ON INSPIRATION. MILTON, as we may see from various passages of his Christian Doctrine and other writings, held that the Holy Spirit aided sincere inquirers after the truth, however unfurnished with human aids to understand the Scriptures, which, in his view, were not to be understood without this aid: “Those written records pure, Though not but by the Spirit understood." Par. Lost, xii. 513. But he went still further, and he seems to have believed that the aid of the Spirit was also given to those who sought, especially by writings, to promote the glory of God. Thus, in his Reason of Church Government, he says of himself, "And if any man incline to think I undertake a task too difficult for my years, I trust, through the supreme enlightening assistance, far otherwise." Again, "For public preaching indeed is the gift of the Spirit, working as best seems to his secret will." When, in the same piece, he hints at his design of writing a great poem, he says, that the requisite powers were to be obtained only "by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases." Milton's invocation of the Holy Spirit in the commencement of Paradise Lost is not therefore to be regarded as a mere form of words. He believed that the Divine Spirit would illuminate the mind of one whose object was to "Assert eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men." In addressing the Divine Light, which he seems to have held to be the same as, or equivalent to, the Spirit, he says "So much the rather Thou, celestial Light, Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers Of things invisible to mortal sight.”—iii. 51. And still stronger in the invocation of the Spirit in Paradise Regained, where he says "Inspire, As thou art wont, my prompted song, else mute.” It is therefore not an improbable supposition that Milton regarded his descriptions of Heaven and Hell, and other" things invisible to mortal sight," as having their foundations in reality, being the secret dictation of the Holy Spirit to his unconscious mind. Newton tells us that Milton's widow, being asked whether he did not often read Homer and Virgil, she understood it as an imputation on him for stealing from those authors, and answered with eagerness, that "he stole from nobody but the Muse who inspired him." And being asked by a lady present, who the Muse was, replied, "It was God's grace and the Holy Spirit that visited him nightly." ON PHILOSOPHY. In astronomy it is, we think, quite clear that Milton, like almost every scholar of his time,* held fast to what is called the Ptolemaic system, which regarded the earth as the centre of the universe. Thus in the Areopagitica we meet the following passage: "Who can discern those planets that are often combust, and those stars of brightest magnitude that rise and set with the sun, until the opposite motion of their orbs bring them to such a place in the firmament where they may be seen evening or morning?" We also meet, in the Reason of Church Government, with the following:-" But that our happiness may orb itself into a thousand vagaries of glory and delight, and with a kind of eccentrical equation be, as it were, an invariable planet of joy and felicity." In the following passage, from the Christian Doctrine, we think also that Ptolemaic ideas may be discerned :-" But even if it filled with its presence the whole circle of the earth * "In the middle of the seventeenth century, and long after, there were mathematicians of no small reputation, who struggled staunchly for the immobility of the earth; and except so far as Cartesian theories might have come in vogue, we have no reason to believe that any persons unacquainted with astronomy, either in this country or on the Continent, had embraced the system of Copernicus. Hume has censured Bacon for rejecting it; but if Bacon had not done so, he would have anticipated the rest of his countrymen by a full quarter of a century."— Hallam, Lit. of Europe, iii. 192. with all the heavens, i. e. the entire fabrick of the world, it would not follow that the Spirit is omnipresent." Further, though in one place of Paradise Lost (viii. 122 seq.) he notices the Copernican system, and hints the possibility of its truth, yet this was only in accordance with a practice of his, of which we shall speak when we come to treat of that poem ; and the system which is employed as the true one all through it is the Ptolemaic. Finally, the book on astronomy which Milton read with his pupils was Sacro Bosco, De Sphæra, with the Commentary of the Jesuit Clavius, in which, as we will show, is to be found every idea and every expression on the subject which occurs in that poem. In truth, with Milton's thraldom to the letter of Scripture, he could not hold any other system. He probably would have said, with Luther, of Copernicus, "This silly fellow wants to upset the old established astronomy; but according to Scripture, Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth." Still we are not to think the less of being in advance of most men of geBacon rejected the Copernican system, and Sir Thomas Brown spoke of it with contempt. It is however rather remarkable that Sir William Davenant has adopted it in his poem of Gondibert; its first introduction, we believe, into the realm of the Muses : Milton from not nius of his time. "Man's pride, grown to religion, he abates By moving our loved earth, which we think fix'd, With others' motions scorn to have it mix'd; As if it were great and stately to stand still Whilst other orbs dance on, or else think all Those vast bright globes, to show God's needless skill, In astrology also Milton seems to have shared the weakness of those two celebrated men. The only passage however that we have found in his prose works looking that way, is the following in the treatise on Divorce: But what might be the cause, whether each one's allotted genius or proper star, or whether the supernal influence of schemes and angular aspects, or this elemental crasis here below,-whether all these, jointly or singly, meeting friendly or unfriendly in either party, I dare not, with the men I am likely to clash, appear so much a philosopher as to conjecture." In Paradise Lost we meet— And "All heaven And happy constellations on that hour "To the blank moon Her office they prescribed; to the other five In synod unbenign; and taught the fix'd In Paradise Regained, Satan says to our Lord,- Or heaven write aught of fate, by what the stars In their conjunctions met, give me to spell, Sorrows and labours, opposition, hate Attend thee, scorns, reproaches, injuries, Violence and stripes, and lastly cruel death. A kingdom they portend thee, but what kingdom, Nor when; eternal sure, as without end, Directs me, in the starry rubric set.—iv. 379. |