WE

CHAPTER III

THE MORTALISTS, 1643-1655

E come closest of all to Milton's most personal ideas in a group of his immediate contemporaries, the Mortalists.

This group is known to us chiefly by a little pamphlet, Man's Mortality, published in 1643 (Amsterdam, printed by John Canne), and republished, with changes, in 1644 (same place and printer) and in 1655 (London, no publisher). The author is generally considered to have been Richard Overton, a London printer and bookseller, and a friend of John Lilburne, the head of the Levellers.2 Owing to the success of their revolutionary propaganda in the army, Overton and Lilburne frequently got into trouble with the Commonwealth government. Milton could hardly help knowing them, since in March, 1649, it was his task as Secretary to report on their arrest, and he was probably present at a violent scene that took place in Council between them and Cromwell. But if Overton was the principal author, it is likely that he had collaborators. Thomas Edwards, in the first part of his Gangræna (1645),* says that a certain Clement Wrighter is thought either to be the author or at least to have had a large part

3

1 This last edition was reissued in 1675. The British Museum possesses copies of all four printings. The edition of 1643 is described by Masson, III, 156.

2 The title pages of all the editions read "By R. O." Several of the copies in the British Museum bear the pencilled addition, in an old handwriting, "Richard Overton." On Overton, see the article by C. H. Firth in the Dictionary of National Biography.

3 See Masson, IV, 87.

* Pp. 81-82.

in the book on the mortality of the soul. And in the second part of the same book (1646)* Edwards describes a meeting of Anabaptists " at the Spitle," where the question of the immortality of the soul was discussed. A man called Battie upheld the thesis that the soul was mortal. Richard Overton seconded, and declared that God had made man, and the whole of man, from the dust, and that consequently the whole of man would return to dust. A good part of the audience approved. There would thus seem to have been a fairly well organized group, that could command a certain amount of popular support, back of the writing of Man's Mortality.

6

Milton, who was "among the sectaries and in a world of discontent" in 1643-1644, must have known the Mortalists then.' At any rate, they would seem to have known him and his pamphlet on divorce. In Chapter VI of Man's Mortality, we find an allusion to "the tyrant Mezentius, that bound living men to dead bodyes." Shortly before the tract came out, Milton had written, in the first edition of his Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (August, 1643): " or as it may happen, a living soul bound to a dead corpse; a punishment too like that inflicted by the tyrant Mezentius." It is only too likely that Milton was considered as potentially among the sectaries. But at this date, and for a good while still, there is no reason to think that he shared the ideas of the

6 P. 17.

6 That the pamphlet sold is evident from the fact that the edition of 1644 replaced in their proper context passages omitted by accident in 1643 and printed in that edition in fine, which proves that the usual trick of printing a new title page and sticking it on the unsold copies was not practised in this case. In other words, the edition of 1643 was sold out.

7 Cf. Masson, III, 156, 188, 262-63.

8 Ed. 1643, p. 44.

→ Prose Works, III, 249.

Mortalists.10 His views, however, underwent considerable change during his long silence from 1645 to 1649, probably in part as the result of conversations with his new friends, and, as we shall see, there is fairly good ground for suspecting that he collaborated in the edition of 1655. Whoever held the pen, Overton or Wrighter, he was secretary to a group, and Milton was in the group when the London edition came out.

I. THE EDITION OF 1643-164411

The title of the pamphlet is perhaps the most important part of it, and indeed, nearly sufficient unto itself:

MANS MORTALLITIE OR A TREATISE Wherein 'tis proved, both Theologically and Phylosophically, that whole Man (as a rationall Creature) is a Compound wholly mortall, contrary to that common distinction of Soule and Body: And that the present going of the Soule into Heaven or Hell is a meer Fiction: And that at the Resurrection is the beginning of our immortallity, and then Actuall Condemnation, and Salvation, and not before. . . .

...

At the head of the first page, this summary is repeated:

A Treatise proving Man (quatinus Animal rationale) a Compound wholly Mortall.

Chapter I is entitled:

Of Mans Creation, Fall, Restitution, and Resurrection how they disprove the Opinion of the Soul. . . .

From the beginning, we meet with the arguments, quotations, and expressions most familiar to us in Milton:

when God had moulded, formed, and compleatly proportionated Adam of the Dust of the ground, he breathed in his face the breath of Lives, and Man became a living Soul: Gen. 2. 7. That 10 See above, p. 47.

11 The 1644 edition was only the 1643 edition typographically rearranged and corrected. My citations are from the latter.

is, he gave that lifelesse Body a communicative rationall Facultie or property of life, in his kind: And so it became a living Creature, or compleate aveрwπоs, of whom was the Woman, both innocent and free from sin, and so from Death and mortality: for the wages of Sin is Death, Rom. 5. 12. I. Cor. 15. 56. Thus Man was gloriously immortall, yet no longer a Creature incorruptable, then [= than] during innocent. . .

12

The quotation from Genesis 2:7 is perhaps the most important passage of the Bible for Milton. In the De doctrina, he uses it, as Overton does here, to prove the unity of man:

man became a living soul; whence it may be inferred that man is a living being, intrinsically and properly one and individual, not compound and separable. . . .18

13

In the two passages, the Spirit brings about a similar transformation of matter:

In the two passages also the word "animal" is insisted upon. Overton writes at the top of his page: "Man (quatenus animal rationale)," and Milton adds to his paragraph: "Hence the word used in Genesis to signify soul is, interpreted by the apostle I Cor. XV, 45, 'animal." Here are then two rather short passages, a page 13 Prose Works, IV, 188. 14 Ibid., IV, 188.

12 Pp. 1-2.

in each case, which contain several identical ideas and even expressions.

The equivalence of Sin and Death, with the covering quotation, "The wages of sin is death," may be found anywhere. Both Milton and Overton, however, derive from it the same unorthodox conclusion. Overton points out humorously the error of those who say that the body alone dies as a consequence of sin:

... then the principall or efficient cause deepest in the Transgression was lesse punished, then the instrumentall, the Body being but the Soules instrument whereby it acts and moves: as if a Magistrate should hang the Hatchet, and spare the Man that beate a mans braines out with it.

15

But for the humorous comparison, which would have been out of place in the De doctrina, this is precisely Milton's argument:

. . what could be more absurd than that the mind, which is the part principally offending, should escape the threatened death, and that the body alone. . . should pay the penalty of sin by undergoing death, though not implicated in the transgression? 16

And Overton's chapter ends on the words, " let us see how it commensurates with the universallity of Scripture and Reason," of which we find an echo in Milton:

17

that the spirit of man should be separate from the body . . is nowhere said in Scripture, and the doctrine is evidently at variance with nature and reason. 18

In both cases the method of proof is the same: Scripture must be upheld by reason; in any other case, one interprets Scripture at will.

Chapter II" Scriptures to prove this Mortallity"—

15 Pp. 4-5.

16 Prose Works, IV, 271.

17 P. 5.

18 Prose Works, IV, 189.