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blind and dependent old man, who could not attend even a conventicle except as he was led, had simply permitted himself, partly from the inertia of failing strength, and partly from dislike of all religious forms even though they were the simplest, to swing to the opposite extreme of no religious service at all. What he excused in himself he could not have justified in others; for, in this very "Treatise of Christian Doctrine," he counts individual membership and support of Christ's church. to be the duty of every believer.

We have spoken of the influence of Cromwell, but there was another influence upon Milton's thinking more important still, and that was the influence of Roger Williams. This most lovable man, yet born agitator, republican, and Baptist, did a work in England as well as in America-a work that only of late years has come to be recognized. When the Long Parliament had loosened the grip of Charles and of Laud upon the civil and religious liberties of England, Williams, in the year 1643, made a visit to his English home. Twelve years before, he had emigrated to Massachusetts; seven years before, he had founded a tiny settlement at Providence in Rhode Island. Cotton Mather tells us what manner of man he seemed to orthodox New Englanders to be. "In the year 1654," says that distinguished divine, "a certain windmill in the Low Countries, whirling round with extraordinary violence, by reason of a violent storm then blowing, the stone at length by its rapid motion became so intensely hot as to fire the mill; from whence the flames, being dispersed by the high winds, did set a whole town on fire. But I can tell my reader that, above twenty years before this, there was a

whole country in America like to be set on fire by the rapid motion of a windmill in the head of one particular man;" and Cotton Mather proceeds to say that this man was Roger Williams.

The church to which Roger Williams belonged in Salem had excommunicated him because he had been baptized and had baptized others, establishing thereby the first church in America of the Baptist faith. It was not in human nature-it was certainly not in Roger Williams' human nature-when he returned to England to cease propagating his new faith. The windmill continued to run and set other towns on fire. He proclaimed, far in advance of his time, the duty of absolutely separating Church and State.

He was the guest,

Here he natuMilton, Vane's

for a whole year, of the younger Vane. rally came frequently in contact with warm friend and admirer. He found Milton, on account of his divorce pamphlets, put out with the Presbyterians, thrown among the sectaries, and, as the poet himself tells us, in "a world of disesteem." Williams now published his "Bloody Tenet of Persecution, with a Plea for Liberty of Conscience." He was the apostle of Voluntaryism. His book made great stir in London, but it especially commended itself to Milton. From Roger Williams, the poet probably imbibed not only this particular portion of Baptist doctrine, but much more with regard to the nature and the subjects of Christian baptism.

If circumstances had permitted the absolute separation of Church and State in England, we may believe that Milton would have steadfastly argued in its favor. But even Cromwell could not accept the principle of

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universal toleration-popery at least must be suppressed. And Milton seems to have yielded to the inevitable. After the Restoration, disestablishment seemed to him only a dream. The final doctrine of the pamphlets published in his lifetime is simply this: Since not reason or the church, but the Scripture, is the one and only authority and standard, there must be "no liberty of conscience until and without acceptance of the Scriptures, but after and with that acceptance, all liberty." But in his "Treatise of Christian Doctrine," he comes squarely to the ground of Roger Williams, and opposes interference of the State or civil magistrate in any way in matters of religious belief.

Travelers in Italy tell us that even educated Italians refer to the Bible ideas and expressions which are found only in the "Divine Comedy." The popular theology of the English-speaking race is, in a similar manner, to a considerable extent derived from "Paradise Lost." Many notions with regard to the nature of angels and with regard to the temptation of man have come to us, not from Moses, but from Milton. It is well for us, therefore, carefully to estimate the claims of the Miltonic theology and its correspondence or non-correspondence with Scripture. We have called Milton the poet of the Protestant Reformation. Can we still subscribe to this dictum, when we find him, in his doctrinal treatise, declaring himself to be an Arminian, an Arian, a Monist, a Traducian, a Soul-sleeper, a Pre-millenarian, and, last of all, a Baptist?

We can answer this question only by asking another, and that is: What is the essence of Protestantism? We reply, Protestantism is the protest of mankind

S

against the substitution of the church in the place of
Christ, and of the priest in the place of Scripture.
Roman Catholicism had turned means into ends. George
Herbert has stigmatized the error in his couplet :

What wretchedness can give him any room,
Whose house is foul, while he adores his broom!

The Protestant Reformation, on the other hand, dispos. sessed all these intermediaries between the soul and God. It insisted that every man must have personal dealings with Christ. He is not to come to Christ through the church, but to come to the church through Christ. He is not to take his belief from the priest, but from the word of God. He is bound to read and to interpret the Scripture for himself, and he is personally responsible to God for the conclusions to which he

comes.

This is Protestantism; this is Puritanism; and Milton is a Puritan of the Puritans. He will put his conscience into no ecclesiastical keeping, even though it may be the keeping of the Westminster Assembly of Divines. So he thinks for himself and writes for him self. While he believes all men to be sinners, and sal vation to be only through Christ, he shows how flexible and daring the intellectual spirit of Puritanism may be, It is not so much the old orthodoxy, as the new the ology, that appears in him. He is the poet of Protest. antism, by illustrating its large range of freedom, and by turning its rugged doctrine into song.

How much the politics and religion of the Commonwealth owe to Milton may be judged by the utter contempt into which they fell for a hundred and fifty years.

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The Long Parliament voted themselves out of office when they determined that none of their number should be members and soldiers at the same time-the Restoration wits stigmatized them as "self-denying devils." Cromwell said to the artist, "Paint me just as I am wrinkles and all!"-the Cavaliers called him "Noll Maggot-face." When that "steel-clad theorist" found that his first levies were eager for prayer meetings and holdings-forth at every halt, he said, "I have a lovely company!" and prophesied that they would hold their own against the gentlemen of the king-but in the next generation all this religious zeal became an object of ridicule. Lofty patriotism gave place to swinish selfindulgence. Milton suffered obloquy with his party. Dr. George H. Clark, the biographer of Oliver Cromwell, tells us that "in the year 1710 an engraver was at work in Westminster Abbey upon a Latin inscription to the memory of the poet, John Phillips. He came to the words: Uni Miltono Secundus-Next to Milton.' The Dean of the Abbey stopped the engraver; that hallowed building must not be desecrated even by the name of Milton on another man's monument. John Phillips, with his poetry, must go down to posterity without it."

We

Only during the last fifty years has the world begun to do justice either to the Puritans or to Milton. cannot understand the one without understanding the other. It is only Milton who shows that the iron faith of the Puritans was compatible with the highest art. His gorgeous verse has glorified the time in which he lived and the doctrine for which he contended. His prose is a defense of the great Protector more telling