A Concise Companion to the Study of Manuscripts, Printed Books, and the Production of Early Modern Texts by Jones Edward;

Author:Jones, Edward; [Jones, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated
Published: 2015-08-25T00:00:00+00:00

The phrase 'Fanatic Egypt' (Paradise Lost 1.480) permits the observation, 'Fanaticus, Lat. a Mad Fanatick Votary … a misguided Zelot, led out of the right way by the Light within him’, thus inserting some distance between Milton and the stereotypical puritan that emerged, for example, in Samuel Butler’s Hudibras, the first part of which was published in 1663 and did much to define the anti-dissenter sensibility of the age. Elsewhere, he reflects contemporary anxieties and, in the Williamite context, politically correct concerns about continental tyranny. His observations on classical Greece support a residual worry about the Ottomanic threat to Europe (1695, 47).

But with more precision Hume uses his commentary on Paradise Lost to define his own position on key theological issues. He emerges as Arminian in his soteriology, recognizing in Milton a fellow anti-Calvinist and opportunistically exploiting the advantage that gives him. Thus, as he comments on the theological discussion between God the Father and the Son in Book 3, he becomes expansive. Taking as his starting point the lines 'nor can justly accuse / Their maker, or their making, or their fate, / As if predestination overruled / Their will' (3.112–15), Hume develops a lengthy and tendentious response:

V. 114. As if Predestination, &c. Praedestinatio, Lat. a foe-ordaining what shall come to pass; the Predestinarians are such, as hold the Elect and Reprobates to be fore-ordained such from the beginning of the World, and that all the Miscarriages and Faults cannot hinder the Salvation of the former, nor all the Struggles and Endeavours imaginable remedy or stave off the Damnation of the latter: An Opinion of the greatest Impiety conceivable, destructive of God’s glory and Mercy, as well as his Irreproachable Justice. Read St. Paul to the Ephesians …

(1695, 103)

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