“With Dangers Compast Round” 1660–1665of spiritual things and a profound love of God, which brings forth good works
freely (478–9). God’s grace is essential to produce these effects, but “our own effort
is always required” (480). Perfection, however, is not possible in this life.
Chapters 22–5 treat humankind’s “relative or external growth” by Justification
and Adoption, processes he ascribes to the Father alone. With Protestants generally
he describes Justification as the imputing of our sins to Christ and of his merits to us,
and insists on Christ’s “absolutely full satisfaction,” leaving no place for human
merit. But unlike many of them, he intimates that Justification follows and depends
upon actual regeneration: the Father absolves from sin and death “those who are
regenerate and ingrafted in Christ” and accounts them righteous, “not by the works
of the Law, but through Faith” (485). Also, he disputes the usual view that faith is
merely infused, defining it rather as “a habit acquired by frequent actions” (489,
492). Adoption is briefly described as the Father’s acceptance as his sons and heirs
those who are justified through faith; its first fruit is Christian liberty, to be dis-
cussed later. In chapter 25 Milton describes the final stage of regenerate growth on
earth, Incomplete Glorification, whereby those justified and adopted experience “a
certain awareness both of present grace and dignity and of future glory” (502), and
attain through the testimony of the Spirit to an assurance of salvation. However, he
flatly denies the Calvinist doctrine of final perseverance, insisting that the “overall
tendency” of many scripture texts indicates that this assurance always presupposes
the condition, “so long as they cling to faith and charity with all their might” (505).
Citing Remonstrant arguments that even a regenerate person may fall irrecoverably
(though not easily), Milton now explicitly associates himself with their doctrine.^155
He turns next to the Covenant of Grace, having at some point added six new
chapters to treat aspects of this important topic.^156 That covenant is delivered first
through the Law (chapter 26), in two modes. The law of nature was given to Adam
and still remains as a “glimmering” in humans after the Fall; it is daily brought
nearer to its original perfection in the regenerate (516). The Mosaic Law was given
to the Jews alone and was intended to lead them, through a recognition of human
depravity, to faith in the promised Messiah; it serves also to lead God’s people
“from this elementary, childish, and servile discipline to the adult stature of a new
creature, and to a manly freedom under the gospel” (517). In chapter 27 Milton
treats the Covenant of Grace under the gospel, “written in the hearts of believers
through the Holy Spirit,” and its concomitant, Christian liberty, which was “not
unknown during the time of the law” but has largest scope under the gospel. Ful-
filling his promise in Of Civil Power to treat this matter further, he now asserts
definitively that Christian liberty involves the abolition of the entire Mosaic Law.^157
Characteristically, he claims to have proved this point against “pretty well all the
theologians” who suppose that only the Jewish ceremonial and judicial laws are
abrogated but that the Decalogue, as an embodiment of enduring moral principles,
still binds Christians.^158 As the Decalogue is described as a law of works that cannot
justify sinners but instead stimulates sin and leads to slavish fear and death, Milton