light as the interpreter of Scripture is asserted with equal conviction; but practically this illumination seems seldom to have guided Milton to any sense but the most obvious.  Hence, with the intrepid consistency that belongs to him, he is not only an Arian, but a tolerator of polygamy, finding that practice nowhere condemned in Scripture, but even recommended by respectable examples; an Anthropomorphist, who takes the ascription of human passion to the Deity in the sense certainly intended by those who made it; a believer in the materiality and natural mortality of the soul, and in the suspension of consciousness between death and the resurrection.  Where less fettered by the literal Word he thinks boldly; unable to conceive creation out of nothing, he regards all existence as an emanation from the Deity, thus entitling himself to the designation of Pantheist.  He reiterates his doctrine of divorce; and is as strong an Anti-Sabbatarian as Luther himself.  On the Atonement and Original Sin, however, he is entirely Evangelical; and he commends public worship so long as it is not made a substitute for spiritual religion.  Liturgies are evil, and tithes abominable.  His exposition of social duty tempers Puritan strictness with Cavalier high-breeding, and the urbanity of a man of the world.  Of his motives for publication and method of composition he says:—­

“It is with a friendly and benignant feeling towards mankind that I give as wide a circulation as possible to what I esteem my best and richest possession....  And whereas the greater part of those who have written most largely on these subjects have been wont to fill whole pages with explanations of their own opinions, thrusting into the margin the texts in support of their doctrines, I have chosen, on the contrary, to fill my pages even to redundance with quotations from Scripture, so that as little space as possible might be left for my own words, even when they arise from the context of revelation itself.”

There is consequently little scope for eloquence in a treatise consisting to so large an extent of quotations; but it is pervaded by a moral sublimity, more easily felt than expressed.  Particular opinions will be diversely judged; but if anything could increase our reverence for Milton it would be that his last years should have been devoted to a labour so manifestly inspired by disinterested benevolence and hazardous love of truth.

His life’s work was now finished, and finished with entire success as far as depended upon his own will and power.  He had left nothing unwritten, nothing undone, nor was he ignorant what manner of monument he had raised for himself, It was only the condition of the State that afflicted him, and this, looking forward, he saw in more gloomy colours than it appears to us who look back.  Had he attained his father’s age his apprehensions would have been dispelled by the Revolution:  but he had evidently for some time past been older in constitution