MILTON'S INWARD LIBERTY A STUDY OF CHRISTIAN LIBERTY FROM THE PROSE TO PARADISE LOST

Twenty Eleven was a year of revolutions in northern Africa and the Middle East. Rising in Tunisia, the revolutionary wave has spread through Egypt, Libya, Syria and other countries. The common denominator of all insurgencies has been the people’s desire to shake off a long-endured yoke of tyranny which had resulted in a stagnant economy, poor life conditions and poorer public liberties. The word ‘democracy’ has become the catalyst of all aspirations. However, where the overthrowing of the dictator has succeeded, reform has been slow to come to pass, opening the door to new, potentially worse, forms of tyranny. The revolution John Milton envisioned during the years of England’s Interregnum was itself one of liberty. Toward such end he worked tirelessly for some two decades. He worked to see liberty projected in all areas of social and political life. Criticism has largely read this as the result of Milton’s apprehension of individual liberty as only fully definable within the context of public liberties. The present work argues that liberty is more appropriately seen in Milton as the rightful portion of the Christian man. In other words, liberty is more appropriately defined in Milton as Christian liberty. Liberal laws and institutions might afford relative liberties, through negotiation of individual and collective freedom, but never true liberty, the latter residing within: the man who was inwardly a slave, a slave must remain, irrespective of outward liberties. However, the man who was inwardly free, free must remain, irrespective of outward restraint. Inasmuch as it entails the restoration of mind and conscience from sin to inward liberty, Christian liberty is found setting the terms for the creation of an inward microcosm of rest and authority. If the work of Milton’s left hand is best read as Milton’s attempt at actualizing its pervasive domestic, ecclesiological and political ramifications, failure to see it reflected in his temporal community would alert the poet to the need for man to individually appropriate it, mindful that only the man who was inwardly free would be able to change his world.