John Milton, 1608 - 1674

John Milton was an author highly regarded in early nineteenth-century America for his views on the relationship of and conflict between liberty and order, freedom and control.  The Unitarian critical tradition embraced Milton especially after the rediscovery of his noteworthy De Doctrina Christiana, hailing him as a fellow Arian and a believer in the worthiness of the literary class for the exercise of artistic authority.  In 1826, William Ellery Channing wrote a rousing piece in the Christian Examiner, praising him for his poetic genius, resistance to tyranny, and anti-Trinitarian theology.  Amos Bronson Alcott included a bust of John Milton as one of the four busts he placed around the classroom at his Temple School in the 1830s.