can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends forth his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the life of whom he pleases. To this must be added industrious and select reading, steady observation, and insight into all seemly and gracious acts and affairs; till which in some measure compact, I refuse not to sustain this expectation.' His blindness abandoned him to a sublime loneliness. Every thing material was banished from his fervid soul, while he sang to God the story of creation as the morning stars' sung it at first, and the greater story of redemption as it was sung by the advent angels. His soul was rapt because it breathed the air of a spiritual gospel and took the nourishment which a personal Christ imparts. His genius was overpowered by the sense of God's help, and this inspired his grace of movement, his glow of adoration. One of his most careful biographers writes that 'the horizon of "Paradise Lost" is not narrower than all space, its chronology not shorter than eternity; the globe of our earth a mere spot in the physical universe, and that universe itself a drop suspended in the infinite empyrean.' Butler says: 'It runs up into infinity.' The gorgeous embroidery which adorns Paradise Lost' is wanting in 'Paradise Regained,' clearly because he curbed his imagination in deference to evangelic truth. He could not gild the atoning cross without making the Gospel blush for the artist. The supernatural existences of 'Paradise Lost' are made visible in their darkness by the aid of superhuman lights; but 'Paradise Regained' shines in the native splendor of plain gospel fact, it lives in the simplicity of Christ without bedecking, it extols the reign of grace without pomp. Christ is so fully its high art and argument, that Wordsworth pronounces it 'the most perfect in execution of any thing written by Milton,' and Coleridge, the most perfect poem extant' of its kind. Milton's religious views were Non-conformist, but there is no decisive proof that he was a communicant of any Church. He said, 1642, that he was a member incorporate into that truth whereof I was persuaded, and whereof I had declared myself openly to be the partaker.' Again, in his Treatise on Christian Doctrine: For my own part, I adhere to the Holy Scriptures alone. I follow no other heresy or sect. I had not even read any of the works of heretics, so called, when the mistakes of those who are reckoned for orthodox, and their incautious handling of Scripture, first taught me to agree with their opponents, whenever those opponents agree with Scripture.' A State religion was abhorrent to him, and he demanded equal rights. for all sects, except Roman Catholics. These he would not tolerate in England, on the ground that Catholicism was a political machine, which had destroyed the liberties of England once, and, he believed, would destroy them again if it recovered ascendency. He did not regard it as a religious but as a political system in a religious guise, directly opposed to civil freedom and, therefore, intolerable. Also, he was extremely jealous lest any sect should trench a hair's-breadth upon his personal rights of conscience; hence, he chose to follow his own individual lines. He adopted the same course in his literary, political, and official life, holding no close intimacy with leading literary men or republicans, not even with Cromwell. He said, in 1657: I have very little acquaintance with those in power, inasmuch as I keep very much to my own house, and prefer to do so.' In this self-contained reserve he appears to have had no intercourse with the literati of the times, Waller, Herrick, Shirley, Davenant, Cowley, Gataker, Seldon, Usher or Butler, and seems not to have met most of them. The purely literary did not suit him, and with many of these he was in warm controversy. Bishop Sumner states, that 'during every period of his life, his Sundays were wholly devoted to theology.' This was not merely a private exercise, for Büch shows that on Sundays he read a chapter of the Greek Testament, and gave an exposition of it to his pupils; and then, at his dictation, they wrote on divinity. This course not only nourished his own religious life, but made him a religious teacher to others, and he followed this order as well before he became blind as after. After 1660 he was so hated that the iron entered his soul, and he preferred to dwell in darkness; or as Macaulay forcibly expresses it: 'After experiencing every calamity which is incident to our nature, old, poor, sightless and disgraced, he retired to his hovel to die.' And still it stands good, that he defended roundly, openly and with his might every distinctive principle which the Baptists hold, and his foes ranked him with them. In his youth he held Trinitarian views and in his 'Ode on Christ's Nativity' speaks of our Lord as, 'Wont at heaven's high council-table, To sit the midst of Trinal Unity.' In later life he was tainted with Arianism; yet, with a strange inconsistency, he constructed his 'Paradise Lost' on the fundamental principle of Christ's vicarious sacrifice, and maintains this truth without the least ambiguity or equivocation in his Treatise on Doctrine,' together with the co-related tenets of original sin, justification and regeneration. These were not distinctive Baptist doctrines in his day more than now; they were held in common by Baptist and Pedobaptist. He held views on divorce which the Baptists of his day did not hold, growing out of his conviction that while marriage itself is an appointment of God, it should be known in human law only as a civil contract, a sentiment which is now incorporated into the statute law of the American States. But on all the doctrines which distinguish Baptists from other religious bodies, he stands an open and firm Baptist writer. 1. As to the Rule of Faith. Usher, the most learned prelate of his day in all that concerned religious tradition, was seriously perplexed and compelled to abandon some of his positions in his controversy with Milton. Milton swept away all his patristic arguments at a stroke, charging that the archbishop was not contented with the plentiful and wholesome fountains of the Gospel, as if the divine Scriptures wanted a supplement, and were to be eked out . . . by that indigested heap and fry of authors HIS VIEW OF INFANT BAPTISM. 343 called antiquity.' He then avows: "That neither traditions, councils, nor canons of any visible Church, much less edicts of any magistrate or civil session, but the Scripture only, can be the final judge or rule in matters of religion, and that only in the conscience of every Christian to himself.' For this reason he refused to appeal to any authority but the Bible in his Treatise on Doctrine.' So rigidly did he adhere to his rule to discard reason in sacred matters,' that Bishop Sumner complains thus: 'Milton has shown a partiality in all, his works, even on subjects not immediately connected with religion, for supporting his argument by the authority of Scripture;' and so the Bible was the mother of his prose and poetic literature. He took the exact Baptist ground of his day and ours, when he said: 'I enroll myself among the number of those who acknowledge the word of God alone as the rule of faith.' 2. He took the highest Baptist ground on the constitution and government of a Gospel Church. He demanded that it must be a 'communion of saints,' a 'brotherhood' professing the faith,' and that such only are to be accounted of that number as are well taught in Scripture doctrine, and capable of trying by the rule of Scripture and the Spirit any teacher whatever, or even the whole collective body of teachers.' Such a Church, he says, 'however small its numbers,' is an independent body: 'In itself an integral and perfect Church, so far as regards its religious rights; nor has it any superior on earth, whether individual or assembly or convention, to whom it can be lawfully required to render submission.' Its offices, he held, are presbyters and deacons, and the choice of ministers belongs to the people.' This excludes all infant membership, on any plea. Ie protests of infants, that they are not to be baptized, inasmuch as they are incompetent to receive instruction, or to believe, or to enter into a covenant, or to promise or answer for themselves, or even to hear the word. For how can infants, who understand not the word, be purified thereby, any more than adults can receive edification by hearing an unknown language? For it is not that outward baptisin, which purifies only the filth of the flesh, that saves us, but the answer of a good conscience, as Peter testifies, of which infants are incapable. . . . Baptism is also a vow, and as such can neither be pronounced by infants nor be required of them.' No Baptist writer, of any period, more thoroughly refutes the doctrine of infant baptism than does Milton.1 ... 3. As to the order of baptism itself, he holds it to be an ordinance under the Gospel: Wherein the bodies of believers, who engage themselves to pureness of life, are immersed in running water, to signify their regeneration by the Holy Spirit,. and their union with Christ, in his death, burial and resurrection.' 'It is in vain. alleged by those, who, on the authority of Mark vii, 4, Luke xi, 38, have introduced. the practice of affusion in baptism instead of immersion, that to dip and to sprinkle mean the same thing; since in washing we do not sprinkle the hands, but immerse them.' His writings abound in this sentiment. In Paradise Lost' (Book xii) he teaches that after Christ's resurrection he commissioned his Apostles 'To teach all nations what of him they learned, For death like that which the Redeemer died.' 6 6 4. As we have already seen, he was a thorough Baptist on all that related to soul liberty, excepting in the case of the Roman Catholics. His Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes' teaches: That for belief or practice in religion, no man ought to be punished or molested by any outward force upon earth whatsoever.' Again, in his 'Christian Doctrine:'The civil power has dominion only over the body and external faculties of man; the ecclesiastical is exercised exclusively on the faculties of the mind, which acknowledge no other jurisdiction.' He went further than Locke, who excluded atheists from toleration; for while he repudiated all union of Church and State, he held to a union between the State and religion, as such. With this one abatement of Catholic toleration, Milton stood with the Baptists on the liberty of conscience. Dr. Stoughton writes: The Baptists multiplied after the Revolution, and continued what they had been before, often obscure, but always stanch supporters of independence and voluntaryism. In this respect they differed from Presbyterians, and often went beyond Independents.' 2 For these reasons, many of Milton's biographers have classed him with Baptists. Mark Pattison tells us, that every Philistine leveled the contemptuous epithet of Anabaptist against Milton most freely. He says of himself, that he now lived in a world of disesteem. Nor was there wanting to complete his discomfiture the practical parody of the doctrine of divorce. A Mistress Attaway, lace-woman in Bell Alley and she-preacher in Coleman Street, had been reading Master Milton's book, and remembered that she had an unsanctified husband, who did not speak the language of Canaan. She further reflected that Mr. Attaway was not only unsanctified, but was also absent with the army, while William Jenney was on the spot, and, like herself, also a preacher.' This slant of the modern author accords exactly with the abuse of Milton by Featley, on the same subject, in 1644. In his 'Dippers Dipt,' he first attends to the case of Roger Williams, who had just issued his Bloody Tenet,' ranking him with the Anabaptists,' because he taught that it is the will and command of God, that since the coming of his Son, the Lord Jesus, a permission of the most Paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or antichristian consciences and worships be granted to all men in all nations and countries. That civil States with their officers of justice are not governors or defenders of the spiritual and Christian state and worship. That the doctrine of persecution in case of conscience, maintained by Master Calvin, Beza, Cotton and the ministers of the New England Churches, is guilty of the blood of the souls crying for vengeance under the altar.' On the same page, and in the next sentence, he couples 6 JOHN TOLLAND ON MILTON. 547 Milton with Williams as an 'Anabaptist' by the title of his book, saying: 'Witness a "Tractate of Divorce," in which the bonds of marriage are let loose to inordinate lust, and putting away wives for many other causes besides that which our Saviour only approveth, namely, in cases of adultery.' Featley's design was to lampoon the Baptists, and if Milton was not understood to stand on their distinctive principles as well as Williams, why did he run the risk of classing them all together and denouncing them in the same breath as Baptists? This furious writer hated both of them as well as their doctrine of soul-liberty, and the law of association led him to denounce them both as symbolizing with those who held this as a divine truth. Other men, whom he hated as much as these, had written books as distasteful to him, but he did not, therefore, class them with Baptists, merely to throw additional contempt upon them as a body; for even Featley had some sense. Milton's widow was a Baptist and a member of the Church at Nantwich, Cheshire, but it is not known when she entered its fellowship. Her body rests in the meeting-house of that Church, and she appointed Samuel Creton, its pastor, her loving friend,' as one of her executors. Perhaps this sketch cannot better be finished than by giving the following from John Tolland, who wrote the first Life of Milton,' published in London, 1699: Thus lived and died John Milton, a person of the best accomplishments, the happiest genius and the vastest learning which this nation, so renowned for producing excellent writers, could ever yet show. . . . In his early days he was a favorer of those Protestants then opprobriously called by the name of Puritans. In his middle years he was best pleased with the Independents and Anabaptists, as allowing of more liberty than others and coming the nearest to his opinion to the primitive practice. But in the latter part of his life he was not a professed member of any particular sect among Christians; he frequented none of their assemblies, nor made use of their peculiar rites in his family. Whether this proceeded from a dislike of their uncharitable and endless disputes, and that love of dominion or inclination to persecution, which, he said, was a piece of popery inseparable from all Churches, or whether he thought one might be a good man without subscribing to any party, and that they had all in some things corrupted the institutions of Jesus Christ, I will by no means adventure to determine; for conjectures on such occasions are very uncertain, and I have never met with any of his acquaintance who could be positive in assigning the true reasons for his conduct.'3 Few men amongst the Baptists ranked higher at this period than BENJAMIN KEACH. He was born in 1640, was immersed on his faith in Christ at the age of fifteen, and began to preach at eighteen; then, in 1668, at the age of twenty-eight, he became pastor of the Baptist Church in Horsleydown, London. For the high crime of publishing a small work on fundamental Baptist principles he was indicted in 1664, and brought before Chief-Justice Hyde. This judge descended to the meanness of browbeating his prisoner. The indictment being long, Keach |