ABSTRACT
John Milton nephew Edward Phillips tells that Milton worshiped God with both organ and song all his life, which, like other evidence explored in this chapter, suggests that Thomas Macaulay's famous essay was right: Milton never was a moral, ecclesiastical, or religious Puritan. Aside from the fact that the Whigs' "Puritan Revolution" turned virtually all revolutionaries into saints, Milton has long been identified with the godly due to his anti-formalism, anti-episcopalism, iconoclasm, and "low church" ecclesiology. Milton's failure to focus on Christ's suffering and death is well known: the theme is virtually absent from his major works and his early poem on the passion was never completed. Milton is nevertheless placed in the sectarian camp by those who regard him as an ecclesiological Puritan, and his De Doctrina Christiana indeed favors a form of sectarian service in which all members have the right to speak and exchange opinions.
