that which it is to be presumed he desires should be cherished, inasmuch as he has himself disclosed it to us, we frustrate the purposes of God, instead of rendering him submissive obedience; as if forsooth we wished to show that it was not we who had thought too meanly of God, but God who had thought too meanly of us.

We have here abundant proof of Milton's belief of the doctrine of plenary inspiration, and may perceive how his logical mind pursued it to its legitimate consequences. To any one who reads the Old Testament with a mind free from preconceived notions it must be quite clear that the ancient Israelites conceived of Jehovah in a human form. In truth, who does not? or who can avoid doing so? The nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu of the Aristotelians is perfectly true, and the ideas of reflection, etc. of the metaphysicians are in reality nothing more than mere terms. We cannot conceive an intelligent being without a material form, and the human, as the noblest that we are acquainted with, is naturally that which we ascribe to superior beings. Thus, when in the language of the Articles of the Church we say of God that he is "without body, parts, or passions," the idea in our mind must be pure space; but when we proceed to the positive affirmation "of infinite power," etc., he instantly assumes to us a human form; and perhaps no one's mind can rise to a higher conception than that of the Ancient of Days in the Book of Daniel. But then the mind which is enlarged by philosophy knows that this is a mere conception, that that form is nowhere really existing, and that the most adequate idea of the Deity is the belief that into whatever remote parts of space we may transport ourselves in imagination, we shall find proofs of power, wisdom, and goodness similar to what we observe in this

world, though possibly varied in character and infinitely greater in degree. The error then of Milton lay in assuming that to be fixed which was fleeting and variable, and restricting to place the infinite and unlimited. We shall also find that it rested in some part on the Ptolemaic astronomy.

Milton next proceeds to the consideration of the decrees of God and predestination. What he says on thissubject is little more than an expansion of the place of Paradise Lost, to which we have referred above. It is one of the fruitless attempts to reconcile the absolute foreknowledge of the Deity with the perfect free-will of man; and it is no discredit to Milton to have failed where every one else has failed.

The nature and character of the Son is next examined into, and at considerable length; and here the suspicion excited by sundry passages of the Paradise Lost is amply confirmed. Milton, after evidently long and anxious inquiry, arrived at the conclusion that the doctrine deriving its appellation from Arius, but which had been known in the Church long before the time of that presbyter, was the true one,-that Christ was different from and inferior to God, and had come into existence in time, instead of having been from all eternity.

Were we to imitate the prudent caution of some writers, we would glide softly over this part of our author's theology, and content ourselves with asserting that he was in error, without deigning to examine his arguments. But such a procedure we hold to be unworthy of a biographer of such a man as Milton, who should possess at least a portion of the courage and love of truth by which his subject was distinguished. Besides, we do not believe that the nature of our Lord has been so fully

revealed in Scripture as to authorize us to assert that any one opinion is the exact and incontrovertible truth; for surely that cannot be clearly revealed on which men of equal talent, learning, sagacity, and love of truth have arrived at different conclusions. Thus this very opinion of Milton's has since his time and without a knowledge of his work been openly professed not merely by divines like Clarke and H. Taylor, but even by distinguished prelates of our own Church,-Law, Bishop of Carlisle, for instance, till his later years; and by Doddridge, Taylor, Benson, Price, and other eminent men among the Dissenters. The utmost perhaps that we are justified in affirming positively is, that "the fulness of the Godhead dwelt in Christ bodily;" but in a manner unrevealed and probably inconceivable to the human intellect.

There are, as is well known, three main opinions, with various branches, on this subject-1. That which is termed the orthodox one, and which is held by the Greek, the Latin, and the Protestant Churches alike. It will be found in the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds, which the Church of England has unconditionally adopted,-unwisely in our opinion, as it binds her to acknowledge the first four General Councils, and thus enfeebles her in the contest with the Church of Rome.† 2. The Arian, or that held by Milton, of which, though we are unable to receive it, we freely recognize the sublimity and the beauty, and acknowledge that there is no passage in

*The Bishop of Winchester thinks that if Milton had lived to read the works of Bull and Waterland, he would have thought differently. All those divines whom we have named must however have read them. The Romish writers assert, and we think with reason, that the doctrine as taught in the Creeds cannot be proved from Scripture alone: see the Bishop of Winchester's note, in p. 80. The same assertion is made in the Tracts for the Times.

Scripture relating to this subject which may not be fairly explained on this hypothesis, some perhaps even better on it than on any other. 3. The Socinian or Humanitarian, which regards our Lord as a mere man, and which, whether true or not, is in our opinion so irreconcilable with many passages of Scripture as to require interpretations which set at nought the principles of grammar and logic.

After quoting the passages in the New Testament in which the Father is spoken of by our Lord himself and by St. Paul as the one sole true God, Milton proceeds to examine two of the chief passages which were maintained to assert the Unity in Trinity, as it was termed. The first of these is, "I and my Father are one," John x. 30. Here he argues with much ingenuity and at great length from other places in the same Gospel; but it really surprises us how not only Milton, but commentators in general, should have overlooked the precisely parallel passage, "He that planteth and he that watereth" (i. e. Paul and Apollos)" are one," 1 Cor. iii. 8, which would have obviated such an expenditure of labour and ingenuity. The other is, "There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one," 1 John v. 7. Milton was aware how dubious this text was, on account of its absence from so many manuscripts and versions; but he argues that, even granting its genuineness, it is nothing to the purpose. At the present day no critic, to our knowledge, maintains the genuineness of this verse, which is found in no manuscript anterior to the sixteenth century, in no translation but the Vulgate, and in no manuscript of that earlier than the tenth century, and is referred to by none of the Fathers.

To the argument that the Son is at times called God, and even Jehovah, and that the attributes of Deity are assigned him, he replies by showing that the word used for God, even in its plural form Elohim (D) was of a very indefinite nature, being used of angels and men, even of a single angel or single false god; and he shows the same of Lord, Adonim (); and arguing from the texts which assert that no one can see God, he asserts that in the places where it is said that Jehovah appeared, it was not Jehovah himself that was seen. Thus, referring to Isaiah's vision, he says, "It was not God himself that he saw, but perhaps one of the angels clothed in some modification of the Divine glory, or the Son of God himself, the image of the glory of his Father, as John understood the vision. 'These things said Esaias when he saw His glory.' For if he had been of the same essence, he could no more have been seen or heard than the Father himself."

Milton utterly rejects the use of the doctrine of the twofold nature of Christ, as having no foundation in Scripture. Of those who use it he says:

They are constantly shifting their reasoning, Vertumnus-like, and using the twofold nature of Christ developed in his office of Mediator as a ready subterfuge by which to evade any arguments that may be brought against them. What Scripture says of the Son generally they apply, as suits their purpose, in a partial and restricted sense: at one time to the Son of God, at another to the Son of Man,-now to the Mediator in his divine, now in his human capacity, and now again in his union of both natures. For this he asserts there is no warrant in Scripture.

Milton makes less use than one might have expected of the passage Phil. ii. 5, which we have always regarded as a main support of Arianism, as it is certainly on that hypothesis that it can be most naturally interpreted; for