THE

Christian Reformer.

No. CXXXVIII.]

JUNE, 1826.

[Vol. XII.

Mr. Rutt on Milton's Treatise of Christian Doctrine. SIR, Clapton, May 24, 1826. WHEN, on the first appearance of Milton's "Treatise of Christian Doctrine," I proposed to offer you some account of a work rendered interesting not only by its subject, but by the character of its author and the circumstances of its long concealment and accidental discovery, I designed especially to gratify those of your readers who would not be likely to have convenient access to that publication. They would, I thought, be peculiarly interested by Milton's scriptural criticisms, some of them now found to have been unconsciously adopted by later scholars, who, like him, were happily prepared to present all their human learning a free-will offering at the sacred shrine of Christian Truth.

I, indeed, little expected, when venturing on an examination of the Treatise, to be now, after so many months, still inviting attention to the 5th chapter. I have, however, felt, and I trust your readers have not generally been unconscious of the feeling, that Milton's contributions to your former pages have not been ill-adapted to the laudable design of the Christian Reformer. Unless I have deceived myself, they are eminently calculated to interest and to edify those who, dissatisfied with the " many inventions" which man has " sought out," would recur, with implicit confidence, to the divine testimony concerning truth, revealed in the Scriptures.

I left Milton (p. 127) examining the various passages in the Epistolary writings of the New Testament, adduced by Trinitarians in support of their theology. He had considered Titus ii. 13, and thence took occasion to describe those explicit declarations which the Scriptures may be expected to contain, rather than forced, and therefore unsatisfactory inferences, when teaching "a primary article of faith." He proceeds to "1 John iii. 16," adopting that Greek text which was used in the Latin Vulgate, and which our Authorized Version correctly renders, " Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us."

Yet Milton remarks, that "the Syriac Version reads illius instead of Dei," adding, "it remains to be seen whether other manuscripts do the same." Dr. (now Bishop) Sumner instances "the Ethiopic Version."

Milton does not appear, on this occasion, to have examined the editions of the Greek Testament, extant in his time, so fully as might have been expected. He, however, contends that, supposing the reading adopted in the Authorized Version should be genuine, "the pronoun he seems not to be referred to God, but to the Son of God." This he concludes "from a comparison of the former chapters of this epistle," &c., and " by analogy from many other passages. Nor is it extraordinary," he adds, "that by the phrase, his life, should be understood the life of his beloved Son, since we are ourselves in the habit of calling any much-loved friend by the title of life, or part of our life, as a term of endearment in familiar discourse."

The passage, 1 John iii. 16, appears, in Milton's age, to have been more regarded by Trinitarians than at present. It was, indeed, first brought to their aid in England by King James's translators. The Version of 1591, which I have quoted (pp. 30, &c.), and of 1596, reads, "Hereby have wee perceived love, that he layde down his life for us." This translation, rejected by King James's learned, rather than impartial divines, is sustained by Castalio's Latin Version, and by nearly all editions of the Greek Testament. Dr. Lardner remarks, (Works, V. 215,) that" our English translation of the former part of this verse is unsupported by any good authority." Mr. Belsham (Calm Enquiry, p.231) says, "The word 8, of God, has the authority of one manuscript only, and that of little note, of the Vulgate Version, and of the Complutensian edition. It is unquestionably spurious, and is left out of Griesbach's corrected text, and of Archbishop Newcome's, Mr. Wakefield's, and the Improved Version's."

I have before me a Greek Testament published in 1768, by an Editor who is honoured with a long List of Subscribers, chiefly clergymen, and including nearly all the English prelacy. His preface closes with a declaration, that if any thing appears contrary to the analogy of faith or the doctrine of the Church of England, he is disposed to unsay it. Yet on 1 John iii. 16, supplying the word Christi in a note, he adopts the generally-approved reading which Griesbach has since confirmed; thus virtually

calling in question the critical judgment or the strict integrity of King James's translators, after whom the priests of his Church commanded, at their peril, to call upon the abused people, whenever I John iii. 16 occurs in the lesson for the day, to believe that God laid down his life; a gross, if not blasphemous notion, which very few hearers, probably, are prepared to qualify by Milton's ingenious solution. Thus slowly does scriptural knowledge flow out to the people through the channel of "the best constituted Church;" while Bible Societies, allowing themselves in a pious fraud, unworthy of their honourable purpose, still circulate the occasionally incorrect, if not sometimes unfaithful Authorized Version, with its leading head-lines and contents, as "the pure word of God, without note or comment." I return to the Treatise, where Milton thus proceeds to dispute with Trinitarians their further claim to support from this Epistle, attributed to "the disciple whom Jesus loved ;" and whom all Christians must regard as the least likely of any disciple to misunderstand his Master's doctrine, or to disparage his dignity.

"But the passage which is considered most important of all is 1 John v., part of the 20th verse; for if the whole be taken, it will not prove what it is adduced to support: We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, (even) in his Son Jesus Christ: this is the true God and eternal life. For we are in him that is true in his Son, that is, so far as we are in the Son of him that is true: this is the true God; namely, he who was just before called him that was true, the word God being omitted in the one clause and subjoined in the other. For he it is that is he that is true, (whom that we might know, we know that the Son of God is come and hath given us an understanding,) not he who is called the Son of him that is true, though that be the nearest antecedent, for common sense itself requires that the article this should be referred to him that is true, (to whom the subject of the context principally relates,) not to the Son of him that is true."

Milton adds, that "examples of a similar construction are not wanting," and refers to "Acts iv. 10, 11, and x. 16; 2 Thess. ii. 8, 9; 2 John 7, and John xvii." Bishop Sumner remarks, that Milton's is "the interpretation of

Benson, Wetstein, Schleusner, Macknight," &c., and refers "in support of the other construction" to "Beza, Whitby, and particularly Waterland."

This reference to Whitby is, I think, somewhat disparaging to the theological reputation of the learned translator. He has, I have no doubt, correctly referred to the Commentary of Whitby, which I have not now an opportunity of consulting. But that Bishop Sumner should never have read, or should have forgotten, the Lust Thoughts of that learned clergyman, which I mentioned, (XI. 426,) is passing strange. Yet with that work in recollection, I cannot allow myself to suppose that he could have referred to Whitby as, on this passage, opposed to Milton, with whose conclusions Whitby's became, at length, strictly in accordance.

When just closing a learned and laborious life, at the age of 88, as if

The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd,

Let in new light through chinks that time had made,

Whitby prepared for the press, though he did not survive to publish, his Last Thoughts, which, as the writer of Paul an Unitarian has well remarked (p. 46), will "remain an imperishable monument of his religious integrity, and confirmed belief in the Unitarian, in opposition to the Trinitarian doctrine." Whitby introduces the work by remarking, after Justin Martyr, "that an exact scrutiny into things doth often produce conviction, that those things which we once judged to be right, are, after a more diligent inquiry into truth, found to be far otherwise." This opinion he proceeds to confirm by the following ingenuous confession: "And truly I am not ashamed to say, this is my very case. For when I wrote my Commentaries on the New Testament, I went on (too hastily I own) in the common beaten road of other reputed Orthodox divines: conceiving, that the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, in one complex notion, were one and the same God, by virtue of the same individual essence communicated from the Father. This confused notion I am now fully convinced-to be a thing impossible, and full of gross absurdities and contradictions."

Proceeding to reconsider the chief passages which he "had produced" in the Commentary, "for confirmation of

the doctrine" which he "there too hastily endeavoured to establish," he thus remarkably corroborates the apostolic doctrine which Milton deduces from the same passage:

"That the true God, mentioned 1 John v. 20, is not the Son, but the Father, who by our Saviour is styled the only true God, is proved from the ancient reading of these words, thus: The Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know the true God; and we are in his true Son, Jesus Christ.' This God, of whom the Son of God hath given us this knowledge, (as our Lord hath told us, John xvii. 3,) is the true God, and the knowledge of him is eternal life.' Thus the disciple accords well with his Master, and only teacheth what he had learned from him."

You will, I trust, excuse this digression, if, indeed, I have not sufficiently connected Milton and Whitby, both pious and learned inquirers after divine truth, and alike prepared to sacrifice to its promotion their most favourite early opinions. Returning to the Treatise, I find the author considering the objection," that according to some of the texts quoted before, Christ is God;" and that "if the Father be the only true God, Christ is not the true God." Milton replies, "We are not obliged to say of Christ what the Scriptures do not say. The Scriptures call him God, but not him that is the true God; why are we not at liberty to acquiesce in the same distinction?" I have stated (p.32) what appears to have been Milton's design when he called our Saviour God, as a name of dignity, not unworthily applied to the most favoured Son and Servant of the Most High. He next proceeds to consider a passage in which Paul describes our Savour's dignity and depression. It has, I believe, been generally numbered by the Orthodox among the strongest holds of the Trinitarian faith; though, as probably many of your readers have observed in the Discourse on that passage to which I very lately referred, it appears on a scriptural examination to be strictly Unitarian.

They also adduce Philipp. ii. 6, IVho being in the form of God. But this no more proves him to be God, than the phrase which follows, took upon him the form of a servant, proves that he was really a servant, as the sacred writers no where use the word form for actual being. But if it be contended that the form of God is here taken in a philosophical sense for the essential form, the consequence