Areopagitica

Milton uses food repeatedly as an illustration to explain his point of view on censorship and free will. He likens literature to meat: “For books are as meats and viands are: some of good, some of evil substance; and yet God, in that un-apocryphal vision, said without exception, Rise, Peter, kill and eat, leaving the choice to each man’s discretion” (348-49). He is referring to the moment in the New Testament in which Jewish dietary restrictions from the Old Testament are abolished. Whereas once men were beholden to strict regulations, now they live under the rule of free will. They must take responsibility for the health of their bodies. But unlike “bad meats,” which Milton claims “will scarce breed good nourishment in the healthiest concoction” (349), “bad books” can be used for positive purposes by a discerning and educated reader. With meat, God leaves “the choice to each man’s discretion” (348). For an unhealthy stomach, whether meat is “wholesome” or “unwholesome” (349) makes no difference, just as a “naughty mind” can use good books for mischief. By nullifying religious dietary laws, God gives man the opportunity to practice temperance. Similarly, “he then also, as before, left arbitrary the dieting and repasting of our minds, as wherein every mature man might have to exercise his own leading capacity” (349). Food, like all pleasures, is a temptation that men must learn to approach with moderation and self-restraint.

Milton merges the image of food with his discussion of truth, education, and free will by referring to Adam and the fruit from the tree of knowledge. He explains: “Many there be that complain of divine providence for suffering Adam to transgress” (356), but he calls those complainers fools, asserting that it was necessary for Adam to exert his free will to acquire knowledge of good and evil. The fruit represents Milton’s perspective on censorship, since “[i]t was from out the rind of one apple tasted that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world” (350). This induction into free will and knowledge requires man to face both good and evil since they are intertwined within the same fruit. A person cannot simply be a follower; one must be a thinker and an analyzer to sort through the knowledge brought by the apple. Of his proposed annulment of the censorship decree, Milton states: “Yet this only is what I request to gain from reason, that it may be held a dangerous and suspicious fruit, as certainly it deserves, for the tree that bore it, until I can dissect one by one the properties it has” (347). He is asking Parliament to allow the public to eat the apple as it is and develop the spiritual strength and discernment necessary to determine what is good and what is evil rather than attempting to slice up the apple as one would for a child.