‘A Taken Scandal not a Given’: Milton's Equitable Grounds of Toleration

This chapter looks at the conceptual bases of Milton's tolerationist views, drawing on his theology as well as early modern English law, especially the equity jurisprudence of Chancery. It explores Satan's insistence in Paradise Lost ‘on the principle of heavenly equality’ to justify the angelic apostasy and revolt consequent upon the Son's exaltation. The chapter thereupon compares Satan's argument, elevating the satanic values of sameness and conformity, to Abdiel's emphasis upon the differentiating principle of equity, whose interpretive and juridical procedures he grounds upon the...

This chapter looks at the conceptual bases of Milton's tolerationist views, drawing on his theology as well as early modern English law, especially the equity jurisprudence of Chancery. It explores Satan's insistence in Paradise Lost ‘on the principle of heavenly equality’ to justify the angelic apostasy and revolt consequent upon the Son's exaltation. The chapter thereupon compares Satan's argument, elevating the satanic values of sameness and conformity, to Abdiel's emphasis upon the differentiating principle of equity, whose interpretive and juridical procedures he grounds upon the theological distinction between creator and creature, which allows for the exceptional instance and thus for dissent. The discussion then turns to A Treatise of Civil Power, and Milton's argument for religious toleration, which begins with the equitable enfranchisement of ‘conscience’ and the separation of religious from civil jurisdictions on that account. Finally, it takes issue with the thesis that both Milton's politics and his exegesis are ‘libertine’ or expedient in the bad sense, demonstrating what Selden regarded as an impossibility — a principled application of equity's assumptions and procedures to the Erastian argument for civil jurisdiction and its scriptural proofs.