ABSTRACT
The mature Milton’s relationship to the cause of religious toleration cannot be properly understood without first defining his position on three closely related issues: ecclesiastical “comprehension,” Protestant ecumenicism, and freedom from censorship. Although his strong defense of freedom from censorship is clear, his positions on Dissent, church comprehension, and authority are far less widely understood. In no small part, this is due to the fact that Milton combined the thoroughly modern principles of voluntary association and ecumenicism with the considerably less modern ideal of church comprehension. These distinctions remain important, since while Dissenters shared Milton’s commitment to the principle of fully voluntary church government and attendance, many rejected on principle his commitment to ecumenicism, and the radicals rejected church comprehension as well. For conservative Dissenters like the Presbyterians, ecumenicism ignored the key distinction between the Elect and the Reprobate, while for the radicals, inclusion or “comprehension” in the national church ignored their right to form separate congregations “gathered” by lay, and in many cases, non-university-trained or even self-taught ministers. In practice, that meant that, while conservatives favored comprehension, they did not wish to “tolerate” indiscriminately, and radicals did not wish to be tolerated or “validated” by the establishment. Dissent additionally included important and influential moderates like Richard Baxter, who worked toward both comprehension and ecumenicism, yet modern church historians have cast considerable doubt on the older idea promoted by W.K. Jordan, William Haller, and their successor, Christopher Hill, that Dissent was the “mother” of religious toleration. For, while all Dissenters certainly promoted the cause of freedom from state persecution, neither they nor their Puritan predecessors espoused anything like the modern concept of complete freedom of opinion or skeptical inquiry into doctrinal or ceremonial issues. Except for minorities like the Quakers, Ranters, and Seekers, nearly all Puritans still regarded deviation from Calvinist orthodoxy as heretical, and even Quakers and Seekers maintained a rigidly orthodox and inflexible anti-ceremonialism.
