Interesting paragraphs................................

     Each in their own way, the Puritans, Presbyterians, Diggers, Levelers, Anabaptists, Lutherans, and Calvinists were working to rebase English or Scottish life on the Bible.  They disagreed among themselves over many things, but they generally agreed that they weren't looking for what we would now call an open or liberal approach to life.  They attacked the old, Catholic certainties - but they believed that these could and would be replaced with biblical ones.
     One of those who took this logic furthest was John Milton, the poet and Puritan who rose to high office in Cromwell's Commonwealth.  Milton, one of the most intelligent and learned men of his time, and perhaps the most respected Puritan scholar in the land, was convinced that a thoughtful reader, using the best manuscripts and limiting himself to simple methods of explication and interpretation, could develop a systematic theology out of the Bible that would provide political and dogmatic certainty in the storms of the age.
     With great goodwill he set out to work, but the manuscript he produced - in Latin known as De Doctrina Christiana (On Christian Doctrine) - was, by most standards, appallingly heterodox.  Earnestly and carefully following what he believed to be the clear meaning of undoubtedly authoritative passages, Milton denied the homoousion, the classic definition of Christ's relationship to God the Father that had been the centerpiece of orthodox Christianity since the Nicene Creed.  In an age when wars were quickly started by theological controversy and Milton's reputation stood as high as any scholar in Europe, this heretical manuscript must have seemed explosive.  It was placed under lock and key for safekeeping, and wasn't published until the reign of George IV, by which time the 
English-speaking world had less to fear from doctrinal controversies.
     What doomed Milton's quest for biblically based certainty was what doomed that quest generally in seventeenth century England:  people simply did not agree about what the Bible meant.
-Walter Russell Mead, as excerpted from God and Gold