Milton's personality, in the sense of individuality and appropriation, is seen at once in the axioms of his quest. Chapter 2 elicits what he takes for granted from inferable drives or predilections of his own.

Then, to see his use of scripture (as sole evidence and arbiter of beliefs), we harness the methods of source criticism in Chapter 3. What does Milton omit, select, change, or add?

Milton's chief source after scripture was the orthodox Swiss theologian Johann Wolleb, Wollebius (Chapter 4). He uses Wollebius for large and small things, from the entire two-book system of topics to verbal detail. In both cases, the humdrum Wollebius identifies points of significant departure.

Yet Milton never names Wollebius or finds him worth explicitly correcting. Milton does routinely take issue with orthodoxy as a collective errant mind-set (“Theologi”). Chapter 5 gathers, rather, the individual theologians whom Milton does name as source or, in a few cases, as authority (“Seldenus”), but very much more often as voices of seemingly wilful misunderstanding. It seems that as composition proceeded and as Milton's self-confidence grew, the correcting of named theologians (whether as representatives or as themselves) grew to be Milton's method, and his last word on a theme or a particular point.