Milton spoke of <i>De Doctrina</i> as “my best and most precious possession.” Through close reading of the Latin itself, John K. Hale assesses the work and its aim, its degrees of success and its by-products, as these reveal Milton at his “personal best.” While to historians or methodologists of theology his best might not seem the very best ever, this work was unutterably precious to Milton, and close reading reveals the personal dimension of Milton’s theology and the passion and energy of his mind in its acts of thought.

<div>Foreword: Milton’s Personal Best<div>Preliminaries: Authorship, Medium, Audience<div>Chapter One: Milton’s Address to Readers<div>PART ONE: MATERIALS<div>Chapter Two: Axioms<div>Chapter Three: The Biblical Citations<div>Chapter Four: Working from Wollebius<div>Chapter Five: Named Theologians as Interlocutors<div>PART TWO: ARTS OF LANGUAGE<div>Chapter Six: Philology<div>Chapter Seven: Pagan Allusions<div>Chapter Eight: Pronouns<div>PART THREE: TRINITY<div>Chapter Nine: Milton’s De Filio<div>Chapter Ten: Theologies Compared<div>Appendix One: Further Etymologies<div>Appendix Two: Hobbes and Dryden<div>Bibliography