the Rev. W. Turner , Jun. , MA., Lives of the eminent Unitarians

[16] Lost is most nearly accordant with what is called the High Arian doctrine; and in one of the finest and most striking passages of the Paradise Regained, the early dawn and gradual development of our Lord's character is beautifully depicted in a poetical enlargement of what the gospel teaches, that he ‘increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favour with God and man.’

O what a multitude of thoughts at once
Awakened in me swarm, while I consider
What from within I feel myself, and hear
What from without comes often to my ears,
Ill sorting with my present state compared!
When I was yet a child, no childish play
To me was pleasing; all my mind was set
Serious to learn and know, and thence to do
What might be public good, myself I thought
Born to that end, born to promote all truth,
All righteous things; therefore above my years
The law of God I read, and found it sweet.

Paradise Regained, book i., 196-207.

Mr. Lindsey, in his ‘History of the Unitarian Doctrine,’ with a conscientious regard for strict accuracy of statement which does him honour, retracts the inference he had previously deduced from this passage as to the Unitarianism of Milton, an inference, says he, in which I was certainly mistaken. He does not assign the reasons which induced him to doubt the correctness of his former conclusions; but we now know that they were perfectly well founded.

Though the matter has of late been occasionally disputed, there seems to be no good reason to doubt that the Society of Friends, commonly called Quakers, in this early period of their history,