afflict the body, are nothing but the prelude. The fourth and last degree of death is death eternal, the punishment of the damned."

OF MAN'S RESTORATION AND OF CHRIST AS REDEEMER. "The restoration of man is the act whereby man, being delivered from sin and death by God the Father through Jesus Christ, is raised to a far more excellent state of grace and glory than that from which he had fallen. In this restoration are comprised the redemption and renovation of man. Redemption is that act whereby Christ, being sent in the fulness of time, redeemed all believers at the price of His blood, by His own voluntary act, conformably to the eternal counsel and grace of God the Father."

OF THE OFFICE OF MEDIATOR AND OF HIS THREEFOLD FUNCTIONS. "The mediatorial office of Christ is that whereby, at the special appointment of God the Father, He voluntarily performed, and continues to perform, on behalf of man, whatever is requisite for obtaining reconciliation with God and eternal salvation. The functions of His mediatorial office are threefold-Prophet, Priest, and King. His function as a prophet is to instruct His church in heavenly truth, and to declare the whole counsel of the Father. Christ's sacerdotal function is that whereby He once offered Himself to God the Father as a sacrifice for sinners, and has always made, and still continues to make, intercession for us. The kingly function of Christ is that whereby, being made king by God the Father, He governs and preserves, chiefly by an inward law and spiritual power, the church which He purchased for Himself, and conquers and subdues His enemies."

"The humiliation

OF THE MINISTRY OF REDEMPTION.of Christ is that state in which, under His character of God-man, He voluntarily submitted Himself to the divine justice, as well in life as in death, for the purpose of undergoing all things requisite to accomplish our redemption. The exaltation of Christ is that by which, having triumphed

over death and laid aside the form of a servant, He was exalted by God the Father to a state of immortality and of the highest glory, partly by His own merits, partly by the gift of the Father, for the benefit of mankind. The satisfaction of Christ is the complete reparation made by Him in His twofold capacity of God and man, by the fulfilment of the law and the payment of the required price for all mankind.” OF REGENERATION. "Regeneration is that change operated by the Word and the Spirit, whereby the old man being destroyed, the inward man is regenerated by God after His own image, in all the faculties of his mind, insomuch that he becomes, as it were, a new creature; and the whole man is sanctified both in body and soul for the service of God and the performance of good works."

If any of our readers have so little taste for theological discussion as to skip these abstract statements of doctrine, they may be glad to have the testimony of so eminent and evangelical a divine as Dr. Sumner, Bishop of Winchester, to the effect that "the doctrine of the Satisfaction of Christ is so scripturally and unambiguously enforced, as to leave nothing on that point to be desired." He says, further," So, too, Milton's sentiments respecting the divine decrees are as clear, and perhaps as satisfactory, as can be expected on a subject in which it is safest to confess with Locke our inability to reconcile the universal prescience of God with the free agency of man, though we be as fully persuaded of both doctrines as of any of the truths we most firmly assent to." The same remarks will apply to the doctrinal statements of Milton upon most points of evangelical truth. His theology possesses a strong Arminian tendency, which may have been the result of a reaction against the hard and rigid Calvinism of his day.

That Milton was in some respects heterodox cannot be denied. This, which had always been suspected from some passages in his Paradise Lost and Regained, is confirmed by the Treatise on Christian Doctrine, to which reference has just been made. Of these alleged heresies we proceed to speak.

Many of those which are commonly charged upon him are not strictly heresies at all. They are philosophical speculations, which lie quite outside the sphere of evangelical truth, and, whether true or false, are rather metaphysical subtleties than matters of doctrinal belief. Amongst these we class his opinions on "the form of God," the method of creation, and the nature of the soul. Upon themes so obscure as these, where certainty is impossible, we may question the wisdom of speculating at all, and may reject the conclusions arrived at as false or groundless, but we should not charge Milton with heterodoxy for holding them.

In questions of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, we should, too, bear in mind the distinction which Milton often draws between error and heresy; the former, in his view, being simply in the opinion, not in the will, the latter in the will, and in the opinion or not as it may happen. In other words, he insists that heresy consists in self-will, in obeying man rather than God, in setting human authority-either one's own or that of another man—above the teaching of revelation. The opinion may be right and true in itself, but he who holds it, not because the Bible teaches it, but because he wishes it to be true, or because some human teacher asserts it, is a heretic. Upon this ground he insists that the Romanists, and the Romanizers of the Anglican Church, are the

greatest of all heretics, because they systematically elevate ecclesiastical authority to a level with revelation. The creed may be Scriptural, but they, according to the original meaning of the word, are heretics in holding it. On the other hand, he defends many of the sects which are commonly regarded as heterodox, from the charge of heresy, not on the ground that their opinions are true, but because they are simply errors of judgment and interpretation. They accept the Bible as their only creed and sole canon of doctrine, and therefore are not heretics, though they may be in error. If we accept this distinction as valid, and to some extent at least we must do so, Milton will stand clear from the charge of heresy. His theological works are all of them intensely Scriptural. Where he fails in his exegesis, it is often from being too rigidly literal and textual in his interpretations. The Treatise on Christian Doctrine is made up of a classification of texts under certain headings, an analysis of their meaning, and a doctrine deduced from or based upon each. He indignantly rejects the intrusion of human authority in any form where divine truth is involved. "We can never want a creed so long as we want not the Scriptures," is his constant motto. Much as we may differ from some of his conclusions, it is impossible to deny to him the merit of profound submission to the teaching of the Bible, as he understood it. In so far, then, as his distinction between error and heresy holds good, we may convict him of the former, but must acquit him of the latter.

The two points upon which Milton's opinions have been most seriously open to attack, as heretical, are his doctrines of the Trinity, and of Polygamy and Divorce. The latter of these will be fully stated and

illustrated in the introduction to his treatises on the subject.* The former must now engage our

attention.

The Unity of the Divine Nature cannot be called in question for a moment by any one who receives the Bible as a revelation from God. That God is ONE, lies at the very basis of all Scriptural teaching. But those who make any pretence or approach to orthodoxy admit, that whilst there is but one God, there has yet been a threefold manifestation of the Divine Being, as Father, Son, and Spirit. The grand difficulty for theologians has been how to harmonise these seemingly opposed doctrines; or how to state the fact of the Trinity in Unity, so as to utter in human words. the ineffable mystery. For more than a thousand years the Athanasian Creed+ has been held to express the orthodox doctrine of the Triune God, affirming, as it does, a trinity of persons with a unity of essence and substance. Diverging from the straight line of Athanasian orthodoxy, has been Sabellianism on the one side and Arianism on the other. The Sabellian doctrine teaches the unity of the essence with simply a trinity of manifestation, — the one eternal God having successively revealed Himself as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Many theologians of high repute,-Archbishop Whately among the number,—have adopted this mode of explanation, and have even used the Athanasian Creed as declaratory of their opinions, understanding the word person

The date of the Creed is uncertain. It was probably composed long after the death of Athanasius, whose doctrines it professed to express and embody.