Milton’s sympathy with Puritanism appears in his views of redemption, regeneration, repentance, justification, and adoption. In his chapter on saving faith he describes it as a full persuasion produced in us through the gift of God, whereby we believe, on the sole authority of the promise itself, that all things are ours, whatsoever he has promised us in Christ, and especially the grace of eternal life.[495] The spirit of free inquiry, at a later period, ran into decided Arianism and Socinianism: at the time of which I am now speaking, tendencies in that direction were at work in different quarters. When, under the Commonwealth, Philip Nye said that “to his knowledge the denying of the Divinity of Christ was a growing opinion;”--when Edwards said, it had found an entrance into some of the Independent Churches;--when Owen said, “The evil is at the door, there is not a city, a town, scarce a village in England wherein some of this poison is not poured forth;”--these writers might be under the influence of uncharitableness, or of false alarm--both are common in seasons of excitement--but when Parliament resolved, in the year 1652, to seize and burn all copies of the Racovian Catechism, that fact forces us to conclude that the Catechism must have been in circulation, and that the tenets which it expressed were being propagated. John Biddle, who under the Commonwealth Government suffered much in consequence of his opinions, may be considered the father of Socinianism. Being a man of blameless life, the persecutions that he underwent awaken our sympathy; and it is highly probable, that the treatment which he received, although intended to reclaim him from his errors, only served to drive him further from orthodoxy. He took high ground as to free inquiry; but professed to exercise it simply in getting at the meaning of Scripture; and he exhorted people “to lay aside for a while, controversial writings, together with those prejudicate opinions that have been instilled into the memory and understanding, and closely to apply themselves to the search of the New Testament.” At first he declared, “I believe, that our Saviour Jesus Christ is truly God, by being truly, really, and properly united to the only Person of the Infinite and Almighty Essence;”--this position, instead of being employed by his opponents as an admission, sufficient to keep him, if consistent, within the bounds of evangelical faith, excited their suspicions, and led to fresh controversy, and fresh persecution. Although he continued to use orthodox language, he made it more and more a vehicle for conveying unorthodox ideas. His opinions and modes of expression are equally peculiar.