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Milton and Wolleb Again (Paradise Lost, I, 54–56, 777)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 August 2011
Extract
Although the influence of Wolleb's Compendium Theologiae Christianae on Milton's De Doctrina has long been recognized, scholarship has discovered few traces of its impact on Milton's poetry. Particularly interesting, therefore, are two passages in Book I of Paradise Lost which show a close resemblance to two of the “Rules” or “Canones” in Wolleb's chapter “De Gubernatione Angelorum.”
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- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1960
References
1 Sewell, Arthur, A Study in Milton's Christian Doctrine (London, 1939), 35–45Google Scholar; Kelley, Maurice, “Milton's Debt to Wolleb's Compendium Theologiae Christianae,” PMLA, L (1935), 156–165Google Scholar; Scott-Craig, T. S. K., “Milton's Use of Wolleb and Ames,” MLN, LV (1940), 403–407.Google Scholar According to Edward Phillips, the Sunday duties of Milton's pupils included “writing from his own dictation, some part of a tractate which he thought fit to collect from the ablest of divines who had written of that subject: Amesius, Wollebius, &c. …”
2 See Sewell, 35–45.
3 Christianae Theologiae Compendium … Authore Iohanne Wollebio (Amstelodami, 1633), 55.
4 John Wollebius, The Abridgement of Christian Divinitie, tr. Alexander Ross, The Third Edition (London, 1660), 64. The first and second editions of this translation had been printed in 1650 and 1656.
5 The Works of Milton, John, XV (New York 1933), 110–111Google Scholar. For comparison of this passage with Paradise Lost, see Kelley, Maurice, This Great Argument (Princeton, 1941), 138Google Scholar; The Prose Works of Milton, John, IV (London, 1883), 219.Google Scholar
6 Abridgement, 67.
7 Compendium, 57.
8 The Works of John Milton, XV, 94–95.
9 For other discussions of the distinction between diabolical wonders and divine miracles, see Aquinas, St. Thomas, Super Pauli, Epistolas S. Lectura, ed. Raphael, P.Cai, II (Rome-Turin, 1953), 201Google Scholar; idem, Theologiae, Summa, ed. Caramello, Petrus (Rome-Turin, 1948)Google Scholar, I, Q.110, A.4 and Q.114, A.4; Operum Theologicorum D. Hieronymi Zanchii, III (Geneva, 1619), cols. 191–195; Bartholomaeus Keckermannus, Systema SS. Theologiae (Hanoviae, 1611), 465–466. Cf. the “lying wonders” of 2 Thess. 2:9. The diabolical “wonder” of lines 776–780 is not really a miracle since 1) God is not the author and 2) it is not an effect “out of the usual order of nature.” As the demons can take “what shape they choose Dilated or condens't,” they are simply displaying a well-known attribute of the angelic nature. See West, Robert H., “The Substance of Milton's Angels,” SAMLA Studies in Milton (Gainesville, Fla., 1953), 31–32, 49.Google Scholar