Imagens da página
PDF
ePub

cree extensive enough, and of such a nature, that it shall cause to be everything that ever will be, from first to last, and leave not one single thing contingent, and yet so arrange the universe, or so arrange influences and causes, that moral beings will of themselves freely choose and do everything that is foreseen and predetermined or decreed concerning them. Or, in the words of inspired disciples, citing a particular case, viz. the murderous putting to death of the Son of God, and the connection of Herod, Pilate, the Gentiles, and the people of Israel therewith, "do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined, before, to be done. " Acts 4: 28. Milton himself, several times in the discussion of decrees, seems to have come near grasping this great subject. See, especially, the passage beginning-"That the will of God is the first cause of all things." p. 39.

Of Predestination in "The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce," "Paradise Lost," etc.

The opinions on predestination, election, and reprobation, above given, are those that Milton holds in The Christian Doctrine. His other great works contain admissions and advocate opinions on these subjects directly at war with these in The Christian Doctrine.

"The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce," published in 1644, certainly admits the truth, if it does not directly advocate, the doctrine of predestination as we understand it to be taught in the scriptures, and explained by Augustine, Calvin, and Edwards.

66

"The Jesuits, and that sect among us which is named of Arminius," he says, are wont to charge us of making God the author of sin, in two degrees especially, not to speak of His permission: 1st, Because we hold that He hath decreed some to damnation, and consequently to sin, say they; next, Because those means, which are of saving knowledge to others, He makes, to them, an occasion of greater sin. Yet, considering the perfection. wherein man was created, and might have stood, no degree necessitating his free will, but subsequent, though not in time, yet in order to causes, which were in his own power; they might, methinks, be persuaded to absolve both God and us."-Prose Works, Vol. III. p. 223. Bohn's Ed.

In addition to these plain words, Milton continues, through two pages, to show how needless and absurd it is for Jesuits and Arminians to bring these objections to the doctrine under consideration. Even the heathen knew better.

"Plato and Chrysippus, and their followers, the Academics and Stoics," he says, "though they taught of virtue and vice to be, both, the gift of divine destiny, yet could they give reasons not invalid, to justify the counsels of God and fate from the insulsity of mortal tongues: that man's own free will, self-corrupted, is the adequate and sufficient cause of his disobedience besides fate; as Homer also wanted not to express, both in his Iliad and Odyssee. And Manilius the poet, although in his fourth book he tells of some "created both to sin and punishment;" yet without murmuring, and with an industrious cheerfulness, he acquits the Deity. They were not ignorant, in their heathen lore, that it is most godlike to punish those who, of His creatures became His enemies, with the greatest punishment; and they could attain, also, to think that the greatest, when God Himself throws a man furthest from Him; which then they held he did, when He blinded, hardened, and stirred up his offenders, to finish and pile up their desperate work, since they had undertaken it. To banish forever into a local hell, whether in the air or in the centre, or in that uttermost and bottomless gulf of chaos, deeper from holy bliss than the world's diameter multiplied; they thought not a punishing so proper and proportionate for God to inflict, as to punish sin with sin. Thus were the common sort of Gentiles wont to think, without any wry thoughts cast upon divine governance. And therefore Cicero, not in his Tusculan or Campanian retirement among the learned wits of that age, but even in the Senate to a mixed auditory (though he were sparing otherwise to broach his philosophy among statists and lawyers), yet as to this point, both in his Oration against Piso, and in that which is about the Answers of the Soothsayers against Clodius, he declares it publicly as no paradox to common ears, that God cannot punish man more, nor make him more miserable, than still by making him more sinful. Thus we see how, in this controversy, the justice of God stood upright even among the heathen disputers." — 1d. pp. 223-225.

Milton's editors and biographers maintain that this is proof Milton now (1644) held the doctrine of predestination. In a note referring to the passage above given, J. A. St. John says:

"Milton appears to have afterwards altogether abjured the doctrine of predestination, which is so repugnant to common sense, and to all our most exalted ideas of the Divinity, that to hold it and believe, at the same time, in the goodness of God, is impossible. When Milton wrote as he does in the text, he was comparatively young, and was hurried into imperfect views by

his own vehement passions. He came, afterwards, to think more calmly and correctly; though, on many points, he always reasons more like an orator than a philosopher."

[ocr errors]

Id. p. 223.

Mr. Keightley also says of the same passage:

"He [Milton], at this time, held the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination, but in the sublapsarian form; for he thus writes." — Keightley's Life etc. of Milton, p. 157.

It must be remembered that both St. John and Keightley concur in the opinion of Dr. Sumner, that The Christian Doctrine was composed after "The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce," and during Milton's declining years. In The Christian Doctrine, then, they find the abjuration and those more calm and correct thoughts St. John speaks of. Keightley, also, finds the same in Paradise Lost and in "Of True Religion, Heresy," etc., published in 1673, but with how much justice a slight examination will show.

Milton, in Paradise Lost, makes no unfrequent or doubtful mention of the doctrines of grace. Nearly every book has something characteristic and distinctive on this subject— the third, perhaps, more than any other. Here the fall and the recovery of man, with what led to the first, and is necessary to the last, is most positively and clearly laid down.

"The particular beauty of the speeches in the third book," are Addison's words, "consists in that shortness and perspicuity of style, in which the poet has couched the greatest mysteries of Christianity, and drawn together, in a regular scheme, the whole dispensation of Providence with respect to man. He has represented all the abstruse doctrines of predestination, free will, and grace, as also the great points of incarnation and redemption (which naturally grow up in a poem that treats of the fall of man), with great energy of expression, and in a clearer and stronger light than ever I met with them in any other writer.-Spectator, No. 315.

In this book Milton does, in the most unequivocal manner, assert the freedom of man, and his guilt for his sin and his fall. He had entire liberty and full strength to stand. No foreknowledge of God, nor decree, necessitated nor influenced, in any way, his sin or fall. Thus the Father discourses to the Son, in that passage in which He foretells the

success of Satan, who has now gone to tempt the newlycreated and blessed pair.

"Man will hearken to his glozing lies,
And easily transgress the sole command,
Sole pledge of his obedience: so will fall,
He and his faithless progeny. Whose fault?
Whose but his own? Ingrate, he had of me
All he could have: I made him just and right,
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.
Such I created all the ethereal powers

And spirits, both them who stood and them who fail'd:
Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell.

Not free, what proof could they have given sincere

Of true allegiance, constant faith, or love?

When only, what they needs must do, appeared,

Not what they would: what praise could they receive?
What pleasure I from such obedience paid?
When will and reason (reason also is choice)
Useless and vain, of freedom both despoiled,
Made passive both, had served necessity,
Not me. They therefore, as to right belong'd,;
So were created, nor can justly accuse
Their Maker, or their making, or their fate;
As if predestination over-rul'd

Their will, disposed by absolute decree,

Or high foreknowledge: they themselves decreed
Their own revolt, not I; if I foreknew,
Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault,
Which had no less proved certain unforeknown.
So without least impulse or shadow of fate,
Or aught by me immutably foreseen,
They trespass, authors to themselves in all,

Both what they judge and what they choose; for so
I form'd them free, and free they must remain,
Till they enthrall themselves; I else must change
Their nature, and revoke the high decree
Unchangeable, eternal, which ordain'd

Their freedom: they themselves ordain'd their fall.
The first sort by their own suggestion fell,
Self-tempted, self-depraved: man falls deceived
By the other first: man, therefore, shall find grace;
The other, none; in mercy and justice both,
Through heaven and earth, so shall my glory excel;
But mercy, first and last, shall brightest shine."

Bk. III. 1. 90-135.

For similar passages, see V. 235 and 520--540. VIII. 635. IX. 344-354. X. 9-12 and 43-48.

While Milton thus clears the Most High from all complicity with man's sin and loss, and makes man's fault turn wholly on the exercise of his own free, yet misdirected will, he does, on the other hand, no less definitely and plainly attribute his recovery and salvation to the election of God's grace; to which election God was not moved by anything that was about to be in man, or anything He foresaw in him, but by what was in Himself. The willing, or the repentance and faith in which the sinner turns to holiness and God, are not the causes or conditions of his election, but the fruits of it. Such is the doctrine of the following passage:

"O Son, in whom my soul hath chief delight, All hast thou spoken as my thoughts are, all

As my eternal purpose hath decreed :

Man shall not quite be lost, but saved who will;
Yet not of will in him, but grace in me
Freely vouchsafed; once more I will renew
His lapsed powers, though forfeit and enthrall'd
By sin to foul exorbitant desires :
Upheld by me, yet once more he shall stand
On even ground against his mortal foe,
By me upheld; that he may know how frail
His fallen condition is, and to me owe
All his deliverance, and to none but me.
Some I have chosen of peculiar grace,
Elect above the rest; so is my will:

The rest shall hear me call, and oft be warned
Their sinful state, and to appease betimes
The incensed Deity, while offered grace
Invites; for I will clear their senses dark,
What may suffice, and soften stony hearts
To pray, repent, and bring obedience due.
To prayer, repentance, and obedience due,
Though but endeavored with sincere intent,
Mine ear shall not be slow, mine eye not shut:
And I will place within them as a guide
My umpire Conscience, whom if they will hear,
Light after light, well used, they shall attain;
And to the end persisting, safe arrive.

This, my long sufferance and my day of grace,
VOL. XVII. No. 65.

2

[ocr errors]
« AnteriorContinuar »