[2]Milton emphasises the need for an open dialogue on these matters, and claims that religious sects are an important part of understanding truth because they serve as reformers.
He reveals his personal connection to ministering by relating to his early calling towards such an occupation when he says,[6] "the difficult labours of the Church, to whose service by the intentions of my parents and friends I was destin'd of a child, and in mine own resolutions".
[9] In the preface of Book II, Milton gives many of his views about literature and genres:[10] Time servs not now, and perhaps I might seem to profuse to give any certain account of what the mind at home in the spacious circuits of her musing hath liberty to propose to her self, though of highest hope, and hardest attempting, whether that Epick form whereof the two poems of Homer, and those other two of Virgil and Tasso are a diffuse, and the book of Job a brief model: or whether the rules of Aristotle herein are strictly to be kept, or nature to be follow'd... Or whether those Dramatick constitutions, wherein Sophocles and Euripides raigne shall be found more doctrinal and exemplary to a Nation, the Scripture also affords us a divine pastoral Drama in the Song of Salomon constiting of two persons and a double Chorus, as Origen rightly judges.
And the Apocalyps of Saint John is the majestick image of a high and stately Tragedy, shutting up and intermingly her solemn Scenes and Acts with a sevenfold Chorus of halleluja's and harping symphonies... Or if occasion shall lead to imitat those magnifick Odes and Hymns wherein Pindarus and Callimachus are in most things worthy, some others in their frame judicious, in their matter most an end faulty: But those frequent songs throughout the law and prophets beyond all these, not in their divine argument alone, but in the very critical art of composition may be easily made appear over all the kinds of Lyrick poesy, to be incomparable.
[12] Milton agreed with those like Philip Sidney and Ben Jonson that literature required an ethical function, but he believed that their views were corrupted by their support of traditional power structures.