tend;* for, as he afterwards observes, it is only menaced to those who shall not believe, and "by unbelievers those only can be meant to whom Christ had been announced in the Gospel; for how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard?' Rom. x. 14." In Milton's view therefore, man, soul and body, after undergoing the toils and sufferings of this mortal life, sinks into a sleep which would be perpetual, i. e. what is regarded as annihilation, had it not been for the restoration effected by the Son, of which he next proceeds to treat.

This restoration comprises redemption and renovation. The former was effected by Christ at the price of his own blood, by his own voluntary act, in conformity with the eternal counsel and grace of God the Father. In Christ's character as Redeemer are to be considered his nature and office; the former of which, according to the views of the writer, having been already shown, the mystery, as it is frequently termed in Scripture, of his Incarnation comes next to be considered; and Milton commences this subject with the following just and Christian observations :

Since then this mystery is so great, we are admonished by that very consideration not to assert anything respecting it rashly or presumptuously on mere grounds of philosophical reasoning; not to add to it anything of our own; not even to adduce in its behalf any passage of Scripture of which the purpose may be doubtful, but to be contented with the clearest texts, however few in number. If we listen to such passages, and are willing to acquiesce in the simple truth of Scripture unencumbered by metaphysical comments, to how many prolix and preposterous arguments shall * On this point, as on some others, he would seem to have altered his views after he had composed Paradise Lost. He there says:"And now without redemption all mankind

Must have been lost, adjudged to death and hell

By doom severe, had not the Son of God," etc.-iii. 222.

we put an end! how much occasion of heresy shall we remove! how many ponderous dabblings in theology shall we cast out, purging the temple of God from the contamination of their rubbish! Nothing would be more plain and agreeable to reason, nothing more suitable to the understanding even of the meanest individual, than such parts of the Christian faith as are declared in Scripture to be necessary for salvation, if teachers, even of the Reformed Church, were as yet sufficiently impressed with the propriety of insisting on nothing but divine authority in matters relating to God, and of limiting themselves to the contents of the sacred volume. What is essential would easily appear, when freed from the perplexities of controversy; what is mysterious would be suffered to remain inviolate, and we should be fearful of overstepping the bounds of propriety in its investigation.

Milton rejects, as Scripture is silent on the point, the doctrine of the hypostatic union, as it is termed, namely, "that two natures are so combined in the one person of Christ, that he has a real and perfect subsistence in the one nature independently of that which properly belongs to the other, insomuch that two natures are comprehended in one person," i. e. that he is "perfect God and perfect man,” according to the Creed. “He took upon him,” says Zanchius, "not man, properly speaking, but the human nature. For the Logos, being in the womb of the Virgin, assumed the human nature, by forming a body of the substance of Mary, and creating at the same time a soul to animate it. Moreover such was his intimate and exclusive assumption of this nature, that it never had any separate existence independent of the Logos, but did then first subsist and has ever since subsisted in the Logos alone." Here Milton very justly observes, that one might infer that Zanchius had been an actual witness of the mystery which he describes so confidently.

Milton on the other hand, among other things, maintains that "if the human nature of Christ never had any

proper and independent subsistence, or if the Son did not take upon him that subsistence, it would have been no more possible for him to have been made very man, or even to have assumed the real and perfect substance or essence of man, than for the body of Christ to be present in the Sacrament, without quantity or local extension, as the Papists assert." His final opinion is, that "there is in Christ a mutual hypostatic union of two natures, i. e. of two essences, of two substances, and consequently of two persons; nor does this union prevent the respective properties of each from remaining individually distinct. That the fact is so is sufficiently certain: the mode of union is unknown to us; and it is best to be ignorant of what God wills should remain unknown."

In treating of the mediatorial office of Christ, when he comes to speak of his death Milton expresses his belief that this extended to his divine nature also. "For not a few passages of Scripture," says he, "intimate that his divine nature was subjected to death conjointly with his human: passages too clear to be explained away by the supposition of idiomatic language."

The satisfaction of Christ consisted in his fulfilling the law by perfect love to God and his neighbour, until the time when he laid down his life for his brethren, and in his paying "the required price for [i. e. instead of] all mankind." After citing the passages which support this last view, he subjoins: "It is in vain that the evidence of these texts is endeavoured to be evaded by those who maintain that Christ died, not in our stead and for our redemption, but merely for our advantage in the abstract, and as an example to mankind." He then triumphantly proves, in opposition to the Calvinists, that this satisfac

tion was made for the whole race of men, and was not confined to the Elect.

Regeneration, as defined by Milton, is

That change operated by the Word and the Spirit, whereby, the old man being destroyed, the inward man is regenerated by God after his own image, in all the faculties of his mind, insomuch as he becomes as it were a new creature, and the whole man is sanctified, both in body and soul, for the service of God and the performance of good works.

The effects of regeneration are repentance and faith:

The ultimate object of faith is not Christ the Mediator, but God the Father: a truth which the weight of Scripture evidence has compelled divines to acknowledge. For the same reason it ought not to appear wonderful if many, both Jews and others who lived before Christ, and many also who have lived since his time, but to whom he has never been revealed, should be saved by faith in God alone; still however, through the sole merits of Christ, inasmuch as he was given and slain from the beginning of the world, even for those to whom he was not known, provided they believed in God the Father. Hence honourable testimony is borne to the faith of the illustrious patriarchs who lived under the law—Abel, Enoch, Noah, etc.,--though it is expressly stated that they believed only in God.

"Justification is," he says, "the gratuitous purpose of God, whereby those who are regenerate and planted in Christ are absolved from sin and death through his most perfect satisfaction, and accounted just in the sight of God, not by the works of the law, but through faith.” When speaking of the satisfaction of Christ he says, apparently on the authority of a single text (2 Cor. v. 21), that our sins are imputed to Christ; and on that of two others (1 Cor. i. 30, Rom. iv. 6), that "the merits or righteousness of Christ are imputed to us through faith."

As when speaking of the works of the law he terms them "the works of the written law" (i. e. the Mosaic

law), it is plain that Milton understood them in this sense in the large quotations which he makes on the subject from St. Paul's Epistles, and hence he finds no difficulty in reconciling St. Paul and St. James: the former, as he says, speaking of the works of the law (i. e. the written law); the latter, of those which spring from a lively faith:

The Apostles who treat this point of our religion with particular attention, nowhere, in summing up their doctrine, use words implying that a man is justified by faith alone, but generally conclude as follows, that "a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law." Hence we are justified by faith without the works of the law, but not without the works of faith; inasmuch as a living and true faith cannot consist without works, though the latter may differ from the works of the written law.

On the subjects of Assurance and Final Perseverance Milton held with the Remonstrant, in opposition to the Calvinist divines, that they were conditional, and that the elect might fall away for ever.*

The Law of God is either unwritten or written. The former is what is called the Law of Nature, given originally to Adam, and of which "a certain remnant or imperfect illumination still dwells in the heart of all mankind; which in the regenerate, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, is daily tending toward a renewal of its primitive brightness."

The written law is twofold-the Mosaic Law and the Gospel :

:

* Referring on this occasion to an argument of the Calvinists from 1 John iii. 9, he says: "We are not at liberty thus to separate a particular verse from its context without carefully comparing its meaning with other verses of the same chapter and epistle, as well as with texts bearing on the same subject in other parts of Scripture, lest the Apostle should be made to contradict either himself or the other sacred writers." -P. 396.