Milton’s work reflects the influence of both the reformation and the Renaissance. The Renaissance and the Reformation had their impact on England in the sixteenth century. Generally speaking, they exerted pulls in mutually opposite directions. Most of the Elizabethans came under the classical and humanistic influence of the Renaissance but did not admit the influence of the Reformation on their literary work Spenser among them. however, tried obviously to reconcile the ‘two enthusiasms.
It was left for Milton...'the poetical son of Spenser”, as Dryden called him..to homogenize these two into a perfect whole. When he started writing, the initial exuberance ushered in by the Renaissance and the Reformation was already on its way out. Milton's poetry is the first and the last example of the happy and effortless harmonization of the two mutually antagonistic enthusiasms which stirred the England of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
In Milton's poetry the Reformation element is found as his soft and steady Puritanism. Puritans were those who 'protested" against even the Protestants who in their turn had protested against the Pope and the Popish religion. The Reformation signifies the great religious revolution of the sixteenth century which gave rise to the various Protestant or Evangelical organizations of Christendom. The movement was European in extent and was widely successful in the reign of Henry VIII, and later Elizabeth I. But some splinter sects rose against the Protestant Church of England which they thought was not yet fully reformed, and who urged to take Christianity back to the religion of Jesus Christ. These Puritans devotedly and rather superstitiously revered the Bible, condemned the Protestant bishop (episcopacy) and every institutionalized religion, emphasized every man's inner light, hated all arts such as painting, sculpture and music and even 'drama, all show and luxury, shied at the least appearance of evil, favored highly formalized and rigorous conduct, and, in general, turned against all literature and aesthetic pursuits. Now, Milton was born in a Puritan family. His schooling and surroundings. his social and political affiliations, and a number of other factors combined to instill in him a love of Puritan ideology and way of life. However, he was a man of too strong an individuality to accept any formal 'ism' in its totality. He was a deeply religious man, and even at the age of twenty-three he could write:
All is, if I have grace to use it so; As ever in my great Task Master‘s eye.
Milton's Puritanism has not much to do with the macabresque and stoic creed of ordinary puritans. The Renaissance elements of his intellectual set-up effectively controvert these tendencies and any fanatic adherence to a rigorous code of conduct and ultimate values. His version of Puritanism was tinged by his love of the classics, the love of nature, the love of beauty. and Renaissance humanism insisting on the world of man, and love of 'the human face divine.‘ Moreover, unlike most Puritans, Milton emphasizes the spirit rather than the conduct. And this emphasis brings him into affinity with the Cambridge Platonists who were themselves mostly Puritans. Milton believed that 'the Spirit which is given to us is a more certain guide than Scripture.‘ In his pamphlet 0f True Religion he states that along with external Scripture there is an internal Scripture, "the Holy Spirit written in the Hearts of believers". Milton departed from the Puritan creed even in some important doctrinal points. For instance, he did not subscribe to the doctrine of predestination and refused the Son an equal status with the Father. In more general terms, he tried to reconstruct the puritan creed on the basis of the humanistic ideology of the Renaissance.
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