B. Nature as the Force and Process of
Universal Order and Law

313

C. Nature in Various Senses Opposed to

Art....

314

PASSAGES FROM THE WRITINGS

OF MILTON THAT BEAR UPON HIS THEORY OF POETRY AND FINE ART

I. PASSAGES SUGGESTING MILTON'S CONCEPT OF 'FORM'

(For incidental references to 'form,' and to closely related matters, such as purpose, function, correspondence, and so on, see above, pp. 1-26).

1. Christian Doctrine (Bk. 2, chap. 1) 2.240:1

It is faith that justifies, not agreement with the Decalogue; and that which justifies can alone render any work good; none therefore of our works can be good, but by faith; hence faith is the essential form of good works; the definition of form being that by which a thing is what it is.

2. Tetrachordon (Gen. 2.24), Works 4.169:

Definition is decreed by logicians to consist only of causes constituting the essence of a thing. What is not therefore among the causes constituting marriage must not stay in the definition. Those causes are concluded to be matter and, as the artist calls it, form. But inasmuch as the same thing may be a cause more ways than one, and that in relations and institutions which have no corporal subsistence, but only a respective being, the form by which the thing is what it is, is oft so slender and undistinguishable, that it would soon confuse, were it not sustained

1The references to Christian Doctrine, throughout these Illustrative Passages, are to Sumner's translation.

by the efficient and final causes, which concur to make up the form invalid otherwise of itself, it will be needful to take in all the four causes into the definition.

3. Artis Logicae (Praef.), Works 7.4:

Forma sive ipsa ratio artis non tam est praeceptorum illorum methodica dispositio, quam utilis alicujus rei praeceptio: per id enim quod docet potius quam per ordinem docendi, ars est id quod est Translation:

The form or very fashion of an art is not so much the methodical arrangement of its rules as its teaching of something useful: because of what it teaches rather than because of the manner of its teaching, an art is what it is.

4. Christian Doctrine (Bk. 1, chap. 5) 1.128:

It is impossible for any ens to retain its own essence in common with any other thing whatever, since by this essence it is what it is.

5. Colasterion, Works 4.368:

How can a thing subsist when the true essence thereof is dissolved?

6. Christian Doctrine (Bk. 1, chap. 10) 1.322-323: [Marriage is indissoluble] if good will, love, help, comfort, fidelity, remain unshaken on both sides, which according to universal acknowledgment, is the essential form of marriage. But if the essential form be dissolved, it follows that the marriage itself is virtually dissolved.

7. Animadversions, Works 3.206:

'Tis not the goodness of matter therefore which is not, nor can be, owed to the Liturgy, that will bear it out, if the form which is the essence of it be fantastic and superstitious, the end sinister, and the imposition violent.

8. Christian Doctrine (Bk. 1, chap. 7) 1.260:

God breathed the breath of life into the other living beings, and blended it so intimately with matter, that the propagation and production of the human form were analogous to those of other forms, and the proper effect of that power which had been communicated to matter by

the Deity. Man being formed after the image of God, it followed as a necessary consequence that he should be endued with natural wisdom, holiness, and righteousness.

9. Christian Doctrine (Bk. 1, chap. 14) 1.391:

For human nature, that is the form of man in a material mold, wherever it exists, constitutes at once the proper and entire man, deficient in no part of his essence.

10. Church-Gov. (Bk. 1, chap. 2), Works 3.103:

Did God take such delight in measuring out the pillars, arches, and doors of a material temple...? Should not He rather now...cast His line and level upon the soul of man, which is His rational temple, and by the divine square and compass thereof form and regenerate in us the lovely shapes of virtues and graces?

11. Reformation (Bk. 1), Works 3.30:

The very essence of truth is plainness and brightness; the darkness and crookedness is our own.

12. Comus 459-463:

Till oft converse with heavenly habitants

Begin to cast a beam on the outward shape,

The unpolluted temple of the mind,

And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence,

Till all be made immortal.

13. Church-Gov. (Bk. 2, chap. 2), Works 3.154:

Believe it, wondrous Doctors, all corporeal resemblances of inward holiness and beauty are now past.

14. P. L. 3.138-141:

Beyond compare the Son of God was seen
Most glorious; in him all his Father shone
Substantially expressed; and in his face
Divine compassion visibly appeared.

15. An Apology, Works 3.316:

Certainly, Readers, the worship of God singly in itself, the very act of prayer and thanksgiving, with those free and unimposed expressions

which from a sincere heart unbidden come into the outward gesture, is the greatest decency that can be imagined. Which to dress up and garnish with a devised bravery, abolished in the Law, and disclaimed by the Gospel, adds nothing but a deformed ugliness.

16. Episcopacy, Works 3.81:

We do injuriously in thinking to taste better the pure evangelic manna by seasoning our mouths with the tainted scraps and fragments of an unknown table; and searching among the verminous and polluted rags dropped overworn from the toiling shoulders of time, with these deformedly to quilt and interlace the entire, the spotless and undecaying, robe of truth.

17. Church-Gov. (Bk. 1, chap. 3), Works 3.111:

For doubtless there is a certain attraction and magnetic force betwixt the religion and the ministerial form thereof. If the religion be pure, spiritual, simple, and lowly, as the Gospel most truly is, such must the face of the ministry be. And in like manner, if the form of the ministry be grounded in the worldly degrees of authority, honor, temporal jurisdiction, we see it with our eyes it will turn the inward power and purity of the Gospel into the outward carnality of the Law, evaporating and exhaling the internal worship into empty conformities and gay shows.

18. P. L. 2.438-441:

The void profound

Of unessential Night receives him next,
Wide-gaping, and with utter loss of being
Threatens him, plunged in that abortive gulf.

19. P. L. 7.232-233:

Thus God the Heaven created, thus the Earth,

Matter unformed and void.

20. P. L. 10.469-472:

Long were to tell

What I have done, what suffered, with what pain
Voyaged the unreal, vast, unbounded Deep
Of horrible confusion.