The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography

“With Dangers Compast Round” 1660–1665

God imparted to the Son as much as he wished of the divine nature, and indeed of the

divine substance also[.] But do not take substance to mean total essence. If it did, it

would mean that the Father gave his essence to the Son, and at the same time retained

it, numerically unaltered, himself. That is not a means of generation but a contradic-

tion of terms. (211–12)

Milton equates essence with hypostasis (individual being or existence) rather than
with substance (141–2).^120 Moreover, as he will soon emphasize in discussing Crea-
tion, by his monist ontology all beings were created from God’s substance, so the
Son is not unique in that regard.^121
The fundamental principle grounding the anti-Trinitarianism of De Doctrina
Christiana – that God’s revelation, though above reason, will accord with reason
and the law of nature – reiterates a principle that sounds like a leitmotif throughout
Milton’s prose. He often appeals to reason to illuminate scripture texts pertaining to
the Godhead, and insists that God himself cannot defy the canons of logic:

The numerical significance of “one” and of “two” must be unalterable and the same

for God as for man.... Two distinct things cannot be of the same essence. God is one

being, not two. One being has one essence, and also one subsistence – by which is

meant simply a substantial essence. If you were to ascribe two subsistences or two

persons to one essence it would be a contradiction in terms.... No one will deny that

the Son is numerically different from the Father. And the fact that things numerically

different are also different in their proper essences, as logicians call it, is so obvious that

no reasonable being could contradict it. Therefore the Father and Son differ from

each other in essence. This is certainly the reasonable conclusion.^122

His orthodox opponents “fly in the face of reason” (213); they wrench both reason
and scripture to maintain “an extremely absurd paradox” (218); and their proof
texts which seem to infer a Trinity or which apply the term God to the Son, must
be held up to the standard of reason:

Reason is loud in its denunciation of the doctrine in question.... Can reason main-

tain an unreasonable opinion? The product of reason must be reason, not absurd

notions which are utterly alien to all human ways of thinking. The conclusion must

be, then, that this opinion is consonant neither with reason nor scripture.... If God

is one God, and the Father, and yet the Son is also called God, then he must have

received the divine name and nature from God the Father, in accordance with the

Father’s decree and will, as I said before. This is in no way opposed to reason, and is

supported by innumerable texts from scripture. (222)

This position, Milton insists, is the faith everywhere expressed in scripture and
codified in the Apostles’ Creed.
In chapter 6 Milton describes the Holy Spirit as