might have stood,-no decree necessitating his freewill, but subsequent, though not in time, yet in order, to causes which were in his own power,-they might methinks be persuaded to absolve both God and us. These are the religious opinions which he seems to have held up to at least the thirty-seventh year of his age; and we have hardly any further indications of his theologic sentiments for more than twenty years, when Paradise Lost was given to the world. In this poem the Arian doctrine respecting the Son was expressed in so plain and unequivocal a manner, that were it not for the cause which we shall hereafter assign, one might wonder that every reader did not discern it. He would also seem to have given up the doctrine of infant baptism; for when speaking of the charge given to the Apostles to teach all nations, he adds : : Them who shall believe Baptizing in the profluent stream, the sign For death like that which the Redeemer died;-xii. 441. which words will properly apply only to grown persons, and we shall presently see were meant only to apply to such persons. With respect to predestination, any one who reads the language respecting it which the poet has ventured to put into the mouth of the Almighty (iii. 98 seq.) will be inclined to suspect that his opinions on that subject also had undergone some alteration. Finally, in his short treatise Of true Religion, Heresy, etc., published in 1673, we meet with that fine passage which we shall give below, on toleration, which breathes the full spirit of Christian charity, suitable to the nature of so great a poet and so heavenly-minded a man as Milton. Such then was the knowledge of Milton's theologic sentiments which the world possessed till the end of the first quarter of the present century, when the Latin manuscript of the treatise on Christian Doctrine which had been discovered in the State Paper Office was printed, with an excellent translation by Dr. Sumner, now Bishop of Winchester.* This, as already observed, is in every respect a most remarkable work, as exhibiting the unbiassed-as far as was possible at the time-opinions of a man of the highest mental powers. From Scripture alone he deduces his proofs; and while the theologic works of the age are overlaid with quotations from Greek and Latin writers, disfiguring the text or covering the margin, here we find a perfect freedom from such dependence and bondage. It were indeed to be desired, but it was hardly attainable at the time, that the mind of the writer had been less enthralled to the mere letter of Scripture, and, though he never actually asserts it, to the theory of Plenary Inspiration; for he then might have escaped some of the errors into which he has fallen, all of which may be traced to this source. It is a remarkable fact that the writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries seem to have taken for granted the divine origin of the Scriptures and their plenary inspiration. Thus the divines who had the task of compiling the Articles of the Church of England never even mention the inspiration of Scripture; in consequence of which omission (for such it surely was) the clergy, not merely the laity, of that Church are at perfect liberty to form what opinions they may please on the subject, and to determine on critical grounds what parts of Scripture are genuine and what are suspicious. This is the more * Our subsequent quotations shall be from this translation in the quarto edition. The italics in them are in general our own. to be wondered at, as they must have been well aware that Luther and Zwinglè had both rejected the Apocalypse, and that Luther also had at least strong doubts as to the genuineness of the Epistles of James and Jude, and Calvin as to that of the Second of Peter. In like manner neither here nor elsewhere do we find anything of moment on what are now called the Evidences of Christianity; all was taken for granted. Even the treatise of Grotius appears to have been intended for the convincing of Mohammedans and heathens, as those born where the Gospel was preached were thought to require no proofs of what was held to be as certain as the demonstrations of mathematics. This is however no longer the case. The evidence of Christianity is now recognized as being only moral evidence, and therefore subject to all the doubt and uncertainty belonging to evidence of that nature. It is therefore to be hoped that the following observations may not prove unacceptable to persons of a serious cast of thought. They are intended. to supply the deficiency of Milton's theologic work. It is surprising how few persons are able to give any valid 'reason for the hope that is in them.' Most believe because their fathers before them believed. To some, such as Luther and Johnson, the main argument is the accomplishment of prophecy; and yet-it is strange how it could have escaped the acute intellect of Johnson— this is actually no argument at all, at least not a primary one; for before we can assert that an event was foretold, we must prove that it happened, which in this case is the quod erat demonstrandum; if the truth of the Gospel history is proved, we have all that was required. Many of the other arguments are not much stronger than this; even that on which Paley rests almost exclusively is by no means unanswerable, and we find at length that nothing can be firmly relied on but the miracles, or rather the one great miracle, the Resurrection; and the inquiry must be, what proof there is of the truth of that stupendous event. Have we the testimony of any sensible, honest eyewitness? It is very doubtful whether we have or not. Two of the Gospels, it is true, are ascribed by the tradition of the Church to two of the apostles; but we meet with this tradition first in Irenæus, a writer who did not flourish till the end of the second century, and whose critical acumen was by no means great. It seems moreover almost morally impossible that the two narratives could have both been written by eye-witnesses, and we have nothing but the aforesaid tradition in support of the assertion of either being the work of an apostle. In this uncertainty, whither then are we to have recourse? Here Providence has preserved us an evidence which, to our mind at least, is invincible, that afforded by the Epistles of the Apostle Paul. In the whole compass of literature there is no work of which the genuineness is more certain than of these epistles, at least the first four, of which alone we will speak at present, and against which even the wildest scepticism has been unable to raise any doubt. They stand on precisely the same ground as those of Cicero, i. e. they have all the internal marks of authenticity, and their genuineness has never been disputed or even suspected. What we would say then to any honest inquirer after the truth is this: Read the two Epistles to the Corinthians carefully; mark the clearness and cogency of reasoning, the sound good sense and good feeling, the noble disinterestedness, which appear in every line of them; and M when have done so, you if you can lay your hand on your heart and say with truth and sincerity that you can suspect the writer to have been a dupe or an impostor, deceived himself or desirous of deceiving others, we will confess that we have no further arguments to offer, and that we abandon all hopes of ever convincing you. It seems to us however almost impossible that such should be the case with any sincere inquirer after the truth. In the first of these epistles-written to those who could contradict and expose him if he asserted anything that he could not prove, and who would have been but too glad to do so he asserts in the strongest terms that he himself had seen Jesus Christ after he had been put to death; and he mentions several other persons who to his knowledge, or at least the best of his belief, had also seen him. He further affirms that he had received the power of performing miracles. The second epistle proves that his assertions had not been, or could not be, contradicted. We thus have what we were in search of-the testimony of one whom we may almost regard as an eyewitness to the truth of the Resurrection. In confirmation of this evidence of St. Paul we may add the last thirteen chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, which have evidently been taken from the diary or journal of one of Paul's companions,—in all probability Timothy,*-and * This theory, and no other, will account for the omission in the Acts of the toils and dangers undergone by St. Paul, and mentioned by himself, 2 Cor. xi. 23 seq. They had occurred in the first years of his labours, and before he had met with Timothy. It may also account for the abrupt termination of the Acts; for, as the tradition is probably correct that St. Paul perished in the Neronian persecution, it would appear that he wrote his Epistle to the Philippians, in which he mentions his intention of sending Timothy to them, a little before that event, and Timothy therefore ended his journal when he left Rome. The writer of the Acts then finding no more documents, stopped at that point. |
