Phillips relates that Milton had " prepared for the press an answer to some little scribbling quack in London, who had written a scurrilous libel against him; but whether by the dissuasion of his friends, or for what other cause he knew not, this answer was never published."

Toland, after reciting many publications of Milton, informs us, that "he daily expected more pieces of this accomplished gentleman from © James Tyrrel, who has the manuscript copies in his hands, and will not envy such a blessing to the nation." But to what was known this seeming goodly promise added nothing.

Of the Letters of State published after the death of Milton, and of his Dictionary in manuscript, accounts have been already given.

d

The Brief History of Moscovia, and of other less known countries lying eastward of Russia as far as Cathay, Milton had evidently designed for the press before he died. "What was scattered in many volumes," he says, " and observed at several times by eye-witnesses, with no cursory pains I laid toge

b Life of Milton, ed. Hollis, p. 132.

• A professed and very learned Whig, who published a History of England, 1696-1704, which is extremely curious and valuable, and now also not of frequent occurrence.

See before, pp. 171, 181.

e Pref. to the Hist.

was living, that the manuscript of Milton at the close of the seventeenth century was then, or lately had been, in his hands. Cyriack was too discreet to undeceive others. The offence, which had been given, was pardoned; and the obnoxious treatise was reposed upon the shelves in the Old StatePaper Office at Whitehall, till in the year 1823 Mr. Lemon, the deputy-keeper of the State-Papers, in his indefatigable researches, discovered it loosely wrapped in two or three sheets of printed paper, which, it is curious to add, were proof-sheets of Horace, one of the publications of Daniel Elzevir. The State-Letters of Milton were in the same parcel. And the whole was enclosed in a cover directed, To Mr. Skinner, Mercht.

With respect to the real title of the manuscript, Aubrey and Wood are supposed to have been in error; because they call it Idea Theologia, and it now is, De Doctrina Christiana ex sacris duntaxat libris petita disquisitionum libri duo posthumi. Yet no doubt the title was at first, as Wood and Aubrey have given it. The Idea was adopted: in conformity to example; from Milton having seen, for instance, what was addressed to his friend Hartlib. in 1651, the learned Pell's Idea of Mathematicks ; or, at a later period, from being informed of the opposition to Hobbes in Dr. Templer's Idea Theologiæ Leviathanis. An Idea Eloquentiæ also appeared about this time. The present title was probably chosen, after his death, by those into whose

hands the manuscript had passed, and whose endeaYour was to make it publick.

These are circumstances which illustrate the external evidence of the treatise as the work of Milton. We shall soon observe what would be conclusive as to this position, if such testimony had been wanting, I mean internal evidence.

66

2

The entrance of the treatise exhibits the great poet explaining his reason for compiling it." I deemed it safest and most advisable to compile for myself," he says, by my own labour and study, some original treatise, which should be always at hand, derived solely from the Word of God itself." Wood appears to have been informed of this determination, as he mentions the poet's "framing a Body of Divinity out of the Bible." Perhaps not satisfied altogether with the systems of theology which he was wont to consult, Milton, so early as when he wrote his Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, could not forbear, in his remarks upon "custom and prejudice," sarcastically to describe " youth run ahead into the easy creek of a system or a medulla." And afterwards, in his Con-siderations how to remove hirelings out of the Church, he mentions, I had almost said in reference to his

2 Preface to the Treatise. I cite at present the translation of the work by Dr. Sumner for the benefit of every reader. And I may assure those, who understand not Latin, that the translation is exact and faithful.

design of the very work before us, "the helps which we enjoy to make more easy the attainment of Christian Religion by the meanest; namely, the entire Scripture translated into English with plenty of notes; and somewhere or other, I trust, may be found some BODY OF DIVINITY, as they call it, without school-terms and metaphysical notions, which have obscured rather than explained our religion, and made it seem difficult without cause." Hence his frequent appeals to the Scriptures only; as in his reference to "b the Protestant religion reforming herself rightly by the Scriptures;" and to "the deciding our controversies only by the Scriptures." Hence his reminding the Parliament of their profession "d to assert only the true Protestant Christian religion, as it is contained in the Holy Scriptures;" and his own assertion," that we can have no other ground in matters of religion but only from the Scriptures." And yet I am persuaded, that this is the very " tractate," which, in the earlier part of his life, he had begun " to collect from the ablest divines, Amesius, Wollebius," and others, as the 1 et cetera of his nephew, who tells us of the compilation, implies; and which, from time

e

a Dr. Sumner is of the same opinion.

b Reason of Church Gov. B. ii.

c Animadv. on the Remonstrant's Defence.

d Treatise of Civ. Power in Eccl. Causes.

* See the whole passage, describing this tractate, cited from Phillips, p. 312.

f Phillips adds to the et cetera the notice of resuming the subject of this treatise, but never refers to it again.

to time, had been augmented, revised, and corrected. For in it indeed there are whole sentences" sometimes almost identically the same as in Wollebius," certain coincidences also with Ames, and some direct citations from other theological writers. But this is not a solitary instance of his practice " opposed to his theory.

h

The work before us consists of two books, entitled Of the Knowledge of God, and Of the Service of God. In this distinction we immediately trace the hand and heart of Milton. "It will require no great labour of exposition," he has before told us, " to unfold what is meant by matters of religion; being as soon apprehended, as defined, such things as belong chiefly to THE KNOWLEDGE and SERVICE OF GOD." The first book is divided into thirty-three chapters. 1. Of the Christian doctrine, and the number of its divisions. 2. Of God. 3. Of the Divine decrees. 4. Of predestination. 5. Of the Son of God. 6. Of the Holy Spirit. 7. Of the Creation. 8. Of the Providence of God, or of his general government of the universe. 9. Of the special government of angels. 10. Of the special government of man before the Fall, including the institutions of the Sabbath, and of Marriage. 11. Of the fall of our first parents, and of sin. 12. Of the punishment of sin. 13. Of the death of the body. 14. Of man's

Dr. Sumner's Transl. p. 602.
See what is stated in p. 308.

i Treatise of Civ. Power in Eccl. Causes.