THIS FOREWORD TELLS how I began my twenty-five years of research into Milton's “best possession,” to help explain the meaning and range of its phrasing, and why I refer to it as his “Personal Best.”

To speak of your “personal best,” be it in throwing the javelin or finishing a crossword puzzle, is to measure yourself by some wider standard so as to take satisfaction in your own prowess when at maximum extension, whilst recognizing that that best is not the world's best. Milton spoke of De Doctrina as “this my best and most precious possession” (haec, quibus melius aut pretiosius nihil habeo). So he is not making quite the same claim, not taking pride in performance or prowess. Recognizing his due humility, I nevertheless take the surviving work as his “best” contribution to theology, and in many senses “personal.”

For one thing, its theology is distinctive in several unorthodoxies, and their zestful advocacy; also in some orthodoxies, like his measured account of Predestination. At the least, De Doctrina is his one and only worked-out Credo. And it figures, albeit belatedly, in histories of the great mid-century Trinitarian debate: it is on the wider map of theology; it counts. As to its being his “personal” best, Milton's Epistle declares it personal, his very own excogitation from scripture, since “whoever wants to be saved must have a personal faith of their own” (MS 1f). Also, he had to complete the compilation “if I did not want to be unfaithful to myself”: nisi mihimet forte infidus esse volebam— strong language, emphasizing his selfhood (mihimet). Thus De Doctrina is personal as being appropriative and self-directed, potentially even self-centred.

For my study, I heed his words, reading the original Latin words themselves, in order to probe the personality and selfhood which argument and style reveal to close reading. These close readings are extended to include the perspective of the readership Milton envisaged. By several means, I move to assessment of the work and its aim, its degrees of success, and its by-products, as these reveal Milton at his “personal best.”