did not scruple to accuse Milton of being a member of a Popish Club. The Popish lord is not forgotten, or unknown, who brought a petition to the late regicides and usurpers, signed by about five hundred principal Papists in England; wherein was promised, upon condition of a toleration of the Popish religion here by law, their joint resolution to abjure and exclude the family of the Stuarts for ever from their undoubted right to the Crown. Who more disheartened the loyalty and patience of your best subjects than their confident scribblers, White and others? And MILTON was a known frequenter of a Popish Club.' See the Address or Dedication to the King prefixed to 'A true Narrative of the Horrid Plot, &c. of the Popish party against the life of his Sacred Majesty, &c. By Titus Oates, D.D. folio, Lond. 1679.' This charge was subsequently copied into A History of all the Popish Plots, &c. from the first year of Elizabeth to this present year 1684, by Thos. Long, Prebendary of Exeter;' who says, p. 93. Milton was by very many suspected to be a Papist; and if Dr. Oates may be believed, was a known frequenter of the Popish Club, though he were Cromwell's Secretary.' The evidence furnished by the present publication will show how improbable it is that Milton, who, even within the precincts of the Papal dominions, had been at so little pains to moderate his zeal for the reformed religion, as to be exposed to insult and personal danger in consequence of his known principles, should have consented to sit at the same secret council-board with his alleged confederates. See particularly p. 239, on the marriage of priests; p. 318, on purgatory; p. 414, &c. on transubstantiation; p. 420, on the sacrifice of the mass; p. 421, &c. on the five Papistical sacraments; p. 427, on the authority of the Roman pontiffs; p. 451, on traditions; p. 464, on councils. On the subject of Divorce, the line of argument pursued in this treatise coincides with the well-known opinions which Milton has elsewhere so zealously advocated. To his heterodoxy on this point must now be added, what hitherto has been unsuspected, his belief in the lawfulness of polygamy, to which he appears to have been led by the difficulty he found in reconciling the commonly received opinion with the practice of the patriarchs. It seems however no less easy to conceive that the Supreme Lawgiver might dispense with his own laws in the early ages of the world, for the sake of multiplying the population in a quicker ratio, than that marriages between brothers and sisters might be then permitted on account of the paucity of inhabitants on the face of the earth. Yet the existence of the latter practice in the primeval ages has never been alleged as a sufficient authority for See Lightfoot, II. 95. the intermarriage of so near relations, now that the reason for the original permission has ceased to operate. It should be remembered likewise that polygamy seems to have ceased even among the Jews previously to the advent of our Lord, as we meet with no instance of it recorded in the New Testament. Something too, must be conceded to the Judaizing spirit of Milton's age, which led him, in his deference for the authority and examples of the Jewish dispensation, to make the Christianity of. the New Testament subservient to the religion of the Old. But Milton's views, both with respect to divorce and polygamy, may be considered to have been materially influenced by the low estimation in which he held the female sex. Whatever may be thought of the truth of the stories current of his behaviour as a husband and a father, it is undeniable that he held strong notions respecting the inequality of the sexes, and shewed a strong disposition to support in his practice his own theory of this 'indelible character of priority, which God had marked the man with.' If the character of Eve be objected, it should be remembered, that she is represented as passively obedient to the will of Adam by divine prescription. That this was his habitual and settled opinion is evident from the frequency with which he introduces it in his prose works, as well as in his poetry; witness the passages quoted in the notes page 224 and Book II. chap. xv.; witness also the eagerness with which he fixes on the submission of Salmasius to the tyranny of his wife, as one of the topics of his splendid though bitter invective against his political adversary. Doubts have frequently been entertained as to the real sentiments of Milton respecting the second person of the Trinity. His commentators and biographers indeed have striven to rescue him from the charge of any heretical taint. Newton is assiduous in praising his theological views, although he once so far qualifies his assertion, as to content himself with pronouncing that Milton is generally truly orthodox.' In his life, however, after noticing that some had inclined to believe that Milton was an Arian, he asserts that there are more express passages scattered among his works to overthrow this opinion than to confirm it. So also Dr. Trapp Neque alienum videtur a studiis viri theologi poema magna ex parte theologicum; omni ex parte (rideant, per me licet, atque ringantur athei et infideles) orthodoxum." Even • Preface to his translation of Paradise Lost. See also Todd's Life, pp. 156-7; Symmons', p. 443. Johnson, who would not have spared his heterodoxies, had he suspected them, appears to have thought that his differences with the Church of England only regarded the form of ecclesiastical government, and pronounces him to have been untainted by any heretical peculiarity of opinion;" more truly did Addison say that 'if Milton's majesty forsakes him anywhere, it is in those parts of his poem where the Divine Persons are introduced as speakers.' And Warton has acknowledged the justice of Mr. Calton's remark on a memorable passage in Paradise Regained (I. 161-167), that not a word is there said of the Son of God, but what a Socinian, or at least an Arian, would allow. The truth is, that whoever takes the trouble of comparing with each other the passages referred to in the note below, will find real and important contradictions in the language of Milton on this subject. That these contradictions should exist, will cease to appear extraordinary after a perusal of the chapter On the Son of God' in the ensuing pages. It is there asserted that the Son existed in the beginning, and was the first of the whole creation; by whose delegated power all things were made in heaven and earth; begotten, not by natural necessity, but by the decree of the Father, within the limits of time; endued with the divine nature and substance, but distinct from and inferior to the Father; one with the Father in love and unanimity of will, and receiving everything, in his filial as well as in his mediatorial character, from the Father's gift. This summary will be sufficient to show that the opinions of Milton were in reality nearly Arian, ascribing to the Son as high a share of divinity as was compatible with the denial of his self-existence and eternal generation, but not admitting his co-equality and co-essentiality with the Father. Had he avoided the calling Christ a creature, he might have been ranked with that class of Semi-Arians who were denominated Homoiousians, among whom Dr. Samuel Clarke must be reckcned. On the whole, his Chapter on the Son of God may be considered as more nearly coincident with the opinions of Whitby in his Last Thoughts than of any other modern divine. Both 9 See his Life. 1 Paradise Lost, III. 62-64. 138-140. 305-307. 250. 384-415. V. 603–605. 719, 720. VI. 676884. 742–745. X. 63–67. 85, 86. 225, 226. The omissions of Milton might lead a careful reader to the same conclusion. Had his views respecting the supreme divinity of the Son been different, he would surely have availed himself of this sublime topic in his hymns of the angels in the presence of the Father; nor would he have been silent respecting it in the vision at the end of the poem, where Michael unfolds to Adam the doctrine of the atonement. Still less, had he entertained other sentiments, would he have selected the temptation as the main incident of Paradise Regained. acknowledge Christ to be verus Deus, though not summus Deus ; both admit his true dominion and his Godhead, though not original, independent, and underived; both assert his right to honour and worship, in virtue of the Father's gift; both deny his sameness of individual essence with the Father; and both maintain that he derives all his excellencies and power from the Father, and consequently is inferior to the Father. That he entertained different views at other periods of his life, is evident from several expressions scattered through his works. The following stanza occurs in the ode on the morning of Christ's Nativity, written, according to Warton, as a college exercise at the age of twenty-one. 6 That glorious form, that light unsufferable, And that far-beaming blaze of majesty, Wherewith he wont at Heav'n's high council table He laid aside; and here with us to be, Forsook the courts of everlasting day, And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay. A few years afterwards he wrote thus in his first controversial work : Witness the Arians and Pelagians, which were slain by the heathen for Christ's sake, yet we take both these for no true friends of Christ."3 In the same tract he speaks of the 'hard measure' dealt out to the 'faithful and invincible Athanasius ;' and in the treatise On Prelatical Episcopacy,' published shortly afterwards, he holds the following important language: Suppose Tertullian had made an imparity where none was originally; should he move us, that goes about to prove an imparity between God the Father and God the Son ?......Believe him now for a faithful relater of tradition, whom you see such an unfaithful expounder of the Scripture." Again;...... Lest the Arians, and Pelagians in particular, should infect the people by their hymns, and forms of prayer.' '5 So late even as the year 1660, at the beginning of which he wrote and published his Treatise entitled The ready and easy way to establish a free Commonwealth,' &c., he apostrophizes the two first persons of the Trinity in language which seems to imply that he then admitted their coequality. Thus much I should perhaps have said, though I were sure I should have spoken only to trees and stones; and had none to cry to but with the prophet, "O earth, earth, earth!" to tell the very soil itself what her perverse inhabitants 2 See also Paradise Lost, III. 303–307. 3 Of Reformation in England. Prose Works, II. 371 • Animadversions on the Remonstrant's Defence. III. 57, are deaf to. Nay, though what I have spoke should happen (which those suffer not, who didst create mankind free! nor thou next, who didst redeem us from being servants of man!) to be the last words of our expiring liberty. His language, however, was very different in his latest work, Of True Religion, &c., which it is important to remember was published only about a year before his death, and where, consequently, if at all, we might expect to meet with sentiments corresponding with those contained in the following treatise. As the passage may be considered ambiguous, it will be proper to quote the context. Some will say, with Christians it is otherwise, whom God hath promised by his spirit to teach all things. True, all things necessary to salvation; but the hottest disputes among Protestants, calmly and charitably inquired into, will be found less than such. The Lutheran holds consubstantiation; an error indeed, but not mortal. The Calvinist is taxed with predestination, and to make God the author of sin, not with any dishonourable thought of God, but it may be over-zealously asserting his absolute power, not without plea of Scripture. The Anabaptist is accused of denying infants their right of baptism; again they say, they deny nothing but what the Scripture denies them. The Arian and Socinian are charged to dispute against the Trinity: they affirm to believe the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost according to Scripture and the Apostolic creed; as for terms of trinity, triniunity, co-essentiality, tri-personality, and the like, they reject them as scholastic notions, not to be found in Scripture, which by a general Protestant maxim is plain and perspicuous abundantly to explain its own meaning in the properest words belonging to so high a matter, and so necessary to be known; a mystery indeed in their sophistic subtleties, but in Scripture a plain doctrine. Their other opinions are of less moment. They dispute the satisfaction of Christ, or rather the word 'satisfaction,' as not scriptural: but they acknowledge him both God and their Saviour. The Arminian lastly is condemned for setting up free will against free grace; but that imputation he disclaims in all his writings, and grounds himself largely upon Scripture only. To a cursory reader it would appear at first sight that the words 'their sophistic subtleties' referred to the grammatical antecedents, the Arian and Socinian.' But it is evident, on a closer examination, that the whole spirit of the passage requires us to refer them to the holders of trinitarian opinions, or scholastic notions;' inasmuch as the very object of Milton is to show that the Arian and Socinian hold what is in Scripture a plain doctrine,' but reject what they consider unscrip Prose Works, II. 138. |