History of Licensing

Though Milton himself declared that the requirement for book licensing was an invention of the "Council of Trent, and the Spanish Inquisition engendring together," and denounced the licensing order of 1643 as "the immediate image of a Star-chamber decree," and otherwise attempts to give the impression that licensing is thoroughly un-English, something imported by the bishops in 1637 (the date of the Star Chamber decree), this is not entirely true. Though the enforcement of licensing in England had been uneven at best, and there had been long periods during which the policy of licensing was not enforced at all, the policy was far from new. In 1408 Archbishop Arundel's Constitutions (confirmed by Parliament in 1414) order that "no book . . . be from henceforth read . . . within our province of Canterbury aforesaid, except the same be first examined by the University of Oxford or Cambridge . . . and . . . expressly approved and allowed by us or our successors, and in the name and authority of the university . . . delivered unto the stationers to be copied out."

Milton's attack on the Licensing Order had no effect on Parliament's policy; in fact, Parliament re-asserted its position in separate Orders on September 30, 1647, March 13, 1648, and September 20, 1649. Milton himself served as licenser of Mercurius Politicus in 1651. For a brief period of 15 months, between 1651 and 1653, the Commonwealth government experimented with an unlicensed press; however, the Rump Parliament revived licensing in an order of January 7, 1653.

Introduction It can’t be expected that no disputes will ever arise in a commonwealth. The best thing is for complaints to be "freely heard, deeply considered, and speedily reformed." That is "the utmost bound of civil liberty . . . that wise men look for." "He who freely magnifies what hath been nobly done and fears not to declare as freely what might be done better, gives ye the best covenant of his fidelity." Private, learned, individuals have been respectfully heard by governments before: Isocrates wrote to persuade Athens to change its current form of government. The Parliament of England will only make itself seem all the wiser by respectfully hearing Milton’s argument. " . . . by judging over again that Order which ye have ordained to regulate Printing: that no book, pamphlet, or paper shall be henceforth printed unless the same be first approved and licensed by such, or at least one of such as shall be thereto appointed."

The Four Major Arguments

1. Who are the inventors of licensing? The Catholic church.
2. What is to be thought of reading? It is a necessary acquisition of knowledge of good and evil in a fallen world.
3. This Order is ineffectual in suppressing "scandalous, seditious, and libelous books."
4. This Order will discourage learning and the pursuit of truth.

Argument #1

1. In Athens, only two types of writings were suppressed by the civil powers: blasphemous/atheistic writings and libelous writings.

4. The Catholic church is the inventor of the licensing of printing: "their last invention was to ordain that no book, pamphlet, or paper should be printed . . . unless it were approved and licensed . . . thus ye have the inventors and the original of book-licensing . . . from the most antichristian council and the most tyrannous inquisition that ever inquired."

Argument #2

1. Moses, Daniel, and Paul were skillful in all the learning of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Greeks, respectively. This can only have been through prodigious reading.
2. Julian the Apostate (emperor from 361-363) forbade Christians the reading of heathen writers. (Seems a weak point, but the contention is that if an apostate forbids reading classical literature, then it must be good for faithful Christians to read.)
3. Dinoysius Alexandrinus—a pious and learned early Christian—read heretical books in order to be able to refute the arguments therein. When challenged by "a certain presbyter," he was in a quandary until he received a vision: "Read any books whatever come to thy hands, for thou art suficient both to judge aright and to examine each matter."
4. Bad books may serve a "discreet and judicious reader" to "discover, to confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate."
5. Solomon writes that much reading is "a weariness to the flesh," but it is not therefore unlawful.
6. The burning of books at Acts 19:19 was a voluntary act—not mandated by any magistrate.
7. Good and evil are almost inseparable in this world—in this world, how can one have wisdom to choose good without "the knowledge of evil"? "Since, therefore, the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely and with less danger scout into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates and hearing all manner of reason? And this is the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read."
8. Controversial books (of religion) are more a danger to the learned than to the ignorant: "It will be hard to instance where any ignorant man hath been ever seduced by papistical book in English, unless it were commended and expounded to him by some of that clergy."
9. Licensing is a vain and impossible attempt, like "the exploit of a gallant man who thought to pound up the crows by shutting his park gate."

Argument #3

1. No well-constituted nation or state ever used "this way of licensing."
2. Plato, in his Laws, spells out such a system, but for an imaginary state. Plato—in reality—was a transgressor of his own (imagined) laws: a writer of dialogues and a reader of Aristophanes (whom he supposedly recommended to Dionysius, the Tyrant of Syracuse [367-356 BC]).
3. If printing must be regulated, so must all other trades and arts.
4. Who shall decide? Who shall set the absolute standards?
5. It is no good "to sequester out of the world into Atlantic [Francis Bacon] and Utopian [Thomas More] polities," rather, we must "ordain wisely as in this world of evil, in the midst whereof God hath placed us unavoidably."
6. The "great art" of a commonwealth lies in knowing what to restrain and forbid, and what to leave to private conscience. Punishment and persuasion must be correctly balanced.
7. God gave man reason and freedom to choose. Otherwise, Adam would have been "a mere artificial Adam." God created passions within us so that we need to temper them in and through virtue (tempering the passions is virtue). By removing the causes/objects of sin, we remove the opportunities for the acquisition, generation, and practice of virtue: "how much we thus expel of sin, so much we expel of virtue."

Argument #4

6. Description of meeting Galileo: "a prisoner to the Inquisition for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought."
7. The complaints of the learned against the Inquisition are now being made by the learned against the Parliament’s order of licensing.
8. The general murmur: if we are so suspicious of men "as to fear each book . . . before we know what the contents are," then we are facing "a second tyranny over learning." This will soon show that the current presbyters (who had only recently been silenced by the then-dominant Anglican hierarchy) are just the same ("name and thing") as the old bishops. Meet the New Boss. Same as the Old Boss.
9. When the bishops were being fought against, freedom of publishing was a good thing (according to the presbyters), but now that the bishops have been defeated, suddenly publishing must be licensed. How convenient.

Conclusion

3. The English people are potentially a "nation of prophets, of sages, and of worthies." Only "wise and faithful laborers" are needed to actualize this potential.
4. "Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making."
5. Analogy to the building of the temple in Solomon’s day: "when every stone is laid artfully together, it cannot be united into a continuity, it can but be contiguous in this world."
6. The strength of the church lies in the unity of diverse (but not too diverse) elements: "the perfection consists in this, that out of many moderate varieties and brotherly dissimilitudes that are not vastly disproportional, arises the goodly and graceful symmetry that commends the whole pile and structure."
7. The "time seems come . . . when . . . all the Lord’s people, are become prophets."
8. The carrying on of these intellectual disputes even during a time of civil war, when the forces of Charles I threaten, is a sign of faith in the good government of Parliament. (Thus commences the kiss-Parliament’s-ass section.)
9. The people became free to write and speak because of the liberty that the "valorous and happy counsels [of Parliament] have purchased." The people cannot grow less learned and less inclined to write and speak unless Parliament revert to tyrannous ways, "as they were from whom ye have freed us.’
10. Let Truth and Falsehood grapple in the open. Truth will win.
11. Doctrine of (limited) tolerance: "if all cannot be of one mind—as who looks they should be?--this doubtless is more wholesome, more prudent, and more Christian, that many be tolerated rather than all compelled."
12. This "many" does not include Catholics (or non-Christians): I mean not tolerated popery and open superstition, which, as it extirpates all religions and civil supremacies, so itself should be extirpate . . . but those neighboring differences, or rather indifferences, are what I speak of, whether in some point of doctrine or of discipline."
13. If the men who appear to be schismatics are indeed wrong, why not debate them openly? If they are not wrong, and are doing the work of God (the "Gamaliel" argument), "no less than woe to us while, thinking thus to defend the Gospel, we are found the persecutors."
14. If nothing else will work, "it would be no unequal distribution . . . to supress the supressors themselves."
15. To set right the wrong that has been done is the highest and wisest thing that Parliament can do.
     

The Atheist Milton Michael Bryson (Ashgate  Press, 2012)

Basing his contention on two different lines of argument, Michael Bryson posits that John Milton–possibly the most famous 'Christian' poet in English literary history–was, in fact, an atheist. First, based on his association with Arian ideas (denial of the doctrine of the Trinity), his argument for the de Deo theory of creation (which puts him in line with the materialism of Spinoza and Hobbes), and his Mortalist argument that the human soul dies with the human body, Bryson argues that Milton was an atheist by the commonly used definitions of the period. And second, as the poet who takes a reader from the presence of an imperious, monarchical God in Paradise Lost, to the internal-almost Gnostic-conception of God in Paradise Regained, to the absence of any God whatsoever in Samson Agonistes, Milton moves from a theist (with God) to something much more recognizable as a modern atheist position (without God) in his poetry. Among the author's goals in The Atheist Milton is to account for tensions over the idea of God which, in Bryson's view, go all the way back to Milton's earliest poetry. In this study, he argues such tensions are central to Milton's poetry–and to any attempt to understand that poetry on its own terms.

The Tyranny of Heaven Milton's Rejection of God as King Michael Bryson (U. Delaware Press, 2004)

The Tyranny of Heaven argues for a new way of reading the figure of Milton's God, contending that Milton rejects kings on earth and in heaven. Though Milton portrays God as a king in Paradise Lost, he does this neither to endorse kingship nor to recommend a monarchical model of deity. Instead, he recommends the Son, who in Paradise Regained rejects external rule as the model of politics and theology for Milton's "fit audience though few." The portrait of God in Paradise Lost serves as a scathing critique of the English people and its slow but steady backsliding into the political habits of a nation long used to living under the yoke of kingship, a nation that maintained throughout its brief period of liberty the image of God as a heavenly king, and finally welcomed with open arms the return of a human king. Review of Tyranny of Heaven