His character of Dryden, who sometimes visited him, was, that he was
a good rhymist, but no poet.

His theological opinions are said to have been first Calvinistical;
and afterwards, perhaps when he began to hate the Presbyterians, to
have tended towards Arminianism. In the mixed questions of theology
and government, he never thinks that he can recede far enough from
Popery, or Prelacy; but what Baudius says of Erasmus seems
applicable to him, "Magis habuit quod fugeret, quam quod
sequeretur." He had determined rather what to condemn, than what to
approve. He has not associated himself with any denomination of
Protestants: we know rather what he was not than what he was. He
was not of the Church of Rome; he was not of the Church of England.

To be of no Church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are
distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by
degrees out of the mind, unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by
external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary
influence of example. Milton, who appears to have had a full
conviction of the truth of Christianity, and to have regarded the
Holy Scriptures with the profoundest veneration, to have been
untainted by any heretical peculiarity of opinion, and to have lived
in a confirmed belief of the immediate and occasional agency of
Providence, yet grew old without any visible worship. In the
distribution of his hours, there was no hour of prayer, either
solitary or with his household; omitting public prayers, he omitted
all.

Of this omission the reason has been sought upon a supposition which
ought never to be made, that men live with their own approbation,