Milton and the Preaching Arts

Written by Jameela Lares Reviewed By Richard Coulton

The most famous critique of the work of John Milton is probably still that offered by his equally celebrated admirer, William Blake. Blake insists that ‘the reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of angels and God, and of liberty when of devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet’. A Romantic construction of the Puritan writer who was one of Cromwell’s most trusted spin-doctors which shaped the reception of Milton’s texts for the best part of two centuries. Only recently have historicists attempted to dislocate Miltonic criticism from such transcendent notions as that of the ‘poetic’, recontextualising the writer in the Seventeenth Century struggles for the control of Church and State (in both of which Milton was vigorously caught up), and re-reading his poetry in the light of his extensive political and theological works.

Jameela Lares’ Milton and the Preaching Arts provides an interesting and highly readable contribution to this revisionism. She argues forcefully that Milton’s decision not to enter the Anglican priesthood was not the rejection of the ministry which it is often represented to be. It is rather an indication of Presbyterian convictions which would repeatedly resurface in his published attacks on established prelacy. By positioning him within contemporary debates about Church governance and homiletics, Lares demonstrates that Milton considered the private conviction of divine vocation crucial to a practising minister in a way that ecclesiastical ordination is not. At the same time that Milton believed those gifted and trained as expounders of God’s message should indeed preach—whether the sermon was delivered from the pulpit or from the pages of published poetry. Whilst her recognition of Milton’s conflating roles as poet and priest is by no means an original observation, Lares’ attention to his views about rhetoric and the artes praedicandiprovides an inventive hermeneutic tool with which to excavate the major poems Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. In particular she shows how Milton’s unusual favouring and combination of two of the five established ‘sermon types’, correction and consolation (the others comprising doctrine, reproof, and instruction), informs the structure and characterisation of these two dramatic poems.

This is a scholarly and thoroughly researched book that will be of interest both to students of literature and those of post-Reformation Church history. Lares refuses to retread old ground—for example her discussion of homiletics bypasses Erasmus and Calvin in favour of an extended discussion of the less well-known Hyperius. Instead she manages to unearth a staggering array of Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century theologians and theorists: indeed the comprehensive bibliography is a superb resource and one of the book’s greatest assets. Refreshingly she is also obviously a big fan of John Milton, sympathising with, if not sharing many of his perspectives upon Church authority and Scriptural truth. This should indeed strike notes of approval in most non-conformist evangelicals. Unfortunately Lares’ drive to establish Milton as a true hero of such dissenting traditions means that she studiously ignores much recent scholarship (undertaken by John Carey, amongst others) which has examined the arguably subversive nature of some of his theological writings and trawled the poems for instances of their encrypted expression within. It was particularly surprising, given the evidence of extensive reading, that a section on Michael Servetus and Faustus Socinus makes no reference to Milton’s acknowledgement of them in the unconventional and questioning study of the Trinity in his De Doctrina Christiana. Overall however, it is gratifying to see this exemplary poet recognised not only for his undeniable contribution to English literature, but also understood as an important if complex contributor to the development of the early Reformed Church.


Richard Coulton

London