ABSTRACT

The poet John Milton believed that the political corruption of the Roman Catholic Church dated back to the reign of Constantine in the fourth century, and that its spiritual corruption sprang from the papacy that contaminated religion in the west for over a thousand years. The Protestant Reformations of the sixteenth century, in Milton’s view, served only to begin the process of cleansing, and in England, he charged, that process had been thwarted by prelates and other regressive interests. By 1641, however, when Milton wrote Of Reformation, the Established Church was under attack, episcopacy was discredited, and a revolutionary parliament seemed to be considering the thorough reform of religion. Milton did not join the thousands who moved to New England for godly as well as social reasons, but he blamed the episcopal Church of England for their exodus. England’s religious future was uncertain as Milton penned his pamphlet, but true Reformation seemed possible.