He might (and we might) as well leave it at that. Yet he goes on, in some perplexity: The name of Spirit is also frequently applied to God and angels, and to the human mind. When the phrase, the Spirit of God, or the Holy Spirit, occurs in the Old Testament, it is to be variously interpreted; sometimes it signifies God the Father himself . . . ; sometimes the power and virtue of the Father, and particularly that divine breath or influence by which every thing is created and nourished . . . " the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." Here however, it appears to be used with reference to the Son. . . . Sometimes it means an angel. . . . Sometimes it ... means Christ. . . . Sometimes it means that impulse or voice of God by which the prophets were inspired . . . the spiritual gifts conferred by God on individuals. 3 And Milton concludes, somewhat dispiritedly: ... 4 Lest, however, we should be altogether ignorant who or what the Holy Spirit is, . . . it may be collected from the passages quoted above, that the Holy Spirit . . . was created or produced of the substance of God . . . probably before the foundations of the world were laid, but later than the Son, and far inferior to him." God is first described as creating the heaven and the earth; the Spirit is only represented as moving upon the face of the waters already created." On the whole then, the Holy Spirit may, or may not, have been a being created and used by God (i.e. the Son, the Creator) to shape the Earth, this world. Milton shows little interest in this hypothetical being. In his thought, the Son is essentially the Spirit of Creation; and the first aspect of creation is matter. 2 This sufficiently accounts for P. L., VII, 235: "The Spirit of God." 3 Treatise, IV, 151–53. Milton is not sure, because the "Holy Spirit" might be Christ. Cf. also Treatise, IV, 175. 5 Ibid., IV, 169. 6 Ibid., IV, 175. III. MATTER God has created all beings, not out of nothing, but out of himself. Since God is entirely non-manifested, this applies to the Son. The Son is thus both Creator and Creation - the spirit or essence that resides in things and is their being, and not a Creator that shapes from outside an independent matter. All things or beings are thus parts of God. Matter is part of the substance of God, and from this matter, divine in its essence, all things have come. Milton develops these ideas at full length, and draws from them their boldest consequences: In the first place . . . neither the Hebrew verb nor the Greek Kričev, nor the Latin creare, can signify to create out of nothing. . . . On the contrary, these words uniformly signify to create out of matter. . . . It is clear then that the world was framed out of matter of some kind or other. For, since action and passion are relative terms, and since, consequently, no agent can act externally unless there be some patient, such as matter, it appears impossible that God should have created this world out of nothing; not from any defect of power on his part, but because it was necessary that something should have previously existed capable of receiving passively the exertion of the divine efficacy. . . it necessarily follows, that matter must either have always existed independently of God, or have originated from God at some particular point of time. That matter should have been always independent of God, (seeing that it is only a passive principle, dependent on the Deity, and subservient to him; and seeing, moreover, that, as in number, considered abstractedly, so also in time or eternity there is no inherent force or efficacy), that matter, I say, should have existed of itself from all eternity, is inconceivable. If on the contrary it did not exist from all eternity, it is difficult to understand from whence it derives its origin. There remains, therefore, but one solution of the difficulty, for which moreover we have the authority of Scripture, namely, that all things are of God. . . . In the first place, there are, as is well known to all, four kinds of causes, -efficient, material, formal, and final. Inasmuch as God is the primary, and absolute, and sole cause of all things, there can be no doubt but that he comprehends and embraces within himself all the causes above mentioned. Therefore the material cause must be either God or nothing. Now, nothing is no cause at all; and yet it is contended that forms, and, above all, that human forms, were created out of nothing. But matter and form, considered as internal causes, constitute the thing itself; so that either all things must have had two causes only and those external, or God will not have been the perfect and absolute cause of every thing. Secondly, it is an argument of supreme power and goodness, that such diversified multiform and inexhaustible virtue should exist and be substantially inherent in God (for that virtue cannot be accidental which admits of degrees, and of augmentation or remission, according to his pleasure) and that this diversified and substantial virtue should not remain dormant within the Deity, but should be diffused and propagated and extended as far and in such manner as he himself may will. For the original matter of which we speak, is not to be looked upon as an evil or trivial thing, but as intrinsically good, and the chief productive stock of every subsequent good. It was a substance, and derivable from no other source than from the fountain of every substance, though at first confused and formless, being afterwards adorned and digested into order by the hand of God." Milton here defines in unmistakable terms the essential principle of his thought: "all things are of God: omnia ex Deo." This principle is the basis of his politics as well as of his cosmology. It is the basis of his ethics also: since matter is divine in essence nothing that comes normally from matter can be anathema; the desires of the flesh, for instance, are in themselves divine. This divine matter is incorruptible: Matter... proceeded incorruptible from God; and . . . it remains incorruptible as far as concerns its essence. 8 Consequently, nothing can ever perish finally: 7 Treatise, IV, 176–79. 8 Ibid., IV, 180. . . if all things are not only from God, but of God, no created thing can be finally annihilated." And man's immortality is based on the very nature of things; but therefore all things and beings are normally immortal, like man. This matter, "productive stock of every subsequent good," contains in itself, in its divine essence, all the possibilities of life and intelligence. All beings come from it, so that there is no essential difference between inanimate things and animals, between animals and men; the whole of Being is one great scale, with gaps, going from matter to God; the whole of Being is God, made of his substance, organized by his will. This scale Raphael explains thus to Adam: O Adam! One Almighty is, from Whom To intellectual; give both life and sense, Is oftest yours, the latter most is ours; 9 Ibid., IV, 181. It is owing to this identity of essence that food can be assimilated by beings, and that inert matter may feed intelligence. This nutritious matter circulates through the scale of beings: Therefore what He gives (Whose praise be ever sung!) to man, in part No ingrateful food: and food alike those pure As doth your rational; and both contain Within them ev'ry lower faculty Of sense, whereby they hear, see, smell, touch, taste; And corporeal to incorporeal turn. For know, whatever was created, needs To be sustain'd and fed: of elements, The grosser feeds the purer; earth the sea; Whence, in her visage round, those spots, unpurg'd Nor doth the moon no nourishment exhale In humid exhalations; and at ev'n Everything then has come out of divine matter. But Milton goes further. Everything has come out of matter by a normal development of its latent powers without any intervention of God. Matter is the "productive stock of every subsequent good." Milton's thought is clearly expressed when he speaks of the reproduction of man, the point at which the intervention of God might the most easily be admitted: 11 Ibid., V, 404-26. We shall come back to this curious passage when studying Milton's sources. See below, pp. 305-06. |