igable workers. Morgan Lloyd (died 1659), a Welshman, son of a Puritan mother, was chaplain of the Parliamentary troops during the civil war. In 1646 he was put in charge of the parish of Wrexham, where he began writing the numerous Welsh tracts which proclaim him a follower of Boehme. In 1653 was published his Book of Three Birds, a work thoroughly Boehmenistic in tone; he discourses on the Heaven and Hell within man, the regeneration and new birth of the soul, the God in man as Will, Word or Love, and Power. The book is a controversy of two birds, the Dove (real Christians) and the Raven (pretended Christians) before the Eagle (Oliver Cromwell). Lloyd had been much attracted to the Quakers, but, although an outspoken Independent, he never joined them and was consequently roundly scored by George Fox.1

Closely connected with the influence of the army, that "hot-bed of Independency," was the political influence of Boehme's followers, and this in turn was hardly to be distinguished from the religious interest. Detached and separate from the prevailing parties of the time the keen political genius of Sir Henry Vane the younger stands out prominently. Baxter calls the political following of Vane a religious sect. Vane's practical principles are now of recognized value, though before him no statesman had dreamed of a doctrine so thoroughly democratic. With him appears the doctrine of natural right and government by consent, which, however open to criticism in the crude form of popular statement, has yet been the moving principle of the modern reconstruction of Europe." This doctrine was the

66

1 See A. N. Palmer: A History of the Older Nonconformity of Wrexham and its Neighborhood, Wrexham, 1888. Also, A Winding Sheet for Mr. Baxter's Dead . . . being an Apology for several Ministers, London, 1685.

result of his recognition of the "rule of Christ in the natural conscience," in the elemental reason, by virtue of which man is properly a law to himself. From the same idea followed the principle of religious toleration, and the principle of excluding the magistrates' power from maintaining and restraining any kind of opinion. To Vane, "the eldest son of religion," Milton was content to leave the direction of "both spiritual power and civil." Did Milton know the source of Vane's inspiration, political as well as religious? If we read the latter's Retired Man's Meditations 2 we cannot fail to find the source; the whole work breathes Boehme's teachings.

1

A factor in the political situation of the early years of the Commonwealth-a factor for a very brief space only-was Gerrard Winstanley (1609-c. 1660). His story is soon told -a dutiful son of the Established Church who saw, in the logical consequences of the doctrine of the "inner light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world," the marvelous vision of political independence for all men; a humble working-man who lived a few years of tremendous activity and influence in the rarefied atmosphere of enthusiastic religion and whose work then seemingly came to naught when Cromwell assumed the protectorate. Winstanley was a Seeker, one of the "Children of Light," by some considered the spiritual father of Quakerism. In matters of religion he was closely related to Fox, but there is no proof that Winstanley and Fox were personally acquainted. Fox may have read Winstanley's many theological pam

2

1 Milton's sonnet to Sir Henry Vane the Younger, 1652.

Henry Vane, Knight: A Retired Man's Meditations or the Mysteries and Power of Godliness, London, 1655. See especially chap. v, "Creation of Man." See also Hauck, 3rd ed., Nachträge, article on Seekers, and T. H. Green, Works, London, 1888, III, pp. 294 ff. Hauck, 3rd ed., Nachträge: "Seekers."

phlets that came out in 1648-1649, the year to which the origin of Quaker doctrines is usually ascribed. Winstanley's main interest, however, was not religious, but social and communistic. The Diggers, under his leadership, tried to force social reform, beginning with an attempt to reclaim unused land for the community. Winstanley's writings show clearly the strong influence of Boehme. Berens 1 speaks of the influence of the Familists, but that is not all. Winstanley treats of creation, of the problem of evil, of the rightful independence of man on account of his birthright of reason or inner light from God, of all life as a struggle between self-love and reason. His political writings culminate in a marvelous document, practically as unknown as the wonderful Nova Solyma by Samuel Gott,2 that closes the list of seventeenth-century Utopian literature, The Law of Freedom in a Platform or true Magistracie Restored, London, 1652. "More's Utopia secured for its author worldwide renown. Winstanley's is unknown even to his own countrymen. Yet let any impartial student compare the ideal society conceived by Sir Thomas More-a society based upon slavery, and extended by wars carried on by hireling, mercenary soldiers-with the simple, peaceful, rational, and practical ideal pictured by Gerrard Winstanley and it is to the latter that he will be forced to assign the laurel crown.' "3 The main work of reformationand we are surely reading a follower of Boehme here-is

1

1L. H. Berens: The Digger Movement, London, 1906.

2 Nova Solyma, the ideal city; or, Jerusalem regained; an anonymous romance written in the time of Charles I, now first drawn from obscurity and attributed to the illustrious John Milton .

by the Rev. Walter Begley, London, 1902. Written by Samuel Gott; see The Library (London), July, 1910.

to reform the clergy, the lawyers, and the law; for all the complaints of the land are wrapped up within these three, not in the person of a king.

In presenting this evidence of the widespread knowledge and deep influence of Boehme's writings, we have been obliged to emphasize the facts of such a knowledge rather than the ideas themselves; these ideas, thus brought from their German home, where they had found little possibility of becoming an incentive to a broader spiritual life, found welcoming hearts in their new English home. Boehme's importance is due not only to the tremendously valuable ideas added by him to the abounding stream of Neoplatonic mysticism in England, but also to the depth that he gave to this stream, to his ability to "be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear." Others had taught the " inner light that lighteth every man," but of the nature of man and of that inner light they did not teach, nor could they tell of creation, of the origin and reason of the evil under which their hearts suffered and bled, of the place of evil in the world-system, of why "God is all in all, and Heaven and Hell are within.” 1 The manner in which some of these thoughts have become a great poet's gift to the world will be shown in Boehme's relation to Milton.

1

1 The Light and Dark Sides of God, or a plain and brief Discourse of The light side, God, Heaven, and Earth, The dark side, Devil, Sin, and Hell. . .By Jacob Bauthumley, London, 1650. See "Epistle to the Reader." The author is evidently a follower of Boehme, although he makes no mention of his master's name.

IV

MILTON AND BOEHME

As a young man Milton's father became a Protestant and was consequently disowned by his zealous Catholic parents. The poet Milton grew up in a Puritan home where religion was not a matter of inheritance but of conviction, and where a feeling for the true inwardness of religious life became a part of his very nature. A consciousness of the essential characteristics of the reformation as a continual progress toward the knowledge of things divine was Milton's birthright and equipment for life and service. Toland says that the poet belonged in youth to the Presbyterians, in later life to the Independents and Baptists, and that finally he freed himself from all church affiliations. Certain it is that while on many questions he came early to a definite stand, in others he advanced far beyond the viewpoint of his youth and early manhood. For this reason his personality and writings alike hold up a mirror to the spiritual and intellectual progress of his time.

1

Milton's education, his early ideals, and the general course of his life were dominated by Puritanism; not, however, the stern, exaggerated Puritanism of a later polemic epoch, but an earnest, yet warm devotion to religion that included the beautiful with the good, that found no irreconcilable contrast between love of music and poetry and love of God. Early in his university career he realized that he was to find there no real education for the ministry, 'Pauli: Aufsätze zur Englischen Geschichte, p. 349.