ABSTRACT
Paradise Regained demonstrates a triumph of spiritual reading, an exemplar for others to follow, and as such it represents the culmination of Milton’s development of that process. Yet the poem also demonstrates, through its presentation of the ideal spiritual reader, the deep differences between Milton’s spiritual reading and that of his contemporaries. In this chapter, I highlight Milton’s distinctive spiritual reading by comparing that reading with the approaches of the prolific Puritan writer Richard Baxter, the Quaker leader George Fox and Gerrard Winstanley the Digger. The work of these writers has been largely neglected, so I examine them in part to demonstrate how examining them through the lens of spiritual reading reveals their approaches to their audience.1 I also choose these authors because each represents a group with which Milton has sometimes been associated: Baxter compares with a model of Milton as a more moderate Puritan, while Fox represents the burgeoning body of Quaker theology developing in Milton’s later days and Winstanley the radical millenarian movement.
