Chapter 10 mentioned that Milton defined his faith by different methods from those of Dryden or Hobbes. The two notable men were his intellectual equals, having a similar education to his, one younger and one older than him. Appendix 2 develops the comparison (without implying any connection, since De Doctrina lay hidden after 1660, and the mutual aversion of Hobbes and Milton is a given) in order to illuminate Milton's theology by contrasts. These are three laymen, sharing a rooted dislike of entrenched clergy and their “priestcraft,” who seek to think out for themselves what to believe—what makes most sense to them of spiritual things.

Of course, the comparison cannot avoid being both limited and lopsided. Hobbes has left everyone, including philosophers, guessing whether he died believing or acquiescing or agnostic. Milton's highly detailed and explicit beliefs lay hidden until 1825, so that although his religious beliefs might smell of heterodoxy by linkage with his politics, his own age did not know him through them. Dryden, in a third way, leaves us guessing in Religio Laici (1682): his engaging verse essay gives sparse detail about his doubts of scripture's accuracy, and about those “essentials” of faith which, as a layman, laicus, he will uphold. All the same, we can lay the three texts alongside, to note how they respond to the same essential, confessional task—to define core beliefs and basic stance in a time of new disputes and doubts.

Hobbes

Hobbes did not see how Moses could be the sole author of all five books of the Law. Hobbes reasoned from internal and linguistic evidence, or logic and common sense. To go no further than the summary in Martinich's biography. First, Moses did not write the account of his own death and burial in Deuteronomy 34. Second, Genesis 12:6 records that when Abraham passed through to Sichem “the Canaanite was then in the land.” The word “then” shows the Canaanite was no longer in the land, which had to be at a time after the death of Moses. Third, Moses is referred to in the third person, and in terms a man of God would not use of himself (“unequalled for all the signs and wonders that the Lord sent him,” Deut. 34:11 and elsewhere).