Notes to Chapter 1Essence that the Son’s sharing of the divine substance aligns him with a more nearly
“orthodox” subordinationist view of the Trinity than with Arius.
122 Pages 212, 262. In the Artis Logicae Milton developed the same logical argument about
number, pointing in a gratuitous comment to its anti-Trinitarian implications. See
chapter 14, pp. 497–8.
123 My translation. Cf. CM XIV, 402.
124 Similarly, the figure speaking in Proverbs 8 “is not the Son of God but a poetical
personification of Wisdom” (304).
125 CPW VI, 284, 285. In Paradise Regained the Spirit’s descent is presented as the Father’s
testimony to and illumination of Christ.
126 My translation. Cf. CM XV, 24.
127 My translation. See CM XV, 18, 22.
128 See CM XV, 24: “sed nec materia nec forma peccat; egressa tamen ex Deo; et alterius
facta quid vetat, quin iam mutabilis per rationcinia Diaboli atque hominis ab ipsis
prodeuntia contagionem contrahat et polluatur.”
129 Also, il Penseroso seeks to learn from Plato about those regions where the “immortal
mind” has “forsook / Her mansion in this fleshly nook” (ll. 89–92).
130 See Stephen Fallon, “The Metaphysics of Milton’s Divorce Tracts,” in Loewenstein
and Turner, eds, Politics, Poetics, and Hermeneutics, 69–83. See also Jason P. Rosenblatt,
Torah and Law in Paradise Lost (Princeton, NJ, 1994), 71–137. Christopher Kendrick,
Milton: A Study in Ideology and Form (London, 1986), 20–35, calls attention to a similar
tendency manifested in the metaphors of Areopagitica, e.g. the book as “the pretious
life-blood of a master spirit” (493).
131 Hobbes, Leviathan (London, 1651), 30. See Stephen Fallon, Milton among the Philoso-
phers (Ithaca, NY, and London, 1991). John Aubrey heard from Milton’s widow that
“Mr Hobbs was not one of his acquaintance: yet her husband did not like him at all:
but he would grant him to be a man of great parts, a learned man. Their Interests and
tenets did run counter to each other” (EL 7).
132 See the discussion of Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, and Benjamin Whichcote in
Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers, 50–78.
133 Ann (Finch) Conway, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, ed Peter
Lopston (The Hague, 1982), 217. The work was written in English, probably shortly
before her death in 1679; a Latin translation was published in 1690. See Fallon, Milton
among the Philosophers, 117–36; the term “animist materialism” is from Fallon (98).
134 CM XV, 31–3: “Coelum beatorum seu Paradisus... ubi etiam Deus angelis et sanctis
quantum illi capiunt, se praebet conspiciendum.”
135 CPW VI, 319, 321. Milton cites Aristotle’s statement that the soul is wholly contained
in every part of the body as a “very strong” argument that “the human seed, that
intimate and most noble part of the body, [is not] destitute and devoid of the soul of
the parents, or at least of the father, when communicated to the son in the act of
generation” (321–2). Milton’s qualification allows the possibility that the father’s se-
men may be the carrier of the soul.
136 Page 333. Cf. PL 12.469–73: “O goodness infinite, goodness immense! / That all this
good of evil shall produce, / And evil turn to good; more wonderful / Then that by
which creation first brought forth / Light out of darkness!”
137 Pages 343–5. Cf. PL 5.535–40, Raphael to Adam: “My self and all th’ Angelic Host
Notes to Chapter 12