Of the Spirit of God.

The discussion of the character and offices of the Holy Spirit is much shorter and less elaborate than that of the Son of God. Milton's opinion on this point may be gathered from the following passage, found at the close of the chapter on the Holy Spirit.

"Lest, however, we should be altogether ignorant who or what the Holy Spirit is, although Scripture nowhere teaches us, in express terms, it may be collected from the passages quoted above, that the Holy Spirit, inasmuch as He is a minister of God, and therefore a creature, was created or produced of the substance of God, not by a natural necessity, but by the free will of the Agent, probably before the foundations of the world were laid, but later than the Son, and far inferior to Him.” — Id. p. 169.

Christian Doctrine denies that prayer is to be offered to the Holy Spirit. Having quoted the apostolic benediction: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ," etc. (2 Cor. 13:14), which is usually regarded as a prayer offered to the Spirit as well as to the Father and the Son, there follows:

"This, however, is not so much an invocation as a benediction; in which the Spirit is not addressed as a person, but sought as a gift, from Him who, alone, is there called God, namely the Father, from whom Christ himself directs us to seek the communication of the Spirit, Luke 11:13. If the Spirit were ever to be invoked personally, it would be then especially, when we pray for Him; yet we are commanded not to ask Him of Himself, but only of the Father. Why do we not call upon the Spirit Himself, if He be God, to give Himself to us? He who is sought from the Father, and given by Him, not by Himself, can neither be God, nor an object of invocation.” —Id. p. 165.

Milton says nothing of the Trinity; nor could he, consistently. Having denied the proper. Divinity of the Son and the Holy Spirit, there is no ground for the Trinity. In the chapter on the existence and attributes of God, he maintains that there is "numerically one God and one Spirit in the common acceptation of numerical unity." His denial of the Trinity, while it is thus indirect, is positive and clear. These are the opinions that Milton holds, of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in Christian Doctrine.

That he held different opinions, and those directly contradictory to these, at other times in his life, is as plain as that his words are the true expressions of his thoughts and opinions. He held to both the supreme Divinity of the Son and the Spirit, and the reality of the Trinity.

Of the Son of God and the Spirit of God, in The Works of 1641 and following.

The Works of 1641 are Milton's theologico-controversial works. Here, if anywhere, we should expect he would be careful of his doctrinal admissions and statements. He was now thirty-three years of age. "Of Reformation in England" was the first of these works, and the first of Milton's prose works that he published. Here he maintains the Divinity of the Son by condemning the Arians, whose peculiarity it is, as is well known, to deny this doctrine. But he shall speak for himself. He had just said that willingness to die, or martyrdom, for a doctrine, did not, in all cases, prove one a true Christian, nor prove the doctrine true for which death was suffered. To use his own words:

"He is not, therefore, above all possibility of erring, because he burns for some points of truth. Witness the Arians and Pelagians, which were slain, by the heathen, for Christ's sake; yet we take both these for no true friends of Christ."-Prose Works, vol. ii. p. 371.

And this, he says, as he shows in another place more distinctly, not because of their life, but because of their doctrine.

Other passages of this work are more marked in their condemnation of Arianism, and their assertion of the true doctrine of the Son of God, particularly that one in which Milton dwells at length upon the character of the early Christian Fathers, and notes their errors in faith and practice; and especially among them those of the emperor Constantine

"How he slew his nephew Commodus, a worthy man, his noble and eldest son Crispus, his wife Fausta, besides numbers of his friends: then his cruel exactions, his unsoundness in religion, favoring the Arians that had been con

:

demned in a council, of which himself sat as it were president; his hard measure and banishment of the faithful and invincible Athanasius; his living unbaptized almost to his dying day these blurs are too apparent in his life. But since he must needs be the load-star of reformation, as some men clatter, it will be good to see, further, his knowledge of religion, what it was; as by that we may likewise guess at the sincerity of his times in those that were not heretical, it being likely that he would converse with the famousest prelates (for so he had made them) that were to be found for learning.

"Of his Arianism we heard; and for the rest, a pretty scantling of his knowledge may be taken by his deferring to be baptized so many years; a thing not usual, and repugnant to the tenor of Scripture; Philip knowing nothing that should hinder the eunuch to be baptized after profession of his belief. Next, by the excessive devotion, that I may not say superstition, both of him and his mother Helena, to find out the cross on which Christ suffered, that had long lain under the rubbish of old ruins;

a thing which the disciples and kindred of our Saviour might, with more ease have done, if they had thought it a pious duty; some of the nails whereof he put into his helmet, to bear off blows in battle; others he fastened among the studs of his bridle, to fulfil (as he thought, or his court bishops persuaded him) the prophecy of Zechariah: "And it shall be, that which is in the bridle shall be holy to the Lord." Part of the cross, in which he thought such virtue to reside as would prove a kind of palladium, to save the city wherever it remained, he caused to be laid up in a pillar of porphyry by his statue. How he or his teachers could trifle thus, with half an eye open upon St. Paul's principles, I know not how to imagine."

Having gone on, at some length, adding to these errors of Constantine, the passage concludes:

"Thus flourished the church with Constantine's wealth, and thereafter were the effects that followed: his son Constantius proved a flat Arian, and his nephew Julian an apostate, and then his race ended; the church that, before, by insensible degrees, welked and impaired, now, with large steps, went down hill decaying. Thus you see, sir, what Constantine's doings in the church brought forth, either in his own or in his son's reign."— Id. pp. 381-383.

...

Milton here puts down Constantine's Arianism as one of his chief errors. Besides calling him unsound in religion, for this very thing, he ranks it with his ambition, his superstition, injustice, and cruelty. As if, too, to show his opinion of Athanasius, the well-known and illustrious defender of the doctrine of the Trinity against the Arians, he calls him the

"faithful and invincible Athanasius," strongly approbating both the man and his doctrine.

If anything more be needed from this work, it is found near its close, in a prayer addressed, be it noted, to the Spirit and the Son, equally with the Father-one of the most lofty and sublime prayers ever heard from human lips; and one, too, avowing the doctrine of Trinity, in a way that every Trinitarian receives it, as a true expression of the scripture doctrine.

"Thou, therefore, that sittest in light and glory unapproachable, Parent of angels and men! Next Thee I implore, Omnipotent King, Redeemer of that lost remnant whose nature Thou didst assume, Ineffable and Everlasting Love! And Thou, the third subsistence of Divine Infinitude, illumining Spirit, the joy and solace of created things! One Tri-personal Godhead! Look upon this Thy poor and almost spent and expiring church.”— Id. p. 417.

"Of Prelatical Episcopacy" is the next of Milton's works. It was published a little later than "Of Reformation in England," in the same year (1641). This work is equally positive in condemning Arianism; or rather, in avowing the equality of the Father and the Son as a scripture doctrine. Milton is aiming to show the equality of bishops and presbyters, in the apostolic church. He cites Tertullian, who, as it seems, had denied this equality.

“But,” he says, “suppose Tertullian had made an imparity where none was originally; should he move us, that goes about to prove an imparity between God the Father and God the Son, as these words import in his book against Praxeas? The Father is the whole substance, but the Son a derivation and portion of the whole, as He himself professes: Because the Father is greater than me.' Believe him now, for a faithful relator of tradition, whom you see such an unfaithful expounder of the Scripture." Id. p. 433.

In Christian Doctrine Milton maintains that imparity between the Father and the Son is taught in scripture; here, that it is denied, and their equality plainly taught; so plainly, that Tertullian shows himself incompetent to be a faithful relator of tradition even, because he does not see it. Contradiction cannot be more positive and complete.

"Animadversions upon Remonstrant's Defence" follows.

This also was published in 1641. In this work Milton avows his belief in the eternal generation of the Son; a doctrine pointedly denied in Christian Doctrine; for he thus prays to the Son: "O Thou, the Ever-begotten Light and perfect Image of the Father! intercede." This prayer proceeds, throughout, upon the supposition that its author held the Son to be not only verus Deus, but summus Deus. Besides the passage already quoted, it contains these declarations: "Thou art a God." "Thy nature is perfection."Prose Works, Vol. III. pp. 71, 72. In the same work, too, the author strongly reprobates the Arians and Pelagians, as "infecting the people by their hymns and forms of prayer." - Id. p. 57.

There is one more work of this year- "The Reason of Church Government," etc. In this work, too, as in " Of Reformation in England," he who had maintained, in Christian Doctrine, that the Spirit is an "inferior creature," and "not an object of invocation," speaks most devoutly of prayer to the Eternal Spirit. Some works he was then meditating, he says, could "not be raised from the heat of youth, or the vapors of wine," ... "but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge."-Prose Works, Vol. II. p. 481.

In a note on that passage, in Christian Doctrine, which expressly states that the Spirit can be neither God, nor an object of invocation, Dr. Sumner refers to the passage just cited from "The Reason of Church Government," to show that

"On this subject (the doctrine of the Spirit) Milton is again at variance with himself." "It should be remembered, however," continues Dr. S., "that this treatise was written as early as 1642, when Milton was not more than thirty-four."'-Prose Works, IV. 165.

To understand this note, it must be remembered that Dr. S. holds Christian Doctrine to have been later than "The Rea

1 "The Reason of Church Government," etc., was first published, as I have before stated, in 1641. See Hollis Catalogue, with original dates of the works therein contained. Hollis Memoirs, Vol. II. p. 583.