MILTON AND NATURAL LAW: WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO THE DIVORCE TRACTS AND 'DE DOCTRINA CHRISTIANA'

Milton's natural law thought is primarily ethical and religious. Even though he does not address natural law systematically, the complex and inclusive ideas one can collect from his various writings, particularly the divorce tracts and De Doctrina Christiana, form a coherent set of concepts that lie at the center of this thought.;In De Doctrina, Milton presents the full doctrinal development of this idea in a theory accommodating both nature and grace. In effect, he rearranges the standard Reformed scheme for salvation (while retaining Reformed terminology) to give regeneration a greater prominence in salvation, and natural law a greater prominence in regeneration. Milton insists upon an extensive regeneration before justification to reconstruct in the believer Adam's internal state, upon which rested his essential relation to God. This state is characterized by man's full use of his rectified right reason to make self-directed decisions independent of, and even contrary to, scriptural precept. The core of Milton's thought, this full Christian liberty is a product of, and contributes to, Milton's broad concept of faith, which he sees primarily as man's full, loving response to God's perfect goodness.;Thus natural law, as the expression of essential goodness reflected in man's own nature, lies at the heart of Milton's central ideas. While he does leave some logical difficulties unresolved, and while he does encounter some difficulty trying to apply this theory of perfect liberty to an imperfect world, Milton does develop a comprehensive set of ideas about natural law, which he uses as the foundation for his own decisions as presented in the prose and for those of his characters as dramatized in the poetry.;The philosophical structure of Milton's natural-law ideas reflects his firm attachment to a permanent, absolute standard of essential goodness, a standard that emanates from the divine nature, is expressed in the natural law, and is intimately connected to man's good as a rational creature--a standard to which all laws, covenants, and institutions must be referred. Milton supports this belief with a vigorous assertion of God's unity and goodness, and with his version of the doctrine of accommodation. For him, this attachment to essential goodness implies a radically immediate appeal to rational truth, and an equally radical insistence upon its immediate application. With judicial law, this takes the form of an appeal to equity; with Scripture, of an appeal to charity leading to his theory of Christian liberty. To relate his larger ethical theory to judicial precept, Milton fully endows "equity" with the content of natural-law, and then uses this to press beyond the law's form as precept to its essence as justice. Although his theory of human nature in the divorce tracts raises certain local problems, Milton's general conclusion is that the law's formal character cannot deny the virtuous man's reasonable actions since they fulfill the law's substantial character. These natural-law ideas parallel and influence Milton's theory of Christian liberty as it applies to scriptural interpretation. Like Milton's "equity," his "charity" comes to have more than a technical application, as its content is largely resolved into natural law. In spite of his avowedly conservative hermeneutical principles, this charity, which begins as a guide to interpretation, becomes in his full theory a divinely authorized injunction to the believer to press beyond Scripture's letter or formal element to act according to its spirit or essence of charity. The result is that for Milton all Scripture, like all law, must be compared to "the rules of nature and eternall righteousnes"--that inner Scripture "written on the heart" by the Spirit.