Page images
PDF
EPUB

This applies to the end of the world. But it is a sort of law in prophetic imagination that the end should be like the beginning, and these texts became, in the tradition, a precious source of knowledge about the origins. Milton in the De doctrina quotes them as proofs for the war in Heaven.15 Here also the Serpent is called Satan; later this will be thought a further proof that Satan was the serpent who tempted Eve.

Lastly, the beginnings of the Christian era saw the birth of an erroneous interpretation of a few verses in Isaiah, and this mistake became also an important docu

ment:

How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! . . . For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north. . . I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.16

The imprecation is aimed at the King of Babylon, and Lucifer is only the morning star. So far as we know, Tertullian and Gregory were the first to apply the passage to Satan, who kept the name Lucifer. From this came the mountain in the North and the chief motive of Satan's revolt: the ambition to be like the most High.

The different elements of the tale are now all evolved: Satan's revolt through ambition; sensuality in the fall of the angels; the temptation of Eve by the Serpent, who is Satan; of Adam through Eve; sensuality in the fall of

man.

15 Prose Works, IV, 216-17.

16 14:12-15. Gunkel suggests (Schöpfung und Chaos, 1895, pp. 132-34) that this may be an allusion to a myth, perhaps Babylonian, recording the ambition and failure of the Morning Star, which disappears in the light of the sun"hides its diminished head," as Milton puts it (P. L., IV, 35).

T

CHAPTER III

THE FATHERS

HE elements of the tale of the Fall were put to

gether and more or less worked out by the Fathers. Yet most of the Fathers, before Augustine, seem to the modern reader hopelessly backward and chaotic. It is only Augustine who gives a coherent tale. The astonishment of the modern reader at the eccentric ideas of the early Fathers was fully shared by Milton, who, consequently, frequently looks upon them with open contempt.

I. MILTON'S OPINIONS OF THE FATHERS

In 1641, in the pamphlet Of Prelatical Episcopacy, Milton expressed picturesquely his feelings about the Fathers, thus:

when men began to have itching ears, then not contented with the plentiful and wholesome fountains of the gospel, they began after their own lusts to heap to themselves teachers, and as if the divine scripture wanted a supplement, and were to be eked out, they cannot think any doubt resolved, and any doctrine confirmed, unless they run to that indigested heap and fry of authors which they call antiquity. Whatsoever time, or the heedless hand of blind chance, hath drawn down from of old to this present, in her huge drag-net, whether fish or seaweed, shells or shrubs, unpicked, unchosen, those are the fathers.1

Further on, Irenæus is sharply rebuked, and called "the patron of idolatry" to the papist for having said that 2 Ibid., II, 430.

1 Prose Works, II, 422.

[ocr errors]

"the obedience of Mary was the cause of salvation to herself and all mankind .. that the virgin Mary might be made the advocate of the virgin Eve." Did Milton change his opinion of Irenæus when he came to call Mary "Blest Mary, second Eve"? Tertullian also was to return to favor, but here he is vigorously blamed: "Should he move us, that goes about to prove an imparity between God the Father and God the Son? "" Still, he feels a certain amount of respect for Clement of Alexandria, and tries to prove that Clement was not in favor of bishops.*

In The Reason of Church Government (1641) Milton calls Jerome" the learnedest of the fathers." Yet in the same year, in Reformation in England, he violently attacks the early Fathers, and Clement is not spared:

Who is ignorant of the foul errors, the ridiculous wrestling of Scripture, the heresies, the vanities thick sown through the volumes of Justin Martyr, Clemens, Origen, Tertullian, and others of eldest time? Who would think him fit to write an apology for Christian faith to the Roman senate, that would tell them "how of the angels," which he must needs mean those in Genesis, called the sons of God, "mixing with women were begotten the devils" as good Justin Martyr . . . told them."

But Cyprian, Lactantius, and especially Augustine are praised for having refused to submit to the authority of the ancients:

St. Austin writes to Fortunatian that "he counts it lawful, in the books of whomsoever, to reject that which he finds otherwise than true; and so he would have others deal by him." He neither accounted, as it seems, those fathers that went before, nor himself, nor others of his rank, for men of more than ordinary spirit, that might equally deceive, and be deceived."

3 Ibid., II, 432.
4 Ibid., II, 433-34.

5 Ibid., II, 458.
• Ibid., II, 379-80.

7 Ibid., II, 385.

On that understanding," so he would have others deal by him," Milton seems, as we shall see, to enter into a sort of pact with Augustine. In 1641 again, in his Animadversions, he declares:

I shall not intend this hot season to bid you the base through the wide and dusty champaign of the councils, but shall take counsel of that which counselled them reason: the gift of God in

one man as well as in a thousand.8

But it is in 1642, in the Apology for Smectymnuus, that the councils are finally disposed of thus:

I have not therefore, I confess, read more of the councils, save here and there; I should be sorry to have been such a prodigal of my time; but, that which is better, I can assure this confuter, I have read into them all. And if I want any thing yet I shall reply something toward that which in the defence of Murena was answered by Cicero to Sulpitius the lawyer: If ye provoke me (for at no hand else will I undertake such a frivolous labour) I will in three months be an expert councilist."

In 1644, in the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, Milton quotes the fathers, Tertullian and Jerome in particular, chiefly to give instances of ancient prejudice on the subject of marriage.

[ocr errors]

In Tetrachordon (1645), as we have seen, he attacks Augustine for his "crabbed opinion on a similar subject. But the attack shows the weight he attaches to Augustine's opinion:

Car il l'attaque à part, comme un noble adversaire.

Then he quotes, in regular battle order, the Fathers that are on his side. He is rather shamefaced about it, for they are the very same Fathers so derided in 1641: Justin, Clement, Origen, and Tertullian. He is brazen enough 9 Ibid., III, 162-63.

8 Ibid., III, 56–57.

even to appeal to the councils of Eliberis in Spain, Neocæsaria, and Agatha," although testimony be in logic and argument rightly called inartificial," 10 etc., etc., the end being that the Fathers are called "wisest heads heretofore." Long discussions follow, of opinions of Justin, Tertullian, Origen, Lactantius, Epiphanius, Jerome, Ambrose, and we come at last to Augustine, the most important of them all, because he interprets fornication (as a cause for divorce) "in a general sense," to mean "that which draws the mind from God's law."" Milton is very grateful to Augustine for this timely help, since this is his principal argument all through the divorce tracts.

Areopagitica (1644) yields a precious indication: "Who finds not that Irenæus, Epiphanius, Jerome, and others discover more heresies than they can well confute, and that oft for heresy which is the truer opinion? " 12 Irenæus and Epiphanius having written mostly against the Gnostics, Milton thus seems not disinclined to approve the latter.

In the Defensio (1651), the Fathers are frequently quoted to confound Salmasius.13 Tertullian is still thought little of: "who is no orthodox writer, notorious for many errors." " Athanasius and Ambrose are "miserably raw in divinity, and unacquainted with the doctrine of the gospel." 15 Augustine, here again, is oftenest quoted and thought most of. His opinion of Sulpitius Severus proves the latter "a man of great wisdom and learning." 1 Milton tries to interpret Augustine in his favor," or combats him in such a manner as to show his

16

10 Ibid., III, 414–19. 11 Ibid., III, 419. 13 E.g., Prose Works, I, 39, 80, 81: on Irenæus. 14 Ibid., I, 101. 16 Ibid., I, 38. Cf. I, 62 and 172.

12 Ibid., II, 69. Jerome, Origen, Tertullian, 15 Ibid., I, 81. 17 Ibid., I, 82.

« PreviousContinue »