
sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth century” (The Persecutory Imagination, p. 6). Among my sources, see
Christopher Hill particularly, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English

121

Revolution, chapter three, “Masterless Men;” chapter eight, “Sin and Hell;” and chapter sixteen, “Life and
Death;” Change and Continuity in Seventeenth-Century England, chapter eight, “The Many-Headed
Monster;” chapter nine, “A One-Class Society?;” and chapter ten, “Pottage for Freeborn Englishmen:
Attitudes to Wage-Labor;” “Postscript to Chapter 8: The Many Headed Monster;” Intellectual Origins of
the English Revolution Revisited, chapter eight, “Religion, Politics, and Economics;” chapter twelve, “The
Many-Headed Monster;” chapter thirteen, “A Three-Sided Revolution.” Also Michael Walzer, The
Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics, chapter five, “The Attack Upon the
Traditional World,” and chapter six, “The New World of Discipline and Work.”

53
“Introduction,” The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection (1997), p. 2.

54
Ibid., p. 15.

55
Ibid., p. 16.

56
“THE Power and Glory of the LORD Shining out of the NORTH, OR THE Day of the LORD Dawning”
p. 1-2.

57
Ibid., p. 2.

58
Ibid., p. 3.

59
Ibid., p. 2.

60
The Revolution of the Saints, p. 145.

61
“THE Power and Glory,” p. 4.

62
Ibid., p. 4.

63
Ibid., p. 4.

64
Ibid., p. 24.

65
Ibid., p. 5.

66
Ibid., p. 4.

67
Ibid., p. 7.

68
The World Turned Upside Down, p. 76.

69
The Politics of Revelation in the English Renaissance (1998), pp. 49-52.

70
Ibid., p. 50.

71
Reay brings up the necessity of resorting to “massive quotations or to reprints to really convey the power,
the sheer apocalyptic fervour” of radical prose (The Quakers, p. 44).

72
The Sorrows, p. 80. This idea does not originate with Cope; he in fact takes it from Anna Cox
Brightman, in her article “The Function of Quaker Literature,” Friends’ Quarterly Examiner, LXVI (1932),
p. 367.

122

73
“Seventeenth-Century Quaker Style” (1956), passim.

74
The Sorrows, p. 81.

75
Change and Continuity, p. 204.

76
Ibid., pp. 280-281.

77
The Sorrows, p. 27.

78
“Seventeenth-Century Quaker Prose,” p. 729.

79
Ibid., p. 737.

80
“THE Power and Glory,” p. 1.

81
“Seventeenth-Century Quaker Prose,” p. 736.

82
The World Turned Upside Down, p. 197.

83
“THE QUAKERS QUAKING: OR, The Foundation of their Deceit shaken” p. 7.

84
Ibid., p. 8.

85
Ibid., p. 9.

86
“THE Power and Glory,” p. 15.

87
Ibid., p. 2.

88
Ibid., p. 3.

89
The Revolution of the Saints, p. 121.

90
The Sorrows, p. 85.

91
Ibid., p. 70.

92
“WEAKNES above WICKEDNES, AND TRUTH above SUBTILTY” (1656), p. 16.

93
“THE QUAKERS QUAKING,” p. v.

94
“WEAKNES above WICKEDNES,” p. 16

95
“THE QUAKERS QUAKING,” p. 21.

96
“WEAKNES above WICKEDNES,” p. 12.

97
“THE Power and Glory,” p. 4.

98
“THE QUAKERS QUAKING,” p. 23.

123

99
“WEAKNES above WICKEDNES,” p. 13.

100
The Sorrows, p. 114.

101
To Brailsford “The Quakers showed themselves the most uncompromising of all sects” (A Quaker, p.
187).

102
“THE Power and Glory,” p. 10.

103
The Sorrows, pp. 25-26.

104
“Two Lectures,” Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews & Other Writings 1972 – 1977, p. 93.

105
The Language of Politics in Seventeenth-Century England (1994), p. 58.

106
“Introduction,” The Psychic Life of Power, p. 17.

107
Ibid., p. 29.

108
The Sorrows, p. 25.

109
Ibid., p. 88.

110
Reay assumes uncomplicatedly that the Quakers privileged the Holy Spirit above scripture (The
Quakers, p. 34); Bittle recognizes Quaker reliance on scripture, but discusses it in relation to theology and
doctrine, while ignoring its political import (James Nayler 1618 – 1660, pp. 35-36).

111
“THE Power and Glory,” p. 21.

112
Ibid., p. 11.

113
The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution (1993), p. 34.

114
“THE Power and Glory,” pp. 2-3.

115
Leviathan, 1.7.4.

116
“THE Power and Glory,” p. 14.

117
Ibid., p. 6.

118
For some reason I am minded of Milton’s angels, who “All heart they live, all head, all eye, all ear / All
intellect, all sense” (Paradise Lost [1674], VI.350-351).

119
“Two Lectures,” p. 97.

120
The Quakers, p. 57.

121
“Ideology,” pp. 177-178, 147.

122
The Revolution of the Saints, pp. 2-3.

124

123
“THE Power and Glory,” p. 4.

124
The Sorrows, p. 65.

125
Ibid., p. 28.

126
Ibid., p. 51. Virtually all radical critics focused their attacks on these two institutions, or as Damrosch
words it, the “intertwined branches of a single institution” (p. 51).

127
“THE Power and Glory,” pp. 6-7.

128
This figure of Christ with a sword issuing from his mouth comes from Revelation 1:16, 2:12, 2:16,
19:15, and 19:21; Nayler does not provide a reference, which could be due to Revelation’s highly
politicized exegetical tradition.

129
Ibid., p. 10.

130
Ibid., p. 14.

131
The English Bible, p.200. Discussing the Quakers’ exploitation of the revolutionary potential of the
example of Jacob and Esau, Hill quotes Fox in his pamphlet “The Lamb’s Officer” (1659) as reminding
readers that the ministry has “‘sold your birthright for a mess of pottage, Esau-like, hunting up and down
with this sword to kill and slay just Jacob and get great benefits . . . . But now the younger brother is risen,
and the elder shall be servants,’” noting that Fox too was “concerned not only with the liberation of the
oppressed but also with the punishment of the oppressors” (p. 242).

132
“THE Power and Glory,” p. 15.

133
The Sorrows, p. 185.

134
“THE Power and Glory,” p. 1.

135
The World Turned Upside Down, p. 135.

136
Ibid., p. 80.

137
James Nayler 1618 – 1660, p. 15.

138
The Quakers, p. 57.

139
Change and Continuity, p. 29.

140
Gangraena, p. 185.

141
Ibid., p. 187.

142
“THE Power and Glory,” p. 2.

143
Ibid., p. 9.

144
The Sorrows, p. 79.

125

145
“THE Power and Glory,” pp. 20-21.

146
Ibid., pp. 20, 21.

147
Ibid., pp. 20, 6.

148
Ibid., p. 7.

149
In Nuttall’s informative and influential study of the seventeenth century’s fascination with the doctrine
of the Holy Spirit, The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience (1946), he describes how various
people from Cromwell to Fox participated in the running controversy of “whether the Spirit which was in
those who wrote the Scriptures can be in contemporaries; and if so, whether, or how far, in the same mode”
(p. 28); but he explains this dispute in terms of being only a religious and theological issue, and ignores its
enormous socio-political implications. And while he devotes a great deal of space to Quakers, defining the
differences between their attitude toward the Holy Spirit and that of their Puritan adversaries, he ultimately
insists that “it may prove possible for the conflicting convictions of Puritans and Quakers eventually to be
embraced in a new unity” (p. 168)—which seems to me to be inconceivable, except that both parties were
concerned with the same thing for the same reasons.

150
The World Turned Upside Down, p. 131-136.

151
Regardless of women’s subordinate status in the Quaker movement, their active participation of itself
threatened the unity of what Althusser calls the “Church-Family couple” (“Ideology,” p. 154). Though I
don’t plan to discuss Quaker women prophets of themselves, there are several books out that do, for
instance: Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England (1992), by Phyllis Mack;
Quaker Women Prophets in England and Wales, 1650-1700 (2000), by Christine Trevett; Political
Speaking Justified: Women Prophets and the English Revolution (2006), by Teresa Feroli.

152
“THE Power and Glory,” p. 8.

153
Ibid., p. 11.

154
The Sorrows, p. 51.

155
Ibid., p. 50.

156
The World Turned Upside Down, p. 79.

157
The Quakers, pp. 18, 17-18.

158
Ibid., p. 38.

159
Ibid., p. 39.

160
Ibid., p. 43.

161
“THE Power and Glory,” p. 12.

162
Change and Continuity, p. 128.

163
The World Turned Upside Down, p. 79.

126

164
Leviathan, “A Review and Conclusion,” paragraph 16.

165
Change and Continuity, p. 131.

166
“THE Power and Glory,” p. 8.

167
Ibid., p. 13.

168
The Quakers, pp. 43-44.

169
The Sorrows, pp. 37-39.

170
“THE Power and Glory,” p. 5.

171
Ibid., p. 6.

172
Ibid., p. 9.

173
The Quakers, p. 58.

174
Ibid., pp. 58-59.

175
Ibid., pp. 58-59.

176
The Sorrows, p. 66.

177
“THE Power and Glory,” p. 11.

178
Ibid., p. 12.

179
Ibid., p. 13.

180
Intellectual Origins, p. 310.

181
Change and Continuity, pp. 159-163, 162.

182
The World Turned Upside Down, p. 197.

183
James Nayler 1618 – 1660, pp. 17; The Sorrows, p. 63.

184
The Sorrows, p. 63.

185
Hill too cites other instances of this type of “bragging”; for example: “‘We are a people accused to raise
up a new war,’ admitted Fox in 1654, though he denied both this charge and the accusation that Quakers
owned no magistracy” (The World Turned Upside Down, p. 197).

186
“Two Lectures,” pp. 90-91.

187
The Sorrows, p. 67.

188
The Quakers, pp. 35-36. Nayler was an inveterate faster; in his article “James Nayler: A Fresh
Approach” Nuttall claims that Nayler’s fasting in emulation of Christ helped him gain entrée into London

127

society, intimating that his immense popularity “acting the part of Christ” helped speed him toward his
ruin, pp. 10-16.

189
The Quakers, p. 35.

190
The Sorrows, p. 33.

191
Ibid., p. 24.

192
Ibid., p. 35.

193
Ibid., p. 35.

194
“THE Power and Glory,” p. 16.

195
“THE QUAKERS QUAKING,” p. 3.

196
Ibid., p. 4.

197
Ibid., p. 4.

198
Ibid., p. 5.

199
“WEAKNES above WICKEDNES,” p. 3.

200
This particular struggle regarding classification constituted part of a larger engagement over
determining what was Christian and Antichristian, as well as who had the right to decide. In Hill’s
persuasive version of the Antichrist contest, Antichrist in Seventeenth-Century England (1971), he focuses
on what he designates “the changing content of the Antichrist legend” (p. 3)—that is how over time the
Antichrist came to represent a profusion of people, institutions, and personality traits, from the Pope to
Cromwell to the national church to the less attractive aspects of human nature, and about which he
concludes:
So I wish to relate the rise and fall of Antichrist to the evolution of the fundamental doctrines of
protestantism as well as to the development of the crisis of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Which is another way of saying that the evolution of the theology must also be related to the
economic and social history of these centuries. (p. 176)
More specifically, as far as concerns Quakers and their opponents, both sides readily indulged in
Antichristian name-calling, which I cannot help but perceive as so much mudslinging with the intention of
discrediting whatever authority each group felt that the others possessed. Anti-Catholic epithets also
functioned in the same way and are included in the Antichrist debates.

201
The Sorrows, p. 35.

202
Yetta Howard’s term!

203
“The Body of the Condemned,” Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1995), p. 30.

204
“Ideology,” p. 168.

205
“The Deployment of Sexuality,” The History of Sexuality: An Introduction (1990), pp. 95-96.

206
The Sorrows, p. 3.

128

207
A Quaker, p. 134. Bittle borrows Carlyle (James Nayler 618 – 1660, p. 118) from Brailsford, but gives
her no credit.

208
Ibid., p. 124.

209
The Sorrows, pp. 7-8.

210
Quaker Women Prophets in England and Wales, p. 166.

211
James Nayler 1618 – 1660, p. 102.

212
Ibid., p. 106.

213
English Messiahs: Studies of Six Religious Pretenders, 1656-1927 (1936), pp. xiii, 4, 11.

214
A Quaker, pp. 97, 111, 107.

215
The Sorrows, p. 163.

216
Ibid., pp. 172, 2.

217
James Nayler 1618 – 1660, pp. 102-103, 93.

218
The Sorrows, p. 147.

219
The Quakers, pp. 27-31, 51.

220
A Quaker, p. 117.

221
The Sorrows, pp. 147-148.

222
A Quaker, p. 119.

223
Ibid., p. 118.

224
The Sorrows, p. 148.

225
James Nayler 1618 – 1660, p. 104.

226
I know I first learned of the struggle for Bristol in Edward’s Gangraena, but though I have been over the
same pages repeatedly I cannot as yet locate the sentence.

227
Enter the King: Theatre, Liturgy, and Ritual in the Medieval Civic Triumph (1998). In his massive
study The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924), Johan Huizinga characterizes decadence in symbolism as the
use of “things of the higher order as symbols of things of the lower order,” in effect raising “terrestrial
things to the higher level by employing sacred conceptions merely to adorn them,” and mentions by way of
example the political symbolism in Chastellain and Molinet (p. 190). Though Huizinga refers specifically
to literature, we can in fact apply the same sentiment to royal entries—and what could have been more
decadent than using “the “liturgical ideas of the Advent of Christ . . . in service of a king’s vanity?” (p. 42),
to borrow Kipling’s question. The fact is, as Kipling proceeds to demonstrate, these triumphs were as
politically expedient as they were decadent.

129

228
Ibid., p. 3.

229
Ibid., p. 21.

230
Ibid., pp. 239, 244.

231
Ibid., pp. 24, 23.

232
The Sorrows, p. 206.

233
Enter the King, p. 47.

234
Ibid., p.44
.
235
Ibid., p. 21.

236
Ibid., p. 119.

237
Ibid., p. 125.

238
Ibid., pp. 126, 127.

239
Ibid., p. 128.

240
Ibid., pp. 128, 129.

241
English Civic Pageantry, 1558-1642 (2003), pp. 26-27.

242
Enter the King, p. 208.

243
Ibid., p. 208.

244
Ibid., p. 209.

245
Ibid., p. 155-156.

246
English Civic Pageantry, p. 88.

247
Ibid., p. 87.

248
Constructing Cromwell, p.77.

249
A Quaker, p. 117.

250
Daryl Palmer in his examination of the politics of hospitality, Hospitable Performances: Dramatic
Genre and Cultural Practices in Early Modern England (1992), discusses Shakespearean clown William
Kemp’s 1599 progress to Norwich in a low-brow imitation of Elizabeth I, characterizing it as “a parasitic
feeding on royal authority and royal strategies of ideological shaping ” (p. 127), a statement one could
apply to Nayler’s Palm Sunday Entry—yet according to Palmer, Kemp was able to complete his progress
unmolested and publish a pamphlet about his journey to boot (pp. 126-133). Without delving into a lengthy
analysis of the myriad of differences between Kemp and Nayler, I posit that Kemp was inoffensive, in that
it was clear to everyone from his complete lack of political authority as well as his demeanor that he was

130

engaging in parody; in contrast Nayler not only exerted tremendous authority in a politically aggressive
movement involving many thousands of people, he was playing his role in earnest; that is, oblivious to the
“parasitic” nature of his depiction. And while Kemp was imitating a particular, still strong monarch,
Nayler had arrogated to himself the basis of all monarchical authority during the reign of a much-contested
military dictator. Thus Kemp’s performance could be viewed as ultimately signaling an acceptance of
status, a strategy of self-containment, if you will, whereas Nayler’s could signify nothing but a total
repudiation of the theo-political framework upon which the frail Protectorate depended.

251
The Sorrows, p. 152.

252
Ibid. p. 152.

253
Ibid., p. 154.

254
Ibid., p. 155.

255
Ibid., p. 156.

256
The Sorrows, p. 163; James Nayler 1618 – 1660; Six English Messiahs, p. 4; A Quaker, p. 107.

257
A Quaker, p. 136.

258
Ibid., p. 136.

259
The World Turned Upside Down, p. 201.

260
A Quaker, p. 136.

261
Six English Messiahs, p. 26.

262
The Quakers, p. 55.

263
The Sorrows, p. 229.

264
James Nayler 1618 – 1660, p. 125.

265
Cromwell’s Major-Generals: Godly Government During the English Revolution (2001), p. 201.

266
Ibid., p. 4.

267
Ibid., p. 5. Durston argues that the major-generals abetted their own downfall by attempting to swing
elections in order to secure pre-approved godly candidates who supported the regime (p. 201).

268
Ibid., p. 208.

269
The Sorrows, p. 183.

270
A Quaker, p. 135.

271
The Sorrows, p. 181.

272
Ibid., p. 187.

131

273
James Nayler 1618 – 1660, pp. 118, 119.

274
Ibid., p. 120.

275
The Sorrows, pp. 198-199.

276
Ibid., p. 198.

277
Ibid., p. 199.

278
Ibid., p. 199.

279
Ibid., p. 200.

280
Cromwell’s Major-Generals, p. 179.

281
Godly Rule: Politics and Religion, 1603 – 1660 (1969), p. 122.

282
Thomas Burton’s diary contains the only existing account of Nayler’s trial, which remained
unpublished until 1828. All scholars writing on Nayler’s trial refer to the diary. The Clark Library does
possess a copy—but for my purposes I didn’t see a reason to consult it.

283
“Two Lectures,” p. 93.

284
The Sorrows, p. 195.

285
Ibid., p. 195.

286
Ibid., p. 196.

287
Ibid., p. 200.

288
Ibid., p. 210.

289
Ibid., p. 208.

290
A Quaker, pp. 147, 153.

291
The Sorrows, p. 211.

292
A Quaker, p. 133.

293
Ibid., p. 137.

294
The Sorrows, p. 203.

295
A Quaker, p. 137.

296
The Sorrows, p. 230.

297
A Quaker, p. 176; The Sorrows, p. 249.

132

298
The Sorrows, pp. 252-253.

299
Ibid., p. 253.

300
A Quaker, p. 177.

301
James Nayler 1618 – 1660, p. 173.

302
Ibid., p. 173.

303
The Sorrows, pp. 265-266.

304
A Quaker, p. 176.

305
James Nayler 1618 – 1660, p. 174.

306
Ibid., pp. 173-174.

307
A Quaker, pp. 192-193.

308
The Sorrows, p. 267.

309
Ibid., p. 13.

310
The World Turned Upside Down, p. 201.

311
James Nayler 1618 – 1660, p. 163.

312
The Sorrows, p. 220; James Nayler 1618 – 1660, pp.164-165.

313
James Nayler 1618 – 1660, p. 133.

314
The Sorrows, p. 219; James Nayler 1618 – 1660, p. 138; A Quaker, p. 149. It seems to me that
Cromwell’s modus operandi involved letting people hoist themselves by their own petards. He also
appears to have been as little troubled betraying allies, friends, and comrades as Henry VIII.

315
The Sorrows, p. 264.

316
I know I got this suggestion from somebody, but I can’t find the quotation—my apologies!

317
The Sorrows, p. 180. Damrosch records the reaction of an unidentified M.P.: “To say that my Lord
Protector . . . hath it [his authority] by Providence: that argument is but like to a two-edged sword, and a
thief may lay as good a title to every purse he takes upon the highway” (p. 181).

133
Chapter Two: Hobbes’ War on Prophecy in Leviathan

As did a great many other interested parties, Hobbes of course well understood
the menace to political and civil order cloaked within the ability to derive truths directly
from God; without attacking specific individuals, he devotes a large portion of his
English edition of Leviathan, published in 1651 during the height of sectarian expansion,
to debunking prophetic phenomena from a variety of perspectives. Noting that “During
those central years of the century, there was such a profusion of sects that modern
scholars remain as fully employed disengaging them as were their contemporaries,”
Conal Condren accents Hobbes’ awareness that “Nothing generated so much controversy
as the guiding word of God.”
1
Scholars who historicize Hobbes’ thoughts on religion as
a means of integrating them with his political agenda agree that he sought to discredit all
forms of enthusiasm, in order to curtail, borrowing Eric Brandon’s analysis, “the
unauthorized reformation of Christian doctrine,” which in Hobbes’ mind if left
unattended constituted a serious threat to sovereignty in the form of “radical shifts in
religious belief and practice,”
2
and accordingly they have attended to his preoccupation
with refuting the conventions this danger came clothed in, especially in its final, most
politically subversive form.
3
A. P. Martinich indicates that “Hobbes had highly specific
denominational and sectarian targets in Leviathan”; explaining that in seventeenth-
century England self-appointed prophets claimed direct revelatory experiences that
justified revolt, Hobbes’ “principal goal” in examining prophets, revelation, and miracles
was “to ensure that religion was not used to subvert government.”
4
Likewise, S. A.
Lloyd propounds

134
that Hobbes’s masterwork, Leviathan, is intended to address precisely this
problem of the domestic social disorder generated by transcendent interests. The
sorts of transcendent interests that particularly worried Hobbes were religious
interests. This is why he devotes more than half of Leviathan to a discussion of
religion, which is crucial to his task of providing a permanent remedy to the
internal social order caused by transcendent religious interests.
5

Later she goes on to say that his objective was the removal of “personal revelation as an
important source of doctrinal discord.”
6
David Johnston bluntly states that to Hobbes
prophets were the mortal enemies of sovereign power and civil peace. The root of
their claims to supernatural power was a desire to exercise real power over other
men and women. To thwart this desire was an aim of paramount importance to
the argument of Leviathan. The beliefs in prophecy, miracles, and magic would
have to be tamed before sovereign authority could be established on firm
foundations.
7

To George Wright, Hobbes “saw a constant threat to peace and stable government in
religious division and fanaticism,” adding that “To counter the threat of religious
enthusiasm, Hobbes sought to understand the phenomenon, to locate its source, and to
argue for a remedy.”
8
And in Quentin Skinner’s intentionally understated view, “By the
time he came to write Leviathan, Hobbes’s attitude had considerably hardened toward
those who, as he sarcastically puts it, ‘are possessed of an opinion of being inspired.’”
9

Tellingly, in Chapter XXIX, titled “Of those things that Weaken, or tend to the
DISSOLUTION of a Common-wealth,” Hobbes lists the “Pretence of Inspiration” as a
factor: “And thus wee fall again into the fault of taking upon us to Judge of Good and
Evill; or to make judges of it, such private men as pretend to be supernaturally Inspired,
to the Dissolution of all Civill Government.”
10
In response to his own assessment,
Hobbes, recognizing the discourse of immediate revelation as the alpha and omega of
mid-century religious fanaticism, dissects it so vigorously from every possible angle, that
illegitimating it appears to be an obsession. Hobbes ultimate concern is to smother

135
attempts by individuals to wrest political power from the monarch (or the Lord
Protector!), lecturing that
the Popularity of a potent Subject, (unlesse the Common-wealth have very good
caution of his fidelity,) is a dangerous Disease; because the people (which should
receive their motion from the Authority of the Soveraign,) by the flattery, and by
the reputation of an ambitious man, are drawn away from their obedience to the
Lawes, to follow a man, of whose virtues, and designes they have no
knowledge.
11

If Hobbes’ fixation on eradicating prophecy and its attributes isn’t immediately
obvious, this is due to the way he integrates it with the rest of the book’s contents.
Because his argument against prophetic discourse is dispersed throughout Leviathan in
sometimes isolated segments that avoid the appearance of a concerted attack, he hits at its
different aspects in a non-linear, seemingly unsystematic, imbricated, and at times
contradictory fashion that allows him to dismantle it cumulatively over the course of the
text; that is, without revealing too much of his strategy at any one time, thus permitting
him to pose (at least to himself!) as being “without partiality, without application, and
without other designe.”
12
What I mean to say is that, when not dealing with prophecy
directly, Hobbes repeatedly addresses it as a supplement to discussions of other subjects;
for example, as Lloyd realizes, in Chapter II, “Of IMAGINATION,” Hobbes evaluates
dreams and visions scientifically in order “to undermine claims to personal revelation
(Chapter 32), and religious beliefs and practices that depend on the doctrine of
incorporeal substance (Chapter 46).”
13
Martinich, in his section on miracles, sees that
Hobbes initiates what he deems “two, inconsistent discussions of miracles in chapter 37
of Leviathan. . . . one religious, one scientific”
14
(but neglects to bring up Hobbes’ first
conversation on miracles, in Chapter XXII, “OF RELIGION,” 1.12.28-29.); however,

136
committed as he is to an ideal of Hobbes as a “sincere, and relatively orthodox,
Christian,” Martinich simply conjectures that in an effort to “explain miracles without
compromising science” Hobbes wrote “two drafts on the section of miracles and later
tacked them together.”
15
Fortunately, Skinner astutely reminds us that the
lack of attention to Hobbes’s rhetorical strategies has arguably given rise to
a number of over-simplified interpretations of his religious beliefs, especially his
beliefs about the veracity of the Bible and the mysteries of the Christian faith.
Recent commentators have shown a growing willingness to accept that Hobbes’s
pronouncements on these matters reveal him not merely to be ‘essentially a
sincere writer’, but ‘a Christian of a genuine if eccentric kind.’
16

Celebrating the English version of Leviathan as “a masterpiece of satire and
invective,” Skinner targets Martinich and Lloyd by name (who also insists that “Hobbes
believed in the truth of the basic doctrines of the Judeo-Christian tradition.”
17
),
exclaiming that “While assuring themselves that there are no hidden codes to ensnare
them, they have, I think, become ensnared in exactly the way that Hobbes intended.”
18

Skinner’s particular project involves elucidating Hobbes’ use of humanist polemic in
Leviathan to “produce a large number of deliberately ambiguous effects,” with an
emphasis on exploring the “various devices specifically recommended by the theorists of
eloquence for contriving a tone of irony and ridicule.”
19
David Wootton also detects a
premeditated equivocacy in Leviathan, questioning why Hobbes would contrive to write
so if his motive was to defend religion, and intelligently requiring that such an account
would need to identify the reasons “a pious author could be misread as impious by both
contemporaries and later generations . . . [and] would have to include an explanation of
why such an author would be unable or unwilling to correct the misapprehensions of his
contemporaries when they became known to him.”
20
And before both Skinner and

137
Wootton, Leo Strauss, in his study of Hobbes’ politics observes his ability, when dealing
with religion, to embed in his writing concepts opposite those he appears to advocate, in
order to fight against “supernaturalism expressly, if only apparently, in the name and with
the weapons of supernaturalism,” remarking that “Hobbes with double intention becomes
an interpreter of the Bible, in the first place in order to make use of the authority of the
Scriptures for his own theory, and next and particularly in order to shake the authority of
the Scriptures themselves.”
21
I raise the issue of Hobbes’ ir-religiosity in connection with
prophetic discourse because, in his eagerness to destroy its credibility, he goes farther
than, to quote Brandon, exposing all “contemporary immediate revelation as either
mediated, falsely perceived, or attempts at deception,”
22
proceeding to confute its very
existence in scripture that he may eliminate any justifiable precedent for it. Regarding all
features of revelation, we can conclude that, despite Wright’s assurance to the contrary,
in Leviathan Hobbes’ theology is completely determined by his politics.
23
By returning
continually to prophecy in discrete bits and pieces (so to speak), Hobbes discharges a
lengthy series of conflicting remarks calculated to haunt each other as a means of
producing doubt regarding scriptural as well as current probity. Aside from being crazy-
making, diagramming Hobbes’ entire overlapping and interconnected scheme could
easily constitute a book in itself; but, beginning with his treatment of scripture, I provide
some excellent examples:
For instance, during one of his oft-repeated rejections of prophecy through
possession, Hobbes claims in Chapter VIII, “Of the VERTUES commonly called
INTELLECTUAL; and their contrary DEFECTS,” that “neither Moses nor Abraham
pretended to Prophecy by possession of a Spirit; but from the voyce of God; or by a

138
Vision or a Dream,” nor any other biblical prophet for that matter.
24
However, we learn
in Chapter XXXVI, “Of the WORD OF GOD, and of PROPHETS,” that even Moses, to
whom God “spake in a more extraordinary manner” than any other mortal, “face to face,
as a man speaketh to his friend,” was still addressed “by mediation of an Angel, or
Angels . . . and was therefore a Vision, though a more cleer Vision than was given to
other Prophets.”
25
This proposition erodes the integrity of his initial statement by eliding
direct contact as one of the methods of divine communication, distancing God from the
encounter. Although it may appear that Hobbes still preserves the supernatural element,
contending that “the Prophets extraordinary in the Old Testament took notice the Word of
God no otherwise, than from their Dreams, or Visions; that is to say, from the
imaginations which they had in their sleep, or in an Extasie; which imaginations in every
true Prophet were supernaturall; but in false Prophets were either naturall, or feigned,”
26

earlier, in Chapter XXXIV, “Of the Signification of SPIRIT, ANGEL, and INSPIRATION in
the Books of Holy Scripture,” while conducting a purposely confusing investigation of
angels as messengers of God’s word, he in several ways destabilizes their ontological
constancy, and by extension invalidates the conditions of their likelihood. According to
Hobbes’ reading of scripture, the word “angel,” among other definitions, can refer
indiscriminately to a range of natural and supernatural entities that may or may not have
corporeality and/or permanent existence, from the apparition of the “pillar of cloud” that
at night assumed the “form of a pillar of fire” and “went before the Army of Israel to the
Red Sea, and then came behind it,
27
to Christ and St. John the Baptist, to “the Dove, and
the Fiery Tongues,”
28
intimating that the word should be at most considered a metaphor,
and depriving it of a definite signifying function. Immediately following, Hobbes, via his

139
special exegetical technique, shows that though a being might be called an angel, the term
may actually designate another entity altogether:
Though we find in Daniel two names of Angels, Gabriel and Michael; yet it is
cleer out of the text itself, (Dan. I2.I) that by Michael is meant Christ, not as an
Angel, but as a Prince: and that Gabriel (as the like apparitions made to other holy
men in their sleep) was nothing but a supernaturall phantasme, by which it
seemed to Daniel, in his dream, that two Saints being in talk, one of them said to
the other, Gabriel, let us make this man understand his Vision.
29

Hobbes’ continuous and rapid displacement of names and the different beings to whom
they refer invites the question of stability: the angel Michael is quickly overtaken by
Christ, who in this case is not the “Angel of the Covenant,”
30
but a “Prince”—and I
assume he means of “the children of thy people.”
31
Gabriel is a mere illusion, yet the two
are able to converse, though it seems that Christ occupies another dimension. The word
“phantasme” itself had, by Hobbes’ time, accrued a range of meanings which prohibits
easy identification. Also, from Daniel’s point of view, the two are indistinguishable
“Saints,” another term with a wide semantic field that again dislodges previous
appellations and their attendant perceived existences. A close reading produces an
uncomfortable sense of semantic perplexity, a kind of conceptual vertigo, in that Hobbes
forestalls any attempt by the reader to construct a reliable cognitive “space” that might
contain the beings in the scenario he describes, raising the suspicion that such a scenario
is impossible. And one cannot escape the irony percolating through the last italicized
clause—the “tone of mockery” as Skinner says concerning Hobbes’ discussions of
scripture in general
32
—that not even Christ might make such a vision understandable.
33

We can look upon this discomfiture as reaffirming a comment Hobbes slips in near the
beginning of the chapter about depictions of bodies in scripture: “But for those Idols of

140
the brain, which represent Bodies to us, where they are not, as in a Looking-glasse, in a
Dream, or to a [208] distempered brain waking, they are (as the Apostle saith generally of
all Idols) nothing; Nothing at all, I say, there where they seem to be; and in the brain it
self, nothing but tumult.”
34
Unequivocally denouncing such images, Hobbes excises
angels from his prophetic equation, and with them the only chance of divine illumination.
This occlusion conforms to Hobbes’ much-celebrated “materialistic interpretation of the
Bible,” the point of which, in Brandon’s language, is to “eliminate the spiritual plane
altogether in an effort to reduce the field of theological and philosophical dispute to the
material world.”
35
Hobbes, keeping to his materialist approach to theology, “saves
Scripture from positing real entities that are not bodies, which according to Hobbes is a
clear violation of natural reason,” it being for him the guiding principle of accurate
biblical interpretation.
36
Bolstered by converging strategies, the aggregate of Hobbes’
disconnected statements confounds any single assertion regarding scriptural
representations of prophecy.
Before continuing a review of Hobbes’ sally against divine revelation via his
study of angels, let it be understood that his assault on the immaterial is not original, but
derives from his mentor Francis Bacon’s critique of, in Anthony Kemp’s words, the
erroneous thinking that pervades “the whole intellectual, cultural and religious world of
man.”
37
In his treatment of Bacon’s programmatic radical redirection of human thought
to “its proper objects,” namely “material particulars and the general laws uniting them,”
Kemp demonstrates that “For Bacon, the primary proper object of thought is an all-
encompassing general suspicion about human thought itself, in order to reduce
drastically, by a kind of scientific satire, the scope of mind.”
38
Bacon’s quest is to purge

141
mental activity of useless abstractions, of which religion is foremost. According to
Kemp, Bacon condemns all religious thinking as “an enormous folly, distraction, [and]
waste of time and energy,” judges that religion itself should be only “a mechanical and
juridical subjection,” and demotes knowledge of scripture to “a purely technical mastery,
like the lawyer’s of the law, from which the affections are banished.”
39
Hobbes
appropriates and mobilizes many of Bacon’s ideas and rhetorical flourishes in service of
his own destructive agenda concerning religion, which mimics Bacon’s in that for
Hobbes also religion should be “dismiss[ed] from the intellect under color of piety,”
40
in
this case to eliminate it as source of socio-political discord. Quoting Bacon’s Valerius
Terminus, Kemp explains that the study of God is to be well-avoided; Bacon instructs
that “For if any man shall think by view and inquiry into these sensible and material
things, to attain to any light for the revealing of the nature or will of God, he shall
dangerously abuse himself.”
41
Since knowledge of the physical world is all that one can
or should amass, the epistemological pursuit of God leads not to knowledge “but wonder;
which is nothing less than contemplation broken off, or losing itself.”
42
In Chapter XII,
“OF RELIGION,” we can hear Hobbes’ master clearly echoed in his rendition of God as a
merely mechanistic “First Mover”: “But the acknowledging of one God Eternall, Infinite,
and Omnipotent, may more easily be derived, from the desire men have to know the
causes of naturall bodies, and their severall vertues, and operations; than from the fear of
what was to befall them in the time to come.”
43
Hobbes not only endeavors to confine
interest in God to His creation, but maintains that, in contrast to “the many Gods [53] of
the Gentiles” who “were at first created by humane Feare,” He was originally conceived
of as a hypostatic and impersonal law of nature, “the First and Eternall cause of all

142
things; which is that which men mean by the name of God: And all this without thought
of their fortune; the solicitude whereof, both enclines to fear, and hinders them from the
search of the causes of other things; and thereby gives occasion of feigning of as many
Gods, as there be men that feigne them.”
44
Setting up a dichotomy between backward,
superstitious pagans and progressive, scientifically-minded Christians, Hobbes contends
that to seek information from or about God Himself is not only pointless and inhibits the
pursuit of practical knowledge, but also implies that to do so would be to revert to a
(damning!) heathenism. In Bacon’s The New Atlantis we locate a source for Hobbes’
distinctly technic brand of belief; regarding the utopia Bensalem, Kemp summarizes that
“science must be shown to be absolutely identical with true Protestant religion, so the
inhabitants of the perfect scientific utopia must be perfect Christians.”
45
And Bacon in
his Advancement of Learning addresses more specifically the concept of God as an
unconscious “spirit of nature.”
46
Kemp asserts that Bacon refuses to accept the
“analogical understanding of a community between God and the human.”
47
Plundering
Bacon’s ideas on metaphysics for his own purposes, Hobbes broadcasts his feelings about
the authenticity of scripture, as a God evacuated of the anthropomorphic and
anthropopathic voids the possibility of any communication between Him and man.
Hobbes adopts Bacon’s negation of “analogical continuities from the realm of the
creatures to that of the creator”
48
as the founding premise for his war against revelation.
Moreover, to complement his denunciation of prophetic discourse as political
opportunism, Hobbes enshrines Bacon’s personal fantasies of boundless majesty as the
centerpiece of his own secular exultation of absolute sovereignty. Intertwined with
Bacon’s plans for the comprehensive restructuring of education and scientific

143
investigation involving all major centers of learning are schemes of self-advancement
that would make him, in his own mind at least, the most powerful person in England;
Kemp weaves together a portrait of Bacon the infinitely aspiring courtier from his very
own works:
Why then should not true majesty belong to the discoverer?, who is superior to
the king. Bacon in this passage effectively passes the mantle of majesty and its
kingly attributes on to the discoverer, who better deserves them, as the founding
King Salamona of Bensalem has left a state ruled no longer by a monarch but by
an institute named after him, and by its head scientist, the Father, who controls
both society and religion. This self-glorifying dream goes beyond its obvious
emotional satisfaction into very specific, if self-deluded, ambition. Bacon’s
endless appeals for the institutionalization of science under royal patronage
envisaged himself as the chief discoverer.
49

Hobbes elevates Bacon the self-imagined “Father, who controls both society and
religion,” as the ideal monarch, concentrating his attention on the stability of civil order,
which to him is the end and goal of all culture. In a theocracy to govern religion is to
govern society, and in Chapter XLIII, “Of what is NECESSARY for a Mans Reception into
the Kingdome of Heaven,” Hobbes’ step-by-step reduction of all religious matters to utter
unquestioning submission to the ruler clarifies his Baconian position. After declaring
that salvation depends only on “this Article, that Jesus is the Christ,” Hobbes posits that
it is not hard to reconcile our Obedience to God, with Obedience to the Civill
Soveraign. . . .

And because he is a Soveraign, he requireth Obedience to all his
owne, that is, to all the Civill Laws; in which also are contained all the Laws of
Nature, that is all the Laws of God: for besides the Laws of Nature, and the Laws
of the Church, which are part of the Civill Law, (for the Church that can make
Laws is the Common-wealth,) there bee no other Laws Divine.
50

Employing Bacon’s equation of God with nature, Hobbes is able to eject religion (and
therefore scripture, with all of its troublemaking examples and injunctions) from culture,
that he may condense all law into a single subjugating instrument that denies any

144
opportunity for dissension. With this objective Hobbes acknowledges the Church only in
its capacity as an implement of control estranged from religion, an assemblage of
meaningless rituals and punitive devices designed to manage the time and behavior of the
citizenry—as he preaches earlier in the same chapter, biblical precepts are “onely Law,
where the Civill Soveraign hath made it so”
51
—scripture allotted in small doses,
expurgated of all matter inimical to socio-political stability, for the prevention of civil
disobedience. Under such circumstances the pronouncement “Jesus is the Christ” ends
up being simply another regulatory tool abstracted from personal signification, as it
depends upon the monarch for interpretation:

But suppose that a Christian King should from this Foundation Jesus is the Christ,
draw some false consequences, that is to say, make some superstructions of Hay,
or Stubble, and command the teaching of the same; yet seeing St. Paul says, he
shal be saved; much more shall he be saved, that teacheth them by his command;
and much more yet, he that teaches not, but onely believes his lawfull Teacher.
52

Since the “Christian King” is the ultimate “lawfull Teacher” his subjects must accept
without reservation the inferences he chooses to make no matter how faulty; addressing
the situation metaphorically by opposing the seemingly solid “Foundation Jesus is the
Christ” to such flimsy reasons made of “Hay, or Stubble” that the monarch might invent,
Hobbes simultaneously covers all scenarios while eliding their possible gravity, with the
implication that subjects are bound to respond in perfect accordance with the monarch’s
wishes and desires, irrespective of their moral validity—through the assurance of what I
assume to be an unorthodox universal salvation predicated on belief in “this Article, that
Jesus is the Christ” the monarch is to “command” his subjects completely.
As usual, we are able to ascertain from where Hobbes receives his ideas: Kemp
remarks that, touching the Father in The New Atlantis “one can see the principle that

145
religion is accepted on the authority of Scripture and the king, Scripture as interpreted by
the king, as a subject’s duty, without any personal intervention of mind or heart.”
53
But
for Bacon the point of such uncomprehending faith is primarily “to free minds for
practical and scientific endeavor,”
54
whereas for Hobbes, as I argue, it is to exert absolute
dominion over the population, and thus Hobbes outdoes Bacon by dropping religion and
scripture entirely from his platform. Divorced from the narratives that limit their
semantic play, the words “Jesus is the Christ” are in Hobbes hands transformed into free-
floating signifiers, sedatives for a country of automatons—the reverse of Milton’s
“Nation of Prophets, of Sages, and of Worthies.”
55
Moreover, Hobbes’ attitude toward
religion truly manifests itself in his granting of the identical privilege of thoughtless
obligation to all monarchs irrespective of their beliefs:
And when the Civill Soveraign is an Infidel, every one of his own Subjects that
resisteth him sinneth against the Laws of God (for such are the Laws of Nature,)
and rejecteth the counsell of the Apostles, that admonisheth all Christians to obey
their Parents, and Masters, in all [331] things. And for their Faith, it is internall,
and invisible; They have the license that Naaman had, and need not put
themselves into danger for it. But if they do, they ought to expect their reward in
Heaven, and not complain of their Lawfull Soveraign; much lesse make war upon
him.
56

Shockingly, Hobbes enjoins Christians to submit completely to non-Christian rulers;
forcing apart Protestant “Faith” and matters of conscience, Hobbes denies its historic
militant and insubordinate character, deeming resistance unacceptable no matter the
situation. To further secure his totalitarian stance, Hobbes determines “Faith” to be
“internall, and invisible” only—that is, to Hobbes the Baconian, “Faith,” being an
abstract without measurable properties, and thus non-existent, should possess absolutely
no influence on human thought and behavior that might detract from submission to the

146
sovereign. To this end, earlier in the same chapter Hobbes conveniently defines Christian
“Faith, [as] whom, and why we beleeve,”
57
concluding that it is owed solely to the
monarch: “And therefore, seeing the Examination of Doctrines belongeth to the Supreme
Pastor, the Person which all they that have no speciall revelation are to believe, is (in
every Common-wealth), the Supreme Pastor, that is to say, the Civill Soveraigne.”
58

Hobbes denudes faith entirely of its subversive political potential by securing it as the
most powerful weapon in the royal ideological armory (and of course this entire chapter
sets out to prove that for Hobbes, there never has been nor ever will be “speciall
revelation”). Once again Hobbes melds “God” and “Nature” together through the
conflation of their laws, a reminder to the attentive reader that what Hobbes intends by
the word “God” is “Nature,” a purely mechanical universe emptied of religious grounds
for rebellion. If Hobbes’ total identification of God and nature passes as a form of
pantheism, it is pantheism at its most extreme, tantamount to atheism. And to fortify and
extend his argument, in a standard maneuver Hobbes applies his own highly suspect
version of scripture: not only do all the Apostles advise unqualified obedience to
“Parents, and Masters,” which is of itself a questionable statement, Hobbes arranges for
this phrase to refer to the monarch, that is, Bacon’s “Father,” who holds limitless sway
over his subjects; unashamedly Hobbes pens his own scripture and then interprets it to
further his cause.
Interestingly however, Hobbes fails to use the already tenuous Old Testament
example of the Syrian warrior Naaman to its best advantage, which would illustrate his
ideas to the extent it shows that non-Christian rulers also enjoy God’s favor and
protection, the inference being that because of such divine sponsorship they deserve total

147
compliance on the part of their subjects: “Now Naaman, captain of the host of the king of
Syria, was a great man with his master, and honourable, because by him the LORD had
given deliverance unto Syria; he was also a mighty man in valour, but he was a leper.”
59

Yet instead Hobbes utilizes the story in terms of Naaman himself: the “license” Hobbes
speaks of pertains to the fact that Naaman, after having been cured of leprosy by dipping
himself in the river Jordan seven times as per the instructions of the Hebrew prophet
Elisha, proclaims to him: “Behold, now I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in
Israel,”
60
and presumably returns to Syria a clean and converted man. Within the
narrative framework Naaman is not punished by the king of Syria for this
acknowledgment; however we don’t discover why—perhaps Naaman keeps his avowal to
himself, or the king forgives him his new-found belief, as it was he who sent Naaman to
Elisha in the first place
61
—the most we can extrapolate from Hobbes’ reading of this
particular scriptural portion is that Naaman is supposedly both a true believer as well as
the loyal and protected subject of a heathen monarch. Just as Naaman, Christian subjects
have no cause to feel endangered for their beliefs: Hobbes confidently asks
But what Infidel King is so unreasonable, as knowing he has a Subject, that
waiteth for the second coming of Christ, after the present world shall bee burnt,
and intendeth then to obey him (which is the intent of believing that Jesus is the
Christ,) and in the mean time thinketh himself bound to obey the Laws of that
Infidel King (which all Christians are obliged as conscience to doe,) to put to
death, or to persecute such a Subject?
62

But if Christian subjects prove disloyal to their king they should expect no earthly
compensation, only “in Heaven”; again Hobbes raises the idea of automatic universal
redemption as the incentive for a wholesale resignation of independent thought and
action. Not simply “warre” but even “complain[ing]” is forbidden; and “conscience,” so

148
far from being the spur and justification for Protestant militarism, becomes in the above
passage its polar opposite, that is the guarantor of a mindless civil order.
63
Capitalizing
on Bacon’s insistence that, as Kemp stresses, “thought knows nothing, refers to nothing,
but thought,”
64
Hobbes bends the semantic indeterminacy of key theological abstractions
to his purpose,
65
which is the secularized apotheosis of the monarch. His arguments
condense into this one injunction: “The Laws of God therefore are none but the Laws of
Nature, whereof the principall is, that we should not violate our Faith, that is, a
commandement to obey our Civill Soveraigns, which wee constituted over us, by mutuall
pact one with another.”
66
Daringly, this stipulation features some of Hobbes’ baldest
language on the social contract, as it displaces religion entirely, with its adopted jure
divino mandate, in that “Faith” is rhetorically transmuted into a mutually agreed-upon
obedience to the monarch. Via a set of bravely straightforward substitutions “God” is
rudely transformed into “Nature,” and “Faith” converted into “a commandement . . . by
mutuall pact one with another.” Stripping the political of its theological adornment,
much to the unhappiness of royalists Hobbes exposes the sociological scaffolding of
sovereignty; and after all, this is what Hobbes is famous for: upholding monarchy while
depriving it of its best defensive armament. Hobbes exploits to its fullest Bacon’s avant-
garde approach to what Kemp calls “the conception of knowledge,” in that “The objects
of knowledge are not ideas, forms, principles, or God, but the particulars and creatures of
the natural world”
67
for his program of permanent civil stasis; rather belatedly I cite
Brandon’s comment that “It is uncontroversial that . . . the main purpose of Hobbes’s
Leviathan is to show the rulers and inhabitants of a commonwealth, notably England,
how they can obtain lasting internal peace.”
68

149
Hobbes’ materiality is the means by which he extirpates scripture as a premise for
the political opposition of existing government, that in a theocracy especially is the most
dangerous and powerful of all rhetorical weapons. Thus Hobbes brazenly attacks its
veracity while utilizing it to strengthen his arguments. As part of his strategy he relies on
Bacon’s axiom that “The human understanding is of its own nature prone to abstractions
and gives a substance and reality to things which are fleeting,”
69
and we can detect this
idea at work as we return to Hobbes’ continued ontological evaluation of angels in
scripture: after failing to locate in the New Testament confirmation that angels cannot be
both “things permanent, and withall incorporeall,”
70
he puts forward “the Devil and his
angels” as proof of permanence and corporeality, postulating that damnation is
“repugnant to their Immateriality; because Everlasting fire is not punishment to impatible
substances, such as are all things Incorporeall. Angels therefore are not thence proved to
be Incorporeall.”
71
This conclusion flatly contradicts assertions about angels in certain
instances being “not reall Substances, nor last[ing] any longer then the Dream, or Vision
they appear in,”
72
or “nothing else but a Voice supernaturall,”
73
as well as a multitude of
others that pervade the book. At last, seemingly apropos of his debate on corporeality,
Hobbes disingenuously theorizes that “to say, an Angel, or Spirit is . . . an Incorporeall
Substance, is to say in effect, there is no Angel nor Spirit at all”; then, seizing on the
issue of his “signification of the word Angel in the Old Testament, and the nature of
Dreams and Visions that happen to men by the ordinary way of Nature,”
74
with feigned
sheepishness he confesses that though he once supposed that angels were “nothing but
supernaturall apparitions of the Fancy,”
75
his studies have “extorted from my feeble
Reason, an acknowledgment, and beleef, that there be also Angels substantiall, and

150
permanent. But to beleeve they be in no place, that is to say, no where, that is to say,
nothing, as they (though indirectly) say, that will have them Incoporeall, cannot by
Scripture bee evinced.”
76
By the time Hobbes is done with his investigation and the
reader, the plausibility of angels is thoroughly compromised; the twists and turns that his
inquiry takes exploring the discrepancies in Old and New Testament angelic accounts
collectively refuse to substantiate any one affirmation as to the reality of their existence.
And using a technique that Skinner calls “commending by way of ironically
criticizing,”
77
Hobbes’ final pronouncement on the matter falls laughingly short of
securing opinion in favor of his ostensible position: after enduring the torturous string of
negatives, one cannot help but think that he means angels indeed “be in no place, that is
to say, no where, that is to say, nothing”—and Hobbes himself is the master of saying so
(“though indirectly”). Faced with such grammar, it is quite easy to think, as Skinner
does, that to Hobbes “the Scriptures make no sense”;
78
Hobbes does a thorough job of
demonstrating Bacon’s proposition that the mind can produce nothing except “deceiving
and deformed images.”
79
Though at various moments in the text we encounter Hobbes’
understanding that God visited prophets only in dreams and visions, as well as his belief
that He communicated with them solely through angelic instruments, in Chapter XXXIV
he deprives us of a firm confidence in their existence. Releasing the rhetorical linchpin
uniting the scriptural components of divine revelation as he conceives of them, Hobbes
deviously undercuts his own arguments in order to take a stand against its possibility.
80

Even before disassembling the validity of scriptural prophecy, Hobbes starts
sabotaging its authority near the beginning of Leviathan in order to shatter the
authenticity of contemporary affectations to divine illumination. Converting prophecy

151
into a mechanistic procedure involving memory and imagination, that to Hobbes are but
two names for “decaying sense,”
81
he proclaims in Chapter III, “Of the Consequence or
TRAYNE of Imaginations,” that “The best prophet naturally is the best guesser.”
82
This
announcement comes during a directed discussion of “the Discourse of the Mind, when it
is governed by designe,” which for Hobbes, conveniently “is nothing but Seeking, or the
faculty of Invention” of either causes or effects.
83
In his line of reasoning, the most
accurate prediction of the future rests on judicious application of “the sequels of actions
Past, to the actions that are Present; which with most certainty is done by him that has
most Experience” in the subject.
84
Concentrating on the idea that the capacity to
construct these types of mental juxtapositions is simply part of our natural endowment as
human beings, Hobbes compares them to either the most mundane activities, such as
“sweep[ing] a room, to find a jewell,” or even animal behavior—“a Spaniel rang[ing]
over a field, till he find a sent”
85
—which to me indicates just how strongly he wants to
divorce humanity from deity. In analogizing the speculative actions of the human mind
and the physical actions of a dog, Hobbes intimates that all of our thought processes are
nothing more than instinctive and reflexive; to ascribe to them divine drive is as
ridiculous as attributing the same to a sniffing spaniel. (Christopher Hill notes that even
the Digger Gerrard Winstanley felt his program to communally cultivate the commons
“so novel and important that he attributed it to a divine command.”
86
)
As I have shown previously, Hobbes here relies heavily upon Bacon, in this
instance Bacon’s mechanistic approach to mental activity devoid of intellection; citing
Novum Organum Kemp condenses Bacon’s attitude toward “establish[ing] progressive
stages of certainty,” into the simple “process of collecting observations of instances,”
87

152
which is how Hobbes presents what he calls “Foresight, and Prudence, or Providence;
and sometimes Wisdome.”
88
Totally demystifying what today we might describe as
intuitive leaps, Hobbes takes pains to caution the reader that such mental operations are at
best “Presumption,” and only rewarded with the title “Prudence, when the Event
answereth our Expectation.”
89
Pointedly disallowing supernatural agency, Hobbes
stresses that “For the foresight of things to come, which is Providence, belongs onely to
him by whose will they are to come. From him onely, and supernaturally, proceeds
Prophecy”
90
—and as we already know, if Hobbes counterfeits that the only genuine
instances of divine revelation are to be found in scripture
91
it is just to corral them there
that he may finish them off at his convenience. Ignoring the possibility of divine
disclosure, Hobbes asserts that the best guesser is “he that is most versed and studied in
the matters he guesses at: for he hath most Signes to guesse by.”
92
Given the tenor of the
entire conversation (Skinner sees the end as “strik[ing] a jeering note”
93
), in this case the
italicized word “Signes” should be regarded as meaning “facts” instead of “omens” or
“portents”—a bit of sarcastic punning on the part of the author, and in keeping with his
sustained deflation of prophetic pretense.
94

Later in Leviathan Hobbes directly assaults the privileged status of the prophet: in
Chapter XII, after listing ad absurdum infinitum what he designates “The absurd opinion
of Gentilisme”
95
relating to the deification and worship of everything from natural objects
to the projections of their own minds, Hobbes turns his attention to the “Prognostiques of
time to come,”
96
and commences to do the same, belittling all manner of classical
divination, starting with the “ambiguous or senselesse answers of the Priests at Delphi,
Delos, Ammon, and other famous Oracles,” and finishing with the “dipping of Verses in

153
Homer, and Virgil.”
97
Condemning them as mere “juggling and confederate knavery” he
scoffs, “So easie are men to be drawn to believe any thing, from such men as have gotten
credit with them; and can with gentlenesse, and dexterity, take hold of their fear, and
ignorance.”
98
Not surprisingly, some practices he enumerates were enjoying resurgence,
chief among them being “the insignificant Speeches of Mad-men, supposed to be
possessed with a divine Spirit; which possession they called Enthusiasme.”
99
Eventually,
in Chapter XXXIV, we learn that to Hobbes’ thinking, even the Apostles were not
literally filled with the Holy Spirit, “which is the Deity itself”; the phrase should be
understood only as an “Externall sign of Gods speciall working on their hearts, to effect
in them the internall graces, and holy virtues hee thought requisite for the performance of
their Apostleship.”
100
Hobbes makes it clear that the Apostles received gifts only to
further them in their work of salvation—in no way did they suddenly partake in godhood,
which to him would have elevated them to the status of gods. So aware is Hobbes of the
political power inherent in conceiving any likeness and/or continuity between the human
and the divine that reflects a difference of degree rather than of kind that he makes
opportunities to repudiate them, in the guise of a disinterested scholarly desire to inform.
We should remember that Hobbes lifts his sharp division between the terrestrial and the
celestial directly from Bacon, who makes God “self-like, having nothing in common with
any creature, otherwise than in shadow and trope”;
101
and we will continue to see this
divarication motivate Hobbes’ rhetorical juggling.
Accordingly Hobbes, for the reader’s edification, redefines the word
“INSPIRATION,” concluding that, properly understood, it means either “nothing but the
blowing into a man some thin and subtile aire, or wind, in such manner a man filleth a

154
bladder with his breath; or if Spirits be not corporeall, but have their existence only in the
fancy, it is nothing but the blowing in of a Phantasme; which is improper to say, and
impossible, for Phantasmes are not, but only seem to be somewhat.”
102
Employing the
device of “tapinosis,” that is the use of, as Skinner observes, “deliberately inappropriate
and undignified terminology to belittle what we are talking about, thereby defacing high
matters . . . by the use of base words,”
103
Hobbes draws a parallel between the earthy and
the imaginary, lending to the word “INSPIRATION” a sense of the preposterous pertaining
to the concept of actual divine afflatus, which is thus barred from any serious
consideration. Capitalizing on his exclusion, Hobbes proceeds to demonstrate that even
in scripture, the word should be interpreted “metaphorically onely”;
104
to underscore his
position Hobbes introduces some well-chosen examples from both the Old and New
Testaments, denying in each instance any commingling of God and man. Paying special
attention to prophecy, Hobbes gives us to understand that when St. Peter teaches in his
Second Epistle (1:21) “That Prophecy came not in old time by the will of men, but the
holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, by the Holy Spirit, is
meant the voice of God in a Dream, or Vision supernaturall, which is not Inspiration.”
105

Or, that when in Joel (2:28) God announces:
I will power out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your Sons and your Daughters shall
prophecy, your Old Men shall dream Dreams, and your Young men shall see
Visions, wee are not to understand it in the proper sense, as if his Spirit were like
water, subject to effusion, or infusion; but as if God had promised to give them
Propheticall Dreams, and Visions. For the proper use of the word infused, in
speaking of the graces of God, is an abuse of it; for those graces are Vertues, not
Bodies to be carryed hither and thither, and to be powred into men, as into
barrels.
106

155
Ending this paragraph with another example of tapinosis,
107
Hobbes unsubtly suggests
that in scripture whatever God may have promised to bestow on humankind in the way of
prescience, such gifting precluded any award of divinity. He reiterates his interpretive
injunction that God limited His congress with man to the unsubstantial and hallucinatory
(and we are already aware of the rhetorical surgery he performs to deprive him of that),
severing immediate and concrete connection with Him and concomitantly, fantasies of
exaltation.
Continually working away at scriptural examples of sanctification, the source of
contemporary antinomian sentiment, and that upon which prophetic ability predicated
itself, Hobbes also focuses on the phrase “Spirit of God,” ensuring that it can in no way
be construed as “God himselfe.”
108
Hobbes subjects it to a more intensive metaphoric
dispersal than the word “angel,” decoding it in ways that rigorously exclude the actual
possession of a divine attribute or substance. Augmenting this strategy, Hobbes
(anticipating Spinoza
109
) legislates that “the nature of God is incomprehensible; that is to
say, we understand nothing of what he is, but only that he is; and therefore the Attributes
we give him, are not to tell one another, what he is, nor to signifie our opinion of his
Nature, but our desire to honor him with such names as we conceive most honorable
amongst our selves.”
110
In this manner Hobbes confines the “Spirit of God” to the self-
referential, preventing use of the term except in relation to human existence. In addition,
to make this push Hobbes avails himself of Bacon’s condemnation of Poesy, which
derives from the problem that it “is a part of learning in measure of words for the most
part restrained, but in all other points extremely licensed, and doth truly refer to the
imagination; which being not tied to the law of matter, may at pleasure join that which

156
nature hath severed, and sever that which nature hath joined, and so make unlawful
matches and divorces of things.”
111
Appraising Bacon’s opinion, Kemp elaborates that
Poesy (that is the imagination)
exempts itself from one feigning: that its inventions are true. Because of this
exemption, it is licensed to indulge all other fantasies, and freed from any
responsibility to the nature of things. If this is the central genre of intellectualism
--the mistaking of the mind’s coherence for the objective nature of things--we
should expect the other genres to be infected with it, and indeed logic,
mathematics, metaphysics are pale variations of poesy, which acknowledge some
constraint on their fantasy, in exchange for a deceptive correspondence between
the order of thought and the order of things.
112

Because for Hobbes all thought is imaginative, and as such fails to cooperate with the
limitations of matter, he is able to conduct metaphoric transpositions, in that he
substitutes human abstractions for divine ideas; not that the former are more authentic
than the latter, only more familiar. People casually and confidently juxtapose words and
vague notions of qualities and behaviors that they ascribe to themselves, whereas they do
so neither quite so casually nor so confidently concerning God, but as to Hobbes all these
contiguities are, to borrow Kemp’s term, “deceptive,” he can freely redefine the phrase
“Spirit of God” in scripture in as many ways as he likes to suit his purpose of immuring
man within his temporal condition. Hobbes advertises the all-pervasive problem of
“inconstant signification” in Chapter IV, “Of SPEECH”:
For one man calleth Wisdome, what another calleth feare; and one cruelty, what
another calleth justice; one prodigality, what another magnanimity; and one
gravity, what another stupidity, &c. And therefore such names can never be true
grounds of any ratiocination. No more can Metaphors, and Tropes of speech: but
these are less dangerous, because they profess their inconstancy; which the others
do not.
113

What Hobbes intimates is that language dealing with abstractions is metaphoric to the
extent that “all names are imposed to signify our conceptions; and all our affections are

157
but conceptions; when we conceive the same things differently, we can hardly avoyd
different naming of them”
114
(while official “Metaphors, and Tropes of speech . . . are
less dangerous” only because advertise themselves as such).
115
Hobbes uses his
Baconian belief in the semantic capriciousness of abstract terms to dismantle the
rhetorical power of the phrase “Spirit of God” in scripture.
But before Hobbes begins, in a regressive move he problematizes the word
“Spirit” itself, establishing that it too has no stable meaning whatsoever; as he teaches,
the proper signification of Spirit in common speech, is either a subtile, fluid, and
invisible Body, or a Ghost, or other Idol or Phantasme of the Imagination. But for
metaphoricall significations, there be many: for sometimes it is taken for
Disposition or Inclination of the mind: as when for the disposition to controwl the
sayings of other men, we say, a spirit contradiction; For a disposition to
uncleannesse, an unclean spirit; for perversenesse, a forward spirit; for
sullenesse, a dumb spirit, and for inclination to godlinesse, and Gods service, the
Spirit of God: sometimes for any eminent ability, or extraordinary passion, or
disease of the mind, as when great wisdome is called the spirit of wisdome; and
mad men are said to be possessed with a spirit.
116

It turns out that for Hobbes “Spirit” is either a figment of the imagination or a metaphor
(and this is a private joke in that, in the Baconian sense, all metaphors are figments of the
imagination), and as such, non-existent. As a metaphor “Spirit” extends over a somewhat
haphazard and hazy range of human attitudes, behaviors, and qualities, which are
themselves metaphors as they depict abstractions; hence Hobbes devises a sequence of
pairs of meaningless terms. “[T]he Spirit of God” becomes but one metaphor among
several, and Hobbes carefully denies the phrase any importance by setting it after several
others. Indeed, “godlinesse” itself, which is one of two concepts Hobbes matches with
“the Spirit of God,” he makes merely another human characteristic, no different from
“uncleannesse,” “perversenesse,” “sullenesse,” or even a “disease of the mind” (words

158
with rather unpleasant associations at that), and consequently it possesses no signifying
capabilities. Since Hobbes assures us that God is beyond our comprehension it shouldn’t
be surprising that “godlinesse” must designate a human trait—yet also, because the word
is premised on that for which there is no supernatural analogy, its semantic viability is in
two ways prevented—Hobbes takes no chances that “godlinesse” might somehow acquire
meaning. Thus “the Spirit of God” and “godlinesse,” both without semantic substance,
engage in permanent meaningless interplay, endlessly shuttling an empty idea back and
forth between them in an illusion of signification.
117
And given this prohibition regarding
the referent, “Gods service” can only indicate (if anything) ecclesiastical employment,
which means allegiance to the crown, and not scriptural charges that might subvert such
allegiance. In anticipation of his rhetorical assault on “the Spirit of God” in scripture as
specifying any type of traffic between the immortal and the mortal, Hobbes makes the
phrase a metaphor for nothing (except civil obedience), rendering it all the more pliant,
and therefore vulnerable to a multitude of definitions.
Hobbes, as a result of his constant tampering with the possibility that abstractions
could actually “mean,” obviates most of his ensuing exegesis (as well as others in
Leviathan that I address), but in a display of twisted hermeneutic brilliance proceeds with
it anyway. In one such example Hobbes, marking “Spirit of God” as “extraordinary gifts
of the Understanding,” cites “Isaiah II. 2, 3. where the Prophet speaking of the Messiah,
saith The Spirit of the Lord shall abide upon him, the Spirit of wisdome and
understanding, the Spirit of counsell, and fortitude; and the Spirit of the fear of the
Lord.”
118
Punning on the synonymy of the words “Spirit” and “Ghost,” in a variation of
“aestismus,” that is, the deliberate use of ambiguity to produce a satirical effect,
119

159
Hobbes dryly protests that “manifestly is meant, not so many Ghosts, but so many
eminent graces that God would give him.”
120
The image of a person being stuffed
repeatedly with specters overpowers the lofty language and renders the idea of holy
imbuement comical. Two pages later Hobbes pointedly derides the term “Ghost,”
snorting: “How we came to translate Spirits, by the word Ghosts, which signifieth
nothing, neither in heaven, nor earth, but the Imaginary inhabitants of mans brain, I
examine not.”
121
If in scripture “Spirit” is at least “Metaphorically, some extraordinary
ability or affection of the Mind, or of the Body”
122
(which as a metaphor still “signifieth
nothing,” as “extraordinary abilit[ies] or affection[s], not relating to concrete things,
possess no meaning) Hobbes allows “Ghost” no pertinent definition at all; slickly setting
up a false dichotomy, he evacuates the first term of divine association and shuts out the
second altogether.
Sticking with his false dichotomy Hobbes, in another illustration, in which he
deems “Spirit of God” to signify “extraordinary Affections,” brings up Saul’s slaughter of
the Ammonites to signify “zeal”: “And of Saul, upon the newes of the insolence of the
Ammonites towards the men of Jabeth Gilad, it is said (I Sam.II.6) that The Spirit of God
came upon Saul, and his Anger . . . was kindled greatly. Where it is not probable was
meant a Ghost, but an extraordinary Zeal to punish the cruelty of the Ammonites.”
123

And again, using “Zeal” (and Saul) as expressing religious fervor, Hobbes explains that
“In like manner by the Spirit of God, that came upon Saul, when he was amongst the
Prophets that Praised God in Songs, and Musick (I Sam.19.20) is to be understood, not a
Ghost, but an unexpected and sudden zeal to join with them in their devotion.”
124

Systematically promoting the absorption of the phrase “Spirit of God” into language

160
denoting human qualities, Hobbes strives to empty it of its theological distinctness and
viability. To encourage this dissipative effect he determines that the word “Zeal” can
itself be applied with equal appropriateness to vastly differing emotions; not only does it
refer to murderous rage but ardent veneration. Hobbes utilizes this semantic multiplicity
to further drain “Spirit of God” of conceptual coherence, and thus its vitality: “Zeal[’s]”
potentially wide array of definitions siphons off the term’s power as a clear theological
idea. (Even the use of Saul serves a purpose in that God eventually abandons him in
favor of David, implying that godliness is not always a permanent condition.)
And stretching things a bit, Hobbes cleverly contrives for “Spirit of God” to
mean, not authority itself, but “a subordination to authority”;
125
among other examples,
he mentions Moses’ transference of power to Joshua to lead the Israelites, contending that
“Joshua was full of the Spirit of wisdome, because Moses had laid his hands upon him:
that is, because he was ordained by Moses, to prosecute the work he had himselfe begun,
(namely, the bringing of Gods people into the promised land), but prevented by death,
could not finish.”
126
Limiting the transaction to human relations, Hobbes neglects to tell
why Moses was required to appoint Joshua as leader in the first place. The obedience
Hobbes speaks of pertains to the temporal only; as he desires to root out contemporary
compliance to supernatural injunction as recourse to self-authorization, he leaves out
those parts of the story that would subvert this goal. In another instance Hobbes, citing I
John 4:2, paints subordination to authority as unquestioning acceptance of Christian
doctrine: “Hereby you shall know the Spirit of God; Every Spirit that confesseth that
Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is of God; by which is meant the Spirit of unfained
Christianity, or submission to that main Article of Christian faith, that Jesus is the

161
Christ.”
127
Once again, Hobbes constructs a range of definitions within a category that
further intensifies metaphoric dilution of the phrase “Spirit of God.” But ultimately we
would do well to remember Lear’s warning to Cordelia: “Nothing will come of
nothing”
128
—by placing interdicts on signification beforehand, Hobbes simply
demonstrates for us the many ways he can apply Lear’s caution to scripture as further
preventive measures against aspiring to godhead.
Analyzing shifts in the meaning of seventeenth-century political language,
Condren calls this process of “Conflation or elision at the expense of one of the terms . . .
subsumptive synonymity,” in which the “elided term is apt to lose its independent area of
operation,” positing that “where conflation seems to have been deliberately engineered,
such a curtailed capacity appears to have been the aim.”
129
Condren however seems to
think that the elision is always assimilated by another term, whereas Hobbes arranges for
“Spirit of God” to be consumed by several terms simultaneously. Anxious that the phrase
is too strong to be easily overtaken by just one term, or even fearful that it could become
the subsuming term, in a case of metaphoric overkill Hobbes seeks to obliterate it through
perpetual semantic deflection; suspending it between a long list of disparate words and
phrases, he deprives “Spirit of God” of its own field—it can always mean something else.
Because the Holy Spirit had by mid-century been transformed from a theological
abstraction into a palpable entity that people could possess and use as they pleased to
legitimize representations of and reactions to individuals, institutions, events, and
conditions, Hobbes perceives its evocation in Old or New Testament language as being
extremely dangerous. His insistence that, in any linguistic form, the Spirit should be seen

162
as a metaphor for human thought and behavior is motivated by the desire to cordon off
deity from humanity.
Even Christ fails to escape Hobbes’ relentless segregation of infinite and finite:
“And though it be [215] said of many, and of our Saviour himself, that he was full of the
Holy Spirit; yet that Fulnesse is not to be understood for Infusion of the substance of
God, but for accumulation of his gifts, such as are the gift of sanctity of life, of tongues,
and the like, whether attained super-naturally, or by study and industry; for in all cases
they are the gifts of God.”
130
Slyly grouping Christ with the “many,” Hobbes sports with
some version of Socinian heresy (which holds among other tenets that not only can there
be no convergence of uncreated and created entities, but also that Christ was completely
mortal with no preexistent being; both are for Hobbes to the purpose), reducing “our
Saviour” to the status of specially designated prophet; what’s more, Hobbes hints that
Christ’s special attributes and talents, though “gifts of God,” may somehow still have
been attained through human endeavor alone, further removing Him from direct divine
contact. Does Hobbes mean that God merely stimulated decisions and behaviors in
Christ as he did in other men? For instance, in Chapter XXXVI, when analyzing how
God spoke to Moses, Hobbes stipulates that “to say he spake by the Holy Spirit, as it
signifieth the graces, or gifts of the Holy Spirit, is to attribute nothing to him
supernaturall. For God disposeth men to Piety, Justice, Mercy, Truth, Faith, and all
manner of Vertue, both Morall, and Intellectuall, by doctrine, example, and by severall
occasions, naturall, and ordinary.”
131
Or farther down the same page, when discussing
the modes by which God communicated with those whom Hobbes terms “subordinate
Prophets of Perpetuall Calling”: “I find not any place that proveth God spake to them

163
supernaturally; but onely in such manner, as naturally he inclineth men to Piety, to
Beleef, to Righteousnesse, and to other virtues all other Christian men.”
132
All of these
statements render superfluous a great portion of Hobbes’ exploration of angels in that, as
supposedly supernatural entities, they play no part in divine communication whatsoever.
And do note the terms Hobbes himself would claim to have “inconstant signification”
and thus no meaning. In fact communication itself has been deliberately downgraded to
subtle influence. But as I’ve said, this is Hobbes’ strategy—to safeguard his careful
distinction between realms in as many ways as he can at the risk of ridiculous and mind-
bending overdetermination, which rhetorically speaking, becomes the theological
equivalent of why the bucket can carry no water—it has no handle, the handle is broken,
it has holes in it, it has no bottom, there is no water to be found, etc. Hobbes also
conveniently fails to describe how God influences men “naturally”; he allows the word to
hang in our minds enigmatically as meaning simply “not supernaturally,” which leads to
such ultimately unanswerable questions as to whether or not God is capable of doing
anything naturally, supernaturally, or even anything at all. For if “the nature of God is
incomprehensible” we cannot dictate what His capacities are: “To say God spake or
appeared as he is in his own nature, is to deny his Infinitenesse, Invisibility,
Imcomprehensibility.”
133

And aside from even further abrading (or finishing off, really) whatever slight
credence he elsewhere in Leviathan pretends to assign to supernatural mediation in
scripture, Hobbes calculated and controversial displacement of Christ functions as an
admonition: if Christ himself was completely divided from His Father, then
contemporary individuals rightly fall under Hobbes’ censure for engaging in “the

164
pretence of private Inspiration, or Revelation”; for “in such a number of men, that out of
pride, and ignorance, take their own Dreams, and extravagant Fancies, and Madnesse, for
testimonies of God’s Spirit; or out of ambition, pretend to such Divine testimonies,
falsely, and contrary to their own consciences.”
134
Hobbes’ concern is arresting the
proliferation of authorial figures as well as factions: he warns that if everyone were to
obey what issues out of just anyone’s mouth, “it were impossible that any Divine Law
should be acknowledged”—the legitimate authority being “the Soveraign, who only has
the Legislative power.”
135
Criticizing current prophetic insight Hobbes touches on
virtually the same idea earlier in the text:
for if men were at liberty, to take for God’s Commandements, their own dreams,
and fancies, or the dreams and fancies of private men; scarce two men would
agree upon what is God’s Commandement; and yet in respect of them, every man
would despise the Commandements of the Common-wealth. I conclude therefore
that . . . all Subjects are bound to obey that for divine Law, which is declared to be
so, by the Lawes of the Commonwealth.
136

Since in Hobbes’ scheme of government, all laws are those decided on by the
Commonwealth, that is the monarch, who is the lone arbiter in determining legality, he
allows for no contestation whatsoever: “But the Church, if it be one person, is the same
thing with a Common-wealth of [206] Christians; called a Common-wealth, because it
consisteth of men united in one person, their Soveraign; and a Church, because it
consisteth in Christian men, united in one Christian Soveraign.”
137
Binding together
sovereignty, law, religion, and the state self-referentially while time and again
extinguishing the possibility of human beings either communicating directly with God or
exhibiting divine powers, Hobbes shuts down challenges to rule that might gain

165
momentum from appeals to prophetic sanction. He delineates his apprehensions very
explicitly late in Chapter XXXVI:
And consequently men had need to be very circumspect, and wary, in obeying the
voice of man, that pretending himself to be a Prophet, requires us to obey God in
that way, which he in Gods name telleth us to be the way to happinesse. For he
that pretends to teach men the way of so great felicity, pretends to govern them;
that is to say, to rule, and reign over them; which is a thing, that all men naturally
desire, and is therefore worthy to be suspected of Ambition and Imposture; and
consequently, ought to be examined, and tryed by every men, before hee yeeld
them obedience; unlesse he have yeelded it them already, in the institution of a
Commonwealth; as when the Prophet is the Civill Soveraign, or by the Civil
Soveraign Authorized.
138

And even more clearly at the end of the chapter:
For when Christian men, take not their Christian Soveraign, for Gods Prophet;
they must either take their owne Dreams, for the Prophecy they mean to bee
governed by, and the tumour of their own hearts for the Spirit of God; or they
must suffer themselves to bee lead by some strange Prince; or by some of their
fellow subjects, that can bewitch them, by slander of the government, into
rebellion, without other miracle to confirm their calling, then sometimes an
extraordinary successe, and Impunity; by this means destroying all laws, both
divine, and humane, reduce all Order, Government, and Society, to the first Chaos
of Violence, and Civill warre.
139

I cite these passages in full to call attention to Hobbes’ apprehension over not only what
he saw as the seductive qualities of prophetic discourse, but also how vulnerable he must
have felt English society as a whole was to it. Realizing that “The Word of God delivered
by Prophets is the main principle of Christian Politiques,”
140
and intent on restricting
power to the sovereign alone, he inveighs against those who counterfeit prophetic ability,
in the first quotation enumerating reasons how and why a subject might entice others into
withdrawing their allegiance from the sovereign and transferring it to him, and in the
second the consequences of so doing. I share Johnston’s recognition that for Hobbes,
prophetic discourse was “fundamentally inimical to the obedience of subjects and the

166
power of sovereigns,” and among the “most destructive of all the forces opposed to civil
peace.”
141
When considered against the backdrop of the burgeoning religious strife and
civil discord that punctuated the middle decades of the century, Hobbes’ single-minded
promotion of a theocratic monarchy appears not so much a mindless celebration of
sovereignty as a solution to the problem of stabilizing a nation caught in the throes of
religious fanaticism.
Foucault, outlining methodological precautions regarding the study of twentieth-
century power relations refers briefly to Leviathan. Advising that we should discard
questions dealing with constructions of sovereignty in favor of those that focus on
subjugation, Foucault stipulates that “rather than ask ourselves how the sovereign appears
to us in his lofty isolation, we should try to discover how it is that subjects are gradually,
progressively, really and materially constituted through a multiplicity of organisms,
forces, energies, materials, desires, thoughts etc.”
142
After challenging the reader “to
grasp subjugation in its material instance as a constitution of subjects” he somewhat
cavalierly claims that “This would be the exact opposite of Hobbes’ project in
Leviathan”; which is true as far as it goes, in that for Hobbes “the problem is the
distillation of a single will—or rather, the constitution of a unitary, singular body
animated by the spirit of sovereignty—from the particular wills of a multiplicity of
individuals.”
143
Discounting the existence of ideological productions and constructs in
the seventeenth century Foucault warns that “We must eschew the model of Leviathan in
the study of power. We must escape from the limited field of juridical sovereignty and
State institutions, and instead base our analysis of power on the study of the techniques
and tactics of domination”;
144
yet he overlooks the fact that, as we have seen, Hobbes

167
displays an acute awareness of relations of domination, especially in terms of discourse
and discursive resistance. Despite what Foucault believes, people in seventeenth-century
Britain were, as Barry Reay says, “convinced of the power of ideology.”
145
Hobbes as
well as Foucault is concerned with the question “what rules of right are implemented by
the relations of power in the production of discourses of truth?”
146
just not in a liberatory
way; Hobbes too perceives that “There can be no possible exercise of power without a
certain economy of discourses of truth which operates through and on the basis of this
association. We are subjected to the production of truth through power and we cannot
exercise power except through the production of truth.”
147

Leviathan was offensive to Hobbes’ contemporaries precisely to the extent that
underwriting his promotion of absolute sovereignty appeared a consciousness of the
realization that, in Foucault’s formulation, “effects of truth are produced within
discourses which in themselves are neither true nor false”;
148
nowhere is this more
evident than in his destructive examination of prophecy and perfectibility. And Hobbes’
mandate that the sovereign be taken as supreme prophet reveals an understanding that the
“battle is not ‘on behalf’ of the truth, but about the status of truth and the economic and
political role it plays”
149
in that appeals to God as guarantor are noticeably absent—he
basically states that in a theocracy, multiple claims on religious truth are dangerous to
national security, order, and stability; hence the best safeguard is to have the populous
worship their civil leader as their religious leader. What Hobbes in effect calls for is a
return to sovereignty jure divino, only more calculatedly, uniformly, and stringently
inculcated and enforced. Hobbes envisions “truth” much the same way Foucault does,
that is “as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution,

168
circulation, and operation of statements.”
150
Propagating competing versions of religio-
political truth, sectarian prophetic discourse had denaturalized power relations; in other
words, it had managed to detach “the power of truth from the forms of hegemony, social,
economic and cultural,”
151
within which it had more or less efficiently operated with the
collapse of censorship in 1640.
152
By mid-century, it had become entrenched enough to
defy the reigning “political, economic, [and] institutional régime of the production of
truth,”
153
and was therefore able to provide and sustain alternative normalizing ideals
regarding subjectivity. Also anticipating Foucault by more than three centuries, Thomas
Edwards, in his endless rant against religious toleration and sectaries, Gangraena
(published in 1646, five years before Leviathan), specifies that lenience “overthrows all
relations, both Politicall, Ecclesiasticall, and Oeconomicall”;
154
worried about “the power
of the people,” he later proclaims that “A Toleration will undoe all, first, bring in
Sceptiscism in Doctrine, and loosenesse of life, and afterwards all Atheisme.”
155

Irrespective of whether or not one agrees with Edwards’ predictions or approves of his
attitude, in the Foucauldean sense his reasoning is sound: remove restrictions on the
production and circulation of truth, and the result will be a change in the production of
subjects (or subjectivities, if you will).
156
In a society that depended upon religious
discourse to maintain the socio-political status quo, perfectibility and prophecy were bona
fide threats as together they created a discursive place for protest, which was
simultaneously a space of subjective alterity. Hobbes’ mission in Leviathan is to wrest
from “private men” that politically self-empowering discourse by removing God from
their rhetorical reach via all possible stratagems, while substituting the monarch for God,
in that the monarch alone is permitted to decide what constitutes His will on earth. As

169
Hobbes testifies in Chapter XXXVI, “All prophecy but of the Sovereign Prophet is to be
examined by every Subject.”
157
For Hobbes, complete civil stasis resulting from mindless
obedience to political leaders comprises his vision of New Jerusalem; because of the
times he lived through it is so very easy to understand why, and just as frightening.

170

Chapter Two Endnotes

1
Thomas Hobbes (2000), pp. 54, 55.

2
The Coherence of Hobbes’s Leviathan: Civil and Religious Authority Combined (2007), p. 50.

3
Virtually all of the authors I involve in my discussion of Hobbes differ in their perceptions of his actual
attitude toward Christianity as it comes across in Leviathan; what unites them is their understanding of its
importance to his political theory. I have included them for this reason only: to demonstrate that Hobbes’
intention of divesting Christianity of those elements that encouraged personal revelation is well-
documented. Rehearsing their individual opinions as well as their supporting arguments pertaining to
Hobbes’ presentation of Christianity for themselves is unnecessary and beyond the scope of my
dissertation.

4
The Two Gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on Religion and Politics (1992), pp. 33, 222, 232.

5
Ideals as Interests in Hobbes’s Leviathan: The Power of Mind Over Matter (1992), p. 2.

6
Ibid., p. 127.

7
The Rhetoric of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Cultural Transformation (1986), p. 153.

8
Religion, Politics and Thomas Hobbes (2006), pp. 212, 214.

9
Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes (1996), p. 401.

10
Leviathan (1651), 2.29.7.

11
Ibid., 2.29.19.

12
Ibid., “A Review and Conclusion,” last paragraph.

13
Ideals as Interests, p. 244.

14
The Two Gods of Leviathan, p. 237.

15
Ibid., pp. 1, 245.

16
Reason and Rhetoric, pp. 13-14.

17
Ideals as Interests, p. 272.

18
Reason and Rhetoric, pp. 272, 14.

19
Ibid., pp. 13, 14.

20
Ironically, I got these lines from Martinich himself, who does his best to refute them (The Two Gods of
Leviathan, p. 28); one can find Wootton’s article in Martinich’s bibliography, “Lucien Febvre and the
Problem of Unbelief in the Early Modern Period” (1988), p. 711.

171

21
The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Genesis (1936), pp. 77. 71.

22
The Coherence of Hobbes’s Leviathan, p. 49.

23
Religion, Politics and Thomas Hobbes, p. 204.

24
Leviathan, 1.8.26.

25
Ibid., 3.36.10.

26
Ibid., 3.36.10.

27
Ibid., 3.34.21.

28
Ibid., 3.34.23

29
Ibid., 3.34.23.

30
Ibid., 3.34.23.

31
Daniel 12:1. Though everyone makes much of Hobbes’ “solo scriptura” method, the fact is that in
Daniel these beings have no names—makes one wonder what “solo scriptura” means—at least to Hobbes!

32
Reason and Rhetoric, p. 405.

33
Ibid. In Skinner’s opinion Hobbes “displays a marked fondness for irony, the mocking trope par
excellence according to rhetoricians of his day” (p. 404).

34
Leviathan, 3.34.3. Hobbes makes a similar statement far earlier in the book pertaining to all manner of
supernatural entities:
And for the matter, or substance of the Invisible Agents, so fancied; they could not be naturall
cogitation, fall upon any other conceipt, but that it was the same with that of the Soule of man; and
that the Soule of man, was of the same substance, with that which appeareth in a Dream, to one
that sleepeth; or in a Looking-glasse, to one that is awake; which men not knowing that such
apparitions are nothing else but creatures of the Fancy, think them to be reall, and eternal
Substances. (1.12.7)

35
The Coherence of Hobbes’s Leviathan, p. 63.

36
Ibid., pp. 64, 54.

37
“Bacon: Fierce With Dark Keeping,” from the soon-to-be published The Materialist Ideology: Bacon to
Sade, p. 13.

38
Ibid., pp. 7-8.

39
Ibid., pp. 29, 30.

40
Ibid., p. 9.

41
Ibid., p. 6. Kemp shows Bacon making a similar statement in the Advancement of Learning: “So we
ought not to attempt to draw down or submit the mysteries of God to our reason” (p. 27).

172

42
Ibid., p. 6. Kemp informs us that Bacon repeats the same sentiment altered only slightly in the
Advancement of Learning: “for the contemplation of God’s creatures and words produceth . . . knowledge;
but having regard to God, no perfect knowledge, but wonder, which is broken knowledge” (p. 6-7).

43
Leviathan, 1.12.6.

44
Ibid., 1.12.6.

45
The Materialist Ideology, p. 46.

46
Ibid., p. 16.

47
Ibid., p. 16.

48
Ibid., p. 7.

49
Ibid., pp. 48-49.

50
Ibid., 3.43.21.

51
Ibid., 3.43.5. In the introduction to his article “How to Write Scripture: Words, Authority, and Politics in
Thomas Hobbes” (1993), Tracy B. Strong focuses on the frontispiece engraving, which he says is
Leviathan’s “ most famous portion” (p. 128); in his description of it he highlights what he calls the “two
hierarchies of panels, ten in total: on the left, the emblems and practices of civil society, all centered around
the use of force; on the right, parallel signs for a church” (p. 130)—but tellingly, the Bible is not depicted.
The Church cannot function effectively as a coercive instrument unless scripture is withheld from the body
politic, to be doled out as necessary, and only in select ways.

52
Ibid., 3.43.21.

53
The Materialist Ideology, p. 47.

54
Ibid., p. 47.

55
Areopagitica, Milton’s Prose Writings (1965), p. 177. Of course in Western Civilization Jesus has been
used as the premier instrument of mind-control; Hobbes simply indicates that He should be used as such,
without scruple—for Hobbes has witnessed the problems of a having a “Nation of Prophets.” And please
observe that Hobbes himself freely employs the very narratives for argumentative purposes to which he
forbids others access—let us recall Strauss’ maxim that Hobbes relies on “the authority of Scriptures for his
own theory, and next and particularly in order to shake the authority of the Scriptures themselves” (The
Political Philosophy of Hobbes, p. 71).

56
Leviathan, 3.43.22.

57
Ibid., 3.43.6.

58
Ibid., 3.43.6. Hobbes briefly dissects faith in Chapter V11, “Of the Ends, or Resolutions of DISCOURSE,”
limiting it to the “meerly Mentall” (1.7.2) discourse of men: “So that it is evident, that whatevsoever we
believe, upon no other reason, then what is drawn from authority of men onely, and their writing; whether
they be sent from God or not, is Faith in men onely” (1.7.7). This more general assertion resonates neatly
with later claims.

173

59
2 Kings 5.1.

60
2 Kings 5.15.

61
2 Kings 5.5-6. Or rather, the king of Syria, sends him to a “prophet that is in Samaria” (2 Kings 5.3),
who turns out to be Elisha.

62
Leviathan, 3.43.22.

63
I disagree with Keith C. Pepperell, who, in his article entitled “Religious Conscience and Civic
Conscience in Thomas Hobbes’s Civic Philosophy” (1989), seems to think that Hobbes believes that
“legitimate, private judgments of value” do exist (p. 19); however Pepperell does readily admit that
“Hobbes’s dominant view of conscience was one of a seditious private conscience – one that, if followed,
would induce civic disunity and civil disobedience” (p. 19). Pepperell also correctly recognizes that
“Basically it is a religious conscience based on interpretations of the scriptures that Hobbes seeks to deny”
(p. 19)—which is amply demonstrated in Hobbes’ discussion of Infidel monarchs and their Christian
subjects.

64
The Materialist Ideology, p. 17.

65
Ibid. Such abstractions qualify as, to quote Kemp “signifying ideas with no original objects, ‘rerum
nomina quae non sunt (names of things which do not exist)’” (p. 22).

66
Ibid., 3.43.5.

67
Ibid., p. 4.

68
The Coherence of Hobbes’s Leviathan, p. 1.

69
The Materialist Ideology, p. 20. Translation from the Latin, from Novum Organum.

70
Leviathan, 3.34.23.

71
Ibid., 3.34.23.

72
Ibid., 3.34.17.

73
Ibid., 3.34.20.

74
Ibid., 3.34.24.

75
Ibid., 3.34.24.

76
Ibid., 3.34.24.

77
Reason and Rhetoric, p. 405.

78
Ibid., p. 405. In a footnote at the bottom of the same page Skinner continues to “slam” Martinich, who
thinks that Hobbes is yielding “(‘with disarming candor’) to ‘the force of the New Testament . . . to change
his belief,’” assuring us that “Here as elsewhere Martinich seems oblivious to Hobbes’s use of irony to lend
his apparent concessions a mocking undertone. . . . [H]is insensitivity to Hobbes’s literary strategies
vitiates much of his argument, especially about Hobbes’s alleged religious commitments. As we have seen

174

Hobbes’s contemporaries were better attuned to his rhetorical strategies and his use of them – as Clarendon
complained – to excite prejudice and contempt.”

79
The Materialist Ideology, p. 20.

80
For some reason Brandon (The Coherence of Hobbes’s Leviathan, p. 49), Lloyd (Ideals as Interests, p.
124), Martinich, (The Two Gods of Leviathan, p. 236), and Johnston (The Rhetoric of Leviathan, p. 158) all
argue that Hobbes does believe in immediate revelation but limits that belief to scriptural examples,
meaning that for him the era had long since passed. Based on my reading of Leviathan I of course don’t
see how this can be true.

81
Leviathan, 1.2.2.

82
Ibid., 1.3.7.

83
Ibid., 1.3.5.

84
Ibid., 1.3.7.

85
Ibid., 1.3.6.

86
The World Turned Upside Down, p. 103.

87
The Materialist Ideology, pp. 32, 33.

88
Leviathan, 1.3.7.

89
Ibid., 1.3.7.

90
Ibid., 1.3.7.

91
Ibid., 3.32.9.

92
Ibid., 1.3.7.

93
Reason and Rhetoric, p. 406.

94
Although Skinner doesn’t bring it to our attention, “Signes” can be seen as instance of “aestismus,” a
“mocking trope” that in his mind Hobbes favored, referring to an attack “by means of an inherently
ambiguous turn of phrase. If the words in question are taken in one way, they provide adequate
descriptions; but if they are taken in another and no less proper sense, they instead produce a satirical
effect”. Skinner does discuss, however, how Hobbes “makes play with the term presumption and its
capacity to either refer to the belief that something will happen or else to the effrontery of presuming it”
(Reason and Rhetoric, p. 409).

95
Leviathan, 1.12.13.

96
Ibid., 1.12.19.

97
Ibid., 1.12.19. When referencing Lucan’s Pharsalia via his judgment that oracular pronouncements were
rendered nonsensical “by the intoxicating vapour of the place, which is very frequent in sulphurous

175

Cavernes” (1.12.19), Hobbes neglects to mention that the atheistic Lucan himself was disparaging the
entire business—but obviously Hobbes is marshalling his information toward a specific end, which is the
rejection of prophecy as a legitimate predictive instrument. In examining classical auguries only in order to
discredit them, Hobbes arranges for the reader a clear dichotomy between credulous pagans and educated
Christians. To venture into a discussion of antique skeptics would dilute the force of his argument
unnecessarily.

98
Ibid., 1.1.2.19.

99
Ibid., 1.12.19.

100
Ibid., 3.34.26.

101
The Materialist Ideology, p. 20.

102
Leviathan, 3.34.25.

103
Reason and Rhetoric, p. 422.

104
Leviathan, 3.34.25.

105
Ibid., 3.34.25.

106
Ibid., 3.34.25.

107
Reason and Rhetoric, p. 423.

108
Leviathan, 3.34.4.

109
Kemp shows that, like much else, Hobbes borrows a “God without attributes, without analogies, God
under the aspect of nothingness” from Bacon (The Materialist Ideology, p. 16).

110
Ibid., 3.34.4.

111
The Materialist Ideology, p. 24.

112
Ibid., p. 25.

113
Bacon in Novum Organum exclaims “Numberless in short are the ways and sometimes imperceptible, in
which the affections colour and infect the understanding” (The Materialist Ideology, p. 15).

114
Ibid., 1.4.23.

115
Bacon in Novum Organum exclaims “Numberless in short are the ways and sometimes imperceptible, in
which the affections colour and infect the understanding” (The Materialist Ideology, p. 15).

116
Leviathan, 3.34.3.

117
I like to think of this entire exercise as a slur against the “Godly”: not only does Hobbes’ group
“godlinesse” together with some unsavory abstract nouns, he voids the term of any meaning that might
redeem it from the affiliation.

176

118
Ibid., 3.34.6.

119
Reason and Rhetoric, p. 409.

120
Ibid., 3.34.6.

121
Ibid., 3.34.14.

122
Ibid., 3.34.14.

123
Ibid., 3.34.7.

124
Ibid., 3.34.7.

125
Ibid., 3.34.11.

126
Ibid., 3.34.12.

127
Ibid., 3.34.13.

128
The Tragedy of King Lear (1607), I.i.90. The Riverside Shakespeare, (1974).

129
The Language of Politics in Seventeenth-Century England (1994), pp. 57, 58.

130
Leviathan, 3.34.25. We should contrast this idea with what Hobbes later says regarding Christ and the
Holy Spirit, namely that in Him “onely the Godhead [as St. Paul speaketh in Col. 2.9.] dwelleth bodily”
(3.36.12); however, as we’ve learned, when outlining material dealing with the miraculous, Hobbes spouts
scripture precisely to interrogate its supernatural content that he may undermine its veracity. And while he
leaves this particular statement untouched, in light of what he says in 3.34.25 I of course wonder at his
sincerity.

131
Ibid., 3.36.12.

132
Ibid., 3.36.14.

133
Ibid., 3.36.12.

134
Ibid., 3.33.21.

135
Ibid., 3.33.21.

136
Ibid., 2.26.39.

137
Ibid., 3.33.21.

138
Ibid., 3.36.18.

139
Ibid., 3.36.19.

140
Ibid., 3.32.1.

141
The Rhetoric of Leviathan, p. 112.

177

142
“Two Lectures,” Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972 – 1977 (1980), p. 97.

143
Ibid., p. 97.

144
Ibid., p. 102. Foucault waffles between admitting and denying that, as far as regards the early modern
era, “it is quite possible that major mechanisms of power have been accompanied by ideological
productions,” at last conceding enigmatically that what took place was “both much more and much less
than ideology” (p. 102).

145
The Quakers and the English Revolution (1985), p. 57.

146
“Two Lectures,” p. 93.

147
Ibid, p. 93.

148
Ibid., p. 118.

149
Ibid., p. 132.

150
Ibid., p. 133.

151
Ibid., p. 133.

152
In Althusserian language, radical prophetic discourse had provided to date the most successful challenge
to class hegemony “over and in the State Ideological Apparatuses” (“Ideology,” p. 146).

153
“Truth and Power,” Power/Knowledge, p. 133.

154
Gangraena (1646), p. 154.

155
Ibid., p. 188.

156
Judith Butler, in her study of subjectivity and subjugation, The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in
Subjection (1997), investigates the production of subjectivities in her chapter “Subjection, Resistance,
Resignification: Between Freud and Foucault,” positing that “subjection is neither simply the domination of
a subject nor its production, but designates a certain kind of restriction in production, a restriction without
which the production of the subject cannot take place, a restriction through which production takes place”
(p. 84).

157
Leviathan, 3.36.19.

178
Chapter Three: Cromwell the Providential Prophet

Foucault, in analyzing the formation of domains of historical disciplines, posits
that all problems connected with such an inquiry “may be summed up in a word: the
question of the document”; that is to say, “the reconstitution, on the basis of what the
documents say, and sometimes merely hint at, of the past from which they emanate and
which has now disappeared far behind them.”
1
He concludes that “The document is not
the fortunate tool of history that is primarily and fundamentally memory; history is one
way in which a society recognizes and develops a mass of documentation with which it is
inextricably linked.”
2
How I choose to interpret this assertion is that we cannot know this
or that particular past, only methods of looking at them, as what we lack is the live
interaction that would provide us with the soundest and fullest possible evidence of what
they might have been like; hence we are forced to rely on written artifacts, essentially
dead things that reveal little except what we need to think about the past in question, in
order to justify what we think about the present, whether or not we are aware of the need
for such justification. According to Foucault, all of our discussions of the past should be
understood as sets of ideologically motivated discursive practices, mere tissues of words,
the corporate function of which is to represent a society to itself, to its own best
advantage. Even the parceling out of the past into separate fields of knowledge is of
itself an ideological operation that fulfills particular societal requirements and goals.
3

Given the ideological strictures that one must negotiate concerning historical
investigation, even if she could magically witness the living past, would it even be
possible for her to make sense of it, or would it be in fact so alien as to evade all means of

179
analogizing that she might bestow upon it a contemporary significance? For us the past
is a jumble of language, and we impose upon this jumble a self-serving order—but how
much can we really know about the past, or the people whom we reconstruct via arbitrary
organizations of this jumble for our own purposes?
My crude, partial, and slanted summation of Foucault’s much broader and far
more specific (and by this time rather well-worn through still valid) Marxist-
psychoanalytic-psycholinguistic argument can be applied to the enigma of Oliver
Cromwell, who is, as Peter Gaunt describes in a relatively recent (and very superficial)
study, “England and Britain’s most closely studied head of state, with biographies . . . far
outnumbering those of any monarch, even the Virgin Queen or the legendary King
Arthur.”
4
Gaunt claims that because Cromwell is a much-mythologized figure,
discovering the “real person” is no easy task, observing that “Getting Cromwell right,
portraying him in sharp focus, true colours and accurate context, is often difficult.”
5

From the mere handful of biographies and histories that I have read, I maintain that
“Getting Cromwell right” is virtually impossible; Robert S. Paul outlines, somewhat
unconsciously, why the “real Cromwell” will always elude us:
to suggest a fundamental hypocrisy—whether on the grounds advanced by
seventeenth century royalists, or on those put forward by twentieth-century
realists—is to offer a solution too simple to be acceptable. It is too simple
because it ignores what is perhaps the most singular fact of Cromwell’s career—
that throughout the vast accumulation of his uttered thought that has come down
to us, never once does he admit a lesser motive in private conversation, public
speech, or in his most intimate correspondence. No man could have forwarded
his own self-interest to achieve a public career of such magnitude without giving
some hint of his ambition in word or letter, if personal ambition were the only or
even the predominant motive of the career; and yet only a few men in history
appear to have acted more consistently and with a clearer conscience than Oliver
Cromwell. The explanation of this can only be that within Cromwell’s own mind

180
his ambition was itself the instrument of a greater cause which he served with
absolute sincerity.
6

Attempts to solve the riddle of Cromwell’s personality continually founder in multiple
ways on the impenetrable screen his legendary providentialism; he is a perfect example
of Foucault’s assertion that “there can be no question of interpreting discourse with a
view to writing a history of the referent.”
7
The fact that biographers and historians
consistently feel the need to render a verdict on their interpretations of Cromwell in terms
of the vexed relationship between his words and his deeds demonstrates that Cromwell
can “emerge only in discourse”
8
—for posterity Cromwell can’t exist except as a messy
conglomeration of suppositions that, in spite of their sheer quantity, fails to yield an even
vaguely coherent personality in the dramatic (that is, Shakespearean) sense of the word.
9

There is no way to “arrang[e] statements”
10
that can conjure up a character that produces
a comfortable sense of satisfaction without including a large element of what comes
down to pure opinion. The reason is because of the impoverished quality of his language;
Foucault formulates the connection between articulate scarcity and interpretive
abundance that neatly fits the dilemma of puzzling out Cromwell: “To interpret is a way
of reacting to enunciative poverty, and to compensate for it by a multiplication of
meaning; a way of speaking on the basis of that poverty, and yet despite it.”
11
Even
Wilbur Cortez Abbott, in his four-volume collection of Cromwell’s recorded utterances,
and about which he brags as being “not only the most nearly complete collection of
Cromwellian documents, speeches and conversation which has yet appeared, but, as the
world stands to-day, possibly the most nearly complete collection which can ever be
made in the future,”
12
concedes that

181
Cromwell is the opportunity and despair of biographer and historian. He not
merely kept his own counsel but he wrote little from which his thoughts and
motives can be guessed, and of that little only part has been preserved.
In consequence, with little straining of the evidence, it has been possible to paint
him as a hypocritical and Machiavellian plotter after the manner of an Italian
tyrant, and as a noble, single-minded hero of liberty with no thought of personal
advancement. It is possible largely because the testimony is not only so scanty
but is susceptible to such widely differing interpretations. It is frequently not so
much what he said as what he refrained from saying that is most important, and
the silent spaces in his life seem often more significant than the records he has
left. It is not merely difficult, it is often impossible to reconstruct from his written
words or from such of his conversations as have come down to us, any wholly
satisfactory account of his real inner thoughts, his plans, his ambitions or his
maneuvres.
13

Abbott’s attitude toward deciphering Cromwell bears out Foucault’s law of “enunciative
poverty” quite nicely; like Paul, Abbott indicates why Cromwell cannot appear except as
a site of irreconcilable contradictions—only Abbott acknowledges why this is so.
It is readily apparent that Paul’s and Abbott’s radically disparate assessments of
Cromwell, as a product of his language, are governed by different assumptions
concerning what Foucault calls “the living plenitude of experience.”
14
For example, not
only does Paul believe that Cromwell’s recorded speech is absolutely coextensive with
his thought, he also imagines that through it we are permitted a glimpse of Cromwell as
both a public persona and a private individual. Abbott’s views, however, are
diametrically opposed to Paul’s: we can glean almost nothing of Cromwell’s thinking
from his words, and thus we are left examining basically an artificial shell.
15
But both
Paul’s and Abbott’s divergent opinions are premised upon the formation of the subject in
terms of a dichotomous private interior and social exterior (that also can be traced back to
Shakespeare), only they negotiate this concept in diverse manners. Because Paul feels
that the language of the “inner and outer” Cromwell agree, he must be completely

182
sincere, whereas for Abbott, because we cannot detect an inward Cromwell, the
authenticity of the outward man remains suspect; Abbott pointedly remarks that “It is not
without significance that so many of his portraits are adorned with masks of a fox and a
lion as symbols of his nature, or that the oft-quoted motto of one of his earlier
biographers is ‘Qui nescit dissimulare, nescit regnare’—‘he who knows not how to
dissimulate, knows not how to rule.’”
16
Paul and Abbot predicate their speculations on
the idea that the private individual, soliloquizing, or communicating with close friends
and family, is the locus of honesty. In a fashion their seemingly antithetical positions
transverse the enormous and confusing “enunciative field” of statements that comprise
Cromwellian discourse;
17
and their analyses are, as Foucault says, “governed by rules that
are not all given to their consciousness.”
18
Ironically Paul praises Abbott for the very
thing that Abbott himself denies, in that Paul credits “the vast accumulation of his
[Cromwell’s] uttered thought” to Abbott’s painstaking research—but criticizes Abbott on
the grounds that he “did less than justice to the man about whom he wrote, for he
underestimated the fact that religion—sincere religion—was an indispensable feature of
the seventeenth-century scene in England, and . . . we cannot interpret the religion of
Cromwell and his contemporaries by twentieth-century motives.”
19
Again, Cromwell’s
providential rhetoric shields him from any consensus regarding the connection between
his intentions and his actions. Paul admits on the very first page of his introduction that
“It would seem that between Clarendon’s royalist convention of the ‘brave bad man’ and
Carlyle’s noble ‘hero’ there is a great gulf fixed, and if this is so, there can be no answer
to the dilemma, and one’s estimate of Cromwell must be consigned to the arbitration of
prejudice.”
20
This common sentiment is not in itself as disturbing as the fact that it is

183
often raised only to be overwhelmed by an avalanche of opinion that masques itself as
evidence, having (conveniently) forgotten that it is ultimately unverifiable.
The controversy over Cromwell’s sincerity regarding his piety has raged since his
own day, and shows no signs of abating. The fact is, however, despite the lengthy and
solid historiographical tradition of Cromwell’s vaunted religious convictions, no one can
determine just what they were in any conventional sense; Colin Davis, in his
investigation of Cromwell’s religion enumerates some of the reasons why:
Cromwell left no programmatic statements, no credo on which we can base a
description of his faith and its personal and social meaning. There are no
verbatim records of the discussion by him of matters of spirituality which we may
presume occupied the circles to which he belonged; no confessional records.
Unlike many of his pious contemporaries, Cromwell left no journal, no diary
revealing the nature of spiritual self-examination. No record of his reading nor of
the contents of his library survives. . . . For all the sermons which he must have
heard and their presumed importance to him, Cromwell never discusses or
criticizes one in his extant utterances.
21

Yet, after pages of questioning Cromwell’s religious identity, Davis still somehow insists
that “There can no longer be any doubt that Cromwell was saturated in the
providentialism of his contemporaries. No event or facet of his life was untouched by
God’s presence and guiding will. The notion of a self-deceiving manipulator of the
language of religion, imperturbably confident in the ‘Divine Right of Oliver’ will no
longer survive critical examination.”
22
I suggest that the only thing we can say for certain
about Cromwell is that his language was (at times!) “saturated in the providentialism of
his contemporaries”—and that he may not have been “self-deceiving.” However, we find
time and again scholars completely seduced by Cromwell’s strategically invoked
providential rhetoric into overlooking his actions that they may celebrate him as some
kind of prophetic hero; for instance Gaunt, echoing Paul, writes that

184
most modern historians are inclined to accept Cromwell’s faith and his
explanations of religious motivation as genuine, pointing out the intense religious
language and justifications appear in very personal letters, to members of his
family and close friends, which were not intended for wider circulation, as well as
in the more public letters, to the Lord General of the army or the Speaker of the
Commons, which he might have expected to reach a wider audience.
23

Martyn Bennett contends that
Cromwell was convinced of the providential nature of God’s relationship with the
world. Only through studying the present, in conjunction with bible study, and
interpreting God’s work, could God’s plan be understood. That this provided
Cromwell with the confidence to act is undoubted. Through this working
relationship Cromwell devised his political and religious perspective from the
1630s onward. . . . What God wanted of Cromwell was essentially what
Cromwell wanted of himself, and others. . . . But Cromwell’s mistaken belief in
God must not be belittled, for that is how he understood the world, for him there
was a genuine conversation a constant struggle to work out God’s plan, and it
would be churlish to argue otherwise. Those who walk with God, however, have
difficulty walking with mankind.
24

David Smith explains that, regarding Cromwell’s providentialism,
Such rhetoric pervades most of Cromwell’s recorded utterances, and the thrust of
recent scholarship has been to take these statements very seriously as a genuine
indication of his inner frame of mind. Most recent writers have inclined towards
seeing Cromwell as basically sincere even if there was an element of self-
deception that allowed him to put the most favorable possible gloss on his own
motives.
25

Richard E. Boyer argues that “Although not a hypocrite he [Cromwell] sometimes
appears to have come very near hypocrisy in implementing his policies,” rationalizing
that while “Many of these apparent contradictions stem from the political expedience of
the day . . . several also might be attributed to the Puritan ideals which guided the Lord
Protector.”
26
And Barry Coward rather naively describes Cromwell’s political decisions
as always having been the result of “a mixture of complex motives; and never only
because of either religious ideology or national interest.”
27
Even Abbott, who throughout
his work unromantically emphasizes that Cromwell

185
was a military dictator and his whole career as Protector was evidence of that fact.
This the representatives of the foreign powers fully recognized and they spoke
and acted accordingly. To them his protestations of divine favor; his concern with
the Protestant Interest; his speeches, his prayers, even his tears, were merely
devices by which he kept his hold on power. . . . It is no reflection on his
character nor on that much abused word “sincerity” to consider him from that
point of view. It is merely a more realistic attitude to his actual place and
authority,
28

can unexpectedly do an about-face, and wax lyrical about Cromwell’s religiosity: “Yet
one may even take his words at their face value and evade the charge of hypocrisy so
often levelled against him.”
29
Suddenly caught up in his own rhetorical delirium, Abbott
goes even further, protesting that
the real weapon of Noncomformity was not the sword of the flesh, but the sword
of the spirit. Its greatest triumphs were not achieved; then or thereafter, by the
destruction of its opponents and its own worldly dominance. They were gained
by the winning of men’s minds and hearts, not by force, but by persuasion. It was
not a matter of conquest but of conscience. It is, in effect, the ancient parable:
“And behold the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains,
and brake into pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind;
and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and
after the earthquake a fire; and after the fire a still small voice.”
30

Foucault postulates that “To analyze discourse is to hide and reveal contradictions; it is to
show the play that they set up within it; it is to manifest how it can express them, embody
them, or give them a temporary appearance.”
31
And though I am not really interested in
analyzing discourse about Cromwell, I do wish to discuss what I take to be its biggest
source of contradiction: his prophetic language, the force of which seems even greater
today than in his own time. Citing John Skinner, Paul demonstrates the degree to which
an educated and intelligent individual is willing to overlook the obvious:
There may be occasions when we are able to discern beneath Oliver’s passionate
assertions of high calling the shape of less worthy motives, but he never gives any
indication in private letter or public utterance that these motives were consciously

186
recognized by him: Cromwell acted like a prophet, and the true prophet “is one
who can say with Paul, ‘I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.’”
32

It is not without significance that someone like Boyer, who without
embarrassment makes such fatuous comments as Cromwell “came to see himself as the
unwilling instrument of the Puritan revolution. He was not only set over the people of
England, but also over the ‘elect’ of England; those with the ‘root of the matter.’ His was
the obligation of leadership,”
33
on the very next page reports that “In the main, the
judgments of Cromwell’s contemporaries were extremely critical,”
34
without appearing to
consider that they had good reason to have been so critical, not to mention outright
condemnatory. Boyer’s “sampling”
35
of a few of the best-known views all focus in great
part on Cromwell’s tactics of self-aggrandizement and domination in his quest for power.
For instance, former confederate and avid republican Edmund Ludlow, a leading member
of Parliament, and one of the chief promoters of Pride’s Purge, the army’s first coup
d’état, characterizes Cromwell’s supposed death-bed speech thusly:
he manifested so little remorse of conscience for his betraying the public cause,
and sacrificing it to the idol of his own ambition, that some of his last words were
rather becoming a mediator than a sinner, recommending to God the condition of
the nation that he had so infamously cheated, and expressing great care of the
people whom he had so manifestly despised. But he seemed above all concerned
for the reproaches he said men would cast upon his name, in tramping on his
ashes when dead.
36

Royalist James Heath addresses Cromwell’s calculated weekly socializing with key army
officers after becoming Lord Protector, recounting that
With these Officers while he seemed to disport himself, taking off his drink
freely, and opening himself every way to the most free familiarity, he did merely
lie at the catch of what should incognantly and with such uninspected
provocations fall from their mouths, which he would be sure to record and lay up
against his occasion of reducing them to the speaker’s memory, who were never

187
like to forget the prejudice and damage they had incurred by such loose
discoveries of their minds and inclinations.
37

Conceptualizing Cromwell’s socio-political trajectory in terms of a gradual fall from
grace, clergyman Richard Baxter offers his theory as to when Cromwell first began to
grow corrupt, locating it fairly early in his military career, with Cromwell’s willingness
to recruit men of religious temperament irrespective of affiliation, as, in Baxter’s
language “none would be such engaged valiant men as the religious”:
38

With their successes the hearts both of captain and soldiers secretly rise both in
pride and expectation; and the familiarity of many honest erroneous men
(Anabaptists, Antinomians, etc.) withal began quickly to corrupt their judgments.
Hereupon Cromwell’s religious zeal giveth way to the power of that ambition,
which still increaseth as his successes do increase. Both piety and ambition
concurred in his countenancing of all that he thought godly, of what sect soever.
Piety pleadeth for them as godly, and charity as men; and ambition secretly telleth
him what use he might make of them. He meaneth well all this at the beginning,
and thinketh he doth all for the safety of the godly and the public good, but not
without an eye to himself.

When successes had broken down all considerable opposition he was then in the
face of his strongest temptations, which conquered him when he had conquered
others.
39

Lucy Hutchinson identifies Cromwell’s hunger for power as the sole reason for the
demise of the Commonwealth,
40
chronicling how he slyly fashioned the army into a
personal tool for his advancement while still lieutenant-general:
But now the poison of ambition so ulcerated Cromwell’s heart, that the effects of
it became more apparent than before, and while as yet Fairfax stood an empty, he
was moulding the army to his mind, weeding out the godly and upright-hearted
men, both officers and soldiers, and filling up their rooms with rascally turn-coat
cavaliers, and pitiful sottish beasts of his own alliance, and other such as would
swallow all things, and make no questions for conscience’ sakes. Yet he did this
not directly nor in tumult, but by such degrees that it was unperceived by all that
were not of very penetrating eyes; and those that made the loudest outcries against
him lifted up their voices with such apparent envy and malice that, in that mist,
they rather hid than discovered his ambitious designs.
41

188
And Edward Hyde, the Earl of Clarendon, who in his famous portrayal of Cromwell
matter-of-factly titles him “the greatest dissembler living,” goes on to commend him
(tongue-in-cheek I’m sure) for his judicious use of sanctimony, complimenting that he
“always made his hypocrisy of singular use and benefit to him; and never did any thing,
how ungracious or imprudent soever it seemed to be, but what was necessary to the
design.”
42
But the oft-repeated line that resounds with the most wit and rage is variously
attributed to Richard Overton or John Lilburne: “[Y]ou shall scarce speak to Cromwell
about anything, but he will lay his hand on his breast, elevate his eyes, and call God to
record, he will weep, howl and repent, even while he doth smite you under the first rib.”
43

The growing trend to take Cromwell’s religiosity at face value, which ultimately
is to take his words at face value, since we possess no other means of gauging his
religious convictions, is, in the guise of conscientious scholarship, an insidious attempt to
elevate him to the status of a biblical prophet. Even when the biographer paints himself
as an atheist, his need to configure Cromwell as some type of Christian Moses appears to
be nigh irresistible. This practice can be seen as, among other things, a nostalgic
reassertion of English Protestant nationalism; by isolating Cromwell from his politics and
politicking he can be resurrected as the supreme instance of a humble custodian of the
public good for the elect nation. The dangers of this sanctification of personal ambition
and political expediency are obvious.
44
Dramatic conventions aside, there is something
undeniably suspect about what Davis deems “a public spirituality enunciated for
essentially public purposes”
45
when it lacks wide-spread public confirmation. It is all
well and good, as Gaunt perceives, to “let Cromwell speak for himself through his
surviving words” as a way of placing him “in his own time and context”;
46
however, such

189
contextualization remains alarmingly inadequate without complementing it via the
surviving words of his contemporaries. And the feature of Cromwell’s religious sincerity
(and therefore the sincerity of all actions and behaviors that he justifies as springing from
it—which happens to be pretty much everything!) that complicates its more cautious
evaluation, is again, the very thing upon which irresponsible scholars base its estimation:
his relentless providential rhetoric. For example, though Davis pretends to “a healthy
scepticism,”
47
he doesn’t hesitate to borrow Cromwell’s cumulative self-portrait to spell
out the current distressingly doctrinaire historiographical agenda:
At the very heart of that public spirituality is an image of God presiding over the
national destiny and pursuing it through varying, if chosen, agents. The context
which Cromwell occupies here is not that of high theology nor that of popular
mentalité On the one hand, it is the landscape of the good constable or the godly
magistrate; on the other, it is that of the divinely chosen and providentially
endorsed instrument, leader, pastor and virtual prophet of God’s peculiar interest
at what might very well be an apocalyptic moment in the cosmic drama.
48

Of course “It is an appraisal of which we can imagine him approving”!
49
—all political
leaders would dearly love to be received by posterity exactly in the way that they
designate, let alone in this way! Except that Moses did not require a standing army to
make himself leader of the Israelites; on the contrary, God made Moses leader of a people
that he forged into a standing army. To take issue with such an ipse dixit assessment is a
waste of time, except in one respect: “The context which Cromwell occupies” is precisely
“that of popular mentalité”—in this Davis contradicts himself—for the providentialism
that “Cromwell was saturated in” should be considered as a basic mode of thought that
structured people’s perceptions about their world and their place in it. Cromwell’s
mastery and manipulation of a discourse that was one of the (if not the) distinguishing
traits of seventeenth-century British mentation not only propelled him into the position of

190
Lord Protector, but enabled him to cover all of his political machinations with a pious
veneer that continually frustrated his opponents, who were legion. Cromwell might well
be the first Teflon-coated politician; it’s almost as if he knew that he would be scrutinized
for centuries after his brief rule—perhaps for this reason alone he should be seen as a
“true prophet.”
Providentialism was a type of post-millennial prophetic discourse that was
predicated on the ability to read God’s teleological plan, both for particular individuals
and the nation as a whole, in personal and national events. Providentialism involved
intimate and special knowledge of the Bible that could only result from illumination by
the Holy Spirit; hence the use of providential rhetoric implied that one was included
among the godly instead of the reprobate, a status of paramount importance in a
theocracy, as only the godly deserved to rule. In a singularly informative article, Blair
Worden condenses into a few pages the role of providentialism in seventeenth-century
life, explaining that “So ubiquitous was providentialism indeed, and at times so repetitive
and predictable in its expression, that our familiarity with it may breed, if not contempt,
than at least neglect.”
50
Concentrating specifically on politics, Worden emphasizes that
providentialism was an enculturated “mental habit without an awareness of which the
character and course of Puritan politics are not properly intelligible.”
51
But as Worden
himself later discerns, as far as understanding God’s interest in the outcome of the
revolution “both royalist and Puritan providentialists shared profound assumptions,” and
could sound identical in triumph and defeat;
52
this is due to the fact that Protestantism, by
making God inscrutable while eliminating all intermediaries between Him and the
individual soul, contrived simultaneously to make Him “more awesomely distant and to

191
bring him more awesomely close.”
53
Therefore, people from virtually all Protestant
congregations attempted to read the Eternal Mind in the success or failure of their
worldly ventures, the most important one since the Reformation to date (aside from the
defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588) being the Revolution. As Keith Thomas notes in
his seminal account of providentialism, “All post-Reformation theologians taught that
nothing could happen in this world without God’s permission. If there was a
commonplace theme which ran through their writings it was the denial of the very
possibility of chance or accident.”
54
But Puritans put providentialism to special use;
Worden lets us know that revolutionary sentiment and the belief in providence enjoyed a
symbiotic relationship:
The rise, and the decline, of Puritan providentialism are large and vexing
questions which lie beyond our present purpose. But while the belief in
providence is an essential and prominent feature of the intellectual map both
before 1620 and after 1660, the providentialism of the period which falls
approximately between those dates does seem distinguishable by the frequency
and intensity of its expression. . . . The Great Rebellion, it seems safe to suggest,
is the time when Puritan providentialism enjoyed it most widespread influence.
55

The fact is that providentialism was the rhetorical tool of political empowerment par
excellence, as it was the premier means by which the revolutionaries legitimized their
cause, first in terms of daring to rebel against Charles I, then in their eventual military
victory over the Royalists. Tellingly, Worden relates that “it is a general rule that Puritan
politicians were more ready to interpret providence than to calculate the millennium”
56
—
for although providentialism was theoretically bound up with pre-millennialism, in that
the rebel saints were running the country ostensibly in anticipation of the Second
Coming, which was (supposedly) imminent, they directed their energies to maintaining
the socio-political-economic status quo, instead of attempting any radical restructuring of

192
society that might more accurately reflect the teachings of Jesus in preparation for His
return (and it is of course this failure that left them open to attack by the sectaries).
Because the governing saints derived their authority to rule the nation from God,
depicting themselves as being spiritually and morally deserving of such a responsibility
figured as a sizable component of their providential rhetoric. Derek Hirst and Richard
Strier, in their treatment of “the troubling subject of the relation of the individual to
God’s purposes” in the seventeenth century, charge that, as a result in large part of
providential concerns “the probity of the individual became the qualification for public
life in a way that it had not been before and perhaps was not to be again until the modern
age of the media blitz and its attendant cult of personality.”
57
Providentialism was the
vehicle by which the godly party could cast their political decisions and corresponding
actions in terms of the obligations of conscience; in their hands it became not only a
doctrine of prosperity, consolation, and submission, but also of active political and
military intervention. Thomas writes of
The providential view of history, in which the rise and fall of nations appeared as
the expression of God’s unsearchable purposes. This type of history was usually
written by those who felt they knew what these purposes were. A good example
was the influential myth, popularised by John Foxe, according to which the
English were a people singled out by God for a special purpose, an elect nation
called upon to play a particular role in the designs of providence. This was a
powerful element in Protestant mythology and animated much historical writing
in the century after the Reformation.
58

It was quite easy for the saints to adapt this well-known story of an elect people to their
plan to bring Charles I to heel, and then later, when that proved futile, trying and
executing him, using their own righteousness as a guarantee of divine approval. As
Christopher Hill puts it, “A natural tendency of the theory of the cooperation of the elect

193
with God was to claim that worldly success was in itself evidence of divine approbation.
There is, of course, nothing specifically Puritan in this attitude of mind. The doctrine that
might makes right is at least as old as ordeal by battle.”
59
Barbara Donagan neglects to
mention providentialism in her article addressing the difficulties involved for many
individuals in determining political allegiance during the Civil War, as she frames their
dilemma in terms of “addressing fundamental constitutional issues in what much current
historiography has decided was a war of religion,”
60
yet ironically providentialism
underwrites her very description of the issue, that is, the problem “concerning the nature
of secular power, as authorized by God,”
61
which included not only “a near-universal
assumption that conscience was central to this war,” but also “the assumption: that the
conscientious must follow their conscience, they must act. Politics was about duties, not
rights.”
62
For the saints, protected in their bubble of rhetorical circularity, acting in
accordance with what they interpreted as God’s will was proof of their spiritual fitness to
execute His intentions. Hill diagrams their situation with ironic-but-forgiving vigor:
Sustained, then, by an outlook on life which helped them in the daily needs of
economic existence; conscious of a bond of unity with others who shared their
convictions; aware of themselves as an aristocracy of the spirit against which the
aristocracies of this world were as nought; fortified by the earthly victories which
this morale helped to bring about: how should the hard core of convinced Puritans
not have believed that God was with them and they with him?
63

As has long been acknowledged, we must account for a religion which, by the
time of the civil war era, allowed for—indeed encouraged—the conflation of spiritual
commitment with apparently boundless material self-interest; hence appraising its
adherents in terms of their sincerity of religious belief and moral rectitude is a difficult
project. Richard H. Tawney, in what Boyer deems “his most famous and controversial

194
work,”
64
alleges of the godly that “The hearts of the rich were never so hard, nor the
necessities of the poor so neglected,”
65
and educates us as to why this was so:
Puritanism in its later phases added a halo of ethical sanctification to the appeal of
economic expediency, and offered a moral creed, in which the duties of religion
and the calls of business ended their long estrangement in an unanticipated
reconciliation. Its spokesmen pointed out, it is true, the peril to the soul involved
in a single-minded concentration on economic interests. The enemy however,
was not riches, but the had habits sometimes associated with them, and its
warnings against an excessive preoccupation with the pursuit of gain wore more
and more the air of afterthoughts, appended to teaching, the main tendency and
emphasis of which were little affected by these incidental qualifications. It
insisted, in short, that money-making, if not free from spiritual dangers, was not a
danger and nothing else, but that it could be, and ought to be, carried on for the
greater glory of God.
66

But, as Tawney admits, “Puritans themselves complained of a mercilessness in driving
hard bargains, and of a harshness to the poor, which contrasted unfavorably with the
practice of followers of unreformed religion,”
67
and that “In England, the growing
disposition to apply exclusively economic standards to social relations evoked from
Puritan writers and divines vigorous protests against usurious interest, extortionate prices
and the oppression of tenants by landlords. The faithful, it was urged, had interpreted
only too literally the doctrine that the sinner was saved, not by works, but by faith.”
68
So
it could be that the obsession with “deals of personal character and conduct, to be realized
by the punctual discharge both of public and private duties”
69
was in many ways a
response to the discomfort of dedication to “a career of compromise,” as Tawny calls it,
especially after Puritanism had evolved into “a political force.”
70
Providentialism helped
to produce as well as ease the distress of blatant secularism, in that through it saints could
consecrate to God temporal aims and achievements; thus the importance of and emphasis
on social constructions of spiritual and moral soundness as evidence of “divine

195
approbation” as a means of skirting unpleasant theological and ethical quandaries—let us
remember Gertrude’s answer to Hamlet’s question, while watching his version of his
father’s death and her remarriage: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
71
Debora
Kuller Shuger, in her evaluation of the Protestant tendency “to ground political and
ecclesiastical arrangements in the will of God,”
72
accents the important function of what
she designates “political divinization,”
73
that is, the politically advantageous conflation of
power and holiness. In Puritan thought this “divinization” was reflected in the concept of
“the calling,” which was the ideologically, hence socio-economically self-serving, role
one felt one was destined to play in society in accordance with God’s wishes;
74
and of
course one would represent oneself as more than deserving of the responsibility.
Furthermore, as far as concerns defying the established socio-political order, such
self-representations were crucial in terms of animating and sanctioning an endeavor that
possessed neither historical nor legal precedent, which was Parliament’s rebellion against
an anointed monarch. In order to participate with full courage in the previously
unthinkable, saints had to be “convinced” not only of the divine justness of their cause,
but their own worthiness as God’s special agents to execute His cosmic design; Hill
diagnoses that “Both the sense of sin, and the feeling of justification, came, ultimately,
from readiness to break with tradition, to obey the internal voice of God even when it
revealed new tasks, suggested untraditional courses of action. Problems had to be solved
within one’s own conscience.”
75
As Hirst and Strier realize, conscience “defined one as a
person in that historical crisis.”
76
“Proper judgment of political structures hinged on how
one conceived and represented oneself as a person,”
77
as well as political and military
activity—providentialism as a discourse facilitated the creation of an army of righteously

196
greedy revolutionaries, out for as much power and wealth as they could attain.
78
In an
essay on the fraught and fragmented political culture of the Restoration, Hirst cautions
that “conscience could never be seen (as we tend now to see it) as simply the site of
principled commitment”
79
—but during the Interregnum at least, militant Puritans
apprehended conscience as exactly that—only the divine dictates which they envisaged
as the obligations of conscience were what we now label as being conveniently self-
interested. Again, the saints’ profitable fusing of spiritual and temporal concerns hinders
our ability to evaluate them in terms of their sincerity of religious belief and ethical
behavior; however, we can safely say that protestations of sincerity became indispensable
for individuals wishing to embark on a career in politics. And to complicate matters, I
wish to add that it is highly unlikely that most people who engaged in such displays did
so ignorant of their effectiveness; that is to say that they were quite aware of the need to
perform the attributes of saintliness, just as their audiences would have been sensitive to
their portrayal. Under the circumstances, questions of calculation, of cynicism, could not
have been avoided. Hirst and Strier make it clear that “An insistence on the importance
of public performance, of enacting oneself and one’s part, co-existed in this culture with a
deep suspicion of hypocrisy.”
80
Perhaps it was that as a means of reconciling these
obverse responses to role-playing, the quality of the performance became the locus of
value, which then, under the circumstances should not be seen as parody, but pastiche.
81

Though Hirst and Strier only briefly mention Cromwell, what they argue
pertaining to “The project of consciously fashioning a moral and political agent”
82
at a
time when “virtue and its representation were so central to public life”
83
applies to him
more than anyone: “The pressure to vindicate the uprightness of the self could extract

197
some surprisingly revelatory and sustained performances from those who would engage
in public life in seventeenth-century England.”
84
And providentialism was the language
of “public life.” Worden judges that “At its period of widest influence, from about 1620
to 1660, Puritan providentialism was a major force in English life and English politics,”
85

and that it “is to be found at the centre of seventeenth-century political argument and
decision-making”;
86
thus, employing providential rhetoric would have been de rigueur for
anyone who wished to advance politically. Thomas tells us that “No one laid more
weight upon ‘extraordinary dispensations’ than did Oliver Cromwell; as a member of one
of his Parliaments remarked, the doctrine of Providence and Necessity was a two-edged
sword; a thief might lay as good a title to every purse he took upon the highway.”
87

Cromwell was thoroughly versed in a ubiquitous, flexible discourse that he was able to
capitalize upon as he sojourned from army captain to Lord Protector, fashioning himself
into God’s chosen instrument along the way through the continual attribution of all of his
military and political achievements to the Lord. Even Worden, in spite of understanding
that “the expressions of grateful wonder at the dispensations of providence which became
virtually obligatory” were not “invariably ingenuous and freshly minted”;
88
in spite of
confessing
that providentialism afforded infinite scope for self-deception; that the social
interests and the constitutional assumptions of Puritans may have figured more
prominently in their interpretations of providence than they recognized; or that
politicians, consciously or unconsciously, will have played up or played down the
doctrine of providence, and pulled it in different directions, as it suited them,
89

falls prey to Cromwell’s language, baldly proclaiming that “Cromwell’s innocence is not
to be exaggerated.”
90
But Abbott (in his saner moments) gives us far more sophisticated

198
and realistic glimpses of the Lord Protector; for instance, through the eyes of foreign
diplomats, to whom he
was not so much the conquering hero of a great crusade, a champion of toleration,
or a saintly leader of an oppressed but finally triumphant company of the godly,
as he was the characteristic successful military adventurer of the times. To them
his deep professions of religious fervor were merely an interesting phenomenon
by which he had managed to rise to his elevated station, to be taken into account
in the general European situation, and especially in conversing with him. When
they talked with him, the representatives of Protestant powers enlarged on the
religious theme, the Catholic envoys remained discreetly silent; but Protestant or
Catholic, neither they nor he lost sight of the affairs of this world in
contemplation of the next.
91

As Foucault cautions, there is “the question of the document” and the “living plenitude of
experience.” Cromwell’s fluency in providential rhetoric, which had been appropriated
by the godly as the rhetoric of revolution, became for him a means of mystification.
Defending Cromwell against allegations of cynicism, Worden protests that it would have
been noticed
92
—and, as others have demonstrated, it was. Thomas reminds us that “Only
too often the belief in providence degenerated into a crude justification of any successful
policy”
93
—and this is what we will find happen with Oliver Cromwell. Even Smith
admits that, regarding Cromwell’s ascendancy, “Any person who rises from rural
obscurity to dominate their world must surely possess immense drive and dynamism”
94
—
especially in seventeenth-century Britain.
If Cromwell’s career had ended on the battlefield, it might be easier to buy into
the myth of the providential prophet, as his surviving letters are full of effusive not to
mention often ecstatic language crediting God with all the glory for his successful
military campaigns (Paul speaks of “the rhapsodical religion of Cromwell’s letters”
95
).
Paul voices the commonplace that “this conjunction of military success with the

199
contemporary ideas of Providence could not but strengthen Oliver’s convictions about the
righteousness of his Cause, and hence his own vocation under God. For this reason we
must give due weight to his military career as a most important influence in the
development of his thought.”
96
And this could have well been the case; for as everyone
is quick to point out, Cromwell had no military experience previous to taking up arms for
Parliament. For instance, in a letter to the Committee of Both Kingdoms regarding his
defeat of some thousand royalists near Oxford, as well as the capture of the fortified
royalist post Bletchingdon House in the spring of 1645, Cromwell closes with one of his
typical paeans to the Lord:
This was the mercy of God, and nothing more due than a real acknowledgment;
and though I have had greater mercies, yet none clearer; because in the first God
brought them to our hands when we looked not for them. . . . His mercy appears
in this also, that I did much doubt the storming of the house, it being strong and
well manned, and I have few dragoons, and this being not my business; and yet
we got it.

I hope you will pardon me if I say, God is not enough owned. We look too much
to men and visible helps: this hath much hindered our success. But I hope God
will direct all to acknowledge Him alone in all.
97

Though not very original, Cromwell’s providential rhetoric is direct, forceful, and
reverent, and he discreetly refrains from disclosing that his was the advantage of superior
numbers (which was virtually always the situation, except for the battle of Dunbar), for at
that time he had under his command a force of 1,500 men. And we should not expect
originality of any kind, as Cromwell is here simply applying rhetorical conventions to an
official narration of a successful military venture that would have been noticed more in
their absence; Worden correctly discerns that “the providentialist language which
Cromwell spoke was a language readily intelligible to Puritan M.P.s, who themselves

200
employed it habitually in their correspondence and their common-place books and indeed
in their own parliamentary speeches. It was a language of everyday Puritan belief.”
98

Providentialism was, among many things, the verbal currency of success; “the mercy of
God” that Cromwell writes of meant, to borrow Worden’s definition, a grant of “divine
clemency, unmerited and unexpected”
99
—but its expression was indeed required. And
while Worden lectures that “Conventional providentialism belongs to conventional piety;
and conventional piety, the bread and butter of so much seventeenth-century thinking,
can easily be mistaken for mere literary decoration,”
100
because providentialism as
intellectual custom entailed standardized verbal and written representations of itself, we
must bear in mind that their use did not imply religiosity purified of expediency and
opportunism, especially in the political arena.
Yet as we already know such representations were not “mere literary decoration”
either. Citing Frederic Jameson, Shuger reminds us that “religion ‘is the master code of
pre-capitalist society,’ the discourse through which it interprets its existence,”
101

elaborating that “Religion during this period supplies the primary language of analysis. It
is the cultural matrix for explorations of virtually every topic: kingship, selfhood,
rationality, language, marriage, ethics, and so forth. Such subjects are, again, not masked
by religious discourse, but articulated in it.”
102
And we must add to this list rebellion; as
I have been intimating all along in one way or another, providentialism, as the popular
ideological mainstay of Protestantism, was practically suited to fostering socio-political
dissatisfaction as well as justifying a militant response, not least because all self-interest
could be disavowed in the quest of doing God’s will. Though Shuger does not name

201
providentialism in her treatment of Richard Hooker’s worried and scathing critique of
Puritanism, it hypostasizes both his analysis and hers:
Thus Hooker argues that Puritanism does not attract converts on theological
grounds, these being too abstruse for mass consumption, but by holding out
promises of power. . . . Its preachers have learned to play on social discontent,
attacking the vices of those in authority, imputing “all faults and corruptions” to
the ecclesiastical government established,” and proposing their own platform “as
the only sovereign remedy of all evils.” So they appeal to “minds possessed with
dislike and discontentment at things present.”. . . Such minds conceal from
themselves the motives behind their conversion to reformed ecclesiology, instead
imagining “herein they do unto God a part of most faithful service.”. . .
Puritanism succeeds not as a religious doctrine but as a utopian ideology, an
occluded expression of political frustration.
103

According to Shuger’s rendition of Hooker, he all but forecasts the Revolution; and while
I plan later to explore Cromwell’s inadvertent exposure of the myth of the Puritan utopian
agenda as myth during the Protectorate, for the moment I would draw attention to the fact
that Cromwell’s celebration of God’s glorious dispensations, more than “mere literary
decoration,” served the purpose of broadcasting his total dedication to the cause in the
language specific to the cause. Once more, because providential language was politically
requisite, we can only be certain of Cromwell’s revolutionary zeal, not the quality of his
religious ardor. Interestingly, in another letter to his superior Sir Thomas Fairfax,
Cromwell reports the same events, but without using any providential language
whatsoever,
104
which, along with a sizable quantity of other documents void of any
reference at all to either God or His cosmic design, signals that he could be selective
when accessing that rhetoric; that is to say he knew when to deploy it, which was without
exception in his missives to Parliament depicting his military victories.

202
For example, after the decisive defeat of royalist forces at Naseby, in a letter to
William Lenthall, Speaker of the Commons, Cromwell ends with hyperbolic praise to
God, Fairfax, and their troops for their victory:
Sir, this is none but the hand of God; and to Him alone belongs the glory, wherein
none are to share with Him. The General served you well with all faithfulness
and honour; and the best commendations I can give him is, that I dare say he
attributes all to God, and would rather perish than assume to himself. Honest men
served you faithfully in this action. Sir, they are trusty; I beseech you in the name
of God, not to discourage them. I wish this action may beget thankfulness and
humility in all that are concerned in it. He that ventures his life for the liberty of
his country, I wish he trust God for the liberty of his conscience, and you for
liberty he fights for.
105

In a letter “To a worthy member of the House of Commons”
106
describing the fight
between his forces and those of Baron Goring in Long Sutton and Langport, Cromwell
enthuses
Thus you see what the Lord hath wrought for us. Can any creature ascribe
anything to itself? Now can we give all the glory to God, and desire all may do
so, for it is all due to Him! Thus you have Long Sutton mercy added to Naseby
mercy. And to see this, is it not to see the face of God! . . . I can say this of
Naseby, that when I saw the enemy draw up and march in gallant order towards
us, and we a company of poor ignorant men, to seek how to order our battle—the
General having commanded me to order all the horse—I could not (riding alone
about my business) but smile out to God in praises, in assurance of victory,
because God would, by things that are not, bring to naught things that are. Of
which I had great assurance; and God did it. O that men would therefore praise
the Lord, and declare the wonders that He doth for the children of men!
107

And in another letter to William Lentall, Cromwell, charged by Fairfax to recount “the
taking of Bristol”
108
(which incidentally was plague-ridden; and in addition Prince Rupert
had not adequate numbers to defend Bristol’s four-mile-long wall), proclaims, in what
Abbott believes to have been his longest letter yet to Parliament:
109

Thus I have given you a true, but not full account of this great business; wherein
he that run may read, that all this is none other than the work of God. He must be
a very Atheist that doth not acknowledge it. It may be thought that some praises

203
are due to these gallant men, of whom valour so much mention is made: their
humble suit to you and all that have an interest in this blessing, is, that in the
remembrance of God’s praises they may be forgotten. It’s their joy that they are
instruments to God’s glory, and their country’s good; it’s their honour that God
vouchsafes to use them. Sir, they that have been employed in this service know
that faith and prayer obtained this city for you. . . .

Presbyterians, Independents, all had here the same spirit of faith and prayer; the
same pretence and answer; they agree here, know no makes of difference: pity it
is it should be otherwise anywhere. All that believe, have the real unity, which is
most glorious, because inward and spiritual, in the Body, and to the Head. . . . In
other things, God hath put the sword into the Parliament’s hands, for the terror of
evil-doers, and the praise of them that do well. If any plead exemption from it, he
knows not the Gospel.
110

Cromwell inserts these spectacular affirmations of absolute faith into virtually every
dispatch to Parliament reporting of his army’s military feats—no wonder Hill exclaims
that “it is the boisterous and confident leader of the 1640s who holds my imagination.”
111

Cromwell had become Britain’s first national war hero since Henry VII, being, as
Bennett informs us, “well-known in the country as a whole, through the newspaper
accounts of his activities.”
112
Moreover, he had accomplished this in the face of
numerous obstacles; Paul stresses that
He had kept his command in spite of opposition of the House of Lords, the
suspicion of the Scots and the legalism of the House of Commons, and one of the
reasons was not unconnected with theology. The astuteness of the Independents
at Westminster, the loyalty of his troops, and his own ability, could not of
themselves have triumphed over the Self-Denying Ordinance had not the majority
of Parliament’s supporters regarded Cromwell as indispensable, . . . and they did
so because they accepted a relationship between God’s Providence and material
success: “it was observed God was with him.”
113

Cromwell himself, however, should be viewed as the instigator of this observation. He
forged the connection between God and himself through his continual providential
declarations, which, because of their immediate appeal due to the received “relationship
between God’s Providence and material success,” assumed the reality and integrity of

204
scripture. Regarding this much-commented-upon-phenomenon we can apply one of
Foucault’s ideas relating to the identity of statements: “We know what theoretical
problems are presented to logic by the material constancy of the symbols used.”
114

Cromwell’s testimonies took on a life of their own in that they ceased to function as
required expressions of thanksgiving, instead becoming guarantees of his special
prophetic stature, a situation he welcomed, and encouraged at every opportunity.
Cromwell was his own best public relations manager; as Bennett wryly stipulates,
“anonymity was not a prerequisite of being one of God’s servants.”
115

What is more, Cromwell did not limit his prophetic self-fashioning to ostentatious
ejaculations of gratitude, often insinuating into his standard exclamations Biblical
references that were subtle enough to pass as disingenuous. An excellent example of
Cromwell’s technique is in the above-quoted passage from his letter describing the battle
of Long Sutton and Langport, where he refers to the battle of Naseby, and himself
parenthetically as “(riding alone about my business)”; this adjectival phrase relates to the
well-known story of the adolescent Jesus in Luke 2:41-52, in which Mary and Joseph,
having journeyed from Nazareth to Jerusalem for Passover, upon their return to Nazareth
discover that He is not with them, and after much searching, find Him still in Jerusalem,
disputing with rabbis in the temple, “who were astonished at his understanding and
answers” (2:47). When Mary questions him as to if whether or not He was aware of the
grief that He had caused them, He responds: “How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not
that I must be about my Father’s business?” (2:49). Also, Cromwell’s skillful use of
parentheses highlights, in the guise of an aside, his bold identification with God’s Son.
Linking himself with Jesus in this manner, Cromwell implies that he is not only doing his

205
Father’s business, but because of their special relationship, he is in fact never alone, as
God is always with him. And intersecting with this association are oblique references to
Moses and Joshua; Cromwell’s divine “assurance of victory” recalls Deuteronomy 31:8,
when Moses, appointing his successor Joshua, promises that “And the LORD, he it is that
doth go before thee; he will be with thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee: fear
not, neither be dismayed,” as well as Joshua 1:5, in which God Himself reiterates that
“There shall not any man be able to stand against thee; as I was with Moses, so I shall be
with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.” In fact both earlier and later in the same
paragraph Cromwell evokes Moses more directly: “to see the face of God” is lifted from
Deuteronomy 34:10: “And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses,
whom the LORD knew face to face”; and “the wonders that He doth” pertains to
Deuteronomy 34:11: “In all the signs and the wonders, which the LORD sent him to do in
the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all his land.” In these
particular citations, Cromwell invokes the image of Moses for his readers in order to
encourage the awareness of a parallel between the two of them. Consequently, in a few
lines Cromwell manages, in ways that appear casual and devoid of premeditation, to
attach himself to the three greatest deliverers of the Old and New Testaments.
Likewise, in Cromwell’s letter about his Naseby victory, we can detect the same
strategy of identification at work. His strong assertion that “this is none other but the
hand of God; and to Him alone belongs the glory” puts one in mind of the entire book of
Exodus, of which “the hand of God” is a controlling metaphor. To begin with, God says
to Moses when He commissions him to lead the people Israel out of bondage, “And I will
stretch out my hand, and smite Egypt with all my wonders which I will do in the midst

206
thereof: and after that he will let you go” (3:20); and later, God reveals to Moses what
will happen, using the same metaphor: “But Pharaoh will not hearken unto you, that I
may lay my hand upon Egypt, and bring forth mine armies, and my people the children of
Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments. And the Egyptians shall know that I
am the LORD, when I stretch forth mine hand upon Egypt, and bring out the children of
Israel from among them” (7:4-5). Plus, in their hymn of thanksgiving after watching the
Egyptians drown, Moses and the children of Israel sing “Thy right hand, O LORD, is
become glorious in power: thy right hand, O LORD, hath dashed in pieces the enemy”
(15:6), and “Thou stretchedst out thy right hand, the earth swallowed them” (15:12).
Moses is the physical embodiment of God’s hand, and the last thing we read of him
concerns this role: “And in all that mighty hand, and in all the great terror which Moses
shewed in the sight of all Israel (Deuteronomy 34:12). In Exodus Moses acts as God’s
appointed agent; it is he who executes God’s commands—as God Himself emphasizes:
“See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh: and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet”
(7:1). When Moses seeks to reassure the people Israel when they are trapped between the
sea and the oncoming Egyptians that God will protect them, He admonishes Moses
“Wherefore criest thou unto me? speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward”
(14: 15), continuing, “But lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand over the sea, and
divide it: and the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea”
(14:16). It is Moses’ hand that first parts the sea and then closes it over the Egyptians
(14: 21, 27). I have already belabored the point; suffice it to say that Cromwell counted
on the biblical literacy both of the M. P.s and Puritans in general to draw the proper
conclusions. Abbott tells us that “The results of Naseby were important even beyond the

207
defeat of Charles and the capture of his papers. It deprived the King of what was left of
his financial resources,”
116
adding that “if the credit of the King was destroyed at Naseby,
that of Cromwell was enormously increased. Twice he had saved the Parliamentary army
from defeat when defeat seemed all but inevitable.”
117
And Bennett agrees, reckoning
that the “The eleven months from July 1644 to June 1645 probably mark the ‘point of
take-off’ for Cromwell’s career, and it was his military successes that were largely
responsible”
118
—but perhaps it would be more accurate to see Cromwell’s timely
providential exploitation of these victories as comprising in great part the beginning of
his remarkable political ascension.
Cromwell’s written program complemented his novel scheme of recruiting and
promoting men from the lower classes, regardless of religious affiliation, even sectaries,
who were willing to give their all for him; as Hill points out (pertaining to Cromwell’s
Naseby victory in particular), “Cromwell was one of those Parliamentarian leaders who
had no inhibitions about using the loyalty and enthusiasm of the lower-class radicals.”
119

Concerning this practice virtually every biographer and historian quotes from Cromwell’s
letter to the Suffolk Committee, in which he advises that “If you choose godly honest
men to be captains of the horse, honest men will follow them, and they will be careful to
mount such. . . . I had rather a plain russet-coated captain that knows what he fights for,
and loves what he knows, than that which you call a gentlemen and is nothing else. I
honour a gentleman that is so indeed.”
120
Paul, believing Cromwell’s choice of men who
were not only quite susceptible to providential thinking but also grateful for opportunity
to serve in the cavalry to be utterly devoid of ulterior motives, claims that from his first
personal victory at Belton in May, 1643, “The connection between God’s intervening

208
Providence and this particular body of men ha[d] begun to take shape in Cromwell’s
mind, and was soon to be shared by his troops.”
121
A few pages later, with frightening
naiveté, he comments that
When Oliver wrote to Sir Thomas Barrington, “truly I count not myself worthy to
be employed by God”, we are reminded of the similar protestations voiced by Old
Testament prophets, . . . who, for all their protests, knew they had been set aside
for special tasks by the Lord God. Oliver and his troops had begun to share a
corporate sense of vocation under God . . . as their successes became more and
more identified with his leadership.
122

Paul’s agentless-passive grammatical constructions circumvent issues of origin: just how
did this “connection between God’s intervening Providence and this particular body of
men” arise collectively in their minds? Why did their successes become “more and more
identified with his leadership?” Abbott lets us know that for the battle of Winceby in
October, 1643, Cromwell’s men rode in singing psalms,
123
and informs us that, at the
crowning victories of Dunbar and Worcester eight years later, their battle cry was “The
Lord of Hosts”;
124
and Paul provides us with the explanation: from almost the beginning
of his military career, Cromwell organized his troops into conventicles (though Paul
doesn’t word it this way, or scrutinize the concept, except to indicate how effective it
was, and defend “the honesty of Cromwell’s intention”).
125
Paul says more than he
realizes when he remarks that “the formation of the Ironsides had a religious significance,
and it appears to have been Oliver’s aim to bind them together not only as an efficient
fighting machine, but also spiritually: they were united as a Church by the one type of
churchmanship which could embrace in equality all shades of Puritan opinion.”
126

Coward also sees as sincere Cromwell’s “commitment to religious liberty of conscience”
in order to secure a certain caliber of fighting men that he otherwise would not have been

209
able to obtain.
127
But Hannsjoachim Wolfgang Koch, in a sophisticated essay treating of
Cromwell’s genius for employing toleration as a means of fostering motivation and
discipline, instructs that “The religious cause, the call for ‘liberty of conscience,’ created
troops as brave, as serviceable, and as eager for victory as their opponents,”
128
relying on
Cromwell’s royal adversary Rupert for the best testimonial:
Prince Rupert commented that Cromwell “could himself evoke a more fierce and
enduring spirit from the People than even that which he here magnifies. His
‘Ironsides’ are the most fearless and successful body of troops on record, even in
our annals: these fellows may have been and I believe were, for the most part
fanatics, but they were not all hypocrites: Hypocrites never fought as they
fought.”
129

According to Koch, Cromwell well understood that “While the Cavaliers fought for the
‘King’s Cause,’ to ask men simply to fight for Parliament and against absolutist
despotism was too abstract and uninspiring”;
130
and so it was that Cromwell had his men
fight a jihad, first against Charles I, and then later against his son the beleaguered Charles
II, and he led them on as their prophet. This much-cited quotation from a newspaper
article celebrating Cromwell’s Belton victory reveals the hold he possessed over his
troops: “As for Cromwell, he hath 2,000 brave men, well disciplined: no man swears but
he pays his twelve pence; if he be drunk his set in the stocks, or worse, if one call the
other ‘Roundhead’ he is cashiered; insomuch that the counties where they come leap for
joy of them, and come in and join with them. How happy were it if all forces were thus
disciplined.”
131
In a speech made to Parliament in 1657, Cromwell divulges his thinking
in the form of a conversation that supposedly occurred between John Hampden and
himself after the disastrous battle of Edgehill in October 1642, which marked the official
beginning of the war:

210
‘Your troopers,’ said I, ‘are most of them old decayed servingmen and tapsters
and such kind of fellows; and,’ said I, ‘their troopers are gentlemen’s sons,
younger sons and persons of quality; do you think that the spirits of such base and
mean fellows will be ever able to encounter gentlemen that have honor and
courage and resolution in them?

. . . You must get men of a spirit; and take it not ill what I say—I know you will
not—of a spirit that is likely to go on as far as gentlemen will go, or else I am sure
you will be beaten still. . . . He was a wise and worthy person, and he did think
that I talked a good notion but an impracticable one.’
132

Though Paul would have us believe that Cromwell “came to think of himself and his
troops as welded together into a single instrument in the hand of the Almighty,”
133
we
here discover Cromwell boasting that he had arranged the situation with cool, calculated
deliberateness—that is to say, independent of spontaneous spiritual motivation—and his
self-congratulatory language is in fact very disturbing. One would think that Cromwell,
at the summit of his political career, would sentimentalize his preference for
indiscriminately enlisting religious zealots from various social strata as arising from the
Lord’s promptings, not expose it as a stratagem, unless he no longer felt it necessary to
maintain pretences. Cromwell sought men to the purpose, and it is in this light that we
must consider his supposed socio-religious toleration, which manifested itself in, as Paul
views it, his “curious task of forming his troop of horse into an Independent Church—a
kind of militant congregation.”
134
But the “equality” that Paul celebrates in such glowing
terms was, if it did indeed exist, restricted to the battlefield;
135
in contrast to Paul’s
elevated appraisal of Cromwell’s catholicity, Abbott tenders a far more pragmatic view:
It had little to do with those abstract principles of toleration and democracy urged
by political theorists. It was pre-eminently practical. There was a war to be won;
a king to be defeated; a bench of bishops to be overthrown; and any instrument
which would assist in the accomplishment of this great task was to be seized upon
and used. That this involved toleration and democracy—if it did—was incidental
to the immediate design.
136

211
Citing the same passage from Cromwell’s speech to Parliament, even Gaunt
concedes that “Cromwell was never a social revolutionary,” that it was necessity that
forced him to “cast his net wider” and recruit “socially less-elevated men”
137
—but still
insists that it was “Cromwell’s belief that God was shaping military events and giving
him victories.”
138
Gaunt’s somewhat conflicted opinion shouldn’t surprise us, since the
bulk of Cromwell’s providential exaltations focus in some fashion on his men as the
joyful “instruments of God’s glory, and their country’s good,” as he extols in his Bristol
letter; and these lavish tributes will continue throughout the three wars, culminating in
Cromwell’s famous utopian declaration near the end of his letter to Lenthall describing
the battle of Dunbar, from which he emerged victorious over David Leslie, despite odds
of roughly two to one:
We that serve you beg of you not to own us, but God alone; we pray you own His
people more and more, for they are the chariots and horsemen of Israel. Disown
yourselves, but own your authority, and improve it to curb the proud and the
insolent, such as would disturb the tranquility of England, though under what
specious pretences soever; relieve the oppressed, hear the groans of the poor
prisoners in England; be pleased to reform the abuses of all professions; and if
there be any one that makes many poor to make a few rich, that suits not a
Commonwealth. If He that strengthens your servants to fight, pleases to give you
hearts to set upon these things, in order to His glory, and the glory of your
Commonwealth, besides the benefit England shall feel thereby, you shall shine
forth to other nations, who shall emulate the glory of such a pattern, and through
the power of God turn into the like.
139

Paul correctly ascertains that “The letter reads less like a despatch from a successful
general than the exhortation of a prophet, and perhaps the author intended it to be so”
140

—only there is no “perhaps” about it. Furthermore, Paul asserts that the passage
summarized a political programme which Cromwell had already outlined to
Edmund Ludlow as minimum requirements for the nation’s health, and there was
even a hint of foreign policy, but the immediate significance of the letter was in
the domestic affairs of England, for if the Lord General felt it incumbent upon

212
him to speak thus in the name of his God to the present rulers at Westminster,
what if they failed to pursue these ends?
141

Given Cromwell’s socio-religio-economically conservative record as Lord Protector, this
“fairly specific and pointed advice to Parliament about how it should act, in this case a
request for social and judicial as well as religious and moralistic reform,” as Gaunt judges
it to be,
142
rings hollow; and Ludlow, whose opinion of Cromwell we have already tasted
of, contends that he failed utterly “to establish the just liberties of the nation.”
143
But
Cromwell’s emancipation proclamation most certainly would have found favor with his
soldiers, the instruments of his military victories, and source of his vast political power.
They considered themselves to be the true people Israel. In an essay exploring the
various socio-religious extremists that attempted to push forward their agendas during the
civil wars, Austin Woolrych notes that Cromwell’s soldiers “saw themselves as the shock
troops of a second chosen people, and their goal was the New Jerusalem—the progressive
realization of the Kingdom of God on earth.”
144
And Cromwell was their Moses. Back
in London celebrating his Worcester victory, which Paul deems “the coping stone to a
military career of unsurpassed fortune and brilliance,”
145
Cromwell was already
beginning to shed his posture of humility; Paul himself admits somewhat grudgingly that
some who had come to know him best noticed that there was a significant change
in his attitude. Although he had long been suspect by doctrinaire republicans like
Ludlow and Hutchinson, it was apparently from the days which immediately
followed Worcester that they began to discern signs of what they regarded as a
fixed determination to seize the reins of government.
146

But Paul, without a trace of irony (of course!), excuses Cromwell’s arrogant behavior as
simply illustrating “two sides of a single complex character—the one part all humility
before God, and the other part, a divinely-inspired ‘instrument’ speaking with prophetic

213
authority”
147
—and Cromwell must have been doubly sure of his standing, as in addition
to God’s endorsement, he possessed the unqualified support of thousands and thousands
of loyal troops.
The controversy that encompasses all aspects of Cromwell’s public persona in
terms his motivations and goals derives from his political career after the end of the civil
wars. Cromwell’s actual role in such episodes as Joyce’s seizure of Charles I as well as
his subsequent escape and capture, the army debates, Pride’s purge, the regicide, and
suppressing the Leveller mutinies, not to mention the vicious massacres at Drogheda and
Wexford, is still hotly contested regarding the extent and nature of his culpability. It was,
however, his activities during (domestic) peacetime as the undisputed leader of a large
standing army of war-hardened veterans that had, over the last few years, grown
conscious of itself as a force to be reckoned with, and intensely concerned about its own
preservation, that continue to fuel contention and debate. For the peace that Cromwell
established “was the peace of the sword,” to use Abbott’s phrase,
148
and through the
sword he emerged from the wars “the de facto if not the de jure head of the state.”
149

That Cromwell held sway through absolute control of the armed forces is a universally
accepted commonplace; as Hill remarks with his usual cleverness, “In the last resort he
was sitting on bayonets and nothing else.”
150
Even Gaunt, who in one biography
ridiculously protests that Cromwell relied upon the army as “a spiritual touchstone,”
151

concedes in another that “Cromwell took care to keep the army loyal to him and it, in
turn, gave him an unchallengeable power-base.”
152
Nothing, however, but the passage of
time, could legitimize Cromwell’s novel and anomalous position, whatever title he might
secure for himself; Abbott queries

214
Without inheritance or election, what law, human or divine, save the natural law
of the strongest, could be adduced to justify his ascendancy? . . . He was, it is
true, the de facto head of state, but it was beyond the ingenuity of even his most
devoted followers to evolve a constitutional argument for his assumption and
exercise of supreme power and to make him seem a de jure ruler by any stretch of
legal technicality. Not all the flattery of his panegyrists could transmute the fact
that his ascendancy was personal into the fiction that he was somehow entitled to
his position by custom, statute or precedent.
153

Hence the farce of the two written constitutions, the Instrument of Government and the
Humble Petition and Advice, which were attempts to validate Cromwell’s usurpation by
bestowing upon him the title of Lord Protector and supposedly placing checks on his
powers. In a rather conflicted article endeavoring to demonstrate that Cromwell did not
rule alone as an autocratic tyrant but actually maintained a close working relationship
with his Protectoral Council, and let it influence his decisions, Gaunt touches upon the
fact that “the constitutions are irrelevant to most accounts of the events and policies of
the Protectorate government. Accordingly, the limitations which the constitutions placed
on Cromwell were usually ignored entirely or scathingly dismissed as inoperable after the
briefest of discussions”;
154
yet Gaunt not only ignores the reality that the constitutions
were drawn up by Cromwell’s cronies (and most likely with his input), but that there
were two of them. Everyone recognized that these constitutions were but window-
dressing,
155
as they expressed the desires of a mere handful of ambitious, fearless men,
and could be altered at their will—indeed the latter enlarged the scope of Cromwell’s
prerogatives considerably—and had he lived longer, there might have been at least one
more constitution that would have granted him additional privileges. Though Gaunt
himself doesn’t hesitate to describe Cromwell’s Protectoral powers as “sweeping,” and
cites such bitter statements as Anthony Ashley Cooper’s remark that “If Pope Alex 6,

215
Caesare Borgia and Machiavelli should joyne in a platform of an absolute Tyranny, they
could not go beyond that which is held forth in that thing which is called the Humble
Petition and Advice,”
156
he voices surprise that “few contemporary publications defended
Cromwell from accusations of unbounded tyranny”
157
—but truly, how could it have
been otherwise?
Woolrych, in another essay interrogating Cromwell’s reputation as a military
dictator, willingly admits that “No man played a larger part than Cromwell in destroying
the vestiges of legitimate authority between 1649 and 1653. He would never have
become head of state if he had not been the general of a powerful army.”
158
But
astoundingly, Woolrych still manages to conclude that
what there was of the dictatorial in Cromwell’s rule – and there was such an
element, often though it has been overstated – stemmed not so much from its
military origins or the participation of army officers in civil government as from
his constant commitment to the interest of the people of God, and his conviction
that suppressing vice and encouraging virtue constituted ‘the very end of
magistracy’.
159

Despite Cromwell’s betrayal of the Commonwealth, and his criminal treatment of
Parliament and parliamentary procedure, assessments of him and his regime often
degenerate into this kind of questionable celebration of vague abstractions that are never
defined with much precision if at all. For the providentialism that Cromwell had
employed during the wars as a medium of inspiration, and simultaneously served as a
device for his own political self-advancement, he later wielded against Parliament as a
weapon of obfuscation; Cromwell’s calculated “identification with the purposes of the
Almighty,” to borrow Abbott’s language,
160
became the means by which he rationalized
his repeated dissolutions and purges of Parliament, which permitted him to govern as he

216
pleased. And Cromwell’s providential rhetoric appears to possess a stronger hold on our
cultural imaginary than that of his own time; Gaunt’s sketchy defense of the Protectoral
constitutions notwithstanding, the bulk of biographers and historians who champion
Cromwell’s military subjugation of the country do so through a focus on his (self-
proclaimed) prophetic stature, not by citing those legal fictions, the Instrument of
Government or the Humble Petition and Advice. Gaunt deplores the fact that to most of
Cromwell’s contemporaries he was “simply an ‘absolute Lord and Tyrant over three
potent Nations,’”
161
but Abbott understands that
There were probably very few men in England who if they had been offered the
choice between parliamentary monarchy, even Stuart monarchy, and military
dictatorship in 1640 would have chosen the latter. Had they foreseen the result of
the revolt against Charles I, most men would almost certainly have adhered to the
evils which they knew and endeavored to redress them than fly to evils which
they knew not of. It seems as certain as any such thing can be that the great
majority of the English people were opposed to the government which was now
forced on them.
162

If the Protectorate was offensive ideologically, in addition it was quickly draining the
financial resources of the nation. Ironically, the foundation of Cromwell’s power proved
also to be what Koch calls his “greatest liability”;
163
Abbott reveals the reasons why:
The land forces on which his government depended for its existence were
reckoned at some 57,000 men. There were reported to be at least 100 vessels of
war “abroad,” of which 62 were in the Channel, and it seems probable that the
fleets of Blake and Penn were not included in this number. The combined
expenses of these armed forces were, in consequence, beyond anything that
England had ever experienced.
164

Abbott later writes that “the charges of the armed forces were, in fact, greater than the
whole expenses of the government of Charles I and even more than Parliament was
presently to allow for the total revenue of Charles II,” adding dryly: “In this respect, at
least, Cromwellian ‘dictatorship’ was proving expensive in comparison with that of

217
Stuart ‘tyranny.’”
165
It became rapidly apparent to Parliament if not the country at large
that the point and end of the Protectorate was to fund the armed forces, as its position was
at all times precarious. Abbott states bluntly that only Cromwell’s personal “command
over the army prevented his overthrow by either his Royalist opponents or his own
followers.”
166

Yet Cromwell’s providential breast-beating is so artfully consistent that
contemporary scholars are often misled into believing that he actually wanted to work
with Parliament; for instance, H. R. Trevor-Roper, in a strange article in which he
concocts the argument that Cromwell was hoping to imitate Queen Elizabeth in terms of
her relationship with her Parliaments,
167
concedes that “Cromwell was as great an enemy
of Parliament as ever Charles I or Archbishop Laud had been, the only difference being
that, as an enemy, he was more successful: he scattered all his parliaments and died in his
bed, while theirs deprived them of their power and brought them both ultimately to the
block”
168
—yet nevertheless declares that “if he could never control his parliaments in
fact, Cromwell at least never rejected them in theory.”
169
Trevor-Roper conveniently
neglects to mention that the whole reason for a Parliament was to prevent a ruler from
becoming so powerful as to be able to control it; however, a military dictatorship,
predicated on the might of a standing army, could not work within a parliamentary
system, because it need not. Bent on distracting us from the obvious, Trevor-Roper
delineates it with an entertaining-but-deceptive combination of accuracy and simile:
in the end, like the good man in a tragedy, caught in a trap of his own weakness,
he resorted to force and fraud, to purges, expulsions, and recriminations. He
descended like Moses from Sinai upon the naughty children of Israel, smashing in
turn the divine constitutions he had obtained for them; and the surprised and
indignant members, scattered before their time, went out from his presence

218
overwhelmed with turbid oratory, protestations of his own virtue and their
waywardness, romantic reminiscences, proprietary appeals to the Lord, and great
gobbets from the Pentateuch and Psalms.
170

Capitulating to the very language that he should be analyzing that he might lull us into
viewing with less severity the manifold ways in which Cromwell repeatedly trampled
over Parliament and parliamentary procedure, Trevor-Roper ignores the import of the
scenario he himself describes. Wishing to ensnare us in his particular vision of Cromwell
as a beleaguered-and-bewildered-but-still-Virtuous-Man,”
171
Trevor-Roper merely
demonstrates that he is the one who has been taken in (he even appears to believe that
Cromwell was “arbitrarily brought to eminence”
172
). Trevor-Roper proudly
sentimentalizes Cromwell’s “ruin[ation] of all existing institutions”
173
thusly:
Nor did he believe in new constitutions, or indeed in any constitutions at all. He
did not believe . . . in the divine right of republics any more than in the divine
right of kings. Forms of government were to him “but a mortal thing,” “dross and
dung compared with Christ,” and therefore in themselves quite indifferent. He
was not, he once said, “wedded or glued to forms of government”: had not the
ancient Hebrews, God’s own people, fared equally well, according to
circumstances, under patriarchs, judges, and kings?
174

I find this uncritical acceptance of Cromwell’s flimsy justification of his military reign
disturbing; Trevor-Roper seems oblivious that such prophetic protestations served as the
rhetorical aegis behind which Cromwell glossed his iron grip on both government and the
nation at large. In a world in which prophetic discourse is again being widely exploited
as, among other things, a means of political advancement and the rationalization of
specious political and military action, apparently innocent celebrations of Cromwell’s
destructive and oppressive regime should be viewed with deep suspicion, especially when
they issue from supposedly disinterested sources. As Foucault intimates, since we use
the past to justify the present, the question of how the past is depicted becomes of the

219
utmost importance; and when these depictions proceed from individuals who, protected
by a reputation for impartiality, act irresponsibly or without integrity regarding the
content of their depictions, we have cause for concern. We should by wary of such
armchair megalomaniacs. Fortunately, in contrast to Trevor-Roper’s seemingly wide-
eyed denial of real politick, Abbott perceives that Cromwell’s attacks on Parliament were
for political purposes,
175
and he educates us as to the real state of affairs:
One thing, however, is certain — it is that for the time being liberty had vanished
from the British Isles. With everything in control of the army, with public
meetings and meeting-places, religious services and even sports and games
regulated by the government, with arms forbidden to those opposed to it, with
many of these opponents in exile or in gaol, and the rest under bonds or registered
with the administration, the revolutionary authorities seemed as secure as they
could ever hope to be.
176

But Woolrych too defends Cromwell’s despotism; when discussing Cromwell’s
forcible dissolution of the Rump, which occurred before the official beginning of his
personal rule, Woolrych determines that “His veneration for Parliament as an institution
was sincere, and he knew how hard it would be to establish a legally constituted
government after such an act of violence.”
177
While Woolrych briefly touches on the fact
that surrounding the Rump were “strong rumors that they intended to remove Cromwell
from the generalship and instill someone more submissive,”
178
he offers as justification
for the coup the idea that “The Rump . . . was manifestly failing to measure up to what
Cromwell called ‘the interest of the people of God.’”
179
Because of this imagined
nonperformance, Woolrych overlooks the fundamental illegality of the entire proceeding,
instead choosing to focus on the unconstitutionality of electing a new Parliament, as if the
issue suddenly mattered: “To summon a new Parliament by means of general election, as
the army had until recently urged the Rump to do, was almost out of the question. Not

220
only had the army no shred of legal right to issue the writs, but the former members could
convincingly invoke the act of 1641 whereby the Long Parliament might be dissolved
only with its own consent”
180
(though no invocation could stand up to Cromwell’s
“famous file of musketeers”
181
). Moreover, in keeping with his peculiar logic, Woolrych
approves of the unlawful solution to the dilemma, which was that the Council of Officers
(meaning Cromwell et al) appointed its own assembly: “So it made a certain sense when
the Council of Officers decided upon a nominated assembly as the new ‘supreme
authority.’ It was to be a body of ‘men fearing God and of approved integrity’ such as
Cromwell had lately urged upon the Rump, only larger and (within limits) more
representative”
182
—“representative” meaning “men whose Puritan zeal was tempered by
a sense of political realities, and where possible made respectable by birth and
property.”
183
Unpacking all of the logical inconsistencies lurking in these statements,
both individually and cumulatively, would take more time than I can spare; suffice it to
say that Woolrych, mesmerized as he is by Cromwell’s supposed religious motivation for
both expelling the Rump and installing a pre-approved group of individuals in its place, is
willing to forgive the means by which this lawless substitution was accomplished.
Quoting from Cromwell’s opening speech to this Nominated Assembly, as it’s commonly
called, Woolrych seems to believe that these airy biblical exhortations, removed from any
kind of practical instruction, comprise Cromwell’s actual expectations (even Paul
confesses that if one evaluates Cromwell’s oration “on the political level alone it is little
more than a meaningless harangue”
184
):
Truly you are called to God to rule with Him, and for Him. And you are called to
be faithful with the Saints, who have been somewhat instrumental to your call

221
. . . . Jesus Christ is owned this day by your call; and you own Him by your
willingness to appear for Him; and you manifest this, as far as poor creatures can,
to be the day of the power of Christ. . . . And why should we be afraid to say or
think, that this may be the door to usher in the things that God has promised;
which have been prophesied of; which He has set the hearts of His people to wait
for and expect?
185

That Cromwell was deeply troubled by the socio-religio-economically progressive
character of this assembly, which was actually trying to reform society in accordance
with their version of Christ’s teachings, and in anticipation of His return, is well
documented, as well as its mysterious and abrupt self-dissolution (Abbott terms the
episode “another coup d’état,” relating that when some of the members refused to leave,
there entered “a file of musketeers who cleared the House as it had been cleared eight
months earlier by the same means”
186
—but no one else that I’ve read so far bothers to
mention this important fact!
187
) before it could achieve any of its goals, and which
resulted in Cromwell’s rapid investiture as Lord Protector; Woolrych himself enumerates
some of the biggest reasons for Cromwell’s displeasure:
Tithes were a case in point, because so large a proportion of tithes had passed into
the hands of lay impropriators and constituted a definite part of the value of the
estates to which they were annexed. Advowsons, or the right to present to parish
livings, were also a marketable property. The common law itself, which the
radicals threatened to destroy, was in large part the land law of the propertied
classes. But what dismayed Cromwell most of all was the threat to do away with
any kind of publicly supported parochial clergy. His main charge against
Barebone’s Parliament, years later, was that “the ministry and propriety [i.e.,
property] were like to be destroyed.”
188

Attempting to discredit the assembly, Woolrych lambastes the behavior and reforming
zeal of these “self-styled saints,”
189
as he unfairly dubs them, having either conveniently
forgotten or never known that it was Cromwell who had commissioned them in the first
place; Paul, however, recognizes that in Cromwell’s opening address he did precisely

222
that, in a most formal and profound way, instructing that the clue lay in Cromwell’s “own
claim that it was a ‘Charge’—the kind of commissioning given to Puritan minister at his
Ordination or Induction to a pastorate.”
190
Paul provides us with the reasons for his
interpretation:
It is the practice on such an occasion for the procedure to follow a clearly-defined
pattern, in which a review of the steps leading to the ordinand’s “call” and his
acceptance, would proceed to the “Charge”, or commissioning, delivered by a
minister or member whose experience would enable him to speak with special
authority. This was the pattern of Oliver’s speech on July 4, I653—he was giving
the Charges at the Ordination of the members of the Nominated Assembly, and
their Induction into the pastorate of the Nation. Even in commending them to use
the guidance of the Holy Spirit he was using a phrase to which his churchmanship
would give a significance beyond that of ordinary piety, for behind it would be
the conception of the Congregational Church Meeting, or Synod, which
professedly meets “under the guidance of the Holy Spirit” and seeks to discover
“the mind of Christ”. The whole form and spirit of Cromwell’s speech suggest
that he was thinking of the Nominated Assembly in these terms: England was to
be governed by a “Church Meeting” set within the parish of the whole nation.
191

Except that Cromwell obviously did not intend for the members of the Nominated
Assembly to take themselves seriously regarding either their status or their duties.
192

What he prophesies about the Rump can be applied to the Nominated Assembly—indeed
it can serve as the epitaph for all of his Parliaments—namely that their “spirit was not
according to God.”
193

Coward begins his commentary on Cromwell’s extra-legal ejection of the Rump
and creation of the Nominated Assembly with appropriate secular suspicion, observing
that “The irony of Cromwell using troops against the Long Parliament on 20 April 1653
only eleven years after he had risked life and property to fight for its cause was not lost
on contemporaries,”
194
and confiding that Cromwell’s protestations concerning the
authorization of the Nominated Assembly “that his chief aim was ‘to lay down the power

223
that was in my hands’ need to be treated with a healthy dose of scepticism”;
195
what is
more, Coward specifies that Cromwell “realised that an elected parliament was out of the
question”
196
due to a quite probable hostility to the army. Yet, like Woolrych, Coward
too succumbs to Cromwell’s providential posturing. Also relying on the opening speech
to the assembly, Coward apparently believes the sincerity of Cromwell’s desire for a
wholesale reformation of society:
But the most dramatic and fullest example of Cromwell’s millenarian expectancy
is his remarkable, lengthy speech at the opening of Barebones Parliament on 4
July 1653, which he made with tears (at times) rolling down his cheeks and with
the enthusiastic style of a revivalist evangelical preacher. They were, he told
them, the legatees of God’s blessing. Power ‘comes, therefore, to you by way of
necessity, by the ways of the wise Providence of God’.
197

Delicately refraining from acknowledging the tidy way that Cromwell displaces all of his
political machinations onto God, as well as failing to address the clash of these
antithetical concepts “necessity” and “Providence” (that is to say, due to the way that
Cromwell piles the phrases on each other, among other questions, is he intimating that
“necessity” issues from “Providence,” or is he simply interested in the rhetorical effect,
without caring to resolve the question?), Coward also pardons Cromwell’s
disenchantment with the Nominated Assembly, despite commending its “business-like
efficiency,” in that “unlike the Rump, it met for six days a week from eight in the
morning, and it discussed many moderate, practical and uncontroversial solutions to
widely recognized problems of contemporary government, the Church and the law.”
198

Coward eventually identifies Cromwell’s disillusionment as resulting from demands that
both the excise and monthly tax assessments be abolished, which would have drastically
reduced the size of the army, reasoning that “without the army the cause of godly

224
reformation would have disappeared for ever”
199
—however, as Coward himself shows,
200

the assembly was striving to attain the goals that Cromwell had outlined at the end of his
letter describing the battle of Dunbar—including lobbying against Cromwell’s former
enemies the intolerant Presbyterians, whom he suddenly felt forced to defend.
201
It
would appear that, whatever Coward’s reading of Cromwell’s “vision of godly
reformation,”
202
it does not involve any profound restructuring of society, especially at
the expense of the army, even if such a reorganization could be achieved without it.
Abbott describes the agenda of the more radical MPs as ultimately seeking to “bring
about social equality and the rule of King Jesus not only in the British Isles but
throughout the world”
203
—but Cromwell’s supposed millenarianism notwithstanding, he
stood with the interests of the propertied classes of which he was a part. Defending
Cromwell (of course!), Paul ignores his own reading of Cromwell’s initiatory “Charge,”
sententiously and somewhat confusedly preaching that “the failure of the government by
Puritan ‘saints’ was their failure to distinguish clearly between or to reconcile adequately
their vocational duty to God as individual Christians, and the vocational duty to God as
civil representatives of their fellow men,”
204
as if (in a theocracy especially!) there should
be a difference. The real problem was that a great many members of the Nominated
Assembly took Cromwell’s “Charge” at face value; for instance, as he thunders near the
end of his opening sermon:
Would all the Lord’s people were prophets. I would all were fit to be called, and
fit to call. It ought to be the longing of our hearts to see men brought to own the
interest of Jesus Christ. And give me leave to say that, if I know anything in the
world, what is there more like to win the people to the interest of Jesus Christ, to
the love of godliness (nay what stronger duty lies upon you, being thus called),
but an humble and godly conversation? So that they may see you love them;
[that] you lay yourselves, time and spirits for them! Is this not the likeliest way to

225
bring them to their liberties? And do not you, by this, put it upon God to find out
times and season for it by pouring forth his Spirit? At least by convincing them
that, as men fearing God have fought them out of their thralldom and bondage
under the regal power, so men fearing God do now rule them in the fear of God,
and take care to administer good unto them.
205

In striving to meet this challenge, the Nominated Assembly so disturbed Cromwell that,
backed by the might of his “twenty thousand of Angels,”
206
which by this time had been
thoroughly transformed into a mercenary force, he sent it packing. Hill argues that
“because of the failure of Barebones nothing was done which would prevent the head of
monarchy being restored to the trunk.”
207

And Gaunt, specifically discussing the first Protectorate Parliament, admits that
Cromwell dissolved it illegally early (after purging it!), before it could pass bills designed
to reduce the size of the army as well as remove it from his control,
208
but blames
“Cromwell’s overconfidence that the MPs would share his own vision of the approach of
the Promised Land and would therefore accept the existing regime and its achievements,”
going so far to assert that “Cromwell felt that, as Protector, he should not intervene
directly or interfere with parliamentary affairs.”
209
As proof of Cromwell’s good faith,
Gaunt provides us with a snippet of his lengthy opening sermon, in which he legislates to
Parliament what their task is, should they, like the errant People Israel from Exodus, wish
to please God that they may cease their wanderings and enter the land of milk and honey:
Truly, I though it my duty to let you know, that though God hath dealt with you,
yet these are but entrances and doors of hope, wherein through the blessing of
God you may enter into rest and peace. But you are not yet entered. You were
today of a people brought out of Egypt towards the land of Canaan, but, through
unbelief, murmuring, repining, and other temptations and sins, wherewith God
was provoked, they were fain to come back again, and linger many years in the
wilderness, before they came to the place of rest. We are thus far through the
mercy of God. We have cause to take notice of it, that we are not brought into
misery; but, as I said before, a door of hope is open. And I may say this to you; if

226
the Lord’s blessing and his presence go along with the management of affairs at
this meeting, you will be enabled to put the top-stone to this work, and make the
nation happy.
210

Obtaining “the Lord’s blessing” as well as “mak[ing] the nation happy” seem to be code
phrases for keeping Cromwell happy—but as with his lecture to the Nominated
Assembly, his prophetic ravings contain little practical advice as to how to go about
doing this—it’s almost as if Cromwell deliberately set up his Parliaments for correction,
chastisement, humiliation, and dispersal. Amidst all of his many scriptural quotations
and references, the only tacit injunction is that no one attempt to overturn the established
socio-politico-economic order: “A notion I hope we all honour, wait, and hope for, that
Jesus Christ will have a time to set up his reign in our hearts, by subduing those
corruptions and lusts and evils that are there, which reign now more in the world than, I
hope, in due time they shall do.”
211
Borrowing the sectarian belief that the Second
Coming is an internal event, Cromwell implicitly warns MPs that they should refrain
from meddling with the status quo; he had learned his lesson from the Nominated
Assembly. But the first Protectorate Parliament had other issues: Coward, basing his
opinion on the election requirements detailed in the Instrument of Government,
demonstrates that this body “reflected probably more fully than ever before the opinions
of the substantial landed gentry of the country, which . . . were running strongly against
the army.”
212
The propertied classes were both fearful of and angry at the continuous
high levels of taxation required to maintain the army, and intended to put an end to them.
If Cromwell indeed thought that he, in Gaunt’s words, should God-like, “be above
the parliamentary fray, watching over events perhaps, but refraining from direct
intervention and participation,”
213
his actions did not reflect this assessment; a little over

227
a week after Cromwell had opened Parliament with such lofty sentiments, he shut it
down; Gaunt recounts that
Things went badly wrong from the outset, for during the first week of the session
a band of republicans and implacable opponents of the regime launched sweeping
attacks upon the whole Protectoral edifice, apparently hoping to destroy the
system and the head of state. In consequence, Cromwell used troops temporarily
to close the House on 12 September and summoned MPs to listen to a second
speech.
214

According to Gaunt, in this speech Cromwell, in spite of insisting that Parliament was
free to do as it wanted, “expected MPs to have understood that I was the Protector, and
the authority that called you, and that I was in possession of the government by a good
right from God and men.”
215
Before allowing the MPs to return to the House Cromwell
stipulated that they would have to sign a document recognizing the Instrument of
Government, which resulted in the purge of about eighty MPs. Gaunt pointedly specifies
that Cromwell based this “regrettable action” on both “necessity” and “counsel from
God”—but not only does Gaunt, like Coward, ignore how these two ideas jar with each
other, he also quotes Cromwell as stating that “necessity hath no law,”
216
without
bothering to examine the import of such a pronouncement (perhaps the most honest thing
Cromwell ever said), especially under the circumstances. If Cromwell, as Gaunt pictures
him, was actually “anxious that his position and the Protectoral constitution as a whole
should receive the approval and sanction of the people, [as] signified through
Parliament,”
217
it could only have been because he well understood that its approbation
would have bestowed a legitimacy on his usurpation and personal rule that all of his
providential posing was unable to do. But Parliament, frustrated by its impotence,

228
refused to take part in the farce and lend Cromwell its support, irrespective of the
constant threat of military violence; Abbott characterizes their face-off in this manner:
He had admonished the members, as soon as they had chosen a Speaker, to take
into consideration the Instrument of Government. He had, it would seem, little
doubt but that this fundamental law of the Commonwealth would be promptly
accepted more or less as it stood, and the vehemence of his attack on the House
when he dissolved it is, in a sense, the measure of his disappointment that its
members had taken the task of revision so seriously — and especially that they
had ventured to put such bounds to his own power as they were able.
218

Ultimately however, Parliament’s benediction, or even its existence, were not required—
as Abbott realizes, the fact that Cromwell and his coterie “were the leaders of a minority
and relatively small minority of the people of the three kingdoms was a matter of small
consequence,” for as Cromwell himself was reported to have said, “even were nine men
out of ten against them, what did that matter if only the tenth man had a sword”;
219

regarding Cromwell, Parliament
might do what it could to ‘limit’ his power; it might challenge his authority in
details, but neither it nor anything else, short of his own destruction, could much
affect the situation. Against him the denunciation of his opponents . . . broke in
vain; so long as he had the army behind him — and there was little sign that he
had lost any of his hold on it — he was safe.
220

Time constraints forbid a discussion of Cromwell’s high-handed treatment of
subsequent Parliaments, but Abbott sums up the history of Cromwell’s unrelenting
antagonism toward all of them with his usual acuteness:
Much has been made of Charles I’s attempt on the Five Members and Pride’s
Purge; but it is apparent that neither of these was more drastic or more
“tyrannical” than the steps taken to drive from the Commons any who might
embarrass the position of the Protector. It has, finally, been generally assumed
that Cromwell was in favor of Parliaments; but nothing seems more apparent than
that, in fact, he did not like them, that he took every means to avoid them, he used
every device to keep out of them any who seemed likely to oppose him, and that
he had no hesitation in dissolving them when they ran counter to his plans. Such
statements may well be challenged as hostile to Cromwell. It is not, however, a

229
controversial issue. No one can study the facts without perceiving that they
confirm this statement; nor is it to be expected that such a military dictatorship as
that of the Protectorate could or would act otherwise than it did. He himself
confessed that the summoning of his I656 Parliament was forced on him by the
“officers” and was against his opinion and advice.
221

The Protectorate on its own authorized taxation and legislation without Parliamentary
consent, which were among the chief causes of the civil wars—only the taxes were far
heavier and the edicts more numerous than those of the hated “Stuart tyranny” that it
succeeded—but somehow scholars still tend, as Abbott puts it, “to glorify Cromwell as
the savior of society, to paint him as one who preserved the last vestiges of English
liberty with his files of musketeers, as he himself declared.”
222
But the truth is, “Under
his direction and by his authority taxes were levied and collected; foreign policy directed,
ordinances with the force of law were framed and administered; judges appointed, and
even local administration largely controlled.”
223
Bearing all this in mind, we must ask,
along with Abbott:
Yet from what did he save England? Not from anarchy; for, with . . . the army
there was no breakdown of authority. Not from military rule, for that was the
result; not from dictatorship, for he became dictator. To say rhetorically that he
“saved England from herself” would have appeared to the enormous majority of
the men of his time the bitterest of jests; not even to later generations can it seem
more than a refuge from the facts.
224

It would seem, however, that a great many biographers and historians find such a refuge
in Abbott’s phrase “he himself declared,” for over the course of the centuries,
Cromwell’s pen has proven to be even mightier than his army’s swords, as scholars very
often go to frightening lengths in the interest of privileging his repeated assurances that
his authority rested on divine revelation over his reliance on the military, that his actions
were always spiritually motivated instead of expressions of self-interest and political

230
expediency. Even worse, they retreat into relying on abstractions in order to justify
Cromwell’s reactionary regime, to a point of appropriating his own terminology and
employing it just as vaguely. And it seems that the misconception that receives the most
attention is Cromwell’s call for “liberty of conscience.” For example, Gaunt, in his later
biography, crudely declares that, according to Cromwell “A regime must be seen to have
God’s support and be working toward God’s goals, chiefly godly reformation and liberty
of conscience,”
225
and that Cromwell “consistently made the pursuit of liberty his main
goal.”
226
Coward calls the “centerpiece of his hoped-for godly reformation . . . liberty of
conscience”
227
—and at least makes a show of interrogating some of the hazy generalities
that pass for Cromwell’s references to this goal, admitting that “It is certainly easier to
say what Cromwell’s vision of a reformed society was not than what it was.”
228
But
instead of attempting to identify the idea “liberty of conscience” in terms of just how the
Protectorate encouraged it to manifest itself in society, Coward ultimately capitulates to
Cromwell’s own idealized definition, one isolated from the political reality of his time:
“If men will profess – be those under Baptism, be those of Independent judgment simply,
and of the Presbyterian judgment – in the name of God encourage them . . . to make use
of the liberty given to them to enjoy their own consciences.”
229
Davis determines that
Cromwell objectives were, among other things,
First, . . . to remain a servant of providence, guarded against ‘unbelief, self-
seeking, confidence in an arm of the flesh, and opinion of any instruments that
they are other than as dry bones’. Secondly, he . . . sought a ‘reformation of
manners’ in society at large. God would, in fact, chastize any nation which did
not purify itself. The English gentry and nobility, prized by Cromwell . . . , could
only be preserved by such a self-purification.
230

231
Davis in due time announces that Cromwell wished “to create an environment of liberty
of conscience for all those whom he bluffly regarded as ‘honest’, ‘godly’, or
‘conscientious,’”
231
and defines Cromwell’s attitude as arising from “the faith that truth
lay in the spirit rather than the institution.”
232
Bennett opines that “The purpose of Oliver
as governor was to create a world in which British and Irish men and women could
achieve godliness”;
233
and though Bennett confesses that Cromwell never saw “social
revolution as necessary,” he still praises Cromwell’s “tolerant church,”
234
proposing that
“Cromwell’s view of godliness was essentially internal.”
235
Ernest Barker, hailing
Cromwell as “the genius of English Non-Conformity,”
236
envisions him as having “stood,
first and foremost . . . for religious liberty,”
237
and goes on to say that “The trend of his
inward nature led him toward a deep feeling for the free motion of the free spirit. . . . He
believed that it was man’s own business to keep the mind free.”
238
And Paul actually
depicts Cromwell as a martyr, having been forced
to rule, or else be prepared to see the religious freedom that he prized above all
other earthly benefits disappear either into the prison of uniformity or into a
madhouse of anarchy. It was the major tragedy of his rule that in defending one
liberty he seemed to threaten all the rest, that in standing as the champion of
freedom he often appeared the epitome of tyranny.
239

Talk about a jumble of language!
The most that I can glean from the combination of such foolish assessments and
my own reading regarding Cromwell’s concern for and promotion of the idea “liberty of
conscience” is that he sought to redefine it by denuding it of its traditional militancy; that
is to say that he appeared to be for permitting religious freedom (excluding Catholicism
and prelacy of course!) in exchange for complete acquiescence to the socio-political-
economic order.
240
Conscience, instead of being the goad and rationale for revolt, was to

232
become its remedy, in that people would be allowed their thoughts and beliefs provided
they made no attempt to challenge how Cromwellian society operated—an enforced trade
which benefited the propertied classes more than the poorer ones—but even the
propertied were desperately unhappy given the amount of levies for maintaining the
army. Cromwell would make no windows into men’s souls if only they would pay their
taxes and their tithes without complaint. Redefining the term “liberty of conscience” for
ideological purposes, he took the Puritans’ pretext for revolution and made it their
punishment—and everyone else’s.
241
In his harangue to the first Protectorate Parliament
just before he purged it, Cromwell lashes the unruly MPs with his supposed veneration
for religious freedom:
Is not Liberty of Conscience a fundamental? So long as there is liberty of
conscience for the supreme magistrate to exercise his conscience in erecting what
form of church-government he is satisfied he should set up, why should not he
give it to others? Liberty of conscience is a natural right; and he that would have
it ought to give it, having liberty to settle what he likes for the public.
242

I call attention to the rather unsubtle contest between the two independent clauses of the
last sentence: if “Liberty of conscience is a natural right,” then by what kind of “liberty”
can the “supreme magistrate” “settle” it on “the public?” I’m sure, however, that no one
pointed out this paradox to Cromwell. One does not dispute with the master of sixty-
thousand men.
243

In a final fillip to reason Davis lauds Cromwell’s commitment to “liberty of
conscience” as having been visionary but unrealized: “Of its very nature it was hard to
conceive of its institutionalism and time was denied for its consolidation. Nevertheless, it
might be held to represent a greater and more sincere Christian achievement than any for
which he has hitherto been credited.”
244
To Davis’ eulogy, as well as to all such praise,

233
we can apply Shuger’s assertion respecting Hooker’s analysis of the appeal of
Puritanism, namely that “An ideology . . . must create an interpretative method to remove
possible contradiction and create, in circular fashion, its own evidence.”
245
By relying on
Cromwell’s own deliberately baffling abstractions as proof of his sincere dedication to
forging a truly Christian culture, his admirers have long been able to misconstrue his
oppressive and expensive military reign as a noble (if failed) attempt to remake society
into a real religious fellowship. The providentialism that sped Cromwell to ultimate
power has gone far to protect his reputation over the centuries; as Abbott recognizes,
when Cromwell
emerged from the position of a subordinate to that of a leading personality, he
retained, indeed, that Puritanical phraseology which had marked writings and his
speeches since his conversion. It may have been what is called “genuine” or
“sincere,” or may not; but one thing is certain. It was of enormous use to him. If,
in Tallyrand’s famous saying, language was invented to conceal thought, no one
ever excelled some of Cromwell’s utterances in that respect.
246

But at times it did not conceal anything. For example, in Cromwell’s Jeremiad to the first
Protectorate Parliament when he angrily dissolved it early for, in his words, “labour[ing]
to overthrow the government,”
247
in the name of Christ he threatens:
if we deny the Spirit of Jesus Christ the glory of all His . . . works in the world, by
which he rules kingdoms and doth administer, and is the rod of his strength, we
provoke the Mediator. And he may say, I’ll leave you to God, I’ll not intercede
for you, let him tear you to pieces; I’ll leave thee to fall into God’s hands; thou
deniest me my sovereignty and power committed to me, I’ll not intercede nor
mediate for thee; thou fallest into the hands of the living God. Therefore,
whatever you may judge men for, and say, this man is cunning, and politic, and
subtle, take heed, again I say, how you judge of his revolutions, as the products of
men’s inventions.
248

One does not cross the master of sixty-thousand men.

234

Chapter Three Endnotes

1
The Archeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language (1972), p. 6.

2
Ibid., p. 7.

3
Ibid., pp. 185-186.

4
Oliver Cromwell (2004), p. 9.

5
Ibid., p. 10.

6
The Lord Protector: Religion and Politics in the Life of Oliver Cromwell (1955), p. 392.

7
The Archeology of Knowledge, p. 47.

8
Ibid., p.7.

9
And, to bring up another well-worn argument, post-modern aesthetics aside, is it possible to consider a
personality coherent unless it is in the Shakespearean sense of the word?

10
The Archeology of Knowledge, p. 57.

11
Ibid., p. 120.

12
The Writing and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume IV: The Protectorate 1655 – 1658 (1947), p. xv.
From what I’ve read so far, those who have written on Cromwell after the publication of Abbott’s work are
profoundly indebted to him, whether or not they are willing to acknowledge it. From what I can tell, many
biographers simply ride on Abbott’s scholarship, rifling through his compilation and commentary without
adding much in the way of original research, thought, and narrative.

13
The Writing and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume I: 1599 – 1649 (1937), p. 758.

14
The Archeology of Knowledge, p. 48.

15
I suddenly remember that, somewhere in his 3,628 pages, Abbott laments philosophically that, given the
fact that it is impossible to know the minds of those closest to us, how could we know Cromwell’s—just
don’t ask me which page!

16
The Writing and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume I, p. 759.

17
The Archeology of Knowledge, p. 117.

18
Ibid., p. 211.

19
The Lord Protector, p. 415.

20
Ibid., p. 11. Paul is merely rephrasing what Abbott before him identifies as the major difficulty when
attempting to evaluate Cromwell personality in relation to his career:

235

From nearly three centuries of Cromwellian historiography there have emerged two widely
different patterns of his life and character. There is, on the one had, that of the great, bad man,
who from the beginning strove to raise himself from obscurity to the headship of the state after the
manner of tyrants of antiquity and the Renaissance. There is, on the other hand, the pattern of a
noble, selfless champion of freedom embarked on a glorious crusade for religious and political
liberty. (The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume II: The Commonwealth 1649 –
1653 [1939], p. 656.)

21
“Cromwell’s Religion” (1990), Cromwell and the Interregnum: The Essential Readings (2003), p. 142.

22
Ibid., p. 146.

23
Oliver Cromwell (2004), p. 17.

24
Oliver Cromwell (2006), pp. 267-268.

25
“Editor’s Introduction,” Cromwell and the Interregnum (2003), p. 3.

26
Oliver Cromwell and the Puritan Revolt: Failure of a Man or a Faith? (1966), p. viii.

27
Oliver Cromwell (1991), p. 171.

28
The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume IV, p. 337.

29
The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume II, p. 657.

30
Ibid., p. 657. Often Cromwellian biographers and historians contaminate their analyses by capitulating to
the very language under investigation, which to me is further proof of its irresistible character.

31
The Archeology of Knowledge, p. 151.

32
The Lord Protector, p. 387.

33
Oliver Cromwell and the Puritan Revolt, p. viii.

34
Ibid., p. ix.

35
Ibid., p.xii.

36
Ibid., p. 10.

37
Ibid., p. 11.

38
Ibid., p. 21.

39
Ibid., p. 21.

40
Ibid., p. 26.

41
Ibid., p. 27.

42
Ibid., p. 15.

236

43
Gaunt, Oliver Cromwell (2004), p.17. Gaunt notes that the author is Overton; Coward also believes the
author to be Overton (Oliver Cromwell (1991), p. 160; Boyer thinks it’s Lilburne (Oliver Cromwell and the
Puritan Revolt (1991), p. viii; Smith, in his slim text Oliver Cromwell: Politics and Religion in the English
Revolution, 1640–1658 (1991), simply mentions that the quotation is from a Leveller tract (p. 65); and
before Smith, Christopher Hill, in his biography God’s Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English
Revolution (1970), claims that it is from a Leveller tract (p. 109).

44
Foucault talks about statements that serve particular interests (The Archeology of Knowledge, p. 105).

45
“Cromwell’s Religion,” p. 147.

46
Oliver Cromwell (2004); p. 15.

47
“Cromwell’s Religion,” p. 141.

48
Ibid., p. 147.

49
Ibid., p. 141.

50
“Providence and Politics in Cromwellian England,” p. 55.

51
Ibid., p. 58.

52
Ibid., pp. 87-88.

53
Ibid., p. 58.

54
Religion and Decline of Magic (1971), p. 79. In an epigraph to his chapter on providence, Thomas cites
martyred Catholic Thomas More, who gives us his witty commentary on providential thinking: “This is
much like as at Berverley, late, when much of the people being at a bear-baiting, the church fell suddenly
down at evensong time and overwhelmed some that then were in it. A good fellow that after heard the tale
told: Lo, quod he, now may you see what it is to be at evensong, when you should be at the bear-baiting”
(p. 78). Thomas’ study of providentialism tends more to the theological rather than the socio-political, but
he does acknowledge its uses in that direction.

55
“Providence and Politics in Cromwellian England, p. 59.

56
Ibid., p. 90.

57
“Introduction,” Writing and Political Engagement in Seventeenth-Century England (1999), p. 3.

58
Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 91.

59
God’s Englishman, p. 246.

60
“Casuistry and Allegiance in the English Civil War,” Writing and Political Engagement, p. 92.

61
Ibid., p. 90.

62
Ibid. p. 92.

63
God’s Englishman, pp. 230-231.

237

64
Oliver Cromwell and the Puritan Revolt, p. 60.

65
Ibid., p. 62.

66
Ibid., pp. 62-63.

67
Ibid., p. 61.

68
Ibid., p. 62.

69
Ibid., p.62.

70
Ibid., pp. 61-62.

71
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (1602), III.ii.230. The Riverside Shakespeare (1974).

72
Habits of Thought in the English Renaissance: Religion, Politics, and the Dominant Culture (1990), p.
152.

73
Ibid., p. 153.

74
Ibid., pp. 152-153. Though Shuger posits James I as “the premier instance of political divinization,” the
same can also be said of Cromwell; as does James, Cromwell “associates himself with God” (p. 153).

75
God’s Englishman, p. 243.

76
“Introduction,” Writing and Political Engagement, p. 6.

77
Ibid., pp. 4-5.

78
Shuger demonstrates that avarice had long been a dominant feature of Puritanism; for instance, in her
assessment of Richard Hooker’s summary condemnation of Puritanism, Shuger claims that Hooker locates
its appeal “to the landed classes in its promise to transfer to them the remaining wealth and power of the
church” (Habits of Thought, p. 129).

79
“Samuel Parker, Andrew Marvell, and Political Culture, 1667–73,” Writing and Political Engagement, p.
152.

80
“Introduction,” Writing and Political Engagement, p. 7.

81
A good deal has been written about the relationship between the theater and what Hirst and Strier
recognize as the “need to manifest ‘the holy’ in public in concrete, bodily, and well-rehearsed ways”
(“Introduction,” Writing and Political Engagement, p. 7); however, I’m concentrating specifically on the
discourse of holiness.

82
“Ibid., p. 5.

83
Ibid., p. 7.

84
Ibid., p. 4.

85
“Providence and Politics,” p. 98.

238

86
Ibid., p. 55.

87
Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 106. As I indicate in the final endnote for Chapter One, Leo
Damrosch makes use of the same remark, as do other scholars whose work involves Cromwell.

88
“Providence and Politics,” p. 97.

89
Ibid., p. 97.

90
Ibid., p. 94.

91
The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume IV, p. 77. We can contrast Abbott’s thinking
with that of someone such as the credulous Roger Crabtree, who somehow believes that, respecting
Cromwell’s position on foreign policy, “‘Providence’ is the clue to Cromwell’s attitude in this as in all
things” (“The Idea of a Protestant Foreign Policy,” Cromwell: A Profile, p. 179.)

92
“Providence and Politics,” p. 57.

93
Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 106.

94
Oliver Cromwell: Politics and Revolution, p. 2.

95
The Lord Protector, p. 35.

96
Ibid., pp. 69-70. For example Gaunt declares “That the string of victories of 1645–1646 confirmed to
Cromwell that he was doing God’s will and that the Lord was shaping events” (Oliver Cromwell [2004]), p.
52.

97
Abbott, The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume I, p. 340.

98
“Providence and Politics,” p. 57.

99
Ibid., p. 61.

100
Ibid., p. 55.

101
Habits of Thought, p. 5.

102
Ibid., p. 6.

103
Ibid., pp. 28-29.

104
Abbott, The Writing and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume I, pp. 341-342.

105
Ibid., p. 360.

106
Ibid., p. 364.

107
Ibid., p. 365.

108
Ibid., p. 374.

239

109
Ibid., p. 374.

110
Ibid., pp. 377-378.

111
God’s Englishman, p. 275.

112
Oliver Cromwell (2006), p. 115.

113
Religion and Politics, p. 97.

114
The Archeology of Knowledge, p. 100.

115
Oliver Cromwell (2006), p. 111.

116
The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume I, p. 360.

117
Ibid., p. 358. The first battle in which Cromwell played the role of savior was Marston Moor; Abbott
relates that “Seldom in history has there been a more dramatic reversal of fortune on the field than that
accomplished by Cromwell at Marston Moor, and from it emerged the hero of the army and his cause. The
royal army was not merely beaten, it was destroyed” (pp. 286-287).

118
Oliver Cromwell (2006), p. 104.

119
God’s Englishmen, p. 60. This tactic of Cromwell’s has been much discussed: for instance, Abbott
states that “Such were the character of the men he sought, believing that there was only one element which
could be pitted against the Royalist cavalry with a chance of success. To birth and honor he opposed
religious faith verging often on fanaticism, and such men he sought and found” (The Writings and Speeches
of Oliver Cromwell, Volume I, p. 216. Paul of course tries to put a religious spin on it: “Oliver viewed it
and judged it as primarily a religious question: he was concerned with the selection of ‘godly honest men’
in the sure belief that these men, irrespective of social class, would prove the most valiant in the Civil War,
and events proved him right” (The Lord Protector, p. 64.). Hannsjoachim Wolfgang Koch, in his essay
“Cromwell’s Genius” (1970), from Cromwell: A Profile (1973), also takes a religious angle, asserting that
“Cromwell’s greatest achievement was to inspire the men under his command with his own religious
convictions and to select men of his own religious persuasion for the command of his troops” (p. 22).
Coward discusses how Cromwell “‘raised such men as had the fear of God before them, and made some
conscience of what they did.’” (Oliver Cromwell [1991], p. 28). Gaunt, in an earlier biography, Oliver
Cromwell (1996), writes that “Cromwell took care that his own subordinate officers and troopers were
sober, godly men” (p. 50). And Bennett merely notes that Cromwell “wanted Godly men” (Oliver
Cromwell (2006), p. 59.

120
The Writing and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume I, p. 256. Also see, Paul, The Lord Protector, p.
63; Hill, God’s Englishman, p. 67; Koch, “Cromwell’s Genius,” p. 23; Coward, Oliver Cromwell (1991), p.
28; Gaunt, Oliver Cromwell (1996), p. 49, and Oliver Cromwell (2004), p. 43; and Bennett, Oliver
Cromwell (2006), p. 59.

121
The Lord Protector, p. 59.

122
Ibid., p. 68.

123
The Writing and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume I, p. 265.

240

124
The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume II, p. 459. Paul provides us with the same piece
of information (The Lord Protector, p. 245).

125
The Lord Protector, p. 385. Paul calls it a “gathered Church.”

126
Ibid., p. 67. Concerning the effectiveness of Cromwell’s method of inspiring, focusing, and controlling
his troops, Paul again says more than he realizes, this time in relation to the battle of Dunbar: “As the rout
developed into a pursuit, Cromwell halted his men to sing Psalm 117 in thanksgiving for victory—a
spiritual exercise with certain practical advantages” (p. 228). Bennett touches on the same Dunbar event,
but gives a different reason for it: “His control over the regiments was superb, honed in the past eight years
to perfection. He calmed Francis Hacker’s regiment down by making them sing the short Psalm 117,
Grainger believed it to be just the right length, a melodious intake of breath before leading in renewed
pursuit” (Oliver Cromwell, p. 186.)

127
Oliver Cromwell (1991), pp. 34-5.

128
“Cromwell’s Genius,” p. 22.

129
Ibid., p. 23.

130
Ibid., p. 22.

131
The Writing and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume I, p. 231. Also, see Koch, “Cromwell’s Genius,”
p. 23; and Gaunt, Oliver Cromwell (1996), p. 23.

132
Ibid., p. 204.

133
The Lord Protector, p. 67.

134
Ibid., p. 67.

135
Paul isn’t the only one who falls for Cromwell’s pretended social and religious toleration; for instance,
even though Bennett makes it clear that he fully understands that Cromwell was interested in recruiting the
strongest possible supporters of the cause, he still insists that Cromwell both believed in “spiritual
equality,” and “that the war was God’s cause” (Oliver Cromwell [2006], p. 59).

136
The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume I, p. 278.

137
Oliver Cromwell (1996), pp. 48, 49; Oliver Cromwell (2004), p. 43.

138
Oliver Cromwell (2004), p. 42. See also Gaunt’s Oliver Cromwell (1996), p. 51.

139
The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume II, p. 325.

140
The Lord Protector, p. 229.

141
Ibid., p. 229.

142
Oliver Cromwell (1996), p. 128.

143
Oliver Cromwell and the Puritan Revolt, p. 6.

241

144
“Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of Saints” (1970), Cromwell: A Profile, p. 53.

145
The Lord Protector, p. 247.

146
Ibid., p. 247.

147
Ibid., p. 247.

148
The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume III: The Protectorate 1653 – 1655 (1945), p.
xiii.

149
Ibid., p. 3.

150
God’s Englishman, p. 154.

151
Oliver Cromwell (1996), p. 173.

152
Oliver Cromwell (2004), p. 108.

153
The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume III, p. 181.

154
“‘The Single Person’s Confidants and Dependents’? Oliver Cromwell and his Protectoral Councillors”
(1989), Cromwell and the Interregnum, p. 95. In this essay Gaunt unwittingly bears out what I’d asserted
earlier in this chapter, namely that most individuals interested in studying Cromwell rely on conjecture, but
disguise it as proof; for although Gaunt begins by confessing that any accurate depiction of the Council’s
role in governmental affairs is plagued by a “paucity of evidence” (p. 93), he nevertheless goes on to
fashion a flimsy argument of sorts, only to admit at the end that it would be “foolish to portray Cromwell as
a servant of the Council as it . . . would disregard completely the overwhelming consensus of contemporary
opinion. Stripped of embellishment and exaggeration, the seventeenth-century image of a very powerful
Chief Magistrate dominating the Council undoubtedly contains a large element of truth” (p. 118). To my
thinking, the fact that the Council, in Gaunt words, “met behind closed doors, their deliberations were
secret and largely remained so and their dealings with the Protector were hidden from the public gaze” (p.
96) is a sure indication that Cromwell “towered over the Protectorate and remained firmly in control of
government” (p. 118).

155
Gaunt observes in all seriousness that “Cromwell usually observed the terms of the written
constitutions” (p. 118).

156
Ibid., p. 95.

157
Ibid., p. 97.

158
“The Cromwellian Protectorate: A Military Dictatorship?” Cromwell and the Interregnum, p. 64.

159
Ibid., p. 89.

160
The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume III, p. xii.

161
“‘The Single Person’s Confidants and Dependents’? Oliver Cromwell and his Protectoral Councillors,”
p. 94.

162
The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume III, p. 134.

242

163
“Cromwell’s Genius,” p. 28.

164
The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume III, p. 509.

165
The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume IV, p. 20.

166
Ibid. p. 337.

167
“Oliver Cromwell and His Parliaments” (1956), Cromwell: A Profile p. 135.

168
Ibid., p. 92.

169
Ibid., p. 92.

170
Ibid., p. 92.

171
Ibid., p. 135. Trevor-Roper’s emphasis on Cromwell’s purity of motive puts me in mind of what Hirst
and Strier theorize concerning the tremendous popularity of Eikon Basilike, which according to them was
not only a “literary masterpiece,” but “the most successful of all seventeenth-century political writings”:
“the Eikon’s construction of the king as the Virtuous Man was surely more central to its success than were
its historical reflections” (“Introduction,” p. 4).

172
Ibid., p. 99.

173
Ibid., p. 99.

174
Ibid., p. 99. Davis also excuses what he terms Cromwell’s “marked distrust of the human agencies and
institutions through which God mediately operates” (Cromwell’s Religion,” p. 158), considering it to be a
distinct feature of Cromwell’s providentialism (p. 158)—though this suspicion appeared to extend only to
those “agencies and institutions” that opposed him. And Gaunt’s explanation of Cromwell’s dictatorship
is similar in its disturbing accent on providentialism: “his interpretation of God’s will led him to use
military might to bring down the constitutional authority and experiment with new forms which he hoped
would do the Lord’s work” (Oliver Cromwell [2004], p. 78.). In his earlier biography on Cromwell Gaunt
says much the same thing: “He deployed his political skills, strengthened by the army backing upon which
he could call, to play a central role, culminating in the events of 1653, when he intervened directly in an
attempt to create new constitutions and political systems which he believed would be more in tune with
God’s will” (Oliver Cromwell [1996], p. 106).

175
The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume II, p. 650.

176
The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume III, p. 830.

177
“Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of Saints,” p. 59. Cromwell would not even take responsibility for
dissolving the Rump, claiming that he was doing God’s bidding; in his compilation Abbott includes
Ludlow’s letter in which Ludlow recounts that Cromwell prefaced his clearing of the House with these
words: “‘It’s you that have forced me to this, for I have sought the Lord night and day, that he would rather
slay me than put me upon the doing of this work’” (The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume
II, p. 643). But Abbott says this about Cromwell’s disavowals: “That he was merely an instrument in all of
this, that he had no desire to play the part of dictator, that he was driven on by circumstances to this hard
decision, that he had no other alternative, would have seemed absurd to many, if not most of his
contemporaries, friends and followers as well as enemies” (p. 655).

243

178
Ibid., p. 59.

179
Ibid., p. 58. Abbott, with characteristic realism, comments that, if Cromwell and his officers wished to
maintain their position of supremacy, they had to “get rid of the Rump as they had got rid of the Eleven
members, of the Presbyterians, and of the King” (The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume
II, p. 649). And addressing Cromwell’s insistence that the dissolution was welcomed by the country at
large, Abbott wittily observes: “Cromwell himself exulted that not a dog barked at the going out of its
members. That is not surprising for one does not argue with the master of thirty thousand men” (p. 653).

180
Ibid., p. 60.

181
Ibid., p. 60.

182
Ibid. p. 60.

183
Ibid., p. 61.

184
The Lord Protector, p. 280.

185
“Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of Saints,” p. 62.

186
The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume III, p. 132.

187
For instance Bennett tells that, just before the institution of tithing could be attacked, the assembly voted
to dissolve itself and “With seeming ease a large number of representatives accompanying the speaker who
carried the mace left the chamber with a prepared statement ceding their powers to him. Apparently the
lord general was thunderstruck. Cromwell always maintained that he had no idea that this was about to
happen” (Oliver Cromwell, p. 215.). Bennett’s only comment on the matter is that “Others had known that
it would. . . . The Instrument of Government had dry ink” (p. 215). And all Coward says is that “It is hard
to believe that Cromwell was being truthful when he later in September 1654 [I am assuming that this is the
correct year, as the text actually reads “1564”] said he ‘did not know one tittle’ of the plans of some
moderates in Barebones Parliament to meet early in the morning of 12 December to push through a paper
signed by eighty members handing power back to Cromwell and the army; the first he knew of it, he said,
was when ‘they all came and brought it, and delivered it into my hands’” (p. 97).

188
“Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of Saints,” p. 67. In true Marxist fashion Hill lectures that “The whole
history of the 1650s can be told in terms of tithes” (God’s Englishman, p. 187).

189
Ibid., p. 68. Abbott too criticizes “Its practice of permitting, even encouraging, individual members to
preach, pray, or expound scripture, until enough of the House had arrived to begin its sitting,” pronouncing
this habit “less adapted to a Parliament than . . . to a conventicle” (The Writings and Speeches of Oliver
Cromwell, Volume III, p. 91)—yet it is obvious that the MPs were taking their cue from Cromwell himself.

190
The Lord Protector, p. 280.

191
Ibid., p. 280.

192
Paul attaches special significance to the fact that Cromwell did not include himself as a member of the
new assembly, judging that if it “was to regarded in any sense the equivalent of a Parliament, this would be
the first time since 1628 that Oliver Cromwell had not sat at Westminster as a member. The inference is
clear—he now regarded himself as independent of, and even superior to the new Representative,” and
highlights Cromwell’s supervision concerning its appointments: “On the basis of the selection made by the

244

interim Council, writs were issued June 6 to ‘divers persons fearing God, and of approved fidelity and
honesty’, who were informed under Oliver’s signature that they were ‘by myself with the advice of my
Council of Officers, nominated’” (The Lord Protector, p. 278).

193
The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume III, p. 56. Ernest Barker, in an article in which
he attempts to foist upon us his fantasy of Cromwell as a proponent of political liberty, concludes that
Cromwell “was not a great Parliamentarian; but neither was he autocrat” (“The Achievement of Oliver
Cromwell,” Cromwell: A Profile, p. 15.

194
Oliver Cromwell (1991), p. 90.

195
Ibid., p. 91.

196
Ibid., p. 92

197
Ibid, pp. 93-94.

198
Ibid., p. 94.

199
Ibid., p. 97.

200
Ibid., p. 94.

201
Ibid., pp. 96-97.

202
Ibid., p. 96.

203
The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume III, p. 92.

204
The Lord Protector, p. 295.

205
The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume III, p. 64.

206
Ibid., p. 65. Cromwell is here paraphrasing line 17 from Psalm 68: “The Chariots of God are twenty
thousand, even thousands of angels; the Lord is among them, as in Sinai, in the holy place.”

207
God’s Englishman, p. 141. Hill also commends the Nominated Assembly for its assiduousness in
pursuing a progressive agenda (pp. 140-141), though he unexpectedly exonerates Cromwell for refusing to
support “the abolition of Chancery or of ecclesiastical patronage and tithes” (p. 142), believing that
Cromwell was actually distressed by the dissolution of the Nominated Assembly (p. 143)—though Hill
himself brings up Cromwell “alleged promise before the battle of Dunbar to abolish tithes” (p. 145).

208
Oliver Cromwell (1996), p. 180.

209
Ibid., p. 182.

210
Ibid., p. 178.

211
The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume III, p. 436.

212
Oliver Cromwell (1991), p. 119.

245

213
Oliver Cromwell (1996), p. 182.

214
Ibid., p. 178.

215
Ibid., p. 179.

216
Ibid., p. 180.

217
Ibid., p. 172.

218
The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume III, pp. 595-596.

219
Ibid., p. 11. Abbott informs us that
The task of men who like Cromwell and his colleagues overthrow an existing system by a sudden
stroke is always hard and always the same. It is to secure their own position, to gain as much
support for it as they can, and to devise a new system which will keep them in power and still
assure as much general approbations as possible. In this the Independent leaders had certain
advantages of which they were well aware. They had armed forces at their command so strong
that there was at that moment no power or possible combination of powers which could hope to
overthrow them. (p. 11)

220
Ibid., p. 547.

221
The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume IV, p. xiv.

222
The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume II, p. 653. Hill dubs Cromwell “the savior of
propertied society” (God’s Englishman, p. 143).

223
The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume IV, p. 373.

224
The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume II, p. 653.

225
Oliver Cromwell (2004), p. 132.

226
Ibid., p. 133. Gaunt is so vested in keeping Cromwell “clean” that he writes that “Cromwell’s legacy is
elusive, not least because it is difficult to distinguish his personal contribution from that of the
parliamentary cause as a whole” (p. 134).

227
Oliver Cromwell (1991), p. 97.

228
Ibid., p. 105.

229
Ibid., p. 111. Coward spends several pages discussing Cromwell’s dedication to “liberty of conscience,”
asserting that “during the 1650s his commitment to it seems to have become greater and greater” (p. 112),
but the only evidence of this steadfastness that Coward provides are Cromwell’s speeches to Parliament.

230
“Cromwell’s Religion, p. 149.

231
Ibid., p. 149.

232
Ibid., p, 150.

246

233
Oliver Cromwell (2004), p. 269.

234
Ibid., p. 270.

235
Ibid., p. 267.

236
“The Achievement of Oliver Cromwell,” p. 4.

237
Ibid., p. 11.

238
Ibid., p. 16.

239
The Lord Protector, p. 392.

240
Although no one has ever mentioned that Cromwell actually read Hobbes’ Leviathan, this ideologically
motivated maneuver is completely Hobbesian in its pacifying intention; in order to understand just what I
am referring to, read my chapter on Leviathan.

241
Shuger says, in relation to her reading of Hooker’s condemnation of Puritanism, that “To control naming
is to construct reality, to ‘naturalize’ ideology” (Habits of Thought, p. 29.)

242
The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume III, p. 459.

243
I am here playing on something Abbott says—please see footnote.

244
“Cromwell’s Religion,” p. 166.

245
Habits of Thought, p. 29.

246
The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume I, p. 720.

247
The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Volume III, p. 593.

248
Ibid., p. 592.

247
Chapter Four: Paradise Regain’d as Satire

Although I’m keenly interested in Milton and Milton studies, I for one no longer
wish to read anything about either Stanley Fish or his work; but regardless of how a
scholar perceives Milton’s relationship to the Calvinist conventions of “Providence,
Foreknowledge, Will and Fate, / Fixt Fate, free Will, Foreknowledge absolute”
1
of his
time, if she wants to be a responsible scholar she must take into account Fish’s devilishly
clever argument concerning the ways in which Milton attempts to bring the reader of
Paradise Lost into alignment with what we would call an orthodox position: namely that,
through “a programme of reader harassment,”
2
as Fish dubs his formula, Milton aims to
make the reader confront the unimpeachable “glory of God, and the state of his own
soul.”
3
According to Fish, by employing the narrator to adjust relentlessly the reader’s
sympathetic responses to Satan, Adam, and Eve, Milton “wants to worry the reader, to
force him to doubt the correctness of his responses, and to bring him to the realization
that his inability to read the poem with any confidence in his own perception is its
focus.”
4
Fish contends that the narrator’s “didactic comments are checks upon our
immediate responses,”
5
and that we should be “angry at the epic voice . . . for being right,
for insisting that we become our own critics.”
6
In other words, given the continual epic
editorializing, any indignation that the reader might experience over God’s seemingly
arbitrary and harsh treatment of the sorry trio becomes a sure indication of her own fallen
state, and if she is a good reader, the narrator will compel her to observe her own
inappropriate reaction to their plight, condemn it, and commence repairing her ruin. Fish
grounds his presentation in the view that Milton “assumes a predisposition in favour of

248
the epic voice rather than a modern eagerness to put that voice on trial; he expects his
reader to worry about the clash, to place it in a context that would resolve a troublesome
contradiction and allow him to reunite with an authority who is a natural ally against the
difficulties of the poem.”
7
The point of such a method is “to lead us beyond our
perspective by making us feel its inadequacies and the necessity of accepting something
which baldly contradicts it. The result is instruction, and instruction is possible only
because the reader is asked to observe, analyze, and place his experience, that is, to think
about it.”
8
In Fish’s estimation, Milton believes that “all value proceeds from God”
9
—
and “There is only one value—the value of obedience”:
10
God expects utter submission
from His creation, no matter how demanding and unreasonable its obligations may
appear, or how severely He tempts it “to seek a separate, self-sustaining existence.”
11

However, from what we know of Britain during the revolutionary era, there
existed a great many people who believed themselves to have been acting in accordance
with God’s will, based on insider information provided by divine revelation, yet there
was little agreement as to what God really wanted from them; and because Fish’s thesis,
while rhetorically neat and tidy, fails to consider this messy and volatile religio-political
milieu, we must discount it as an ahistorical interpretation of a text that, as most everyone
agrees, arose directly out of those circumstances, after Milton the revolutionary and
regicide had, by his own admission, “fall’n on evil dayes, / On evil dayes though fall’n,
and evil tongues, / In darkness, and with dangers compassed round.”
12
By the time
Milton first published Paradise Lost, the practice of using resignation to God’s will as a
means of gaining and maintaining political ascendancy had become thoroughly suspect.
“Henceforth I learne, that to obey is best,”
13
Adam pronounces piously to Michael, after

249
the angel has supplied him with an abbreviated version of Old and New Testament
history, culminating in a rendition of the Apocalypse—and a contemporary reader would
have caught the irony lurking within that sentiment, well understanding how vexed and
degraded a concept obedience had become in the 1660s, a bitter epitaph for decades of
domestic turmoil that had produced little of lasting consequence except the return of
monarchy, and a healthy suspicion of trumpeting God as the underwriter of political and
military action. Milton sets up this irony earlier in the same encounter between Adam
and Michael via a reference to the paradox of the Fortunate Fall, as he has Adam confide
to Michael that, now knowing what will transpire, he wonders
Whether I should repent me now of sin
By mee done and occasioned, or rejoyce
Much more, that much more good thereof shall spring,
To God more glory, more good will to Men
From God, and over wrauth Grace shall abound.
14

Milton explains that from the very beginning of our creation, we did not know if our
actions were in compliance with the will of God—indeed, we could not, since from the
very beginning of our creation, God has often concealed His real intentions from us.
15

Thus poor Adam, in addition to being forced to vacate Paradise for defying a divine
injunction, vacates it recognizing that he unwittingly did the right thing, if for the wrong
reasons, and that it was destined to be so, yet still concludes that rendering obedience to
God is the wisest course, when his very situation demonstrates its impossibility: for, as
far as concerns His desires, God may say one thing, but secretly want another—and what
God wants He invariably gets—in this case to exalt His preferred Son, who “though
Thron’d in highest bliss / Equal to God”
16
volunteers to “quit[ted] all to save / A World
from utter loss,”
17
and therefore be worthy of such favoritism “By Merit more than

250
Birthright.”
18
Interestingly, neither Michael nor the narrator criticize Adam for
articulating such a theologically controversial idea as the Fortunate Fall, and Milton
permits it to haunt our minds as the ousted pair “Through Eden took thir solitarie way,”
19

with only “Providence as thir guide.”
20
Furthermore, Milton most certainly would have
been cognizant of what a theo-politically charged word “Providence” had become by the
Restoration, fraught as it was with the eclipsed dreams of an entire generation of
revolutionaries who once upon a time were convinced that they were bringing to fruition
God’s cosmic plan for both Britain and the world at large; Fish’s explanation of Milton’s
goals in writing Paradise Lost fails to account for the lived experience of such profound
and total disillusionment. If Providence is at all useful as a pilot why then would Adam
and Eve be “solitarie?”
21
God may have planted within Adam and Eve His “Umpire
Conscience”
22
“as a guide,”
23
but we know from what happens to them and their progeny
that He will allow His creation to be led astray for reasons of His own. Fish may be right
in propounding that, for Milton, all history is error, an unreal wandering from “the saving
center,”
24
and that our task is to join somehow our will “with the will of a God who has
removed his ways from human sense”
25
—but he overlooks Milton’s tremendous anger
and anxiety about being in thrall to such a deity, who foreordained this condition.
Of course I’m happy to be getting my shot at Fish; but not only can he handle my
weak salvo, he’s big enough to welcome another challenge to his theory that the reader’s
education regarding her spiritual condition is the poem’s objective. And why shouldn’t
Fish continue to embrace new contenders seeking to dethrone his reading of Paradise
Lost?—for so long as he has them, he can rest assured in what he gentlemanly boasts of
as “The institutional fact of its prominence.”
26
But the truth is Fish himself realizes that

251
his treatment of Paradise Lost is seriously flawed, though he’ll never admit it to anyone,
at least publicly, and for reasons that we can best locate in Milton’s other epic about
obedience, Paradise Regain’d, which is his expansion on the story of the Temptation of
Jesus by Satan in the wilderness, found in the Synoptic Gospels in differing versions, and
the real subject of this chapter. Attempting to depose Fish’s interpretation with my puny
rhetorical armory is simply a convenient way for me to initiate the investigation of a
poem that, due to certain wayward textual elements, absolutely prohibits any kind of
stable, comfortable reading whatsoever. Fish argues that “conflict, ambivalence, and
open-endedness . . . are not constitutive features of the poetry but products of a
systematic misreading of it,”
27
that “the inconclusive or polysemous or paradoxical,
words that name literary qualities most of us have been taught to admire . . . are not
qualities Milton admires.”
28
Yet, because of these wayward elements Paradise Regain’d
epitomizes all of Fish’s adjectives. And Fish knows to what I refer, because he himself
has both identified and commented upon their existence in other of Milton’s poems (as
well as in the work of other poets), but discreetly refuses to perform the same maneuvers
on Paradise Regain’d, as to do so would compromise all of the above assertions, if not
most of whatever he proposes about Milton’s beliefs regarding his poetry and his God.
And what I mean by “wayward elements” are, among other things, grammatical
blunders situated at certain moments in Paradise Regain’d when the narrator, through
pronominal commingling, briefly conflate the characters of the Son of God and Satan,
and by extension the contrary metaphysical domains that they stand for and inhabit. Fish
demonstrates that syntactical confusion is a technique Milton employs in different forms
in other of his poetical works, for instance in “L’Allegro”: reviving a 1934 debate in the

252
Times Literary Supplement involving the question of just “Who comes to the window in
L’Allegro, line 46?”
29
Fish, after rehearsing the various answers that subscribers sent in,
announces that “if the entire exchange proves anything, it is that Milton does not wish to
bind us to any one of these interpretations,”
30
legislating that
the ambiguity is so complete that unless someone asks us to, we do not worry
about it, and we do not worry about it (or even notice it) because while no subject
is specified for “come,” any number of subjects—lark, poet, Mirth, Dawn,
Night—are available. What is not available is the connecting word or sustained
syntactical unit which would pressure us to decide between them, and in the
absence of that pressure, we are not obliged to decide.
31

Perhaps Fish has forgotten that he wrote these lines; or perhaps, because “L’Allegro”
does not take theodicy as its subject matter, he can conveniently exclude them from his
pronouncements on Milton’s poetic and spiritual values. But Fish furnishes us with
another example more pertinent to my excursus, from Paradise Lost, in which the
narrator slips Adam and Satan into the same pronominal position:
Satan, now first inflam’d with rage, came down,
The Tempter ere th’ Accuser of man-kind,
To wreck on innocent frail Man his loss
Of that first Battel, and his flight to Hell.
32

Defending his opinion that Milton’s purpose is the reader’s edification as to her own
fallenness, Fish maintains that
One of the things a reader does in the course of negotiating these lines is to
assume that the referent of “his” in line 11 is “innocent frail man.” Within this
assumption the passage would seem to be assigning the responsibility for the Fall
to Satan: Satan, inflamed with rage, comes down to inflict the loss of Eden on a
couple unable to defend themselves because they are innocent and frail. This
understanding, however, must be revised when the reader enters line 12 and
discovers that the loss in question is Satan’s loss of Heaven, sustained in “that
first battle” with the loyal angels. It is that loss of which Adam and Eve are
innocent and the issue of the Fall is not being raised at all. But of course it has
been raised, if only in the reader’s mind. . . . The understanding that the reader
must give up is one that is particularly attractive to him because it asserts the

253
innocence of his first parents, which is, by extension, his innocence too. By first
encouraging that understanding and then correcting it, Milton . . . makes the
reader aware of his tendency, inherited from his parents, to reach for
interpretations that are, in the basic theological sense, self-serving.
33

In producing this reading Fish neglects to mention that Adam and Eve are indeed
defrauded of Paradise unfairly, in that God, from the beginning of Satan’s banishment to
Hell allows him to direct his vengeance toward them unimpeded; as Milton informs us in
Book I, Satan would have remained
Chaind on the burning Lake, nor ever thence
Had ris’n or heav’d his head, but that the will
And high permission of all-ruling Heaven
Left him at large to his own dark design,
That with reiterated crimes he might
Heap on himself damnation, while he sought
Evil to others, and enrag’d might see
How all his malice serv’d but to bring forth
Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy shewn
On Man by him seduc’t, but on himself
Treble confusion, wrauth and vengeance pourd.
34

While Fish tries to downplay the terms of this cosmic drama, calling them “Milton’s
introductory stage direction (or is it marginal note),”
35
as far as concerns Satan’s role,
they summarize the entire action; William Empson, the rebellious bad boy of Miltonists,
recognizes that in this passage “we are told specifically that God’s actions towards Satan
were intended to lead him into greater evil.”
36
Fish himself says as much later in the text:
“Satan is condemned to restless wandering until God or some deputy of God’s finds a use
for him and endows him with motives and opinions and powers to fit the role ‘imposed
from without’. He is a convenience, available for any and all duties.”
37
After all, how
does Satan, alone of his cohorts, happen to come by the knowledge that there will be
“another World, the happy seat / Of som new Race calld Man, about this time / To be

254
created like to us”
38
that will form the basis of his plan to exact a more than “Common
Revenge,”
39
except that God makes it in some way accessible to him? And why would
Satan be permitted this information, supposedly via “ancient and prophetic fame in
Heav’n,”
40
but not that of his own fatal rebellion? Again, God will shepherd His
creatures into dilemmas not of their choosing to satisfy His own schemes, careless of the
grief it causes them. For instance, as proof that Satan’s plummet from Heaven was
predetermined, Hell was prepared in advance: for as the Son relates blissfully to the
Father just before he chases Satan and his crew from Heaven,
But whom thou hat’st, I hate, and can put on
Thy terrors, as I put thy mildness on,
Image of thee in all things; and shall soon,
Armed with thy might, rid Heav’n of these rebelld,
To thir prepar’d ill Mansion driven down,
To chains of Darkness.
41

Satan is the designated “bad guy” destined to suffer eternally that others may be saved.

We might now apprehend the pronoun “his” differently, as both Satan and Adam
are “innocent” to the extent that they have been pre-appointed to perform their functions,
no matter how loudly God protests that they cannot
justly accuse
Thir maker, or thir making, or thir Fate;
As if Predestination over-rul’d
Thir will,
42

that He is unable to “revoke the high Decree / Unchangeable, Eternal”
43
—as if God could
actually do something that He would not be able to undo should He desire it. Satan’s and
Adam’s individual losses are quite similar in that they are fundamentally unfair for much
the same reasons, and the reader is made aware of this correspondence upon discovering
that “the loss in question is Satan’s loss of Heaven”; Fish is correct that, because of the

255
conflation, the issue of the Fall has been raised, “if only in the reader’s mind,” but for
another purpose, which is to establish the correlation between these losses in terms of the
parties’ guiltlessness, not culpability. Fish’s insistence that, concerning the narrative
strategy of Paradise Lost, “everything a reader does, even if he later undoes it, is part of
the ‘meaning experience’ and should not be discarded”
44
still holds true; yet I draw a
distinction between how this tactic may generate meaning and what it might be made to
mean—and while Fish’s astute observation is helpful analytically when reaching for an
interpretation it cannot constrain interpretation—in fact, as I hope to show, it can suspend
meaning altogether. Fish may like to pretend that “the conflicted or tragic or
inconclusive or polysemous or paradoxical”
45
are absent from Milton’s work, and hence
“might properly be a reason for declining to read it”
46
—but I feel if ever work existed
that embodies these attributes, it is Milton’s. Fish gives out that what he designates as
“an epistemological limitation”
47
to be the situation Milton puts forward: to wit, that a
mediated or partial truth does not deny its singleness, but specifies “the conditions under
which it must be chosen, conditions that always fall short of what would be the case if the
shape of truth were self-evident and indisputable.”
48
I would suggest that Milton, so far
from making any sincere attempt at approaching truth, however circumscribed, instead
proves that even trying to imagine it fails to yield a perception of reality that we might
consider remotely logical, or understandable. And one of the ways Milton accomplishes
this is by revealing language to be truth’s most unreliable repository.
In Paradise Regain’d, Milton, in keeping with his predilection for purposeful
ambiguity, confronts us, as I said above, with occurrences of pronominal confusion

256
involving the Son of God and Satan. In Book I it is God Himself who conflates His Son
and Satan, during His speech to Gabriel about His desire to put the Son to a test:
this man born and now up-grown,
To shew him worthy of his birth divine
And high prediction, henceforth I expose
To Satan; let him tempt and now assay
His utmost suttlety, because he boasts
And vaunts of his great cunning to the throng
Of his Apostasie.
49

Although we understand from the part of the passage preceding the semi-colon that “this
man” is the beloved Son whom God will subject to Satan in the wilderness, in the section
that follows the semi-colon, because we cannot automatically identify to which particular
antecedents the personal pronouns refer, we experience moments of confusion so
thorough that we wish only to pass over them (and virtually everyone does).
50
Until we
arrive at that point in the text where we read “Of his Apostasie” we do not know who is
actually examining whom. The first short clause succeeding the semi-colon is problem
enough on its own: for if we understand the Son to be the object who receives the action
in the clause “let him tempt,” which sounds logical given the circumstances, we must
read it as either “let Satan tempt the Son” or “let the Son be tempted by Satan,” and then
face the perhaps innumerable questions that arise when trying to decipher what it might
signify that Milton arranges the syntax so that the referent could be both the Son and
Satan—for unlike the situation Fish profiles in “L’Allegro,” due to the content of
Paradise Regain’d we are not only pressured to choose between them, for narrative and
theological reasons, but also forced to ponder why Milton would contrive for us such a
dilemma. Plus, to make matters even more annoying, when we come to the words “and
now assay / His utmost suttlety,” because of Milton’s deliberately erroneous use of the

257
verb, we cannot be sure if it isn’t the Son who is testing Satan, as “assay” is always
employed to describe making trial of either another person or a thing, and not of oneself.
And to confirm this vexatious reading, we stumble upon the adjective “suttlety,” a
modifier that evokes the Serpent in Paradise Lost;
51
therefore it must be Satan to whom
“His” refers. In addition, due to Milton’s intentional mistake, we then wonder if the
“him” in “let him tempt” might in fact denote the Son as the subject and not the object, as
to do so would make for a grammatically consistent and comfortable reading: “let the Son
tempt and now assay / Satan’s utmost suttlety.” Because we are thus confounded, we
then struggle through the rest of the passage bewildered as to which character “boasts /
And vaunts of his great cunning to the throng / Of his Apostasie.” I posit that we
ultimately base our decision as to who is the agent not on the material we find in this
passage, but on the memory of what we have read on the previous page, which indeed
reports of Satan disclosing to his “infernal Crew”
52
that the Son must be opposed with
“well coucht fraud, well woven snares.”
53
This little passage is a semantic minefield.
Twinned with this interpretive nightmare is another located in Book IV,
approximately one page before the end of the story, in which the narrator ostensibly
chronicles Satan’s (second) fall upon discovering that the Son can indeed balance
Himself on the highest pinnacle of the Temple in Jerusalem:
So Satan fell; and strait a fiery Globe
Of Angels on full sail of wing flew nigh,
Who on their plumy Vans receiv’d him soft
From his uneasie station, and upbore
As on a floating couch through the blithe Air,
Then in a flowry valley set him down
On a green bank, and set before him spread
A table of Celestial Food, Divine,
Ambrosial, Fruits fetcht from the Tree of Life,

258
And from the Fount of Life Ambrosial drink,
That soon refreshd him wearied, and repaird
What hunger, if aught hunger had impaird,
Or thirst, and as he fed, Angelic Quires
Sung Heav’nly Anthems of his victory
Over temptation, and the Tempter proud.
54

Because the initial short clause of this passage positions Satan as the subject, we cannot
help but think that he is the “him” whom the “Globe / Of Angels “receiv’d . . . soft” “on
their plumy vans,” though this reading is directly contrary to Milton’s narrative. As a
means of strengthening this construction, Milton mischievously employs the adjective
“fiery” to modify “Globe,” a word that invokes the memory of Satan’s nine day plunge to
Hell recorded in Paradise Lost, that “habitation fraught with fire / Unquenchable”;
55
yet
our interpretive momentum is abruptly checked when we find out that “him” actually
alludes to the designee of the following pronoun in the phrase “From his uneasie station,”
hence the Son, and from that point in the passage onward, we resistingly are to suppose
that it is He who is feted for His “victory / Over temptation, and the Tempter proud.” In
this passage Milton spins out a series of seven pronouns that have no antecedent properly
speaking, which is not so disconcerting of itself, except that the first one in this series
conflates the Son and Satan, and plunges us anew into confusion as to whom it is that
Milton is referring, as well as suspense as to why he would foist such confusion upon us
so late in his story. It is far easier to tender a reading in support of a specific argument
when dealing with a grammatical ambiguity such as Fish’s example from Paradise Lost,
in that both Satan and Adam occupy the same theological domain in terms of their fallen
condition (whether or not one judges them to have had it thrust upon them fairly), but
when the same sort of ambiguity is employed to compress entities that, theologically

259
speaking, not only occupy opposing domains, but are in fact their paradigms, proffering
an interpretation as evidence in service of an investigation becomes delicate business,
especially when the major critical conversation concerning the author in question has
literally for centuries revolved around the precise character of his religious beliefs. What
is more, to encounter this consolidation in a text that uses scripture as its source further
complicates the interpretive process, especially if one wishes to portray Milton as an
orthodox Christian, if not a happy one.
As I mentioned previously, the syntactical, and thus interpretive and theological
problems with this last passage have received little attention throughout the centuries,
although Charles Dunster briefly notes them in his annotated edition of Paradise
Regain’d, first published in 1795: “The grammatical inaccuracy here, I am afraid, cannot
be palliated. Him, according to the common construction of language, certainly must
refer to Satan, the person last mentioned. The intended sense of the passage cannot
indeed be misunderstood; but we grieve to find any inaccuracy in a part of the poem so
eminently beautiful.”
56
As Dunster fails to clarify what he means by “The intended sense
of the passage,” we can only assume that, because he calls the conflation simply a
“grammatical inaccuracy” without interrogating possible reasons for its insertion, he
accepts Milton as a traditional Christian. Since Dunster’s remark, only three scholars
have incorporated this condensation into their studies of ParadiseRegain’d, of whom
William Kerrigan is the first, predicating his analysis on the deconstructive procedure of
“enter[ing] a text at a moment traditional readings have thought insignificant . . . then
labor[ing] to elevate this victim of oppression into a new sort of sublimity.”
57
Kerrigan,
declaring that “Milton riddled the climax of his brief epic with enigmas of such power

260
that they occasion us to reflect in unfamiliar ways about his life, his art, and his
religion,”
58
addresses Dunster’s long-neglected observation:
We find the sense all right, but why does the “common construction of language”
urge us to put Satan in the place of Christ? Here is not just “any inaccuracy,” and
I have trouble believing that the duplicity of the pronoun is not the “intended
sense.” The discursive thrust of Paradise Regained is toward this moment of
definitional separation, of theophany and expulsion, but at exactly this time of
clarity Milton riddles darkly. Syntax, the medium of discursive thought, is made
intuitional when Christ and Satan inhabit for a moment the same him. The poem
stops, arrested in mystery.
59

Arguing that “Beyond the discursive statement of Paradise Regained there is a dimension
of symbolism in which its protagonists are strangely identified,”
60
Kerrigan notes
the same convergence of Adversary and Messiah evoked by the angelic hymn.
Removing Christ to the flowery valley, they first address “True Image of the
Father” and then, as if their audience were Satan as well, address fourteen lines to
him: “But thou, infernal Serpent!” What the expository “But” works to
distinguish, the common logic of address tends to unite.
61

Pursuing this contest between the discursive and the intuitive, Kerrigan claims that “In
Paradise Regained the wisdom of ‘thought following thought’ acts to separate Christ and
Satan, whereas the mysterious intuition of the climactic passage . . . evokes the possibility
of interchanging them.”
62
In keeping with his treatment of Milton’s religiosity, which
admits of a God that is evil, inasmuch as He is a law unto Himself,
63
Kerrigan interposes
his version of Milton’s theodicial concerns, enjoining that “The him at the end of
Paradise Regained, inhabited by Satan and Christ, is the pronoun of the Christian ego.
Theodicy has learned that Satan is the ego at the moment of its just death. Through
Christ, death regains the stamp of injustice erased by the work of theodicy. Although it
satisfies a legal requirement, his death is not deserved.”
64
Kerrigan amplifies:
This is the Father’s terrible riddle: although the meaning of the Sacrifice is the
crucifixion of sin, the disarming of death, and the crushing of Satan, the event

261
given this meaning is the wrathful destruction of the wrong Son. Milton could
never write about the Sacrifice because he felt its intolerable illogic more
profoundly than a Crashaw. He reimagines as he can. In his gospel epic he
moves the consequence of Atonement, the regaining of paradise, from the
crucifixion that murders Christ to the temptation that unmakes Satan. Treating
the Father’s riddle indirectly, Milton is able to bring meaning back in harmony
with event. . . .

Although the future of his hero is not subject to his wish, the poet somewhere
knows that at the hour when the wrath falls on a forsaken Son, charged with the
sins of the world, the Son is Satan. The angels receive him, preparing him for the
Cross that will one day stand on the pinnacles of temples as the emblem of a
culture.
65

Insomuch as standing on the pinnacle represents the Crucifixion, the Son must, in order
to escape the limiting snares of this world that He may begin His salvific enterprise,
surrender everything He possesses willingly to the demands of His Divine Father (“the
sacred super-ego”), even and especially His life; only in this way can He gain what
Kerrigan terms His “unique selfhood.”
66
Kerrigan envisions this psychic drama of
“temptation, renunciation, obedience” enacted in Paradise Regain’d as “the sacred
complex,” a holy mimicry of “the profane” Oedipal complex which it will “subvert.”
67

Though I shall return to Kerrigan’s interpretation near the end of this chapter in order to
do greater justice to his intricate “psychoanalysis of faith,”
68
at this point Kerrigan
himself, relying upon Denis Saurat, best summarizes his own inquiry into the psychic
substance of Milton’s spiritual life as expressed in Paradise Regain’d: “In the two poems
generally assumed to have been written after Paradise Lost, Saurat concluded, Milton
‘frees himself from all dogma; all he keeps of it is God-Destiny.’”
69
To Kerrigan’s
thinking, for Milton “The resurrected Christ is the ego retrieved in the name of love from
the moment of its unjust and pretheodicial death. . . . This exemption demands the
mysterious replacement that Milton intimates on the pinnacle. Christ must somehow

262
become Satan in order that the Satan toward which we live as a last possibility may
somehow become Christ.”
70
God, His unfathomable anger satiated, will extend His
compassion to His Son and us.
Christopher Grose, in his charming (as in leading us where we quite know not)
examination of Paradise Regain’d as “Milton’s severest test for his audience by
challenging us to distinguish weary abandonment of the world from a chance to exercise
our faith in a context of near-perfect literary freedom”
71
—that is, a lesson in how to
maintain critical vigilance amidst a kaleidoscopic array of seductive sensuous and
ideological opportunity—incorporates what he calls “questions of syntactic agency” into
his discussion, namely “the celebrated instance near the poem’s conclusion . . . when, as
William Kerrigan observes, Satan and the Son inhabit the same pronoun.
72
” An
academic Pied-Piper, Grose appears to imitate his hypothesis, insofar as he transports us
through a sequence of opinions that he alludes to rather than explain with expected
straightforward scholarly didacticism,
73
and his explication of what he refers to as the
epic “aftermath of the Son’s heroic deed”
74
is illustrative of his whimsical style:
The banquet begins with what certainly looks like yet another mininarrative of
Satan’s fall . . . and because of our adjustment to a plot relocated in metaphysical
or spiritual territory just a moment ago, it becomes difficult to accept the banquet
as something that happens only to the Son. Despite the narrator’s severity in
forcing personal distinctions . . . it is not easy to refer the “him” of two lines later
to anyone but the original subject of this sentence. Indeed, I claim that we can do
this only after the fact, when once again (in 594-95) Milton tells us who did what
to whom, both in the passage and in the epic as a whole. Satan may now be safely
“debelled,” in short, but Milton appears to linger on the fate of the Adversary, and
not just in those luxurious allusions to Antaeus and the “Theban monster,” either.
In general, he makes it difficult not to feel, OK, here is that tour de force we all
knew Milton was still capable of, here is strength, real epic . . . at last! The more
eagerly the poet disposes of his dramatis personae in space onstage, the greater
our difficulties in deciding who is where. . . . Until now, indeed, it has been hard
not to read this poem well, thanks to the conflation of the Bard with the divine

263
protagonist himself. But in these last moments, the scene is almost completely
free from the kind of interpretive aids which Milton has provided earlier. . . . As
interpretive readers—and that is the kind we have become during this work—we
seem to be on our own now, working without much help in a sort of literary
analogue to the Son’s own wilderness, following his and Satan’s departure—if
Milton’s Satan can ever really disappear.
75

In addition to this problematic doubling of the Son and Satan, Grose locates another
instance of it earlier in the text (though not the one that I outline above), when the
narrator describes their first encounter:
But now an aged man in Rural weeds,
Following, as seemd, the quest of some stray Ewe,
Or witherd sticks to gather; which might serve
Against a Winters day when winds blow keen,
To warm him wet returned from field at Eve,
He saw approach, who first with curious eye
Perus’d him, then with words thus utterd spake.
76

Evaluating these lines, Grose apprises us that
Milton has forced a conjunction between the Son’s “thoughts” . . . and Satan[’s],
who turns out to be the primary voice in question. The “he” of 319 turns out to be
the Son, but some work is required to avoid identifying this “he” with the “who”
just three words farther down the line. . . . The uncertain agency of this moment
(or at 1:36, say) is the effect, for the particular-minded reader at any rate, of
Satan’s character: the Adversary’s deep-seated need to “approach” the Son or
indeed to be “the exalted man” himself. Like Whig historians of the sort Milton
became in 1642, we get the story straight only after the fact.
77

But Grose does little more with these fusions except to merge them into his
assessment that, regarding the poem, “the general loss of critical resistance extends to the
poet himself and seems bound to affect all but the most heroic readers.”
78
Furthermore,
for Grose these literary paladins are “for better or worse the guardians of the brief epic’s
crucial Gospel incident”;
79
they become fit enough to resist the temptations of “the real
Satan of Paradise Regained [who] is nothing a reader can be done with quite so soon—or
indeed, at any point—in the narrative,”
80
“only by improving upon the poet’s own

264
performance.”
81
And to complicate matters, Grose also teasingly weaves into his tale of
Miltonic education random hints concerning “God’s ‘permissive will,’” remarking that
“Early in the poem (1:127 – 28), we are offered the fully explicated presentation of just
how the Satanic wiles fit with the divine plan; whatever the Adversary’s intentions, we
will be dealing with a contrary fulfillment of that ‘purposed Counsel pre-ordain’d and fixt
/ Of the most High.’”
82
Eventually Grose utters what he feels to be the “challenge posed
by the later portions of Milton’s brief epic: to remember the providential chain of
command behind Satan’s masque-like spectacle”
83
—yet, as with most of Grose’s
suggestions, this too is not adequately contextualized—and we are left to our own devices
figuring out how to apply it to his overall argument that in Paradise Regain’d Milton is
bent on teaching his readers a lesson in judicious diligence when negotiating a narrative
in which “the poet does not seem to be up to the challenge of the whole endeavor.”
84

Perhaps, because Grose’s supposition about the increased “pressures” of “divine
permissiveness
85
near the end of the book comes upon the heels of his dissection of “that
seemingly definitive fall from the pinnacle of the Temple”
86
we are of ourselves to
establish a correspondence between them (and at the proper moment, I shall); at any rate,
Grose abruptly ends his sinuous analysis of Paradise Regain’d tongue-in-cheek: “Here
only the fittest of us will remember to apply that very professional admonition of 1642:
‘The author is ever distinguished from the person he introduces.’”
87
And here I cannot
resist adding that Grose strands us without indicating if he means Milton or himself.
And Neil Forsyth, in his comprehensive celebration of Milton’s Satan as “one of
the most fertile characters in English literature—fertile of interpretation, of response, of
rewriting—and unsettling, even threatening, because so fascinating and yet so hard to

265
evaluate,”
88
explores Satan’s replacement of the Son on the pinnacle as one more instance
of Milton’s thinly-veiled conflict arising from the need “to defend God’s benevolence at
the same time as he asserts his governance of all things, evil as well as good,”
89
in that it
reenacts an uncomfortable epiphanic moment, when Milton’s God reveals Himself to be
that deity from Isaiah 45:7: “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and
create evil: I the Lord do all these things.”
90
Forsyth’s interpretation is comprised of a
hermeneutic mélange of Gnostic tradition, mythology, and political literary theory.
Conceiving of Milton’s characterization of Satan in Paradise Regain’d as “the Judeo-
Christian version of that fundamental figure of the world’s mythologies, the trickster, he
who teaches (often inadvertently) the basic truths about the universe even as he tries (or
seems) himself to subvert those truths,” Forsyth pictures him as the embodied
“reconciliation of dove and serpent . . . mean[t] in those enigmatic words of Christ in
Mathew 10.16,”
91
and renders the pinnacle scene in terms of this harmony:
Thus the Satan of the myth may well be damned for his unrelenting hostility to
God, but the Satan of the poems is redeemed for his benign but unconscious
relation to the reader. At the climax of his tempting-teaching of the Son, Satan
joins him on the temple pinnacle and momentarily substitutes for him as the
angels come to rescue him from his fall. . . . Briefly the pronoun “him,” like the
pinnacle, is inhabited by both Satan and Christ.
92

In a footnote to his reading of the conjunction of the Son and Satan in Paradise Regain’d,
Forsythe quotes Luther Link on the Venetian painter Lorenzo Lotto’s depiction of the
war in Heaven, Michael and Lucifer: “To represent a horde of falling monsters attacked
by angels (as Breughel did) is one thing. To represent angels attacked by angels is quite
something else. The awkward problem, usually avoided, is confronted in Lotto’s
painting. Michael and Lucifer are the same: the same body, the same face. They are

266
twins, complementary souls. The other face of Michael is Lucifer.”
93
Forsyth, marking
the coupling as a manifestation of the dilemma voiced by Fredric Jameson in his classic
study of literary analysis, namely “‘the perplexing question of how my enemy can be
thought of as being alien (that is, as other than myself and marked by some absolute
difference),’ when he in fact . . . reflects him as in a mirror,”
94
instructs us that when
Christ issues His “ enigmatic response to Satan’s final challenge, ‘Tempt not the Lord thy
God’ (4.561), [which] makes Satan fall, smitten with amazement. . . . The difference
between the two seems finally clear, and yet just for a moment, the dark secret was out,
that hero and enemy are one in the same, good and bad father, good and bad son.”
95
The
ambiguous God of Isaiah briefly and disturbingly intrudes upon the narrative then
vanishes—but in Forsyth’s view, not without consequences: “Satan’s role has been
inadvertently to bring Christ to be himself, and it is a delicate irony that at the climactic
moment, he should also be the ultimate other. Once again, the text of the poem, if not the
doctrine, has redeemed Satan.”
96

Forsyth, boldly affirming that “Without that sympathy for Satan that is our
Romantic inheritance, we cannot properly read Milton,”
97
anatomizes other such
suspicious grammatical constructions that he detects in Paradise Lost, especially those
that unite fallen and unfallen beings. For instance in Book IV, when Milton mixes
together the archangel Uriel, charged with guarding Paradise from intruders, and Satan:
Atop Mount Niphates, Satan, after wrestling with his conflicting attitudes toward his act
of rebellion, publishes his famous Byronic adieu to virtue: “So farwel Hope, and with
Hope farwel Fear, / Farwel Remorse: all Good to me is lost; Evil be thou my Good”;
98

Uriel, however, discerning that during Satan’s farewell address his facial features, in

267
Forsyth’s words, have been “so disfigured by emotion, and his body so twisted by
‘gestures fierce’ (4.128) . . . realizes he must be a false dissembler,”
99
and puts Satan
under observation. Though Satan, suddenly aware of his own behavior, makes a display
of “outward calme,”
100
the corrections come too late for him to escape Uriel’s notice:
Yet not anough had practiced to deceive
Uriel once warned; whose eye perus’d him down
The way he went, and th’ Assyrian mount
Saw him disfigur’d, more than could befall
Spirit of happie sort: his gestures fierce
He mark’d and mad demeanour, then alone,
As he suppos’d, all unobserv’d, unseen.
So on he fares, and to the border comes
Of Eden.
101

Forsythe posits that, because the unexpected trespass of Uriel’s perception severs us from
the soliloquizing Satan and thrusts us into the position of an observer,
The effect is disorienting, since on the one hand we are deliberately offered
another point of view than Satan’s—the spy is spied on—“As he suppose’d, all
unobserv’d, unseen” (4.131)—and yet that point of view just gets absorbed by the
narrative until we are not sure who sees what. Uriel sees Satan, but . . . they
succeed each other confusingly. It’s not that we can’t pause and figure out which
“he” is which, but that we are made to pause and do so, to sort the fallen from
heavenly angel in our minds. . . . Further, he [Uriel] is in an oblique grammatical
case, not the subject of the sentence.
102

Forsyth understands that this unstable subjectivity pervades the last sentence of the
passage as well, relating that when we come upon the clause “So on he fares,” “we must
pause, however briefly, to get straight that this is not Uriel, whom we expect to take
instant action, but Satan, the last ‘he’ mentioned, though only by a line from the ‘he’ that
is Uriel.”
103
And Milton augments his strategy of producing doubt as to how to distribute
agency by eliminating Uriel from the story just as precipitously and unceremoniously as
he introduces him; as Forsythe tells us, “indeed Uriel simply disappears for the

268
intervening 420 lines.”
104
We may look on Milton’s combination of that fleeting and
needless interjection of Uriel into the narrative with the uncertain syntax melding Satan
and him together as another literary correlative to Lotto’s painting.
Forsyth also unpacks Milton’s account of Satan’s actual descent into Eden
directly after his description of its lofty trees, which contains yet another example of the
grammatical blending of the fallen and unfallen;
Yet higher than thir tops
The verdurous Wall of Paradise up sprung:
Which to our general Sire gave prospect large
Into his nether Empire neighbouring round.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
On which the Sun more glad impressd his beams
Then in fair Eevning Cloud, or humid Bow,
When God hath showrd the earth: so lovely seemd
That Lantskip: And of pure now purer aire
Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires
Vernal delight and joy, able to drive
All sadness but despair.
105

Forsyth’s take on this passage begins with the query
But what then are we to make of the lines that mention the wall of Paradise? No
further point of view has intervened, nor has Adam himself even been introduced,
except as he whose abode is Paradise in Uriel’s recounting of the Creation to
Satan (3.735). . . . I challenge any reader of those lines not to hesitate a moment,
perhaps even to make Satan our general Sire and this world we are visiting with
him “his neather Empire”—as indeed he wants it to be, as indeed it will
become.
106

But lest we interpret the confusion over whom we should designate “our general Sire”
simply in terms of Milton indicating to us that we are, in a sense, the damned offspring of
both Satan and Adam, Forsythe proceeds to occlude this type of reading by
demonstrating that Satan first experiences “delicious Paradise”
107
with unfallen pleasure.
Forsyth underscores Milton’s subtle identification of the Sun and Satan
108
via their

269
similar status as Edenic spectators, through his typical grammatical infraction involving
the lack of correspondence between antecedent and pronoun: after Satan, Milton
produces “another observer of all this, highest of all, the Sun, who clearly likes the
sight”
109
of that “Lantskip”; thus the pronoun “his” in the clause following the colon we
automatically assume betokens the Sun—it must be Sun’s “approach.” (Though Forsyth
fails to push the union of the Sun and Satan as the conjoining of the “Son” and Satan,
when the intended pun is so obvious as to be hard to miss.
110
) Forsyth, however,
ascertains that the “approach” is in fact Satan’s, “in spite of the violation of the rule of
pronoun reference, and the disconcerting repetition of the Sun’s emotional response to
Eden in Satan’s (“more glad”—“delight and joy”), just as if he were a creature of this
place himself.”
111
Moreover, to seal this reading, Forsyth argues that “several other
passages confirm he is indeed capable of such emotional and aesthetic response; for
example, a few lines later when he looks down from the Tree of Life”:
112
“Beneath him
with new wonder now he views / To all delight of human sense expos’d / In narrow room
Natures whole wealth.”
113
As Forsyth stresses, “the text mingles Satanic and human
response”
114
—and the only possible human response is at this place in the narrative an
unfallen one. This compounding helps to substantiate Forsyth’s view that Paradise Lost
in great part commemorates “the tragic status of the hero,”
115
who happens to be the
Devil. The same text that condemns Satan to his fate as the unsung but necessary savior
of mankind, exposes the arbitrary nature of that fate by a variety of stratagems, and
Milton’s common “move that separates syntax from logic”
116
is one of them.
Ultimately, Forsyth’s interests concerning Paradise Lost (and Paradise Regain’d
too!) lay in proving that “Milton knew God may seem very much like the Devil—and the

270
poem shows how much.”
117
Treating of Satan’s Mount Niphates meditation on the
reasons for his damnation and the possibility of redemption, Forsyth writes:
what Satan discovers . . . is that not only can he not repent, but he cannot even,
when he tries, address God. The stage convention of the soliloquy has become a
prison of solipsism. He tries to say to God “O then at last relent,” [IV.79] but he
is the only one who replies, and the reply is negative.
118

For Forsyth, the absent God is encountered “in the text as he is appealed to (even if it is
only a misreading quickly canceled by the reader), and . . . momentarily, in the reader’s
consciousness at least, Satan and God have replaced each other”
119
(and tellingly, in a
footnote Forsyth likens this situation to “the similar moment at the climax of Paradise
Regain’d, when ‘he’ [Satan] falls from the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem”
120
).
Moreover, in Forsyth’s mind, their exchange signals beyond the problem of Satan to the
problem of “An omniscient and omnipotent God . . . who is merely toying with this
defiant devil”:
121

It is God doing it, says the theology, yet as we watch Satan unable to get through
to God, there is little question where our sympathies will go. . . . [W]e know that
God is responsible for Satan’s plight—he says as much: ‘Man therefore shall find
grace, / The other none’ (3.131 –32). The rhetoric of Satan has brought God into
the text and equated him with the self of Satan.
122

Pertaining to this most controversial of all transpositions, Forsyth teaches that “Such is
the terror of this Satanic idea of God that Origen, the greatest and most intelligent of the
early Fathers, tried to save Christianity from it. He propounded a doctrine of
apokastiasis, that even the Devil would be saved. For this he was attacked by Augustine
and posthumously condemned in 543.”
123
In another footnote, Forsythe supplies us with
Milton’s indirect rejoinder to Origen in Christian Doctrine, which is terse to a point of
being cryptic: “God openly confesses that it is he who incites the sinner, hardens his

271
heart, blinds him and drives him into error [but] it must not be concluded that he is the
originator even of the very smallest sin, for he is supremely holy”;
124
and Forsyth realizes
that “It is hard to imagine a less satisfactory way to solve the problem”
125
—especially
when applying it to the Devil.
I have wandered far from my study of Milton’s disturbing incorporations of the
Son and Satan in Paradise Regain’d by tarrying so on Forsyth, but I find his explanations
about what Milton intends by repeatedly resorting to conjunctions involving Satan with
either God, the Son, or Adam most appealing and helpful. And Forsyth’s summary of
Milton’s attitude toward Satan’s function in Paradise Lost is apropos to my discussion:
At issue here is the role that Milton gives to Satan as equivalent of narrative
double of the Son. . . . They are mirrors for each other. . . . Both, for example,
are saviours of mankind. The Son offers himself with fairly elaborate fanfare as
the one to suffer life and death in order to make up for man’s polluting sin, but
God also makes Satan play a similar role in the same theological Book 3.
126

Forsyth goes on to say that
Satan’s temptation of mankind is a necessary prerequisite to the Son’s reciprocal
intervention in the fate of mankind. Without Satan, no Son. This is Milton’s
narrative variant of a common saying: “No Devil, no God” was to be John
Wesley’s way of putting it. . . . Or, to put it another way, the Devil keeps God
good.

Thus Satan has an extremely important role to play in the philosophical or
theological structure of Paradise Lost. It is Satan’s presence that both causes and
excuses the fall of mankind, and his role is to allow God to forgive Adam and
Eve. Like his great opponent in the poem, the Son, he is, in an important sense,
sacrificed for the good of mankind. Both Son and Satan are, in this version of the
Christian myth, necessary for salvation. And while the one understands his role,
and volunteers for it, knowing he will ultimately overcome death and ride in
triumph high, the other steps unwittingly up to be damned.
127

In Paradise Regain’d we witness Milton’s posture regarding basically the same
theological transaction, but in such a way that, in order to behold it, we must overcome

272
the poem’s strong but superficial narrative drive. With the exception of Kerrigan, Grose,
and Forsyth, virtually all of the critical treatment that the work has engendered ignores
Milton’s startling syntactical clues in favor of an ideologically closed canonical (with its
associated religious implications) agenda, focusing on Milton’s attitude toward
transhistorical religious and theological matters, including the Trinity, the Incarnation,
the personality of the Son, the purpose of the debate, the meaning of the temptations,
which gospel predominates, and the influence of the Book of Job—or more recently,
Milton’s grievous disillusionment with the outcome of the Revolution, such as the
condemnation of monarchy, the cynical censure of England’s politically fickle populace,
the Son as representative of Milton himself, the Son as a proper Puritan, the Son as a
radical sectarian, and His withdrawal to His mother’s house at the poem’s finish as a
metaphor for Milton’s post-Restoration seclusion. We can see that any thoughtful
accounting for the grammatical interchanges of the Son and Satan allows for interpretive
responses that do not correspond to the traditional above-mentioned concerns. This
critically imbalanced and dichotomous situation verifies Terry Eagleton’s pithy remark
that “Criticism is not an innocent discipline, and never has been,”
128
as it is obvious that,
in order to stake their canonical readings of Paradise Regain’d, scholars must
assiduously avoid what Eagleton calls “recalcitrant material that refuses to be
absorbed.”
129
Eagleton, using Wordsworth’s The Prelude as a paradigm,
130
lectures us
about “the severe self-divisions of meaning ”
131
a work may produce due to resistant
textual features: “The Prelude is formally fissured by its ideological contradictions,
unable to rise above to the seamless impersonal epic it would wish itself to be: its generic
uncertainty, unevenness of texture, haltings, and recoveries of narrative and shifts of

273
standpoint are at odds with the consoling evolutionism of its outlook, indices of its lack
of unity with itself.”
132
Likewise, Paradise Regain’d’s unruly compositional elements,
which include much more than the transposals heretofore discussed, and some of which I
shall investigate later, not only reveal the poem’s own particular “lack of unity with
itself,” they radically subvert the ideologically constrained and customary interpretations
that inform its critical history.
But here let me say I do not mean to intimate that such critical work on Paradise
Regain’d is of little value—far from it. Most of my knowledge about Milton derives
from studying the material that these texts contain regarding the poem, him, and his
oeuvre in general; furthermore, much of this scholarship displays a profound breadth and
depth of knowledge that far surpasses anything that I may ever achieve regarding my own
education. As a tentative Miltonist I feel as if I’m an intellectual Lilliputian tiptoeing
upon the shoulders of erudite giants—and always will feel that way, most probably—
however, having expressed all this, I still maintain that there is a direct relationship
between the exclusion of the syntactic amalgamations of the Son and Satan and an
ideologically circumscribed reading. To be more concise, analyses of Paradise Regain’d
that shrink from discussing the conflation of the Son and Satan conform to a restricted set
of interpretations that I categorize as canonistically comfortable, in that they assume the
shape of a celebration of Milton as a vexed and/or eccentric but submissive Christian,
occasionally incorporating a brief meditation on Milton’s anguished mental state due to
the failure of “the good old cause.” When anatomizing a text such as Paradise Regain’d,
it is useful to remember Jameson’s words on the illusory nature of organic wholeness and
the “real job” of literary criticism, which nicely complement Eagleton’s:

274
It follows, then, that the interpretive mission of a properly structural causality will
. . . find its privileged content in rifts and discontinuities within the work, and
ultimately in a conception of the former “work of art” as a heterogeneous and (to
use the most dramatic recent slogan) a schizophrenic text. In the case of the
Althusserian literary criticism proper, then, the appropriate object of study
emerges only when the appearance of formal unification is unmasked as a failure
or an ideological mirage.
133

Paradise Regain’d is indeed such an example of a “schizophrenic text” (Fish has his own
term for schizophrenic texts of the seventeenth-century—“Self-Consuming Artifacts”—
which is also the title of his investigation of them). Interpretive difficulties derive from
attempting a totalizing analysis of a poem that historically has been thought to
demonstrate great formal (and thus ideological) cohesiveness, but in truth does not. I am
pulling together some of the many “rifts and discontinuities” that Milton wove into his
seeming elaboration of scripture, that another poem may appear to us. We can call this
emergent text a satire; yet it is not a satire of scripture so much as of an entire era when
virtually everyone, armed with the Holy Spirit and the Bible, prided themselves on being
in possession of full knowledge; however, in Paradise Regain’d Milton will, among other
things, slyly (and bitterly too) remind us that full knowledge belongs to God alone.
134

Paradise Regain’d exemplifies the degree to which, as Jameson insists, “texts come
before us as the always-already-read; we apprehend them through sedimented layers of
previous interpretations, or . . . through the sedimented reading habits and categories
developed by those interpretations.”
135
The poem escapes conventional analyses due to
material that is, as far as concerns those analyses, interpretively unmanageable.
This textual wildness largely centers around, as I have already begun to argue,
Milton’s conflation of the Son and Satan, which I now assert is not only a commentary on
his disgust with the way his political party had exposed itself as being just as greedy,

275
hypocritical, and vicious as the royals that it had driven from power, but also an
expression of anger at a God who would grant victory only to allow the victors to
mismanage things so badly that they would relinquish their authority to the son of the
very man who, during the war, they had execrated as the Anti-Christ. Christopher Hill, in
his comprehensive study of Milton in relation to the Revolution, cites Milton’s friend
Isaac Penington concerning God’s capriciousness; Hill employs the quotation to
underline Milton’s reluctant (and not quite sincere) acceptance of God’s absolute
sovereignty, and we can apply it to his rendition of the duel between the Son and Satan:
He that bringeth both the perfect and the wicked upon the stage may turn either of
them off from the stage when he will. There is no more to hinder him from
destroying the perfect than there is to hinder him from destroying the wicked.
They are both equally his. They are both at his dispose. They are one and the
same under several representations, and he has appointed them both to one and
the same end, which is destruction. . . . He is Lord of all, and has the dispose of
all, and let him make never so many deeds of gifts . . . still he has the power of
life and death in his own hands. . . . All dispensations are but for a season, they
are not everlasting. Therefore eternity delights to swallow them up. Perfect and
wicked are both of the same lump, only differently clothed to act their several
parts, which when they have done, their clothes must be taken off, and they turned
back into the lump again. There is nothing durable but the eternal state of
things.
136

Milton goes to some length to demonstrate that, despite their differing sanctioned
relationships to the Father, the Son and Satan are actually interchangeable puppets
shadowboxing for the Father’s pleasure, hence the difficulty of stating anything about
their engagement that attempts to make it seem other than it is, a “pre-ordained and fixt”
fight that has nothing to do with questions of the adversaries’ inherent worth or that of the
Son’s mission. As if to prove this point, Milton even makes the Son a rather vicious
character, a situation that has long puzzled scholars; for instance, as W. W. Robson
famously declares in his essay blasting Paradise Regain’d in pretty much all possible

276
ways (due in great part to the fact that he interprets the poem as the gospel according to
Milton), “Milton’s presentation of Christ, as a whole, must stand convicted of either an
error of feeling or an error or taste,”
137
protesting that, among other things, “The Christ
who speaks of the people as ‘a miscellaneous rabble’ (iii. 50) is not the Christ who had
compassion for the multitude.”
138
Significantly, Robson also complains of Milton’s too-
moving portrayal of Satan, objecting to the emotional “contrast between the presentation
of the two disputants generally,”
139
and insisting that it “is too systematic, too consistent,
too representative in the poem to have been unintentional.”
140
Satan is by far the more
touching of the debaters, which Robson calls “the central peculiarity of the undertaking
of Paradise Regained.”
141
It’s nigh impossible to resist sympathizing with Satan when he
cries out to the Son that “This wounds me most (what can it less) that Man, / Man fall’n
shall be restor’d, I never more”;
142
one can almost imagine Satan beating his breast as he
repeats the word “Man” to the cruel Son, who proceeds to chastise the Devil
unmercifully. Or when Satan flings back this reproof, grieving:
Sharply thou hast insisted on rebuke,
And urg’d me hard with doings, which not will
But misery hath wrested from me; where
Easily canst thou find one miserable,
And not inforc’t oft-times to part from truth,
If it may stand him more in stead to lye,
Say and unsay, feign, flatter, or abjure?
143

Robson comprehends Milton’s affective reversals in theological terms, explaining that
“Milton, it has often been observed, is a striking example of that type of divided poetic
personality in which the prédilection d’artiste for certain themes is accompanied by a
moral antagonism towards them,”
144
and “that there is apt to be a cleavage between
Milton’s expounded doctrines and his unconscious sympathies.”
145
But in Paradise

277
Regain’d Milton is not critiquing theology so much as the era that he had outlived.
Milton makes it as clear as he can, without completely giving the game away, that the
Son and Satan could swap identities—that is to say that good could become evil, and evil
good—and still enact the same story without the exchange affecting the plot in the least.
To borrow what Wolfgang Iser stipulates about textual play, Milton makes us keenly
aware through various stratagems that Paradise Regain’d barely “upholds the difference
it seeks to eradicate.”
146
Thus it should come as no surprise that scholars acknowledge
that the Son and Satan sound alike in more ways than one, but cannot concur as to who
actually mimics whom: for example, Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, the best known and most
accomplished scholar on Paradise Regain’d, demonstrates that the pair employ similar
rhetorical and rhyming schemes, arguing that such use supports her “observation that
Satan is this poem is endeavoring to sound like Christ’s alter ego, to imitate the voice of
rationality”;
147
whereas Archie Burnett, in his study of Milton’s writing style, also detects
a close resemblance in speech patterns, but locates it primarily in adjectival usage, and
feels that it is actually the Son who impersonates Satan, contending that “It is important
that the Son parody Satan’s language, and not just for the sake of rhythmic vigour or
tone: his imitation signals that he has seen through the techniques of temptation and
denunciation; replying in their style impairs their success.”
148

Furthermore, we are unable to differentiate between the two physically, for as
Roland Mushat Frye recognizes in his investigation of Milton’s imagery in connection
with the visual arts, Milton provides neither the Son nor Satan with a specific and
identifiable corporeality; discussing their intangibleness, Frye reports that, as regards the
Son, He “is never given a physical description in Paradise Regained. Whether he is tall

278
or short, massive or lean, blond or brunet, bearded or clean shaven, we simply do not
learn from Milton,”
149
and that, although there was a standard conception of Him, it
possessed “marked variations, and Milton’s readers are not given the slightest hint as to
whether they should imagine Christ in the Wilderness after the fashion of, say, Botticelli
or Tintoretto, Ghiberti or Mattia Preti, Cock or Rubens.”
150
As to Satan, Frye tells us that
Milton omits giving him “any telltale physical sign which would identify the stranger as
the devil.”
151
Frye excuses their utter lack of distinguishing characteristics, supposing
that, as regards the Son, Milton’s “reticence was due to his knowledge that he had no firm
historical evidence as to the actual appearance of Jesus,”
152
and that, concerning Satan,
Milton “prepares us for Satan’s advent so that we know just who he is when he arrives on
the scene.”
153
But what Frye surmises to be a problem pertaining to imagining the Son
isn’t one when attempting to conjure up likenesses of the devil, for he suggests readers
would have been able to picture mentally what the devil looked like in his guises as the
old man and Renaissance courtier, as well as his own “wonted shape,”
154
from paintings,
prints, tapestries, and the like;
155
as Frye demonstrates from his research, “Between the
fifteenth century and the seventeenth, the Tempter in the Wilderness appeared in several
standard forms.”
156
We should take Frye’s contradictory responses as typical of the
confusion that occurs when someone reacts to Paradise Regain’d as “The Biblical
Narrative Envisioned”;
157
but it wouldn’t surprise me if Milton had conceived of the Son
and Satan as being identical twins. The Son and Satan, Roundhead and Royalist, Puritan
and Anglican, all clamoring that they alone truly speak and act for God—and perhaps at
times they do—for as Satan protests to the Son, the Father “vouchsaf’d his voice / To
Balaam Reprobate, a Prophet Yet / Inspir’d; disdain not such access to me.”
158
Hill

279
believes that “Milton often seems deliberately to blur the external distinctions between
good and evil to emphasize the all-importance of the internal spirit”;
159
however, in
Paradise Regain’d, Milton, through such “smudging,” is not stressing the significance of
the Spirit so much as commenting on the impossibility of adjudicating who is granted
possession of it and to what end. And he goes further than “blur[ring]” the boundaries
between good and evil, in that he collapses their classifications altogether. In Paradise
Regain’d, Milton makes good and evil categorically inconsequential except in terms of
who is slated to win “both Worlds”
160
—indeed, both the Son and Satan know who the
winner will be. Not only the Son, but also Satan “receives / Light from above, from the
fountain of light,”
161
that they may execute their roles to the Father’s satisfaction.
In Book I Milton has the narrator summarize the entire action of the Temptation,
which promises that the Son will be provided with whatever He requires to emerge from
the test unscathed and unbeaten:
Victory and Triumph to the Son of God
Now entring his great duel, not of arms,
But to vanquish by wisdom hellish wiles.
The Father knows the Son; therefore secure
Ventures his filial Vertue, though untri’d,
Against whate’re may tempt, whate’re seduce,
Allure, or terrifie, or undermine.
Be frustrate all ye stratagems of Hell,
And devilish machinations come to naught.
162

And the hymning angels later verify the narrator’s assurances, warbling
True image of the Father, whether thron’d
In the bosom of bliss, and light of light
Conceiving, or remote from Heaven, enshrin’d
In fleshly Tabernacle, and human form,
Wandering the Wilderness, whatever place,
Habit, or state, or motion, still expressing
The Son of God, with Godlike force indu’d

280
Against th’ Attempter of thy Father’s Throne,
And thief of Paradise.
163

The Father, as I have already said in relation to Paradise Lost, always gets what He
wants, and the same holds true for its sequel; the Father ensures “Victory and Triumph to
the Son of God” by equipping Him with the “wisdom” He needs that He may pass His
test in an outstanding fashion, the fact of which the Son is well aware. The Son even
knows the terms of the test, in that He apprehends that He must “endure the time, till
which expir’d / Thou [Satan] hast permission on me.”
164
Witness also what the Son
replies to Satan’s request at the end of their first skirmish that he be allowed further
visits: “Thy coming hither, though I know thy scope, / I bid not or forbid; do as thou
find’st / Permission from above; thou canst not more.”
165
The Father ensures that His
Son will be able to “endure the time” “with unaltered brow.”
166
So supremely confident
is the Son in His eventual “Victory and Triumph” that He taunts Satan after refusing the
Devil’s offer of Rome:
Know therefore when my season comes to sit
On Davids Throne, it shall be like a tree
Spreading and over-shadowing all the Earth,
Or as stone that shall to pieces dash
All Monarchies besides throughout the World,
And of my Kingdom there shall be no end:
Means there shall be to this, but what the means,
Is not for thee to know, nor mee to tell.
167

The Son operates on a secret surplus of knowledge that, although we cannot measure
with any precision, is sufficient to guarantee His spectacular success: as He remarks to
Himself, “For what concerns my knowledge God reveals.”
168

As the two antagonists negotiate their rigged game in the wilderness, Satan also
obtains information and vigor from the Father; though, not surprisingly, this fact has

281
garnered no attention, for it falls into the category of what I have already termed
“wayward textual elements” that neutralize all canonical readings of Paradise Regain’d.
For instance, Satan is granted a boost of energy in order to carry the Son up to a mountain
top that He might view all the kingdoms that Satan is willing to bestow upon Him:
But I will bring thee where thou soon shalt quit
Those rudiments, and see before thine eyes
The Monarchies of th’ Earth, thir pomp and state,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
With that (such power was giv’n him then) he took
The Son of God up to a mountain high.
169

The suspicious-looking agentless-passive construction of itself speaks volumes, in that it
underscores the narrator’s obvious attempt to elide the fact that Satan acquires his sudden
strength from the Father; in addition, the parentheses serve to emphasize, instead of
conceal, this troublesome state of affairs. Milton couldn’t be more transparent than if he
had stated outright that it is God who is actually responsible for Satan’s surge of power,
as the flimsy (that is to say phony) attempt to conceal this verity only serves to highlight
it, and by extension the numerous problems, theological and political, that it points to in
terms of making God responsible for the existence of evil. Moreover, the narrator gives
out that Satan is highly conscious of this boon, informing us that, after the temptations of
the kingdoms, Satan “took (for still he knew his power / Not yet expir’d) and to the
Wilderness / Brought back the Son of God, and left him there”;
170
this second
parenthetical aside duplicates the effects of the first one, as it accentuates embarrassing
data that Milton (ostensibly) wishes for us to overlook—namely that Satan is supposed to
perform his function as Adversary “unweeting[ly]”
171
—so the contradiction either
signifies that the narrator has forgotten that Satan is to fulfill “The purposed Counsel pre-

282
ordained and fixt / Of the most High” unknowingly, or that Satan is cognizant of his role
as the heavy. Let us remember what the Son barks out at Satan upon their first meeting:
“Why dost thou then suggest to me distrust, / Knowing who I am, as I know who thou
art?” And, as Satan himself admits to the Son, regarding his subservience to the Father,
“what he bids I do,”
172
later observing to the Son that, for purposes of their joust, “thou
art plac’t above me, thou art Lord; / From thee I can and must submiss endure / Check or
reproof, and glad to escape so quit.”
173
The fact is that these parenthetical asides cannot
be assimilated into canonical readings of Paradise Regain’d, hence their invisibility;
because they are, like the suspicious grammatical constructions, visually small, few, and
(apparently) randomly deployed, scholars pass them up that they may make their
orthodox analyses with confidence, but we should not presume any correlation between
the size, amount, and placement of these narrative sotto voces and their actual interpretive
impact. Norman Friedman, in his study of the relationship between form and meaning in
literature, expresses the situation nicely regarding their occulted condition: “If one
assumes that there is a definition or order of literature to which criticism must conform,
and neglects the fact that what he sees only looks that way if regarded from a certain
point of view, his assumptions become not working hypotheses but rather self-evident
truths, and so it will seem that he is not assuming much at all.”
174
In the last pages of this
chapter I shall demonstrate just how much willed blindness is involved straitening
Paradise Regain’d into either scripture or a story that conforms to a scriptural reading, at
the cost of examining features that, taken together, yield up (among other things) a
commentary on the divine politics involved in the battle between the Son and Satan as
they discharge their appointed tasks according to their Father’s whims.

283
It is in view of this categorical irrelevance of good and evil that we should
examine what Lewalski designates as Paradise Regain’d’s “great controlling ambiguity
[which] centers upon the term ‘Son of God,’ the title bestowed in a special way upon
Christ at his baptism (the event with which the action begins) and insistently applied to
him with a variety of meanings.”
175
As Lewalski recognizes, this incertitude derives in
great part from the fact that Satan too is also God’s child: “Obviously, as Satan later
remarks, this is a title which ‘bears no single sense’ (IV.517): Satan himself can claim
with some justice, ‘The Son of God I also am, or was, / And if I am; relation stands; / All
men are Sons of God’ (IV.518–20).”
176
And Edward E. Ericson, Jr, in his article on the
biblical sources for the appellation “Son of God,” pronounces that “Indeed, it is not too
much to say that the whole of Paradise Regained turns on the meaning of this term.”
177

Of course, I invest both the epithet “Son of God” and the uncertainty surrounding it with
an irony that eludes Lewalski and Ericson, as, for Lewalski, the title stands for “the very
substance of the dramatic action”
178
in which Satan attempts to wrest from the Son, as he
puts it, “In what degree of meaning thou art calld / The Son of God,”
179
and Ericson
merely wishes to establish that Milton adopts the name from Genesis 6.
180
But, to borrow
what Herman Rapaport writes about the blending of good and evil in Paradise Lost,
Milton ultimately situates the epithet “Son of God” in the margin that “confuses fallen
with unfallen, good with evil”
181
“in such a way that the problematic of good and evil is
wrenched out of an acceptable theological perspective,”
182
“casting the terms into an
indistinct economy in which such terms themselves are sacrificed or mutilated, their
meanings lost.”
183
A point Ericson raises in his article parenthetically, only to drop
immediately, is that in the New Testament, “Son of God” refers to anyone who is part of

284
what he phrases as “redeemed humanity”
184
—so Satan implicitly articulates the
scandalous truth that everything else so far discussed in this chapter hints at: that in
Paradise Regain’d, no matter how much abuse Satan receives or how offensive it may
seem to some, in the fullness of time he too will be “turned back into the lump” for doing
the Father’s dirty work. As Robson notes, “Good and evil are confronted: good stands
and evil falls. Such is the bare schema of the poem. But who can feel that the actual
Satan of the poem is ‘evil’? However discredited and contemned, he is ‘serviceable to
Heaven’s King’ by Christ’s own admission. . . . Satan is the servant of Milton’s art. That
is, I think, why his ‘evil’ remains in the poem merely schematic, nominal.”
185
Effacing
metaphysical distinctions was Milton’s way of repudiating a world in which Cromwell
could betray the cause and die in his bed the most powerful man in Europe, and Charles
II would be escorted home by Cromwell’s former henchmen and assume his father’s
throne to the sound of applause. Quoting John Dryden, Hill accurately states that the
defiant Milton had to face “a Providence which, ‘from a human point of view, operates
without visible regard for justice’”
186
—only Hill thinks that Milton “felt called upon to
justify the outrageousness at the centre of things”
187
—whereas I believe he could not
restrain from expressing his outrage, and, in Paradise Regain’d, neutralizing the two
figures that define Christianity was how he did it. If good and evil are merely God’s
inventions for His own entertainment (or—just as disturbing!—human inventions for
which God has no use), then there are only competing points of view, which eventually
collapse into the “eternity [that] delights to swallow them up.” On the surface of things it
appears that only the Son is rewarded, but Milton intimates that Satan too receives his

285
“just desserts,” only “off-stage” somewhere, in a pretense of preserving appearances—
thus Milton turns the Temptation into a “just-so” story.
Milton further augments his strategy of dismantling the contraries of good and
evil by transforming them into doubles, as Rapaport proposes about the iconoclastic
process enacted in Paradise Lost,
188
by alluding to the Son as the “Morning Star”: after
the Son’s soliloquy in Book I, the narrator breaks in with “So spake our Morning Starr
then in his rise, / And looking round on every side beheld / A pathless Desert, dusk with
horrid shades,”
189
lines that directly refer to Isaiah 14:12-15, describing the fall of
Lucifer, which, as every schoolgirl knows, comprises the core story of Paradise Lost:
How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut
down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine
heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I
will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will
ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou
shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.

As Kerrigan tells us, “Lucifer is of course associated with Satan, but also with Christ, the
identity of the . . . Morning Star[s] being to this day a common emblem of the
Resurrection.”
190
But, lest the reader miss the term’s compression of the Son and Satan,
the narrator makes it seem for a moment as if the Son is indeed Satan at home in Hell, in
that the Son finds Himself enveloped in “dusk with horrid shades,” a phrase that evokes
Satan’s unhappy residence, as the word “shades” can mean, among other things, not
simply the shadows cast by objects, but darkness, specters, and spirits of the dead; in
addition the adjective “horrid” leaves no doubt that Milton desires we equate the Son
with Satan, as the nasty modifier promotes the desert’s symbolic resemblance to Hell.
191

To adopt what Kerrigan argues concerning “the apostrophe to sidereal Lucifer, the

286
morning star, during the matins of Adam and Eve (5.166-170)”
192
in Paradise Lost, “The
language here seems calculated . . . to reveal the double nature of this single star.”
193

And Milton pushes this point when in Book III he has the Son taunt Satan, querying
sadistically “Know’st thou not that my rising is thy fall, / And my promotion will be thy
destruction?”;
194
the Son’s arrogant assertion of superiority in the form of a trajectory,
simultaneously literal and metaphorical (that is to say, metaphysical), that can be
construed as a metonym for the Exaltation, the pinnacle temptation, the Crucifixion, and
the Resurrection, ironically serves to remind us that He and Satan are one and the same.
At a moment in the text when the Son seeks to differentiate Himself from Satan in the
most profound and all-encompassing way, His own unwitting use of the participle
“rising,” which recalls the line “So spake our Morning Starr then in his rise,” ensures that
He identify Himself with His Adversary in our minds. As do the suspect pronouns, the
title “Morning Starr” indicates both the Son and Satan, placing them into confusion, and
we should take this uncomfortable play of signification as further evidence that the desire
to read Paradise Regain’d as Milton’s “straight” rendition of the Temptation testifies to,
as Elizabeth Sauer ascertains regarding the difficulty scholars traditionally have had
accommodating the various forms of dissonance in Paradise Lost, “the ideologically
freighted nature of the critics’ own positions.”
195
Milton shrewdly exploits the semantic
elasticity of the term “Morning Starr” to intensify further the indiscriminate mixing of the
antagonists, and thus good and evil.
Also left completely unexplored in terms of such compounding is Milton’s cryptic
mention of the “Hippogrif” in connection with Satan when he bears the Son to the
pinnacle: Satan, after warning the Son that he must test Him using another method,

287
“caught him up, and without wing / Of Hippogrif bore through the Air sublime / Over the
Wilderness and ore the Plain.”
196
Elizabeth Marie Pope, in her investigation of Milton’s
conceptual and stylistic innovations regarding inherited traditions of envisioning the
Temptation, identifies this particular syntactic teaser, suggesting that “even if the phrase
‘without wing’ refers to the devil instead of the hippogriff (which is by no means certain),
the point is still far from being conclusive: the undisguised Satan was frequently
represented without his wings in Milton’s day, . . . and it may well have been a figure of
this sort which the poet had in mind. . . . But either interpretation is possible.”
197
Pope is
a careful and subtle reader, as she able to recognize the ways in which this particular
grammatical blip forbids the sure ascription of agency; however, the interpretive
possibilities that she suggests are neither narratively nor theologically disturbing. Aside
from Pope’s brief and canonically inoffensive reading, the narrator’s inclusion of this
chimerical creature, as well his imprecise grammar, have received no critical attention
whatsoever, when these two elements merit closer inspection, as together they act as a
metonym for the characters Atlas and Ruggiero in Ludovico Ariosto’s sixteenth-century
satire of medieval romances, Orlando Furioso, which parodies the chivalric legends of
Charlemagne and the invasion of France by the Saracens. To begin with, as Pope
intimates, because of the indecisive grammar we cannot be sure if Satan is able to carry
the Son without employing the Hippogrif, a winged horse with a griffon’s head, chest,
forefeet, and feathers, or if he resorts to using the Hippogrif to do the work for him. If
one takes the phrase to indicate that Satan depends upon the Hippogrif for the aerial
transportation of the Son and himself, it reenacts a moment in Orlando Furioso in which
the evil sorcerer Atlas kidnaps the main protagonist Ruggiero via the Hippogrif, and

288
secretes him in an enchanted castle—only we eventually learn that Atlas absconds with
the knight for love of him and fear for his safety; as Atlas relates to the female warrior
Bradamant, who is determined to marry Ruggiero, and has just bested Atlas in combat,
‘Alas, I had no wicked intention’, explained the old enchanter, weeping, ‘when I
built the handsome castle on the crag’s top. And it is not avarice that has made
me a robber: Love it was that moved me to rescue a gentle knight from extreme
peril—for Heaven revealed to me that he is shortly to die a Christian,
treacherously slain. . . . Ruggiero he is called and I, whose name is Atlas, have
brought him up from his tenderest years. Thirst for honour and his own hard
destiny have brought him to France in the following of Agramant the King; and I,
who have ever loved him more than I would a son, I would withdraw him from
France, and from danger. . . . I built this handsome castle all in order to detain
him securely, once I had captured him—just as today I hoped to capture you.
And I have brought in ladies and knights, as you shall see, and others of noble
birth so that, if he cannot leave at will, these companions my serve to temper his
regrets.’
198

Even though Atlas is, earlier in Ariosto’s satire, described as “one of Hell’s dread
angels”
199
for abducting another knight’s lady for Ruggiero’s entertainment, we come to
understand that his behavior is motivated by an intense love for his errant adopted son.
Milton uses Atlas as a subtle commentary on the deceptive nature of appearances, in that
once we understand the reason for Atlas’ actions, we perceive him differently. Ariosto
himself ensures that we get the point, for only when Bradamant is about to behead the
magician does she (and we!) realize that she is battling an old man instead of a vigorous
youth: “Quickly she raised her victorious arm, for she proposed to sever his head; but one
look at his face and she held, as though disdaining so cheap a vengeance. The man
whom she had overpowered turned out to be a venerable elder with a doleful face.”
200

Instead of “one of Hell’s dread angels” he turns out to be an aged foster-father attempting
to guard his beloved child by any means possible. Satan invokes Atlas in ways that, like
much else in Paradise Regain’d, offset the devil’s status as the incarnation of evil.

289
If we choose the alternate reading, and understand by Milton’s ambiguous
phrasing that Satan himself is able to convey the Son without visible helps, it stills seems
that Milton is utilizing Atlas, only differently, in that we might say that Satan, just as the
pinioned steed, does his master’s bidding without fail; for as Ariosto informs us,
Bradamant and Ruggiero, after she rescues him from the enchanted castle, come upon the
Hippogrif, which Ruggiero attempts to claim for himself, but instead carries him away,
according to Atlas’ plan, as “he was still bent on his compassionate plan to deliver
Ruggiero from the great danger threatening him: this was his only thought, his only care.
So he sent the hippogryph in this direction, meaning this way to contrive his removal
from Europe.”
201
Furthermore, by highlighting the fact that Satan carries the Son on his
own, Milton subtly reminds us that the devil must still be operating on a donation of
power from the Father—and for all we know the Father has timed it to end exactly when
the Son stands alone and makes his proclamation—for all we know, the narrator miscalls
Satan’s plummet, and he is “smitt’n with amazement” because he doesn’t expect to
tumble precisely at that moment. Irrespective, however, of the way that we elect to
interpret the syntax (and it may be that Milton is simply informing us that Satan’s wings
are no longer feathered, and could very well resemble the bat-like instruments that
sometimes adorn his representations in Frye’s compendium of illustrations), the
cumulative effect of the potential meanings of Milton’s startling and unseemly allusion to
the Hippogrif in relation to Satan just before the climax of the poem is to wink at the
seriousness of the situation he is depicting. For Milton to couple and/or compare Satan
with a fantastical creation from a sophisticated burlesque of chivalry at such a crucial

290
point in his text eclipses the possibility that he is doing much of anything other than
satirizing scripture for purposes that we have already addressed.
Moreover, Milton’s implicit identification of the Son with Ruggiero consolidates
considerably the satiric emphasis, as, in the final pages of Orlando Furioso, Ariosto has
Ruggiero engage successfully in mortal combat with an enemy in such a manner as to
call attention to the fact that, as the hero of the narrative, Ruggiero must win, irrespective
of whether or not he is morally superior to his opponent. Ruggiero, though Ariosto
makes him a descendent of Hector through his son Astyanax, actually parodies Aeneas in
several ways, and not more so than when he jousts with Rodomont, the pagan King of
Sarthia, who accuses Ruggiero of being a traitor for deserting to Charlemagne and
becoming baptized a Christian. Ariosto makes certain features of their combat invoke the
contest between Aeneas and Turnus at the end of the Aeneid, when Aeneas and Turnus
fight for Lavinia’s hand; for instance, the very last sentence of the satire mimics that of
the epic: Virgil has the defeated Turnus’ “limbs grow slack and chill, and the life with a
moan flies indignant into the dark,”
202
and Ariosto, regarding Rodomont, elaborates upon
Virgil’s (and Turnus’) denouement, declaring dramatically that “Released from its body,
now ice-cold, the angry spirit which, among the living, had been so proud and insolent,
fled cursing down to the dismal shores of Acheron.”
203
And as does Aeneas, Ruggiero
possesses to his great advantage armor forged by the god Vulcan, only in this case it was
for the “glorious Hector,”
204
and which compensates for Ruggiero’s slight martial
inferiority; for instance, as Ariosto informs us, Rodomont’s lance “struck Ruggiero’s
shield full in the middle, but to little effect, so perfect was the steel which the Vulcan had
tempered,”
205
and that Ruggiero only survives a savage buffet from Rodomont’s sword

291
because of his enchanted helmet, as “without it, the blow would have cleft rider and steed
in two.”
206
But it is clear from Ruggiero’s literary antecedent Aeneas that, even if at
times he seems imperiled, he is scheduled to beat Rodomont; in fact the outcome is so
obvious as to highlight the contrived character of their combat—that is to say that their
contest appears too artificial to allow us to suspend our disbelief for a moment—we are
always aware that we are simply reading an entertaining tale. The premeditated quality
of Ariosto’s depiction of the fight between Ruggiero and Rodomont anticipates and
comments upon the staged nature of the battle between the Son and Satan. In addition,
Ariosto’s calculated and consciously derivative dependence upon Virgil’s epic is
mirrored in Milton’s reliance upon scripture, in that Milton’s narrator treats scripture as
one source among many that he incorporates indiscriminately into his own gospel story,
without being able to distinguish among them all in terms of truth and falsehood. Thus,
Milton’s inclusion of Orlando Furioso in Paradise Regain’d simultaneously signals to us
his satiric strategy and serves of itself as a textual predecessor.
207

That Milton means for Ruggiero and Rodomont to signify the Son and Satan is
also apparent from their basic equivalence; Ariosto uses the agon between the two former
allies as a means of stressing their fundamental uniformity. The narrator, through the
obnoxiously frequent use of the two epithets “pagan” and “Saracen” to indicate
Rodomont,
208
without employing opposing religio-political epithets to describe Ruggiero,
underscores the fact that Ruggiero too was until recently a pagan champion fighting for
the Saracens, and in truth, the really “impious”
209
knight, in that he doesn’t hesitate to
rely upon his pagan equipment instead of his new-found Christian faith. And toward the
end of their match, when Ruggiero has Rodomont trapped beneath him, Ariosto, in a

292
debased Ovidian-style simile, compares the two antagonists to a pair of dogs, a pointed
reference to their spiritual condition: “Imagine a mastiff beneath a ferocious wolf-hound
which has clamped its teeth on his throat: with blazing eye and frothing mouth the mastiff
strives in vain to free himself of the predator’s grip, but the latter surpasses him in
strength if not in fury.”
210
About the implied interchangeableness of Ruggiero and
Rodomont let us recall the Jameson quote that Forsythe applies to the dilemma Paradise
Regain’d probes at that moment in the text when “the pronoun ‘him,’ like the pinnacle, is
inhabited by both Satan and Christ,” namely “‘the perplexing question of how my enemy
can be thought of as being alien (that is, as other than myself and marked by some
absolute difference),’ when he in fact . . . reflects him as in a mirror.” While Ruggiero
and Rodomont grapple like beasts with one another, Ariosto foregrounds for the last time
the major theme of his book, which is the identical character of the Christian and pagan
knights in terms of what Jameson calls their “identity of . . . conduct,”
211
in “points of
honor, challenges, [and] tests of strength.”
212
In Orlando Furioso, Christianity is treated
as merely one religion among others, with no particular pride of place, and, as the surest
proof of its indifferent status, it generates no knights that are inherently superior
regarding their moral agency, and thus it is reduced to a religious opinion supplantable by
other opinions. To underline this idea, Ariosto lets us know that, when it appears
Ruggiero will emerge victorious, he has “Fortune by the mane,”
213
not the blessings of
Heaven and, more importantly, that Rodomont’s “angry spirit” does not speed down to a
Christian Hell, but to either Tartarus or Hades, which contains all spirits of the dead,
good and bad alike, as Acheron is one of the five rivers of the classical underworld, the
one over which Charon ferries the souls of the dead (and is of itself a term for the infernal

293
regions), and we never discover if each religion provides its adherents with separate
afterlives or if paganism alone is the only one. At any rate, we should take Rodomont’s
destiny as Ariosto’s final comment on Christianity as the single metaphysical perspective
through which we are to evaluate and rank human behavior. Ruggiero and Rodomont do
not represent opposites so much as viewpoints at variance with one another. (And
regarding this collision of outlook we should recall Satan’s words to the Son, namely that
he “seek[s] / To understand my Adversary”—that is to say that Satan ironically applies to
the Son his own Jobean epithet [for “Satan” means “adversary”]—from Satan’s point of
view, the Son occupies that position.)
Indeed, from Rodomont’s perspective, Ruggiero is a political traitor as well as a
religious heretic. Ariosto slyly articulates this truth in connection with Ruggiero’s new
bride Bradamant who, along with everyone else, feels her husband to be “no match for
the ferocious pagan,”
214
who unaided “had destroyed a great part of it [Paris] by fire and
the sword”:
215
“Bradamant’s heart trembled more than any other’s, not that she imputed
to Rodomont the greater strength or the greater courage; not that she believed that Justice
was on the pagan’s side (She often commits the honours of battle to her allies). But she
could not avoid being afraid, for anxiety is a natural product of love.”
216
In the process of
apprising us that Bradamant is apprehensive of Ruggiero’s life out of love for him, the
narrator unwittingly insinuates that Rodomont is his physical and moral superior by
informing us that she would still, despite the nature of her personal relationship to
Ruggiero, believe him to be the virtuous of the two, simply for being a confederate; in
other words, Ariosto uses Bradamant’s political, religious, and emotional bias in favor of
Ruggiero to intimate that Rodomont may actually be the worthier opponent on all

294
grounds, and that all such valuations are only the byproducts of a variety of prejudices
both personal and cultural. Ariosto deliberately calls attention to and pokes fun at the
contradiction between what Jameson designates as “older positional notions of good and
evil, perpetrated by the chanson de geste”
217
(of which The Song of Roland is the greatest
example) and the socio-economic solidity of a feudal nobility which was, by Ariosto’s
time, thoroughly “conscious of itself as a ‘universal class’ or ‘subject of history’”
218
with
its own completely “codified ideology.”
219
Ruggiero embodies a Christianity which is in
all practical ways indistinguishable from, and thus not superior to, its pagan competitor.
Via that single word “Hippogrif” Milton transforms the Temptation even further into a
satire on the ultimately useless and unprofitable fratricidal feud between Monarchists and
Parliamentarians, in which each party had claimed the benedictions and support of
Providence while condemning the other as being the opposite of what it purported to be,
but, in their insatiable greed and lust for power, ended up being identical.
Bearing in mind Milton’s disgust with the way the entire revolutionary era played
itself out, and left him, a blind and bewildered relic of that period, to brood upon the
unfathomable ways of Providence, we should let his brief but pungent reference to
Ariosto’s satire that he inserts before the final test on the pinnacle direct our reading of
the pair of combat similes that follow it:
But Satan smitt’n with amazement fell;
As when Earths Son Anteus (to compare
Small things with greatest) in Irassa strove
With Jove’s Alcides, and oft foild still rose,
Receiving from his mother Earth new strength,
Fresh from his fall, and fiercer grapple joind,
Throttl’d at length in th’ Air, expir’d and fell;
So after many a foil the Tempter proud,
Renewing fresh assaults, amidst his pride

295
Fell whence he stood see his Victor fall.
And as that Theban Monster that propos’d
Her riddle, and him, who solv’d it not, devourd;
That once found out and solv’d, for grief and spite
Cast her self headlong from th’ Ismenian steep,
So strook with dread and anguish fell the Fiend.
220

Despite the fact that, as Lewalski acknowledges, “In Milton’s poetry the problem is to
determine when and to what degree the traditional typological associations are being
invoked,”
221
especially when these associations derive from classical mythology, as by
the seventeenth century “pagan myths were seen as deformations, corruptions, and even
diabolical perversions of truth,”
222
the few canonically-minded scholars who even make
the effort to attend to these combat similes assume them to be sincere reinforcements of
the Temptation’s resolution, regardless of how problematic they are in that capacity.
About the struggle between Hercules and Antaeus, Lewalski, for example, in spite of her
own cautions, sees it as “the allegory of reason’s conquest over all sensual or earth-bound
passion’s and desires. . . . This simile alludes to Christ’s perfect command over the
kingdom within; to the absolute freedom he has won for his kingdom, the church, from
any necessary reliance upon the things of this world.”
223
Lewalski devotes several pages
to an uncomplicated and straightforward discussion of Hercules as one of the few
admissible classical types of Christ, beginning with an extended point-by-point
comparison between the two:
both heroes were Sons of God and a mortal mother; Hercules strangled serpents in
his cradle, and Christ escaped in his infancy from Herod; Hercules achieved his
difficult labors and Christ conquered Sin; Hercules freed Prometheus and Christ
freed human nature from the Law and Sin; Hercules repudiated Deinara for Iole
and Christ repudiated the synagogue for the church; Hercules conquered the
many-headed Hydra and Christ conquered Satan; Hercules suffered on Oeta and
Christ on Calvary; Hercules chained Cerberus and liberated Persephone and
Christ overcame hell and liberated all man-kind.
224

296
Avoiding any inquiry into this elaborate juxtapositioning of crude pagan physical activity
with Christian passivity (for the Son is meant to be the epitome of inaction), Lewalski
simply concludes that Milton was thinking of Hercules in his received Stoic guise “as a
model of temperance in kingly ideals . . . that was dominant in the Renaissance.”
225

And although Malcolm Kelsell, in his article in which he attempts to historicize
the Son’s life as Milton describes it in Paradise Regain’d, sees the inclusion of the
Hercules’ triumph over Antaeus as “a dangerous image to choose, not only because it is
nonbiblical . . . , but because the Herculean tale has only shaky credibility and runs the
risk of mixing ‘truth’ (Christ’s victory) with pagan (hence Satanic) fable at a most
inappropriate moment,”
226
he still defends Milton’s decision, rationalizing that
Perhaps the well-established Renaissance tradition of Hercules moralized
overcame Milton’s doubts here, but it is also possible (and it can never be certain
why Milton chose this particular image), that this pagan hero was precisely the
right figure to choose in the immediate historical context. The implications are
far-reaching, and Pontius Pilate, had he read the secret record of Paradise
Regained, would have seen an immediate danger to his province.
227

Insisting that Milton “conceived of the Herculean motifs in political terms,”
228
Kelsall, in
his complicated-not-to-mention-muddy argument enumerating possible reasons as to why
Milton selected Hercules to represent Christ, commences with a discussion of Virgil’s
praise of Augustus as a type of Hercules in the Aenied, contending rather confusedly that
“Augustus was worshipped in his own life as a God, and Josephus tells how Herod had
introduced games every fifth year in his honor, and how Pilate, violating the second
commandment of the Decalogue had brought into Jerusalem graven images of the
emperors.”
229
I don’t know what to make of this explanation, which seems to equate the
Son with Augustus through the figure of Hercules, and why this of itself would have

297
threatened Pilate (after all, the Son was still completely unknown—as Satan tells us, the
Son is “unfriended, low of birth, / A Carpenter thy Father known, thy self / Bred up in
poverty and streights at home”
230
); and Kelsall’s final reason (I think) then links the Son
with Seneca via the playwright’s version of pagan hero, whom he used “to advance his
political views concealed in the Herculean myth”
231
in his protests against the tyrant
Nero, contending that Seneca’s “dilemma under Nero may be likened to Christ’s under
Tiberius. It was not safe to speak out. Nor was political action appropriate. Such
quietism, however, saved neither Seneca nor Christ.”
232
This idea is in its own way just
as problematic as the other one, in that Kelsall not only fails to clarify if whether the Son
is the Senecan Hercules or Seneca-as-Hercules, the fact is that, historically speaking,
Nero was born after the Crucifixion, in 37, which was the year that Tiberius died, and
Seneca hadn’t yet begun his tragic association with the later emperor; at the moment in
real time when the Son is being tempted by Satan in the wilderness, Pilate would have
had no cause to be suspicious of a reference to the Senecan Hercules in relation to Nero.
And tellingly, Kelsall, confining his odd speculations concerning the possible historical
reality of Milton’s depiction of the Son to pleading for Milton’s use of Hercules,
delicately refrains from mentioning the other figure from classical myth that Milton
employs which is even more difficult, if not impossible, to justify: Oedipus.
The greatest proof of the trouble that any scholar encounters when endeavoring to
recuperate Milton’s identification of the Son and Oedipus in the service of a canonical
interpretation is the dearth of commentary; for instance, Howard Shoaf, in his study of
Milton’s use of, in his own words, “the dual and the duel”
233
as “powerful heuristic tools
in the reading of Milton,”
234
ignores the supposed resemblance entirely, merely

298
remarking that “Oedipus is the incarnation of identity, Christ the incarnation of
difference. . . . Christ is perfect, whole and complete; Oedipus is incomplete, still
confused with his father and mother.”
235
Missing the irony in Oedipus’ tragic story,
Burton Jasper Weber says only that he “is a classical byword for intelligence”;
236
and
earlier than both Shoaf and Weber, Lewalski, baldly claiming that Oedipus was one of
the “commonly accepted classical types of Christ
237
” without providing any textual
evidence for that statement whatsoever, also promotes a child’s version of myth in order
to make the simile work comfortably, maintaining that “The Sphinx simile alludes to
Christ’s attainment of true wisdom. Oedipus defeated the Sphinx by solving the riddle
whose answer is ‘Man,’ and Christ defeats Satan because he possesses true self-
knowledge and knowledge of the human condition.”
238
Interestingly, Kerrigan is the only
scholar that I’ve read who thoroughly investigates Milton’s application of the Oedipus
myth; in his psychoanalytic analysis of the Son in terms of His utter submission to the
Father’s authority, of His voluntary obedience to the Father’s will, Kerrigan understands
Milton’s reference to Oedipus in relation to the Son as a redemption of the myth, which
he calls “the sacred complex,”
239
specifying that, “unlike Laius who made his deserted
son Oedipus [‘swell-foot’], Christ’s Father will not permit his Son ‘to dash’ his ‘foot
against a stone.’
240
Furthermore, in stating his case Kerrigan in fact traces a similarity
between the Son, Oedipus, and Antaeus, not Hercules, eliminating the pagan strongman
entirely from his interpretation: citing the last two lines of Paradise Regain’d, in which
the Son “unobserv’d / Home to his Mother’s house private returned,”
241
Kerrigan argues
that, “Like Antaeus after the bout with Hercules, like Oedipus after answering the riddle,
Christ in the end returns to his first mother.”
242
But because the Son, Kerrigan opines,

299
knows who His progenitor is, there is no chance that He will duplicate the tragedy of
Oedipus,
243
and thus, “there is nothing compulsive or fatal about this attachment”;
244
thus
Kerrigan, as does Shoaf, ultimately places the Son and Oedipus in contrast with one
another. Kerrigan believes that Milton exploits what he calls the conventional typology
of the Son and Mary’s “oedipal marriage,”
245
and that, in Paradise Regain’d, “the work
of redemption is the sacred complex by means of which this marriage, and much of what
it means in psychic life, is transcended, through its latent repetition.”
246
According to
Kerrigan, the Son is able to go about His Father’s business because He makes the
severance from Mary absolute,
247
and the purpose of the double simile is to “urge[s]
separation from the first mother.”
248
And because the Son’s “complete victory over the
crimes of the oedipus complex, there can be psychological authority in the hope that we
will be guided safely through the moment of our corruption, returned like Christ to the
home of a sinless mother.”
249
Our identification with that singular being who has
transcended all desire will undo “the life of Death.”
250
Kerrigan eventually synthesizes
his analysis of the combat similes with his ideas on the subsequent pronominal conflation
of the Son and Satan that I outlined earlier in this chapter by proposing that the
substitution ultimately represents the “expulsion of Satan”
251
which we must each
accomplish in order to institute “the sacred complex,” and experience “the good death of
the saved”
252
(at least if one happens to be male). But Kerrigan’s psychoanalytic
treatment of the combat similes, like that of the syntactical transposition of the Son and
Satan, however engaging (and problematic!), is predicated on an ahistorical reading of
the poem, and ignores the historical context in response to which it was conceived. In
fact, we should apprehend Kerrigan’s interpretation of Paradise Regain’d as ultimately

300
conservative in character, in that he rehabilitates an orthodox theodicial position by
locating the cause of evil in an unresolved oedipal complex which he assumes to be the
plight of most men, hence conveniently bypassing the dilemma of accounting for the
origin of evil in metaphysical terms. For as Kerrigan himself admits, “As Milton might
have learned from the example of Calvin, a rational theodicy that begins with a moral
dualism and a strict monotheism must eventually collapse. The evil principle has to
originate somewhere: retrace the path of causation stubbornly enough, and there is only
place left for evil to derive from. Calvin did not attempt a rational theodicy.”
253

Kerrigan’s analysis of the combat similes as examples of the punishments meted out to
men who fail to separate from their mothers avoids the problem of interpreting them in an
historical context, in the ways Milton might have consciously been employing them.
I however consider these similes to take up where Ruggiero and Rodomont leave
off, in that Milton purposely chooses for each pair of combatants figures of equivalence
that set the interpretative stage for that profoundly unsettling moment in the text when the
Son and Satan are for the last time fused together in the pronoun “him.” What is more,
Milton depicts them in such a way as to illuminate their equivocal character, and we
should view everything about them with suspicion, beginning with the fact that, as
Forsythe observes, “the focus of each simile is the loser”;
254
he goes on to say that
Hercules is named, but only in a prepositional phrase: ‘Antaeus strove / With
Jove’s Alcides’. . . . Otherwise he is present, if at all, only as the unexpressed
agent behind the passive participle “Throttled,” just as Oedipus is implied only by
the passive participles attached to the riddle, ‘once found out and solved.’
255

Because of the syntax, our attention is purposely directed away from the “winners” of
these contests of strength and wit that are seemingly meant to represent the Son; as Grose

301
has already told us, “Milton appears to linger on the fate of the Adversary . . . in those
luxurious allusions to Antaeus and the ‘Theban Monster.’” Furthermore, by having the
narrator introduce these pairings via their “less good” (to use “double-speak”)
appellations, Milton demonstrates that no hierarchic imperative is at work in terms of
privileging the supposedly morally superior beings by automatically referring to them.
While such a careless substitution may not be especially problematic regarding the
classical characters themselves as they possess no ontological status whatsoever, in their
roles as typological duplicates of the Son and Satan this exchange becomes exceedingly
problematic. And to both set off and escalate this already perturbing lack of
discrimination on the narrator’s part, Milton has him pointedly remark parenthetically
that he is “compar[ing] / Small things with greatest”
256
—does the narrator intend that the
Son and Satan as well as their classical counterparts occupy the same plane of reality?
Does he consider the Son and Satan to be simply another fictional duo? When combined
with the conflations and the dubious arrangement of the similes themselves, this
perplexing comparison not only erases the absolute theological and doctrinal opposition
of the Son and Satan, but equally important if not more so, questions their very existence.
No master blueprint exists for guiding us as how to integrate these classical
references with the biblical material, but, given all the unruly elements at play at this
moment in the text, I have to think, to borrow what Hill writes about their admixture in
Paradise Lost, that they are “mingled in such a way which shows that neither is to be
taken seriously.”
257
For in addition to the narrator’s worrisome phrasing and apparent
inability to distinguish between the mythic and the real, these pagan couplings are
interpretively mischievous simply on account of the nature of the characters themselves.

302
Neither pair consists of a dichotomy touching its ostensible narrative function of
embellishing the outcome of the Temptation; leaving aside questions concerning the
moral status of their supposed antagonists, Hercules and Oedipus are themselves hardly
examples of human beings that have led sinless lives, having been doomed by the gods to
commit the most horrific crimes against their own family members unaware of their
actions, circumstances that function to interrogate the extent of man’s agency in a hostile
universe, as well as the ethical disposition of a divine order that would inflict such
meaningless suffering on its vulnerable inferiors. Indeed, the emphasis on relentless
celestial sadism highlights the ontological character of the protagonists’ dilemmas:
inasmuch as the gods are responsible for engineering situations which result in mortal
misery to gratify their own needs, they manifest a cosmos that reveals human conceptions
of justice, goodness, and evil to be nothing but futile attempts at organizing existential
chaos. We may apply to Hercules’ and Oedipus’ similar predicaments in relation to
Paradise Regain’d Rapaport’s words about the confusion of good and evil in Paradise
Lost, namely that “the problematic of good and evil is wrenched out of an acceptable
theological perspective, casting the terms into an indistinct economy in which such terms
themselves are sacrificed or mutilated, their meanings lost.” Both Hercules and Oedipus
are fated to be the unwitting instruments of their own wretchedness out of godly
capriciousness, and thus they evoke Satan, who is destined to bear the burden of heaping
ever more damnation upon himself in order to magnify God’s power to determine what
constitutes the semantic substance of good and evil. Milton was one of the foremost
classicists of his day, if not the foremost, and we should scrutinize some of the texts that
he would have had read, in one form or another, when coming to a decision as to the

303
significance of the combat similes concerning their purpose of magnifying the result of
that final test on the pinnacle.
Despite the tame version of Hercules that both Lewalski and Kelsall assume to be the
proper analogue to the Son, he is actually a premier model for Satan in both Paradise
Lost and Paradise Regain’d. In Euripides’ tragedy Heracles, the unfortunate hero, in a
fit of madness, slaughters his own wife Megara and their young boys, only minutes after
saving them from being murdered by the tyrant Lycus, who recently usurped the throne
of Thebes by killing king Creon, Megara’s father. Heracles, who has just returned from
the underworld with its watchdog Cerberus, thus completing his twelfth and final labor
for Eurytheus, is hailed by the Chorus as the savior of mankind for his incessant toil,
which sings “He is the son of Zeus, but even this high birth / is eclipsed by his courage
and virtue. / By his labours—in destroying fearsome beasts— / he has made life calm for
mortal men.”
258
And during Heracles’ attack on Lycus and his henchmen, the Chorus
proceeds to celebrate divine fairness, proclaiming ecstatically “Hurray for justice and the
ebb and flow of fate from the gods!”
259
as well as “The gods, the gods are concerned for
the unjust and the just and notice their ways,”
260
and convicting Lycus for his impiety,
reviling him for “attributing lawlessness to the gods.”
261
At this moment, roughly in the
play’s middle, it is certainly possible to picture Heracles as a typological double for the
Son, but the sudden appearance of the goddesses Madness and Iris interrupt the Chorus’
paean to Heracles and heavenly justice. Iris explains that they have been sent by Hera to
wreak vengeance upon Heracles through no fault of his own, but simply for being the
product of the adulterous liaison between Zeus and the Alcmene, stating explicitly that,
with the end of Heracles’ labors, Zeus has withdrawn his protection, and so “Hera wants

304
to impose kindred murder on him by having him kill his sons.”
262
Madness performs her
duty of visiting Heracles with temporary insanity with extreme reluctance, but executes it
with such vigor that it requires Athena to knock out Heracles with a boulder just before
he murders his step-father Amphitryon, who is then faced with the sad task of apprising
Heracles of his deranged behavior after his step-son awakens in his right mind. While
Heracles struggles with the information, Theseus, whom Heracles had liberated from the
underworld when he captured Cerberus, happens upon the anguished pair, and after
hearing of Heracles’ misfortune, offers him permanent asylum in Athens, which Heracles
accepts—but not before venting his anger against the gods for inflicting such suffering on
him—and it is in the dialogue between Heracles and Theseus at this late point in the play
in which the similarities between Heracles and Satan further manifest themselves through
Heracles’ combined agony and impotent antagonism for the divine order that would
manipulate him into ruining his life, as well as sanction, let alone enjoy, his pain.
In a sentence that brings to mind Satan’s despair in terms of it being a dramatic
spectacle for the Father’s pleasure, Theseus admits that Heracles’ misfortunes, “reach all
the way from earth to heaven”;
263
and Heracles is so fraught with grief that he is driven to
blaspheming against the gods, raging that they “look after their own interests; I am
repaying them in kind.”
264
Interestingly, Heracles’ challenge has been translated in a
variety of ways concerning its emotive intensity: for instance, “Self-willed are they and
cruel, And I defy the gods”;
265
“For me God cares not, nor care I for God!”;
266
and
“Remorseless hath heaven been to me; so I will prove the like to it”
267
—but, whichever
version of this line one chooses to believe as being the most accurate, we know from
Theseus’ subsequent rebuke (which indeed always translates as a rebuke) that Euripides

305
intends we take Heracles’ fulmination as being sacrilegious: “Silence! This arrogant talk
could cost you worse suffering.”
268
Heracles, however, cannot resist voicing his feelings
of being persecuted unfairly, eventually asking “How could anyone pray to the kind of
goddess who out of jealousy of Zeus’ affair with a woman has destroyed an innocent man
who was the benefactor of Greece?”
269
And while the Chorus too throws all of the blame
onto Hera, Theseus inadvertently suggests that Zeus is in fact liable for the calamity:
commenting upon the careless and immoral conduct of the gods, Theseus queries
rhetorically “Haven’t they defiled their fathers with chains in order to gain kingship?”
270

In this fashion Euripides raises the possibility that Zeus, having overthrown his father
Cronos in order to reign on Olympus, was fearful that his own son would one day grow
bold enough to try and wrest the throne from him—after all, if Heracles could descend
into the netherworld and storm Hades’ halls in order to capture Cerberus, and retrieve
Theseus as well, he might attempt Olympus. Abandoning his son to Hera, Zeus permits
her to cut him down and ensure the safety of his heavenly rule; and Heracles, though
determined to go on living,
271
is devastated by the catastrophe, and in a literalized
metaphor of his immobilization actually collapses to the ground, requiring Theseus to
support him as he takes his final farewell to Amphitryon—the world’s strongest man,
ravaged by his emotions, has been reduced by his own “deeds of shame”
272
into a useless
hulk. After Heracles and Theseus depart, the Chorus laments that they have “lost our
greatest friend”;
273
however, given the circumstances responsible for this sentiment, we
can no longer envisage Heracles as a classical correlative for the Son. Repudiated by
Zeus and victimized by Hera, Heracles occupies a position far closer to that of Satan.

306
Seneca, in his reworking of Euripides’ tragedy, Hercules Furens, commences by
focusing on the divine paranoia briefly touched upon in the earlier play: in Juno’s lengthy
opening soliloquy she first condemns Hercules for successfully performing the labors that
she herself had commanded via Eurystheus, then worries that, emboldened by his
triumphs, he will eventually look to depose his father by violent means:
’Tis for heaven we must fear, lest he seize the highest realms who has overcome
the lowest—he will snatch the sceptre from his father. Nor will he come to the
stars by a peaceful journey as Bacchus did; he will seek a path through ruin, and
will desire to rule in an empty universe. He swells with pride of tested might, and
has learned by bearing them that the heavens can be conquered by his strength.
274

Using her fantasies of Hercules’ domination of Olympus to fuel her fury, Juno rages
“Then on my wrath, on, and crush this plotter of big things; close with him, thyself rend
him in pieces with thine own hands. Why to another trust such hate?”
275
Juno closes
with this threat:
Me has he overcome; now may he overcome himself and long to die, though late
returned from the world of death. Herein may it profit me that he is the son of
Jove. I will stand by him and, that his shafts may fly from string unerring, I’ll
poise them with my hand, guide the madman’s weapons, and so at last be on the
side of Hercules in the fray. When he has done this crime, then let his father
admit those hands to heaven!
276

But to make it absolutely clear that Hercules, far from wishing to usurp his father’s
throne, maintains a reverent attitude toward the divine order, despite being continually
hounded by Juno, Seneca has him emerge from the lower world entreating that the gods,
with the sole exception of his stepmother, shun the profane sight of Cerberus, requesting
Let only two look on this monster—him who brought and her who commanded.
To appoint me penalties and tasks earth is not broad enough for Juno’s hate. I
have seen places unapproached by any, unknown to Phoebus, those gloomy
spaces which the baser pole has yielded to infernal Jove; and if the regions of the
third estate pleased me, I might have reigned. The chaos of everlasting night, and
something worse than night, and the grim gods, and the fates—all these I saw and,

307
having flouted death, I have come back. What else remains? I have seen and
revealed the lower world. If aught is left to do, give it to me O Juno; too long
already dost thou let my hands lie idle. What dost thou bid me conquer?
277

Though Jove never materializes, he perhaps not only hears Hercules’ gloomy speech, but
places undue emphasis on his son’s bleak boast that “if the regions of the third estate
pleased me, I might have reigned,” and thus decides to let Hera take her revenge
unimpeded. As in the earlier tragedy, the ruler of Olympus is made to appear as the
absent cause of Hercules’ downfall—for it is no coincidence that Amphitryon prays that
Hercules’ “father end thy toils, that at last rest and repose be given to the weary”
278
—
through Amphitryon Seneca alludes to the possibility that Jupiter has purposely allowed
Juno both to test Hercules’ capabilities and to keep him busy in order to thwart
challenges to his heavenly authority. Having witnessed his son’s apparently limitless
strength and determination, Jupiter could be fearful that peace and ease may eventually
breed a Herculean discontent that only Juno’s plan will avert, and ironically, it is in the
midst of a prayer to his father pleading for the cessation of earthly evils that Hercules’
madness manifests itself; Hercules himself innocently and indirectly articulates the
reasons why Jupiter has refrained from either curbing Juno’s relentless harassment of his
son or acting to prevent the ensuing catastrophe. The intimations of fatherly hatred that
permeate Euripides’ tragedy assume a more concrete form in Seneca’s remake, and, in a
crowning irony, at the moment when Hercules begs Jupiter that “If the earth is still to
produce any wickedness, let her make haste, and if she if preparing any monster, let it be
mine,”
279
he begins to go crazy. Jupiter allows his son to destroy himself just when he is
at his most pious, and at this point in the play we well understand that Juno, in her initial
ravings about Hercules’ alleged treasonous desires, is merely parroting Jupiter’s thoughts.

308
To repeat Kerrigan’s remark concerning the Calvinist combination of moral
duality and monotheism in relation to Hercules’ disaster, “The evil principle has to
originate somewhere: retrace the path of causation stubbornly enough, and there is only
place left for evil to derive from”: Juno is simply a stand-in for Jupiter, who, through his
deliberate inattention, lets Hercules ruin himself, that he may reign all the more securely.
Although Hercules in his filial devotion might mimic the Son, his father’s premeditated
callousness forces us to view him in satanic terms; via Juno, Jupiter arranges for his son’s
self-condemnation and leaves him alone to struggle with his guilt. Moreover, in
Hercules’ explicit insistence that his offenses against Megara and their boys are solely
his,
280
despite Amphtiryon’s repeated assurances that “the woe is thine; the crime thy
step-dame’s,”
281
we discover the literary antecedent of Satan’s soliloquy of self-
damnation on top of Mount Niphates in Paradise Lost, in which he castigates himself for
his fatal rebellion, agonizing “Hadst thou the same free Will and Power to stand? / Thou
hadst: whom has thou then or what to accuse, / But Heav’ns free Love dealt equally to
all?”
282
While in Euripides the unfortunate hero is tortured in great part by an
appreciation of his own innocence in the face of cosmic hostility, in Seneca he is caught
in a solipsistic bubble of shame and remorse that denies him even the comfort of
recognizing his own blamelessness (if one can call that comfort), and wonders where he
can hide from himself; his final words to Theseus are “Take me back, I pray thee, and
restore me to the nether shades; put me in thy stead, loaded with thy chains; that place
will hide me—but it, too, knows me!
283
In Paradise Lost Satan reiterates and compounds
Hercules’ sense of unremitting despair and alienation from all creation, including the
abyss that is his home: “Which way I flie is Hell; my self am Hell; / And in the lowest

309
deep a lower deep / Still threatening to devour me op’ns wide, / To which the Hell I
suffer seems a Heav’n.”
284
For Hercules and the fallen archangel, hell is a state of mind
from which peace of mind has been permanently banished.
That Milton intends we regard Hercules as invoking the defeated hero from
classical tragedy can also be seen in his use of the appellation “Alcides,” the name
bestowed upon him by his adoptive father Amphitryon, in memory of Amphitryon’s own
father Alcaeus, and which is the title Juno uses when plotting her attack against her
stepson at the beginning of Hercules Furens: “Dost then seek Alcides’ match? None is
there save himself; now with himself let him war,”
285
and “That Alcides may be driven
on, robbed of all sense, by mighty fury smitten, mine must be the frenzy first—Juno, why
rav’st thou not?”
286
The term Alcides in Seneca signifies godly hatred, like that of Satan
in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regain’d. Taking into account then, a dramatic legacy
that portrays Hercules as the utterly crushed progeny of the Olympian ruler, we must be
wary of any interpretation of the combat simile that posits a simple correspondence
between it and the Son and Satan.
287
Yet even if we examine the simile abstracted from
the two tragedies, the fact is that, in Herculean lore the contest between Hercules and
Antaeus exists only as a brief anecdote (as does Hercules’ murder of Megara and their
children) in an extensive and varied mythological career that cumulatively renders
Hercules into a swashbuckling picaro. In Bibliotheca, a compendium of Greek myths
believed to have been assembled sometime during the second century, stories of
Hercules’ exploits appear to be more numerous than those of any other character,
including Zeus: Hercules spends his whole existence fighting, murdering, marrying, and
fathering as many children as Priam, it would seem—even after achieving immortality

310
(which is, in Bibliotheca at least, simply one more anecdote without special significance),
he marries still again and begets more children. The Hercules of classical myth is, by
Christian standards, an amoral adventurer and mercenary, not a sacral figure. Even in
Pharsalia, Lucan’s satire on the war between Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar, the
author accentuates Hercules’ opportunism, using the story of the wrestling match
between Hercules and Antaeus to emphasize Caesarian Curio’s arrogant overestimate of
his military might; upon landing in Libya, the birthplace of Antaeus, and hearing from a
local inhabitant the tale of his death at Hercules’ hands, Curio misapplies the tale to his
own circumstances, and his forces suffer a fatal defeat by the ruthless Juba: “in this happy
place he pitched his hapless tents, / gratified by this ground, stripping the hills of their
magic; / for he, with strength out-matched, challenged a savage foe.”
288
To reinforce his
equation of Curio with Antaeus, Lucan arranges for Juba’s clever method of routing
Curio to compliment Hercules’ realization regarding how he may overpower the giant,
narrating that
At length, when Hercules understood
what his opponent gained
from touching his mother, he said:
‘You must stand up! No
more contact with the soil!
You’re barred from lying on Earth!
You’ll stick close, up against my chest,
with your limbs squeezed tight: here’s where
You’ll fall, Antaeus!’
289

And so Lucan tells us that Curio’s men, slowly compressed into an ever-tighter circle by
Jubal’s troops, expire standing: “Just how sweet the spectacle was that Fortune was
granting, / the Moorish victor failed to perceive: he saw no rivers / of gore, no twitching
limbs, no bodies pitching down / on the ground: pressed by the throng, each cadaver

311
stood upright”
290
—Curio’s forces, like Antaeus, “fall” vertically, vanquished by a wily
opponent. But ironically, although Juba may symbolize Hercules in this particular
skirmish, because of his alliance with Pompey, he also represents the losing side of the
war; thus the Numidian king ultimately embodies both Hercules and Antaeus—and, in
his own way, Curio as well, because of his allegiance to the eventually successful Caesar,
whom Lucan absolutely despises as the destroyer of the Roman Republic. Lucan’s
treatment of the characters of Hercules and Antaeus, in terms of their denotative
polyvalence, pointedly reduces them to interchangeable counters, and either one can be
made to fit the epithet “bloody / menace.”
291
And tellingly, Lucan highlights this
identification in his actual depiction of their contest, foregrounding their similarity by
portraying them as physical duplicates of one another; for instance, he relates that:
They locked hands and forearms together
in a complex knot;
for a long time, brawny shoulders tested necks—
useless:
each man held up his head up, stock still,
with scowling brow,
surprised to have met his match.
292
(IV.617-620)

Describing Hercules and Antaeus as sets of mirroring physical features, Lucan renders
the two wrestlers indistinguishable from one another, reiterating their exchangeability
later in the story, recounting that “They squared off, a matched pair.”
293
In his story of
Hercules and Antaeus, Lucan reduces them to twin brawlers motivated by one concern,
which is the defeat of the rival, their agon being only an egoistic test of strength with no
real moral purpose, a metaphor for the political and military battles that result in the
destruction of the Republic.

312
Bearing in mind, then, the complicated history of Hercules as a mythical figure,
which admits of no real relation to the Son of God, and who, if anything, should be seen
as a prime literary antecedent of Milton’s Satan, we must view the combat simile
involving Hercules and Antaeus as contravening its own function of enhancing the result
of the pinnacle test in terms of distinguishing the Son and Satan as inhabitants of rival
ontological domains. In this first simile the character that is assumed to be the proper
analogue for the Son is, upon a more thoughtful inspection, revealed to be, if anything,
Satan’s legendary classical forebear; what is more, he engages in combat with a being
that possesses a close resemblance to himself. At this point in Paradise Regain’d, the
Son has vanished from the narrative, as we find no real trace of Him in the simile
consisting of Oedipus and the “Theban Monster” either; as Kerrigan observes, “The
anarchic potential of the victory passage in the macrocosm of the poem is mirrored, in the
microcosm of the passage itself, by the appearance Oedipus.”
294
While Oedipus is clever
enough to solve the Sphinx’s riddle, he unknowingly murders his father Laius, marries
his mother Jocasta, and begets children from this incestuous union, a triple transgression
for which the population of Thebes is punished until the crimes are brought to light, and
Oedipus banished. As is Hercules, Oedipus is predestined to perpetrate these offenses, in
his case, despite his own strenuous efforts to avoid doing so; indeed, in Sophocles’
version of myth, Oedipus the King, the greatest irony in this greatest play of irony centers
precisely around how Oedipus’ best intentions redound upon his own head—like Satan,
he can only bury himself with damnation. For instance, in his first conversation with
Jocasta, just after he begins to suspect that he has fulfilled the prophecy, Oedipus recalls
the time that he traveled to Delphi to determine if whether or not the king and queen of

313
Corinth were in fact his own parents, and instead learned that he was fated to murder his
father, sleep with his mother, and breed his own siblings; as he relates to his queen:
I heard all that and ran. I abandoned Corinth,
from that day on I gauged its landfall only
by the stars, running, always running
toward some place where I would never see
the shame of all those oracles come true.
295

But in spite of his own desperate precautions, Oedipus indeed slays his own father, and
for his service to Thebes in ridding it of the Sphinx he is rewarded by completing the rest
of the prophecy. Furthermore, in his zeal to find his father’s killer, Oedipus pronounces
his own doom; in a speech that resonates with irony he thunders,
Now my curse on the murderer. Whoever he is,
a lone man unknown in his crime
or one among many, let that man drag out
his life in agony, step by painful step—
I curse myself as well . . . if by any chance
he proves to be an intimate of our house,
here at my hearth, with my full knowledge,
may the curse I just called down on him strike me!
296

But eventually intuiting the import of all that had transpired since he deserted Corinth in
an attempt to outwit the oracle, Oedipus agonizes to Jocasta
what man alive more miserable than I?
More hated by the gods? I am the man
no alien, no citizen welcomes to his house,
law forbids it—not a word to me in public,
driven out of every hearth and home.
And all these curses I—no one but I
brought down these piling curses on myself!
And you, his wife, I’ve touched your body with these,
the hands that killed your husband cover you with blood.

Wasn’t I born for torment?
297

314
As does the Senecan Hercules, Oedipus accuses himself for his misdeeds—but in
the Theban king’s case, not only did he always act in his right mind, but he himself is
responsible for the proclamations judging him a permanent pariah:
I order you, every citizen of the state
where I hold throne and power, banish this man—
whoever he may be—never shelter him, never
speak a word to him, never make him partner
to your prayers, your victims burned to the gods.
Never let holy water touch his hands.
Drive him out, each of you, from every home.
He is the plague, the heart of our corruption.
298

Oedipus is not only tortured by his comprehension that he has satisfied the terms of the
prophecy, wailing to the Chorus that “Apollo—he ordained my agonies—these, my pains
on pains!”
299
but also by his recognition of the extent of the cosmic hostility directed at
him: begging the Chorus to remove him from Thebes, he refers to himself as “cursed to
heaven, / the man the deathless gods hate most of all!”
300
The Chorus makes explicit the
connection between Oedipus’ knowledge and his anguish, commiserating “Pitiful, you
suffer so, you understand so much . . . / I wish you had never known.”
301
Seneca begins
his rendition of the tragedy accentuating this bond between knowledge and despair:
Oedipus in his opening soliloquy is suspects that he has fulfilled the oracle, conjecturing
what am I to think when this pestilence, so deadly to Cadmus’ race, so widespread
in its destruction, spares me alone? For what evil am I reserved? Midst the ruins
of my city, midst funerals to be lamented with tears ever fresh, midst the slaughter
of a nation, I stand unscathed. . . . Couldst thou hope that to crimes like thine a
wholesome kingdom would be granted? I have made heaven pestilent.”
302

Oedipus spends the entire play grappling with his possible guilt, and once he knows for
certain, he, like Seneca’s Hercules, unfairly assumes full responsibility for his actions.
Raging at himself, Oedipus begs to be annihilated:

315
Yawn earth! And do thou, king of the dark world, ruler of shades, to lowest
Tartarus hurl this unnatural interchange ’twixt brood and stock. Citizens, heap
stones upon my accursed head; slay me with weapons. Let father, let son assail
me with the sword; let husbands and brothers arm hands against me, and let the
sick populace snatch brands from the pyres and hurl them at me. The crime of the
age I wander, hate of the gods, destruction of holy law, the very day I drew the
untried air already worthy death.
303

Enumerating the familial categories that he transgressed by confusing them, Oedipus
reproduces Hercules’ estrangement from the entire universe; and Jocasta, reminiscent of
Amphitryon, tries to alleviate Oedipus’ desolation, arguing that “Fate’s is that fault of
thine: by fate no one is made guilty.”
304
But to do other than acquiesce to his destiny is
beyond Oedipus, and his final words are “Ye blasting Fates, thou quaking terror of
Disease, Wasting, and black Pestilence, and mad Despair, come ye with me, with me.
’Tis sweet to have such guides”
305
—a condition of infinite dejection that anticipates what
I previously termed Satan’s Byronic adieu to virtue, when he succumbs to his situation
and embraces the role that God decreed for him: “So farwel Hope, and with Hope farwel
Fear, / Farwel Remorse: all Good to me is lost; / Evil be thou my Good.” Oedipus’
calamitous existence, like Hercules’, makes him a classical model for Satan; in fact,
Oedipus, in killing Laius, who had repudiated him, and then assuming the Theban throne,
actually realizes the Devil’s deepest desires. To further emphasize this identification, the
elision of Oedipus from the simile, in conjunction with the italicized “Theban Monster,”
merges the two beings in that single title: thus Milton highlights the truth that Oedipus
and the Sphinx are in fact both atrocities, irrespective of the slight narrative thrust that
seeks to restrict them to different domains.
Moreover, if we pursue the myth of Oedipus as it extends to his sons, we discover
the twins Polyneices and Eteokles, cursed by their father to murder each other, who agree

316
to rule Thebes jointly, alternating years, but end up at war when Eteokles refuses to yield
the throne at the appointed time, and fulfill their father’s prophecy—an obvious and
disquieting reference to civil war, calling to mind the Great Rebellion. In Seven Against
Thebes, Aeschylus’ tragedy about Oedipus’ warring heirs, while Eteokles condemns
Polyneices throughout the text for attacking Thebes with a foreign army, the playwright
insinuates that Eteokles is also at fault for refusing to honor the agreement that he had
made with his brother. For instance, the Apollonian priest Amphiaraos, in spite of
fighting for Polyneices, disagrees with the whole endeavor, and denounces Polyneices for
undertaking such an impious enterprise; as the Eteokles’ Scout reports, Amphiaraos asks
How can the gods delight in such a deed?
How can posterity admire it,
to sack your father’s city and your native gods,
launching a foreign force against them?
306

Amphiaraos’ accusations contain the very reason why Polyneices feels compelled to
wage war: because Thebes is his father’s city it is as much his as Eteokles’. The Scout
informs the outlaw king that, at one point, Amphiaraos
calls on your brother,
whose heritage and fate you share,
strong Polyneices,
and repeatedly sounds the ending of his name,
which means “strife.”
307

Again, Aeschylus delivers the motive for Polyneices’ assault on Thebes even as he
ostensibly castigates him for it: Polyneices and Eteokles, in possessing the same lineage,
also share the same birthright and destiny—and although we cannot ascertain if whether
or not the Scout actually knows anything regarding the brothers’ mutual murder, he alerts
us to the fact that their lives and deaths are inextricably bound up together. The name

317
“Polyneices”—meaning “many strives”—comes to indicate both of the fraternal
adversaries, who defeat each other to no purpose, as neither keeps the kingdom that is the
cause of their blood-feud. Eteokles himself ironically articulates his and his brother’s
similarity, while once more underscoring the idea that Polyneices feels warranted in his
efforts to wrest Thebes from his younger sibling: positioning himself against Polyneices,
Eteokles bellows “Who has juster claim than I? / Ruler against ruler, brother against
brother, / hater against hater, I must take my rightful place.”
308
Usurping the moral
indignation that technically belongs to his brother, along with the throne, Eteokles
actually becomes Polyneices, whom Aeschylus never provides with the opportunity of
airing his grievances—thus Eteokles not only stands against his brother, but for him as
well—identical in their craving to possess the city at all cost, which is their undoing.
It is no coincidence that Eteokles begins the play by discussing the meaning of his
own name, which is “cause of weeping,”
309
as his usurpation initiates the sequence of
events that culminates in war. As does “Polyneices,” the name “Eteokles” designates
both brothers. In the guise of detailing the horrors of despoliation, Aeschylus has the
Chorus outlines the action early on:
Pillagers loot each other
in plundering brotherhood; greed joins with greed;
the empty-handed hails
with rallying cry his empty-handed brother;
no one content with a lesser or equal share.
310

Aeschylus reinforces the twins’ psychological (and dramatic) conflation repeatedly over
the course of the tragedy: for example, Eteokles, when railing against Tydeus, the enemy
captain poised outside the first gate, sermonizes that “he himself / against himself / will
become his own oracle of impious violence”;
311
unwittingly Eteokles forecasts the

318
circumstances in which he and Polyneices will become the victims of their mirroring lust
and hatred. The Chorus reemphasizes this situation late in the play, as Eteokles girds
himself to do battle, weeping “the death of one by the hand of the other / who is the
image of himself – / such blood spills pollution which endures and fouls beyond
cleansing.”
312
Aeschylus makes their self-slaughter a metaphor not only for the cursed
line of Laius,
313
but for the city of Thebes itself, doomed to devastation by the Epigoni a
decade later: fatal wounds matching, Polyneices and Eteokles are in death still united by
the kingdom and curse that destroyed their relationship, but nonetheless kept them yoked
together in common greed and antagonism. Appropriately the Semi-Chorus chants
Sperm-linked, twinned in the seed, united
in wrath and loveless strife,
these rivals went to school their killing hatred
in the first waters of life.
314

Taking into consideration Aeschylus’ methods of cautioning us that each brother is
answerable for the attempted sack of Thebes, that they are interchangeable in their joint
culpability, the magistrates’ decision to pay tribute to Eteokles with a proper funeral
while execrating Polyneices by commanding that his body be left outside the city as
carrion resonates with irony; the Messenger brings word to the Chorus and surviving
sisters Antigone and Ismene that the civic leaders have resolved to bury Eteokles
with honor and pomp, in recognition
of his good will toward the land;
for he contained the enemy,
and, in choosing death at the gates of the city
to protect the protect the sanctities of his father.
315

We know, however, that Oedipus is far from sanctified, and during the sisters’ dirge just
preceding the announcement, in which they also meld their brothers into one through

319
echoing lamentations, the Chorus underscores Oedipus’ foul legacy, chiming in with the
refrain “Terrible, ungenerous is Fate, / and so are you, dark shade of Oedipus.”
316
Under
the circumstances, the magistrates’ verdict not only sounds arbitrary, but in fact
perversely highlights the unspoken truth that, had Polyneices ruled first, he too would
have refused to yield the throne, provoking Eteokles into attacking Thebes with an alien
force. Nothing would have altered, except the body that would have been condemned to
lie untended to rot. The Scout and Koryphaios, the leader of the Chorus, during an
exchange in which he relates the story of the siblings’ deaths, unconsciously make
explicit this scenario: when the Scout reports that “The city is safe, but the two kings of
one blood / have spilled their shared stream out,”
317
she replies “So fatally equal was the
spirit they shared. / So utterly has it consumed the ill-fated race.”
318
Polyneices and
Eteokles embody best Milton’s idea that in this world there are only winners and losers,
impious and bloodthirsty the both, identical in their emotions, motivations, and actions,
despite all protestations of godliness, true holiness having long since vanished from the
face of the earth, or possibly never having existed at all except in a biblical fairytale.
In this tragedy of indiscriminate duplication, there are in addition to Eteockles and
Polyneices six other pairs of champions battling each other, all claiming divine support
and assurances of success from the same group of gods, a situation that Aeschylus
highlights in the teaming of the above-mention Amphiaraos and Lasthenes. Lasthenes,
Eteockles’ champion, bears a shield with an image of Apollo on it, an allegiance that is
mirrored in Amphiaraos himself, the priest of Apollo who fights for Polyneices. Yet,
ironically, each brother does battle under a god who, given the context, should seemingly
serve as his rival’s symbol and aegis. Polyneices, whom Eteokles accuses as being

320
“babbling and aberrated”
319
—adjectives that together evoke an image of madness—has
embossed on his shield a gold figure of Dike, daughter of Zeus and the goddess of justice,
who represents the secure foundation of cities. Though Eteokles rages against Polyneices
that “she is not likely to be at his side / or help him in this violence, / this crime against
the parent land,”
320
the device serves to remind us that Polyneices pretends to himself that
he is emancipating a city that has been unlawfully commandeered by his brother. And
Eteokles, who throughout the tragedy has posited himself as the righteous and pious
defender of Thebes, carries a shield illustrated with the Fury, a representation of frenzy
and irrationality that displays itself in the usurping king’s comments to the Chorus as he
outfits himself for slaughter. Before we are even offered a glimpse of the Fury,
Eteockles, in response to the Chorus’ interrogation of his vicious eagerness to shed his
brother’s blood, exposes the deforming hatred of his brother that comprises the real
reason as to why he invoked the attack upon the city, ranting:
Since the Fury brutally forces on the event,
let the generations of Laois go down to the last man,
blown wind-wracked along the weeping river of Hades,
even as is their lot, right from the first,
being hated of Phoibus, branded and unclean.
321

A few lines later Eteokles reiterates his unreasonable loathing of Polyneices, confessing
to the Chorus that “The hateful Fury, the black Curse of / my beloved father . . . / . . .
speaks of a gain to be had from a doom that will follow.”
322
Admitting that he is in thrall
to a rage that he cannot control, irrespective of its outcome, Eteokles at last fully divulges
the extent of his self-annihilating wrath, contending that “for a long time, / We have
ceased to be a concern of the gods. / Our death is the only sacrifice they would value”
323

321
—and one must think that this imperial “Our” represents not only the possessive version
of the royal “we,” but also both of the brothers. Ultimately Eteokles, in his determination
to merge with Polyneices in violent death, expresses the moral chaos that is Thebes, a
city founded upon enmity and strife, whose noblest families descended from the five
identical warriors who survived the ordeal that was their infancy, having slaughtered their
brothers as their first living action, and subsequently helped Cadmus to build a citadel on
that battlefield. Thebes itself, cradle of the Spartoí, the “sown” men of Ares, represents
in small an amoral universe of meaningless conflict.
324
Thebes’ civil discord, resulting
from an irresistible indulgence in a vicious personal quarrel, can be taken as another
allusion to the pointless dispute between the Royalists and their Puritan adversaries.
Though Aeschylus gives us to understand that, despite Eteokles’ official
addresses to Zeus as the arbiter of the war between the brothers at the beginning of the
tragedy, it is actually “Gigantic Ares,”
325
who presides over the battle: as the Chorus
recognizes in its lament on the fate of women “when a city is doomed to armored
rape,”
326
demonic Ares, “dazed and insane with the towering flame and fume, / befouls
the pieties, harvests his dead wealth, / and breathes from our black smoke his terrible
health.”
327
And ironically it is Eteokles himself who, in his senseless bloodlust, comes to
symbolize best the beastly god of war: before exiting to face Polyneices, Eteokles, fully
armed, “Takes the same attitude as the statue of the God Ares, behind him.”
328
Eteokles,
who commences by appearing the very picture of piety, rationality, and civic concern,
ends raging and furious, sanctioning his wrath by projecting it onto the gods; his last
words to the Chorus are “If the gods dispose evil, no man can evade it”
329
—and we
should assume that Polyneices echoes his brother’s mentality. The Chorus emphasizes

322
Ares’ sovereignty over the twins, who deals them the same fate, wailing “Bitter is Ares,
Lord Apportioner, / who dealt such balanced bounty, equal lots / making the father’s
furious wish come true.”
330
All surface issues concerning broken pacts and injured egos
having been burnt away in the fire of their mutual hate, Polyneices and Eteokles are
exposed as demented counterparts, insanely ready to risk death and civic destruction to
slake what the Chorus calls “a stinging desire”;
331
for as the Semi-Chorus judges, “With
hearts like blades, these two young men shared out / this inheritance in just and equal
lots.”
332
But the Chorus makes it clear that the damned royals were ultimately playing for
the sadistic pleasure of their overlord, who urged them on to satisfy himself, pronouncing
that “the justice of their reconciler, Ares, / is stern, forbidding, costly, without beauty.”
333

In Seven Against Thebes, Aeschylus’ depiction of identical brothers who both protest
righteousness, but are in fact consumed by a mutual craving for revenge, completely
undermines any idea that in Paradise Regain’d we might locate in the Son and Satan a
dichotomous pair, even and especially on the pinnacle. In all of these tragedies we
witness a world with no moral order, and thus no meaning, a world that is at the mercy of
brutal deities whose greatest gratification derives from torturing their own worshippers, a
world that exists outside concepts of benevolence, mercy, and morality, in which the
disinterested and impartial love that ideally is the Son is not even a possibility.
Thus, preceding and succeeding the final temptation on the pinnacle during which
the Son and Satan are supposed to be distinguished from each other in the most
significant and profound fashion, we are confronted with several allusions to pairs of
satanic pagan figures that, instead of mimicking the Son and Satan in terms of an all-
encompassing opposition, reflect and merge into each other in distressing ways. As, by

323
the time we hit that interpretively immobilizing “him,” the Son, as the human
embodiment of divine goodness that we need Him to be, has long since disappeared from
the text, we must go to some trouble to resurrect Him that He may be the one to enjoy the
celestial repast. And our confusion as to which character is which stubbornly stays with
us until the end of the passage, leaving us in some doubt as to who the true “Tempter
proud” really is; about His identity, let us once more recall Kerrigan’s words concerning
the “evil principle ha[ving] to originate somewhere: retrace the path of causation
stubbornly enough, and there is only place left for evil to derive from.” As does Ares, the
Father sets his children on one another for His own enjoyment. In this chaotic victory
passage Milton communicates to us in a very subtle manner that, in his lawless world,
good doesn’t grapple with evil; instead, there exist only opposing forces locked in self-
serving struggle, forces that more or less duplicate each other in their unprincipled and
self-centered strivings, while God urges them to annihilation with delusional dreams of
glory. Good and evil give way to arbitrary winners and losers—and in truth neither
group is particularly dear to Him. We should remember Penington’s melancholic
complaint that I cited earlier in this chapter about the God
that bringith both the perfect and the wicked upon the stage may turn either of
them off from the stage when he will. There is no more to hinder him from
destroying the perfect than there is to hinder him from destroying the wicked.
They are both equally his. They are both at his dispose. They are one and the
same under several representations, and he has appointed them both to one and
the same end, which is destruction.

In Paradise Regain’d we see only actors, contending for the profane spoils of the
Restoration. Hill optimistically feels that in Paradise Lost, Paradise Regain’d, and
Samson Agonistes Milton is “wrestling with the problem of the failure of the Revolution,

324
trying to apportion blame and look forward from defeat,”
334
but I believe that, at least in
Paradise Regain’d, Milton blames everybody, including and especially the God who let
him down despite his own best prophetic efforts, and, instead of “look[ing] forward from
defeat,” the angry poet exacts revenge by concealing his rage in the very instrument that
he once thought underwrote the lasting success of his political party.
In two famous sentences from Areopagitica, his 1644 plea for unlicensed printing,
Milton sketches out ideas that find their resonance in his late poetic masterpieces:
Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together almost
inseparably; and the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the
knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned,
that the confused seed which were imposed upon Psyche as an incessant labour to
cull out, and sort asunder, were not more intermixed. It was out the rind of one
apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together,
leaped forth into the world.
335

In the victory passage of Paradise Regain’d Milton’s narrator demonstrates the difficulty
we can experience when attempting to distinguish good from evil, in that, if not
extremely careful, we can be duped into perceiving their significant clash where there is
only the clash itself. As Milton admits later in Areopagitica, good and evil are actually
identical, “for the matter of them both is the same.”
336
By the time the Son is
reintroduced into the passage after His disappearance, He and Satan have been glued
together in our minds in so many ways that convincing ourselves they are distinct entities
is extremely challenging, if not impossible; therefore, as Grose has already correctly
apprised us, we cannot readily “accept the banquet as something that happens only to the
Son.” Because of their equivalence we should not view the Son and Satan as uniting in
some kind of “coincidentia oppositorum of interdependent good and evil,” as James P.
Driscoll would have it in his Jungian approach to Milton’s conception of God,
337
for they

325
mimic rather than oppose each other, merely executing their parts according to the
Father’s whim, with the fate of man’s soul as the ostensible reason for their debate, when
the Father makes it clear in Book I that the whole show is a play of His consciousness for
His own divine pleasure. And while the Son may suffer in His role for a few hours in
order to gain everlasting glory, Satan must suffer in his for possibly all eternity, making
others look good while receiving no official credit for it, hence Milton’s repeated
references to Job as a means of imparting this idea to us; for instance, when in Book I
Satan reminds the Son that it was the Father who “Gave up into my hands Uzzean Job /
To prove him, and illustrat his high worth,”
338
the Son castigates him, deriding “What but
thy malice mov’d thee to misdeem / Of righteous Job, then cruelly to afflict him / With
all inflictions, but his patience won?”
339
In Book III, the Son again denies Satan credit,
lauding the Father for extolling Job “To all his Angels, who with true applause / Recount
his praises,”
340
while ridiculing Satan for his failure, jeering “As thou to thy reproach
mayst well remember, / He asked thee, hast thou seen my servant Job?”
341
Significantly,
Satan’s language regarding his testing of Job in order “To prove him, and illustrat his
high worth” evokes the Father’s language concerning the Son’s trial: “To shew him
worthy of his birth divine / And high prediction, henceforth I expose / To Satan.” The
modifiers “worthy” and “high” reverberate in the phrase “high worth”; ironically, it is
Satan himself who reminds us of “the providential chain of command,” as Grose has
termed it, that dictates his actions. The real “Tempter proud” pits his players against each
other in a mock metaphysical battle, arbitrarily and unfairly assigning to the one all of the
ignominy, and attributing to the other all of the honor, as do the magistrates Polyneices
and Eteokles. Perhaps that is how Milton perceived the situation when Charles II was

326
invited home after the ignoble collapse of the Protectorate, and with it, the last of his
dreams of “a knowing people, a Nation of Prophets, of Sages, and of Worthies.”
342

And speaking of “a Nation of Prophets, of Sages, and of Worthies,” how should
we judge that flawed and unreliable epic voice in Paradise Regain’d who, to reiterate
what Grose contends, provides us with the “chance to exercise our faith in a context of
near-perfect literary freedom?”:
Thou Spirit who ledst this glorious Eremite
Into the Desert, his Victorious Field
Against the Spiritual Foe, and broughtst him thence
By proof th’ undoubted Son of God, inspire,
As thou art wont, my prompted Song else mute,
And bear though highth or depth of natures bounds
With prosperous wing full summd to tell of deeds
Above Heroic, though in secret done,
And unrecorded left through many an Age,
Worthy t’ have not remaind so long unsung.
343

In spite of Fish’s warning that we must resist our own “modern eagerness” to put
Milton’s narrator “on trial,” the narrator nonetheless has much to account for in relating
the story of the Temptation in a way that demonstrates he possesses little critical
vigilance. It would appear that the Holy Spirit did not honor his invocation requesting
inspiration for his “Song else mute.” If, as Georgia Christopher posits in her
comprehensive study of Milton’s work in relation to Puritanism, “The Holy Spirit’s
Work, formally considered, was that of rhetorical expertise,”
344
it is obvious that the epic
voice should have waited a bit longer upon its epiphany. Milton scholars who devote
energy to examining the invocations in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regain’d in terms of
Milton’s reliance upon the Holy Spirit for creativity and rationale accept without
reservation the idea that they are always sincerely meant; for example, Ken Simpson, in

327
his study of Milton’s literary ecclesiology in Paradise Regain’d, feels that the Milton
who lingered on in the Restoration as a political cipher was the same Milton whose
literary and linguistic skills beguiled him into believing that he was a special prophetic
appointee during the revolutionary era, reporting that
It was perhaps Milton’s firmest inward conviction that he was called to perform
an extraordinary ministry in poetry, and both his calling and the evidence that he
received it are explored throughout his works. This vocation was interrupted
when he was called to serve God and the nation in prose, but when he turned in
the late poems to take up his former calling, the prophetic identity formed during
the years of the Civil War and Commonwealth asserted itself in the Restoration
epics with a new confidence and power despite his political and religious exile
after 1660.
345

Walter Schindler, examining Milton’s invocations in general, also supposes them to be
genuine in intent; citing William Riggs, Schindler determines that Milton honestly
“stand[s] or fall[s] by a power that is not his own: ‘The essential message of Milton’s
epic invocations is . . . that everything, for the poet, depends upon his muse. The muse is
both his support and justification. Such support, such justification is not commanded by
the poet; rather it is sought by prayer, the efficacy of which must remain in doubt.’”
346

Schindler later goes on to say, specifically in relation to Paradise Regain’d, that the poem
is “a meditation on the intervening of divine voice in human history.”
347
And William B.
Hunter, in a collection of his essays investigating different aspects of Milton’s life and
oeuvre, states unequivocally that Milton “composed real, not literary prayers for divine
guidance addressed to the Christian Trinity and to its individual members.”
348

Christopher actually spends some time treating of the role that the Holy Spirit
plays in Paradise Regain’d, claiming that the Son’s “identity is that of the unique bearer
and sender of the Holy Spirit.”
349
Quoting from Milton’s Christian Doctrine, Christopher

328
understands the Son as being the very model of what man can achieve via absolute trust
in divine guidance, commenting that “In Paradise Regained, Milton attempts to show
how the Holy Spirit operates: ‘No one teaches us more plainly what the nature, source,
and functions of this Holy Spirit are than the Son of God himself.’”
350
But Christopher’s
own reading of the poem leaves her puzzled in an important way: as she wonders, “If
Paradise Regained presents Christ as the unique bearer of the Spirit, it seems curious that
the brief epic is Milton’s least numinous poem.”
351
We should now accept that, at least in
regards to the “brief epic,” Milton was no longer that fiery visionary of the Interregnum,
and had actually renounced the concept that self-proclaimed saints were privy to the
contents of the Divine Mind, or that they could access the Holy Spirit for purposes of
their own. Milton had permanently relinquished the idea of “a Nation of Prophets”;
Michael Fixler, investigating Milton’s varied relationship with poetry, prophecy, and
politics over the course of his life, observes that in Christian Doctrine, Milton goes “so
far as to suggest in his discussion of Providence that God might indeed deliberately
deceive those who unworthily probed the secrets of his will”
352
—and he must have been
referring to his own vanquished party. For Milton’s grim admission that God makes no
distinction “between the righteous and the wicked with regard to the final issue of events,
at least in this life”
353
testifies to, in Fixler’s words, his “bleak abandonment of the idea
that Providence dispenses retributive justice.”
354
If, as Simpson insists, Milton, in
unfashionably invoking the Spirit’s aid in Paradise Regain’d, was indeed “making a
strong political statement,”
355
it wasn’t the kind of statement Simpson would have us
think: by that time Milton no longer believed in “his own extraordinary office of the
ministry in poetry and prose,”
356
but only the force of his own talent, that had seduced

329
him into believing that he was capable of prophesying the future of Britain. Given the
vexed content of Paradise Regain’d, Milton’s invocation is neither religious nor
politically nostalgic, but actually satiric in nature, in that it had become for him simply a
literary convention, despite its affective resonance, a mere rhetorical caricature of the
invocations in his early thunderous proleptic prose, or of such prophetic poems as “On
the Morning of Christ’s Nativity” and “Lycidas.” Unbeknownst to anyone, Milton wrote
Paradise Regain’d not as a prophet but only as a poet, investing it with a lifetime of
knowledge and disappointment. He had learned that nobody can speak for God.
In the “brief epic,” Milton’s narrator, much as scholars would have him represent
an infallible prophetic voice that expresses a single celestial perspective, in reality
articulates several discourses that conflict with one another, and in doing so, reproduces
in small the chaos responsible for text’s existence. Paradise Regain’d is not Milton’s
wistful illustration of the prophetic mode of thought that had dominated British mentality
for centuries, and had played itself out in the wreckage of the Revolution; rather it
communicates his devastating disenchantment with that intellective mode, which, having
been unmasked to him as a front for crude ambition and egocentric wish-fulfillment, left
him with little to console himself except the talent that had once deceived him into
believing he was the very vox Dei. Paradise Regain’d demonstrates to an uncanny
degree Eagleton’s assertions regarding the “complex relation of text to ideology:”
357

[T]he text encounters ideology as a relatively structured formation which presses
upon its own particular valencies and relations. . . . The text works, now with,
now against the variable pressure of these valencies, finding itself able to admit
one ideological element in unprocessed form but finding therefore the need to
displace or recast another, struggling against its recalcitrance and producing, in
that struggle, new problems for itself. In this way the text disorders ideology to
produce an internal order which may then occasion fresh disorder both in itself

330
and in the ideology. This complex movement cannot be imaged as the ‘structure
of the text’ transposing or reproducing the ‘structure of ideology’: it can only be
grasped as a ceaseless reciprocal operation of text on ideology and ideology on
text, a mutual structuring and destructuring in which the text constantly
overdetermines it own determinations.
358

Despite the narrator’s plea to the Holy Spirit for divine inspiration, he cannot enlarge
upon the Temptation in a way that convinces us that he has any business doing so;
although he gets the basic facts correct, the narrator makes so many blunders in his
amplification that the expanded tale merely testifies to his own inadequacy. What is
more, because Milton’s epic voice doesn’t recognize its own failure, neither do most
scholars, who are too beguiled by that powerfully charming invocation, which represents
the strongest “ideological element in unprocessed form,” to realize that the rest of the
poem is a severe critique of that “element,” as well as all of the national events that
ensued because of it. In Paradise Regain’d we are on our own in a critical wilderness
without any elucidative tools, human or divine, subject to a guide who is unable to lead
us out of it. Milton had experienced in the bitterest way the consequences of exploiting
the Holy Spirit as a vehicle for political ambition and empowerment, and that bitterness
blossomed into a poem that is so ideologically conflicted as to be incoherent. Prophetic
discourse had become an embarrassment, and no one had more reason to be ashamed of it
than Milton. As Jameson reminds us oracularly, “History is what hurts, it is what refuses
desire”
359
—and Milton, in Paradise Regain’d, lets us know just how much.

331

Chapter Four Endnotes

1
Paradise Lost (1674), The Poetical Works of John Milton (1961), II.559-560.

2
Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost (1998), p. 4.

3
Ibid., p. 12.

4
Ibid., p. 4.

5
Ibid., p. 11.

6
Ibid., p. 9.

7
Ibid., p. 47.

8
Ibid., p. 21.

9
How Milton Works (2001), p. 35.

10
Ibid., p. 53.

11
Ibid., pp. 53.

12
Paradise Lost, VII.25-27.

13
Ibid., XII.561.

14
Ibid., XII.474-478.

15
The concept of “larva Dei,” the “mask of God,” is important in Luther’s theology, and refers to the
various means by which God executes His purposes on earth. This chapter will eventually demonstrate the
extent to which Milton came to feel betrayed by this idea.

16
Ibid., III.305-306.

17
Ibid., III.307-308.

18
Ibid., III.309.

19
Ibid., XII.649.

20
Ibid., XII. 647.

21
Fish claims that “When Adam and Eve exist paradise and are described as at once ‘solitary’ and guided
by providence, this is neither a contradiction nor the announcement of a new state in which, as Rogers puts
it, divine interpretation has given way ‘to a world of human choice’. . . . Adam and Eve are at this moment
in the same epistemological position they were always in” (Surprised by Sin, p. xliv). Again, not only does
Fish base his assessment on a reading that ignores history but in this case, overlooks the fact that initially

332

God communicated directly with Adam, so that he did not have to interpret anything. Problems arose after
God withdrew His unmediated presence, and delivered His message via the angel Rafael.

22
Paradise Lost, III.195.

23
Ibid., III.194.

24
How Milton Works, p. 572.

25
Ibid., p. 570. Fish is speaking specifically of Samson.

26
Surprised by Sin, p. xiii.

27
How Milton Works, p. 14.

28
Ibid., p. 14.

29
Is There a Text in This Class?: The Authority of Interpretive Communities (1980), p. 113. In one of
Fish’s essays on George Herbert’s poetry, “The Dialectic of the Self in Herbert’s Poetry,” from Self-
Consuming Artifacts: The Experience of Seventeenth-Century Literature (1972), he concentrates on
instances of pronominal confusion in which characters are conflated, such as between the Christ and the
speaker in “The Crosse” (pp. 187, 188), between God and the speaker (p. 201) in “A True Hymne,” and
between alter, Lord, and servant in “The Alter” (pp. 208-209).

30
Ibid., p. 116.

31
Ibid., p. 117.

32
Paradise Lost, IV.9-12.

33
Is There a Text in This Class?, p.4.

34
Paradise Lost, I.210-220.

35
Surprised by Sin, p.17.

36
Milton’s God, p. 42.

37
Ibid., p. 338.

38
Paradise Lost, II.347-349.

39
Ibid., II.371.

40
Ibid., II.346.

41
Ibid., VI.734-739. I must confess that I stole this observation from someone—but I can’t remember
who!

42
Ibid., III.12-15.

333

43
Ibid., III.126-127. Ironically this quote refers to the “Decree / . . . which ordained / Thir Freedom ”
(III.126-128)—but we all know that it in truth “ordained thir fall” (III.128)

44
Is There a Text in This Class?, pp.3-4.

45
How Milton Works, p. 14.

46
Ibid., p. 14

47
Ibid., p.xli.

48
Ibid., p. xlii.

49
Paradise Regain’d (1671), The Poetical Works of John Milton (1961), I.141-146.

50
Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, in her extensive and erudite study of Paradise Regain’d, Milton’s Brief Epic:
The Genre, Meaning, and Art of Paradise Regained (1966), does fleetingly and unsatisfactorily address the
syntactical situation in manner that complies with her agenda: “Because of the syntax we are momentarily
in doubt whether Satan is to assay Christ’s subtlety or his own, and both meanings are relevant: Satan is to
put to proof, try, or tempt Christ’s subtlety, and also to practice by way of trial his own subtlety” (p. 342).
As I shall demonstrate, Lewalski’s superficial reading conveniently glosses in multiple ways the more
disturbing implications of the conflation.

51
As we know, Satan decides to slide himself into “The Serpent suttl’est Beast in all the Field” (IX.86),
for in the wilie Snake,
Whatever sleights none would suspicious mark,
As from his wit and native suttletie
Proceeding, which in other Beasts observ’d
Doubt might beget of Diabolic pow’r. (IX.91-95)

52
Paradise Regain’d, I.107.

53
Ibid., I.97.

54
Ibid., IV.581-595.

55
VI.876-877.

56
Milton’s Paradise Regained: Two Eighteenth-Century Critiques by Richard Meadowcourt and Charles
Dunster (1971), p. 260.

57
The Sacred Complex: On the Psychogenesis of Paradise Lost (1983), p. 233.

58
Ibid., p. 82.

59
Ibid., p.82.

60
Ibid., p. 91.

61
Ibid., p. 91.

62
Ibid., pp. 96-97.

334

63
Ibid., p. 120.

64
Ibid., p. 124.

65
Ibid., p.102

66
Ibid., p. 117.

67
Ibid., p. 117.

68
Ibid., p. 117.

69
Ibid., p. 120.

70
Ibid., p. 124.

71
Milton and the Sense of Tradition (1988), p. 141.

72
Ibid., p. 125.

73
Indeed, Grose himself mischievously transforms his own readers into “the confused night wanderers of
those epic similes early in Paradise Lost” that he claims Milton and Satan “together” make of the readers
of Paradise Regain’d (p. 137).

74
Ibid. p. 136.

75
Ibid., pp. 136-137.

76
Paradise Regain’d, I.314-320.

77
Milton and the Sense of Tradition, pp. 125-126.

78
Ibid., p. 141.

79
Ibid., p. 125.

80
Ibid., p. 122.

81
Ibid., p. 141.

82
Ibid., p. 131.

83
Ibid., p. 137.

84
Ibid., p. 128. Grose reasons that in Paradise Regain’d, “More clearly than in Paradise Lost, the project
of making others ‘such as I’ is based upon the kind of vulnerability exploited when the dazzling serpent
meets a ‘Circean’ Eve among her roses” (p. 140).

85
Ibid., p. 129.

86
Ibid., p. 123.

335

87
Ibid., p. 141.

88
The Satanic Epic (2003), p. 6.

89
Ibid., p. 9.

90
Forsyth points out that Milton inserts this passage from Isaiah into his theological treatise Christian
Doctrine a few times in different contexts (p. 8).

91
Ibid., p. 312. Forsyth doesn’t cite the verse but I shall: “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of
wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.”

92
Ibid., p. 312. Forsyth observes that John Carey defuses the conflation of the Son and Satan during the
pinnacle temptation by claiming that it dismisses Satan , in that “he ceases to count even as a grammatical
referent” (p. 313).

93
Ibid., p. 313.

94
Ibid., pp. 312-313. While Forsythe only touches upon the romance element in Paradise Regain’d, I shall
investigate it more thoroughly, as I believe that Milton exploits it more fully and consciously in terms of its
satiric nature than Forsythe realizes.

95
Ibid., p. 313.

96
Ibid., p. 313.

97
Ibid., p. 6. Forsyth unapologetically revives the Romantic critical legacy concerning Milton’s portrayals
of God and Satan espoused by Empson, who in regards to Paradise Lost insists with great relish that
readers would enjoy the poem much more if they “adopted the manly and appreciative attitude of Blake and
Shelley, who said that the reason why the poem is go good is that it makes God so bad” (Milton’s God, p.
13). Empson reviews for us Shelley’s famous diagnosis: “Milton’s Devil as a moral being is far superior to
his God, as one who perseveres in some purpose which he has conceived to be excellent, in spite of
adversity and torture, is to one who in the cold security of undoubted triumph inflicts the most horrible
revenge upon his enemy, not from any mistaken notion of inducing him to repent of a perseverance in
enmity, but with the alleged design of exasperating him to new torments” (pp. 20-21).

98
Paradise Lost, IV.108-110.

99
The Satanic Epic, p. 124.

100
Paradise Lost, IV.120.

101
Ibid., IV.124-132.

102
The Satanic Epic, p. 124.

103
Ibid., p. 125.

104
Ibid., p. 125.

105
Paradise Lost, IV.142-156.

336

106
The Satanic Epic, p. 125.

107
Paradise Lost, IV.132.

109
The Satanic Epic, p. 126.

110
Let us remember Satan’s hostile apostrophe to the Sun that begins his introspective monologue while on
Mount Niphates:
to thee I call,
But with no friendly voice, and add thy name
O Sun , to tell thee how I hate thy beams
That bring to my remembrance from what state
I fell, how glorious once above thy Spheare;
Till Pride and worse Ambition threw me down
Warring in Heav’n against Heav’ns matchless King. (IV.35-41)
Satan’s angry address not only reveals the reason for his fall from grace, but replays it, as, until God’s
exaltation of the Son, Satan did indeed feel himself to be “glorious” above all, including the Son. As
Forsyth reminds us, “The whole sorry story begins, in Milton’s version, from the rivalry that God wittingly
installs between them by promoting the Son above Satan in the angelic hierarchy” (The Satanic Epic, p.
13); again, Forsyth echoes Empson, who relates that “God begins all the trouble by promoting his Son”
(Milton’s God, p. 103).

111
Ibid., p. 126.

112
Ibid., p. 126.

113
Paradise Lost, IV.205-208.

114
The Satanic Epic, p. 126.

115
Ibid., p. 4.

116
Ibid., p. 16. As Forsythe emphasizes, in many places that “It is . . . clear that his [Satan’s] sacrifice leads
not to the damnation but the salvation of mankind. . . . [A]ccording to God’s logic, Satan is actually
necessary for salvation. To be sure this is rather a buried than evident truth, since the surface glory must all
go to Satan’s bitter rival, the Son” (p. 13).

117
Ibid., p. 9.

118
Ibid., p. 156. The entire sentence reads: “O then at last relent: is there no place / Left for Repentance,
none for for Pardon left?” (IV.79-80).

119
Ibid., p. 157.

120
Ibid., p. 157.

121
Ibid., p. 157.

122
Ibid., p. 156.

123
Ibid., p. 156.

337

124
Ibid., p. 156.

125
Ibid., p. 156.

126
Ibid., p. 13.

127
Ibid., p. 17.

128
Criticism and Ideology: A Study in Marxist Literary Theory (1976), p. 17.

129
Ibid., 94.

130
The Prelude, coincidentally, is modeled in part upon Paradise Regain’d as a version of the
internalization of the quest romance; Stuart Curran verifies that the Romantic poets duplicated what he calls
“the internalized epic of Paradise Regained” in “The Mental Pinnacle: Paradise Regained and the
Romantic Four-Book Epic,” from Calm of Mind:Tercentenary Essays on Paradise Regained and Samson
Agonistes in Honor of John S. Diekhoff (1971), p. 136.

131
Ibid., p. 94.

132
Ibid., p. 94.

133
The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (1981), p. 56.

134
As John Carey instructs us in his essay “Milton’s Satan,” from The Cambridge Companion to Milton
(1999), “according to Milton in Christian Doctrine . . . full knowledge was the Father’s alone” (p. 166).

135
The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (1981), p. 9.

136
Milton and the English Revolution (1977), p. 358. Tony Kemp pointed out to me Debora Kuller Shuger,
in her study of dominant culture in late Renaissance Britain, Habits of Thought in the English Renaissance:
Religion, Politics, and the Dominant Culture (1990), includes quotations by John Donne that anticipate
Penington’s: “‘all the evill (that is, all the penall ill, all plagues, all warre, all famine,) that is done in the
World, God doth.’. . . There is no cosmic battle between God and Lucifer but instead a ‘strange warre,
where there are not two sides . . . for, God uses the Devill against us, and the Devill uses us against one
another . . . so that God, and the Devill, and we, are all in one Army, and all for our destruction’” (p. 170).
I find it ironic that Penington’s sectarian lament regarding God’s hostility toward His creation echo’s
Donne’s Calvinist complaint.

137
“The Better Fortitude,” The Living Milton: Essays by Various Hands (1968), p. 134.

138
Ibid., p. 133.

139
Ibid., p. 131.

140
Ibid., p. 131.

141
Ibid., p. 130.

142
Paradise Regain’d, I.404-405.

143
Ibid., I.468-474.

338

144
“The Better Fortitude,” pp. 130-131.

145
Ibid., p. 131.

146
“The Play of the Text,” Languages of the Unsayable: The Play of Negativity in Literature and Literary
Theory (1989), p. 329.

147
Milton’s Brief Epic, p. 350.

148
Milton’s Style: The Shorter Poems, Paradise Regained, and ‘Samson Agonistes’ (1981), p. 125.

149
Milton’s Imagery and the Visual Arts: Iconographic Tradition in the Epic Poems (1978), p. 341.

150
Ibid., p. 341.

151
Ibid., p. 344.

152
Ibid., p. 341.

153
Ibid., p. 342.

154
Paradise Regain’d, IV.449.

155
Milton’s Imagery and the Visual Arts, pp. 342-345.

156
Ibid., p. 343.

157
Ibid., p. 341.

158
Paradise Regain’d, IV.490-493. Though earlier in this chapter I take the phrase “disdain not such
access to me” as the Son does, meaning that Satan desires access to His person—yet it is also valid to
understand it as Satan’s reference to his own prophetic powers.

159
Milton and the English Revolution, p. 444.

160
Paradise Regain’d, IV.633.

161
ParadiseRegain’d, IV.288-289.

162
Ibid., I.173-181.

163
Ibid., IV.596-604.

164
Ibid., IV.174-175.

165
Ibid., I.494-496.

166
Ibid., I.493.

167
Paradise Regain’d, IV.146-153.

168
Ibid., I.293.

339

169
Ibid., III.244-252.

170
Ibid., IV.394-396.

171
Ibid., I.126.

172
Ibid., I.377.

173
Ibid., I.475-477.

174
Form and Meaning in Fiction (1975), p. 13.

175
Milton’s Brief Epic, p. 133. To my knowledge no one notices that Satan in Paradise Regain’d admits
that he is God’s Son, whereas in Paradise Lost he considers himself to be, “self-begot, self-rais’d / By our
own quick’ning power” (V.860-861).

176
Ibid., p. 133.

177
“The Sons of God in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained,” Milton Quarterly (1991), p. 88.

178
Milton’s Brief Epic, p. 133.

179
Paradise Regain’d, IV.516-517.

180
“The Sons of God in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained,” p. 88.

181
Milton and the Postmodern (1983), p. 68.

182
Ibid., p. 69.

183
Ibid., p. 69.

184
“The Sons of God in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained,” p. 83.

185
“The Better Fortitude,” The Living Milton: Essays by Various Hands (1968), p. 136.

186
Milton and the English Revolution, p. 360.

187
Ibid., p. 360.

188
Milton and the Postmodern, p. 69.

189
Paradise Regain’d, I.294-296.

190
The Prophetic Milton (1974), p. 230.

191
These lines could also be construed to invoke Christ’s harrowing of Hell, which only add to the
confusion.

192
The Sacred Complex, p. 101.

193
The Prophetic Milton (1974), p. 230.

340

194
Paradise Regain’d III.201-202.

195
Barbarous Dissonance and Images of Voice in Milton’s Epics (1996), p. 44.

196
Paradise Regain’d, IV.540-543.

197
Paradise Regained: The Tradition and the Poem (1947), p. 50.

198
Orlando Furioso (1532), 3.29-31.

199
Ibid., 2.38.

200
Ibid., 4.27.

201
Ibid., 4.45.

202
Aeneid, XII.951-952.

203
Orlando Furioso, 46.140. Please note that neither ending incorporates the slain antagonist’s name.

204
Ibid., 46.116

205
Ibid. 46.116.

206
Ibid., 46.122.

207
Though this is not the time to list all of Milton’s textual references regarding Paradise Regain’d, he
does feature characters from Orlando Furioso earlier in the poem: when Satan offers the Son the kingdom
of Parthia, with all of its “numberless / . . . Troops” (III.310-311), the narrator relates that
Such forces met not, not so wide a camp,
When Agrican with all his Northern powers
Besieg’d Albracca, as Romances tell;
The City of Gallaphrone, from thence to win
The fairest of her Sex Angelica
His daughter, sought by many Prowest Knights,
Both Paynim and the Peers of Charlemagne. (III.337-344)

208
In the last twenty-five verses of the book that describe their battle, I counted thirteen instances of the
word “pagan” and six of the term “Saracen.”

209
Orlando Furioso, 46.139. The narrator calls Rodomont “the impious Saracen” (46.139) just before
Ruggiero plunges a “dagger to the hilt in Rodomont’s forehead” (46.140).

210
Ibid., 46.138.

211
The Political Unconscious, p. 118.

212
Ibid., p. 118.

213
Orlando Furioso, 46.136.

214
Ibid., 46.111.

341

215
Ibid., 46.112.

216
Ibid., 46.113.

217
The Political Unconscious, p. 118.

218
Ibid., p. 118.

219
Ibid., p. 118.

220
Paradise Regain’d, IV.562-576.

221
Milton’s Brief Epic, p. 172.

222
Ibid., p. 173.

223
Ibid., p. 319.

224
Ibid., p. 231.

225
Ibid., p. 233.

226
“The Historicity of Paradise Regained,” Milton Studies 12 (1979): p. 242.

227
Ibid., p. 242.

228
Ibid., p. 244.

229
Ibid., p. 242.

230
Paradise Regain’d, II.413-415.

231
“The Historicity of Paradise Regained,” p. 244.

232
Ibid., p. 244.

233
Milton, Poet of Duality: A Study of Semiosis in the Poetry and the Prose (1985), p. xi.

234
Ibid., p. xi.

235
Ibid., p. 167. Ironically, earlier in his book Shoaf, attempting a psychoanalytic reading of Satan in
Paradise Lost, Shoaf posits that “Like Oedipus, the ultimate figure of confusion in the classical world,
Satan, the Adversary, has never separated from the Father (nor, therefore, from himself): to kill the father,
as oppose the Father, is to bind oneself to the father (and to the ‘self’ thus bound)” (p. 117). Whether or not
one agrees with Shoaf’s interpretation, the fact that he uses Oedipus to discuss Satan testifies to the figure’s
ambiguous character.

236
Wedges and Wings: The Patterning of Paradise Regained (1975), p. 104.

237
Milton’s Brief Epic, p. 115.

238
Ibid., p. 319.

342

239
The Sacred Complex, passim.

240
Ibid., p. 106.

241
Paradise Regain’d, IV.638-639.

242
The Sacred Complex, p. 106.

243
Ibid., p. 107.

244
Ibid., p. 106.

245
Ibid., p. 106.

246
Ibid., p. 106.

247
Ibid., p. 106.

248
Ibid., p. 106.

249
Ibid., p. 124.

250
Ibid., p. 124.

251
Ibid., p. 124.

252
Ibid., p. 124.

253
Ibid., p. 101.

254
“Having Done All to Stand: Biblical and Classical Allusion in Paradise Regained,” Milton Studies 21
(1986): p. 203.

255
Ibid., pp. 203-204.

256
Again, Milton’s use of parentheses is meant to highlight the comment, and in this case, its
inappropriateness.

257
The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution (1972), p. 322.

258
Heracles and Other Plays (2003), p. 52. In Paradise Lost the Father pronounces the Son “By Merit
more than Birthright Son of God” (III.309).

259
Ibid., p. 53.

260
Ibid., p. 54.

261
Ibid., p. 53.

262
Ibid., p.55.

263
Ibid., p. 67.

343

264
Ibid. p. 67.

265
Hercules Distracted, Hecuba and Other Plays (1888), p. 79.

266
The Madness of Hercules, Euripides (1930), p. 231. In his demand for prudence, Theseus sounds very
much like Belial in Paradise Lost, who during the war council proves quite capable of imagining what the
fallen angels can “suffer worse” (II.163). Moreover, when Theseus advises Heracles to conduct himself
bravely in the face of his tragedy, maintaining that “It is a sign of nobility to endure whatever comes to us
from the gods and not to retreat from it” (p. 67), he also resembles Mammon in the same meeting, who
proposes that it is better to reign secure in hell than attempt Heaven, insisting that by accepting defeat the
angels’ “greatness will appear / Then most conspicuous” (II.257-258).

267
Heracles, Euripides: The Complete Drama (1938), l. 1243.

268
Heracles and Other Plays, p.67.

269
Ibid., p. 69.

270
Ibid., p. 69.

271
Ibid., p. 69. Heracles tells Theseus that “even in the midst of my misfortune I have given thought to
whether I would incur the charge of cowardice if I killed myself, on the grounds that anyone who cannot
stand up to disaster would be equally incapable of standing up to a weapon wielded by a human opponent.
I shall stand fast and endure life.”

272
Ibid., p. 72.

273
Ibid., p. 73.

274
Hercules Furens, Seneca’s Tragedies V1: Hercules Furens, Troades, Medea, Hippolytus, Oedipus
(1917), p. 9.

275
Ibid., p. 11.

276
Ibid., p. 13.

277
Ibid., pp. 55-56.

278
Ibid., p. 81.

279
Ibid., p. 83.

280
Ibid., p. 113.

281
Ibid., p. 105.

282
Paradise Lost, IV.66-68.

283
Hercules Furens, p. 119.

284
Paradise Lost, IV.75-78.

344

285
Hercules Furens, p. 11.

286
Ibid., p. 13.

287
After reading both Euripides and Seneca, I feel Kelsall’s explanation as to why Milton employed the
combat between Hercules and Antaeus to be even more ridiculous than I had originally thought.

288
Pharsalia (1993), IV.663-665.

289
Ibid., IV.645-649.

290
Ibid., IV.784-787.

291
Ibid., IV.609.

292
Ibid., IV.617-620.

293
Ibid., IV.636.

294
The Sacred Complex, p. 91.

295
Oedipus the King, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus (1984),
ll.876-880.

296
Ibid., ll.280-287.

297
Ibid., ll.901-910.

298
Ibid. ll.269-276.

299
Ibid., ll.1467-1468.

300
Ibid., ll.1479-1480.

301
Ibid., ll.1481-1482.

302
Oedipus, Seneca’s Tragedies V1: Hercules Furens, Troades, Medea, Hippolytus Oedipus (1917), p. 431.

303
Ibid., p. 509.

304
Ibid., p.519.

305
Ibid., p.523.

306
Seven Against Thebes, The Complete Aeschylus, Volume II: Persians and Other Plays (2009), ll.718-
721.

307
Ibid., ll.712-716.

308
Ibid., ll.844-846.

309
Ibid., l.11.

345

310
Ibid., ll.430-434.

311
Ibid. ll.496-498.

312
Ibid., ll.857-860.

313
The Chorus mourns:
O black conclusive prayer of Laios’ race,
Oedipal Curse, O dark.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The word invoked by the father, the potent word
went its unwearied way
and was acted out, bloodily to the last.
The defiant act conceived in Laios’ day
has pierced from the buried past
into their midst and bodies, has pierced through. (ll.1055-1056, 1064-109)
“The defiant act” is Lauis’ rape of Chrysippus, the young son of Pelops, king of Pisa. While still a young
man and staying with Pelops as his guest, Lauis violated all standards of hospitality by abducting
Chrysippus, an act for which Pelops cursed him.

314
Ibid., ll.1177-1180.

315
Ibid., ll.1286-1291. In his tragedy Antigone, Sophocles has Creon parcel out the dead brothers’ burial
fortunes (ll.215-231).

316
Ibid., ll.1242-1243, 1258-1259.

317
Ibid., ll.1030-1031.

318
Ibid., ll.1034-1035.

319
Ibid., l.827.

320
Ibid., ll.836-838.

321
Ibid., ll.869-873.

322
Ibid., ll.878-879, 881.

323
Ibid., ll.886-888.

324
Eteokles refer to his subjects as Cadmus’ children, meaning that they are in reality the children of Ares,
the bloodthirsty and irrational god of war. For instance, in the very first line of the play Eteokles addresses
them as “Citizens, children of Kadmos” (l1). And Eteokles explicitly refers to his first champion
Melanippos, who bears a shield adorned with Ares as “a thorough son of this land, / a shoot sent up from
the seed of the dragon’s teeth / sown by Kadmos, and by Ares spared” (ll.507-509).

325
Ibid., l.421.

326
Ibid., l.419.

346

327
Ibid., ll.422-424.

328
Ibid., p. 160.

329
Ibid., l.907.

330
Ibid., ll.1194-1196.

331
Ibid., l.874.

332
Ibid., ll.1150-1151.

333
Ibid., ll.1153-1154.

334
The World Turned Upside Down, p. 326.

335
Areopagitica (1644), Milton’s Prose Writings (1965), pp. 157-158.

336
Ibid., p. 164.

337
The Unfolding God of Jung and Milton (1993), p. 41.

338
Paradise Regain’d, I.369-370.

339
Ibid., I.424-426. Lewalski of course is famous precisely for her thorough investigation as to the extent
to which, in her words, “Paradise Regained is Milton’s effort to write a ‘brief epic’ on the Jobean model”
(Milton’s Brief Epic, p. 8.). Concerning the Book of Job itself, Lewalski readily admits to the injudicious
character of Job’s torments, acknowledging that Job’s well-meaning and pious friends “are wrong in their
opinion that God’s favors and punishments in this world are exactly squared to man’s desserts, and wrong
also in deducing from this false premise that Job’s apparent virtue must be hypocrisy” (p. 19). But
Lewalski, making the case that Job over the centuries had come to be considered a type of Christ on a
number of grounds (pp. 22-27), and that Milton had “weighty precedent not only for the conception of Job
as an epic, but also for the actual use of that Book as a model for an epic poem” (p. 35), assumes that in
Paradise Regain’d Milton is simply transferring God’s capricious treatment of Job onto the Son, remarking
that God’s comments to Gabriel in Book I “indicate that Christ’s trial will be of the same order of Job’s,
and will serve the same purpose–to display Christ as Job had been displayed, for a ‘spectacle to angels and
men’” (p. 111). In accordance with her canonical agenda Lewalski ignores the irony present in Satan being
appointed the miserable agent of God’s will.

340
Ibid., III.63-64.

341
Ibid., III.66-67.

342
Areopagitica, p. 177. Tony Kemp correctly recognizes that, “prophets can’t be a nation, as prophets can
only oppose not approve”—a statement that sums up the religio-political factionalism that plagued Britain
during the Interregnum, as an every-growing number of people attempted to use prophetic discourse that
they might impose their political agendas on the rest of the populace.

343
Paradise Regain’d, I.8-18.

344
Milton and the Science of the Saints (1982), p. 7.

347

345
Spiritual Architecture and Paradise Regained: Milton’s Literary Ecclesiology (2007), p. 67.

346
Voice and Crisis: Invocation in Milton’s Poetry (1984), p. 50.

347
Ibid., p. 93.

348
The Descent of Urania: Studies in Milton, 1946–1988 (1989), p. 19.

349
Milton and the Science of the Saints, p. 202.

350
Ibid., p. 205.

351
Ibid., p. 203.

352
Milton and the Kingdoms of God (1964), pp. 215-216.

353
Ibid., p. 215.

354
Ibid., p. 215.

355
Spiritual Architecture in Paradise Regained, p. 66.

356
Ibid., p. 67.

357
Criticism and Ideology, p. 98.

358
Ibid., p. 99.

359
The Political Unconscious, p. 102.

348
Bibliography

Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes. The Complete Aeschylus, Volume II: Persians and
Other Plays. Trans. Anthony Hecht and Helen H.Bacon. Ed. Peter Burian and
Alan Shapiro. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Abbott, William Cortez. The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell. 4 vols. 1937-
1947. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988.

Althusser, Louis. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Trans. Ben Brewster. New
York: Monthly Review Press, 1971.

Ariosto, Ludovico. 1532. Orlando Furioso. Trans. Guido Waldman. 1974. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1998.

Barker, Ernest. “The Achievement of Oliver Cromwell.” Cromwell: A Profile. Ed. Ivan
Roots. New York: Hill and Wang, 1973. World Profiles.

Bennet, Martyn. Oliver Cromwell. London: Routledge, 2006.

Bergeron, David M. English Civic Pageantry, 1558-1642. Tempe: Medieval and
Renaissance Texts and Studies, Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance
Studies, Arizona State University, 2003.

Bittle, William G. James Nayler 1618 – 1660: The Quaker Indicted by Parliament.
York: William Sessions Ltd., 1986.

Brailsford, Mabel Richmond. A Quaker From Cromwell’s Army: James Nayler. New
York: The Macmillan Company, 1927.

Brandon, Eric. The Coherence of Hobbes’s Leviathan: Civil and Religious Authority
Combined. London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2007.

Boyer, Richard E. Oliver Cromwell and the Puritan Revolt: Failure of a Man or of a
Faith? Boston: D. C. Heath and Company, 1966. Problems in European
Civilization.

Burnett, Archie. Milton’s Style: The Shorter Poems, Paradise Regained, and Samson
Agonistes. London: Longman, 1981.

Butler, Judith. The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1997.

349
Carey, John. “Milton’s Satan.” The Cambridge Companion to Milton. Ed. Dennis
Danielson. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Christianson, Paul. Reformers and Babylon: English Apocalyptic Visions from the
Reformation to the Eve of the Civil War. Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1978.

Christopher, Georgia B. Milton and the Science of the Saints. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1982.

Como, David. Blown by the Spirit: Puritanism and the Emergence of an Antinomian
Underground in Pre-Civil-War England. Stanford: Stanford University Press,
2004.

Condren, Conal. Thomas Hobbes. New York: Twayne Publishers, 2000.

- - -. The Language of Politics in Seventeenth-Century England. New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1994.

Coote, Lesley Ann. Prophecy and Public Affairs in Later Medieval England.
Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2000.

Cope, Jackson I. “Seventeenth-Century Quaker Style.” PMLA 71.4 (1956): pp.725-754.

Coward, Barry. The Cromwellian Protectorate. Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2002.

- - -. Oliver Cromwell. 1991. London: Longman, 1992. Profiles in Power.

Crabtree, Roger. “The Idea of a Protestant Foreign Policy.” Cromwell: A Profile. Ed.
Ivan Roots. New York: Hill and Wang, 1973. World Profiles.

Curran, Stuart. “The Mental Pinnacle: Paradise Regained and the Romantic Four-Book
Epic.” Calm of Mind:Tercentenary Essays on Paradise Regained and Samson
Agonistes in Honor of John S. Diekhoff. Cleveland: Press of Case Western
Reserve University, 1971.

Damrosch, Leo. The Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus: James Nayler and the Puritan
Crackdown on the Free Spirit. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996.

Davis, Colin. “Cromwell’s Religion.” Cromwell and the Interregnum: The Essential
Readings. Ed. David L. Smith. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2003.

Dobin, Howard. Merlin’s Disciples: Prophecy, Poetry, and Power in Renaissance
England. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990.

350
Donagan, Barbara. “Casuistry and Allegiance in the English Civil War.” Writing and
Political Engagement in Seventeenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999.

Driscoll, James P. The Unfolding God of Jung and Milton. Lexington: University Press
of Kentucky, 1993.

Durston, Christopher. Cromwell’s Major-Generals: Godly Government During the
English Revolution. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001.

Eagleton, Terence. Criticism and Ideology. London: NLB, 1976.

Edwards, Thomas. Gangraena. London: Ralph Smith, 1646.

Empson, William. Milton’s God. Rev. ed. 1961. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1981.

Ericson, Edward, Jr. “The Sons of God in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.” Milton
Studies 26 (1991): pp. 79-89.

Euripides. Heracles. Heracles and Other Plays. Trans. Robin Waterfield. Intro. Edith
Hall. 2003. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

- - -. Heracles. The Complete Greek Drama. Trans. E. P. Coleridge. Ed. Whitney J.
Oates and Eugene O’Neill, Jr. Vol. 1. New York: Random House, 1938.

- - -. Euripides in Four Volumes. Trans. Arthur S. Way. Vol. 3. 1912. London:
William Heinemann; New York: G. P. Putnum’s Sons, 1930. The Loeb Classical
Library.

- - -. Euripides: Hecuba and Other Plays. Trans. Michael Wodhull. Intro. Henry
Morley. London: George Routledge and Sons, 1888.

Fish, Stanley. How Milton Works. Cambridge: The Belknap Press-Harvard University
Press, 2001.

- - -. Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost. 2nd ed. 1967. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1997.

- - -. “What it’s Like to Read L’Allegro and Il Penseroso.” Is There a Text in This
Class?: The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1980.

351
- - -. “Letting Go: The Dialectic of the Self in Herbert’s Poetry.” Self-Consuming
Artifacts: The Experience of Seventeenth-Century Literature. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1972.

Fixler, Michael. Milton and the Kingdoms of God. Evanston: Northwestern University
Press, 1964.

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan.
2nd ed. 1977. New York: Vintage Books-Random House, 1995.

- - -. The History of Sexuality: Volume I: An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. 1978.
New York: Vintage Books-Random House, 1990.

- - -. “Two Lectures.” Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings
1972—1977. Trans. Colin Gordon, Leo Marshall, John Mepham, Kate Soper.
Ed. Colin Gordon. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.

- - -. The Archeology of Knowledge. 1969. The Archeology of Knowledge and The
Discourse on Language. Trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon
Books, 1972.

Forsyth, Neil. The Satanic Epic. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.

- - -. “Having Done All to Stand: Biblical and Classical Allusion in Paradise Regained.”
Milton Studies 21 (1986): pp. 199-214.

Friedman, Norman. Form and Meaning in Fiction. Athens: University of Georgia Press,
1975.

Frye, Roland Mushat. Milton’s Imagery and the Visual Arts: Iconographic Tradition in
the Epic Poems. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978.

Gaunt, Peter. Oliver Cromwell, 1599-1658. New York: New York University Press,
2004. The British Library Historic Lives Series.

- - -. “‘The Single Person’s Confidants and Dependents’? Oliver Cromwell and His
Protectoral Councillors.” Cromwell and the Interregnum: The Essential
Readings. Ed. David L. Smith. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2003.

- - -. Oliver Cromwell. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1996.

Grose, Christopher. “‘With Curious Eye’: Setting and Structure in Paradise Regained.”
Milton and the Sense of Tradition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988.

352
Halley, Janet E. “Heresy, Orthodoxy, and the Politics of Religious Discourse.”
Representing the English Renaissance. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1988.

Hill, Christopher. Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution—Revisited. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1997.

- - - . The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution. London: Penguin
Books, 1993.

- - -. A Nation of Change and Novelty: Radical Politics, Religion, and Literature in
Seventeenth-Century England. London: Routledge, 1990.

- - -. Antichrist in Seventeenth-Century England. London: Verso, 1990.

- - -. Milton and the English Revolution. New York: Viking Press, 1978.

- - -. The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution.
New York: Viking Press, 1972.

- - -. God’s Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution. New York: The
Dial Press, 1970.

Hirst, Derek, and Richard Strier. “Introduction.” Writing and Political Engagement in
Seventeenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Hirst, Derek. “Samuel Parker, Andrew Marvell, and Political Culture, 1667–73.”
Writing and Political Engagement in Seventeenth-Century England. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999.

- - -. Authority and Conflict: England, 1603–1658. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1986

Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. (1651). Ed. C. B. Macpherson. London: Penguin Books,
1985.

Huizinga, Johan. The Waning of the Middle Ages. London: Edward Arnold Press, 1924.

Hunter, William B. The Descent of Urania: Studies in Milton, 1946–1988. Lewisburg:
Bucknell University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1989.

Ives, Jeremy. “THE QUAKERS QUAKING: OR, The Foundation of their Deceit
shaken.” London: J. Cottrel, 1656.

353
Iser, Wolfgang. “The Play of the Text.” Languages of the Unsayable: The Play of
Negativity in Literature and Literary Theory. New York: Columbia University
Press, 1989.

Jameson, Frederic. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981.

Jansen, Sharon L. Political Protest and Prophecy Under Henry VIII. Woodbridge: The
Boydell Press, 1991.

Johnston, David. The Rhetoric of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Cultural
Transformation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.

Kemp, Anthony. The Materialist Ideology: Bacon to Sade. Unpublished book,
2010.

Kerrigan, William. The Sacred Complex: On the Psychogenesis of Paradise Lost.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983.

- - -. The Prophetic Milton. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1974.

Kelsall, Malcolm. “The Historicity of Paradise Regained.” Milton Studies 12 (1979):
pp. 235-251.

Kingsley, Margery A. Transforming the Word: Prophecy, Poetry, and Politics in
England, 1650–1742. Newark: University of Delaware Press; London:
Associated University Presses, 2001.

Kipling, Gordon. Enter the King: Theatre, Liturgy, and Ritual in the Medieval Civic
Triumph. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998.

Knoppers, Laura Lunger. Constructing Cromwell: Ceremony, Portrait, and Print,
1645—1661. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Koch, Hannsjoachim Wolfgang. “Cromwell’s Genius.” Cromwell: A Profile. Ed. Ivan
Roots. New York: Hill and Wang, 1973. World Profiles.

Lamont, William M. Godly Rule: Politics and Religion, 1603-1660. London: Macmillan
and Company, 1969.

Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer. Milton’s Brief Epic: The Genre, Meaning, and Art of
Paradise Regained. Providence: Brown University Press; London: Methuen &
Co. Ltd., 1966.

354
Lloyd, S. A. Ideals as Interests in Hobbes’s Leviathan: The Power of Mind Over Matter.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Lucan. Pharsalia. Trans. Jane Wilson Joyce. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993.

Martinich, Aloysius P. The Two Gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on Religion and
Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Marvell, Andrew. The Complete Poems. Ed. Elizabeth Story Donno. London: Penguin
Books, 1986.

Matthews, Ronald. English Messiahs: Studies of Six English Religious Pretenders, 1656-
1927. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1936.

Milton, John. Paradise Regained. 1671. Ed. Charles Dunster. 1795. Milton’s Paradise
Regained: Two Eighteenth-Century Critiques by Richard Meadowcourt and
Charles Dunster. Facsim. ed. Ed. Joseph Anthony Wittreich, Jr. Gainesville:
Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1971.

- - -. Paradise Lost. 1674. The Poetical Works of John Milton. Ed. Helen Darbishire.
1958. London: Oxford University Press, 1961.

- - -. Paradise Regain’d. 1671. The Poetical Works of John Milton. Ed. Helen
Darbishire. 1958. London: Oxford University Press, 1961.

- - - . Areopagitica. 1644. Milton’s Prose Writings. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.,
1958.

Nayler, James. “WEAKNES above WICKEDNES, AND TRUTH above SUBTILTY.”
London: Giles Calvert, 1656.

- - -. “THE Power and Glory of the LORD, Shining out of the NORTH, OR THE Day of
the LORD Dawning.” London: Giles Calvert, 1656.

Nuttall, Geoffrey F. The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience. Intro. Peter Lake.
2nd ed. 1946. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992.

- - -. “James Nayler: A Fresh Approach.” Supplement No. 26, Journal of the Friends’
Historical Society (1956): pp. 1-20.

Palmer, Daryl W. Hospitable Performances: Dramatic Genre and Cultural Practices in
Early Modern England. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1992.

Paul, Robert S. The Lord Protector: Religion and Politics in the Life of Oliver Cromwell.
London: Lutterworth Press, 1955.

355
Pepperell, Keith C. “Religious Conscience and Civic Conscience in Thomas Hobbes’s
Civic Philosophy.” Educational Theory 39:1 (1989): 17-25.

Pope, Elizabeth Marie. Paradise Regained: The Tradition and the Poem. Baltimore:
John Hopkins Press, 1947.

Rapaport, Herman. Milton and the Postmodern. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1983.

Reay, Barry. The Quakers and the English Revolution. New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1985.

Richey, Esther Gilman. The Politics of Revelation in the English Renaissance.
Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998

Robson, W. W. “The Better Fortitude.” The Living Milton: Essays by Various Hands.
Ed. Frank Kermode. 1960. New York: Barnes & Nobel, Inc., 1968.

Rusche, Harry. “Prophecies and Propaganda, 1641 to 1651.” The English Historical
Review 84: 333 (1969): pp. 752-770.

Rutter, Russell. “Printing, Prophecy, and the Foundation of the Tudor Dynasty: Caxton’s
Morte Darthur and Henry Tudor’s Road to Bosworth.” Prophet Margins: The
Medieval Vatic Impulse and Social Stability. Ed. E. L. Risden, Karen Moranski,
and Stephen Yandrell. New York: Peter Lang, 2004. Studies in the Humanities:
Literature—Politics—Society 67.

Sauer, Elizabeth. Barbarous Dissonance and Images of Voice in Milton’s Epics.
Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996.

Schindler, Walter. Voice and Crisis: Invocation in Milton’s Poetry. Hamden: Archer-
The Shoe String Press, Inc., (1984).

Seneca. Hercules Furens. Seneca’s Tragedies V1: Hercules Furens, Troades, Medea,
Hippolytus, Oedipus. Trans. Frank Justus Miller. Facsim. Ed. London: William
Heinemann; New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1917.

- - -. Oedipus. Seneca’s Tragedies V1: Hercules Furens, Troades, Medea, Hippolytus,
Oedipus. Trans. Frank Justus Miller. Facsim. Ed. London: William Heinemann;
New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1917

Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of King Lear (1607). The Riverside Shakespeare.
Ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974.

356
- - -. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (1602). The Riverside Shakespeare.
Ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974.

Shoaf, Richard Allen. Milton, Poet of Duality: A Study of Semiosis in the Poetry and
the Prose. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.

Shuger, Debora Kuller. Habits of Thought in the English Renaissance: Religion, Politics,
and the Dominant Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.

Simpson, Ken. Spiritual Architecture and Paradise Regained: Milton’s Literary
Ecclesiology. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2007.

Skinner, Quentin. Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Smith, David L. “Editor’s Introduction.” Cromwell and the Interregnum: The Essential
Readings. Ed. David L. Smith. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2003.

- - -. Oliver Cromwell: Politics and Religion in the English Revolution, 1640–1658.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Sophocles. Oedipus the King. The Three Theban Plays: Antigone, Oedipus, Oedipus at
Colonus. Trans. Robert Fagles. Ed. Bernard Knox. 1982. New York: Penguin
Books, 1984.

Stachniewski, John. The Persecutory Imagination: English Puritanism and the
Literature of Religious Despair. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.

Strauss, Leo. The Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis. T
Trans. Elsa M. Sinclair. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1952.

Strong, Tracy B. “How to Write Scripture: Words, Authority, and Politics in Thomas
Hobbes.” Critical Inquiry 29 (Autumn, 1993), No. 1: 128-159.

Taylor, Rupert. The Political Prophecy in England. New York: The Columbia
University Press, 1911.

Thomas, Keith Vivian. Religion and the Decline of Magic. New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1971.

Trevor-Roper, H. R. “Oliver Cromwell and His Parliaments.” Cromwell: A Profile. Ed.
Ivan Roots. New York: Hill and Wang, 1973. World Profiles.

357
Trevett, Christine. Quaker Women Prophets in England Wales, 1650-1700. Lewiston:
The Edwin Mellon Press, 2000.

Virgil. Aeneid. Virgil’s Works: The Aeneid, Eclogues, Georgics. Trans. J. W. Mackail.
New York: The Modern Library, 1950.

Walzer, Michael. The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origin of Radical Politics.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965.

Weber, Burton Jasper. Wedges and Wings: The Patterning of Paradise Regained.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press; London: Feffer and Simons, Inc.,
1975.

Wojcik, Jan, and Raymond-Jean Frontain. “Introduction: The Prophet in the Poem.”
Poetic Prophecy in Western Literature. Rutherford: Fairleigh University Press;
London: Associated University Presses, 1984.

Woolrych, Austin. “The Cromwellian Protectorate: A Military Dictatorship?” Cromwell
and the Interregnum: The Essential Readings. Ed. David L. Smith. Malden:
Blackwell Publishing, 2003.

- - -. “Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of Saints.” Cromwell: A Profile. Ed. Ivan Roots.
New York: Hill and Wang, 1973. World Profiles.

Worden, Blair. “Providence and Politics in Cromwellian England.” Past and Present
109 (1985): pp. 59-99.

Wright, George. Religion, Politics and Thomas Hobbes. AA Dordrecht: Springer, 2006.

Zwicker, Steven N. Lines of Authority: Politics and English Literary Culture, 1649—
1689. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract During Britain’s civil war era, prophecy comprised the rhetorical means by which certain religio-political groups legitimized their efforts to seize power, based on claims of election and the attendant right to determine God’s will on earth. In seventeenth-century Britain, the Holy Spirit became the vehicle for political empowerment par excellence. This dissertation investigates prophetic discourse in terms of its political function during a time when the issue of political authority was a focus for interrogation and debate. The Introduction provides a brief history of prophetic discourse as an intellective mode that characterized British mentality for centuries, and found its most potent manifestation in the Puritans’ self-sanctioned ability to speak for God. Chapter One discusses the Quakers’ appropriation of the Holy Spirit, which gave them license to judge their Puritan rulers. Chapter Two analyzes Hobbes’ attack on prophecy in Leviathan, in which he eliminates the possibility of election by various rhetorical strategies. Chapter Three examines Cromwell’s rise from obscure minor gentry to Lord Protector through his exploitation of providentialism, that is, the right and duty of every Puritan saint to read God’s cosmic plan in personal and national events. And Chapter Four treats Milton’s Paradise Regain’d as a cynical commentary on the political opportunism and self-interest concealed in the postures of righteousness adopted by both the Royalists and the Roundheads during the Revolution.

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Conceptually similar

PDF

Unruly passions: reconsidering compassion in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century British poetry and drama

PDF

The politics of eros: writing under the auspices of Ovid's Cupid in early modern English literature

PDF

Romancing the bomb: Gothic terror and terrorism in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature

PDF

Anger matters: politics and theology in the fourth century CE

PDF

Curing hooliganism: moral panic, juvenile delinquency, and the political culture of moral reform in Britain, 1898-1908

PDF

The lady of the eighth ward: political, economic, and military power of nyoin during the twelfth century, Japan

PDF

Magic and media: the critical concept of telepathy (1918-1939)

PDF

Multiracial politics or the politics of being multiracial?: Racial theory, civic engagement, and socio-political participation in a contemporary society

PDF

The progressive dilemma: grassroots liberals, the Democratic Party, and the search for political power in mid-twentieth century America

Asset Metadata

Creator Goodman, Rochelle Susan (author)

Core Title Prophecy and the politics of authority in seventeenth-century revolutionary Britain

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program English

Publication Date 04/01/2010

Defense Date 03/02/2010

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Holy Spirit,James Nayler,John Milton's Paradise regain'd,Literature,OAI-PMH Harvest,Oliver Cromwell,Politics,Prophecy,Puritan revolution,Religion,Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan

Place Name Britain (countries)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Kemp, Anthony (committee chair), Lazar, Moshe (committee member), Smith, Bruce R. (committee member)

Creator Email rgoodman@usc.edu,rsgoodman1@verizon.net

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m2890

Unique identifier UC1122079

Identifier etd-Goodman-3528 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-307123 (legacy record id),usctheses-m2890 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Goodman-3528.pdf

Dmrecord 307123

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Goodman, Rochelle Susan

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu