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written permission from the JHU Press. Inasmuch as Barabara Lewalski's "Milton and De Doctrina Christiana: Evidences of Authorship" 1 as well as the Dobranski/Rumrich volume--i. e., Steven Fallon's essay "'Elect above the rest': theology as self-representation in Milton" 2--contest some of my statements regarding De Doctrina Christiana in ways with which I do not agree, something needs to be said in reply. As I have stated repeatedly, both publicly and privately, my chief concern in the controversy over authorship of the treatise has been with quality of argument, not with one school or the other, whether for or against what Hunter charmingly characterized at Vancouver as his "advanced Alzheimer's." The standard case for Milton does seem to me to entail problems, and I think it foolish to bash Hunter and pretend that orthodox reasoning is infallible.
As illustration, let me begin with Barbara Lewalski's taking Hunter to task for supposedly ignoring Ames's "birth in England" and "successful academic career as a fellow of Milton's own college, Christ's, before his exile in Holland"--Milton was then scarcely born--and thence suggesting a Dutch provenance for the treatise. The rebuke really should be directed at me, as I am responsible for providing Hunter evidence (graciously acknowledged) on which his statement is partly founded. 3 He is, of course, no more ignorant of Ames's English birth and education than I. 4
Now the core issue in this matter is not whether Hunter is right in suggesting a "Dutch provenance for the treatise." As I have observed repeatedly, proving Hunter wrong does not in itself establish Milton's authorship. The relevant question is whether the expression "noster Amesius" in De Doctrina Christiana actually demonstrates the author to be an Englishman, which would lend probability to, though not necessarily clinch claims for, Milton. 5 To assert that this pronoun does so here is to run grave risk, however. If the treatise had spoken of, say, Milton's orthodox contemporary, Adam Stewart, Professor of Philosophy at Leiden, formerly of Sedan, 6 as "Steuuardus noster," would we be obliged to consider the author a Scot? Or if an anonymous manuscript in England should term the famous Professor Maccovius of the University of Franeker "noster," would anyone have the temerity to insist that the provenance was Polish? The fact is that in 1666 the great seventeenth-century pietistic Dutch proponent of orthodox theology, Professor Gijsbert Voetius of Utrecht, spoke in one breath of three non-Dutch, ultra-orthodox Reformed divines--one formerly at Sedan, two at Dutch institutions--as "ours" (nostris): nominatim (as Voetius put it) Pierre du Moulin, Andreas Rivetus, and Ames. This clearly demonstrates that just because a Reformed document like De Doctrina Christiana, even though in the possession of an Englishman in England, attaches "noster" to the name of a divine like Ames, such denotation, while not at all denying the possibility of English authorship, does not prove it beyond doubt. Indeed, noster so used can even suggest that on Voetius's evidence, at least, Hunter's idea of continental provenance may not be entirely unreasonable.
How could Voetius speak of Ames as one of his own? Because, compared with many exiles such as Burgess and other Englishmen populating separatist English churches in the Netherlands, Ames's so-called "exile" in the Netherlands was exceptional. One must not forget that not only did he never, unlike John Burgess, say, go back to England, but he did not stay a separatist either. He actually served and enjoyed a prestigious career within the Dutch Presbyterian establishment proper, first as a chaplain (1612-1621) to the regiment of Sir Horace Vere 7--a post salaried and controlled by Dutch authorities, 8 though presumably subject to the jus patronatus of the colonel commanding (probably influenced in this instance by his wife Mary, who was a notorious favorer of puritans)--and thereafter until 1633 as a prestigious professor of theology at Franeker university, 9 an employment that (as among other sources the Post-Acta of the Synod of Dort abundantly shows) 10 the authorized Dutch church encompassed along with the congregations, ministers, and lower schools as one of its arms. He left Franeker in 1633, primarily because he could not get along with Maccovius, and Harvard's own roots, as I trust Lewalski is aware, reach back to plans he hatched at Rotterdam just before his death. 11 In such a context, virtually any Dutchman could have claimed the late Ames as one of "ours," and for that matter so could any divine identifying with the orthodox reformed theological tradition, whether Scots, German, Walloon, French Huguenot, or Swiss, not just the English. Indeed, it is noteworthy that the title page of even the posthumous London translation of his Workes (1643) styles him "Doctor and Professor of the Famous University of Franeker in Friesland," for that was the cockpit of his fame. 12 In short, allusion to noster Amesius proves little about an English provenance behind the treatise, let alone Milton's authorship. If our object is to "cause the truth" [End Page 38] regarding the ascription "to shine forth more clearly," arguing from "noster Amesius" is not a prudent line to take.
A second point of disagreement is Lewalski's attempt to maintain the supposed allusion in De Doctrina Christiana to Tetrachordon, which I challenged in a recent article in SEL. The two endeavors are based on somewhat different concerns. Her priority is to defend and maintain congruence between De Doctrina Christiana and the Milton canon, mine was only to ask whether the assumption that the author of De Doctrina Christiana indeed alludes to Tetrachordon is as secure as she and most Milton scholarship has believed. My conclusion was simply that the Latin text at best "constitutes but a possible allusion" to Tetrachordon; it is "hardly a probable one," and "certainly not a necessary one." 13 I stand by this still, as I do not think Lewalski adequately meets the objections raised.
Let us begin with the eclectic translation that she offers in lieu of Sumners and Carey's. First, the Latin:
Fornicationis autem vox si ad orientalium normam linguarum exigatur, non adulterium solum significabit, sed vel quicquid res turpis aliqua dicitur, vel rei defectus quae in uxore merito requiri potuit, Deut 24. 1. (ut cum primis Seldenus in Uxore Hebraea multis Rabbinorum testimoniis demonstravit,) vel quicquid amori, fidelitati, auxilio, societati, i e, primae institutioni pertinaciter contrarium, ut nos alias ex aliquot scripturae locis et Seldenus idem docuit, reperitur.14
Lewalski's translation (209):
The word fornication, however, if it be considered according to the idiom of the oriental languages, signifies, not adultery only, but either what is called "any unclean thing" or a defect in some particular which might justly be required in a wife, Deut. xxiv.i (as Selden demonstrated especially well in his Uxor Hebraea with the help of numerous Rabbinical texts) or it can signify anything found to be persistently at variance with love, fidelity, help and society, that is, with the original institution of marriage, as I showed in aother work out of other places of scripture, and Selden also demonstrated.
It is gratifying to see that Lewalski has heeded some of my objections to her forerunners, in that, unlike Carey, she has restored as she should the translation to a single period that (despite the limitations of the awkward either-or correlative in English) preserves the three "vel" clauses intact and retains the same order they display in the original. She has also avoided Sumner's choosing English rules of politeness over the actual order of ideas in the text by placing Selden at the end of the sentence instead of the "nos" (thus eliminating an emphasis on self that the author of De Doctrina Christiana may not have intended), and she has rightly eliminated the semi-colon by which Sumner separated from the rest of the sentence the final "ut" construction touching "nos" and "Seldenus," which lent it an undue independence also not justified in the original.
At the same time, serious difficulties remain, a couple of them virtually insuperable in English. One can readily question the translation of "docuit" as "demonstrated," a point that I discussed thoroughly. 15 Though not unimportant, re-arguing the issue here entails more prolixity than is worth the trouble. However, when it comes to translating the word "alias" in the final "vel" clause, on the meaning of which the semantic case hinges for interpreting this passage as an allusion to Tetrachordon, Lewalski indulges in a substitution too important to pass over. Although the expression literally means no more than "on another occasion" or "elsewhere," she does not follow Carey's "elsewhere" but substitutes "in another work" which, if not as blatantly misleading as Sumner's "in another treatise," might still tempt some to imagine a sizeable opus in either manuscript or print, which is not what "alias" necessarily specifies. As I wrote, this adverb does "not tell us very much whether an author's thought was private, epistolary, circulated in manuscript or printed," or whether it entailed "merely a brief mention of divorce" or "an extended line of argument devoted exclusively to this subject." 16 Rather like Sumner's unauthorized preposi tional phrase, Lewalski's "work" adds a critical noun that does not stand in the Latin, yet unwarrantably tends to tilt matters in favor of an interpretation that the original does not necessarily support.
Closely related to this is another bit of fudging: namely, the translation of "aliquot" (in the phrase "ex aliquot scripturae locis") as "other"--"out of other places of scripture." The text reads "aliquot"--"some" or "several"--not a form of "alius" or "alter," I am almost embarrassed to say. This modifier does not sharply differentiate the proof texts that "nos"--"I"--speaks of having used from the ones mentioned earlier in the sentence, whereas the employment of "other" suggests that in urging the last of his definitions of fornication, both Selden and he had used proof texts different from those mentioned earlier in the sentence. While such a meaning is introduced to strengthen the case for a direct reference to Tetrachordon, presumably, "other places" does not in [End Page 39] fact properly reflect the "aliquot" the Latin text actually employs. Her interpretation would of course be stronger if the claim were correct that Selden had used the same "other" biblical passages to support the same definition as the author presents in his third "vel" clause. As I pointed out, however, the assertion regarding Selden's defining marriage in such a fashion is suspect; yet Lewalski does not address this critical issue.
However, let us concede that "aliquot" refers, as it may indeed, to scriptural passages adduced to support "the" definition of fornication in Tetrachordon, not the four passages on marriage and divorce that provide the latter treatise with its title. 17 Even if this were a fact, would it actually resolve the difficulty I brought up with respect to establishing a concrete reference to Tetrachordon? If Mil ton's purpose, I repeat, was really to try to establish an unmistakable cross-reference and make readers think specifically of Tetrachordon, why did he use words of such imprecise denotation, whether "alias" or "aliquot"? The colon in question provides every opportunity to establish a clear and precise allusion to Tetrachordon, and the fact remains that however one interprets these words, the author did not take the trouble to do so. Such vagueness suggests, as I said, either carelessness or that the author of De Doctrina Christiana was remarkably insouciant about making such cross reference indubitable--something we certainly cannot say about the title catalogue of his writings that Milton enunciates in Defensio Secunda. All would be well, of course, if we could be sure that Milton were absolutely unique, whether in England or abroad, in holding the unorthodox view of marriage and divorce that De Doctrina Christiana espouses in the close of the period in question. But it is dangerous to assume that he was. We have, after all, Milton's own witness in Defensio Secunda, adduced by Lewalski herself, that there were "other" unidentified persons besides himself who likewise held the very sententia that he claims anticipated Selden and the Uxor Hebraea by a couple of years or so. 18 In such light, the case for cross-reference seems pretty wobbly.
There are three more problems with the Lewalski translation, two of which, as they involve the inflexibility of English word order as opposed to that of Latin, are impossible for almost any translator to avoid. To begin with these latter two, both are occasioned by the awkward, though effective placement of the main verb of the final "vel" clause--i. e., "reperitur"--at the very end of the sentence. In this instance, the grammatical situation in Latin is analagous to that in languages like German, which could render the construction very nicely as "oder alles was, die Liebe . . . entgegen . . . gefunden wird." As modern English has lost the capacity to operate in its old Teutonic ways, however, it is impossible for Lewalski gracefully to place "found to be" (reperitur) after "Selden also demonstrated." The unfortunate consequence is that in English the "ut" element completing the sentence ("as I showed in another work . . . and Selden also demonstrated") squints. One cannot tell whether it is restricted to just the last "vel" clause or refers back to all three of them, whereas in the Latin, the "reperitur" following "Selden also demonstrated" makes it absolutely clear that "ut nos alias . . . et Seldenus idem docuit" pertains only to the final "vel" clause. It does not and cannot include either of the two preceding. In other words, if the aim is accuracy, one must not draw primarily on the first and second "vel" constructions to establish cross reference to Tetrachordon, for, according to the Latin, only the third and last element constitutes strict evidence. In short, the revised translation incorporates a slippery, albeit unavoidable and hence blameless ambiguity on this point.
The more important problem posed by the inability of English to postpone the main verb "reperitur" ("is found") as governed by its subject "quicquid" ("anything") until the end of the sentence is whether the climax of the entire period falls not merely upon the third "vel" member but also upon the final "ut" clause, which in my view fulfills a parenthetical function within the third "vel" construction. Although Lewalski's statement puzzles me about just where she thinks the main emphasis falls in the final "vel" clause--i. e., upon the definition of fornication therein, or upon the "I" and "Selden" docens that concludes the clause?--she denies that the concluding "ut" construction is a "kind of afterthought," which is not quite what I said. 19 Indeed, as in English the latter unavoidably constitutes the concluding phrase of what she calls the "last, longest element" in the period, the "definition of fornication" on which the "climax" and "special emphasis" of the whole falls, her vernacular translation bestows on the "as I" and "Selden also demonstrated" lemma the most prominent spot in the sentence. That is not what occurs in the original text. By placing the main verb "reperitur" awkwardly and obtrusively after "docuit" at the end of the clause, the "mos teutonicus" that here characterizes the Latin grammar makes sure, as I stated before, "that our attention at the end of the clause returns to and fixes upon the main thought--'quicquid . . . pertinaciter contrarium . . . reperitur'," the subject of the clause thus, and not upon the parenthetical phrase preceding the final verb that "Miltonists take as a cross reference to Tetrachordon." 20
The reason she gives in opposition to this fact is that I [End Page 40] ignored "the Ciceronean [sic] sentence structure," the "well-designed" tricolon crescendo "created by the three "vel" clauses," an arrangement that "typically sets forth parallels that build to a climax and produces special emphasis on the last, longest element," in this instance the definition of fornication "ascribed both to Tetrachor don and Selden." I hate to confess ignorance, but I do not understand what exactly she envisions by calling this sentence a tricolon crescendo? A tricolon, of course, is or should be a period consisting of three membra or cola. By adding the gerund "crescendo"--surely the form should be "crescens"?--she evidently means that the period swells, each of the successive cola increasing in length and therefore emphasis. As far as I can see, though, the fornication period is not a tribut a tetracolon in that it actually consists of four main cola, not three--that is, an opening colon followed by three "vel" clauses. Her meaning then is that the three "vel" clauses constitute a special tricolon within the larger unit that is distinct from the rest of it? The point, apparently, is that the third "vel" clause constitutes a climax of some sort.
In the first place, is it really reasonable to expect studied use of Ciceronian music in such an often inelegant, crabbed, Ramistical piece of Reformed scholasticism, stuffed with Biblical proof texts as De Doctrina Christi ana? Examine, specifically, the passages surrounding the definition of fornication on the pages immediately fore and aft, and what does one find? Style typical of standard exegetical commentary, with many a short, choppy sentence involving but one colon, not the two or more requisite in a period, and numerous fragmentary units (commates) that do not even constitute a colon. Few sentences involve three cola, much less four, and the definition of fornication is quite exceptional here in manifesting the compound structure associated with the kind of periods that Latin oratory requires.
Inasmuch as this particular sentence does exhibit enough complexity to qualify as Ciceronian, though, it can be read as building to a climax, certainly if we are sure it exhibits deliberate oratorical artistry. However, one can question the degree to which ornament is really intended to color what is after all nothing but a rather scholastic definition of fornication. For one thing, the structure does not, as a classical Roman period should, put the sense in suspense by withholding verbs throughout the sentence and then resolve the whole with the rolling delivery of a splendidly effective main one in which the full sentence culminates. Rather, this period provides a separate verb for every membrum individually, which, as I understand, is not particularly good Latin if one seeks elegance of the kind Lewalski apparently has in mind. As I remarked, the "reperitur" ending the sentence causes the mind to come back to the subject of the third "vel" membrum, not to the beginning of the entire sentence, nor to the "ut nos . . . Seldenus . . . docuit" comma either, which from a grammatical point of view (it has its own verb) seems clearly parenthetical, not the focus of even the single colon resolved by "reperitur." Neither do the cola swell as the period moves towards its ending, as she intimates. In the first place, the first "vel" clause is not nearly as long as the membrum that opens the sentence. Secondly, although this first "vel" clause is manifestly shorter than the two that follow, the latter do not in fact grow in length but are virtually identical. That is, the second is actually longer than the third: 27 words (67 syllables, if the numerals are read as "caput quattuor et viginti, versus unus"), as against 25 words (66 syllables, including "id est"). Nor is there much in the way of rhetorical figure except for the embryonic anaphora automatically inherent in the series of correlative "vels." However, here too expectations of symmetry are not perfectly realized. While the "quicquids" beginning the first and third "vel" clauses reinforce the figure, the opening of the second spoils the pattern in that it reads "vel rei defectus quae" instead of "quicquid" or some pronoun effecting a parallel at least suggestive of anaphora, and this clause does not end in a passive verb either. Variations to avoid cloying euphuism, no doubt? As for metrical effects, there is little or no sign of the sentence pursuing anything of the kind. 21
The third difficulty with the Lewalski version--a matter problematic in any translation--is that it does not transmit ambiguities, errors, or sloppiness that may inhere in the original. Translators normally feel themselves compelled to make a definitive selection among the possibilities that source and target languages present them. In this case, her rendition makes what she thinks is the best choice--and it is--among at least three radically different readings that the Latin syntax enables. In so doing, though, it loses the ability for conveying in English--an almost impossible desideratum--the alternatives lurking in the Latin so that readers might examine them for themselves. According to her, I first admitted, then chose to "ignore" the obvious Ciceronian syntax. On the contrary, I gave the Sumner-inspired kind of translation she favors its full due and termed it a "perfectly defensible approach," one that on this score is, as I explicitly stated, quite correct. 22 What I chose not to ignore were the alternative interpretations that the loose syntax of the period indisputably entails, an endeavor that "strains," in her words, "to avoid the most likely reading of this passage." [End Page 41] When skepticism regarding prior translations first prompted me to look at the allusion to Tetrachordon carefully, I too began with the notion that there was or should be one proper meaning inhabiting the text. Naively, I ran to a school grammar (Allen and Greenough) and, heavily influenced especially by Sumner, came up with essentially the same syntax as Lewalski urges, with Selden as the subject of the verb "docuit." Seeking confirmation from expert classicists, though, I submitted the result to five specialists (listed at the end of my notes), two of them Dutch (one a distinguished Neo-latinist, the other a gymnasium-trained specialist in history of the French language), and three Americans from a variety of institutions. To my surprise, the responses dealt with my reading in remarkably disparate fashions, school grammars notwithstanding, and the two consultants who most agreed with each other actually favored the third option that I presented: namely, the one that--although it seemed to me the least likely--the faulty allusion to Selden in the last "vel" clause in fact seemed to sustain. 23 It was the "straining" of experts, not mine, that finally broke through my if-it's-Milton's-it's-got-to-be-perfect syndrome. The experience brought the realization that the sentence in question is badly put together, violating if nothing else Quintilian's explicit injunctions about avoiding ambiguity. 24 As I said, the sentence is simply not sound enough compositionally for someone blindly to rely upon one membrum of it as the sole basis for a supposedly iron-clad allusion to Tetrachordon. If, again, Lewalski or someone else can show us just where Selden defined marriage in the way the allusion to him in the third "vel" clause seems mistakenly to say he does, this might somewhat undermine the likelihood of the interpretation to which she objects. However, as she neglected to address this critical question, I see as yet no reason for reversing expertise far greater than mine.
While I would never deny that the exegeses of fornication in De Doctrina Christiana and Defensio Secunda run quite parallel--although I am not sure how much like use of the mere verb "showed" ("demonstravit") actually proves--I do not think that "Milton's parallel citation of Selden and himself on the meaning of fornication" in the Defensio Secunda necessarily lends the "powerful support" of the "case for the cross-reference" that Lewalski claims it does. Note, first, that the passage in Defensio Secunda refers only to Selden's opinion of fornication in "his Hebrew Wife." This allusion finds its parallel in the second "vel" clause of the definition of fornication in De Doctrina Christiana. There is no equivalent here whatever to the fourth definition of fornication as a violation of the "original institution of marriage" and the remarkably mistaken joint attribution thereof to Selden that forms the "ut" clause in the third "vel" membrum. Surely this omission does not secure the case for cross reference? Furthermore, in Defensio Secunda Milton proudly trumpets his anticipation of Selden's opinion by two years or so. Since his reference is to the Uxor Hebraica specifically, it seems odd that in De Doctrina Christiana the second "vel" clause, the spot where the idea properly belongs and where insertion would be easy, fails even to mention, let alone stress--as does the passage in Defensio Secunda--Milton's claim to originality vis-à-vis the Uxor Ebraica. If the passage were his, one would expect this ambitious, often egotistical author to work the idea into the second "vel" clause, come what may. And while I myself am willing to read (so as not to slant the case) "cum primis" (not "primus," as her text runs) in this very clause as "in particular" or "especially," one must not forget that people much better than I, including Sumner, read it as meaning Selden was the first, or among the first to make the point, a statement that either flatly contradicts Milton's claim about anticipating Selden in Defensio Secunda by some two years, or asks that at least Milton here name himself and the others he mentions in the same breath as Selden in order, if nothing else, to clarify exactly what he means by "cum primis." The passage in De Doctrina Christiana fails to do either, and the ambiguity corroborates neither the strict parallelism nor the congruency urged between the two works.
Finally, it is remarkable that, whenever Milton refers to Selden in print, he explicitly speaks of him with chauvinistic pride everywhere--that is, consistently throughout all of his published works, including the passage Lewalski cites from Defensio Secunda--as English: "Our learned Selden" (The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, CM 3: 505); "your own in parliament," "chief" of "learned men reputed in this land" (Areopagitica, CM 4: 309); "our Selden" (Considerations Touching . . . Hirelings, CM 6: 72). Everywhere, that is, except for two works only: the Commonplace Book and . . . the definition of fornication promulgated by De Doctrina Christiana. 25 This leaves one in a bit of a trilemma, as it were, regarding the congruence between the passage citing Selden in Defensio Secunda and its fellow in De Doctrina Christiana. As the latter practically invites insertion of a "noster," the obvious omission distantiates on the one hand the expression from Milton, suggesting it may not be his, or if his, used with no intent of publication. On the other, it may associate De Doctrina Christiana with Milton's practice in the Commonplace Book of referring twice to plain, unmodified "Seldenus" [End Page 42] (CM 18: 151-52), suggesting that if the reference in De Doctrina Christiana is Milton's and not someone else's, it serves ends more closely analogous to those of the Commonplace Book than to those of prose opera intended for and put in print. Such conclusions, in turn, are in flagrant conflict with the rhetorical stance adopted in the preface of De Doctrina Christiana ("Haec si omnibus facio, . . . haec, . . . quam possum latissime libentissmeque impertio, tametsi multa in lucem protulisse videbor quae ab receptis . . . opinionibus discrepare statim reperientur . . . " [CM 14: 8]), which is sustained by reiterated references to opponents and enemies in the third person singular and plural throughout the treatise, as if it were by an author actively embroiled in current theological controversies within the Reformed world. This posture, I argue elsewhere, is "inappropriate for Milton, as there is no proof other than the DDC that he was ever involved in large scale theological quarrels, certainly not after his blindness." 26 Decisive certainty regarding congruence between Defensio Secunda and De Doctrina Christiana is not, I think, to be had on the basis of the passage Lewalski cites from the former.
The last area of disagreement does involve the subject of compatibility between De Doctrina Christiana and Paradise Lost regarding the decree of predestination and the nature of the object to which it applies. 27 Before proceeding, though, I would like to brush away a minor irritant: i.e., the idea that Lewalski and others slip in to imply that because De Doctrina Christiana appeals "to reason," the treatise must be Milton's because this is a "fashion" "characteristic" of him, as though such were proper only to Milton or Remonstrant sympathizers but not to orthodox divinity. 28 Indeed, Fallon goes so far as to claim that, as Milton was "impatient with mystery," his "accessible standards of reason" somehow differentiate him from a Calvinism that supposedly held the subjecting of God's justice to "rational evaluation" to be "sinfully presumptuous." 29 Milton was trained in letters and divini ty, not the analytical discipline of law (which he calls "a trade"), as were Luther and Calvin, not to speak of others, and his contempt for the "most intellective abstractions of logic and metaphysics," the "asinine feast of sowthistles and brambles" unworthy of inclusion in the education of elite youth, is a matter of record. 30 One might reasonably be able to develop some sort of dubious case of this sort vis-à-vis Luther, but does one really wish to suggest publicly that Milton is distinct from Calvin and his like because he treasures reason in divinity more than the precise, trained jurist's mind of the Geneva reformer? More so than, say, Beza's, Friedrich Spanheim's, or above all Du Moulin's, that notorious promoter of Reformed scholasticism, for whom, it has even been said, logic took precedence over scripture? 31 Merely to suggest that Pres byterian orthodoxy (albeit forbidding such discussion largely for political and social, not theological reasons before the general public) eschewed extensive, hard-nosed reasoning about predestination at even the classis level--not to speak of provincial or national synods--in the Low Countries, France, Germany, New England, or Switzerland is to betray innocence regarding the contents of recorded proceedings such as (to name but the chief one) the Dort Acta. Despite all the posturing, it was a beloved topic belabored in extenso, as most know and many rue. Subjecting "God's justice to rational evaluation," thus, surely does not differentiate Milton or De Doctrina Christiana from orthodoxy. 32 However, if one could determine what kinds of logic or methods of reasoning--assuming homogeneity--inhere in De Doctrina Christiana, it might be possible to develop litmus tests that provide valid philosophical discriminations between the treatise, Milton, and orthodoxy. However, I do not see that such a sun has as yet cleared the eastern horizon.
But to predestination proper, and first, the treatise regarding divine decrees and election. I readily agree with Lewalski that De Doctrina Christiana takes neither a purely supralapsarian nor an infralapsarian position, and I am glad she agrees to a surprisingly large extent regarding important differences from Arminius. 33 Of its adopting "an Arminian position as regards God's general call to humankind in Christ, the provision of sufficient grace to all, and conditional, not absolute election" or its "own distinctive position" regarding predestination, I am less sure. Subsequent research has led me to conclude that chapters three and four of De Doctrina Christiana may stem from the school of Saumur, not the Remonstrants, and specifically from Moïse Amyraut, not Arminius. Inasmuch as this research was but recently aired at the 1997 Milton conference at Murfreesboro and is to see light in the forthcoming volume of essays from that event, Lewalski has had no opportunity to consider the argument, and there is no point in going into further detail. 34 Suffice it to say that, in general, her précis of the "General Decree" and the "Special Decree of Predestination electing to salvation all human beings who believe and persevere" reads rather like a summary of Amyraldianism, and of course the denial of reprobation that she too notes in De Doctrina Christiana is a hallmark of Amyraut's system. 35 In this light, I would only caution that God's "General Decree," in which he "from all eternity willed and provided real . . . freedom for his intelligent creatures" [End Page 43] applies to man's prelapsarian state, not necessarily his fallen, as she appears to think, and it may not strictly follow that the treatise thereby "means to put out of account, in advance, all versions of Calvinist determinism," as Amyraut did not. 36 While the General Decree leaves man responsible for the fall--a position common to infralapsarianism, Arminianism, and Amyraldianism--it is by no means certain from the proofs she advances that the "Special Decree electing to salvation all human beings who believe and persevere" likewise entails such contingency. As I suggested, 37 election may be instead "contingent" on individual choices that the elect are foreseen without "regard to actual sin or merit" as exercising in the future, particularly since, as she notes, "the treatise affirms that God may give more grace to some than to others," that it belongs to "his supreme will that an equal portion of grace should not be extended to salvation," that God has the "right to offer grace in unequal measure." 38 Amyraut's hypothetical universalism was a gallant if vain attempt to mediate between Reformed orthodoxy, Arminianism, and even Lutheranism, and I am beginning to wonder whether Chapters 3 and 4 of De Doctrina Christiana not only attempt to "soften the traditional" supralapsarian stand "on reprobation and refute the standard accusation that such a form of predestination necessarily makes God the author of sin," 39 but endeavor as well to blend it with Amyraut in order to effect a similar compromise aimed at including determinists of supralapsarian stripes as well as infralapsarian and Remonstrant. However, this is speculation. It is, after all, even possible that at places the author may simply have put down contradictory ideas without endeavouring everywhere to reconcile them, particularly if at some stage he were using the document as though a commonplace book.
This said, some additional observations about specific issues are necessary to clear up misunderstandings. According to both Lewalski and Fallon, I wrongly argued that De Doctrina Christiana is in any way supralapsarian, but my position exhibited a little more nuance than they allow, I think. 40 When I called the treatise "a clever, Ramicized piece of supralapsarianism that joins many predecessors in attempting to soften the traditional stand on reprobation," I made it clear that the point refers primarily to the stand chapters three and four take on the order of the divine decrees and on the object of the decree of predestination, not the entire scheme. Both my "grid," as Lewalski aptly calls it, and my text properly distinguished De Doctrina Christiana from full-dress supralapsarianism in terms of ends, election, reprobation (the really significant departure from infra- and supralapsarianism both), and application to specific individuals. My sole claim was that the two systems do coincide with respect to a) placing the decree of predestination before both creation and fall, and b) the human creature subject to the decree. 41 In this limited sense, this section of De Doctrina Christiana is plainly tinted with supralapsarian colors.
According to Lewalski, this cannot be. The "description" of the general and special decrees of Predestination in De Doctrina Christiana "could hardly depart further from supralapsarian doctrine," she opines, 42 and Fallon, assuming that the basis of my argument urging a supralapsarian streak in De Doctrina Christiana was "the treatise's indication that the decree of predestination took place 'before the foundations of the world were laid'," agrees wholeheartedly. 43 This biblical formula, "common to all discussion of predestination," he says, fails "to distinguish between chronological priority--meaningless with reference to an eternal creator--and logical priority, on which the distinction between Arminian and Calvinist depends." He is quite right: "ante iacta mundi fundamenta" does not in and of itself prove the claim. However, the core of the argument for "classical supralapsarianism" regarding the "logical interrelationships" of decrees "within the mind of God" (as I expressly put it) does not derive primarily from the "formula" that he rejects. It is rather based on the indisputable fact that the Latin grammar of De Doctrina Christiana in this passage makes a distinctively supralapsarian use of the second periphrastic conjugation as well as a future active participle in describing the object of (or human being subject to) the decree of predestination.
Since the perhaps overly curt rehearsal of these forms apparently obscured the import of my remarks, let me explain more fully. Regarding the "Materia seu obiectum praedestinationis" ("the material or object of predestination"), the commentary in Chapter 4 on the "generis humani, quamvis sua sponte lapsuri, misertus" lemma of the definition of predestination is explicit in laying down two essential characteristics of the being subject to the grand decree. Both are expressed in terms that conform to expressly supralapsarian terminology, used seemingly with care and precision. That is, the treatise adds an additional term "creandus"--an expressly supralapsarian one, as we shall see--to a formula that otherwise appears to derive straight from Wollebius. 44 The first portion contains the added element: namely, that such object "non erat simpliciter homo creandus" ("was not purely the human being that had yet to be created"). The second echoes Wollebius practically word for word, [End Page 44] holding that it was not only such a putative human being, "sed sua sponte lapsurus" ("but one that was going to fall of itself" or "on its own"), 45 or "human beings definitely going to fall" as it is reformulated in the commentary on the following lemma. 46 Let us begin with the future participle "lapsurus" in the second phrase, for a term like that is by itself sufficient, at least for an infralapsarian like Turretin, to define a supralapsarian. 47 If the creature subject to the decree is one that is not "lapsus," has not yet fallen but one that is "definitely going to fall," then the decree governing it is and must be precedent to a fall that is still to come. In this respect, Chapter 4 distinguishes itself sharply from both infralapsarianism and Arminianism, since both of these systems rest on the assumption that the object of the decree is "homo lapsus," "fallen man," not "homo labilis" or "lapsurus." Like reasoning applies to the "homo creandus" of the first phrase. If the creature subject to the decree of predestination is one that has not yet been "creatus"--"created"--but rather one that "is going to be created," "must yet be created," "has got yet to be created," "still needs to be created"--"creandus"--then the decree governing such an object as yet uncreate must be antecedent to the creation of man too. How a scholar of such authority as Maurice Kelley could conclude that from these very words and this specific lemma that "Milton is here rejecting the supralapsarian position," I find difficult to understand. 48
Enfin, the grammar in De Doctrina Christiana goes out of its way literally to make doubly clear that, Fallon's objection notwithstanding, the author thought the creation and predestination of mankind "ad salutem aeternam" did in fact take "place in eternity ante iacta mundi fundamenta--that is, 'before the foundations of the world were laid'," which I take as synonymous with creation. 49 While I suppose one might argue that because the decree as here described may be antecedent to only the work of the Sixth Day, not that of the preceding five, predestination may nonetheless have followed the pentahemeral "days" of creation and therefore is not fully supralapsarian. Inasmuch as man is supposedly the culmination of the hexahemeron, though, such quibbling, if any, would be irrelevant. In sum, if a treatise using plainly supralapsarian jargon and representing "the object of predestination" as both a humankind that has still got to be created and an as yet unfallen humankind that is nonetheless going to fall is not flagrantly supralapsarian, then I have no idea of what constitutes supralapsarianism. Apparently, neither do historians of dogma like Turretin or Heppe. 50
If, then, the claim is hardly overstated that the creature subject to the decree of predestination in De Doctrina Christiana is per se "outspokenly supralapsarian," let us determine both where the decree falls in the order of divine decrees in Paradise Lost and what kind of objects it governs. Then we can perhaps see whether they resemble or differ from those set forth in De Doctrina Christiana.
In my view, the decree plainly occurs in the poem as the climax on which the deity's first speech ends (3. 131-32):
Man therefore shall find grace,
The other none: In Mercy and Justice both,
Through Heav'n and Earth, so shall my glory excel,
But Mercy first and last shall brightest shine.
Lewalski dissents. If I understand her correctly, she seems to think of these lines as but "an allusion" to the Father's "Special Decree of predestination," not as an extraordinarily dramatic promulgation of divine volition regarding human salvation at this point in the epic. Her reasoning seems to be that as the decree proper is "eternal" (as opposed to what--the temporal, the temporary, the mutable?), the passage is but an explanation of the decree, not proclamation of the decree proper, for "clearly" such decrees could not be "instituted at the" very "time they are explained." 51
While I cannot discern exactly "when" in relationship to the action of Paradise Lost (which I regard as dramatic, not expository) she thinks the decree was issued, it seems patent that the passage cited above constitutes an eternal, irreversible decree, not an explanation of a previous decree, and that this decree takes a double object, pro claiming grace (to salvation) for mankind while expressly denying the same to the fallen angels. First and foremost, the intrusive specification of ends--"Mercy" and "Justice" (lines 132-34)--is plain evidence that Milton intended this sentence as the decree of predestination, redolent as these terms are of virtually all classic definitions of predestination in the Reformed tradition that their mention unavoidably brings to mind. Second, the three and one-half lines of the decree are cast entirely in the future tense. They look ahead, sharply unlike the lines preceding. From the Father's act of foreseeing the fall of man (lines 96) up to the caesura concluding the first half of line 131, the entire speech is in past tense, "alluding" indeed (to use Lewalski's word) to at least two prior "high" decrees. These are, specifically, those affecting the creation of, first, the fallen angels, and subsequently of "Man"; the reference is not to the [End Page 45] decree foreordaining the latter to salvation. Thirdly, the paternal voice--employing but one verb, "shall find," governed by two subjects, "Man" and "other"--is imperative as well as future, for the auxiliary is "shall." The command mode of kings and great captains, thus, not mere allusion, observation or exposition. Furthermore, the Father's words here effect something novel, not something known. Although the inhabitants of heaven had undoubtedly long been experiencing "joy ineffable" beforehand, a "Sense of new joy ineffable" (italics mine) follows upon this particular proclamation. Surely "new" feelings spring from new things or deeds, not things already extant. Add to this that when the Logos speaks here, utterance constitutes deed. Like the fiats of Genesis, it works as force and act, not merely speech. As the action of the epic goes on to confirm, these words are in fact ordaining a chain of future events that shall be carried out, come what may. Exactly as was willed from and for eternity in this passage, the plot bestows ultimate grace and hope of salvation upon mankind accordingly, yet bars evil angels from ever attaining either, despite afflicted conscience, the pain of which remains almost tragically futile.
Lastly, even though from a human perspective Book 3 takes place in "time," one must not assume that, since the decree of predestination is supposed to be a high decree eternal and unchangeable, the formula in lines 131-32 cannot, so Lewalski seems to think, constitute such a decree. As Turretin cogently observes, it does not follow that divine decrees "distinguished one from another as first and later" are "not eternal in themselves, since the distinction is made not from God's point of view (they are indeed a single and absolutely simple act in God) but with respect to our manner of conceiving them." Since human beings "can only conceive the decrees distinctly through the idea of first and later," priority and posteriority must "be understood, not of the decrees, but of the matters decreed, which have an order in their execution; some are earlier or later than others." 52 At the opening of Book 3, the narrator of Paradise Lost, it seems to me, is careful to observe such parameters. He presents the Father from eternity as engaging initially in an act of foreseeing the consequences of Satan's attempt on man. Then, subsequent to reviewing his creations and the causalities their natures entail, the deity, having concluded that clemency can be extended to man without violating justice when he falls, is shown as proceeding forthwith to the exercise of his will regarding the future. In reporting all this, Milton's narrator goes out of his way to keep the distinction between human and divine perspectives ever before our eyes. He sees God in fact as operating in eternity, not in time and space ("High Thron'd above all highth"); he perceives that the divine foreseeing and foreordaining here comprise one "single and absolutely simple act" (bending down his "eye, / His own works and their works at once to view," marking Satan's progress "from his prospect high, / Wherein past, present, future he beholds"); and he knows that the Father's volition as pronounced here in Book 3 remains in fact an "eternal" decree (as God himself says of it in line 172). Yet, unable even in prophetic ecstasy to escape the necessities of human epistemology, the Tiresias-like seer can but report his vision of invisibilia, ironically enough, in deconstructive chronological order. In brief, I think the decree of predestination in Book 3 is indeed "instituted" at the same "time" it is--I would not say with Lewalski "explained"--but presented by a fallen narrator, who is compelled to work from human perspective, not divine. Regardless of its promulgation in connection with time and space, such exercise of divine will is just as everlasting as any other high decree eternal.
The question, then, is what position does this decree hold in the sequence of other decrees implicit or explicit in Paradise Lost? In what order do they occur, and "where" in the epic does the proclamation "Man therefore shall find grace/ The other none" fall among them? After decrees creating heaven and hell; after shaping "all th'Ethereal Powers and Spirits" sufficient "to have stood, though free to fall" (3.99-102); after foreseeing the revolt of some (3.118); after "command"-ing their fall (Book 1, Argument); after exercising the "will and high permission of all-ruling heaven" (1.211-12), the "sufferance of the supernal power" (1.241) that allowed escape from the "Stygian flood"; after the fiats creating limbo, the material universe, earth, paradise, living creatures, and Adam and Eve; after the high permissions enabling Satan's attempt on man; after viewing the "sight" of Satan poised to "stoop" upon the "bare outside" of the created universe; after foreseeing man's fall and reviewing creation--then only, and only then, does Paradise Lost allow the Almighty to proclaim his decision to predestine mankind to grace, the fallen angels to none.
As for decrees subsequent to this exercise of divine willing (Book 3, line 134 onwards), they inform the rest of the main action. The sequence starts immediately in Book 3 with a series of mini-decrees, as I call them, effecting the means by and conditions under which predestination to saving grace will be carried out; then follow the commands that govern the education of Adam, the circumstances of the fall proper, the curses--i. e., judicial [End Page 46] decrees--pronounced in the garden on serpent and fallen angels as well as on mankind for disobedience despite divine warnings, the execution of sentence not just on Adam and Eve but on Satan and his brood, and the behests from on high that remove the guilty couple from Eden, though leaving them blessed with hope and revelation. What, then, is to be said except that whereas De Doctrina Christiana places the decree of predestination before both creation and fall, the dramatic action of Paradise Lost sets it after the creation, but before the fall? Regarding the order of divine decrees, I say again, the two texts are not congruent.
What, then, about the object of predestination, the being or beings subject to the decree enunciated in Book 3? Unlike the one posited in De Doctrina Christiana, which (as Lewalski agrees) affects humankind only, the target in Paradise Lost is double, mankind and fallen angels both. The fate of the former manifests divine mercy, of the latter, God's justice--a remarkable arrangement, although probably not peculiar to Milton as there is a whiff of it in the Westminster Confession. 53 As for the human being subject to the decree, De Doctrina Christiana, as we recall, specified it as the supralapsarianish homo creandus, whereas the subject creature here in Paradise Lost is clearly homo creatus, not man still to be created but man that already exists as a created entity. With respect to creation, the discrepancy between the object of the decree in Paradise Lost and that in De Doctrina Christiana is, as I observed, glaring. In the epic, this aspect of the creature is literally identical with the one that the infralapsarians, Arminius, and the remonstrants urge, not with that of the supralapsarians, although it obviously plays a different role in the system taken as a whole.
As for the fall, though, the opposite is true. The creature subject to the decree in both texts remains essentially identical--i. e., supralapsarian: homo labilis or lapsurus, mankind who is capable of falling or is definitely going to fall, but who is not yet fallen. Thus Paradise Lost seems to strike a middle way not so much beween Arminians and the orthodox as between infralapsarians and supralapsarians by placing the decree after the creation but before the fall. As I suggested, this arrangement may derive from Junius, who sought around 1590 to develop a compromise between the two systems. 54 Neither the supralapsarians nor Junius embrace a free-will theology, of course, and as Arminius and Wollebius alike observe, systems like these, however well disguised, are both supralapsarian, as they entail by implication some form of reprobation rooted in preterition and predamnation. 55 While I did not as flatly as Lewalski implies "identify" Milton's "elect above the rest" as "necessarily" suffering "under some form of preterition"--I only observed that Arminius would probably have so reacted 56--I would not, in light of the above, be as quick as she unhesitatingly to exclude by category any such an interpretation of what happens to "the rest" who hear "me call" in Paradise Lost as a real possibility in interpreting these lines. While it is likely that some in this group will find grace, probable that most will not, the passage offers, after all, absolutely no guarantee whatever than any single one of the so called, warned, afflicted, etc., will ever have the power to use the lights given them "well" or "to the end persisting, safe arrive." Is our certainty of Milton's heterodoxy in this matter so sure? However all this may be, it remains difficult nonetheless to understand how, in light of the human perspective that informs Paradise Lost, anyone can maintain its absolute and full congruency with the De Doctrina Christiana when differences in matters as important as the order of decrees and the objects of predestination are as flagrant as they are.
It remains but to remark on two or three corollary points. With respect to my identifying "Milton's 'elect above the rest' with the absolute elect of the orthodox," 57 I formulated the issue as moot, not as an absolute affirmative. I simply asked the litmus-test question that the Dort fathers would have put to suspected remonstrants: namely, whether "the creatures blessed with such election have the power to reject it any more than the elect proposed by the orthodox?" 58 I am not wholly sure of the answer, even now. But while Lewalski claims that "both tract and poem" state that "all can fall away," I would point out that the poem (III.185) does not read "all"; the words actually used are "The rest," plainly meaning in context just those alone who are not "elect above the rest," and precisely excluding those "chosen of peculiar grace." However, since Lewalski has raised the point, what explicit evidence does the text actually offer that this special election is in any way conditional on free will? Indeed, is it really probable, even feasible, that, once pronounced, such a "peculiar" exercise of divine "will" (elsewhere [VII.173] the Father remarks, "what I will is Fate"), with no condition attached, could ever fail in execution? That the creature subject to such a decree--for that is what this proclamation is--has power to frustrate a divine will synonymous with fate, unless that will expresses, as here it does not, a specific contingency allowing just such leeway? We can run and borrow from De Doctrina Christiana, and thence impute the statement conditional, but the raw text as it stands uncontaminated [End Page 47] from outside in Paradise Lost yields no clue of any such thing, as Fallon is rightly well aware. 59
Next, Lewalski's assumes that notions such as "only those who neglect and scorn God's 'long suffrance' and 'day of grace' will be lost," or "all are given sufficient grace, that all can respond or not respond, and all can fall away" establish Milton's authorship of "both tract and poem" because their uniqueness on this score somehow provides adequate differentiation between his free-will theology and that of the orthodox. Rather, these are formulaic commonplaces insisted on in one form or another by virtually all Reformed treatments of predestination of the age, whether supralapsarian, infralapsarian, Arminian, or whatever. None of the most hard-bitten predestinarians of any stamp--Calvin, 60 Perkins, 61 Turretin, 62 the Dort articles, 63 Gomarus, 64 the Westmin ster Confession, 65 not Luther himself 66--would ever concede that any reprobate was the victim of insufficient grace, or denied adequate powers enabling response. In one way or another, the blame is always going to be attributed to the shortcomings of the creature, never of the creator. God is faultless; the lost, lost through their own will or sin; the elect, only upheld from universal falling away by grace undeserved. To the orthodox, saying that they hold otherwise would meet most fervent condemnation as impious slander fomented by ignorant and malicious enemies of the true Reformed faith.
Finally, it must be pointed out that Lewalski's appealing to Samson Agonistes in order to support the claim that there is no discrepancy between Paradise Lost and the treatise regarding "those elect above the rest" involves a blatantly dangerous circularity of the argument. 67 We first draw on De Doctrina Christiana in order to interpret Samson's restoration as the result of "his own painful moral struggles and choices, in response to offered grace," then we turn right around and try to use Samson's example to prove that Milton authored the treatise because supposedly both treatise and drama support conditional election. Such reasoning begs the question of authorship, and it illustrates nicely why in the current controversy, I am concerned about quality of argument.
* I am deeply indebted to Professor Emeritus Albert Baca, Department of Classical and Modern Languages, California State University at Northridge; Professor John Hale, Department of English, University of Otago, New Zealand; Professor Margriet Lacy, Department of French, Butler University, Indianapolis, Indiana; Professor Emeritus Richard Lanham, Department of English, UCLA; Professor Emeritus Bengt Lofstedt, Department of Classics, UCLA; and Professor Keith Sprunger, Department of History, Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas, for their counsel regarding problems touching Latin, rhetoric, and history. It goes without saying that none of them are to be taken as responsible in any way for statements herein or necessarily agreeing with either the point of view or individual statements expressed.
1. "Milton and De Doctrina Christiana: Evidences of Authorship." Milton Studies 36 (1999): 203-28.
2. Milton and Heresy (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998): 93-116.
3. William B. Hunter, Visitation Unimplor'd: Milton and the Authorship of De Doctrina Christiana (Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP 1998): 74-75.
4. Ibid., 74.
5. Carey's translation, CP 6:706, is misleading as it adds the word "countryman."
6. J.P.N. Land, "Schotse wijsgeeren aan nederlandsche hoogescholen," Verslagen en mededeelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen, Tweede Reeks; Vol. VII (1878): 179-80.
7. Paul R. Sellin, So Doth, So Is Religion: John Donne and Diplomatic Contexts in the Reformed Netherlands, 1619-1620 (Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1988): 237, note 10; see also 214-15, n. 13.
8. In the English churches in The Hague, see Keith L. Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism: A History of English and Scottish Churches of the Netherlands in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1982): 142-56.
9. Keith L. Sprunger, The Learned Doctor William Ames: Dutch Backgrounds of English and American Puritanism (Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1972): 71-95.
10. See especially the loyalty formula required of professors of theology, Acta of handelingen der nationale synode . . . gehouden door autoriteit der Hoogmogende Heren Staten-Generaal der Verenigde Nederlanden te Dordrecht in de jaren 1618 en 1619 (rpt. of the 1621 edition; Houten: Den Hertog B. V., 1987): 944 et passim.
11. J. A. van Dorsten, "The Dutch Origins of Harvard College," presented at the symposium "The Netherlands and the Foundation of the American Republic," UCLA, Los Angeles, 1982.
12. Cf. Sprunger 266.
13. Paul R. Sellin, "The Reference to John Milton's Tetrachordon in De Doctrina Christiana," SEL 37 (1997): 138, 148.
14. Public Records Office, London, S. P. 9/61, p. 159. I am indebted to Professor Hunter for providing a reproduction of the manuscript page in question.
15. Ibid., 143.
16. Ibid., 148.
17. Lewalski 225, note 26.
18. Ibid., 211-12. CM VIII, 132: "quid item de excepta solum fornicatione sentiendum sit, & meam aliorumque sententiam exprompsi, & clarissimus vir Seldenus noster, in Uxore Hebraea plus minus biennio post edita, uberius demonstravit" (boldface mine). The translations in CM ("my own opinion and the opinion of others concerning what was to be thought of the single exception of fornication--a question which has been also copiously elucidated by our celebrated Selden . . . published some two years after") and in CP IV, 624-25 ("Concerning the view which should be held on the single exception, that of fornication, I also expressed both my own opinion and that of others. Our distinguished countryman Selden still more fully explained this point . . . published about two years later") do not make clear, as does the Latin, that but one single sententia common to all parties is at issue. CP makes no effort to identify these "others."
19. Cf. Sellin, "Reference," 140.
20. Ibid., 140.
21. I am indebted to Professor Baca on this point.
22. Ibid., 142.
23. Ibid., 144-45.
24. Institutio oratoria VIII.ii.
25. According to Hunter ("The Provenance of the Christian Doctrine: Addenda from the Bishop of Salisbury," SEL 33 [1993]: 198), Bishop Burgess anticipated this point in 1825.
26. See my "Some Musings on Alexander Morus and De Doctrina Christiana," forthcoming, Milton symposium at York, England, July, 1999.
27. Lewalski, 217-21.
28. Ibid., 218
29. Fallon, 93.
30. Areopagitica, CP IV, 278, 280; cf. my "The Seventeenth-Century Taxonomy of Arts and Sciences in G. J. Vossius's De artium et scientiarum natura and John Milton's 'Curriculum' in Of Education," Acta conventus neo-latini Torontonensis, eds. A. Dalzell, C. Fantazzi, and R. J. Schoeck (Binghamton, 1991): 659, 663-65.
31. Brian G. Armstrong, Calvinism and the Amyraut Heresy: Protestant Scholasticism and Humanism in Seventeenth-Century France (Madison, 1969): 185-86.
32. Cf. Francis Turretin, Institutio theologiae elencticae, Locus IV, "Question VI: Concerning Predestination: Whether Predestination ought to be publicly taught and preached (Affirmative)," in Reformed Dogmatics:: J. Wollebius, G. Voetius, F. Turretin, ed. John W. Beardslee III (New York, 1965): 352-55, especially item ix.
33. Lewalski, 216, 217, 219.
34. "'If Not Milton, Who Did Write the DDC?' The Amyraldian Connection," Living Texts: Intrepreting Milton, eds. Charles W. Durham and Kristin P. McColgan, under consideration by Susquehanna UP, forthcoming 1999-2000.
35. Lewalski, 217-18, 219-20.
36. Ibid., 217.
37. Sellin, "John Milton's Paradise Lost and De Doctrina Christiana on Predestination," Milton Studies 34 (1997): 51.
38. Lewalski, 219-20.
39. Sellin, "Predistination," 51.
40. Fallon, 98; cf. Lewalski, 216, 217.
41. Sellin, "John Milton's Paradise Lost and De Doctrina Christiana on Predestination," Milton Studies 34 (1996): 50-52 and Table 1.
42. Lewalski, 217.
43. Fallon, 98.
44. "Materia s. obiectum electionis et reprobationis non est homo absolute consideratus, sed sua sponte in peccatum lapsurus," as quoted in Heinrich Heppe, Die Dogmatik der evangelisch-reformierten Kirche, ed. Ernst Bizer (Neukirche Kreis Moers, 1958): 130n). The parallels, obvious in Latin, get muddied and lost in English translations of Wollebius such as Beardslee's in Reformed Dogmatics, 51; the same is true of English translations of Heppe.
45. Sumner (CM XIV.101) translates "sua sponte" acceptably as "own accord."
46. CM XIV.104: "nulla cum hominibus lapsuris reconciliatio Dei . . . ."
47. Turretin, Question IX, paragraph iii, 362; cf. XVIII.iv, 444-45.
48. CP VI, 173, footnote 19. Apparently he accepted Carey's translation of sua sponte as "of his free will" uncritically. However, the expression is not (as Wollebius's own predestinarian use of the phrase implies) necessarily as synonymous as Kelley evidently thought with "arbitrium liberum" or "libertas voluntatis," the forms that De Doctrina Christiana uses in the previous chapter specifically to denote the freedom of human powers of choice.
49. Sellin, "Predestination," 50-51.
50. Turretin, "Question IX: Concerning the Object of Predestination," iii ("Some [divines] consider the matter before the fall, and are therefore called supralapsarians. They hold that the object of predestination is either man not yet created or, at least, not fallen") 361-62; Heppe, 131-33, quoting Mastricht, who uses exactly the same terminology--homo creandus et lapsurus--that occurs in De Doctrina Christiana. Observe too that De Doctrina Christiana meets both of Turretin's conditions whereas but one, "lapsurus," would be sufficient for him to define a theologian as supralapsarian.
51. Lewalski, 220, 220-21.
52. Turretin, 342.
53. K. Dijk, De strijd over Infra-en Supralapsarisme in de Gereformeerde Kerken van Nederland (Kampen, 1912): 290-91, citing the Confession, Chapter III, Article 3, and Questions 12 and 13.
54. Sellin, "Predestination," 55-57.
55. Sellin, ibid., 53; Heppe, 123 plus note 23, 144, where he quotes Wollebius.on praeteritio and praedamnatio (cf. Beardslee, 53).
56. Lewalski, 220.
57. Ibid., 220.
58. Sellin, "Predestination," 53.
59. Fallon, 95-97, 110.
60. Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill and trans. F. T. Battles (Library of Christian Classics, Vols. XX and XXI; London, 1961), II.iv.2; cf. III.xxii.7, xxiii.2 and 11.
61. J. J. van Baarsel, William Perkins (Amsterdam, 1975), 146-47.
62. Turretin, 382.
63. Cf. De Dordtse leerregels, ed. J. G. Veenstra (4th ed.; Kampen, 1975), Chapter I, Article xv; II.vi; III.ix.
64. "Het oordeel van Franciscus Gomarus over het eerste artikel," Acta . . . te Dordrecht, Schriftmatige tegenstellingen, 620-21.
65. Chapter III, Article 1, as cited in Dijk, 290-92.
66. Ernst F. Winter, trans., Erasmus-Luther: Discourse on Free Will (New York, 1961): 191-93.
67. Lewalski, 220.
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