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John Milton's Millenarianism Reconsidered

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John Milton's Millenarianism Reconsidered Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 8-24-2017 11:00 AM Waiting for God: John Milton’s Millenarianism Reconsidered Rainerio George Ramos The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Dr. John Leonard The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in English A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © Rainerio George Ramos 2017 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Ramos, Rainerio George, "Waiting for God: John Milton’s Millenarianism Reconsidered" (2017). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 4773. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/4773 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Abstract “Waiting for God: John Milton’s Millenarianism Reconsidered” Challenging consensus, I argue that John Milton never adhered to the politico- religious ideology of millenarianism, the belief that in the end times Christ would descend to rule the world with his saints for a thousand years. No definitive evidence for millenarianism exists in Milton’s English poetry and prose. Milton explicitly mentions the millennium only in De Doctrina Christiana, his Latin theological treatise. However, my research has demonstrated that even that brief reference is tentative and inconclusive. Consequently, the Oxford editors of De Doctrina (2012) have decided to revise a crucial sentence in their translation. I reveal the persistence of distortive, ideologically driven criticism in Milton studies and help demonstrate Milton’s epistemological flexibility. Milton’s early poetry, which demonstrate a vitalist belief in the immanence of a divine and free vital spirit in nature, preclude adherence to the theocratic millenarian dogma. Throughout his career Milton focuses his eschatology not on Christ’s millennial kingdom, but on the final eternal kingdom of the renewed heaven and earth, wherein divine immanence is fully realized. Even the apocalyptic references in his controversial prose works, which critics have inferred to be millenarian, actually look forward to the final kingdom after the dissolution of the world and the renewal of heaven and earth. Milton cares not for any earthly, fleshly, and coercive kingdom, future or past, even one personally ruled by Christ, but, rather, for the already existing, purely spiritual kingdom of Christ, through which union with God is imperfectly, but sufficiently and presently, attainable. Paradise Lost demonstrates Milton’s longing for the ultimate end of the Son’s kingdom when God shall be “All in All,” (1 Cor. 15:28) rather than the future beginning of his millennial reign. The Son’s kingdom had already begun at the beginning of time and that beginning is eternally recurring. Finally, I argue that the problem of Paradise Regained lies in the failure of scholars to take its title at face value. Paradise, the “paradise within” (PL 12.587), has, in fact, been regained. The Son’s kingdom has begun ii again and, like all previous recurrent beginnings, the faithful may already enjoy oneness with God. Keywords John Milton, millenarianism, millenarian, millennium, early modern English literature, eschatology, apocalypse, apocalypticism, Book of Revelation, end times, end of the world, ideology, epistemology, historical revisionism, new heaven and new earth, New Jerusalem, postapocalyptic theology, spiritual kingdom, vitalism, animist materialism, theocracy, separation of church and state, liberty of conscience, Christian liberty, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, De Doctrina Christiana iii Acknowledgments I would like to express my sincerest and deepest gratitude to Dr. John Leonard, Dr. Madeline Bassnett, Dr. John K. Hale, Dr. J. Donald Cullington, Dr. Douglas Trevor, Dr. Michael Schoenfeldt, the late Dr. William W. Cook, Dr. Claver P. Ramos, Dr. Thelma Tupasi Ramos, Grace Ramos, and Tristan Ramos. I am also very grateful to the National Archives in London, England for facilitating my request for scans of the manuscript of Milton’s De Doctrina Christiana and to the Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies, the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English, the Newberry Library Multidisciplinary Graduate Student Conference, and the Murfreesboro Conference on John Milton for giving me opportunities to present my thesis research and receive feedback. Finally, I wish to thank the University of Western Ontario, Dartmouth College, and, most especially, my parents, Dr. Claver P. Ramos and Dr. Thelma Tupasi Ramos, for funding this project. Praise the Lord. iv Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments.............................................................................................................. iv Table of Contents ................................................................................................................ v List of Plates ..................................................................................................................... vii Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 A. Fear, Hope, the Devil, and the Millennium Bug ..................................................... 1 B. Beginnings, Ends, and Ideology ............................................................................. 7 Chapter 1 ........................................................................................................................... 15 1 Imminent or Immanent Kingdom? The Question of Millenarianism in the Early Poetry and Academic Prolusions ................................................................................. 15 1.1 “His thirty Armes along the indented Meads” ...................................................... 15 1.2 The Proto-Vitalist “Naturam” ............................................................................... 23 1.3 “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity” and the Final Conflagration .................... 40 1.4 Other Minor Poems: “ready to smite once, and smite no more” .......................... 55 1.5 Poems of Mr. John Milton, Both English and Latin, Compos’d at several times . 70 Chapter 2 ........................................................................................................................... 73 2 Tactical Millenarianism and Doubt: The Final Kingdom in Milton’s Prose ............... 73 2.1 “Thy universal and milde Monarchy through Heaven and Earth” ....................... 73 2.2 “Unlimited Scepter” .............................................................................................. 89 2.3 “The boisterous & contradictional hand of a temporall, earthly, and corporeall Spirituality” ........................................................................................................... 93 2.4 “The Roman Antichrist . bred up by Constantine” ......................................... 100 2.5 The Augustinian-Parean Millennium and The History of Britain ...................... 109 2.6 Tactical Millenarianism in Milton’s Prose ......................................................... 114 v 2.7 “They . will live and reign with Christ for [those] thousand years” ............... 122 Chapter 3 ......................................................................................................................... 138 3 Paradise Lost: The Eternally Recurring Beginnings and Ultimate End of the Son’s Kingdom ..................................................................................................................... 138 3.1 The Humiliation and Exaltation of William Empson ......................................... 138 3.2 “This day I have begot” ...................................................................................... 150 3.3 From “heaven long absent”: Anti-millenarianism in Paradise Lost ................... 172 Chapter 4 ......................................................................................................................... 183 4 Paradise Regained: Anti-millenarian Brief Epic ....................................................... 183 4.1 Proto-millenarian Satan ...................................................................................... 183 4.2 Milton’s Rejection of Millenarianism in Paradise Regained and the Deferral of Fulfillment ...................................................................................................... 196 4.3 The “real” Kingdom: Taking Paradise Regained seriously ............................... 206 4.4 The “allegoric” Kingdom: the tree, the stone, and David’s throne in Paradise Regained 4.146-53 .............................................................................................. 225 Conclusion: Fixing Milton’s Eschatology and Epistemology ........................................ 237 Works Cited .................................................................................................................... 242 Curriculum Vitae ............................................................................................................ 256 vi List of Plates Plate 1: The National
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