1823 a long-forgotten MS. of his was found in a State office at
Westminster, and two years later it was published under the editorship
of Dr. Sumner, afterwards Bishop of Winchester. The work is entitled _A
Treatise of Christian Doctrine_. It was a late study by the poet,
laboriously comparing texts and pondering them with a mind prepared to
receive the verdict of Scripture as final, whether in agreement with
orthodoxy or not.

The most ardent of Milton's admirers, and even the most eager Unitarian,
must find the book a trial; but the latter can at least claim the author
of _Paradise Lost_ as an Anti-trinitarian, and the former may solace
himself by noticing that here, as in all the rest, Milton's soul 'dwelt
apart.' He emphatically denies that it was the works of 'heretics, so
called,' that directed and influenced his mind on the subject. We may
notice here the interesting fact that another great mind of that age,
_Sir Isaac Newton_, has left evidence of his own defection from the
orthodox view; and his correspondent _John Locke_, whose views appear to
have been even more decided, is only less conspicuous on this point
because his general services to breadth and liberality of religious
fellowship are more brilliantly striking.

Locke's _Plea for Toleration_ is widely recognized as the deciding
influence, on the literary side, which secured the passage of the
Toleration Act in 1689. Deferring for the moment further allusion to the
position created by this Act, we must at once observe the scope of one
of Locke's works which is not so popularly known. This is his
_Reasonableness of Christianity_, which with his rejoinders to critics
makes a considerable bulk in his writings. In pursuance of the aim to
'reduce the number of essentials' and to discover that in the Christian
religion which is available for simple people--the majority of