Paradise Regained and the Restoration Church of England: Pieties in Dialogue

Piety manuals were bestseller material in Restoration England. The vast appetite for such books in the decades following the return of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 is exemplified by the case of The Practice of Christian Graces; or, The Whole Duty of Man. Published anonymously in 1657 and heavily influenced by previous popular manuals written by Henry Hammond (Practicall Catechisme, 1644/45) and Jeremy Taylor (Holy Living, 1650), it is estimated that The Whole Duty of Man “enjoyed the greatest number of editions [of all contemporary piety manuals] between 1660 and 1711, perhaps forty-five in all, again probably enough copies (135,000) for every tenth family.”¹ On top of this there were three well-received sequels: The Gentleman’s Calling (1662), The Causes of the Decay of Christian Piety (1667), and The Government of the Tongue (1667). These books presented practical guidance in an easily comprehensible style on how to live a life of devotion, and they were structured to promote methodical, repeated reading. The Whole Duty of Man was carefully divided into 17 partitions: “One whereof being read every Lords Day the Whole may be read over Thrice in the Year.”² It is little wonder that such books were valued so highly as gifts for confirmation candidates, the young, and the deserving poor.³

Despite their apparently innocuous, pious content, such manuals were not politically inert. They were written and endorsed by senior clergymen in the restored Church of England; it has been proven almost beyond doubt that the author of The Whole Duty of Man was the clergyman Richard Allestree, an active royalist during the 1640s and 1650s, who was elevated to the position of Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford in 1663.⁴ More controversial publications written by Conformist clergy argued explicitly that the piety espoused in The Whole Duty of Man ought to be emulated in thanksgiving for the miraculous return of the Stuart monarchy and episcopal government in 1660. Words from a sermon delivered to the congregation of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London on the Sunday following the coronation of Charles II suggest the preacher’s indebtedness to such manuals and the ideals of “holy living” that inspired them: “For the whole Duty of a Christian doth consist in two things; first (by way of privation) in casting off the works of Darkness, in denying ungodliness and worldly lusts; next (by way of Acquisition) in putting on the armour of light; Living soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world. Tit. 2. 12.”⁵ As another passage in this sermon makes clear, pious living was to be central to the new political settlement, which would consist of the king and his bishops (“untill our Bishops receive their Right, though we are glad to have our King, we may rationally fear we shall not hold him”), working in harmony to correct the deleterious effects of the previous rebellion and “tyranny.”⁶ In arguments such as this, “religious and political duty … became indistinguishable (just as religious dissent became indistinguishable from sedition): good Christians are loyal subjects.”⁷ The ideological concerns of the piety manuals themselves, however, are harder to pin down. They do consider loyalty to the magistrate to be crucially important, but not solely so: it was only one part of the “holy living” phenomenon, and to focus on it reduces such works to the status of mere Conformist propaganda. Indeed, the number of popular Nonconformist imitations of these ostensibly Anglican piety manuals is testimony to the breadth and depth of their reception in Restoration England.⁸

Paradise Regained also participates in this context of politicized piety, exploring the concept in both form and thought.⁹ In the poem, Jesus acts in accordance with a notion of pious living that is bound up with his burgeoning awareness of his messianic vocation. Milton’s Jesus declares the cessation of all oracles with the statement that God has sent “his spirit of truth henceforth to dwell / In pious hearts, an inward oracle / To all truth requisite for men to know.”^10...