returned to England; but at what exact period we know not. He had been compelled to confess all he knew respecting them; and had an interview with Sir Joseph Williamson upon the subject. He was accordingly advised or invited, we may suppose, to deliver the manuscripts to the Secretary of State; and thus might be led to expect, by this voluntary cession of them, the forgiveness of his College after his slighting their commands, and their admission of him at last to the honour which appears to have been long withheld, namely, that of a major fellowship of his College, till May 1679.

X

Such was the person, who transcribed the first part of the manuscript, apparently for the press; the collections or extracts made at different times, and for a long period perhaps, together with amendments or alterations, being now arranged, or assumed to be fit for publication. For the remainder of the manuscript is in an entirely different hand, being a strong upright character, undoubtedly the same hand which transcribed the beautiful Sonnet of Milton, beginning Methought I saw my late espoused Saint, which is now among the manuscripts of Milton in Trinity College, Cambridge; and this scribe is believed to be his daughter Deborah, whom Wood expressly calls his amanuensis. This part of the volume is interspersed with interlineations and cor

y

* See what is presently said of the collation of the writing in the Treatise and this Sonnet.

y Fasti Oxon.

rections, and in some places with small slips of writing pasted in the margin. The corrections are in a different hand-writing, the writer of which can1 not now be ascertained.

Thus I have endeavoured satisfactorily to account for the long-lost theological treatise of Milton having been deposited in his Majesty's State-Paper Office. The conjecture, acutely proposed and ably illustrated, of its having found its way into this treasury of national documents, in consequence of a supposed connection of Cyriack Skinner with the popish plot in 1677, is therefore now at rest. Dr. Sumner indeed anticipated the probability, that some such discovery would be made, as I have related; and, after Barrow's letter was found, communicated to me his new conjecture nearly tallying with the facts. Of Skinner, a Benedictine, denounced by Titus Oates in 1678 as a confederate in the alleged conspiracy of the preceding year, and conjectured also to have been implied in Milton's papers, we may now consign the memory to oblivion; since a Benedictine could not, as Daniel Skinner was, be the fellow of a Protestant college; nor, as Cyriack appears to have been, a married man. I have only further to observe, that if Cyriack Skinner had been suspected as a conspirator, and if his papers had been seized, such circumstances would hardly have escaped the minute inquiries of Anthony Wood and of Toland; who both say, while Cyriack Skinner too By Mr. Lemon and Dr. Sumner. Introduct. p. x.

was living, that the manuscript of Milton at the close of the seventeenth century was then, or lately had been, in his hands. Cyriack was too discreet to undeceive others. The offence, which had been given, was pardoned; and the obnoxious treatise was reposed upon the shelves in the Old StatePaper Office at Whitehall, till in the year 1823 Mr. Lemon, the deputy-keeper of the State-Papers, in his indefatigable researches, discovered it loosely wrapped in two or three sheets of printed paper, which, it is curious to add, were proof-sheets of Horace, one of the publications of Daniel Elzevir. The State-Letters of Milton were in the same parcel. And the whole was enclosed in a cover directed, To Mr. Skinner, Merch.

With respect to the real title of the manuscript, Aubrey and Wood are supposed to have been in error; because they call it Idea Theologiæ, and it now is, De Doctrina Christiana ex sacris duntaxat libris petita disquisitionum libri duo posthumi. Yet no doubt the title was at first, as Wood and Aubrey have given it. The Idea was adopted. in conformity to example; from Milton having seen, for instance, what was addressed to his friend Hartlib in 1651, the learned Pell's Idea of Mathematicks ; or, at a later period, from being informed of the opposition to Hobbes in Dr. Templer's Idea Theologia Leviathanis. An Idea Eloquentiæ also appeared about this time. The present title was probably chosen, after his death, by those into whose

hands the manuscript had passed, and whose endea vour was to make it publick.

These are circumstances which illustrate the external evidence of the treatise as the work of Milton. We shall soon observe what would be conclusive as to this position, if such testimony had been wanting, I mean internal evidence.

The entrance of the treatise exhibits the great poet explaining his reason for compiling it. "I deemed it safest and most advisable to compile for myself," he says, "by my own labour and study, some original treatise, which should be always at hand, derived solely from the Word of God itself." Wood appears to have been informed of this determination, as he mentions the poet's "framing a Body of Divinity out of the Bible." Perhaps not satisfied altogether with the systems of theology which he was wont to consult, Milton, so early as when he wrote his Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, could not forbear, in his remarks upon "custom and prejudice," sarcastically to describe "youth run ahead into the easy creek of a system or a medulla." And afterwards, in his Considerations how to remove hirelings out of the Church, he mentions, I had almost said in reference to his

z Preface to the Treatise. I cite at present the translation of the work by Dr. Sumner for the benefit of every reader. And I may assure those, who understand not Latin, that the translation is exact and faithful.

"the helps

design of the very work before us, which we enjoy to make more easy the attainment of Christian Religion by the meanest; namely, the entire Scripture translated into English with plenty of notes; and somewhere or other, I trust, may be found some BODY OF DIVINITY, as they call it, without school-terms and metaphysical notions, which have obscured rather than explained our religion, and made it seem difficult without cause." Hence his frequent appeals to the Scriptures only; as in his reference to "b the Protestant religion reforming herself rightly by the Scriptures;" and to "the deciding our controversies only by the Scriptures." Hence his reminding the Parliament of their profession ❝d to assert only the true Protestant Christian religion, as it is contained in the Holy Scriptures" and his own assertion, "that we can have no other ground in matters of religion but only from the Scriptures." And yet I am persuaded, that this is the very "tractate," which, in the earlier part of his life, he had begun "to collect from the ablest divines, Amesius, Wollebius," and others, as the ' et cetera of his nephew, who tells us of the compilation, implies; and which, from time

f

a Dr. Sumner is of the same opinion.

b Reason of Church Gov. B. ii.

c Animadv. on the Remonstrant's Defence. Treatise of Civ. Power in Eccl. Causes.

e See the whole passage, describing this tractate, cited from Phillips, p. 312.

f Phillips adds to the et cetera the notice of resuming the subject of this treatise, but never refers to it again.