hence that the Son is coessential with the Father; for then the title of Son would be least of all applicable to Him, since He who is properly the Son is not coeval with the Father, much less of the same numerical essence, otherwise the Father and the Son would be one person; nor did the Father beget Him from any natural necessity, but of His own free will, a mode more agreeable to the paternal dignity. . . For questionless it was in God's power, consistently with the perfection of His own essence, not to have begotten the Son, inasmuch as generation does not pertain to the nature of the Deity, Who stands in no need of propagation; but whatever does not pertain to IIis own essence or nature, He does not affect, like a natural agent, from any physical necessity. If the generation of the Son proceeded from a physical necessity, the Father impaired Himself by physically begetting a coequal; which God could no more do than He could deny Himself; therefore the generation of the Son cannot have proceeded otherwise than from a decree, and of the Father's own free will. Thus the Son was begotten of the Father in consequence of His decree, and therefore within the limits of time; for the decree itself must have been anterior to the execution of the decree." Id. p. 82.

Again :

“When the Son is said to be the first born of every creature, and the beginning of the creation of God, nothing can be more evident than that God of His own will created, or generated, or produced the Son before all things, endued with the Divine nature, as in the fulness of time, He miraculously begat Him in His human nature, of the virgin Mary. The generation of the Divine nature is described by no one with more sublimity and copiousness than by the apostle to the Hebrews, 1:2, 3, Whom He hath appointed heir of all things; by Whom, also, He made the worlds; Who, being the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person, etc. It must be understood from this, that God imparted to the Son as much as He pleased of the Divine nature, nay of the Divine substance itself, care being taken not to confound the substance with the whole essence, which would imply that the Father had given to the Son what He retained, numerically, the same Himself; which would be a contradiction of terms, instead of a mode of generation." Id. p. 85.

Having reasoned in this style through many pages, Milton lays down the following propositions, to be proved from the scriptures:

"1st. That the name, attributes, and works of God are attributed, in the Scriptures, only to one God, the Father, as well by the Son Himself as by his apostles. 2d. That whenever they are attributed to the Son, it is in such a manner that they are easily understood to be attributable, in their original, proper sense, to the Father alone; and that the Son acknowledges

Himself to possess whatever share of Deity is assigned to Him, by virtue of the peculiar gift and kindness of the Father; as the apostles also testify. And, Lastly, that the Son Himself, and His apostles, acknowledge throughout the whole of their discourses and writings, that the Father is greater than the Son, in all things." Id. p. 96.

Milton admits that the Son is God; but denies that He is supreme God, or equal with the Father.

"He ascribes to the Son as high a share of Divinity," says Dr. Sumner, as was compatible with the denial of His self-existence and eternal generation. Had he avoided the calling Christ a creature, he might have been ranked with that class of semi-Arians who were denominated Hoemoiousians, among whom Dr. Samuel Clarke must be reckoned. On the whole, his chapter on the Son of God may be considered as more nearly coincident with the opinions of Whitby, in his Last Thoughts, than of any other modern divine. Both acknowledge Christ to be Verus Deus, though not Summus Deus; both admit His true dominion and His Godhead, though not original, independent, and underived; both assert His right to honor and worship, in virtue of the Father's gift; both deny His sameness of individual essence with the Father; and both maintain that He derives all His excellences and power from the Father, and consequently is inferior to the Father."— Id. p. XXIX.

This is, as must be confessed, according to Dr. Channing, "strong reasoning against the supreme Divinity of Jesus. Christ." To it, however, bishop Bull has made the only fitting reply. "The Unitarians," he says, "own Christ to be God, but a made God, such as is a mere creature, such as had no existence before his birth of the virgin. O great God!"- Bull's Works.

Milton closes the discussion of this subject by declaring "Such was the faith of the saints respecting the Son of God; such is the tenor of the celebrated confession of that faith; such is the doctrine which, alone, is taught in scripture, which is acceptable to God, and has the promise of eternal salvation. Finally, this is the faith proposed to us in the Apostle's Creed, the most ancient and universally received compendium of belief in the possession of the church.”—Id. pp. 149, 150.

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