Bad Nourishment: John Milton, Ezekiel's Roll, and Prophetic Indigestion

Abstract

In the prefatory letter to Parliament and the Westminster Assembly in the second edition of The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1644), a treatise that alarmed many contemporary readers by marshaling Scripture to argue in favor of divorce, Milton begins by making a remarkable allusion to Ezekiel. Rather than invoking the prophet's consumption of a sacred text (Ezek. 2.8-3.3) in support of his own project of biblical interpretation, Milton reframes Ezekiel's visionary experience as a heedless rather than holy ingestion of the divine word:Though vertue be commended for the most perswasive in her Theory; and Conscience in the plain demonstration of the spirit, finds most evincing; yet whether it be the secret of divine will, or the original blindnesse we are born in, so it happ'ns for the most part, that Custome still is silently receiv'd for the best instructer. Except it be, because her method is so glib and easie, in some manner like to that vision of Ezekiel, rowling up her sudden book of implicit knowledge, for him that will, to take and swallow down at pleasure; which proving but of bad nourishment in the concoction, as it was heedlesse in the devouring, puffs up unhealthily, a certaine big face of pretended learning, mistaken among credulous men, for the wholsome habit of soundnesse and good constitution; but is indeed no other, then that swoln visage of counterfeit knowledge.(CPW 2: 222-23)