On Christian Doctrine
For For readers of Milton's theology; a systematic Latin treatise from Scripture, unpublished until 1825, which departs from orthodoxy on the Trinity and on creation.
De Doctrina Christiana is John Milton's systematic theology, a Latin treatise composed over roughly the last two decades of his life, with work running from the late 1650s into the 1670s. Milton, the Puritan poet and Latin secretary to Cromwell's Council of State, wrote it in the aftermath of the Restoration, as the cause he had served collapsed and he lived in blindness and political danger. He never published it. The manuscript was found in 1823 among the state papers in London, translated, and published in 1825, which set off a long argument about how a work so unorthodox could have come from the author of Paradise Lost.
The treatise is built on a single method: Milton will say only what Scripture says, and he will search it himself rather than inherit the conclusions of the creeds. He divides the work into knowledge of God and the worship of God, and he assembles it largely out of biblical quotation, trusting the texts to carry the argument. The conclusions are strikingly independent. Milton holds that the Son is begotten of the Father in time and is subordinate to him, rejecting the Nicene doctrine of coequal Trinity. He argues that creation was not out of nothing but out of the divine substance, an unusual position that gives matter a dignity most of his contemporaries denied. He is a thoroughgoing Arminian on the freedom of the will, rejecting Calvinist predestination, and he defends the mortality of the soul, the view that the whole person dies and is raised. He permits divorce on grounds of incompatibility and grants Christians wide liberty in matters of conscience. The book's governing conviction is that Scripture is clear enough and the Spirit present enough that the believer must judge for himself.
The work has mattered chiefly for what it shows about Milton and about the Reformation's freer margins. It is the clearest prose statement of the theology behind Paradise Lost, and readers of the epic have long turned to it to test claims about the poem's Arian subordinationism and its account of creation and free will. Scholars still dispute details of its composition and the degree of Milton's own hand in the manuscript, but its place in the history of English dissent and biblical independence is secure.
Who should read this: students of Milton and of seventeenth-century English theology, and anyone curious about how far a committed Protestant could push sola scriptura against received doctrine. It is a demanding doctrinal reference, not a devotional book, and readers who want a settled orthodox account of the Trinity or of predestination will find it a challenge rather than a guide.
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- PDF De Doctrina Christiana (Internet Archive (De Doctrina Christiana, Latin, ed. Sumner, Cambridge, 1825)) PD LatinEd. Charles R. Sumner · 1825The first printing of De Doctrina Christiana (Cambridge, 1825), edited by Charles R. Sumner from the manuscript found in the State Paper Office in 1823; Milton's Latin, published the same year as Sumner's translation. A page scan of the University of Toronto copy.Much harder than the work: Milton's Latin, with no translation.
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E.6AWADB.PReport - PDF De Doctrina Christiana (Internet Archive (De Doctrina Christiana, Latin, ed. Sumner, 1825; second scan)) PD LatinEd. Charles R. Sumner · 1825Sumner's first printing of the Latin De Doctrina Christiana (Cambridge, 1825), a second scanned copy.Much harder than the work: Milton's Latin, with no translation.
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E.2CZ78T.4Report - PDF De Doctrina Christiana (Internet Archive (Prose Works, Bohn, vol. 4: Christian Doctrine, Book I, tr. Sumner)) PD AbridgedTrans. Charles R. Sumner · 1853Charles R. Sumner's English translation, A Treatise on Christian Doctrine, Book I (Of the Knowledge of God), with Milton's preface, in The Prose Works of John Milton (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1853), vol. 4. Book II is in vol. 5. A page scan.
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E.XBBRH1.VReport - PDF De Doctrina Christiana (Internet Archive (Prose Works, Bohn, vol. 5: Christian Doctrine, Book II, tr. Sumner)) PD AbridgedTrans. Charles R. Sumner · 1868Charles R. Sumner's English translation, A Treatise on Christian Doctrine, Book II (Of the Worship of God), in The Prose Works of John Milton (Bohn), vol. 5, an 1868 reprint; Book I is in vol. 4. A page scan.
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E.1D0P36.HReport - PDF De Doctrina Christiana (Internet Archive (Treatise on Christian Doctrine, tr. Sumner, Cambridge, 1825)) PDTrans. Charles R. Sumner · 1825Charles R. Sumner's English translation, A Treatise on Christian Doctrine, Compiled from the Holy Scriptures Alone (Cambridge, 1825), the first English edition. A page scan of the Brigham Young University copy.
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E.8Y5XVK.WReport - PDF De Doctrina Christiana (Internet Archive (Treatise on Christian Doctrine, tr. Sumner, Boston, 1825, vol. 1)) PD AbridgedTrans. Charles R. Sumner · 1825Charles R. Sumner's English translation, A Treatise on Christian Doctrine, in the Boston reprint (Cummings, Hilliard, 1825), volume 1 of 2. A page scan of the University of Toronto copy.
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E.QYPDMC.AReport - PDF De Doctrina Christiana (Internet Archive (Treatise on Christian Doctrine, tr. Sumner, Boston, 1825, vol. 2)) PD AbridgedTrans. Charles R. Sumner · 1825Charles R. Sumner's English translation, A Treatise on Christian Doctrine, in the Boston reprint (Cummings, Hilliard, 1825), volume 2 of 2. A page scan of the University of Toronto copy.
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E.P60Y7T.PReport
Catalog IDW.SJ7H68.P