The Life of John Milton Volume 3 1643-1649: Narrated in Connexion with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of His TimeMasson, David
Religion
The Life of John Milton Volume 3 1643-1649: Narrated in Connexion with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of His Time
Masson, David
Milton, John, 1608-1674; Poets, English -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- Biography
and professes to censure the letter of Zeeland. He is a bitter enemy to
Presbytery, and is openly for a full liberty of conscience of all sects,
even Turks, Jews, Papists, and all to be more openly tolerate than with
you [_i.e._ than even in Holland]." [Footnote: Baillie, II. 180, 181.
Goodwin's mention of Spang, referred to by Baillie, is as follows:--
"There is a Scottish Church, of which one Spang is a very busy agent, at
Trevere [Campvere]... whence the Letter [_i.e._ the Zeeland Letter in
favour of Presbytery] came."] Baillie's representation of Goodwin's
Toleration doctrine is fair enough. It is not so deep, so exceptionless,
and so transcendentally reasoned as Roger Williams's; and indeed there
was none of the sap and mystic richness of nature in Goodwin that we find
in Williams, but chiefly clear courage, and strong cool sense. For most
practical purposes, however, Goodwin's Toleration was thorough. He was
for tolerating not merely the orthodox Congregationalists and such more
heterodox sects as might be thought respectable, but all religions,
sects, and schisms whatsoever, if only the professors of them were
otherwise peaceable in the State. Not, of course, that they were not to
be reasoned with and proved false publicly; or that heretics in
congregations were not to be admonished, and, if obdurate,
excommunicated; or that a whole church tainted with a great heresy ought
not to be put under a ban by all other churches, and communion with it
renounced. All this was assumed in the theory of Church-Independency
which was common to Goodwin and Williams. True, Williams, now that he had
passed beyond the Baptists and saw no true Church anywhere on earth, must
have begun to doubt also the efficacy and validity of even spiritual
censures, as exercised by the so-called churches, to regard as a mere
agency of troublesome moonshine that incessant watchfulness of each
other's errors on which Independency relied, and so to luxuriate in a
mood of large charity, sighing over all, and hoping more from prayer and
longing and pious well-doing all round than from censures and
disputations. To Goodwin, on the other hand, troubled with no such
visionary ideas, and fully convinced that a very good model of a Church
had been set up in Coleman Street, the right and efficacy of disputation
against error, and of ministerial vigilance against error in particular
churches, seemed more important, or at least more worth insisting on in a
public plea for Toleration. Williams and Goodwill did not differ
theoretically, but only practically, over this item in the exposition of
their doctrine. The sole difference, of theoretical import, was that
Goodwin, in dwelling on the duty of disputation by Christian ministers
against false religions and dangerous opinions in society round about
them, and of vigilance against minor heresies in their own congregations,
talked vaguely of a right on the part of the civil magistrate to admonish
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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