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Locke asserts that the Bible is an infallible source of divine revelation, and that human reason has the capability of establishing its authenticity and determining its meaning. But he apparently fails to justify these claims anywhere in his writings, notwithstanding his awareness of serious challenges to biblical authority. This incongruity can be resolved. Locke did offer a proof of the authenticity of the Bible, but it has gone unnoticed because of its form and character. Analogous to natural theological arguments founded on evidence in nature of divine wisdom and power and goodness, his proof is cumulative and scattered among his writings. A principal source is a work by Faustus Socinus, known to Locke. The form of the argument, its strategy, and its occurrence in Locke’s writings are presented in the remaining part of the chapter.

This chapter explains how Newman reached the conclusion that Arius, the 4th-century heresiarch, defiled Christian civilization with liberal apostasy. Other heretics than Arius and Hampden might have been selected to illustrate the anti-dogmatic principle against which Newman rebelled. Among his contemporaries, Blanco White and John Stuart Mill provoked his indignation as much as Hampden did, and the ancient errors of Nestorius and Sabellius, were, he thought, tainted with the same protoliberalism that infected the theology of Arius. But Arius and Hampden are at least representative of the humanistic tradition against which Newman hardened his heart, and in addition, each can claim to be important in his own right. Arius has been controversial for 1,600 years, and if Newman was right, he is one of the pivotal figures of Western thought.

This chapter provides a genealogy for Milton’s scenes of Edenic awakening in Paradise Lost, arguing that Milton diverges significantly from his predecessors in order to invite readers into a pure experience of their own natures. But these natures are not natural or even neutral. Instead, Milton uses Adam’s and Eve’s accounts of awakening to paint a picture of human nature—pitched against that advocated by thinkers as diverse as Faustus Socinus, Simon Episcopius, Hugo Grotius, and Robert South—capable of underwriting the existence of his own peculiar understanding of subjectivity, political community, and the nature of divine revelation. The chapter also explores Milton’s innovative relationship to central terms in the philosophical tradition—subject and substance, among others—showing how such works as Paradise Lost and De doctrina Christiana rework these terms in order to develop a theoretical account of human nature.