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
"The hell-hatched doctrine of th' immortal soul
Discovered makes the hungry Furies howl,
And teare their snakey haire, with grief appaled
To see their error-leading doctrine quailed,
Hell undermined and Purgatory blown
Up in the air."
There are Latin quotations in the Tract; and some of the physiological
arguments by which the author seeks to refute the opinion of "the
Soulites," as he calls them, are rather nauseous. On the whole, were it
not for the appended concession of a Resurrection, or New Creation, and
an Immortality somehow to ensue thence, the doctrine of the Tract might
be described as out-and-out Materialism. Possibly, in spite of the
concession, this is what the author meant to drive at. Among some of his
followers, however, a milder version of his doctrine seems to have been
in favour, not quite denying the existence of a soul, but asserting that
the soul goes into sleep or temporary extinction at death, to be re-
awakened at the Resurrection. [Footnote: Paget, pp. 148, 149; _Gangræna_,
Part I. pp. 22, 23; Baillie's _Dissuasive_, Part II. 99 and 121; but
mainly the Tract cited.]
ARIANS, SOCINIANS, AND OTHER ANTI-TRINITARIANS:--Since 1614, when Legate
and Wightman had been burnt for Arianism (Vol. I. p. 46), this and other
forms of the Anti-Trinitarian heresy had been little heard of in England.
But in the ferment of the Civil War they were reappearing. A Thomas Webb,
a young fellow of twenty years of age, had been shocking people in London
and in country-places by awful expressions against the Trinity; one
Clarke had been, doing the same; one Paul Best had been circulating
manuscripts in which there were "most horrid blasphemies of the Trinity,
of Christ, and of the Holy Ghost;" and John Biddle, of Gloucester, master
of the school there, and of whom, from his career at Oxford, high hopes
had been formed, had begun to be "free of his discourses in a Socinian
direction." Baillie adds Mr. Samuel Richardson, one of the Baptist
ministers of London, to the number of those whose Trinitarianism was
questionable, and charges the Baptists generally with laxity on that
point. In short, there was an alarm of Arianism, and other forms of Anti-
Trinitarianism, as again abroad in England. Mr. Nye, the Independent, had
been heard to say that "to his knowledge the denying of the Divinity of
Christ was a growing opinion, and that there was a company of them met
about Coleman Street, a Welshman being their chief, who held this
opinion." Coleman Street appears, indeed, to have been a very hotbed of
heresy. For here it was that JOHN GOODWIN (Vol. II. 582-4, and
_antè_, pp. 120-122) had his congregation. He had not revealed
himself fully; but the public had had a taste of him in recent pamphlets.
Baillie, on rumour, reports him as a Socinian; and Edwards, who came into
conflict with him in due time, and devotes many consecutive pages of
Billingsgate to him in the Second Part of his _Gangræna_, tells us
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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