1. Milton and Bunyan.—Whilst Clarendon and his allies were fortifying the legal position of the Church of England, the old Puritanism which they attempted to crush found a voice in literature. Milton, who had become blind, in consequence of his intense devotion to the service of the State, as the secretary of Cromwell, at last, after long preparation, gave to the world 'Paradise Lost,' in 1667. The poem was Puritan, not only because its main theme was the maintenance or destruction of the purity of a single human soul, but because it based that purity on obedience to the commands of the great Taskmaster; whilst, in the solemn cadence of its blank verse there is something to remind the reader of the stern world of duty, in the midst of which the nobler spirits of the Commonwealth and Protectorate had moved. As Milton was the poet of Puritanism, John Bunyan was the prose-poet of Dissent. He had himself fought as a soldier on the side of Parliament in the Civil War, and, having become an earnest Baptist preacher, he continued to preach after the Restoration, and, boldly defying the law, was requited with a long imprisonment. His masterpiece, 'The Pilgrim's Progress,' was probably not written till 1675, but many of his religious writings were published before that date. His force of imagination made him the greatest allegorist the world has seen. His moral aim lay in the preservation of a few choice souls from the perils and temptations of a society wholly given up to evil.
John Milton in 1670.
2. Butler and the Dramatists.—There was, doubtless, much in the world round Milton and Bunyan to awake indignation. Samuel Butler was a man of genius, but his 'Hudibras,' which appeared in 1663, shows but poorly by the side of 'Paradise Lost' and 'The Pilgrim's Progress.' This mock-heroic account of a Puritan knight is the work of a strong writer, who can find nothing better to do with the warriors and disputants who had lately controlled England than to laugh at them. The mass of Restoration poetry was far weaker than 'Hudibras,' whilst its dramatic writers vied with one another in the expression of licentious thought either in prose or in the regular heroic couplets which were, at this time, in vogue. It was, indeed, impossible to put much human passion into two neat lines which had to be made to rhyme; but at Court love-making had been substituted for passion, and the theatres, now re-opened, after they had been suppressed by the Puritans, were meant for the vicious Court and not for the people at large.
3. Reason and Science.—The satire of Butler, and the licentiousness of the dramatists, both sprang from a reaction against the severe morality of the Puritans; but it would have been a poor prospect for the generation following that of Puritan repression if the age had not produced any positive work of its own. Its work was to be found in the increase of respect for human reason. In the better minds amongst the clergy of the Restoration, the reasonable character of the Church of England was more than ever predominant. A few, such as Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, and Stillingfleet, Dean of St. Paul's, were even anxious to find some way of comprehension by which Dissenters might be reconciled to the Church, whilst others, like Morley and Barrow, attached far more importance to arguments addressed to the understanding, than to that uniformity of ceremonial which had been so dear to the mind of Laud. Still more important was the spread of devotion to natural science. The Royal Society, founded for its promotion in 1660, brought together men who thought more about air-pumps than about the mysteries of theology; and it was mainly the results of their inquiries which made any renewed triumph of Puritanism impossible. In 'The Pilgrim's Progress' the outer world was treated as a mere embarrassment to the pursuit of spiritual perfection. By the Fellows of the Royal Society it was treated as calling for reverent investigation, in order that, in the words of Bacon, nature might be brought into the service of man by his obedience to her laws.
4. Charles II. and Toleration. 1667.—In the long run the rise of the scientific spirit would conduce to religious toleration, because scientific men have no reason to desire the suppression of any form of religious belief. The first step taken after the restoration in the direction of religious toleration had come from Charles (see p. [581]), who was actuated partly by a sneaking fondness for the Roman Catholic Church and partly by dislike of being dictated to by Parliament. He therefore, after Clarendon's fall, gave his confidence mainly to men who, for various reasons, were inclined to support his wishes in this respect.