¹ In This Great Argument, Princeton (1941), pp. 3 ft., Maurice Kelley writes of the dismay which the publication of the Christian Doctrine occasioned.Google ScholarPubMed

² Masson, David, The Life of John Milton, New York (1946, reprint edition), VI, 823. Kelley holds that the Christian Doctrine “asserts Arian views on the Son of God” and that Paradise Lost is Arian too. Although “Milton's is not an extreme type of Arianism” in Kelley's eyes and “the theologian would perhaps find ‘anti-Trinitarian’ a more exact term,” yet, like other twentieth century readers of Milton, Kelley has “used the two terms interchangeably” and argues also that “Miltonists … should cease to question the anti-Trinitarianism of Paradise Lost.” Pp. 6, 11 ff., 35 n. 22, and 118 n. 86.Google Scholar

³ Even in the midst of the main “Arian” chapter of the Christian Doctrine, he casually mentions Arius, but without any sense of identification. Works, New York (1931–38), XIV, 293.

⁴ Heresiography, Or a Description of the Hereticks and Sectaries Sprung Up in These Latter Times, London (1661), p. 157.

⁵ Orthodox church fathers vigorously and successfully campaigned to have all of Arius' writings destroyed. Accordingly his ideas are available to us only through statements made by his opponents, of whom Athanasius is by far the most important. This summary is taken from his Orationes contra Arianos, I, 5 and 6. See also Gwatkin, H. M., The Arian Controversy, London (1898), p. 7.Google Scholar

⁶ The phrase is originally from 2 Maccabees 7:28.

⁷ See the discussion by Wolfson, Harry A. in The Philosophy of the Church Fathers, Cambridge, Mass. (1956), I, 217 f.Google Scholar

⁸ In the original Nicene Creed which was adopted to oppose Arianism, Christ is “begotten of the Father, an only-begotten—that is, from the essence (ousia) of the Father— … begotten, not made, being of one essence (homoousion) with the Father, by whom all things were made. … But those who … maintain that the Son of God is of a different essence (hypostasis or ousia)” are anathematized. See Gwatkin, pp. 29–30. Note that neither Nicene Creed expressly affirms the Son's eternity nor the equality of the members of the Trinity. Only in the “Athanasian” Creed are “The whole three Persons … coeternal and coequal.”

⁹ Chapter II; see also Chapter VII.

¹⁰ Phillips’ actual words are that Milton wrote “from his own dictation, some part, from time to time, of a tractate which he thought fit to collect from the ablest of divines who had written of that subject: Amesius, Wollebius,&c.” But was this the Christian Doctrine? The published work is not in any sense a collection of passages from these or any other writers; rather, it is a compilation of biblical verses. Its organization seems traditional.

¹¹ William Ames, The Marrow of Sacred Divinity, London (1642), p. 15.

¹² Masson, III, 157 f. I should add here that Martin Larson's attempt to trace Milton's conception of the Trinity to Servetus (PMLA, XLI, 1926, 891–934) does not seem convincing. Servetus’ ideas are easily available in The Two Treatises of Servetus on the Trinity, trans. Wilbur, E. M., in Harvard Theological Studies, XVI (1932).Google Scholar

¹³ John Bidle, A Confession of Faith Touching the Holy Trinity (1648), p. 2, reprinted with separate pagination in The Faith of One God, Who is Only the Father; and of One Mediator between God and Men, Who is Only the Man Christ Jesus, London (1691).

¹⁴ Timaeus and Epistles, trans. Bury, R. G., London (1929), 312 E.Google Scholar

¹⁵ No really satisfactory translation is at hand for this term. MacKenna uses the awkward intellectual principle in his translation of the Enneads; Inge uses Spirit in his Philosophy of Plotinus, London (1948Google Scholar, 3rd ed.) but this unfortunately suggests the third rather than the second member of the Christian Trinity. Dodds, E. R. in his translation of Proclus' Elements of Theology, Oxford (1933)Google Scholar, uses intelligence. English writers in the seventeenth century were generally satisfied with mind.

¹⁶ For Plotinus' main discussion of the relationship of the three “Persons” of the neoplatonic trinity, see Enneads, V, i. Besides being quite unknowable, the One is, as Proclus says, utter unity as well: “Every manifold is posterior to the One.” Dodds notes that “this proposition demonstrates that the Absolute Unity … is completely transcendent in the sense of being uninfected by plurality.” Elements, Prop. 5 and note, p. 191. Milton's God is likewise in the final sense unknowable (Works, XIV, 31) and utterly unified: “nothing can be said of the one God which is inconsistent with his unity, and which assigns to him at the same time attributes of unity and plurality” (XIV, 51).

¹⁷ Elements, Prop. 33. In Paradise Lost Milton states that after the Last Judgment “God shall be All in All” (III, 341; see also V, 469 f.), an idea elaborated in the Christian Doctrine (Works, XVI, 367). Though the Christian source is 1 Cor. 15:24–8, the idea is identical with the neoplatonic “return.”

¹⁸ On the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians, trans. Taylor, Thomas, Chiswick (1821), pp. 301–302.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Cf. Dodds’ note in Elements, p. 290. But with regard to the eternal generation of the Son the similarity is striking.

²⁰ Hermetica, ed. and trans, by Scott, Walter, Oxford (1924), I, 117. Scott notes (II, 24) that the writer has hypostatized the Logos, as had Philo. Later in this Libellus it is expressly paralleled with the Demiurgos-Nous of the Platonists (cf. I, 119, and II, 32). The parallels with Milton are obvious, but they can be matched in many other writers.Google Scholar

²¹ Hermetica, I, 131. I have capitalized Word although Scott argues that it is not hypostatized here (II, 70). But in the seventeenth century one could hardly read the passage with other than Christian meaning.

²² Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, trans. Stahl, William H., New York (1952), pp. 143–146Google Scholar. The fact that Mind is described as created and not eternal should be noted. In several other details Macrobius' ideas are analogous to those of Milton: cf. the origin and destiny of the soul (pp. 124–125; Milton, Works, XV, 239, and my own “Milton's Materialistic Life Principle,” JEGP, XLV, 1946, 74)Google Scholar. Milton's Limbo of Vanities (Paradise Lost, III, 444 ff.) may owe something to the Commentary, p. 126. Macrobius’ description of creation, p. 182, is similar to Milton's lines in Paradise Lost, VII, 235 ff.

²³ Confessions, trans. Pusey, E. B., New York (1950), VII, 9.Google Scholar

²⁴ Plotinus, II, 210.

²⁵ Cory, Isaac P., Ancient Fragments, London (1832, 2nd ed.), Introduction, p. li.Google Scholar

²⁶ Gwatkin, pp. 20, 26.

²⁷ For the exposition of Philo's ideas I follow Harry A. Wolfson, Philo, Cambridge, Mass. (1948). He discusses Philo's transcendent God on II, 119, giving an extended argument and observing that this conception is new in the history of western philosophy and religion.

²⁸ “On the Creation,” iv, in Works, trans. F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker (Loeb, 1929), I, 15, 17. See also Wolfson, Philo, I, 226 ff.

²⁹ “On the Creation,” v, in Works, I, 17; cf. Wolfson, Philo, I, 230.

³⁰ Wolfson, Philo, I, 231.

³¹ Wolfson, Philo, I, 234 f.

³² “Allegorical Interpretation,” III, 61, in Works, I, 419.

³³ “Philosophy of the Church Fathers, I, 293, 586.

³⁴ “Wolfson, Philo, I, 325 ff.

³⁵ “Wolfson, Philosophy of the Church Fathers, I, 192.

³⁶ Adversus Praxeam, 5 and 7 as cited in Wolfson, Philosophy, I, 195.

³⁷ “Adversus Praxeam, 5 and 7; Wolfson, Philosophy, I, 198.

³⁸ “Allegorical Interpretation,” II, 1, in Works, I, 225–227; cf. Wolfson, Philosophy, I, 194.

³⁹ Contra Haeresim Noetim 10; Wolfson, Philosophy, I, 194.

⁴⁰ As summarized in Wolfson, Philosophy, I, 223.

⁴¹ Adversus Praxeam, 6; Wolfson, Philosophy, I, 224. As he notes, the seventeenth century was perfectly aware of the question: cf. Dionysius Petavius, De Trinitate, VI, 8, 1 ff., in his De Theologicis Dogmaticis, Paris (1644–50). He might have cited the Christian Doctrine just as well.

⁴² Cf. the discussion in Prestige, G. L., God in Patristic Thought, London (1956), pp. 135Google Scholar ff. The Greek word ποιέω is not involved here: the Nicene Creed had disposed of it once and for all. So also the Latin facio.

⁴³ “The Second Ecumenical Council at Constantinople (381) seems to have decided that γεννηθέντα (begotten) be used in connection with the Son and έκπορενὁμενον (proceeding) with the Holy Spirit.

⁴⁴ Metaphysics, trans. W. D. Ross, 1032a25 and 1049b27–8. See Wolfson's stimulating discussion in Philosophy, I, 289 ff., where he distinguishes the artisan, antimythological creation (such as Plato's demiourgos) from the Judaeo-Christian artisan, mythological creation.

⁴⁵ It should be noted that this argument does not depend upon Wolfson's interpretation of Philo. See his Philo, I, 239, for other opinions. But Wolfson's is clear, cogent, and an excellent basis for understanding the patristic writers.

⁴⁶ Wolfson, Philosophy, I, 200.

⁴⁷ Wolfson, Philosophy, I, 198 ff.

⁴⁸ Origen, De Principiis, I, 2, 4; Wolfson, Philosophy, I, 201.

⁴⁹ Origen, De Principiis, IV, 4, 1; Wolfson, Philosophy, I, 201 f.

⁵⁰ Ad Autolycum, II, 22; Wolfson, Philosophy, I, 197.

⁵¹ Athanasius, Orationes contra Arianos, I, 6; Wolfson, Philosophy, I, 586 f.

⁵² Athanasius, Orationes, I, 6; Wolfson, Philosophy, I, 244.

⁵³ See Prestige's discussion, Chapter VII.

⁵⁴ See e.g. Athanasius, Orationes, III, 60; Wolfson, Philosophy, I, 227 ff.

⁵⁵ See Wolfson, Philosophy, I, 310.

⁵⁶ Wolfson, Philosophy, I, 313–59.

⁵⁷ Cudworth, Ralph, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, London (1845), II, 313–314Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ Even Sir John Suckling noted the parallel. Regarding the Trinity, he wrote, “I observe in those great lovers and lords of reason, quoted by the fathers, Zoroastes, Trismegistus, Plato, Numenius, Plotinus, Proclus, Amelius, and Avicen, that when they spoke of this mystery of the Trinity, of which all writ something, and some almost as plainly as Christians themselves, that they discussed it not as they did other things, but delivered them, as oracles which they had received themselves, without dispute.” From “A Discourse of Religion,” in The Poems, Plays, and Other Remains, ed. Hazlitt, W. C., London (1892), II, 252.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ From the 1647 edition. In 1642 he had argued that “the platonists, the best and divinest of Philosophers, and the Christians, the best of all that do professe religion, do both concur that there is a Trinity.” Both editions of “To the Reader” make extensive and detailed comparisons between the two trinities.

⁶⁰ In his notes upon this canto, More observes that ”Ahad, Æon, Psyche, the Platonic Triad, is rather … the Divinity rather than the Deity.” From the “one indivisible immovable self-born Unity” come “Wisdome, Intellect, Æon, On, or Autocalon, or in a word, the Intellectual world.” One can sympathize with Paul Shorey's comment in Platonism Ancient and Modern, Berkeley, Calif. (1938), p. 40, upon “the imperturbable self-assurance of the Neo-Platonic type of mind—the almost comic innocent serenity with which these ‘babe-like Jupiters,’ in Emerson's phrase, … sit on their clouds and from age to age prattle to each other and to no contemporary.” Or perhaps he would prefer Dodds' epithet of the “Wissenschaft des Nichtwissenwerthan,” Elements, p. ix.

⁶¹ II, 347–9. His “authority” for the latter statement is Proclus.

⁶² II, 399; see also p. 390. As George Rust observes in A Letter of Resolution Concerning Origen and the Chief of His Opinions, London (1661), p. 16: “There seems such a necessity of nature that all Effects and Productions whatever, whether voluntary or emanative, should decline something from the supereminent Excellency of the Cause and Producer, that it is scarce possible to keep our mindes from thinking but that the Rule holds also in the Divine Emanations.”

⁶³ See his De Trinitate, II.

⁶⁴ II, 374 f. See also his editor Mosheim's long note to the passage.

⁶⁵ Cudworth is quite well aware too that Philo is somehow related to the question. See, e.g., II, 316, 320, etc.

⁶⁶ A Free and Impartial Censure of the Platonick Philosophie, Oxford (1666), pp. 93, 109.

⁶⁷ The Platonic Tradition in English Religious Thought, London (1926), p. 58.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ The Platonic Renaissance in England, trans. Pettegrove, James P., Austin, Texas (1953) P. 38.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Again Tertullian (Adversus Hermogenem, 3) offers a suggestive parallel: “There was, however, a time when neither sin nor the Son was.” Cf. Wolfson, Philosophy, I, 586 n.

⁷⁰ Philip Schaff, perhaps alone among nineteenth century scholars, reaches the same conclusion. Milton, he says, cannot properly be termed an Arian; his system of ideas is “totally different” from that of Arius. History of the Christian Church, New York (1867), II, 640 n.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Cassirer, pp. 30, 84. The last quotation is from More's “General Preface” to A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings, London (1662), p. vi.