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THE DEVOTIONAL EXPERIENCE IN MILTON'S POETRY

By

Michael Ernest Travers

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English

1985

@1985

MICHAEL ERNEST TRAVERS

All Rights Reserved

ABSTRACT
THE DEVOTIONAL EXPERIENCE IN MILTON'S POETRY

By

Michael Ernest Travers

This dissertation considers two questions: first,
what is the nature of the experience of devotion in Milton's
poetry; and, second, what contributions does Milton's poetry
make to devotional literature? A premise of the study is
that Milton's poems are both theodicies and devotions; that
is, they consider God's ways to men and demonstrate men's
responses to God.

The Introduction briefly establishes two contexts for
Milton's poetry, one the devotional traditions of the seven-
teenth century, the other Milton's own definition of devo-
tion as the worship, or love, of God in Book Two of The
'ChriStian'DOCtrine. Chapter One examines Milton's comments
on the theory of poetry and the theological premises on
which he predicates those comments. The first chapter,
therefore, provides the theological and poetic foundations
for the analysis of the poetry in the remainder of the
dissertation.

Chapter Two examines the poetry from 1629 to 1637

closely, especially "Lycidas." The analysis in this chapter

pays particular attention to the poet-speaker's experience
of devotion and to the scholarship about the speaker in
the poems. Chapters Three through Five consider Paradise

LoSt, Paradise Regained and'SamSOn'AgoniStes, specifically

 

 

demonstrating the development of devotion in selected
speeches in these poems.

. The conclusions of the study are as follows. Milton's
contribution to seventeenth century devotional literature
was to synthesize the experience of devotion within the
narrative development of a longer poems In Milton's hands,
devotion becomes an active expression of character-develop-
ment in response to the conflicts of life. Second, by 1637,
poetry had become an act of devotion for Milton, a means
of expressing his love for God in the face of sin and
death. Third, the protagonists of Milton's final three
poems develop a mature experience of devotion, each one in
his own particular way finding his God in the face of prob-

lems in an evil world.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to express my deepest gratitude to Dr. D. M.
Rosenberg, whose tireless patience in reading and re—
reading drafts of this dissertation is greatly apprebiated.
I wish to thank Dr. P. McGuire, Dr. R” Meiners, and Dr. D.
Peterson whose assistance in narrowing the focus of this
dissertation to an appropriate scope is appreciated, as

well.

ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

 

 

Introduction p. 1
Chapter One: Poetic Theories p. 15
Chapter Two: Early Poems p. 38
Chapter Three: Paradise LOSt p. 72
Chapter Four: Paradise Regained p.‘114
Chapter Pive: 'SamSOn Agonistes p. 150
Conclusion ' p. 176
Notes p. 184
Bibliography p. 195

INTRODUCTION

As a result of Milton's conviction that each person is
responsible for taking God into account in his life, the
reader of Milton's works is aware of two general subjects.1
In The Christian Poet in “Paradise LOSt", William.G. Riggs
identifies these two subjects as "God's dealings with man

and man's dealings with God."2 Although Riggs' statement

is limited to Paradise Lost in particular, it applies to

 

Milton's poetry in general: Milton justifies God's ways
to man and shows man how to approach God. His major poems
are theodicies in that they attempt to present God's actions
in human lives in comprehensible terms; they are devotions
in that they attempt to show men how to respond to God and
His actions in their lives. In this dissertation, I wish
to examine one of these two subjects, the experience of
man's devotion to God, in Milton's poetic theories and his
major poetry from 1629 to 1671. I wish to argue that Milton's
own devotion to God is an active expression of his love for
God and that he communicates this devotion in his view of
poetry and in the experience of the‘speakers and characters
in his poems..

Milton was certainly not the only writer of religious

poetry in seventeenth century England; indeed, the seventeenth

century provided some of the best devotional poetry in all
of English literature. One of the most striking character-
istics of devotional poetry of the day was its breadth.

No one religious group dominated the writing of devotional
poetry; no one religious credo prescribed the forms that
devotion was to take in poetry. Roman,Catholics, such as
Robert Southwell and Richard Crashaw, wrote great "medita-
tive" poetry after the Ignatian model which Louis L. Martz

analyzes so thoroughly in The‘Poetry;of'MeditatiOn (1954).

 

Anglicans, such as John Donne and George Herbert, wrote
devotional poetry and also many sermons that challenged

3

the reader to meditate on religious subjects both informally

4 And Puritans, such as John Milton and Edward

and formally.
Taylor (in Massachusetts) wrote a type of poetry that was
generally devotional in tone. Nor does this list exhaust
the roll-call of seventeenth century devotional poets;
Quarles, Vaughan and Traherne are other religious poets of
the century whose poetry, in addition to that of those already
mentioned, has come to be regarded as important devotional
literature. The seventeenth century, then, produced religious
poetry of great quality and quantity. I

There were, however, at least two important "traditions"
Of devotional poetry in Milton's England. Just as the
Reformers, beginning in 1517 with Martin Luther's "Ninety

Five Theses" had reacted against the Roman Catholic church,

so too the Roman Catholic church reacted against the

Protestants in 1534 with the Counter Reformation establish-
ment of the Order of the Jesuits by Ignatius Loyola. The
sixteenth-century split in the church, underscored in
England by Henry VIII's decision to divorce Catherine of
Aragon and by Elizabeth I's efforts to strengthen and de-
fend the Church of England, led inevitably to two types of
devotion, the Roman Catholic and Reformed. The study of
these methods of devotion, and the poetry that developed
from them, is a complex one. Louis L. Martz examines the
Roman Catholic Ignatian and Salesiansmodels of meditation

of the Counter Reformation in The Poetry of Meditation.

 

Barbara K. Lewalski analyzes the Reformed mode of devotion
in her book, PrOteStant Poetics and the SeVenteenth Century
Religious Lyric (1979). She identifies the characteristics
of the Protestant devotion --what she calls "the Protestant
paradigm" (p. 10) -- and analyzes the poetry of Donne,
Herbert, Vaughan, Traherne and Taylor in that light. Al-
though it is not possible to prove that Milton borrowed
exclusively from one of these two traditions, nevertheless
he did not write in an intellectual vacuum, unaware of the
major devotional traditions of his day. Therefore, let me
examine briefly the general characteristics of Ignatian and
Protestant devotion -- and the Augustinian perception of
devotion which lies behind them.

In The'Poetry‘of'Meditation}~Louis L. Martz claims that

 

Roman Catholic Ignatian methods of meditation provided the

"method" for seventeenth century English religious litera-

ture:
But fundamentally, I shall argue, the Counter Refor-
mation penetrated to English literature through methods
of religious meditation that lay at the heart of the
century 8 spiritual life and provided a radiant center
for religious literature of every kind.6
From his study of Ignatian and Salesian handbooks of medi-
tation, Martz establishes that a tripartite structure is
characteristic of the meditative poetry of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. According to this model, the
first step in a meditative poem is "composition, seeing the
spot" —- the writer focuses on the subject at hand or on
the object of devotion. Second comes the "understanding,"
or analysis, of those affections that would best move the
will to appropriate meditation. The third step is the

"colloquy,' in which the affections are "stirred up" and
the will is brought into devotion, or love, for the object
at hand (p. 40). The value of this tripartite Ignatian
structure in understanding meditative poetry is its applica-
tion to brief, self-contained lyrics that introduce, develop,

7 Martz's commentary is particu-

and conclude a meditation.
larly useful in the analysis offhe early seventeenth century
devotional lyrics of Donne, Herbert and Vaughan. (It must

be granted that Martz applies his understanding of meditation

to Paradise Regained in'The Paradise Within.) His study

 

 

alone, however, does not explain Milton's expression of

devotion adequately, especially in the longer poems.

It would of course be natural for Milton to turn to
Protestant, even Puritan, types of devotion rather than
Roman Catholic meditations as models for his own writing.
In‘ProteStant'Poetics‘and'the'Seventeenth#Century'Religious
'Lyric, Barbara Lewalski argues that seventeenth century
Protestant devotions concentrate more on St. Paul's the-
ology than on Ignatian meditative structures. She states:

The Pauline terms -- election, calling, justi-
fication, adoption, sanctification, glorification --
mark the important stages (some of them concomitant
rather than sequential) in the spiritual life of any

Protestant Christian, who was urged by dozens of

manuals to seek constantly for the evidence of those

stages in his own life. '
p. 16
Lewalski cites three significant distinctions between Protes-
tant and Roman Catholic meditation. First, the Protestant
poet returns directly to the Bible for the subjects of his

devotion; this is in keeping with the Reformers' position of

sola scripture -- the Bible alone as the rule of faith and

 

practice.8 Milton's three major poems, for instance, are
based on biblical narratives.

Second, the Protestant meditation does not follow a
strict structure; its "stages" can be "concomitant" as well
as sequential. Hence, Protestant devotion has no single,
universally-recognized structure to identify it. In the
Protestant meditative tradition, therefore, Milton was able

to find the flexibility which he;needed in order to write

long narrative poems in which the characters experience
devotion in a variety of ways.

Lewalski's third point is that the Prbtestant meditator
examines his own life for evidences of God's grace in his
election, calling, justification, adoption, sanctification
and glorification. The Protestant meditator does not
approach God on the basis of his meditation; rather, he
rehearses his own experience of God's grace. Lewalski
elaborates on the difference between Ignatian and Protestant

devotion:

The manner of application to the self in Protestant
meditation also distinguishes it from Ignatian or
Salesian meditation. In these continental kinds, the
meditator typically seeks to apply himself to the sub-
ject, so that he participates in it; he imagines a
scene vividly, as if it were taking place in his
presence, analyzes the subject, and stirs up emotions
appropriate to the scene or event or personal spiritual
condition. The typical Protestant procedure is very
nearly the reverse: instead of the application of
the self to the subject, it calls for the application
of the subject to the self -- indeed for the subject's
location in the self

pp. 149-50

In grotestant devotional poetry, the meditator does not actively
stir his emotions up to worship the subject (God); rather,
Protestant devotion is characterized by a search on the part
of the meditator for the already-existing evidences in his
own experience of the actions of God. Milton's devotion is
close to this Protestant paradigm.

Behind both the Roman Catholic and Reformed traditions

(if meditation is St. Augustine's commentary on the subject

of devotion, or worship. Milton was familiar with Augustine's
City of God9 and surely must have been aware of his comments
on devotion to God. Roger Hazelton's 1955 article, "The
Devotional Life," makes a far-reaching claim regarding the
influence of Augustine on western modes of worship and
devotion:

. he [Augustine] likewise marked the channels of
Christian devotion, from7his time to our own. His
stamp upon the prayer-ways of the Christian West,
both Catholic and Protestant, has been no less deep
and enduring than his monumental theological influence.
The great themes which recur in Christian worship,
the images and metaphors by which the devotional spirit
is perennially nourished, the very words and phrases by
which Christians in public or in private recall them-
selves to God -- these are still in large part indubi-
tably Augustinian. lO

Hazelton attributes the major themes, images and metaphors

of Christian devotion in both its Roman Catholic and Prot-
estant forms to St. Augustine. Barbara Lewalski agrees that
Augustine's comments on devotion were important and that both
Roman Catholics and Protestants regarded him "as a primary
point of reference" in the subject (p. 215). Louis Martz

introduces The Paradise Within with a preface that argues

 

for the centrality of Augustine's teachings on worship in
seventeenth century meditative poetry.

Of particular importance in Martz's discusssion is his
identification of the "paradise within" and the image of

God in man. He states:

the image of God is manifested not in the mere
passive possession of certain qualities but in the

action, the‘pgwg£_tg BEE reason for its proper ends. 11
The important point for this discussion is the idea that
the image of God is active, not passive. Milton agrees
with this idea throughout his poetry. His characters express
their love for God actively: Adam and Eve repent of their
sin; the Son does not succumb to the temptations in the
wilderness; and Samson defeats the Philistines by his own
death.

It would be impossible to claim that Milton restricts
his perception of devotion to the Ignatian, Reformed or
Augustinian method of devotion. Nor can we argue that he
moves consistently toward one of these models of devotion
in his poetry. He is closer in his later poetry to Augus-
tinian or Reformed devotion than he is to the Ignatian struc-
» ture of meditation, but I do not wish to assert that he
designs his poems on any specific model of devotion. Rather,
Milton is original in his depiction of devotion -- as he is
in his works in general. He integrates a vast range of inf-
luences into his own unique work. His poetry-is his own,
made in his own image, so to speak, not a casual collection
of others' materials. His contribution to devotional litera-
ture is this union of devotion and narrative and dramatic

poetry. In Paradise Lost, Paradise'Regained, and Samson

 

 

Agonistes in particular, he expresses devotion within the

 

narrative development itself. The integration of devotion

with narration allows him to develop devotion as an active,
not a passive, experience; and it allows devotion to be an
expression of character. This is Milton's genius in devo-
tional literature: devotion is the active and inevitable
articulation of a character's love to God as he experiences
it in the actual development of narrative events. Fortunately,
Milton provides us with a clear statement outside of his
poetry of his perspective of devotion and love for God in
The Christian Doctrine.

Because The Christian Doctrine is the only systematic
statement of Milton's theology, it is important for us to
understand what he says there about devotion. He considers

the subject of devotion in Book Two of The ChriStian Doctrine

 

under the heading of the worship of God. He distinguishes
the worship of God in Book Two from the knowledge of God in
Book One. Because he separates worship from the knowledge.
of God proper, he presents worship (with devotion included

as a type of worship) as less a doctrine than an "affection."
Specifically, devotion is the affection of love toward God,

a love which is directed properly toward God alone (CE, XVII,
p. 3). Milton further restricts the subject of devotion by
placing it in the category of "internal," as opposed to
"external," worship. For Milton, external worship has to do
with the public and outward forms of worship (CE, XVII, p. 51

and 53); "internal worship," on the other hand, "consists

10

mainly in the acknowledgment of the one true God, and in the
cultivation of devout affections toward him" (CE, XVII, p. 51).
Devotion is an individual's inner attitude toward God which

he expresses in the "cultivation,' or active develoPment, of
certain "devout affections" for Him.

Milton defines this devotional love as "that by which
we prefer him.[God] above all other objects of affection, and
desire his glory" (CE, XVII, pp. 51 and 53). As Milton's
references to Deuteronomy 6:5 and Matthew 22:37 indicate,
we are to love God "with all [our] soul[s], and with all
[our] might.“ God is to be the object of our hearts! love,
and that even at the expense of our love for the things of
this world. Indeed, the love of the world is hatred of God,
as Milton makes clear. He cites a number of scriptural texts
in support of this argument, especially James 4:4 in which
James asks, "Know ye not that the friendship of the world
is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of
the world is the enemy of God."12 The kind of love that
Milton calls devotion is a type of love that is a free,
conscious act of the will which chooses God over the things
of this world.

The deliberate choice of God is a necessary part of
devotional love for Milton. Love must come from a free will,
else it is not proper devotion at all. In The Christian
Doctrine Milton identifies seven different ways that a person

may choose to express his devotion to God. They are what he

11

calls "devout affections": trust, hope, gratitude, fear,
humility, patience, and obedience (CE, XVII, p. 51). He

defines each one specifically in The Christian D0ctrine; it

 

is these affections which Milton uses to develop an approp-
riate devotional love for God in the lives of the characters

of his poems.

In order to understand Milton's depiction of the exper-
ience of devotion, we shall examine in Chapter One his state—
ments regarding poetry and the nature of the poetic talent
that are relevant to devotion. We will also locate his
comments within his theology, specifically his theory that
God's general grace is the foundation for poetry. It will
be necessary, therefore, to examine briefly Milton's state-
ments regarding the nature and limits of divine inspiration
in poetry. Finally, we will outline Milton's definitions
of the seven devout affections. These issues in poetic
theory provide the material for Chapter One and form the
theoretical foundations for the later studies of devotion
in Milton's poetry in subsequent chapters.

In Chapter Two, we-shall examine the "Nativity Ode,"

"The Passion,‘ and "Lycidas" inasmuch as they demonstrate
Milton beginning to develop devotion in his poetry. These
poems, written between 1629 and 1637, were composed during
a period of intense preparation on Milton's part for his
career as a poet. He was searching for the "right" way to

13

use his God-given talent of writing. These were the years

12

preceding the Civil War; they were private years for Milton,
among his last until the Restoration. During the 1630's,
Milton wrote many important poems, at least three of which
begin to develop the experience of devotion.

Chapter Three deals with Paradise Lost. It is obviously

 

impossible in one chapter to conduct a sustained analysis
of the poem in its entirety. The poem is too long and complex
to allow that kind of comprehensive treatment. Therefore,
we shall examine selected passages that develop the experience
of love toward God most directly. These passages are prima-
rily the speeches of Adam.and Eve at significant points in
the narrative, though the Son's speeches provide an impor-
tant counterpoint to the devotion which Adam and Eve exper-
ience -- especially after the fall. The unfallen angels,
too, speak devotionally at times. Indeed, a division of
Paradise Lost into its prelapsarian and postlapsarian sec-
tions provides an effective and appropriate perspective of
the experience of devotion in the lives of Adam and Eve, the
central characters in the poem.

In chapter Four we shall analyze the development of

devotion in the life of the Son of God in Paradise Regained.

 

Through the temptations in the wilderness, the Son learns

how to express his love for God. Milton emphasizes the humr

 

anity of his protagonist in Paradise Regained, even when he
idendifies him as "the Son of God" (thirty-nine times),

"Savior" (twenty-one times), "Messiah" (seven times), and

13

"Jesus" (six times).14 Milton consistently stresses the Son's

need to prove himself worthy to redeem men from their sins
throughout the poem. The point is that Milton clearly
wishes to emphasize the humanity of his protagonist so that
he can develop in understanding and emotion in the poem.

The final chapter examines Samson Agonistes with ref-

 

erence to the development of proper devotion in the exper—
ience of Samson himself. Samson is particularly appropriate
as a model of devotion for two reasons. First, he is an Old
Testament saint, whose life demonstrates that Milton thought
of devotion as an experience available to all men. Second,
Samson has no one to turn to but God: the Hebrew leaders
desert him and Dalila betrays him; Manoa does not understand
him and Harapha taunts him. God alone appreciates the depth
of his discouragement. In the character of Samson, Milton
presents devotion in its most practical and integrated form.
This is the plan of the dissertation. It presumes,

first, that Milton wrote Paradise Lest between 1655 and

 

1663 for publication in 1667, and then wrote Paradise Re-

 

gained and Samson AgOnistes for 1671 publication. Though

 

he had plans for the final two poems early in his career,

he did not write the poems as we now have them until late

15

in life. Second, the dissertation presumes that, be-

cause Milton was always conscious of his divine call as a

poet,16 he was developing the theology of The Christian

 

Eggggipg_simu1taneously with the writing of his major poems;17

14

therefore, Milton's doctrine of general grace as we have it

in The Christian DoCtrine is important to an understanding

 

of his later poetry. Finally, I rely on the traditional
chronology in order to allow for development of devotion

in Milton's works.

CHAPTER ONE
POETIC THEORIES

Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of Heav'n's joy,
Sphere-born harmonious Sisters, Voice and Verse,
Wed your divine sounds, and mixt power employ

Dead things with inbreath'd sense able to pierce,
And to our high-rais'd fantasy present

That undisturbed Song of pure concent,

Aye sung before the sapphire-color'd throne

To him that sits thereon,

With Saintly shout and solemn Jubilee,

Where the bright Seraphim in burning row

Their loud uplifted Angel-trumpets blow,

And the Cherubic host in thousand choirs

Touch their immortal Harps of golden wires,

.Withl those just Spirits that wear victorious Palms,
Hymns devout and holy Psalms

Singing everlastingly;

That we on Earth with undiscording voice

'May rightly answer that melodious noise;

As once we did, till disproportion'd sin

Jarr'd against nature's chime, and with harsh din
Broke the fair music that all creatures made

To their great Lord, whose love their motion sway'd
In perfect Diapason, whilst they stood

In first obedience and their state of good.

0 may we soon again renew that Song, —

And keep in tune with Heav'n, till God ere long

To his celestial consort us unite, 1
To live with him, and sing in endless morn of light.

I have quoted "At a Solemn Music" (1633) in its entirety,
not to discuss Milton's views of music, but to suggest his
perspective on the arts in general and on poetry in parti-
cular. Miltdn believes the orthodox Christian teaching that
God created us originally in a "state of good" and that, in

that good state, we were in harmony, or "perfect Diapason"

16

as he calls it here, with the Creator. That is to say, there
was no "discord," or lack of understanding between the
Creator and man. However, man fell into sin and therefore
out of harmony with God. Milton describes sin in this poem
as "disproportioned" and "against" nature; sin "broke the
fair music that all creatures made / To their great Lord."
Because of his sin, man lost a full understanding of God's
ways in his life; this is the reason that Milton feels the

need to "justify the ways of God to men" in Paradise Last.

 

How then can fallen man communicate with God? Milton
believes that the art of poetry (as well as musicz) can be
an act of devotion to God, even after the fall:

0 may we soon again renew that Song

And keep in tune with Heav'n, till God ere long

To his celestial consort us unite,

To live with him, and sing in endless morn of light.
The ultimate purpose of music and poetry is eschatological:
it is praise to God when we are in heaven. But music and
poetry composed on this earth even before that final day
when we are all "united" in heaven can celebrate and wor-
ship God. This is Milton's reason for writing poetry --

to express his personal love to God. And, as we have seen

in his definition of devotion in The Christian'Doctrine, love

 

for God is devotion. Milton's poetry expresses his own
devotion to God.
Milton echoes the same thought about learning in gen-

eral in Of Education, written in 1644:

 

17

The end of learning is to repair the ruins of our
first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out
of that knowledge to love him ...

p. 631

Milton's thoughts about the nature of poetry (because it
is one method of teaching3) are inextricably related to
his orthodox thinking about the creation of man, his fall,
and the manner in which fallen man communicates with God.
We are to come to "know God aright" again; this is accomp-
lished in large part in Milton's view by God's grace.

Milton's doctrine of divine grace is important to his
poetic theories, particularly insofar as it relates to his
thinking regarding the worship of God in poetry. While
Milton believes that poetry is a means of worshipping God,
he does not think that fallen man can express devotion to
God without God's first extending grace to him.4 This is
prevenient grace. Only God, in His work of "regeneration,"
can "create afresh, as it were, the inward man" and restore
him to future good works:

Regeneration is that change operated by the Word and

the Spirit, whereby the old man being destroyed, the

inward man is regenerated by God after his own image,

in all the faculties of his mind, insomuch that he

becomes as it were a new creature, and the whole man

is sanctified both in body and soul, for the service

of God, and the performance of good works.

CE, XV, p. 367

In order for any of man's works, including his expressions

of love in poetry, to be acceptable to God in Milton's view,

man must be "regenerated" so that he is "sanctified both in

18

body and soul, for the service of God." Without this divine
sanctification in a fallen man's life, his poetry is unac-
ceptable to God as an expression of love. Man must become
a "new creature" in Milton's view before his "good works"
can serve God. God makes man a "new creature" by His grace.

Milton holds to a doctrine of general grace that has
to do with all of God's activities in men's lives. For
Milton, God gives grace to man in two particular ways. The
first evidence of God's grace in man's life is His universal
offer of salvation. God gives sufficient grace to all men
for their salvation through His grace:

he [God] undoubtedly gives grace to all, if not in
equal measure, at least sufficient for attaining know-
ledge of the truth and final salvation.
CE, XIV, p. 147

The Calvinistic doctrine that God ""rebrobates" some men to
hell and ”elects" others to heaven is anathema to Milton.5
He teaches rather that God offers enough grace to all men
for their salvation; salvation is the making of a new creature
fit for God's service. Beyond that saving grace, however,
God provides a second evidence of His grace: He gives more
grace to certain men to serve Him more fully than others.
‘Milton notes that God's grace is not given in "equal measure”
beyond the minimum saving grace. This discriminate bestowal
of grace beyond salvation to some more than others is the

N

prerogative of a sovereign, or "supreme," God:

19

That an equal portion of grace should not be extended

to all, is attributable to the supreme will of God;

that there are none to whom he does not vouchsafe

grace sufficient for their salvation is attributable

to his justice. .

CE, XIV, pp. 147 and 149

Sovereignly, with no respect of man's opinions, God bestows
gifts on some men for special service by the same grace with
which He saves them. In this view, there is no distinction
between spiritual and non-spiritual concerns in life; every-
thing is spiritual because everything is affected by the ac-
tivity of God's grace in men's lives. Poetic composition,
therefore, is as spiritual an activity for Milton as any
other activity f- such as preaching or administering a Latin
Secretaryship, for instance. Poetry is a valid medium with
which to express love to God. I

Indeed, Milton thought of his ability to write poetry

as the most important talent that he could use to express

his devotion to God.; in The ReaSOn of Church Government

 

urged against Prelaty, which he wrote in 1642, Milton clearly

 

identifies God as the source of his poetic talents:
These abilities [to write religious poetry], wheresoever
they be found, are the inspired gift of God, rarely
bestowed, but yet to some (though most abuse) in every
nation.
Hughes, p. 669.
The ability to write poetry is the "inspired gift of God."
Milton maintains throughout his career that his poetic talent

is the gift of God. In accepting that God is the source of

his poetic talent, Milton shoulders the concomitant

20

responsibility that his abilities bring: he must not "abuse"
the gift by not serving God with it; rather, he must make of
his poetry an act of devotion to God.

Milton's belief that God enables him to write poetry
is made more poignant by his awareness that not every one
so gifted uses the talent for God's glory. When Michael
presents the first human arts to Adam in Book Eleven of
Paradise Lost, for instance, he tells Adam that Lamech's
children abused their artistic abilities. They did not use
them for God's glory, but for their own gain. Michael says
in part:

studious they appear

Of arts that polish Life, Inventors rare,

Unmindful of their Maker, though his Spirit

Taught them, but they his gifts acknowledg'd none.

XI, 11. 609-12

Milton repeats his concern about the abuse of art in Paradise
Regained when the Son rejects Satan's temptation of Gentile
culture:

Alas! what can they [Gentiles] teach, and not mislead;

Ignorant of themselves, of God much more,

And how the world began, and how man fell

Degraded by himself, on grace depending?

Much of the Soul they talk, but all awry,

And in themselves seek virtue, and to themselves

All glory arrogate, to God give none,

Rather accuse him under usual names,

Fortune and Fate, as one regardless quite

Of mortal things. Who therefore seeks in these

True wisdom, finds her not

Ivr 11. 309-19a

21

The Son's condemnation of the Gentile arts in general is a
serious one in Milton's view because they have failed to
teach wisdom. "True wisdom" is to know God -- His creation
of men and His grace in their lives. With so many poets,

in Milton's thinking, not using their abilities to serve God,
Milton is particularly careful that he serve God with his
poetry.6

In order for him to be able to write well, Milton knows

that he must develop his talent. In The ReaSon of Church

 

Government, for instance, he notes that in addition to his
moral purification "must be added industrious and select
reading, steady observation, insight into all seemly and
generous arts and affairs" (p.671). Milton is aware that he
must read widely and judiciously, observe life carefully,
and weigh the materials wisely -- if he is to write well
enough to glorify God. He must work hard to perfect the
talent that God has given him.

But his talent and training are not sufficient for him
to write the type of poetry that he wises to write. He must
be divinely-inspired as well as divinely-talented. As he

states of inspiration in The Reas0n of Church G0vernment,

 

the poet must apply himself

by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit who can enrich
with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his
seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch
and purify the lips of whomghe pleases.

p. 671

22

Clearly, Milton emphasizes his need for prayer to ask God

to help him to write poetry. He goes on immediately to
reiterate, however, his own need for "industry" in order for
him to write well. In Milton's view, both inspiration and
industry are necessary for a poet to write effective religious

poetry.

 

In John Miltonz'Poet, Priest and'Prophet, John Spencer

......

Hill notes a valuable distinction between poetic talent and

divine inspiration in Paradise LOSt. Hill identifies the

 

"Muse in‘Paradise'Lost as "the divinely implanted poetic

 

talent ... which Milton has possessed from birth and which
he has nurtured and improved over a long life of study and
severe application" and the "Spirit" of the invocations in

Paradise Lost as the one who "purif-[ies] the vessel [the

 

poet] and enlightens [him] with knowledge that is unattainable
except by direct revelation" (p. 110). Hill sees a two-fold

dynamic at work in Paradise Lbst: ‘Milton's own poetic talent

 

on the one hand and the divine, supernatural inspiration of
the poet on the other, both of which are necessary for Milton
to write poetry to the glory of God. When the poet in

Paradise Lost asks for inspiration, therefore, we must assume

 

that such an invocation is more than a literary convention

because he sees himself as sinful and unable to write effec-
tively; he asks for an inspiration that he feels he actually
needs. Hill notes that "for Milton, inspiration is neither

the anti-rational afflatus of the Corybantic priests in

23

Plato's Ion 534a nor (at the other extreme) is it merely an
empty rhetorical trope" (p. 60). Milton knew that he needed
inspiration to write poetry that was acceptable to God as

an act of his devotion and he asks for that inspiration in
most of his poems from the "Nativity Ode" on.

. The "Nativity Ode" is an early example of a poem in
which the poet asks for divine inspiration to assist him to
express his love for God. The poet is grateful for the incar-
nation of the savior at Bethlehem. He begins with a prelude
that invokes a "heav'nly Muse" forfiinspiration to lift the
poet up to write a hymn of praise to the new-born king. He
speaks to his Muse in these two stanzas:

Say Heav'nly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein
Afford a present to the Infant God?
Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain,
To welcome him to this his new abode,
Now while the Heav'n by the Sun's team untrod,
Hath took no print of the approaching light,
And all the Spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright?
See how from far upon the Eastern road
The Star-led Wizards haste with odors sweet:
0 run, prevent them with thy humble ode,
And lay it lowly at his blessed feet;
Have thou the honor first, thy Lord to greet,
And join thy voice unto the Angel Choir,
From out his secret Altar toucht with hallow'd fire.
‘ 11. 15-28
The poet asks his Muse for inspiration to "prevent," or
precede, the Magi with a gift of a hymn for "the Infant God."
This is both a request for divine aid to write the hymn and,

as Woodhouse notes in The Poet and‘His Faith, a dedication

 

of the hymn itself to God.7 By seeking divine inspiration

24

and by dedicating himself to God, Milton clearly declares
himself a Christian poet in this prelude. Hill comments on
the obvious sincerity in Milton's self-dedication to God in
the "Nativity Ode":

In the "Nativity Ode" Milton thinks of himself as a
Stylus dei, an amanuensis of deity. -And while it is
true’fhat this stance, like the pagan afflatus of the
earlier pieces, is sanctioned by a long tradition,

the sincere and confident tone of the "Nativity Ode"
makes it plain that the inspiration to which it lays
claim is far from being a conventional literary topos.

p. 59

 

Though the ode makes use of conventional materials, Hill
maintains that its prelude indicates that Milton sees hime
self in need of divine aid if he is to write poetry that
expresses love for God.

Some fourteen years after he wrote the "Nativity Ode,"

Milton comments in The Reason of Church Government on his

 

need for inspiration in his poetry. In this passage, Milton

refers specifically to his promise of Paradise'L0st:

 

Neither do I think it shame to covenant with any know-
ing reader, that for some years yet I may go on trust
with him toward the payment of what I am now indebted,
as being a work not to be raised from the heat of
youth, or the vapors of wine, like that which flows at
waste from the pen of some vulgar amorist, or the
trencher fury of a riming parasite, nor to be obtained
by the invocation of Dame Memory and her Siren daughters,
but by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit who can
enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out
his seraphim with the hallowed fire 6f:h s altar,1to
touch and purify the lips of Whom he pleases.

p. 671

25

Milton rejects secular subjects such as "vulgar" love poems
called up by "Dame Memory and her Siren Daughters" and em-
braces instead "that eternal Spirit" who can inspire his
poetry heavenward. The "Spirit" to whom Milton alludes here
is the Holy Spirit who "sends out his seraphim with the hal-
lowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of
whom he [the Spirit] pleases." Seraphim are traditionally
associated with purification.8 As Merritt Y. Hughes notes,
this is clearly a reference to Isaiah 6: 1-9.9 This inspir-
ation is literal for Milton in that the Spirit provides him
with "knowledge" -- presumably about God and His actions in
human life. Such a knowledge is beyond natural human talent;
it comes from God.

Besides providing inspiration, the Spirit purifies the
poet with "fire" from the "altar." In the pasSage from
Isaiah to which Milton alludes, Isaiah laments his sinful-
ness: "Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I
am a man of unclean lips." Because of his sinfulness,
Isaiah is cleansed by God: God lays the "live coal" of
purification upon Isaiah's lips (verse seven). He is then
‘sent out to serve God (verse nine). All of this detail from
Isaiah provides a source for Milton's understanding of ins-

piration in The ReaSon of Church GoVernment. He regards him-

 

self as sinful; therefore, he needs to be sanctified; and

he needs to be sent out as a prophet of God's "message,"

26

as Isaiah was. Thus, he will be able to serve God. The
inspiration which Milton invokes is emphatically divine. It
lifts him to a level higher than is normally possible, to a
height at which the poet, now like a prophet, can announce
what God has done for him. It is this type of inspiration,
along with his inborn poetic talents, that Milton needs to
write poetry that is an act of devotion to God -- he needs
supernatural enlightenment and purification.

The question of the identity of the Muse who inspires
Milton is, of course, a much-debated one -- especially in

Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. It is not my intention

 

 

to trace in this chapter the complex issue of the Muse's

identity in those two poems; I shall consider some of the
specific problems that the subject of the Muse's identity
raises that are relevant to the subject of devotion in the

discussion of each of the poems. With the exception of

 

Muse invoked in Book Three is merely the physical light which
Milton had lost in his blindness,10 critics generally agree
that Milton sincerely sought something higher than himself

to aid him in the writing of his poems to the glory of God.
James Holly Hanford, for instance, argues in "That Shepherd
who First Taught the Chosen Seed" that Milton was more int-
erested in divine guidance itself than in the specific name

11

of the one who provides that assistance. More recently,

27

in The Christian Poet in “ParadiSe'LOSt", William G. Riggs

 

holds that the Muse is neither the Holy Spirit nor the Son

of God, but a spirit who "accompanies" them from the begin-
ning of time and who inspires Milton at his point of writing.
He writes, "... this 'overshadowing Spirit' is sent along
with the Son and is, therefore, presumably not identical with
him" (PP. 163 -64). Perhaps Riggs has in mind the personified
Wisdom of Proverbs 8: "The Lord possessed me in the begin-
ning of his way, before his works of old," Wisdom says (verse
twenty-two). She adds, "For whoso findeth me findeth life,
and shall obtain favor of the Lord" (verse thirty-five).

John Spencer Hill maintains in John Milton:'Poet,'PrieSt and

 

Prophet:

For Milton, inspiration is ... the operation of a sanc—
tifying grace that continuously nourishes and sustains
those whom God has marked as His special servants.

And, while Milton's sense of poetic calling deepens

and sharpens considerably in the years separating the
"Nativity Ode" from Paradise Lost, the image of the
live coal laid by the seraph on Isaiah's lips remains
the constant symbol (in a Coleridgean sense) of his
poetic calling.

 

pp. 60-61
Whatever identity they ascribe to his muse, critics agree
that Milton finds a legitimate inspiration for his poetry
outside of himself. It is this inspiration that assists
him in writing of heavenly things.
The question of identity aside, what finally is Milton's

view of inspiration in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained?

 

 

28

I find Hill's conclusion in John Milton:'Poet,'Priest'and
Prophet a particularly useful statement of how Milton's
view of inspiration helps to make his poetry an act of devo-

tion to God. Hill writes:

Milton's experience as God's spokesman in the prose
works taught him to place himself in the tradition of
Old Testament prophecy. And in that tradition, .
inspiration is distinct from irrational afflatus and,

in fact, bears no relation to it. The prophets are

'men, free men, who voluntarily co—operate with God and
consciously accept the service 'imposed' on them. They
will to relax the will, in order to declare God's will.
In the same way Paradise LoSt is the record of,the col-
laboration between Poet andiGOd, that is; between a free
speaker and the divine word. In the opening invocation
these two figures are invoked separately: through the
'heavenly muse' Milton declares his own readiness to
begin, and through the invocation to the Spirit he calls
upon God to sustain and direct the work.

In later invocations the two functions are fused, as
is natural since there is no distinction between instr-
ument and Word once the request for inspiration has been
granted.

pp. 111-12
Hill refers to Milton as God's "spokesman" in his prose
works and His "prophet" in the poetry. I prefer to call
Milton God's "prophet" in the prose works because he thinks

12 Hill's

of himself as preaching "God's Word" to his nation.
comment that Milton willingly cooperates with God also cor-
robates my perception of him as a prophet (for St. Paul said
that "the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets,"
I Cor. 14:32).

In his poems, however, Milton does not preach the Word

of God. Rather, he celebrates the glories of God and his

love for Him. He does this through his talents and the divine

29

inspiration that he has received. As Hill states, by the

end of the Invocation to Book One of Paradise Lest, the poet

 

has already received the inspiration he needs -- by faith --
from God. Therefore, because the poet has been inspired at
the beginning of the poem, he can write his poetry as an
.acceptable act of devotion to God (again, by faith) -- after
all, the poet believes that God has inspired its very compo-
sition. Hence, as a poet, Milton is more like a priest than
a prophet: he celebrates his own devotion to God in his
poetry, whereas he preaches it in his prose.

In his poems, Milton integrates devotion with narrative
events and character development. As Arthur Sewell writes

in A Study of Milton's Christian Doctrine:

 

The poems report the more integral truth of Milton's
spiritual development. They not only tell us what were
the achievements of his spiritual inquiry, but they also
embody the affections of his heart, his agonies, his
inward struggles, during the very process of inquiry.

p. 83
Milton's poems "embody" and develop the spiritual "affec-
tions of his heart." They are acts of devotion, or celeb-
rations, for him within which his characters progressively
develop their love for God in the narrative events of the
poems. Milton's view of poetry, therefore, emphasizes char-
acter development because it is in the characters themselves
that he presents devotion to God.

Milton's emphasis on devotion in his characters re—

flects the paradigm of Protestant meditation that Barbara

30

Lewalski identifies in ProteStant'Poetics‘and the Seven-

 

teenth CenturngéligiouS'Lyric. Lewalski notes that Prot-

 

estant meditation lends itself to "psychological insight"
and development:

. Protestant meditation did engage the mind in an ef-
fort to penetrate deeply into the motives and motions
of the psyche, and also to understand the self as the
very embodiment of the subject meditated upon. The
Word was still made flesh, though now in the self of
the meditator ... . This emphasis contributed to the
creation with a new depth and sophistication of psych-
ological insight.

p. 150
In Milton's devotion, as well as in Protestant meditation
in general, the "self" is the "very embodiment of the sub-
ject meditated upon." That is, God (the "subject" and the
"Word" of Lewalski's statement) ascribes His characteristics
to the character in the poem (the "self" and the "flesh" of
the reference). Through the experiences of the narrative
events in the poem, the characters acquire a love for God by
developing certain qualities in their lives. This is how
the "Word" becomes "flesh ... in the self of the meditator"
in Milton's poetry. The development of character in the
course of a poem, therefore, is toward devotional love for
God. Milton's contribution to devotional poetry is this dev-
elopment of devotion within a narrative sequence of events.
In Milton's hands, devotion is no longer restricted to brief

lyrics; it is an integral part of the epic (Paradise Lost and

Paradise Regained) and drama (SamSon Agonistes).

 

31

As we indicated in the introduction to the dissertation,
Milton defines devotional love for God "above all other
objects of affection"“ (CE, XVII, pp. 51 and 53). To love
God, in Milton's view, is consciously to choose Him -- by
a free-will act of faith -- above everything else as deser-

ving of love. In The ChriStian DoCtrine, Milton identifies

 

seven different ways to express devotion to God; he names
them "devout affections." These seven devout affections are
trust, hope, gratitude, fear, humility, patience and obed-
ience (CE, XVII, p. 51). They are the results, or "effects"
as he calls them, of an individual's devotional love for God;
they are the particular, active expressions of that love to
God.

In The Christian Doétrine, Milton defines each of these

 

devout affections, beginning with trust. He characterizes
trust in God "as an effect of love ... whereby we wholly
repose on him [God]" (CE, XVII, p. 53). He distinguishes
trust from faith in that, whereas faith has to do with a

person's "justification,' or salvation, trust has to do with
a Christian's daily confidence in God's goodness toward him.
Such a trust is active and pragmatic; Milton cites three
practical details which we can trust to God. He quotes Psalm
18: 2 and 3, "Jehovah is my rock and fortress ... in whom I
will trust," in order to indicate that God will protect us.

Second, God will guide us. Referring to Psalm 37:5, "Commit

thy way unto Jehovah, trust also in him and he shall bring it

32

to pass,” Milton states his trust that God will direct our
lives. Third, God will "establish” our thoughts (Milton
refers to Proverbs 16:3 in this regard) so as to stabilize
our lives (CE, XVII, pp. 53 and 55). Milton's understanding
of trust, then, is three-fold: God protects us from physical
harm; He guides the direction of our lives; and He stabilizes
our reason.

With trust comes hope, ”that by which we expect with
certainty the fulfillment of God's promises" (CE, XVII, p.
57). This is the certainty that what God promised in the
Bible, He will perform in a Christian's life. Milton quotes
Job 13:15, "though he [God] slay me, yet will I trust in him,"
to underscore his hope in God's love. He goes on to distin-
guish three benefits which result from the expression of devout
hope. We are assured of life after death. We will be joyful
because "the hope of the righteous shall be gladness” (Proverbs
10:28). And we will be strengthened, as Isaiah 40:31 promises:
"they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength ... ."
These are all references which Milton cites to demonstrate
that an individual's hope in God is safely-founded and
amply-repaid (CE, XVII, pp. 57 and 59). Each person must,
of his own free will, choose to hope in the promises of God;
when he does so, God not only fulfills His promises to him,
but He also rewards his hope with eternal life, gladness

N

and strength.

33

Because God is faithful to fulfill the promises which
hope expects to have fulfilled, we are to be grateful to-
ward Him. Milton defines gratitude as "that whereby we
acknowledge his [God's] goodness in conferring benefits
upon creatures so unworthy as ourselves? (CE, XVII, p. 59).
There are two important thoughts here. First, God's good-
ness prompts our gratitude. Second, our sinfulness, which
renders us unworthy of God's benefits, accentuates God's
goodness. The scriptural passages which Milton quotes regar-
ding gratitude relate to God's goodness in salvation. For
example, I Corinthians 6:20, "Ye are bought with a price;
therefore, glorify God in your body, and in your spirit,
which are God's," expresses the Protestant teaching that
Christ "paid" all of man's ”sin-debt" in His death. We can
add nothing to Christ's work. How are we to respond to such
a benefit? With gratitude, Milton asserts, "let us have
grace whereby we may serve God with reverence and godly fear"
(Hebrews 12:28). Here again, as he does with hope and trust,
Milton presents gratitude as an active and practical devout
affection -- active and practical service to reflect the
deliberate free-will choice of God above all other objects
of affection.

Even in his depiction of devout fear, Milton declares
that a devotional love of God is the only basis on which we
are to reverence God. He says, "We are to reverence God as

the supreme Father and Judge of all men, and dread offending

34

him above all things" (CE, XVII, p. 61). First of all,
Milton speaks of God as the Father here, a positive picture
of God as the giver and sustainer of life and all its ben-
efits. He cites Proverbs 19:23, "the fear of Jehovah tendeth
to life," as evidence. This statement relates primarily to
God's provision of our physical needs, though it may allude
to spiritual life as well. Milton'anext mention of God as
the Judge of all men cites I Peter 1:17 as evidence that God
will judge every man "according to [his] work." Because God
is both preserver and judge, we are to reverence, or fear,
the one who has that power over us. He loves us, but will
judge our works.

If we fear God, we "acknowledge our unworthiness in
[His] sight" (CE, XVII, p. 65). This acknowledgement is
humility. Because of God's mercies to us, not because of
His wrath against our sinfulness, we are to humble ourselves
before Him. Milton quotes Genesis 32:10, "I am not worthy
of the least of all thy mercies," to underscore the idea that
our humility is to be predicated on the mercies we receive.
In his quotation of Paul in I Timothy 1:15, "Christ Jesus
came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief,"
Milton makes it clear that the greatest mercy of all is sal-
vation. God's offer of salvation is what prompts the devout

humility of The ChriStian DoCtrine.

 

Closely related to hope in Milton's thinking is patience

as a type of devotional love to God. "Patience is that

35

whereby we acquiesce in the promises of God," he writes,
"through a confident reliance on his divine providence,
power, and goodness, and bear inevitable evils with equanimity,
as the dispensation of the supreme Father, and sent for our
good" (CE, XVII, p. 67). Because of His omnipotence, God
can allow "inevitable evils" in our lives; because of His
goodness, however, He will uphold us when the evil times come.
Therefore, we are to love God with a patient love, not ac-
cusing Him of unkindness in the difficult times. Milton
quotes many passages to substantiate his definition of pae
tience, the most significant of which is Hebrews 10:36: "Ye
have need of patience, that after ye have done the will of
God, ye might receive the promise." Patience is necessary
to hope, else the waiting upon God for Him to fulfill His
promises would be too burdensome. Rooted in his conviction
that God is faithful, Milton's devout patience is practical
fortitude for daily living.

Obedience is Milton's final devout affection. He de-
fines it as "that virtue whereby we propose to ourselves
the will of God as the paramount rule of our conduct, and
serve him alone” (CE, XVII, p. 69). Obedience is the end
of devout love: it is the deliberate act of subordinating
the human will to God's will in active service, an expression
of love to God. Milton indicates that we are to obey God
by quoting Christ in John 14:15: "If ye love me keep my com-
mandments"; and I John 5:17: "He that doeth the will of God

36

abideth for ever.” Obedience testifies to our discipleship
and it secures eternal life.

These seven devout affections -- truSt, hope, grati—
tude, fear, humility, patience, and obedience -- are all
different expressions of the love that Milton holds we are
to have toward God. This love deliberately chooses God
above all other objects of affection; these devout affections
manifest that love to God in our experience. Milton writes
poetry to express his devotion for God. Through the events
in his major poems, he depicts his characters and speakers
in such a way as to develop this kind of devotional love in
their experiences.

Before the successful integration of devotion and nar-

rative development that he achieves in Paradise Lost, Para-

 

dise Regained and Samson Agonistes, however, Milton writes

 

 

many poems and prose works that do not express devotion to
God in the way in which we have discussed it in this disser-
tation. Milton develops his perception of devotion early

in his poetic career -- specifically between 1629 and 1637,

I would suggest. The "Nativity Ode" (and its related poem,
the Elegy to Diodati) and "The Passion" are the first poems
to express any of these specific devout affections. Of
course, the subject of the "Nativity Ode" is religious -- as
is the subject of "The Passion" -- and lends itself to a dev-

otional tone. However, Milton develops his mature expression

37

of devotion first in "Lycidas,' a poem not specifically
"religious" in subject-matter. The occasion of "Lycidas"

is not an event in the life of abiblical character; the
occasion of the poem is the inexplicable, premature death ‘

of a fellow-poet. As the poet confronts the death of Lycidas,
Milton writes his first fully devotional poem. These three

poems, and Milton's development of devotion in them, are

the subject of the next chapter.

CHAPTER TWO
EARLY POEMS

As early as 1628 and 1629, Milton begins to indicate
that he wishes to write specifically "Christian" poetry.
It is in his poetry that he first confronts the problems
that writing Christian poetry presents. For Milton, the

‘major problem is the question of the relationship between

religious subjects -- such as the events of Christ's life,
for example -- and classical literature. In "At a Vacation
Exercise," which he wrote in 1628, Milton communicates some

dissatisfaction with his "muse for alluding exclusively to

classical mateiials (the particular references in the poem

are to Apollo, Hebe, Neptune and Ulysses -- all "deities"
whom the speaker of the poem sees in "heaven"). "But fie,

my wand'ring Muse," the speaker scolds, "how thou dost:

stray! Expectance callSthee another way" (11. 53-54). Even
at this point in the poem, however, the speaker cites yet
another classical reference, namely the Aristotelian "predi-
caments." Nevertheless, Milton is conscious of a tension in
his poetry between classical materials and "some graver sub—
ject" (l. 30). He eventually resolves this tension by writing

about Christian not classical heroes, beginning with the

"Infant God" in the "Nativity Ode." John Spencer Hill

39

characterizes "At a Solemn Music" as a public "manifesto"

of Milton's religious intentions for his English poetry.1

In December of 1629, a year and a half after the "Vacation
Exercise," Milton announces in "Elegy VI" his specific plans
to write devotional poetry.

In "Elegy VI" (to Diodati), Milton writes a clear dec-
laration of his intent to write devotional poetry that will
express his love for God in a variety of ways. Milton's
first concern in this elegy is that the devotidadl poet be
morally pure, "innocent of crime and chaste, his conduct
irreproachable and his hands stainless" (11. 68-71). These
lines impose strict moral standards on the poet who wishes
to write on divine themes; Milton's devotional poet must be
entirely blameless. As we noted in the first chapter, Milton's
ideal poet is poetically-talented, divinely-inspired, and
well—practised in his writing. Here in "Elegy VI," Milton
adds to those demands the requirement of moral purity. ‘When
at the conclusion of the Elegy, Milton announces his intention
to write the "Nativity Ode," he leaves the reader with the
impression that he is the morally-pure poet who will write
devotional poetry.

The announcement at the end of ”Elegy VI" that Milton
is writing a poem as a "gift" for the Christ-child is the
Inost important statement in Milton's early poetry that he
has chosen to write devotional poetry. The final two verse

[:aragraphs of the Elegy are clearly a dedication of his

40

poetry to God:

But if you will know what I am doing (if only you
think it of any importance to know whether I am doing

anything) -- I am singing the heaven-descended King,
the bringer of peace, and the blessed times promised
in the sacred books -- the infant cries of our God

and his stabling under a mean roof who, with his Father,

governs the realms above. I am singing the starry sky

and the hosts that sang high in air, and the gods that

were suddenly destroyed in their own shrines.

I .These are my gifts for the birthday of Christ --

gifts which the first light of its dawn brought to me.

For you these simple strains that have been meditated

on my native pipes are waiting; and you, when I recite

them to you, shall be my judge.

11. 78-90

As the reference to the fact that the "Nativity Ode" was
written in the "firSt light" of Christmas morning that year
indicates, "Elegy VI" was written shortly after Christmas in
1629. Clearly, Milton regards the "Nativity Ode" to be a
song in praise of the incarnatidn of Christ.

In offering the "Nativity Ode" as a "song" of praise to
the newborn king, Milton associates himself with the Hebrew
priest of old who celebrated his "sacrifices of praise"

(Hebrews 13:15) to God. In her book,'ImageS'and Themes in

 

Five Poems by Milton, Rosemond Tuve refers to the "Nativity

 

Ode" as a "liturgical act of praise."2 While I do not wish
to assert that the "Nativity Ode" is liturgical, I do wish
to emphasize Milton's perception of himself as a "priest"
and his poem as a "gift" to God. In "Elegy VI," Milton
speaks of the "bard," or poet, as the "priest" of the gods

(1. 77); the poet is an intermediary between men and the gods.

41

In the "Nativity Ode," Milton regards himself as one who
celebrates the birth of Christ.

The "Nativity Ode" specifically celebrates the incar-
nation of Christ, "the heaven-descended King" of Bethlehem's
manger. The poet begins the hymn proper with a picture of
the nativity scene:

It was the Winter wild,

While the Heav'n-born child,

All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;
Nature in awe to him
Had doff't her gaudy trim,
With her great Master so to sympathize.
11. 29-34
The scene of the Christ-child "all meanly wrapt" emphasizes
the "heav'n-born child['s]" humility in assuming a position
of poverty as to be born in a "rude manger." The poet int-
roduces the actual picture of the nativity scene with a

reference to "the Star-led Wizards,‘ or Magi of the second
chapter of Matthew's Gospel account, and concludes it with
Mary's maternal solicitations for the sleepy child by "[laying]
her Babe to rest." It is"a traditional picture, though not
given in much detail.

There is, however, a second subject in the "Nativity
Ode," one which accounts more for the devotional tone in
the poem than do the events of the incarnation and nativity.
This is the subject of redemption. Christ was born to die

to "redeem" men. The prelude to the "Nativity Ode" begins

with the poet's consciousness of the dual focus of Christ's

42

birth and redemptive death:

This is the Month, and this the happy morn

Wherein the Son of Heav'n's eternal King,

Of wedded Maid and Virgin Mother born,

Our great redemption from above did bring.

11. 1-4

The poet projects a picture of Calvary on Bethlehem, anti-
cipating Christ's crucifixion and the salvation, or "redem-

tion, that it would bring.

The poet refers again to the crucifixion in stanza
sixteen of the hymn itself. In the fifteenth stanza, the
poet presents an eschatological view of the final victory
of "Truth," "Justice" and "mercy." As he begins the sixteenth
stanza, however, he acknowledges that "This [victory] must
not yet be so" because Christ has not yet finished the work
that will make that future victory possible. It is clear in
the stanza that Christ must suffer at Calvary before He can
reign as King:

The Babe lies yet in smiling Infancy,
That on the bitter cross '
Must redeem our loss;
So both himself and us to glorify.
11. 152-55
Though the baby is "smiling" now, he will suffer on the
"bitter" cross of Calvary in just a few years. The 52125
of the incarnation is the crucifixion. The "Babe [who] lies
yet in smiling Infancy" in the "Nativity Ode" must go to the

"bitter cross / To redeem our loss.‘ As a result of His

death at Calvary, Christ finally binds "Th'old Dragon under

43

ground," thereby glorifying himself and all who are redeemed.
But this victory is begun, the poet emphasizes, on "this
happy day" of the nativity. There is, therefore, a dual
focus to the "Nativity Ode," a focus on both incarnation and
crucifixion. The poem is as much a prophecy of the cross

as it is a celebration of the manger.

The double focus on Christ's birth and death in the Ode
accounts for the experience of devotion in the poem. The
poet expresses his love for God in the "Nativity Ode" as
_hope —- hope that, because God has been faithful in providing
the promised incarnation, so too will He be faithful in pro-
viding redemption, or salvation. Both poles of Christ's
life are necessary for the poet's hope to be valid; the hope
of redemption is predicated on the fact of the nativity.
Christ's incarnation is both the fulfillment of many Old

3 and also a promise of the climactic

Testament prophecies
event of the New Testament, the crucifixion. Therefore,
because it faithfully fulfills Old Testament prophecies, the
nativity gives testimony to the certainty of redemption at
Calvary. It is the assurance that God will perform what He

promises that is the major characteristic of Milton's devout

affection-of hope in The Christian Doctrine: "hope," he

 

writes, "is that [affection] by which we expect with certainty
the fulfillment of God's promises" (CE, XVII, p. 57). It is

this confident expectation that is the speaker's experience

44

of devotion in the poem.
There is another side to the hope which the poet exper-

iences in the "Nativity Ode,‘ and that is the dismissal of
doubt. Doubt is one of two opposites to hope as Milton de-

fines it in The Christian DoCtrine, the other being despair

 

(CE, XVII, p. 59). The extremity of despair does not enter
the "Nativity Ode," but victory over doubt is certainly a
part of the devotional experience in the poem. Behind the
necessity for the incarnation is Satan's victory in the
garden of Eden in effecting the fall into sin of Adam and
Eve. As a result of this victory, Satan enjoys a certain
"sway" over the earth and its inhabitants -- until the incar-
nation, that is. Stanza eighteen makes it clear how signifi-
cant the nativity is in dispelling the poet's concern that
Satan's "usurped" power is eternal:

And then at last our bliss

Full and perfect is,

But now begins, for from this happy day
Th'old Dragon under ground,
In straiter limits bound,
Not half so far casts his usurped sway,
And wroth to see his Kingdom fail,
Swinges the scaly Horror of his folded tail.
11. 165-72

The birth of Christ "begins” the final defeat of Satan which
will be completed at Calvary.

Surely the many years between the fall in Eden and the

nativity in Bethlehem discouraged hope that God would ever

"bruise [the serpent's] head" as He promised he would

45

(Genesis 3:15); would God ever vindicate His Word? By
placing himself in the company of eyewitnesses to the birth
of Christ, the poet in the Ode experiences the release from
doubt in God which the nativity brings:

This is the Month, and this the happy morn

Wherein the Son of Heav'n's eternal King,

Of wedded Maid, and Virgin Mother born,

Our great redemption from above did bring;

For so the holy sages once did sing,

That he our deadly forfeit should release,
And with his Father work us a perpetual peace.
11. 1-7

This is "the happy morn" that all the "holy sages" of old
celebrated in anticipation only. The poet of the Ode is the
first to celebrate the actual end to the doubt that God
would never fulfill His promise of the incarnation and the
beginning of the realization of the hope for redemption that

Messiah's birth brings -- he "prevents,' or precedes, the

"Star-led Wizards" to the manger. (The poet even reports

"on

the shepherds' experience of the music of the spheres
the Lawn / Or ere the point of dawn" as if he had observed
it.) The poet experiences devotion in the poem in the form
of the hope that the nativity inaugurates.

The poet stands as eyewitness to a major event in God's
dealings with man —- an event second only to the crucifixion
in the divine redemptive purposes. How is he to be worthy
to celebrate the nativity in his poetry: the subject of

redemption is so holy that the poet's final request in the

prelude to the Hymn is for his sin to be cleansed; he wishes

46

"from out his secret Altar [to be] toucht with hallowed
fire." Like Isaiah of old, the poet's lips must be purged

of sin by the seraph if he is to write of such a high sub-
ject. Isaiah states, "Woe is me! ... because I am a man of H

unclean lips.’ Understanding his sinfulness, he asks for
cleansing: "Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having

a live coal in his hand ... And he laid it upon my mouth,

and said, 'Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity
is taken away'" (Isaiah 6:5-7). The allusion in the prelude
to the "hallow'd fire," therefore, emphasizes the poet's
consciousness that God must make him pure so that he is a

fit priest to celebrate the hymn of praise to "the Infant
God."

Personal purity, however. important to the poet in the
"Nativity Ode" and to Milton throughout his life, is inade-
quate by itself to assure the poet's "fitness" for the
hymn. He must also be inspired by God. This is especially
so in that, by making the poet an eyewitness of the nativity
which begins the New Testament, Milton denies the poet access
to the New Testament writings which teach the redemptive
purpose of Christ's birth; at the point of thehpoet's writing
his song of praise, the New Testament had not yet been written.
The poet must receive the revelation of Christ's death super-

naturally, therefore, by inspiration from God -- just as the

apostles themselves did.

47

In addition, the poet's sinful nature makes his need
for divine inspiration even more poignant. Were he not
sinful, he would have no need of redemption and, therefore,
.no need to compose a hymn of praise for the incarnation.
Had Adamand Eve not sinned (and, in them, all men), no
savior would have been necessary; hence, neither Bethlehem
nor Calvary would have been necessary either. The subject
of redemption presumes a fallen poet who needs to be raised
up to the subject's height. Therefore, the poet seeks divine
inspiration to lift him up to be equal to the task. He
writes in his introductory invocation:

Say Heav'nly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein

Afford a present to the Infant God?

Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain,

To welcome him to this his new abode?

11. 15-18
The poet asks for inspiration from a "heavenly muse," pre—
sumably the Holy Spirit, simply because he is a fallen man
who has lost the intimate communion with God that Adam and
Eve had before the fall. Hence, the speaker in the poem
introduces his hymn with a twofold request of God: first,
to cleanse him from sin; and, second, to inspire his hymn
of praise so that it will be an acceptable gift to lay at
Christ's "blessed feet." By superimposing Calvary on Beth-
lehem, Milton creates a more adequate experience of devotion

than a simple religious poem on the nativity alone would

give.

48

The importance of the "Nativity Ode" in developing the
experience of devotion is twofold. First, Milton makes it
clear in this ode that a poem is not devotional simply be-"
cause it has a religious subject (such as the birth of Christ).
As we have shown, devotion in the "Nativity Ode" does not
come from the divine birth alone. Second, devotion is an
experience of a person within the poem itself. In the "Nati-

vity Ode, the poet expresses a devout hope for redemption
on the basis of the incarnation. The "Nativity Ode" estab-
lishes that, for Milton, devotion is a dynamic hope of the

poet in the poem; in the later narrative poems, the charac-

 

ters -- Adam.and Eve in Paradise Lost, the Son in Paradise
Regained, and Samson in Samson Agonistes -- are the ones who

 

experience devotion.

Three months after he wrote the "Nativity Ode," Milton
returned to a religious subject, this time Christ's passion
and crucifixion in~"The Passion." As Hanford indicates, it
is clear thatMilton intended "The Passion" to be a sequel
to the "Nativity Ode," though the date of March 1630 (not

Hanford's April 1630) is the correct date, March having been

the month of Easter that year:4

"The Passion" immediately follows "On the Morning
of Christ's Nativity" in the 1645 edition and appar-
ently belongs to the following Easter (i.e., April,
1630). It is bound to the preceding work by allusions
in the opening lines and by the use of a meter identical
with that employed in the introductory portion of the
other. The poem represents an attempt to continue the
lofty religious vein which Milton had entered upon in

49

earnest of his new consecration in 1629. Quite pos—

sibly he projected such a series of commemorations of

the divine events at their appropriate anniversaries

in the Church calendar as are to be found among the

works of Herbert and Donne.

pp. 144-45

No doubt Milton thought of "Upon the Circumcision," written
two years later, as a part of the same "series of commem-
orations of the divine events" of Christ's earthly life.
However, he was unable to finish "The Passion." At the end
of the fragment, Milton writes, "This subject the Author
finding to be above the years he had, when he wrote it, and
nothing satisfied with what was begun, left it unfinisht"
(p. 63). He felt too immature to write well about such a
profound subject.

Why did "The Passion" not satisfy Milton? What inter-
nal weaknesses are there that would indicate why the poem
failed? I think that there are three areas of weakness in
"The Passion" which account for Milton's inability to write
effectively, all of which ultimately suggest that the poet
lacked a sufficient devotional perspective in the poem.
While Milton's subject is certainly the most "religious" of
all possible subjects, he does not approach it with a consis-
tently devotional attitude. Hence, the poem collapses.

The first problem is that the poet relies too much on
classical literature in the poem. In stanza two, for ins-

tance, the poet speaks of Christ as the conventional classical

hero:

50

Most perfect Hero, tried in heaviest plight
Of labors huge and hard, too hard for human sight.

11. 12-13
Christ is a Herculean figure who shows his deity by his
"labors huge and hard." The heroic conventions in classical
and Renaissance literature demanded that a poet "overgo" all
other men in the figure of his hero. Milton is writing
within this tradition in "The Passion," just as he is in the
"Nativity Ode" in the reference to Christ's defeating "th'old
Dragon" and all of his imps. The difference between the
Hercules myth in the "Nativity Ode” and its use in "The
Passion" is that Milton does not progress beyond the myth,
or, more importantly, synthesize the myth with the Christian
tradition in "The Passion" as he does in the "Nativity Ode."
Although Christ is an anti-type of Hercules, His excellencies
are a matter of the superlative degree in "The Passion."
The sacrifice at Calvary, however, is traditionally regarded
as a matter of Christ's divine nature, not of human courage.
Orthodox Christianity claims that the divine God-man died
on the cross and rose again. Milton's depiction of Christ
as a super-hero falls short of the biblical claims that Christ
is divine. Therefore, the death on the cross would become
merely another heroic action of a good man, not a substitu-
tionary atonement. The youthful Milton could not present
the Son of God in the classicalgmode as being more human than

divine; and this is one reason he felt unequal to the task.

51

The second problem of "The Passion" is its reliance in
the penultimate stanza on icons instead of a consistent focus
on the person of Christ himself. In this stanza, the speaker
"sees" the tomb of Christ and elevates it almost to the
status of veneration. It is "that sad sepulchral rock /

That was the Casket of Heav'n's richest store" that provides
the subject for the stanza. The poet wishes to write his
"[com]plaining verse" actually on the tomb -- making it almost
like the Hebrew wailing wall in Jerusalem where Jews go to
have their prayers answered. He makes of the tomb a shrine
to be esteemed as holy. This stanza is the closest that the
poet comes in the fragment to iconography; he focuses more
on the object of the tomb than on the person of Christ.
Therefore, a devotional attitude is entirely out of place --
at least for a Protestant poet it is. The proper subject of
devotion for Milton is God. Hence he cannot continue the
poem with its emphasis on the tomb rather than on Christ.

Not only do classical mythology and Christian icons
not grant an adequate vehicle for Calvary, neither does
Christian mysticism. Stanza six is a mystical vision like
Ezekiel's:

See, see the Chariot and those rushing wheels

That whirlldfithe“Prophetlupiat’Chebar flood;

My spirit some transporting Cherub feels,

To bear me where the Towers of Salem [Jerusalem] stood,

Once glorious Towers, now sunk in guiltless blood;

There doth my soul in holy vision sit,

In pensive trance, and anguish, and ecstatic fit.

11. 36-42

52

The poet alludes to Ezekiel 1:16 in his reference to "Chebar
flood," the river by which Ezekiel was given his vision of
the great and small wheels. Like Ezekiel, the poet "feels"
himself enter into an "ecstatic fit" or "holy vision" which
transports him to Jerusalem. There, he meditates in "pensive
trance, and anguish" on the events about to be unfolded out-
side the city walls. Salem means peace. How is it, then,
that the poet sees destruction and "guiltless blood” in his
vision of Salem? He writes as if the events of the passion
are still future. This is why it is necessary for the poet
to be given a mystical vision, like the prophets of old, in
order to see Calvary and the crucifixion;.it is as if the
crucifixion is still a future event. Herein lies the third
problem of the poem: the eschatological vision of the cross
without the resurrection is inconsistent with any valid
sense of Christian devotion.

The underlying problem in "The Passion" is its emphasis
on sorrow as opposed to hope. Sorrow is not consistent.
with a devotional experience that takes the Christian God
into account. Sorrow can only be temporary because the
climax of Christ's suffering is not the tomb, but the empty
- tomb. Hanford nOtes that Milton is, by temperament, "remot[e]
from the emotion of religious sorrow" (p. 155); certainly the
failure of "The Passion" is largely attributable to the poet's
inability to project the hope of the resurrection through '

the sorrow of the cross. The "Nativity Ode" projects the

53

hope of redemption through the certainty of the incarnation
and thereby provides a successful devotional experience for
the poet-speaker. "The Passion," however,’fails because in
it death is final; there is no hope for victory over death.
While it is true that the religious subject of the birth of
Christ does not make the "Nativity Ode" devotional, it is
also true that the religious subject of the crucifixion alone
does not give Milton an adequate basis for devotion. Because
the poet's experience stops short of the resurrection, he is
overcome with the horror of the cross and cannot continue
the poem. "The Passion" remains "unfinisht" because its
devotional experience is incomplete. There is no hope.
Milton resumes the narrative of Christ's death and

carries it through to its conclusion in the resurrection,

 

ascension and second advent in Paradise Lost, Book Twelve,

lines 402 to 465. In Oaten Reeds and Trumpets: Pastoral and

 

Epic in Virgil, SpenSer and Milton (1981), Donald M. Rosenberg

 

suggests that this passage can be regarded as Milton's com-
pletion of "The Passion" fragment.5 The connection between

the two pieces is a valuable one in that the speech in Par-

adise Lost, in contrast to "The Passion,‘ moves toward grati-

 

vtude for what God does through Christ. Michael is the speaker
of the account which he addresses to Adam. He concludes his
narrative to Adam that the earth will be a "far happier

place" when Christ returns than Eden was before the fall.

Adam responds to Michael with his hope in the certainty that

54

God would defeat Satan and vindicate Himself strengthened:

O goodness infinite, goodness immense!

That all this good of evil shall produce,

And evil turn to good; more wonderful

Than that which by creation first brought forth

Light out of darkness! full of doubt I stand,

Whether I should repent me now of sin

By mee done and occasion'd, or rejoice

Much more, that much more good will to Men

From.God, and over wrath grace shall abound.

XII, 11. 469-78

As he does throughout the whole of Michael's account,
Adam stands here in a special position. By means of God's
revealing history to him through Michael, Adam is able to
know what hecould not otherwise have known. All of Michael's
narrative is eschatology to Adam; Michael's revelation of
the course of human history confirms Adam's hope that God
will reverse his failure. He rejoices "that all this good
of evil shall produce, / And evil turn to good." Adam descants
on the victory at Calvary; he does not lament the suffering
and death on the cross. He cannot bemoan Christ's suffering
because Michael does not describe it in any detail; he merely
announces that Christ will be

to death condemn'd
A shameful and accurst death, nail'd to the Cross
By his own Nation, slain for bringing Life.

XII, 11. 412b-14

Milton clearly avoids the sorrow of ”The Passion" in Para-

 

dise Lost. Rather, he emphasizes the telos of that sorrow --

resurrection and redemption.6, This section in Paradise Lost,

 

therefore, provides the hope that "The Passion" did not provide.

55

Two other poems written between the "Nativity Ode" and
"Lycidas" deserve attention for their expression of devotion.
One is a religious poem, "Upon the Circumcision" (1632-33);
the other is a non-religious poem, "Comus: a Mask" (1634).
"Upon the Circumcision" is the third in a sequence of poems

on the events of the life of Christ.7

The poet attempts to
make much of Jesus' circumcision in the poem, proclaiming
it as a type of the crucifixion (the antitype). As He does
on the cross, Christ here "bleeds to give us ease" because
our "sin / Sore doth begin / His infancy to seize!" (11. ll-
14). In the Old Testament, the shedding of blood always
accomplishes the remission of sins.8 The blood that the
circumcision sheds is necessitated by our sin. Christ's
wound at the circumcision is the type of His crucifixion
agony in the poem and it foreshadows the reference to the
suffering at the conclusion of the poem:

but Oh! are long
Huge pangs and strong
Will pierce more near his heart.
11. 26-28

As in the "Nativity Ode," we have here the projection of the
crucifixion of Christ through another, earlier event of the
Savior's life. There is, therefore, a devotional experience
in the life.of the poet-speaker in "Upon the Circumcision";
there is hope that, just as the child suffers the pain of

the circumcision, so too will he accept the agony of the

crucifixion to redeem men.

56

Christ's obedience (also a subject of Paradise Re-

 

gained) is the second devout affection of "Upon the Cir-
cumcision." The poet states-that Christ "seals [His] obe-
dience first with [the] wounding smart" of the circumcision
itself. The occasion of the poem becomes a symbol of the
Son's obedience to the Father. Because of Christ's obedient
submission to the wound of circumcision, the poet experiences
the certainty that He will be obedient at Calvary. Hence,
the poet's hopes for his own redemption are strengthened by
the assurance of Christ's foreshadowed death. "Upon the
Circumcision" is the last of Milton's poems that celebrate
the events of Christ's earthly life until he writes of the

temptations in Paradise Regained.

 

The second poem that has devotional tones is "Comus: a
Mask." "A Mask" of course is not a biblical poem in the same
way that the "Nativity Ode," "The Passion" and "Upon the
Circumcision" are; it does not present an event in Christ's

life. However, as A.S.P. Woodhouse argues in The Poet and

 

His Faith, it is a "spiritual" poem in that its subject is

 

(at least in part) the conflict of nature and grace (p. 98).
In regards to its devotional elements, "A Mask" is a tran-
sitional poem for Milton between the religious poetry on the
events of Christ's life on the one hand and an integration,
or synthesis, of devotion with other poetic elements on the
other hand. Milton accomplishes the integration of devotion

into his poetry first in "Lycidas." Of course, "A Mask" is-

57

much more than a ”transitional" poem; it is an important
poem in its own right. [Rosemond Tuve claims that it "comes
close to the perfection of 'Lycidas.'"9
If we accept Tillyard's position that the subject of
the poem is chastity -- the Lady's chastity -- and, if we
accept Woodhouse's association (p. 98) of the two brothers

with nature and Sabrina with Grace,10

then the final speech
in the wood is more a retreat than a celebration. I have_in
mind these lines, the Spirit speaking to the Lady:

Come Lady, while Heaven lends us grace,

Let us fly this cursed place,

Lest the sorcerer us entice

With some other new device.

11. 138-41

The agents of good in the poem have combined to rescue the
Lady from Comus' seduction or, worse yet, his violation of
her. The Brothers and the Spirit rescue her from physical
harm; Sabrina releases her from the "spiritual," or mental,
bondage of the curse. However, the Spirit still wishes to
spare the Lady further temptation, counselling flight from
the "cursed place." Surely the Spirit's suggestion of flight
is a superficial response to the presence of evil in the
universe. His advice implies that evil is limited in location
and that a change in locale will eliminate its presence.
This separation of good from evil in "A Mask" undermines any

serious devotional elements that the poem may have; indeed,

the failure of the poem to face evil as an omnipresent fact

58

of this life renders devotion impossible.

However, the poem is after all a masque, a conventional
set-piece that does not demand, or even allow, serious moral
questioning. Milton deals with the subject of chastity in
the poem either superficially within the masque tradition
or allegorically. Rosemond Tuve's "Image, Form and Theme
in 'A.Mask,'" for example, argues that the poem is a moral
allegory built "upon the great hinge of the Circe-Comus
myth" (p. 116). But such an interpretation does not take
into account the presence of real evil in the universe.

The problem of devotion in "A.Mask" is that of Milton's
Platonic separation of physcial from ideal, of body from

soul, as Mary Ann Radzinowicz states it in Toward "Samson
ll

 

Agonistes”: the Growth of Milton's Mind. She cites Milton's

 

early distinction between body and soul as evidenced in "A
Mask" in these lines:

things that no gross ear can hear,
Till oft converse with heav'nly habitants
Begin to cast a beam on th'outward shape,
The unpolluted temple of the mind,
And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence,
Till all be made immortal.

11. 458-63

The body is "gross, the soul an immortal "essence." How
can such a bifurcated being love a God who has no real pres-
ence in a world of evil? Later in his life, however, Milton

changes his dualistic position and, in The Christian Doctrine,

 

he teaches that body and soul are one:

59

it is said ... that "man became a living soul;" whence
it may be inferred ... that man is a living being, int-
rinsically and properly one and individual, not com-
pound or separable, not, according to the common opiné
ion, made up and framed of two distinct and different
natures, as of soul and body, but that the whole man

is soul, and the soul man, that is to say, a body, or
substance individual, animated, sensitive, and rational;
and that the breath of life was neither a part of the
divine essence, nor the soul itself, but as it were

an inspiration of some divine virtue fitted for the
exercise of life and reason, and infused into the
organic body; for man himself, the whole man, when
finally created, is called in express terms, "a living
soul.

CE, XV, pp. 39 and 41

What Milton came to realize is that devotion to God is in-
adequate if it cannot face evil in this life. And, because
of evil, death: "for the wages of sin is death," St. Paul
writes (Romans 6:23). It is in his facing death in "Lycidas"
three years after "A Mask" was written that Milton develops
a devotional experience as an integral element within a poem.

In "Lycidas," Milton responds to the death by drowning
of a friend and fellow-poet. As the poet-speaker in the
poem expresses his grief over the loss of Lycidas, he begins
to doubt God's benevolence. As he moves from one thought to
another, however, the poet-speaker comes to experience a
certain hope that, because God has given Lycidas immortality,
so too will He grant the speaker immortality. As Mary Ann
Radzinowicz states, there is a "conversion of [the speaker's]

anxiety into assurance" (p. 142). The immortality of which

the poem speaks is not a delusive "Fame" for the poet, for

60

Lycidas died before he wrote his great poetry; it is rather
the personal immortality of life after death "through the
dear might of him that walk'd the waves" (1. 173). The pro-
cess by which the poet-speaker realizes this hope in his own
"life" accounts for the experience of devotion in the poem.
The pastoral elegy form which Milton chooses for
"Lycidas" provides a "decent drapery of grief," as Hanford
says (p. 167), and a degree of formality and objectivity.
The poem is, in part, a public lament for Lycidas, a fellow
"swain," having been printed as the final poem in the Igsga

Eduardo King, the memorial volume for King. Many of the poem's
12

 

details come from the elegaic tradition. The pastoral
elegy has a long and complex history with its conventions
originating in Theocritus, Moschus, Bion and Virgil in clas-
sical antiquity and developed in Renaissance England by

Edmund Spenser and many others. In addition to these clas-
sical and Renaissance sources, there are the biblical pastorals
in Psalm Twenty-three and the tenth chapter of John's Gospel.
The Johannine material is particularly relevant to the attack

on the clergy in "Lycidas,' Milton employs these precedents
to provide a richness and diversity that allows the poet-
speaker in the poem to modulate his grief and despair into
hope. The hope which concludes "Lycidas," however, is not
merely a superficial elegaic convention; it is also a personal

expression of devotion on the speaker's part that is the

climax of the devotional elements in the poem.

61

Because so much of "Lycidas" is conventional, some
scholars have regretted the poem's "impersonal" nature. This
is a serious charge if the poem is to be considered devotional,
for it cannot express a valid love for God if the problem of
evil is avoided by merely de-personalizing the loss of a
friend. Dr. Johnson leads the charge:

One of the poems on which much praise has been be-
stowed is "Lycidas," of which the diction is harsh,

the rhymes uncertain, and the numbers unpleasing.

What beauty there is we must therefore seek in the

sentiments and images. It is not to be considered as

the effusion of real passion; for passion runs not

after remote allusions and obscure opinions. Passion

plucks no berries from the myrtle and ivy, nor calls

upon Arethuse and Mincius, nor tells of rough satyrs

and "fauns with cloven heel." Where there is leisure

for fiction there is little grief. 13
For Johnson, there is no "real passion" in "Lycidas"; its
"remote allusions and obscure opinions" do not allow it. In
our own century, as well, John Crowe Ransom insists that the

"14 Does the

poem is an impersonal "literary exercise
elegy, then, fall short of expressing real devotion because
its conventions do not allow the poet-speaker to address the
issue of death personally? '

Not all scholars find the poem too impersonal, however.
Some critics find the poem intensely personal. Richard Adams,
for example, even in discussing "The Archetypal Pattern of
Death and Rebirth in 'Lycidas,'" states:

Milton was expressing his own feelings in
"Lycidas," and not any abstract or general or public
sorrow. The personal note Established in the first

five lines is maintained throughout. 15

pp. 123-24

62

Adams flies directly in the face of Dr. Johnson by referring
specifically to the myrtle and ivy (which Johnson found to
betray insincerity) as examples of the poet's personal grief.
E.M.W. Tillyard shifts the lgggs_of the grief ingeniously by
citing Milton, not Edward King, as the proper subject of the
poem:

Fundamentally "Lycidas” concerns Milton himself; King

is but the excuse for one of Milton's more personal
poems. 16

If the poem is personal because it is "really” autobiograph-
ical, then do we have a basis on which to build a case for
devotion in the poem? I think not. Milton's simply being
the man behind the poem does not allow the devotion of the
poem to exist within the poem because the experience of dev-
otion would demand constant reference to the man Milton per-
sonally -- if Tillyard is correct, that is. I think that
David Daiches is closer to an understanding of the experience
of devotion in "Lycidas" when he argues that the "poet-priest"
is the proper subject of the poem (p. 104). 3

It is the poet-speaker who comes to have the devotional
experience of hope in "Lycidas." Milton makes use of the
pastoral elements in order to express devotion throughout
the poem, involving the speaker in both classical and bib-
lical associations. As poet, the speaker is in the classical
tradition; as priest, he is in the biblical tradition.

David Daiches summarizes this confluence of the two traditions

63

of the pastoral:
The shepherd as the symbol of the spiritual leader
[pastor-priest] is of course an old Christian usage,
~and goes right back to the Bible. But in the clas-
sical tradition the shepherd [poet] also sings and
pipes. So by combining the Christian and classical
traditions [in "Lycidas"] Milton can use the shepherd
as a symbol for the combination of priest and poet
which was such an important concept to him.
p. 114
Throughout his poetry, Milton combined classical and biblical
allusions. In "Lycidas," the use of the shepherd as a poet
is important because the speaker wishes to memorialize a
friend in verse which will last forever; the use of the shep-
herd as a priest in the poem is significant because the

speaker learns to celebrate Lycidas' immortality as a fore-

shadowing of his own. Don Cameron Allen's The Harmonious

 

Vision argues explicitly that Milton was aware of the simi-
larities of these two pastoral traditions and that it would
be reasonable to assume that he used them deliberately in
"Lycidas" to create his speaker as a shepherd-poet-priest.l7

Insofar as the speaker's experience of devotion in the
poem is concerned, his role as priest takes precedence over
his function as poet; Let me follow Arthur Barker's helpful
tripartite division of the structure of "Lycidas" in "The
Pattern of Milton's 'Nativity Ode.'" Barker divides "Lycidas"
as follows: the first "movement" (lines 1-84) laments the

shepherd as poet; the second movement (lines 85-131) laments

him as priest; and the third movement (lines 132-93) unites

64

these two laments in an apotheosis at the marriage supper

18

of the Lamb. Based on our understanding of Barker's struc-

tural analysis of the poem, let me focus specifically on the
shepherd-swain as priest. Rosemond Tuve, even though she is
not discussing devotion in "Lycidas," but rather the poem's
themes and images, notes the poem's principle of devotion in
this statement:

The poem ["Lycidas”] is a tribute, is like some

but not all elegies in that it is not an object but
an act, offered, and speaking allegiance... 19

H H

The poem is an an "offering" by one person in memory

act ,
of another; it works through grief and sorrow to hope by the
progress through its materials. Just as Edward King's death
is the occasion of Milton's writing "Lycidas," so too the
lament itself is an occasion for the speaker within the poem
to experience devotion as his sorrow gives way to hope.
Barker understands the first section of the poem to
describe Lycidas and the speaker as poets. It is certainly
true that the weight of the pastoral materials at the begin-

ning of the poem relate to the swains as poets. They sang

as the satyrs danced; even "old Damaetas lov'd to hear

[their] Song." The emphasis is on singing -- creative comp-
osition -- not the husbandry of the flocks. It is interesting
to note that it is the shepherds -- the poets -- who miss

Lycidas (1. 49), not the "sheep”Nat this point in the poem.

65

Of course the important allusion to Orpheus' death emphasizes
the loss of Lycidas as a poet rather than as a priest. The
first movement of the poem, then, establishes the important
subject of immortality, the poet memorializing Lycidas in
his poem.

But Milton does not ignore the shepherd's responsibi-
lities as priest altogether in this section. The speaker
notes that he and Lycidas "fed the same flock" (l. 24) and
batt'n[ed their] flocks with the fresh dews of night" while
they sang (1. 29). The picture of the shepherds tending the
sheep is conventional no doubt, but the speaker makes much
later in the poem of the faithless "shepherds" who do not
feed their "flocks"; these early references to the pastoral
care of the sheep, therefore, take on significane in the
light of the section of the poem that presents the shepherd
more directly as priest.

In the second section of the poem, according to Barker,
the speaker laments Lycidas as a priest. The poet makes
little more of the classical pastoral tradition in this
section than a list of appropriate references (11. 85-102).
The focus of this second section is the speaker's allusion
to Peter:

Last came and last did go
The Pilot of the Galilean Lake.

11. 108-09

66

In the Gospels, Peter was both a fisherman and "shepherd."
By trade, of course, he was a fisherman who worked the Sea
of Galilee20 -- hence Milton's allusion to him here. Peter
is invoked, therefore, partly because his vocation makes
him an appropriate Christian allusion in an incident of
drowning. In addition, the biblical Peter is a shepherd-
priest in the New Testatment, in that he has the pastoral
responsibility for a "flock" of people: Christ commands

"Zland Peter even-

Peter three times to ”feed [His] sheep,
tually spends the rest of his life doing so, as the Book of
Acts indicates. It is significant too that Peter was an
author of two New Testament epistles. He is an appropriate
choice on Milton's part for the first Christian allusion in
"Lycidas": as fisherman, he would understand the reality of
death by drowning; as shepherd-pastor, he would lament the
loss of a "sheep"; as author, he would experience the desire
to write. Therefore, Peter provides a suitable link between
Christian and classical motifs in the poem, and he emphasizes
the shift from poet to priest.

Milton develops only one of Peter's roles at this point
in "Lycidas," that of the priest. Milton uses Peter to con-
demn the corrupt English clergy for not "feeding" their

"sheep,' namely the English people. Peter eulogizes Lycidas
at this point in the poem and laments his death.most because
he was a "good shepherd" -- one 5f the few in England at the

time. The rest of this section is a bitter diatribe against

67

the faithless religious leaders of Milton's day:

But the hungry Sheep look up, and are not fed,

But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,

Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread:

Besides what the grim Wolf with privy paw

Daily devours apace, and nothing said.

11. 125-29

This is the bleakest scene of the poem in regards to the
speaker's experience of devotion. As a priest who is to
celebrate God's goodness, he looks one way and sees a "good
shepherd" taken in his prime; he looks the other and sees
the "wolves" and "hirelings" (of John 10) fattening them-
selves at the expense of the people -- "they are sped," the
speaker ejaculates (l. 22). Lycidas' death is bad enough
in itself, but it is made worse because his place will be
filled by a faithless "wolf.” Surely the speaker questions
God's love here. Either God is not omnipotent and was,
therefore, unable to prevent Lycidas' death (and, if this is
the case, why worship Him?), or He is uncaring enough to
allow a death that He could have prevented -- and should have
averted, according to Peter's sharp rebuke of those priests
left behind. The emotion here is not despair; it is dgpbg,
doubt in God whom the speaker serves as priest as well as
poet. The emotion is paralyzing for the speaker at this
point in the poem; all he can do is invoke divine justice,

in the form of the "two-handed engine," upon the hireling

priests.

68

The third movement of the poem, according to Barker,
syntheSizes the two roles of the swain as poet and as priest
in an apotheosis of immortality. This section is comprised
of a catalogue of flowers, the statement of immortality
through Christ, and the promise of tomorrow for the poet-
speaker. This section significantly changes the experience
of hope that the speaker has and, thereby, provides a valid
experience of devotion toward God in the face of that most
terrible reminder of sin, death.

The catalogue of flowers provides a modicum of hope to
the speaker. Wayne Shumaker's article, "The Archetypal Pat-
tern of Death and Rebirth in 'Lycidas,'" suggests that the
flowers in this catalogue become ”brightened" and encoura-
ging rather than "somber" and discouraging as they had been
earlier in the poem. The "Bells and Flowrets,” the speaker
tells us in "Lycidas," "are of a thousand hues" (1. 135).
Shumaker states, "The result [of this list] is that the
grief, while remaining grief, is lifted and brightened"22
There is a note of optimism on the speaker's part as he
describes these flowers.

There is a second reason why the catalogue of flowers
which begins the last section of the poem is a source of
tentative hope for the speaker. These flowers symbolize a
generic "resurrection": that is, because the flowers repro-
duce themselves in their seeds; fhey achieve a type of immor-

tality for the species -- a generic immortalityu This

69

imgortality suggested by the flowers is a symbolic one in
that the poet-speaker of the elegy provides a "resurrection"
for Lycidas by writing the poem for him. The speaker is,
symbolically at least, the progeny of Lycidas as a poet,

thereby providing a "generic" immortality for him: Lycidas'

"immortality,' or "resurrection,' in the speaker also pro-
vides the speaker a hope for the same kind of generic resur-
rection when he should die in the person of another poet
who will lament his death.

Even this consolation, however, is not enough. Lycidas
is still dead; his "resurrection" is only symbolic and,
therefore, impersonal. The catalogue of flowers from the
classical tradition of the pastoral elegy is finally inade-
quate to provide a hope that will overcome the grief that
attends the death of an individual person. Therefore, the
speaker returns to the Christian tradition to find an ade-
quate hope. He finds that hope specifically in Christ's
power over the waves; it is a hope in a personal resurrec-
tion for Lycidas, and therefore for himself as well, that
he finds in the penultimate verse paragraph of the poem.

"Weep no more, woeful Shepherds, weep no more, the speaker
begins, "For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead, / Sunk though
he be beneath the wat'ry floor" (11. 165-66). There is
life after death --resurrection for the individual-- in

these lines. The speaker is confident, even certain, that

70

Lycidas lives. He lives, not only in a general sense in

the lines of the speaker of this poem, but in a more parti-
cular and personal manner because he attends the "unexpres-
sive nuptial Song" of Revelation 19:9 to which all the saints
of all ages are invited. Furthermore, he intercedes, as

"the Genius of the shore," on behalf of all who travel the
sea. Both of these references suggest that Lycidas will re-
tain his individuality and personality after death. The
speaker is assured of this. If Lycidas has a personal resur-
rection, then there is hope that the speaker will also have
a personal resurrection. This is the hope that "Lycidas"
celebrates -- the poet-speaker's assurance of his own, per-
sonal immortality.

But on what basis is this type of hope guaranteed? How
is this hope a devotional hope? With these questions, we
come to the center of the speaker's experience of devotion
in the poem. The climactic lines are these:

So Lycidas, sunk low, but mounted high,

Through the dear might of him that walk'd the waves,

Where other groves, and other streams along,

With Nectar pure his oozy Locks he laves,

And hears the unexpressive nuptial Song,

In the blest Kingdoms meek of joy and love.

11. 172-77
Peter gives way to Christ as the one who provides the basis
for hope in resurrection. Peter condemned the faithless

shepherds in this poem, and it was Peter who walked on the

water with Christ for a brief time. He could not remain on

71

the water, of course, and Christ had to save him as he sank.
Just as Christ rescued Peter, so will He resurrect Lycidas
as an individual who will attend the "nuptial Song" of the
Lamb. It is Christ who assures the speaker of his final
victory over death in the poem. Just as the speaker's hope
for redemption in the "Nativity Ode" is guaranteed by the
incarnation, so too the speaker's hope for his own resurrec-
tion in "Lycidas" is assured by the resurrection of Lycidas
by Christ's might.

With the speaker's hope having been assured, Milton
completes the poem in the final verse paragraph. He promises
that the poet-speaker will carry on: "At last he [the
speaker] rose, and twich't his Mantle blue: / Tomorrow to
fresh Woods, and Pastures new." Here is where Tillyard's
statement that Milton, not Edward King, is the subject of
"Lycidas" is most helpful: just as the speaker of the poem
will write again on the basis of his experience, so too will
Milton. As Don Cameron Allen writes in The Harmonious Vision,
"The melic [preparatory] period is ended [with "Lycidas"];
there is renewed confidence for the greater task" (p. 56).
Milton successfully integrates the development of the speaker
from the doubts with which he first faces Lycidas' death to
the devout hope with which he will face his own death. This

success re-assures him when he writes Paradise Lost so many

 

years later.

CHAPTER THREE
PARADISE LOST

After the publication of "Lycidas" and the completion
of his poetic apprenticeship, thirty years elapsed before

Milton first published Paradise Lost in 1667. The interval

 

of time was taken up in part by the writing of the prose
tracts of the 1640's when Milton thought he saw his religious
hopes for God's kingdom in England beginning to be realized
and by the writing of The Christian Doctrine in the 1650's.1
Milton's personal life was in turmoil during these years:
his marriage to Mary Powell began unhappily; he was blind by
1652; and he lost two children in that same year. In 1660,
the Restoration of Charles II dashed all of Milton's hopes

for an earthly kingdom of God in England and threatened his
personal safety. Once the immediate danger had passed, Milton

returned to a more private life and, in the next eleven years,

wrote his three most important poems: Paradise Lost, Para-

 

dise Regained and Samson Agonistes.

 

 

Paradise Lost is the first of Milton's great mature

 

poems. It is both a theodicy and a devotion. As a theodicy,
it considers sin, its effects upon men, and God's grace
which overcomes the results of sin in men's lives. As a

devotion, ParadiSe LoSt presents man's responses to God

 

73

before and after the fall and demonstrates how the presence
of sin in Adam and Eve's experience necessitates their cons-
cious worship of God if they are not to despair of God's

love altogether. As John Holloway states, Paradise LOSt is

 

a "present rule of life, an insight into how postlapsarian
-man must face a fallen world, and his own fallen nature."2
Adam.and Eve gain this "insight" as they mature in their
expressions of devotion to God and as they experience God's

love for them even after the fall. In Paradise Lost, Milton

 

"justif[ies] the ways of God to men" (I, l. 26) by having

Adam and Eve consciously develop their devotion to God,

thereby increasing their understanding of God's providence.
The fall of Adam and Eve in Book Nine is the crisis of

Paradise Lost and divides the experience of devotion in the

 

poem into two major sections. Books One through Eight give
the account of the events in heaven before the creation of
the world, the fall of Satan, the creation itself, and the
joys of human innocence in the garden of Eden before the fall.
In these eight books, Adam and Eve are still sinless; they
live in a prelapsarian world until Book Nine. Adam and Eve
focus their devotion, therefore, on God as their creator and
the giver of the many blessings of Eden. Their devotion is
spontaneous and always acceptable to God.

Adam and Eve are not the only ones in this section of
the poem to experience devotion to God; the Son and the angels

who remain loyal to God also express devotion to the Father

74

in these books. The perspective of both the Son and the
loyal angels is always one of sinlessness and purity; more-
over, they understand God's ways more completely than do
Adam.and Eve. Therefore their devotion focuses on more than
God's creative activity; it extends to God's future offer of
grace to man after his fall. In addition to the Son and the
angels in heaven, of course, there is Satan with his host of
fallen angels in hell. Because their purpose is "To wage

by force or guile eternal War / Irrenconcilable to [their]
grand Foe [God]" (I, 11. 121-22), however, they clearly do
not worship God at all.

In the first section of Paradise Lost, from Book One

 

to Book Eight, we have these perspectives in regards to the
subject of devotion: Adam and Eve are sinless and worship

God with no restraints; Christ and the loyal angels worship
God with a greater knowledge than do Adam and Eve, though

they are by no means omniscient; and Satan remains entirely
outside of the experience of devotion, his fall already having
been completed before the poem begins.

The second major section of Paradise Loat, Books Nine

 

,through Twelve, provides the account of the fall of man, its
effects on nature, and Michael's chronicle of human history
up to the second advent of Christ at the end of time. Adam
and Eve's perspective is radically altered by their sinful-
ness in these books. Ironically, they have an augmented, '

not a diminished, basis on which to worship God after their

75

fall; God is not only their creator, but, in response to
their sin, He becomes their redeemer as well. There is

therefore a felix Culpa motif at work in the postlapsarian

 

devotional experience of Adam and Eve that makes their devo-
tion more valid for the reader (who is fallen, in Milton's

view). In The ChriStian Poet in "Paradise'Lost", William

 

G. Riggs notes this effect of the fall: "The fall ... inc-
reases man's need for direct manifestations of God's grace"
(p. 63). Adam and Eve's devotion matures after the fall
because it must if God's providence is to be justified to
fallen men.

Even though the Son does not fall into sin with Adam
and Eve, His experience of devotion is also deepened by
their fall. His obedience to His role in the Father's plan
of redemption becomes more immediate and more plain to Him;
His choice to obey is a mature one. This is not to say that

a simple division of Paradise Lost into two sections accounts

 

for the devotion in the poem. William Riggs warns us not
to make too sharp a distinction between prelapsarian and
postlapsarian states if we wish to understand Milton's use
of the fall and his depiction of Eden. Riggs writes:

it is only by insisting on a sharp demarcation be-
tween fallen and unfallen states that difficulties
arise in interpreting the so-called fortunate fall.

If we are determined to consider paradise as a static,
mindless holiday resort, it is hard to escape the
feeling that sin has delivered man into a condition
which.more adequately challenges his native abilities.

p. 51

76

Eden is not static -- not for Milton nor for his characters.
The fall, therefore, provides more of a crisis than a
"sharp demarcation" in the poem in regards to the devotional
experiences; the narrative continues in the last four books,
though irrevocably altered.

There are two other perspectives on the experiences

of devotion in Paradise Lost which we must mention briefly.

 

They are the poet-speaker's and the reader's. ‘Both the
speaker and the reader are fallen, sinful. Both are in
need of God's grace; both are in need of ”inspiration"to
understand events from a divine perspective. This is why
the poet asks for divine inspiration in his invocations in
Books One, Three, Seven and Nine. And, this is why the
reader must read the poem. Only a fallen man needs to read
a theodicy; the unfallen man understands God's ways "immed-
iately" -- without a mediator. Speaker and reader, therefore,
are in a position to learn that mature devotion is active
and willingly-given, just as Adam and Even come to learn
after their fall.

For Milton, freedom of will is essential to devotion.
It is essential both to prelapsarian and postlapsarian men.
Free will is active in Milton's view. Man is not "predes-
tinated" fatalistically to a predetermined action; in re-
gards to salvation, for instance, Milton rejects the idea

N

or the fore-ordained damnation of some

of "reprobation,'

men to hell.3 Man is truly free to choose, else God's ways

77

are unjustifiable and man's devotion to God is slavery, not

love. Milton is clear on this issue in AreOpagitiCa:

 

Many there be that complain of divine providence
for suffering Adam to transgress. Foolish tongues!
when God gave him reason, he gave him freedom to
choose, for reason is but choosing; he had been else
a mere artificial Adam, such an Adam as he is in the
motions. We ourselves esteem not of that obedience,
or love, or gift, which is of force. God therefore
left him free, set before him a provoking object,
ever almost in his eyes; herein consisted his merit,
herein the right of his reward, the praise of his
abstinence. Wherefore did he create passions within
us, pleasures round about us, but that these rightly
tempered are the very ingredients of virtue?

p. 733
God allowed man the freedom to choose to serve Him; He did

not coerce that service. In John Milton: Poet, Priest and

 

Prophet, John Spencer Hill defines Milton's concept of free
will as the legitimate choice "to grow either toward God or
away from Him" (p. 120). To grow away from God is sin; to
grow toward God is devotion. Devotion is the active exer-
cise of man's free will to "grow toward God."

Adam.and Eve in both their prelapsarian and postlap-
sarian states are free to worship and serve God. The fall
does not introduce free will to man in Milton's view; rather,
man was created originally with the ability to choose to
obey or disobey God. In Milton's view, devotion must be
expressed willingly. John Hill notes that there is always
choice facing Milton's Adam and Eve: before the fall, their
choice is between "known good and potential evil"; after the

fall, the choice is between "known good and known evil" (p. 120).

78

The difference is not that there is choice only after the
fall, but that the choice involves "known evil" after the

4 In

fall as opposed to "potential evil" before the fall.
both contexts, Adam and Eve can worship God willingly -- or
disobey Him willfully. J. M. Evans emphasizes the same

crucial point in "Paradise Lost" and'the Genesis Tradition.

 

He refutes the position of Willey and Waldock that Adam and

Eve's prelapsarian innocence is "effortless,' and argues
instead that they must maintain a "constant vigilance" if
they are to retain their innocence at all. Their innocent
prelapsarian state is "conditional," Evans asserts -- condi-

tional upon their obedience.5 And they are free to disobey,

if they choose. Therefore, devotion in Paradise Lost is

 

predicated on Milton's insistence that man has a valid free
will to choose to express devotion to God -- or not -- as
he wishes.

But free will involves more than external alternatives
to choose from; it involves "self-knowledge" as well. To
be free, we must know not only what the choices are, but
which one is best for us. This is where Adam and Eve fail;
Eve assesses her situation incorrectly and determines that
disobedience to God's stricture on the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil is her best course of action. She ration-

alizes:

79

Here grows the Cure of all, this Fruit Divine,

Fair to the Eye, inviting to the Taste,

Of virtue to make wise.

IX, 11. 776-78

Eve lacks self-knowledge; at least, she lacks proper self-
knowledge as Hill defines it. "Self-knowledge" for Milton,
Hill argues, is "knowledge of self 13 God and in relation
to God" (p. 121). Eve chooses knowledge of herself apart

from God, not in God; Adam wilfully chooses to follow Eve.

Devotion in Paradise LOSt, therefore, is predicated on the

 

development of proper self-knowledge -- "knowledge of self
13 God," as well as on freedom of will. The two factors
provide a paradox: Adam and Eve have freedom of will to
reject God, but it is only by acknowledging God that they
are free -- free to know themselves.

I have stated that Adam and Eve's experience of devotion

in Paradise Lost is influenced greatly by the presence of

 

sin. Milton writes three of the twelve books of Paradise
Lgsg before Adam and Eve appear and speak. It is not until
Book Four that the reader sees Adam and Even, and that
through Satan's envious eyes:

Two of far nobler shape erect and tall,

Godlike erect with native Honor clad

In naked Majesty seem'd Lords of all.

IV, 11. 288-90

Adam does not speak for another one hundred lines. When he

does, he offers a hymn of praise to God as his creator,

"infinitely good" (1. 413). Before the appearance of Adam

80

and Eve in their Edenic joy, however, the poet has narrated
a vast background of events in heaven and hell that provide
an ironic context for the picture of the innocent Adam and
Eve. The first two books present Satan, fallen from his
glory as Lucifer, the champion of sin in the universe; al-
most half of the third book accounts for Satan's activities
as well. Only the first four hundred lines of Book Three
present the scene in heaven and the characters of the Father,
the Son and the unfallen angels. wBefore Adam and Eve speak
at all, therefore, the reader is aware of the cosmological
warfare that has preceded creation and the awesome magni-
tude of their arch-enemy, Satan. The first devotional speech
in the poem is, appropriately, Christ's reaction to the
Father's intent to provide a solution to man's sin by His
grace.

At the council in heaven in Book Three, the Father an-
nounces His plan to extend mercy to Adam and Eve when they
sin:

Man falls deceiv'd

By th'other first: Man therefore shall find grace,

The other none: in Mercy and Justice both,

Through Heav'n and Earth, so shall my glory excel,

But Mercy first and last shall brightest shine.

III, 11. 130-34
This is "prevenient" grace, grace that foresees (not fore-

ordains) man's fall and reverses the effects of sin by pro-

viding mercy.

81

Apparently, the Son first learns of the Father's plan
for offering grace to fallen men from this announcement.
The Father has the role of authority in the interchange
with the Son about grace in Book Three. He announces grace

as a fait'acCompli; the Son responds with praise for God's

 

mercy:
0 Father, gracious was that word which clos'd

Thy sovran sentence, that Man should find grace;

For which both Heav'n and Earth shall high extol

Thy praises.

III, 11. l44-47a

Already in this speech the Son displays His earnest care
for man that he should not be cast off by God forever --
"that be from thee far, / That be far from thee, Father,"
Christ exclaims in the same speech (11. 153-54). He is

grateful that the Father, in His prescience, has provided

a solution to man's future sin. In The ChriStian Doctrine,

 

Milton defines gratitude as that attitude "whereby we ac-
knowledge [God's] goodness in conferring benefits upon
creatures so unworthy as [men]” (CI, XVII, p. 59). Christ
is grateful on man's behalf even before he sins. This is a
clear definition of grace, as well as of gratitude: grace
is God's free "benefits" to "unworthy" men who deserve pun-
ishment, not mercy, for their sins.

Christ's experience of gratitude here, however, is not
the reader's. Christ learns of the Father's offer of grace

from his dialogue with the Father in Book Three. The reader,

82

on the other hand, already knows from the biblical account
that Christ's crucifixion and resurrection are necessary
for man to realize God's grace. The reader, then, is privy
to information which the Son does not know at this point in

the narrative. In John Milton: Poet, Priest and Prophet,

 

John Spencer Hill admonishes us to be careful to distinguish
between our perspective as readers and Christ's as the agent
of man's future redemption in this section of the poem. If
we are not alert here, Hill warns, we will "run the risk of
serious misinterpretation, either by ascribing to the Son

a prescience which (for Milton) he does not possess or, more
grievously, by interpreting the Atonement offer as'a pre-ar-
ranged scenario between the Father and the Son" (PP. 123-24).
The "devout affection" of gratitude on Christ's part for

the Father's announcement of His offer of grace to men is
more important in the development of the Son's devotional
experience than it is to the reader's at this point in the
poem.

Gratitude is not the only devotional reaction that is
prompted by the Father's announcement of His intention to
extend grace to man. The Son also expresses His intent to
be obedient to the Father in carrying out His responsibili-
ties so that man can receive grace. Because man will be
sinful, he cannot atone for himself: "Atonement for himself
or offering meet," the Son tells us, "Indebted and undone,

[man] hath none to bring" (III, 11. 234-35). Therefore,

83

the sinless Son offers to expiate man's sin. He says to
the Father:

Behold mee then, mee for him, life for life

I offer, on mee let thine anger fall;

Account mee man.

III, 11. 236-38a

Christ's obedience extends to His willingness to be separated
from God and to die on the cross to "lead Hell captive

maugre Hell" (III, 1. 255). Milton's definition of obedience

as one of the devout affections in The Christian DOctrine

 

applies perfectly to the Son's attitude in this speech.
Milton defines obedience as "that virtue whereby we propose
to ourselves the will of God as the paramount rule of our
conduct" (CE, XVII, p. 69). Even Christ obeys God; here,
as elsewhere, obedience comes from the free will of the one
who obeys. Thus, at the announcement of divine grace, Christ
shows both gratitude and obedience to God the Father, even
before man has fallen into sin. The significance of the
Son's devotional expressions is that He develops a stronger
commitment to the Father from having heard His offer of
mercy to men. Christ moves from gratitude to obedience in
Book Three; He intends to offer His life for man's life.
The Son is not the only one to praise God in gratitude
for His plan to redeem fallen man by grace. The loyal
angels sing an extended hymn of praise, first to the Father
and then to the Son for loving man enough to die in order

for God to extend grace to fallen man. The speaker reports

84

the angels' praise of God as the Father of creation:
Thee Father first they sung Omnipotent,
Immutable, Immortal, Infinite,
Eternal King; thee Author of all being.
III, 11. 372-74
The angels celebrate God and magnify Him by naming His at-
tributes, but modulate their praise quickly toward the Son:
Thee next they sang of all Creation first,
Begotten Son, Divine Similitude,
In whose conspicuous count'nance, without cloud
Made visible, th'Almighty Father shines.
III, 11. 383-86
These verses suggest Milton's mature anti-Trinitarian
theology. If Christ was created, His nature and "lifespan"

are not divine in the same way as the Father's are. If

Christ is not God in Milton's view in Paradise Lost, His

 

speeches of petition, gratitude and obedience all become
profoundly devotional as the attitudes of 3 created being
toward God. Even the angels regard the Son to be of a dif-
ferent essence than the Father when they note that "No
sooner did [the Son] / Perceive [God] purpos'd not to doom
frail Man" (III, 11. 403-04), than He offered to redeem him.
The Son is not omniscient if He must learn what the Father
already knows. At the very least, Christ's dual nature as
God and man allows his humanity to express devotion to God
the Father, even in heaven before the fall. The angels in
heaven echo the Son's praise to the Father and suggest a

pattern for Adam and Eve to follow. As they are superior

85

to men and yet still worship the Father, so Adam and Eve
should worship Him, too. All that the Son and the angels
celebrate about God in Book Three is His creation of man
and His projected plan to redeem him.

When in Book Six God plans to defeat Satan and his
rebel host, the Son develops His obedience to the Father
yet further than he does in Book Three. After God gives
Christ the mandate to subdue Satan, the Son responds in com-
plete commitment to the task, finding personal glory only
insofar as He "exalts" the Father:

0 Father, 0 Supreme of heav'nly Thrones,

First, Highest, Holiest, Best, thou always seek'st

To glorify thy Son, I always thee,

As is most just; this I my Glory account,

My exaltation, and my whole delight,

That thou in me well pleas'd, declar'st thy will

Fulfill'd, which to fulfill is all my bliss.

VI, 11. 723-29
Milton's emphasis in this speech is not so much on the di-
vinity of the Son as on His obedience to the Father, for He
makes "the will of God the paramount rule of [His] conduct"
(CE, XVII, p. 69). He wishes to "fulfill" the Father's
will; this is "all [His] bliss." Of course, the Father's
will here is for the imprisonment of Satan in the lake of
fire. Therefore, the Son states, "Whom thou hat'st, I hate,
and can put on / Thy terrors, as I put thy mildness on."
He will crush Satan where Michael and Gabriel could not.

The result of Christ's defeat of Satan, however, is not

praise of himself, but praise to the Father alone. Christ

86

announces that "all thy Saints unmixt" shall "Unfeigned
Halleluiahs to thee [God] sing, / Hymns of high praise, and
I among them chief" (VI, 11. 744-45). Here again Milton
depicts Christ, even before the creation and fall of man,
offering devotion to God for His grace toward man and judg-
ment of Satan. Before the fall, Christ and the angels offer
God their gratitude and their obedience in relation to His
grace to be offered to fallen men; what is more, Christ de-
velops a more complete obedience to God between Book Three
and Book Six.

Though there is the devotion to the Father which we have
noted on the parts of the Son and the loyal angels before
the fall, it is Adam's and Eve's expressions of devotion that
are most fully developed by the poet. Adam.and Eve appear
in the poem for the first time in Book Four and, until the
end of Book Eight, they experience devotion for God in a
prelapsarian condition. In this sinless state, the first
parents express devotion to God as their creator -- often
in hymns of praise that are not yet affected by the presence
of sin. 'With their fall in Book Nine, however, Adam and
Eve must first repent of their sin and learn to worship God
not only as their creator, but also as their redeemer. Dev-
otion in the last four books of the poem, therefore, tends
to be less spontaneous than it is in the first eight books

when Adam and Eve are innocent.

87

The predominant devotion in the first eight books of

Paradise LoSt is, therefore, Adam and Eve's celebration of

 

God as their creator and provider. They express their love
to God before the fall in their innocent gratitude and obed-
ience; these are the major motivations of their devotion.
Even in prelapsarian Eden, devotion is a conscious and an
active expression of love to God. There is even an under-
lying irony in Adam's first speech in the poem. It is a
devotional speech, but it is overheard by Satan who has just
arrived in Eden to learn how best to deceive Adam and Eve
into sin. The scene presents the reader with the first ac-
tual appearance of Adam and Eve in the narrative and give us
Adam's ane Eve's first speeches. The scene is ironic in that
we see our first parents when Satan sees them. Satan is
filled with envy and jealousy at the sight of the happiness
of Adam.and Eve (IV, 11. 501-03). Adam and Eve speak in
perfect innocence of evil, even of the threat of evil which
is so close to them at this early point in the narrative.
The irony of the reader's perspective emphasizes the beauty
of the love which Adam and Eve express for God.

Adam's first speech to Eve is an exhortation to grat-
itude and obedience for God's beneficence toward them. He
begins by praising God for His goodness (an important moti-
vation for Adam's love throughout the poem):

Sole partner and sole part of all these joys,
Dearer thyself than all; needs must the Power

88

That made us, and for us this ample World

Be infinitely good, and of his good

As liberal and free as infinite,

That rais'd us from the dust and plac't us here
~In all this happiness, who at his hand

Have nothing merited, nor can perform

Aught whereof he hath need.

IV, 11. 4ll-l9a
The bounty and beauty of the garden of Eden elict Adam's
devotion to God. He is grateful for God's ”liberality" in
providing "this ample World," for God's generosity attests

to His goodness. In The Paradise Within, Louis L. Martz

 

speaks of Adam's gratitude as an "intuitive movement toward
the love of God" (p. 132). God's love, as evidenced in His
ample provision for Adam and Eve's happiness in Eden, prompts
Adam's loving gratitude. More than this, this first speech
provides us with a hint of grace, too: Adam and Eve "have
nothing merited" God's love. Even though it is addressed

to Eve, Adam's first reaction to God is one of gratitude for
His "goodness" to "creatures so unworthy" as himself (CE,
XVII, p. 59).

The devout affection which most readily accompanies
gratitude toward God is obedience to His commands. After
all, Adam argues, God has placed only one stricture upon him
and Eve among the many blessings which He has conferred upon
them. It is only reasonable, therefore, to obey that one
command. Adam says to Eve:

hee who requires
From us no other service than to keep

89

This one, this easy charge, of all the Trees

In paradise that bear delicious fruit

So various, not to taste that only Tree

Of Knowledge, planted by the Tree of Life.

IV, 11. 419b-24
The command "not to taste that only Tree / Of Knowledge" is
"the only sign of our Obedience left," Adam argues (IV,;-
11. 423-24, 428). In the prelapsarian state, gratitude is
not an inadequate motive for Adam and Eve's obedience.
Without sin, Adam has no need of God's grace; therefore, all
that he experiences of God is his love for Him as his creator.
Adamis devotional attitudes of gratitude and obedience are
proper responses to God. He summarizes his devotion as he
concludes his speech to Eve:
let us ever praise him, and extol

His bounty, following our delightful task

To prune these growing Plants, and tend these Flow'rs,

Which were it toilsome, yet with thee were sweet.

IV, 11 436-39

Adamds exhortation is to serve God; in Eden before the fall,
this service is rendered by Adam and Eve's cultivating the
garden as God commanded. Again, obedience is active: Adam
is, on the one hand, to avoid the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil and, on the other hand, to "prune these growing
Plants." Obedience demonstrates gratitude.

When Eve replies to Adam's speech regarding God, she

does so in prelapsarian innocence which shows perfect satis-

faction with the 1ot that God has given her:

90

O thou for whom

And from whom I was form'd flesh of thy flesh,

And without whom am to no end, my Guide

And Head, what thou hast said is just and right.

For wee to him indeed all praises owe,

And daily thanks.

IV, 11. 440-45

Eve accepts her position under Adam and God without question
and worships God accordingly. Adam is her "guide" and
"head." Adam's exhortation to worship God is enough reason
for Eve to do so. Of course, at the fall, Eve rebels against
what she then perceives as a position of "subservience" to
Adam. As Adam obeys God before the fall, however, so Eve
obeys Adam. This is Milton's view of the chain of responsi-
bility before the fall. Adam and Eve obey those responsi-
bilities without question because they are commanded by God.
Hence, the first devotion of Adam and Eve in the garden is
unalloyed in that no sin interferes with the couple's grati-
tude and obedience to God and His ordinances in their lives.
Paradoxically, they express their free wills by deliberately
choosing God's will that they be grateful and obedient; by
obeying God, they realize their fullest potential as humans.

Milton expands Adam and Eve's praise to include the
whole of the prelapsarian creation. Adam is not unique in
his praise; he is merely the highest of created, earthly
beings who render praise to God as their creator. In his

devotion to God, Adam is in perfect "harmony" with the uni-

verse before the fall. He himself tells us this:

91

Millions of spiritual Creatures walk the Earth

Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep:

All these with ceaseless praise his works behold

Both day and night; how often from the steep

Of echoing Hill or Thicket have we heard

Celestial voices

Singing their great Creator.

IV, 11. 677-82a; 684a

The universe is in perfect harmony and agreement in its
praise to God as its creator. This is the music of the
spheres Eppps, used here to show the universality of "unmedi-
tated," prelapsarian praise to God. Adam.is only one "note"
in that symphony, albeit the highest earthly one. He is
fulfilling his proper function in the sympnony of creation
by teaching Eve to praise God as their creator. All of
nature joins in the hymn to God.

Before they retire for their night's rest at this
point in the narrative of Book Four, Adam.and Eve discuss
their perfect bliss. Their dialogue forms a hymn of praise
to God for all that He has given them, but especially for
each other. Because he is responsible for Eve, Adam begins
the hymn, noting that "God hath set/ Labor and rest" (IV,
11. 612-13) both in their cycles for man's benefit. He rec-
ognizes that God's plan that they cultivate Eden is an ack-
nowledgment of their dignity. "Man hath his daily work of
body or mind / Appointed," he says to Eve (IV, 11. 618-19).

Adam understands that his task is active; even praise in

this hymn is a manifestation of that active love.

92

Eve's response to Adam is an expression of her love
not only for Adam, but also for God. She replies to Adam:

My Author and Disposer, what thou bidd'st

Unargu'd I obey; so God ordains,

God is thy Law, thou mine: to know no more

Is woman's happiest knowledge and her praise.

IV, 11. 635-38

Eve obeys Adam and submits to know no more than her position
allows. We must not let our modern concern with Eve's sub-
mission to Adam have us misinterpret the devotion that Eve
is expressing in these lines. By rec0gnizing her position
in relation to Adam, Eve acknowledges her love for God; her
obedience to Adam is love for God. Eve's response to Adam's
hymn of praise to God is a hymn of praise of her own -- to
Adam and, through him, to God the Father.

Adam concludes his evening hymn with a doxology to
the Father for His having created a beautiful world and,
more importantly, for His having given him Eve:

Thou also mad'st the Night,

Maker Omnipotent, and thou the Day,

Which we in our appointed work imploy'd

Have finisht happy in our mutual help

And mutual love, the Crown of all our bliss

Ordain'd by thee.

IV, 11. 724-29a

Adam's final speech on the first day that we see him is a
hymn of gratitude to God for Eden, for the cycle of the day-

time work and nighttime rest, and for Eve's "help" and "love."

Adam's gratitude for Eve, however, is the focus of his

93

doxology to God. There is nothing lustful or selfish in

Adam and Eve's prelapsarian enjoyment of their mutual love.
Their pleasure in love before the fall is a perfectly legi-
timate expression of their love for God; they are obeying

His mandate to them to "be fruitful and multiply." Hence,
Milton expresses love for God, gratitude to Him and obedience,
through the prelapsarian marriage relationship of Adam and
Eve.

It remains for the narrator to comment on Adam and
Eve's obedience after Adam expresses their gratitude. The
narrator states that the innocent ”connubial love” of Adam
and Eve is ”adoration pure":

but adoration pure

Which God likes best, into thir inmost bower

Handed they went; and eas'd the putting off

These troublesome disguises which wee wear,

Straight side by side were laid, nor turn'd I ween

Adam from his fair Spouse, nor Eve the Rites

Mysterious of connubial Love refus'd.

IV, 11 737b-44
God's command to Adam and Eve to procreate is not burden-
some: children will help parents to cultivate the garden
and, thereby, obey God. It is not until after the fall,
when Eve wishes to remain childless so as to frustrate
Satan (X, 11. 979-91),that this command becomes a serious
test of obedience. In Book Four, it is still the "Rites /
Mysterious of connubial Love" (llfl743-44).

N

Though the whole created universe praises God before

94

the fall, Milton is primarily interested in the devotion of
Adam and Eve. In Book Five, the poet returns to Adam and

Eve, and we hear their morning hymns to God. Gratitude and
obedience are important devout affections in the hymns, but
here Milton most emphasizes the love that they have toward

God. In The'ChriStian DOCtrine, Milton defines love as the

 

preference of God "above all other objects of affection"
and the desire to bring Him "glory" (CE, XVII, pp. 51 and
53). Adam's gratitude responds to what God has done for him;
his obedience comes from what God has commanded him; his
love, however, reflects who God is Himself, regardless of
the blessings He bestows. The object of Adam's devotional
love, therefore, is God Himself.

Immediately before Adam and Eve sing their "orisons"
to God, the narrator introduces their hymn this way:

Thir Orisons, each morning duly paid

In various style, for neither various style

Nor holy rapture wanted they to praise

Thir Maker, in fit strains pronounct or sung

Unmeditated, such prompt eloquence

Flow'd from thir lips, in Prose or numerous Verse,

More tuneable than needed Lute or Harp

To add more sweetness, and they thus began.

V, 11. 145-52

The narrator comments on the spontaneity, the "unmeditated"
and "prompt" nature of the orisons that Adam and Eve sing
to God. Since there is no sin, they sing without restraint.

The narrator's emphasis on the spontaneity of their hymns

suggests that Adam.and Eve freely and naturally focus their

95

attention on God each morning. There is no constraint
placed upon them to do so, only their own unforced love.

Adam emphasizes the love he has for God when he sings
his hymn of praise, which begins with these words:

These are thy glorious works, Parent of good,

Almighty, thine this universal Frame

Thus wondrous fair; thyself how wondrous then!

Unspeakable, who sit'st above these Heavens

To us invisible or dimly seen

In these thy lowest works, yet these declare

Thy goodness beyond thought, and Power Divine.

V, 11. 153-59

As he surveys God's ”wondrous works" all around him, Adam
meditates on God Himself: "thyself how wondrous then," he
exclaims. Adam is overwhelmed with the thought of God's

wonder, "goodness beyond thought, and His "Power Divine."
Meditating on what God has done for them in creating the
world for their use, and contemplating what God must be like
to have made so many beautiful creatures, Adam can respond
only in love: "witness if I be silent, Morn or Even, / To
Hill, or Valley, Fountain, or fresh shade / Made vocal by
my Song, and taught his praise." He cannot remain silent,
he tells us; he must praise God for His great bounty to him.
His song, therefore, is one way to glorify God. The pri-
mary motivation for Adam's gratitude and obedience, then,

is love for God who has done so much for him.

Even in their daytime work in the garden before the

fall, Adam and Eve repeatedly sing praises to God. Joseph

96

H. Summers argues in The Muse's Method that the songs which

 

Adam and Eve sing while they cultivate the garden glorify
God; they are doxologies which punctuate the work.6 For
instance, all of nature joins Adam in this paeon to the
creator:

Hail universal Lord, be bounteous still
To give us only good.

V, 11. 205-06

Within one hundred lines of Adam's hymn of praise, Eve com-
ments on God's "bounties" (l. 330) and observes at length
the amplitude of Eden: all delicacies from India, "Pontus
or the Punic coast" (1. 340); all "must, and meaths / From
many a berry," "dulcet creams" with ”Rose and Odors from the
shrub infus'd" provide pleasure to the innocent pair (V, 11.
333-49). Eve is grateful for them all; or, more exactly,
she is grateful that God has provided such abundance in
Eden. These little doxologies attest to a consciousness of
God's liberality.

Nor is Adam niggardly of what he has received from
God in His goodness. When Raphael arrives in Book Five to
speak with him about God's creation of him, Adam proffers
him a banquet from God's bounty:

Heav'nly stranger, please to taste
These bounties which our Nourisher, from.whom
All perfet good unmeasur'd out, descends,

To us for food and for delight hath caus'd
The Earth to yeild; unsavory food perhaps

97

To spiritual Natures; only this I know,
That one Celestial Father gives to all.

V, 11. 397-403
Adam is both generous with his foods and eager to indicate
his gratitude to "that one Celestial Father [who] gives to
all." These few brief hymns of praise and acknowledgments
of gratitude to God on Adam's and Eve's parts during their
daily activities attest to the active, omnipresent grati-
tude that they have in their innocent state for the Father's
kindness.

In Books One through Eight, therefore, Milton demon-
strates several types of devotion to God. Christ and the
angels foreshadow God's grace to fallen men with expressions
of gratitude; Christ offers His obedience to God's role for
Him in the plan of man's redemption; and Adam and Eve praise
God and willingly obey Him for His creating them and then
bestowing abundant blessings upon them in each other and in
the natural creation. Because they have not yet sinned,
however, they cannot express devotion to God for His grace.
The worship in the prelapsarian experience of the poem, then,
concentrates on God as creator.

In the postlapsarian books of Paradise Lost, on the

 

other hand, devotion does focus mainly on God's grace and
His providence in men's lives. The fall of man does not
limit the experience of devotion in the poem; rather, it

expands it. Whereas in their prelapsarian lives Adam and

98

Eve loved God only as their creator and provider, in their
postlapsarian state they learn to love God as their redeemer
as well. Their love for God as their creator and provider
is not negated in Books Nine through Twelve; this love is~
increased by their love for God as their redeemer. Because
of sin, Adam and Eve lose their immediate -- non-mediated --
communication with God and must work even more consciously
and actively to express devotion to God. In addition, their
free will is limited by the fall in that, though they have
experienced both evil and good, their ability to choose
rightly between them is diminished by sin. But these changes
do not nullify devotion in the poem; on the contrary, they
necessitate devotion all the more. In Books Nine through

Twelve of Paradise Lost, therefore, all of the characters

 

(except the Father, the Son and the loyal angels, of course)
are fallen; speaker, reader, and Adam and Eve are all in
need of devotion.

The Son provides the hope that sin and death are not
final. It is the Son's obedience to His role in the Father's
plan of redemption that provides the basis on which Adam
and Eve come to understand that the Father has taken their
sin into account and that He will reverse its effects for
them. The Son asks the Father to allow Him to redeem fallen

man :

99

See Father, what first fruits on Earth are sprung
From thy implanted Grace in Man, these Sighs
And Prayers, which in this Golden Censer, mixt
With Incense, I thy Priest before thee bring,
Fruits of more pleasing savor from thy seed
Sown with contrition in his heart, than those
Which his own hand manuring all the Trees

Of Paradise could have produc't, ere fall'n
From innocence. Now therefore bend thine ear
To supplication, hear his sighs though mute;
Unskilful with what words to pray, let mee
Interpret for him, mee his Advocate

And propitiation, all his works on mee

Good or not good ingraft, my Merit those

Shall perfet, and for these my Death shall pay.
Accept me, and in mee from these receive

The smell of peace toward Mankind, let him live
Before thee reconcil'd, at least his days
Number'd, though sad, till Death, his doom (which I
To mitigate thus plead, not to reverse)

To better life shall yield him, where with mee
All my redeem'd may dwell in joy and bliss,
Made one with me as I with thee am one.

XI, 11. 22-44
Just as when He created them God gave Adam and Eve the gar-
den of Eden to cultivate and enjoy, so too does He give them
His grace for their redemption after they fall. Like the
plants in the garden, grace is "implanted" like a "seed" in
man's heart. Adam's contrition is the fertilizer for this
seed of God's grace. Just as Adam was to cultivate Eden,
so too God "cultivates" grace in Adam's and Eve's hearts
and leads them to produce the devotional "fruits" of con-
trition and grititude. God is now the gardener, Adam the
garden. God's grace and man's penitence form a ”more pleasing
savor" to God than did Adam's husbandry of the trees and

fruits in Eden before the fall. Hope for this future

100

restoration which God's prevenient grace plans for man is
to be realized on the basis of the Son's obedience to the
Father.

It is to guarantee grace to man afpep he falls that
Milton has Christ ask to be allowed to redeem man in Book
Three before man falls. Prevenient grace guarantees re-
demption and provides Adam and Eve -- and the reader as
well -- with the certainty that devotion after the fall is
not in vain. In the first council in heaven, the Son says
to the Father:

Behold mee then, mee for him, life for life

I offer, on mee let thine anger fall;
Account mee man.

III, 11. 236-38
The Son asks to be the substitute for man -- "on mee let
thine anger fall," he asks of the Father -- to take the
penalty for man's sin. The Father demonstrates His grace
by accepting the Son's offer without reservation:
thy merit
Imputed shall absolve them who renounce
Thir own both righteous and unrighteous deeds,

And live in thee transplanted, and from thee
Receive new life.

III, 11 290-94
The Father will grant sinful man Christ's righteousness
("thy merit / Imputed") and, therefore, be able to accept
man once again sinless -- in Christ. Isabel Rivers explains

the theology of this transaction in Classical and Christian

101

Ideals in English RenaiSSance Poetry:

God's justice, which punishes man for the sin of
disobedience, is matched by his mercy, which forgives
man. Yet his justice demands satisfaction. This is
achieved through the mediation of God's greatest gift
to man, his Son, the second Adam, whose perfect obe-
dience cancels the disobedience of the first Adam,
and who gives himself as a sacrifice, thereby taking
on himself man's sin and redeeming him from damnation.
The disobedience of the first Adam brought man death;
the obedience of the second Adam brings man eternal
life. Just as Christ takes on man's sin, though he
is himself sinless, so he imputes to man his righ-
teousness, though fallen man is himself incapable of
righteousness. God accepts Christ's imputed righ-
teousness or merits as man's, and thus grants man
salvation. '

p. 113
This plan of redemption for fallen man is worked out,
and agreed upon, by the Father and the Son in Book Three of

Paradise LoSt before Adam.and Eve fall. Yet in Book Eleven,

 

the Son asks the Father to accept Him as man's "advocate /
And propitiation" (XI, 11. 34-35). Christ will both pay
man's debt -- this is "propitiation" -- and defend him be-
fore God when he sins -- this is His "advocacy." In addi-
tion, Christ asks God to "accept [Him], and in [Him] from
these receive / The smell of peace toward Mankind" (XI,
11. 37-38).7 Yet all of this plan was agreed upon before
Creation and reported in Book Three. Surely, then, Christ
is repeating His obedience to the Father in all of His plan.
As Milton defines it, "obedience is that virtue whereby we
propose to ourselves the will of God as the paramount rule

of our conduct” (CE, XVII, p. 69). Even Christ, therefore,

102

approaches God the Father devotionally after man's fall; He
expresses God's will and also obeys it Himself. In Book
Three, the reader has seen God's promise that He will redeem
man. He has seen Christ's reminder of that promise in Book
Eleven. Therefore, he has a certain hope that God will ful-
fill His promise.

Before the Book Eleven dialogue in heaven between Father
and Son takes place in the chronology of Milton's narrative,
Adam and Eve have already repented of their sinful disobe-
dience against God's stricture upon their eating of the fruit
of the forbidden tree. Adam and Eve realize God's grace
after they repent of their sins. At the end of the tenth
book, for instance, Adam and Eve pray for forgiveness:

and there confess
Humbly our faults, and pardon beg, with tears
Watering the ground, and with our sighs the Air

Frequenting, sent from hearts contrite, in sign
Of sorrow unfeign'd, and humiliation meek.

X, 11. 1088-92
This is one of Adam's most poignant penitential "prayers"

in Paradise Lost. It comes after Adam and Eve have both

 

accused each other bitterly for having sinned, and also
after they have made an attempt to reconcile themselves to
each other. The prayer concludes Book Ten and, in Book
Eleven, Michael comes to encourage Adam and Eve with the
eschatological victory of God's grace over the serpent.

I!

Adam "confesses" his "faults" to God here, and "begs for

103

"pardon" and forgiveness. The prayer is an informal exp-
ression of penitence: penitence admits guilt and seeks
pardon. Twice, Adam speaks of his humility as he prays.
Adam's humility reverses his earlier "pride against God,"

as Milton calls it in The ChriStian Dectrine (CE, XVII,

 

p. 65); rather than asserting his will against God's Adam
learns that his most appropriate course of action -- the one
in which, paradoxically, he realizes his own identity best --
is to admit guilt and ask forgiveness. Humility is the pro-
per first response to God for Adam after he has sinned. He
has loved God for His beneficence to him before the fall.

At this point in the narrative, however, he has not yet ex-
perienced God's grace in redemption so that humility, rather
than love, is Adam's appropriate posture at the end of Book
Ten.

At the climax of Michael's narrative of human history
in Book Twelve, Milton turns Adam's humility into hope. In
a brief forty-six verses, Michael recounts the major events
of Christ's death, resurrection, ascension, and second
advent.which form the basis of the Christian hope of eternal
life. The economy of Michael's account intensifies the
impact of the climactic events of Christ's incarnate work,
especially in the light of the almost leisurely pace of the
rest of Michael's chronicle. After Adam hears of the com-

pletion of the prOto evangelum (that Eve's "seed" would

 

104

"bruise" the serpent's "head"), he breaks into a spontaneous
song of praise, exclaiming:

O goodness infinite, goodness immense!

That all this good of evil shall produce,

And evil turn to good, more wonderful

Than that by which creation first brought forth

Light out of darkness!

XII, 11. 469-73

This is Milton's most important articulation of the felix
culpa motif through which he seeks to "justify the ways of
God to men" (fallen men, that is). Adam tells us that
God's grace in His plan of redemption is "more wonderful"
than His beneficence in creation. Adam's hope at this point
in the narrative is a clear contrast to his despair after
his fall. Earlier he had exclaimed:

0 miserable of happy! is this the end

Of this new glorious World, and mee so late

The Glory of that Glory, who now become

Accurst of blessed, hide me from the face

Of God, whom to behold was then my highth

0f happiness.

X, 11. 720-25

Whichever way he turns, he seems to find no hope. All is
bleak for Adam; he despairs that he will ever be happy again.
At this point, he lacks all hope. Adam's hymn in Book
Twelve, therefore, is an important example of the devotional
attitude of hope, "that by which we expect with certainty
the fulfillment of God's promises" (CE, XVII, p. 57). Adam

rejoices as if Christ had already completed His role in the

plan of redemption; yet all of this is still future at the

105

time of its telling. Surely this is "expecting" with "cer-
tainty" the fulfillment of the promise. This is what

Milton calls hope and the Bible calls faith. Significantly,
the hymn focuses on God's character, specifically His "good-
ness" (repeated four times in five verses), as all legitimate
devotion does in Milton's view. From Adam's perspective,

this is the theological climax of Paradise LOSt; here he

 

realizes the extent of God's love and grace for him.

Prior to realizing that the Father would turn evil to
good, Adam and Eve come to understand that God loves them,
not only as the first parents of the human race, but also
as individuals. One of Eve's earliest reactions to the fall
was to seek to avoid the divine penalty of death which God
placed upon her and Adam. But death was not God's only
sentence on the sinful pair; He condemned Adam to eat by the
sweat of his brow and Eve to bear children in pain (cf.
Genesis 3:16-19). Eve proposes to avoid her sentence by
dying childless (X, l. 989). She even goes so far as to sug-
gest that she and Adam end their lives immediately so as to
ensure her barrenness:

Let us seek Death, or he not found, supply
With our own hands his Office on ourselves.

X, 11. 1002-03
This is an example of "impatience under the divine decrees"
(CE, XVII, p. 67) which Milton cites in The Christian Doc-

trine as an antithesis to hope. Clearly, Eve wishes to avoid

106

sin's penalty for her progeny, as well as for herself, by
committing suicide (cf. X, 11. 988-91). It is in response
to Eve's despair that Adam gives his most significant devo-
tional speech after the fall. In it, he tries to encourage
Eve with the hope of God's promise that He would bruise
Satan's head by her seed (X, 11. 1028-32). He counsels her
to patience, a devout affection which Milton defines as
"that [emotion] whereby we acquiesce in the promises of God,
through a confident reliance on his divine providence, power
and goodness, and bear inevitable evils with equanimity, as
the dispensation of the supreme Father, and sent for our
good" (CE, XVII, p. 67). Adam's encouragement of Eve is an
example of this kind of patience, which is an active patience,
not a fatalistic, passive acceptance of God's pronouncements.
Adam predicates his argument to be patient on "a con-
fident reliance" on God's providence in their lives:
Then let us seek
Some safer resolution, which methinks
I have in view, calling to mind with heed
Part of our Sentence, that thy Seed shall bruise
The Serpent's head; piteous amends, unless
Be meant, whom I conjecture, our grand Foe
Satan, who in the Serpent hath contriv'd
Against us in this deceit: to crush his head
Would be revenge indeed; which will be lost
By death brought on ourselves, or childless days
Resolv'd, as thou proposest; so our Foe
Shall 'scape his punishment ordain'd, and wee
Instead shall double ours upon our heads.
X, 11. 1028-40

Adam remembers that God had promised to defeat Satan in

Eve's "Seed" that "shall bruise / The Serpent's head." If

107

by the "serpent" God meant Satan, Adam conjectures, then

His plan is, indeed, superior to Eve's proposal of suicide.
Adam.and Eve realize that this plan is not only for the good
of all mankind but also for their personal benefit. Adam
understands that, if he and Eve commit suicide, Satan will
not be crushed and, what is more personally significant,
they will receive "double" punishment. Adam is concerned
with his own personal welfare, and that of Eve, in addition
to his concern for the eschatological fulfillment of God's
promise.

Milton's theological definition of patience includes
awareness of God's goodness, as well as His faithfulness.
Adam predicates his advice to Eve in part on God's goodness
when he says, "How much more, if we pray him, will his ear /
Be open, and his heart to pity incline." He has seen God's
goodness in His bountiful creation; now he rests in the hope
that God will be consistent in His character and show good-
ness toward him even though he has fallen into sin. The
goodness which Adam hopes for in relation to his sin, of
course, is God's "pity"; he wishes that God might not exact
payment from him, but show mercy and fulfill His promise to
judge Satan, not Adam.(cf. III, 11. 130-32).

Based on his confidence in God's providence and good-
ness, Adam counsels Eve to patience. The core of his argu-

ment follows:

108

No more be mention'd then of violence

Against ourselves, and wilfull barrenness,

That cuts us off from hope, and savors only

Rancor and pride, impatience and despite,

Reluctance against God and his just yoke,

Laid on our Necks. Remember with what mild

And gracious temper he both heard and judg'd

Without wrath or reviling.

X, 11. 1041-47

Adam wishes to "bear [their] inevitable evils with equani-
mity" and not do "violence against" themselves because im-
patience would fly in the face of God's goodness toward
them. He wishes not to be cut off from hope in the "mild
and gracious temper" of God who will, he expects, show mercy
to them if they but ask for it (as they do at the end of the
book). As well as arguing that they should have patient de-
votion toward God even in their sin, Adam lists some of their
specific sins which cut them off from God- "Rancor," or
anger, for example, is the opposite of the fear of God, or
the "reverence" of Him and the "dread [of] offending Him
above all things" (CE, XVII, p. 61). Anger against God
betrays impatience with His providential disposition of the
affairs of this life. Pride is, of course, the opposite of
humility -- which is the attitude that Adam and Eve take
immediately following this speech in their supplication to
God for forgiveness (X, 11. 1088-96). Reluctance, the op-
posite of obedience, would paralyze Adam's wish that he and

Eve beg God for mercy. In the speech which precedes their

initial penitence, then, Adam seems to understand his

109

position well. He focuses everything that he says to Eve
on the character of God and its manifestation in His bounty
to them before the fall. In Milton's narrative, Adam and
Eve's penitence at the end of Book Ten prompts the realiza-
tion of God's grace in Books Eleven and Twelve of Paradise

Lost -- and, indeed, on into Christ's victories in Paradise

 

Regained. God shows grace to Adam in Michael's visit to
encourage him that all is not lost.

It is during Michael's visit that Adam's postlapsarian
devotional experience is richest. Michael's message, as
well as the kind attitude with which he is instructed by God
to deliver it, teaches Adam that he is right to have asked
God for forgiveness and to have placed God above Eve's sui-
cidal tendencies. God instructs Michael to "drive out the
sinful Pair" (XI, 1. 105), but to do so with kindness:

Yet lest they faint

At the sad Sentence rigorously urg'd,

For I behold them soft'ned and with tears

Bewailing thir excess, all terror hide.

If patiently thy bidding they obey,

Dismiss them not disconsolate; reveal

To Adam what shall come in future days,

As,I shall thee enlighten, intermix

My Cov'nant in the woman's seed renew'd;

So send them forth, though sorrowing, yet in peace.

XI, 11. 108-17
God intends Michael's chronicle of "history” to Adam
to be in part consolatory. He wishes to encourage him, not

discourage him; this He does by having Michael promise Adam

and Eve their redemption through the woman's seed. The

 

110

lessons that Adam learns from Michael involve the love of
God and obedience to Him. Because of the gratitude and love
which Adam bears toward God for His grace, he responds with
obedience to His will. His immediate obedience is to leave
Eden forever; his motive for obedience is God's grace. Adam
says to Michael after he has finished his chronicle of human
history:

Henceforth I learn, that to obey is best,

And love with fear the only God, to walk

As in his presence, ever to observe

His providence, and on him sole depend,

Merciful over all his works, with good

Still overcoming evil.

XII, 11. 561-66

This is the thematic climax of the poem in Adam's life. He
has fallen, but God has lifted him up in grace. How else
can Adam respond except in implicit obedience to God's will,
making it "the paramount rule of [his] conduct" (CE, XVII,
p. 69)? God's providence is good; therefore, Adam acqui-
esces. In addition to his obedience, Adam trusts God im-
plicitly. Because of God's mercy, he can "depend" On Him

"solely.' In The Christian Doctrine, Milton defines Adam's

 

confidence: this is trust, or "wholly repos[ing] on him
[God]" (CE, XVII, p. 53). Michael's account of human his-
tory, therefore, prompts Adam's immediate trust and obedience.
Trust and obedience are not all that Adam learns from
Michael. He goes on to express the patience and meekness

which he has learned:

111

and by small

Accomplishing great things, by things deem'd weak

Subverting worldly strong, and worldly wise

By simply meek; that suffering for Truth's sake

Is fortitude to highest victory,

And to the faithful Death the Gate of Life.

' x11, 11. 565b-7l

He has learned to allow God's "providence, power and good-
ness" to gain victory over Satan for him; he has learned
to be meek in order to overcome the "worldlystrong" and
"worldly wise." In all, Adam has learned "to walk / As in
his [God's] presence" at all times in intimate communion
with Him because

Hee to his own a Comforter will send,

The promise of the Father, who shall dwell

His Spirit within them, and the Law of Faith

Working through love upon thir hearts shall write,

To guide them in all truth.

XII, 11. 486-90

Adam is served by Christ as his redeemer, and by the Holy
Spirit as his "comforter" and constant guide. Therefore,
he is in perpetual devotion to God; his postlapsarian life,
because of divine grace, is theocentric.

Michael summarizes Adam's new-found devotional ex-

perience at the end of Paradise LoSt, when he states:

 

only add
Deeds to thy knowledge answerable, add Faith,
Add Virtue, Patience, Temperance, add Love,
By name to come call'd Charity, the soul
Of all the rest; then will thou not be loath
To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess
A paradise within thee, happier far.

XII, 11. 581b-87

 

112

Adam is "answerable" for the vastly-increased knowledge
about God which Michael's information has given him. He
has come to understand God's goodness in the events of his-
tory; now he must "add [good] deeds" with an attitude of
love toward God. It is love, the "soul of all the rest" of
the devout affections, that places God "above all other ob-
jects of affection" (CE, XVII, pp. 51 and 53). Before the'
fall, Adam had gratitude toward God for His beneficence
toward him, but that was an external knowledge of God; God
was mediated through His blessings. After the fall, on the
other hand, Adam comes to love God. This is an internal
experience, an active movement toward God on Adam's part.
God is mediated now by the "Comforter" and the Son, God's
personal agents of redemption.

With the Holy Spirit "who shall dwell ... within
[him]" (XII, l. 488), the regenerate Adam takes "paradise"
with him -- paradise within him. This is the felix culpa
of the experience of devotion in the poem for Adam and Eve.
Louis Martz speaks of this paradise within Adam as "the re-

stored Image of God in man" in The Paradise'Within (p. 200).

 

With the Comforter dwelling within him, Adam is in a con-
stant devotional relationship with God, walking "as in his
presence" throughout his life. Martz insists, as I have
throughout this chapter, that this image of God restored
(what I have called the devotional experience) is active,

not passive. He writes, "The image of God is manifested

113

not in the mere passive possession of certain qualities but

in the action, the power 59 use reason for its proper ends"

(p. xiv). It is God's grace and Adam's personal experience
of it -- not reason alone, pace Martz -- that accounts for

devotion in the poem. Adam's concluding attitude toward God
in Paradise Lost is an active, victorious, devotional love

of Him above everything else.

CHAPTER‘FOUR
PARADISE REGAINED

Paradise Regained presents many problems, at least two

 

of which are relative to the subject of devotion in the
poem. The first problem is a theological one, the question
of exactly how the Son of God "regains" paradise by foiling

Satan's temptations. In Paradise Lost, Adam and Eve are

 

regenerated and given a ”Comforter" who provides them with
a "paradise within ... happier far" (XII, l. 1588) than the
external paradise of Eden:

Hee [God] to his own a Comforter will send,

The promise of the Father, who shall dwell

His Spirit within them, and the Law of Faith,

Working through love, upon thir hearts shall write,

To guide them in all truth, and also arm

With spiritual Armor, able to resist

Satan's assaults, and quench his fiery darts.

XII, 11. 486-92

From these lines, it appears that paradise has already been
promised fallen man in his regeneration through God's grace.

This paradise is an inner one which Louis Martz identifies

in The Paradise Within as "the inward Light by which man is

 

enabled to see a Paradise that lies within the center of the

poem [Paradise LoSt] and within the center of the mind and

 

memory" (p. 115). How, then, does the Son in Paradise Re-

 

gained, who is the "True Image of the Father" (IV, 1. 596),

115

regain "lost Paradise" and provide a "fairer Paradise" for
Adam and Eve (IV, 11. 608 and 613)? It seems that, theolo-
gically at least, the Son's appointed task of redemption is
unnecessary in that the Father has already promised Adam and

Eve a greater paradise in Paradise Lost.

 

The resolution to this theological problem is simple

for Milton. In Paradise Lost, Michael merely reports the

 

information that God the Father has given him about His fu-
ture plan of redemption through the Son's crucifixion and

resurrection. At the end of Paradise Lost, redemption is

 

actually still eschatology. The poem presents prevenient
grace, not actual saving grace in operation: Christ has not

yet been born nor crucified by the end of Paradise Lost.

 

The "paradise within" of which Adam learns from Michael in

the poem, therefore, is yet future for him. In Paradise

 

Regained, however, Milton begins to show God's plan for man's
redemption in the Son's victories over Satan's temptations.
The Son earns the right to redeem man in his victories in

Paradise Regained. He does not, however, complete the task;

 

that would require Calvary.

The second problem in Paradise Regained relates to the

 

protagonist's character development. How can a poem which
has the Son of God as its protagonist allow for an experience
of devotion? Devotion, especially after its expression by

the fallen Adam and Eve in'Paradise Loat, involves a growth

 

116

on man's part toward God that seems impossible for the in-
carnate Son of God who would surely be in perfect and eternal

communication with the Father. In Paradise Loat, Adam and

 

Eve develop a devotion for the Father as their redeemer that
they did not possess when they were sinless. Because Adam's
sin separates him from God, he must learn to love God by
actively obeying Him and, paradoxically, by submitting his

will to the Father's. In Paradise Regained, however, the

 

Son is sinless (though not incapable of being tempted by
sin);1 how then can he learn-to love God, or even to obey
Him? Does Milton allow for the Son's character to develop
in the poem?

The answer to this question is more complex than the
resolution of the other, theological problem. Milton not
only allows for the Son to have a valid devotional exper-

ience in Paradise Regained, he also develops the character

 

of the Son through his devotional experience. In the course
of the narrative, the Son matures in his understanding of
his earthly role as man's savior. He develops in his char-
acter as the Son of Man to the point at which he is ready
to become man's savior at the conclusion of the poem. The
angels sing his praise on this theme in their final doxology:
For though that seat of earthly bliss be fail'd,
A fairer Paradise is founded now

For Adam and his chosen Sons, whom thou
A Savior art come down to reinstall.

IV, 11. 612-15

117

The significant point about the Son's devotion to the Father
in the poem is that he earns his right to become the savior
by demonstrating patience with Satan and active obedience
to the Father. In order for this development to occur,
Milton emphasizes the Son's humanity, while he subordinates
his divinity, especially in the temptations which precede
the final one at the tower. Because he concentrates more
on the Son's humanity than on his divinity, Milton can mature
his protagonist in his experience of devotion to the Father.

The opening lines of the poem present Milton's empha-
sis on the Son's humanity and indicate that the Son will de-
velop in the course of events in the poem:

I who erewhile the happy Garden sung,

By one man's disobedience lost, now sing

Recover'd Paradise to all mankind,

By one man's firm obedience fully tried

Through all temptation, and the Tempter foil'd

In all his wiles, defeated and repuls't,

And Eden rais'd in the waste Wilderness.

Thou Spirit who led'st this glorious Eremite

Into the Desert, his Victorious Field

Against the Spiritual Foe, and brought'st him thence

By proof th'undoubted Son of God, inspire,

As thou are wont, my prompted Song, else mute,

And bear through height or depth of nature's bounds

With prosperous wing full summ'd to tell of deeds

Above Heroic, though in secret done,

And unrecorded left through many an Age,

Worthy t'have not remain'd so long unsung.

I, 11. 1-17

In the first verse paragraph, the Son is the "one man"
whose "firm obedience" will win redemption for fallen man;
he will raise Eden in "the waste Wilderness" of this fallen

world. This is the keynote for the poem: as a man, the

118

Son learns to obey the Father and thereby defeat man's
"Spiritual Foe," Satan. _

In the next paragraph, the poet indicates that, by
virtue of the experience of the temptations in the desert,
the protagonist will emerge "by proof th'undoubted Son of
God." As a result of his victory in the wilderness against
Satan, the Son apparently proves himself worthy to be the
Savior. The Father makes it clear in His first speech of
the poem that the Son EEEEE the right to become the Savior.
He speaks of the Son as "This perfect Man, by merit call'd
my Son / [Who will] earn Salvation for the Sons of men" (I,
11. 166-67). By virtue of his merit, not because of his
divine nature, the Son is worthy to redeem man. Paradise
Regained, therefore, is Milton's account of the exercising
of the Son's virtue, under Satanic deceit and even attack,
to earn salvation for fallen men. In order to demonstrate
the process by which the Son earns his rights as Savior, the
poet emphasizes his humanity.

Much as a man might engage in an internal debate when
he faces uncertainty, the Son goes into the wilderness lost
in deep meditation regarding his "Godlike Office." He is
unaware of his hunger and thirst for forty days as he con-
siders how best to begin his public work. The poet describes
the Son's frame of mind when he enters the wilderness as

meditative:

119

One day [the Son] forth walk'd alone, the Spirit
leading,

And his deep thoughts, the better to converse

With solitude, till far from track of men,

Thought following thought, and step by step led on,

He enter'd now the bordering Desert wild,

And with dark shades and rocks environ'd round,

His holy Meditations thus pursu'd.

I, 11. 189-95

The Spirit leads the Son into the "bordering Desert wild."
However, the Son is oblivious to his surroundings, lost in
"deep thought" and "holy Meditations" regarding his earthly
ministry. In Book Two, the poet describes the Son's lonely
contemplations in a similar manner:

[The Son] with holiest Meditations fed,

Into himself descended, and at once

All his great work to come before him set;

How to begin, how to accomplish best

His end of being on Earth, and mission high.

II, 11. 110-14

The purpose for his being in the wilderness is to determine
a plan of action for "his great work" of redemption. He has
lived thirty years in obscurity and, sensing his need to
proclaim his purpose publicly, he seeks to devise a means

of accomplishing man's redemption. The Son's character de-

velopment in Paradise Regained involves his growth in under-

 

standing his earthly "mission high."

So significant is the presentation of the protagonist's
humanity that virtually no reader of ParadiSe Regained
denies the poet's emphasis on it. Don Cameron Allen attri-
butes the energy and success of the poem to "the fluctuation

in this man's [the Son's] knowledge of himself and of his

120

mission"; he states further that this fluctuation "Is what

makes Paradise Regained more taut in action than Johnson

 

perceived" (p. 118). There is an action in the poem for
Allen, the action within the protagonist's character. Bar-
bara Lewalski speaks of the action of the poem in her complex

analysis, "Theme and Action in Paradise Regained," as the

 

protagonist's "self-realization" (p. 322). By this term,
Lewalski means that the Son actualizes his knowledge about
himself (a subject to which I will return shortly) by virtue

of his obedience to the Father. In John'Milton: POet,‘Priest

 

and Prophet, John Spencer Hill understands the focus of

Paradise Regained to be the protagonist's "voyage of self

 

discovery ... and deepening self-awareness" (p. 178). In

The Paradise Within, Louis Martz fully agrees with these

 

other statements; in fact, Martz uses the same terminology

as Hill does, calling the action of Paradise Regained the

 

"self-discovery of the hero" (p. 180). The point is twofold.
The scholarship is virtually unanimous that Milton concen-

trates on the Son's humanity in Paradise Regained rather

 

than on his divinity.2 Second, because the Son is human,
the critics contend, his character develops in the poem;
such references as "self-realization" and "self-discovery"
suggest growth and change, not divine stasis.

The question of the final nature of the Son, be it
divine or human -- or a hypostatic union of the two -- is

a vexed one in the light of The ChriStian DoCtrine. There,

 

121

Milton subordinates the Son to the Father, denying that he
is divine in the same manner as the Father is:

and so he [the Son] explains himself in the same
chapter, after the Jews had misunderstood his saying,
[John] x. 38. "believe the works; that ye may know
and believe that the Father is in me, and I in him."
xiv. 10. "believest thou not that I am in the Father,
and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto
you, I speak not of myself, but the Father that
dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." Here he-[the
Son] evidently distinguishes the Father from himself
in his whole capacity, but asserts at the same time
that the Father remains in him; which does not denote
unity of essence, but only intimacy of communion.
Secondly, he declares himself to be one with the
Father in the same manner as we are one with him;
that is, not in essence, but in love, communion,

in spirit, in glory.

CE, XIV, pp. 211 and 213
The question is, does Milton depict the protagonist in Para-

dise Regained in this anti-Trinitarian manner? Don Cameron

 

Allen says not. He does find, however, a pattern to Milton's
characterization of the Son as sometimes divine, sometimes

human. He writes in The Harmonious VisiOn, "When Christ is

 

alone, he is human; when he is confronted by Satan, he
assumes divinity or, at least, is raised above humanity"
(p. 119). The suggestion is helpful but does not give an
entirely accurate account of what Milton does with the Son

in Paradise Regained. If the Son were divine in his debates

 

with Satan, then the poem would fall flat; there would be
no dramatic tension, for the contest would have a fore-or-
dained result. There is a valid tension in the poem, but it

comes from the development of the Son's character as he

122

progresses through patience to obedience to the Father
under Satan's pressure.
So important is the Son's humanity to the realization

of redemption in Paradise Regained that Mary Ann Radzinowicz

 

insists in ToWard‘"Samson'AgoniStes";'the'Growthof‘Milton's
Mipd that "the Son's humanity ... has regained lost para-
dise" (p. 334). It is because the Son -- as a man -- proves
himself worthy of redeeming men that he is victorious in

the poem. It is because he defeats Satan, not by virtue of
his divine nature (for that would make an unjust combat),
but in his humanity that the Son can "earn Salvation for

the sons of men" (I, l. 167). It is men who need salvation;
it is a man -- "th'exalted man" (I, l. 36) -- who wins it
for them. The regaining of paradise, therefore, is predi-
cated on "one man's firm obedience" (I, 1. 4), and that man
the second Adam.

Paradoxically, as the Son in ParadiSe Regained increases

 

in his knowledge of himself and his method of redeeming men,
he experiences devotion for the Father. Just as Adam comes
to know himself only by submitting obediently to God and

receiving His grace, so too the Son in Paradise Regained

 

experiences devotion for the Father only by coming to under-
stand himself fully. This self-knowledge ona the Son's part
involves both his nature and his mission. Mary Ann Raczino-
wicz gives us an admirably-brief statement of this paradox

in Toward "Samson AgOniStes":

 

123

The role of the Son is to achieve self-knowledge in

relation to a conception of God, and to act in con-

formity to that knowledge.

p! 246

Only by understanding his relationship with the Father can
the Son realize self-knowledge. That is, the Son comes to
understand his own nature only in relation to the Father.'
Moreover, he must "act in conformity to that knowledge."
This action is his mission -- to redeem fallen men. The
protagonist comes to realize in the poem, therefore, that
he is by nature and, as Hill suggests, by vocation man's
Savior (p. 193).

The Son's realization is that, with self-knowledge,
which is achieved only by submitting oneself to God, comes

proper devotion. This lesson is particularly appropriate

in Paradise Regained. Adam learns the same lesson: his

 

postlapsarian devotion demands this type of paradoxical
self-knowledge; his prelapsarian devotion is incomplete be-
cause he did not put this principle into action. The Son in

Paradise Regained, however, provides a paradigm for this

 

type of devotion. In describing Protestant devotion in

Protestant Poetics and'the Seventeenth Century Religious

 

Lyric, Barbara Lewalski explains how meditations such as

the Son's in Paradise Regained can epitomize this type of

 

devotional experience:

124

. Protestant meditation did engage the mind in an
effort to penetrate deeply into motives and motions
of the psyche, and also to understand the self as
the very embodiment of the subject meditated upon.

-The Word was still to be made flesh, though now in
the self of the meditator... . This emphasis con-
tributed to the creation with a new depth and sophis-
tication of psychological insight.

p. 150
Milton has a unique "meditator" in the Son: he is the
"Word made flesh"; therefore, he nathrally "embodies" the
"subject meditated upon" in himself. This is not to say
that it is the Son's divinity that allows the devotional

experience in Paradise Regained. As I have already stated,

 

the Son develops into a full understanding of himself as
Savior. This process of the Son's increasing awareness of
his nature and mission as Savior, gained in the face of
Satan's temptations, is exactly how the "Word" becomes
"flesh" in the poem. By learning his full humanity, the
protagonist becomes a prototype of devotion. But he comes
to this experience only through the experiences of the poem
and by careful introspection throughout the narrative.

The Son begins this process of "self-realization" and
devotion in his opening soliloquy, a passage of a hundred
lines in length in which he reflects upon his childhood
development. It is a spiritual autobiography that demon-
strates the Son's understanding of,proper devotion: devotion
involves the Son's deliberate chpice of the Father's will

over his own; paradoxically, however, this choice results in

 

125

the Son's growth in self-knowledge. Self-abnegation is
actually the beginning of self-realization. As he enters
the "desert wild," the Son is confused: "0 what a multi-
tude of thoughts," he says, "at once / Awak'n'd in me swarm"
(I, 11. 196-97). In an attempt to bring perspective to his
future mission, the Son meditates upon his past, commenting
first that he loved the scriptures, or "the Law of God" as
he calls them here, and made their reading his "whole delight"
(I, 11. 207-08). From the very early lines of the Son's
first speech, we are aware, therefore, that he knew he was
called to a mission: he was "born to promote all truth"

(I, 1. 206). We know also that he would find that mission
revealed in the scriptures. He remains true to these con-
victions throughout the poem.

The pressing problem for the Son at the beginning of
the poem is not what his task itself is, but rather how to
achieve it. It is with this question in mind that he seeks
solitude and "wanders" into the desert. As he meditates in
this first speech, he remembers that he used to think of
accomplishing his mission by military means. He reflects:

victorious deeds

Flam'd in my heart, heroic acts; one while

To rescue Israel from Roman yoke,

Then to subdue and quell o'er all the earth

Brute violence and proud Tyrannic pow'r,

Till truth were freed, and equity restor'd.

I, 11. 215-20

126

Still searching for his Father's plan, not his own, for him
to redeem man, the Son here considers establishing a poli-
tical kingdom in which "truth" and "equity" would overrule
violence and tyranny. While this is not the Father's mode
of redemption, the poet here establishes the Son's inclina-
tion toward active involvement to make a plan work. However,
the Son comes to understand that the Father does not intend
for him to establish a political kingdom yet, and so he re-
jects his military aspirations as inappropriate to his task.
The Son does come to realize by his consideration of mili-
tary strength, however, one important phase of his mission,
and that is "to rescue Israel from Roman yoke" (I, l 217).
He is learning here to submit to the Fatheris will in all
points of his mission -- method as well as purpose.

Having rejected martial force as an appropriate means
to complete his task, the Son turns to persuasion as the
possible mode of freeing Israel. He says that he

Yet held it more humane, more heavenly, first

By winning words to conquer willing hearts,

And make persuasion do the work of fear.

I, 11. 22-23
Significantly, the Son attempts to find a method of com-
pleting his purpose which is both human and divine. The
decision not to coerce men by martial force to submit to
the Father's redemption, but rather to win men's wills to

salvation indicates the Son's enlarged perspective of his

127

task. He understands early in the poem that men must wish
redemption of their own free wills.

After considering political and rhetorical methods of
achieving redemption, the Son returns to the scriptures, or
"the law and Prophets," and ponders again how to obey God's
mandate to him. His examination of the Old Testament turns
his attention toward the Jewish Messiah. He "soon found of
whom they spake": it was himself. 'What is more, he tells
us:

This chiefly, that my way must lie
Through many a hard assay even to the death,

Ere I the promised Kingdom can attain,

Or work Redemption for mankind, whose sins'

Fell weight must be transferr'd upon my head.

II, 11. 263-67
He comes to understand that he must suffer "through many a
hard assay even to the death" if he is to "work Redemption
for mankind."

No doubt the scriptural reference that the Son has in
mind as prophesying his suffering is in Isaiah:

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was
bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our
peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned
every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on
him the iniquity of us all.

Isaiah 53: 5-6
The Son's allusion to the Book of Isaiah here makes it

clear that he knows before he meets Satan that his task is

to be a painful one; yet he does not waver.

128

The Son's response to the prophesied suffering is the
climax of his first speech. "Yet neither thus dishearten'd
or dismay'd," he declares, "The time prefixt I waited" (I,

11. 268-69). Unlike Eve in‘Paradise'LOSt who misconstrues

 

her situation and chooses unwisely to act outside of God's
commands, the Son here chooses to subordinate his will to
the Father's and await His timing to begin his Messianic
responsibilities. The Son's decision to obey the Father
demonstrates the central paradox of his devotion throughout
the poem: by what appears at first to be passive submission,
the Son begins to earn the right to "work Redemption for
mankind" (I, l. 266). John Spencer Hill explains the para-

dox in John Milton: Poet, Priest and Prophet this way:

 

[The Son learns] to will to relax the will, a spir-
itual state which is the apex of self-knowledge and
the apotheosis of human potential.

pp. 182-83
The proper way to self-knowledge for the Son is to obey the
Father. The Son's path toward self-knowledge lies through
pain. To be man's savior, he must suffer; it is this suf-

fering that he begins to confront in Paradise Regained. As

 

Hill states, the Son "must assist divine disposal [the sote-
riological mission] by his own responsive choices" (p. 179).
The Son's response to the Father is to choose suffering.

This choice leads him both to knowledge of himself and devo-

tion to the Father.

129

Immediately following this decision to obey the Father
even in suffering, the Son goes to the river Jordan and, at
his baptism, hears the Father's public pronouncement of ap-
proval upon his obedience. He then obeys the promptings
"by some strong motion" to enter the wilderness and there
await further understanding from the Father:

And now by some strong motion I am led

Into this Wilderness, to what intent

I learn not yet; perhaps I need not know;

For what concerns my knowledge God reveals.

I, 11. 290-93
So the stage is set for the temptations that will test the
Son's "merit" to redeem mankind.

The testing of the Son's worthiness to be man's savior
involves the Son's patience in the face of Satan's temp-
taions in addition to his obedience to the Father. Satan
tests the Son's patience in that he tempts the Son to wrest
power to himself prematurely, before the Father's "time pre-
fixt" (I, l. 269). The Son's patience, which is a passive
virtue, involving the Son's ability to withstand Satan, and
his obedience, which is active in that it deliberately places
the Father's will above the Son's, are important expressions
of love for the Father. Barbara Lewalski summarizes these

two experiences in her commentary on the temptation at the

tower in "Theme and Action in Paradise Regained." She writes

 

that the Son's "journey to self-understanding ... images

forth the passive endurance he will display at the Crucifixion

130

[and] ... turn[s] this passion [the crucifixion] into a
dramatic act of conquest over Satan" (p. 344). Just as the
crucifixion is paradoxical in that it involves both suffering
and victory for the Savior, so too the temptations are para-
doxical in that they involve the Son's patience (his "en-
durance") and obedience (his "act of conquest"). Ultimately,
it is impossible to separate the Son's patience with Satan
from his obedience to the Father; they are two expressions
of the same devotional motive on the Son's part for his
whole earthly mission -- his willing love for the Father.

The narrative of the actual temptations is much leng-
thier and more complex in Milton's account of it than in any
of the gospel versions. Accordingly, scholars have divided
and arranged the temptations in various ways -- usually in
categories which assist their central arguments. In Jphp
Milton: Poet, Priest and Prophet, for instance, John Spencer
Hill capiesMilton's division of Paradise Regained into its
four books, each one furthering, in Hill's account, the Son's
sense of "vocation" (PP. 175-94). In The Milton Handbook,
James Holly Hanford divides the temptations as follows. The
first temptation is Satan's crude appeal to the Son's hun-
ger in Book One. The second temptation is that of the
"Kingdoms of the World," which includes the profuse banquet
at the beginning of Book Two; the discussion of "glory";

Parthia; Rome; and, finally, Greece. The third temptation,

 

131

according to Hanford, is that at the tower in Book Four (pp.
274-79). However, neither Hanford's nor Hill's approach
reveals to advantage the development of the Son's experience
of devotion in the course of the temptations. Let me, there-
fore, following Hanford's hint that the gospel account clo-
sest to Milton's narrative is Luke's (p. 271), return to the
fourth chapter of the Gospel of Luke. Luke recounts the
story this way: Satan tempts the Son first with food (verse
3); next he tempts with "all the kingdoms of the world"
(verses 5-7); and, finally, he tempts Christ at the "pin-
nacle" of the temple (verses 9-13). Accordingly, the temp-

tations in Paradise Regained would be structured in the fol-

 

lowing pattern. The first temptation includes the two temp-
tations of the Son's hunger, the crude appeal in Book One
and the luxurious banquet in Book Two. The second tempta-
tion is comprised of the "kingdoms of the world," including
Parthia, Rome and Greece. Satan tempts the Son here with

"glory" and "learning,' as well. The third temptation is
Satan's attempt to have the Son cast himself down from the
tower in Book Four. This sequence reveals the development
of the Son's patience into obedience.

The first temptation, that one which appeals to the
Son's bodily hunger after he has passed "four times ten
days" (II, 1. 245) in the wilderness without food, tests

the Son's patience in three ways. The most obvious test of

the Son's patience is of his physical endurance: will he,

132

after protracted hunger, change stbnes into bread to satisfy
his own needs? Even this simple temptation is a test of

the Son's earlier statement that "what concerns my knowledge
God reveals" (I, l. 293); the temptation questions whether
or not the Son can trust the Father to provide for his
physical needs as a man in time. The Son replies "sternly"
(I, 1. 407) to Satan's temptation and offers Job as an ex-
ample of godly patience in the face of physical adversity
(I, 11. 424-46). Clearly, the Son perceives this first
temptation as a test of his patient trust in the Father's
providence; he responds with a "confident reliance" in God's
provision for him (cf. CE, XVII, p. 67).

The second test of the Son's patience in the first
temptation comes with the "Table richly spread in regal
mode" (II, 1 340). This is a test of the Son's temperance.
The question here is not so much the need of food for sur-
vival; rather, it.is the degree of control which the Son
has over his senses. Appropriately, Jesus replies, "temp-
erately" to this temptation, condemning Satan's "pompous
delicacies" as "specious gifts" (II, 11. 378; 390-91). The
Son responds to the temptation to indulge himself hedonis-
tically with appropriate self-control.

Satan's final test in the first temptation is a subtle
attack on the Son's patient trust in the Father. This is
the temptation to wealth -- wealth that Satan appeals to as

a means to supply a myriad of other wants to which Satan

 

133

returns in his second temptation, that of the worldly king-
doms. The Son replies "patiently" (II, 1. 433), debating
logically with Satan the uses of wealth in principle. In
his final dismissal of Satan's testing of his physical de-
sires, the Son states:
and knowing worship God aright,
Is yet more Kingly; this attracts the Soul,
Governs the inner man, the nobler part.
II, 11. 475-77

This is a devotional expression of temperance, one which
predicates self-control on the "worship [of] God." There-
fore, the Son rests his refusal of Satan's first temptation
to allow him to supply the Son's bodily wants on his wor-
ship, or love, of the Father. The fact that the Son moves
from reacting "sternly" in his initial answer to Satan to
replying "patiently" at the end of the first temptation
demonstrates the care with which the poet develops the Son's
patience in this temptation. This temptation is the first
test of the Son's "endurance"; at this point it is his bodily
endurance after forty days of starvation that is under attack.

Satan's second temptation of the Son is the complex
series of tests which the kingdoms of the world present.
Satan taunts the Savior with examples of young emperors,
such as Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, who rose to
power earlier in their lives than the Son appears to be
rising; "Thy years are ripe, and over-ripe," he challenges

the Son (III, 1. 31). The Son's reply is a quiet, but

134

effective, repudiation of the temptation to premature poli-
tical glory and the wealth on which such fame is predicated.
The Son demonstrates his patience as he replies "calmly"
with this statement:

Thou neither dost persuade me to seek wealth

For Empire's sake, nor Empire to affect

For glory's sake by all thy argument.

III, 11. 44-47
The statement demonstrates the Son's perception of Satan's
lies about wealth, power and fame: recalling the earlier
temptation to wealth, the Son repudiates money as the proper
base of power; he rejects the temptation to seize political
power at this moment in his life because to do so would be
to disobey the Father whose time is "not yet ripe"; he int-
roduces the speech on false and true glory, denying that
political power is the proper source of glory. The Son
thinks of glory as a result of power that is properly used
to glorify God.

The Son's speech on the false "blaze of fame" as
opposed to "true glory and renown" (III, 11. 44-64) is an
important example of his experience of devotion. The speech
is a microcosm of the Son's devotion in the poem, modulating
his patience into obedience. The Son first explains the
error of Satan's perception of glory:

For what is glory but the blaze of fame,

The people's praise, if always praise unmixt?

And what the people but a herd confus'd?

III, 11. 47-49

135

The Son finds the opinions of the "miscellaneous rabble"
(l. 50) unreliable, even undesirable, as a measure of glory.
However, he does not conclude his statement with this re-
pudiation; rather, he immediately goes on to define "true
glory and renown":

This is true glory and renown, when God

Looking on th Earth, with approbation marks

The just man, and divulges him through Heaven

To all his Angels, who with true applause

Recount his praises.

III, 11. 60-64

True glory is God's "approbation,' or approval, not man's.
The Son seeks the applause only of the Father and the angels
because they praise the "just" man. Political glory, which
brings with it the adulation of people, has no attraction
for the Son. He has already determined to obey God, not to
rest in the praises of men. In his speech on fame, there-
fore, the Son moves beyond the repudiation of an evil (here
the sin of presumptuous political power) to the active com-
mitment to seeking the Father's approbation before that of
men.

Repeating Satan's earlier use of examples to affirm
his point, the Son next offers two "just" men who won God's
praise and who are, therefore, worthy of emulation: Job
and Socrates. One is a biblical hero, the other a classical
philosopher, but both are obedient heroes in the Son's eyes

because they were patient men. The Son's praise of Job's

and Socrates' patience is his most direct statement on the

136

subject of godly patience in the poem. in The'ChriStian

 

Doctrine, Milton defines patience as "that whereby we ac-
quieSce in the promises of God, through a confident reliance
on his divine providence, power and goodness, and bear ine-
vitable evils with equanimity, as the dispensation of the
supreme Father, and sent for our good" (CE, XVII, p. 67).

Job and Socrates each represents a different type of patience
in the poem, Socrates an example of "patience within [him]
self," and Job an example of "patience toward God," to use
Mary Ann Radzinowicz' terms in TOWard "Samson Agonistes"

(p. 238).

 

What better example of "patience toward God," or devo-
tional patience, than the biblical Job? The opening scene
in the Book of Job is in heaven, with a conversation in
progress between the Father and Satan about Job. "Hast thou
considered my servant Job," the Father asks Satan, "that
there is none like him in the earth?" (Job 1:8). The Father
offers Job to Satan as an example of a devout man.‘ Satan's
reply, "Doth Job fear God for nought?" (Job 1:9), challenges
the Father that Job does not love the Father for Himself,
but for the material abundance that God has bestowed upon
him. Clearly the writer of the Book of Job wishes his
readers to think in cosmological terms, the contest for
Job's soul emphatically one betweeh God and Satan. The

story is well-known: bereft of all his family except a

critical wife; spoiled of all his wealth; afflicted with

137

boils from head to heel; and saddled with self-righteous
"friends," Job waits patiently for God. He says,

Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall

I return thither; the Lord gave, and the Lord hath

taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

Job 1:21

Job patiently -- almost passively -- accepts God's sovereign
control over all that he possessed, now taken from him.

Job's patience is not limited, however, to passive ac-
ceptance of present evil. Patience in the face of present
"inevitable evils" is good, but "confident reliance" on God
for the future is better; in the nineteenth chapter of the
Bock of Job, the protagonist says, "I know that my redeemer
liveth," and again, "in my flesh I shall see God" (Job 19:’
25 and 26b). Job's patience extends beyond himself, even
beyond faith in God for the needs of the moment; Job's
faith is a type of devotional love for God that "confidently"
awaits God's vindication of his sufferings. 'The Son's offer
to Satan of Job as an example of "patience toward God" is
an implicit condemnation of Satan's impatience to be exalted
above God; more importantly, Job is an example of a man who
manifests devout patience in his life.

The Son contrasts Job with the example of Socrates, a
man whose patience is more passive than active:

Poor Socrates (who next more memorable?)

By what he taught and suffer'd for so doing,

For truth's sake suffering death unjust, lives now

Equal in fame to proudest Conquerors.

III, 11 96-99

138

Socrates was executed for allegedly teaching doctrines that
were contrary to the worship of state gods. The Son states
that Socrates was executed unjustly for seeking "truth."
Socrates is an example of "patience within oneself." He

did not have the Hebrew God, the Son's Father, to "inspire"
him as Job did. His patience, therefore, is a result of his
own character. Socrates' patience is a remarkable instance
of patience that comes from the strength of personal convic-
tions.-- not patience toward God.

The Son concludes his speech on the patience of Job and
Socrates by reminding Satan that he himself is patient be-
cause he has "confident reliance on [the Father's] divine
providence" in his life. He says,

Shall I seek glory then, as vain men seek

0ft not deserv'd? I seek not mine, but his
Who sent me, and thereby witness whence I am.

III, 11. 105-07
This is an example, not only of patience, but also of the

obedience which the Son learns in Paradise Regained. "Obe-

 

dience is that virtue whereby we propose to ourselves the
will of God as the paramount rule of our conduct, and serve

him alone," Milton writes in The Christian DOCtrine (CE,

 

XVII, p. 69). The Son is an emissary with a responsibility
to obey his Father. All of Satan's temptations, in one way
or another, tempt him to make his own will and his desires

supreme, not the Father's. Therefore, the most significant

practical expression of devotion in the poem is the Son's

139

obedience to his Father's will. It is important that, in
the words with which the Son finally rejects the temptation
to political glory, obedience shows love: his obedience is
a "witness" of the motivation for his mission, the Father's
offer of grace to fallen men.

Obedience is certainly important for Milton; it is in

Adam's case in Paradise Lost as well as in the Son's case

 

in Paradise Regained. But the motive for obedience is more

 

important for Milton. Adam obeys because of the love which
God's goodness prompts in him after the fall (cf. PL, XII,
11. 469-84); in Paradise Regained, the Son obeys the Father

 

because of the love he bears Him. Immediately after the
Son's statement that he seeks God's glory, not his own,
Satan replies that even God "seeks glory"; therefore, if the
Son is to be like his Father, Satan suggests, he must seek
glory, too. The Savior's reply is quick and incisive; it
is "fervent" because the Son perceives the Father's charac-
ter to be impugned by Satan:
since his word all things produc'd,
Though chiefly not for glory as prime end,
But to show forth his goodness, and impart
His good communicable to every soul
Freely; of whom what could he less expect
Than glory, and benediction, that is thanks?
III, 11. 122-27
The Son makes it clear to Satan that, though God is worthy

of all glory for His having created everything that is, His

tmotive in creating was to show His goodness. Therefore,

140

not because God created for glory, but because He created
at all, the Savior argues, He deserves praise. This is de-
vout love, or the preference of God "above all other objects
of affection" and "the desire to bring Him glory" (CE, XVII,
pp. 51 and 53). The son's love for the Father motivates his
desire to glorify Him, not himself. This is important in
Milton's view of obedience. The Son is not God's puppet in
Paradise Regained: he is an individual with free will who
shows his love of the Father by his unforced obedience to
His will.

With his accounts of the glories of Parthia and Rome,
Satan redoubles his temptations of the Son to disobey the
Father's will in his earthly ministry. Ironically, however,
the Son learns more about his work of redemption from Satan's
attacks. In the early verses of Book Four, the Son demon-
strates that he, like Job and Socrates, is a patient hero.
His temptation of the Savior to temporal, political glory
having failed, Satan tempts with classical eloquence. The
Son rejects this temptation on the basis that his kingdom
is yet future. He can wait, he says:

Know therefore when my season comes to sit

On David's Throne, it shall be like a tree

Spreading and overshadowing all the Earth

IV, 11. 146-48
And of my Kingdom there shall be no end:
Means there shall be to this, but what the means,

Is not for thee to know, nor me to tell.

IV, 11. 151-53

141

The Savior is willing to wait patiently for the time ap-
pointed in the Father's will to take his throne. He is un-
willing to wrest power to himself too soon and thereby be
forced to make use of Satan's power to achieve his goal.
Though the Savior's comment suggests that his knowledge of
his future kingdom is greater than Satan's, he still demon-
strates patience; that is, he has a "confident reliance on
[God's] divine providence, power and goodness" and he is,
therefore, willing to bear Satan's onslaughts "with equanim-
ity, as the dispensation of the Father, sent for [his] good"
(CE, XVII, p.67). The Son's patience is not fatalism and
passivity. It is confidence in God's plan, or His provi-
dence, and His ability (or "power") to fulfill that plan in
men's lives through his own obedience. In his deliberately
submitting his will to the Father's, the Son's patience be-
comes active obedience.

Satan's most intensive and subtle temptation of the
Son is his final volley in the temptation of the kingdoms
of the world. He marshals all of his deceit and subtlety
to win the Son away from Hebrew wisdom to the best of Gen-
tile wisdom, namely Greek culture. He wishes the Son to
_grant that Gentile wisdom is as legitimate as the canonical
Hebrew wisdom. The heart of this temptation is here:

All knowledge is not couch't in Moses' Law,
The Pentateuch or what the Prophets write;

142

The Gentiles also know, and write, and teach
To admiration, led by Nature's light.

IV, 11. 225-28

The first implication of this statement is that Hebrew wis-
dom is incomplete in that it needs Gentile wisdom to augment
it. The second implication is that Gentile wisdom is su-
perior to Hebrew because it lacks the supernatural inspira-
tion of the Hebrew writers and yet still communicates truth.
Were the Savior to grant this, he would no longer have an
adequate base on which to predicate his call to redeem.man-
kind and, therefore, could not be obedient to the call at
all. Early in the poem, we must remember, he had determined
from the scriptures alone that he was called to redeem men
(cf. 1, 11. 207-08), and now that foundation is under attack.

Satan's temptation is lengthy and compelling. He moves
on quickly from his premise that the Hebrew scriptures are
inadequate by themselves to provide truth, to "gloze" it over
with appealing examples of the beauties of Gentile litera-
ture. Specifically, Satan presents Plato and his Academy
as a pristine pastoral retreat. Plato is the "Attic Bird"

"summer long." Even the

who "warbles" notes of wisdom all
"bees' industridus murmur oft invites / To studious musing"
(IV, 11. 245-59). Satan perverts the pastoral into a stu-
dious, but finally passive, retreat from the Savior's call

to redeem mankind. This temptation is to passive meditation

without practical good works; such a posture would be

143

disobedience of the Father on the Son's part and an inade-
quate expression of active devotion for the Father.

Satan further amplifies his temptation with references
to Greek music, oratory and phi1030phy, all intended to dis-
sipate the Son's attention upon obeying God's mandate into
an indefinite postponement of the responsibility. Satan
tempts the Son with "Aeolian charms and Dorian Lyric Odes,"
with the works of "the famous Orators" and finally with
"sage Philosophy next," Socrates, the Peripatetics, Epi-
cureans and Stoics offered as specific examples (IV, 11.
257-80). The Son listens patiently to the long list of
Greek writers.

The Son's patience with Satan is not, however, acqui-
escence. Very quickly, he focuses his repudiation of Satan's
temptation on his initial premise that Gentile literature
provides legitimate truths that the Hebrew scriptures lack:

Alas! What can they teach, and not mislead;

Ignorant of themselves, of God much more,

And how the world began, and how man fell

Degraded by himself, on grace depending?

Much of the soul they talk, but all awry,

And in themselves seek virtue, and to themselves
All glory arrogate, to God give none.

IV, 11. 309-15
This is the Son's most categorical rejection of Satan's
temptation using Gentile glory and culture. The Son claims
that the Gentiles are wrong in that they neither understand
God nor give glory to Him for what He has done. He makes

it clear that the proper perspective on God is to love Him:

144

He has created all things and, in His grace, He has provided
a plan of redemption for fallen men. Therefore, the Son
defends his obedience to the Father on the basis of his love
' for Him; Gentile learning, then, is ultimately inadequate

as devotion because it does not finally take God into account
as creator or redeemer.

Far from having achieved their aim of destroying the
Savior, Satan's temptations have only helped the Son to
articulate a defense of his obedience to God. That defense
is his love of God above everything else, because of His
goodness to men in creation and redemption. It is in this

sense that the Son is the "second Adam" in Paradise Regained.

 

Adam and Eve proved their disdain for God in their disobe-

dience in the garden of Eden in Paradise Lo$t; the Savior

 

shows his love for God in his obedience to Him in Paradise

Regained.

 

The temptation of "all the kingdoms of the world,"
especially the powerful appeal of Greek learning, is a cri-
sis in the Son's developing devotional experience in Para-

dise Regained. The Son demonstrates his patience, rooted

 

in his worship of God, in his rejection of Satan's first
temptation to satisfy his bodily hunger by reverting to
means outside of the Father's provision for him; this temp-
tation manifests the Son's devout patience predicated on

the Father's care for the Son.

145

The second temptation, however, demands more of the
Son than his passive refusal; it demands that he put for-
ward some active alternatives to Satan's offerings. Against
Satan's temptation of false glory, the Son espouses the
"true glory and renown" of God's "approbation" (III, 11. 60
-61). Against the natural wisdom of the Gentiles which
Satan suggests is necessary for a man to have complete
knowledge, the Son champions Hebrew wisdom alone. Truth,
he says, rests only in that literature in which

God is prais'd aright, and Godlike men,
The Holiest of Holies, and his Saints:
Such are from God inspir'd, not such from thee [Satan].
IV, 11. 348-51

This second temptation, then, prepares the Son for Satan's
final attack by soliciting his active obedience to the
Father; consistently aware of always obeying the Father, he
clearly declares himself the Messiah in this temptation.

William G. Riggs comments on the effects of temptation on

the Savior in The Christian Poet in "Paradise Lost":

 

In contemplation of his own acts and potential for
action, the Miltonic hero [here, the Son] discovers
God in himself. Through temptation he is perfected
in obedience and rectitude.
p. 188
The Son enters the final temptation ready to secure his
calling as mankind's redeemer by defeating Satan one more

time.

The Son does indeed defeat Satan one more time, though

146

the outcome of the conflict is never in doubt, of course,
for the reader who knows the New Testament. There is,
however, a major difference in the presentation of the Son's
defeat of Satan at the tower. No longer does the poet qua-
lify the Son's response to Satan. Earlier in the poem, the
poet notes that the Son replies to Satan in a variety of
ways: he replies, for instance, "sternly" (I, 1. 407);
"temperately" (II, 1. 378); "patiently" (II, 1. 433);
"calmly" (III, 1.43); "fervently" (III, 1. 121); and
"sagely" (IV, 1. 285). Not once in the first two temptations
does the Son reply to Satan without the poet's qualification.
It is significant that, in the final temptation, the poet
introduces the Son's climactic repudiation of Satan with the
simple "To whom thus Jesus" (IV, 1. 560). The statement
which follows is remarkable because of its brevity and its
effect on the Tempter:

Also it is written,

Tempt not the Lord thy God, he said and stood.
But Satan smitten with amazement fell.

IV, 11. 560b-62
The Son merely "stood." Apparently by the very power of
his character, the Son here vanquishes Satan whose test of
the Savior is ultimately tempting God the Father. In his
humanity, the Son defeats Satan; by virtue of the patience
and obedience which he learned under Satan's attacks, the

Son overcomes the Tempter.

147

The Savior's defeat of the Tempter is the climax of

Paradise'Regained. The brevity of the poet's narration of

 

the event is a remarkable break with his earlier practice;
as a result, the event is all the more effective for its
intensity. A.S.P. WOodhouse notes that the Son's action at
the tower is the "supreme act of obedience and trust."3
The Son's confident refusal to be trapped by Satan to do
anything but stand is the final active assertion of his
obedience to the Father to await His time, and his trust in

God to defend him at the moment against Satan's attempts to

harm him. In John Miltbn: Poet,'Priest and Prophet, Hill

 

writes of the Son's final action at the pinnacle as "mani-
festing once again that selfless patience and obedience to
the Father" (p. 192). Hill, too, regards the Son's strength
to be the result of his developing character in the narra-
tive. In fact, Hill thinks of the tower temptation as the
one in which the Son reverses combat roles with Satan and
takes the offensive against man's "spiritual Foe" (I, l. 10).
Hill states, "Action, formerly the essence of temptation,
is now, as the Son embarks on his messianic mission, en-
joined as a vocational necessity" (p. 193). Seen in this

light, the temptations in Paradise Regained try the Son's

 

merit to be man's savior and find it adequate. The Son
progresses beyond patience with Satan to obedience to the

Father. The action is now the Savior's, not Satan's.

148

This is why the angels praise the Savior at the end
of the poem: he has "recovered paradise [for] all mankind /
By [his] firm obedience" to God's command (I, 11. 3-4).
They are grateful that, because of what the Savior has done,
man will receive grace:

For though that seat of earthly bliss be fail'd,

A fairer Paradise is founded now

For Adam and his chosen Sons, whom thou

A Savior art come down to reinstall.

IV, 11. 612-15

The Savior does not create a new paradise; he merely "rein-
stalls" the one that had been'lost by Adam's and Eve's dis-

obedience. This restored paradise, however, is a paradise

within -- as it is at the end of ParadiSe Lost. It is, as

 

Louis Martz indicates in The Paradise Within, the "restored

 

image of God in man, the paradise within" (p. 200) that the
Son gives to fallen men. In the words of the angels' dox-
ology, it is the

True Image of the Father, whether thron'd

In the bosom of bliss, and light of light

Conceiving, or remote from Heaven, enshrin'd

In fleshly Tabernacle, and human form,

Wand'ring the Wilderness, whatever place,

Habit, or state, or motion, still expressing

The Son of God.

IV, 11. 596-602a

The Savior is able to "earn" man's redemption at the end of

Paradise Regained because his obedience to the Father has

 

made it possible to "reinstall"gthe image of the Father in

regenerate men. The Son's devotional experience in Paradise

149

Regained is, as Barbara Lewalski suggests about Protestant
devotion in the seventeenth century, a process whereby
the "Word" becomes "flesh."

The Son's victory is not his alone; he regains paradise
for fallen men. Milton's presentation of the Son's actions

in Paradise Regained, therefore, "represent[s] the process

 

of recovery, the recovery of a paradise within" (Riggs,

p. 187) for everyman. The Son is not only an image of the
Father, he is also an image fp£_man of paradise regained.

He is, in Riggs' term, an exemplar, "a crucial instance of
the labor all men must undertake" (p. 186) if they are to

realize the paradise within that the Savior's obedience to
the Father makes possible. He is an example of the exper-
ience of devotion which the first Adam's fall necessitates
and the second Adam's obedience makes possible. The Son's

experience of devotion in Paradise Regained is, in Milton's

 

view, an example of the devotion that is possible for all
men, not the theological premise on which God's offer of
devotion to fallen men is predicated. It is, finally, in

his full humanity, not his divinity, that the Son experiences
devotion for the Father developing in the poem; it is in

the Son's humanity that Milton finally manifests the ex-

 

CHAPTER FIVE
SAMSON AGONISTES

In the capture and apparent defeat of the biblical
hero, Samson, Milton gives his clearest expression of the
experience of devotion. The choice of Samson as the prota-
gonist of his final poem frees Milton from the encumbrances
that attached to the devotional experience in both Paradise

Lost and Paradise Regained. In Paradise Lost, Milton faced

 

the difficulty of providing a valid experience of devotion
for his readers in the innocent experiences of Adam and Eve
before they fell. It is sin, ironically, that completes
Adam and Eve's experience of devotion and demands that their
obedience to and love for God be active and voluntary ex-
pressions of devotion on their parts. For two-thirds of

the poem, therefore, Milton must be careful to insure that
Adam and Eve's innocent devotion does not seem inadequate

for a fallen reader. In Paradise Regained Milton must main-

 

tain a finely-tuned tension between the two natures of his
protagonist as God and man if he is to express a mature de-
votion at all. Because of the problems that an over-emphasis
early in the poem on the Son's divinity would present to

his experience of devotion, the poet concentrates on deve-

loping the humanity of the Son under Satan's temptations so

151

as to demonstrate that the Son is worthy to become man's
Savior. With Samson, however, Milton is free of both the
untried innocence of Adam and Eve in the first eight books

of Paradise LoSt and the unexercised sinlessness of the

 

Son as he enters the desert in Paradise'Regained. Samson

 

is a fallen man. In regards to the experience of devotion,

Samson Agonistes is Milton's'EVery‘man.1

 

Samson Agonistes begins with the protagonist apparently

 

defeated. Both internal and external forces in Samson's
life have combined before the beginning of the poem to bring
him down in defeat. Once Israel's champion against the
Philistines, Samson is now "eyeless in Gaza"; he has been
blinded by his captors and imprisoned "at the Mill with
slaves" (l. 41). What is worse, he is soon to be called
upon to "stain [his] vow of Nazarite" (l. 1386) and become
the entertainment at the Philistines' celebrationof Dagon's
victory over Samson's God, Jehovah. All of this misery is
the immediate result of Dalila's betrayal of Samson -- her
husband, in Milton's account -- to her people. In Milton's
view, however, the cause of Samson's initial fall is not
the faithlessness of a "heathen" woman, but the weaknesses
of Samson himself.

Samson's weaknesses are his pride, his impatience, his
disobedience to God and his fear that he has been cast off

by God forever. It is these weaknesses that the action of

152

the poem forces Samson to confront. Significantly, Samson
does not examine himself apart from God; rather, by exami-
ning himself in relation to God, he learns the humility and
patience which give him the obedience and hope that he needs
to serve God once again. The action of the poem is the dev-
elopment in Samson's character of devotion to God. There
are no angels, no direct revelations sent from God and no
supernatural appearances by Satan in the poem to share the
reader's attention with Samson. There is not even any leng-
thy claim to divine inspiration by Samson that might direct
the reader's attention away from the simple, natural devel-
opment of the protagonist's character; only once in the poem
does Samson lay claim to any "inspiration" which affects his
action, and that is to "some rousing motions" which "dispose'

his thoughts to "something extraordinary" (11. 1382-83).

In Toward "Samson Agonistes": the Growth of Milton's Mind,

 

Mary Ann Radzinowicz notes that there is not even a poet-
speaker, apart from the fallible chorus, to comment on the
action of the poem (p. 185). Milton gives us Samson alone

with his visitors, "struggling,' as Galbraith M. Crump says

in his "Introduction" to Twentieth-Century Interpretations

 

 

of "SamSon Agonistes", to "define himself within the vast
dimensions of a theocentric universe."2 This is the focus
of the poem: Samson and his God.

The action of the poem, then, is the development of

153

Samson's character specifically from pride to humility, from
impatience to patience, from disobedience to obedience, and
from despair to hope which results from his devotion to God.

John Spencer Hill perceives the action of Samson Agonistes

 

to be the protagonist's "progressively more acute spiritual
awareness"(p. 151); Hill's comment imples that Samson matures
spiritually in a teleological manner, one lesson predicated
on the previous one. Balachandra Rajan disagrees with Hill

on this point. In The Lofty Rhyme, Rajan states that Samson's

 

growth is not a progressive movement toward "self-knowledge,"
but rather a "movement into dejection and out of it."3 While
there is a "restoration" (p. 144) of Samson's equilibrium
for Rajan, it results from dejection.4 I think that Mary
Ann Radzinowicz understands Samson's character development
correctly when she states that he matures spiritually in the
poem, though not always progressively. This, she states, is
normal for a fallen man. As proof, Radzinowicz quotes Samson
on Dalila:

So let her go, God sent her to debase me,

And aggravate my folly who committed

To such a viper his most sacred trust
Of secrecy, my safety, and my life.

11. 999-1002
Commenting on this speech, she observes that "Samson's rege-
neration does not trace a simple curve; like all suffering
men, he can and does lapse from new levels of insight back

into old positions. Such regressions testify to the painful

154

nature of change and permit change at a pace tolerable to
the human psyche" (p. 237). There is development, there-
fore, though not a simple one, for Samson.

It is important to recognize that Milton develops the
character of Samson through action. Were Samson to remain
"blind to the spiritual significance of his suffering," as
William G. Madsen asserts he does in "From Shadowy Types to
Truth" (p. 95), his final act of pulling down the temple on
both the Philistines and himself would be insignificant. If
Samson does deve10p, he must do so in response to his suf-
fering. The Chorus sees Samson's act as the inscrutable
vindication of God's Providence that "All is best, though
we oft doubt / What th'unsearchable dispose / Of highest
wisdom brings about" (11. 1475-77). Manoa, the Israelite
who least perceives God's hand in Samson's life, finds "no
time for lamentation now" (1. 1078) when he hears of Samson's
death. And Samson himself predicts that "This day will be
remarkable in my life / By some great act, or of my days the
last" (11. 1388-89). Samson's character develops in relation
to God.' It is not, as Madsen insists, that Samson does not
develop spiritually; it is rather that he is engaged through-
out the action of the poem in "an internal struggle toward

self-knowledge,‘ or a psychomachia (Crump, p. 6). Samson
develops spiritually as a fallen man does -- imperfectly and

' N
tentatively. Radzinowicz aptly declares that the meaning of

155

Samson's life is "to grow toward knowledge of God. ... A more
profound faith ... then emerge[s] in action" (p. 250).

Samson's prime character flaw is his pride. He has
done great things for God and Israel, delivering them tempo-
rarily from the hand of the Philistines. Even in prison at
the beginning of the poem, he displays self-pity which is a
manifestation of his pride; he chafes under his incarceration.
From the outset of the poem, he struggles with his self-pity
on the one hand and his personal responsibility for his own
calamity on the other. Even though the feast in honor of
Dagon provides him with a rest from his forced labor, he
cannot escape his own shame. He laments:

Ease to the body some, none to the mind

From restless thoughts, that like a deadly swarm

Of hornets arm'd no sooner found alone,

But rush upon me thronging, and present

Times past, what once I was, and what am now.

0 wherefore was my birth from Heaven foretold

Twice by an Angel?

11. 18-24a

These are not the words of a man who accepts responsibility
for his actions and repents of his wrongs. Samson shifts
responsibility onto God whose angels foretold his great des-
tiny and then betrayed him along the way by allowing him to
be ignominiously defeated. Samson regards himself as a vic-
tim of his own thoughts, which, like a "deadly swarm of hor-
nets," descend upon him the minute that he is at rest from

his physical labor, "found alone.‘ He depicts himself as the

156

receiver of wrongs, not their originator. This is the first
picture that the reader has of Samson: with a great deal

of self-pity,'he laments the lot which has been forced upon
him.

In his first speech, Samson demonstrates his injured
pride in his lament over the extremity of his fall from
national deliverer to slave. In anguish, he cries out:

0 glorious strength

Put to the labor of a Beast, debas't

Lower than bondslave! Promise was that I

Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver;

Ask for this great Deliverer now, and find him

Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves,

Himself in bonds under Philistian yoke.

11. 36-42
Samson's concern is not the damage that his defeat has done
to the name of God, nor even that Israel still groans under
cruel foreign domination; he is concerned only with his per-
sonal humiliation in serving the Philistines as a slave.
He is "debas't," he says, an indication of his damaged pride.
The bitterness with which he says, "Ask for this great De-

liverer now,‘ is a particularly poignant innuendo that God
has betrayed His "promise" in not allowing him to deliver
Israel from the Philistines.

It is not that Samson in pitying his lot in life so
intensely is ignorant of his irresponsibility. Briefly,

he recognizes that perhaps he had some responsibility for

his own incarceration. "What if all foretold / Had been

157

fulfill'd but through mine own default," he asks; "Whom
have I to complain of but myself?" (11. 44-46). This is
his first, tentative admission of guilt: it is possible
that he, not God, is responsible for the fact that he has
not yet delivered Israel from the Philistines. However,

he soon relapses into self-pity, this time regarding his
blindness, and once again shifts the responsibility for his
downfall off of his own shoulders. "Why am I thus bereav'd
thy prime decree [of sight]?" he questions, indicating that
he perceives Providence to have allowed his fall.

With the despair of the closing lines of his first
speech, Samson falls into intense self-pity. He has, he
says,

a life half dead, a living death,

And buried; but 0 yet more miserable!

Myself my Sepulcher, a moving Grave,

Buried, yet not exempt

By privilege of death and burial

From worst of other evils, pains and wrongs,

But made hereby obnoxious more

To all the miseries of life,

Life in captivity

Among inhuman foes.

11. 100-09
The oxymorons suggest the extremity of Samson's emotion and
confusion. Because of his blindness and incarceration, he
is "a living death" and "a moving grave." Unlike the dead,
however, he is not exempt from suffering "evils, pains and

wrongs," and from having to live life among "inhuman foes."

The reader's first view of Samson's character is of a human

158

being who is defeated, inwardly as well as outwardly. Yet
this is the man whom Milton makes into a hero before the
poem is over by giving him the experiences that develop a
devotional attitude in him.

Manoa's visit early in the poem brings Samson face to
face with his own pride. Manoa, Samson's father, counsels
him to repent but not to demand punishment from God pride-
fully. His advice to Samson is that he should ask mercy,
not justice, of God:

Him who imploring mercy sues for life,

Than who self-rigorous chooses death as due;

Which argues over-just, and self-displeas'd

For self- offence, more than for God offended.

11. 512-15
Manoa is clearly aware of his son's pride and he speaks in
-an effort to make Samson recognize his pride himself. It
would be impious pride and presumption on Samson's part for
.him to take God's place by demanding a harsher punishment of
himself than God demands.

Samson understands the implications of Manoa's argu-
ment perfectly, but he refuses to beg God for mercy. He is
still proud. "His pardon I implore," Samson replies; "but
as for life, / To what end should I seek it?" (11. 521-22).
Samson seems to consider his judgment regarding his life to
be superior to God's. He laments that, even though he was

gifted by God with superhuman strength and "all mortals [he]

excell'd" (l. 532), he still fell to his pride and then into

159

voluptuousness:

Immeasurable strength they might behold

. In me, of wisdom nothing more than mean;
This with the other should, at least, have pair'd,
These two proportion'd ill drove me transverse.
11. 206-09

Had God given him the proportionate wisdom to handle his
strength well, he argues, he would not have fallen. He ac-
cuses God of being remiss in not giving him wisdom equal to
his physical strength. Clearly, Samson transfers blame to
God and, therefore, avoids having to accept responsibility
for himself; God's "disproportioned" gifts to Samson ruined
him. This is "pride toward God," the first weakness that
leads to his defeat.

Not only does Samson blame God for his fall, but he
also blames the leaders of the nation of Israel for not
recognizing their deliverance at his hand. "That fault
[Israel's continued enslavement to the Philistines], I take
not on me," he states, "but transfer / On Israel's Gover-
nors" (11. 241-42) who did not accept Samson's heroic ex-
ploits as God's method for their deliverance. Samson's
condemnation of the leaders is both scathing and character-
istic:

Had Judah that day join'd, or one whole Tribe,
They had by this possess'd the Towers of Gath.

11. 265-66
Had they taken the advantage which Samson afforded them, he

argues, the Israelite governors could be free. But they

160

chose "to love Bondage more than Liberty, / Bondage with
ease than strenuous liberty" (11. 271-72), Samson further
laments. He himself chafes horribly under his bondage, he
disdains those who choose servitude voluntarily.

Ironically, it is Manoa's criticism of God's provi-
dence that prompts Samson to rise above self-pity to true
humility. Manoa says to Samson:

Alas! methinks whom God hath chosen once

To worthiest deeds, if he through frailty err,

He should not so o'erwhelm, and as a thrall

Subject him to so foul indignities,

Be it but for honor's sake of former deeds.

11. 368-72

As Samson's father, Manoa is sensitive to the injustice of
his son's situation. Even if God does not respect Samson
after he has fallen, Manoa thinks, He should at least honor
his previous heroic deeds. That this statement prompts
Samson's penitence is ironic because earlier in the poem
Samson, as well as Manoa, had been critical of God's provi-
dence. Samson had taxed "divine disposal," as the chorus
accused him (1. 210), when he lamented the fact that God
had not given him wisdom adequate to handle his physical
strength (11. 206-09). In his conversation with Manoa, how-
ever, Samson acknowledges his own responsibility for his
fall:

Appoint not heavenly disposition, Father,

Nothing of all these evils hath befall'n me
But justly; I myself have brought them on,

161

Sole Author I, sole cause: if aught seem vile,
As vile hath been my folly, who have profan'd
The mystery of God giv'n me under pledge

Of vow.

11. 373-79a
He realizes that it was his own "profane," or unholy, atti-
tude toward God's gift of strength that caused his defeat,
not God's malignity. For the first time in true humility,
Samson acknowledges his "unworthiness in the sight of God"
(CE, XVII, p. 65). It is when Samson sees himself as God
sees him that he recognizes his unworthiness and submits
himself before God.5 Humility comes only as he focuses on.
God, not himself; when he thinks of his sinful attitude to-
ward God, he loses self- pity and his pride. Furthermore,
he realizes his fault in serving Dalila, not God, with his
divinely-given strength. With this admission of failure,
Samson finds his "former servitude" to Dalila "ignoble, /
Unmanly, ignominious, infamous, / True slavery, and blind-
ness worse than this, / That say not how degenerately [he]
serv'd" (11. 416-19). When he realizes that he has debased
his God-given strength to serve a woman, he admits his per-
sonal responsibility for his defeat and slavery.

Samson's marriage to Dalila points up his second weak-
ness, namely his "impatience under the divine decrees" (CE,
XVII, p. 69). No doubt sincerely eager to fulfill the
divinely-appointed task of liberating Israel from the Phil-

istines, Samson married Dalila, planning to use her to

162

infiltrate the Philistines. Manoa, however, understands
that there was more to Samson's motivation for marrying
Dalila than a desire for Israel's liberty. He doubts Samson:

I cannot praise thy marriage choices, Son,

Rather approv'd them not; but thou didst plead

Divine impulsion prompting how thou might'st

Find some occasion to infest our Foes.

11. 420-23
Using the excuse that he was furthering his divine calling,
Samson married Dalila in fact to satisfy his own lechery,6
and, in so doing, "presumed" upon God's timing for the de-
liverance of his people.7 Samson was impatient to fulfill
his calling; he was unwilling to await God's time for His
deliverance of the Israelites from Philistine bondage, and,
therefore, used Dalila as a means to accomplish his task.

It is not Dalila, however, but Harapha who is the cata-
lyst whereby Samson learns patience. Harapha ridicules
Samson's pride as a warrior and calls his shame upon his
head. Harapha shows insolence when he needles Samson with
his claim, "To combat with a blind man I disdain, / And thou
has need much washing to be toucht" (11. 1106-07). Samson
responds to Harapha's malicious taunt with amazing patience.
He does not attack him, not does he verbally lash out at
him; he simply reminds Harapha of Dalila's treachery -- all
the more heinous in Milton's narrative than in the biblical

story because Milton makes Dalila Samson's wife. Samson

informs Harapha that his "trust is in the living God" (1. 1140)

163

and then challenges him to combat to prove which god, Dagon
or Jehovah, is stronger. Though this is a simple statement
on Samson's part, it is significant in that it shows some
patience with God's providence. Samson begins to perceive

of his conflict with Harapha as God's contest with Dagon.

He "acquiesce[s] in the promises of God, through a confident
reliance on his divine providence, power and goodness, and
bear[s] inevitable evils with equanimity, as the dispensation
of the Father, and sent for [his] good" (CE, XVII, p. 67).
This is Milton's definition of devout patience in The Chris-

tian Doctrine. Because Samson has come to realize that "all

 

the contest is now / Twixt God and Dagon" (11. 461-62), not
between Samson and Harapha, he can accept "inevitable evils
‘with equanimity" and wait for God to vindicate Himself.
Ironically, therefore, Harapha's visit begins to develop
patience as a quality in Samson's character.

Samson's patience is not, however, perfect even after
Harapha has tested it. Even though Samson acknowledges to
Harapha that God has "inflicted" the "evils" of his present
condition upon him "justly" (11. 1169-71), he still relapses
easily into the old impatient warrior. When Harapha calls
him a "Murderer, a Revolter, and a Robber," Samson lashes
'back at him with "Tongue-doughty Giant, how dost thou prove
the these?" (11. 1180-81). Samson's pride surfaces again --

naturally enough. Milton does not remove Samson's pride

164

at once; that would be psychologically unrealistic, given
the extent to which pride ruled Samson's life before the
action of the poem. But Milton does test it again by Hara-
pha's insults and thereby underscores the difficulty that
Samson has in overcoming his pride and impatience. John
Spencer Hill is certainly correct when he says that Harapha
does not teach Samson patience (p. 167) and cites Samson's
following reaction to Harapha as evidence:

Go baffl'd coward, lest I run upon thee,

Though in these chains, bulk without spirit vast,

And with one buffet lay thy structure low,

Or swing thee in the Air, then dash thee down

To the hazard of thy brains and shatter'd sides.

11. 1237-41
It is not Harapha who teaches Samson patience; it is Samson's
increasing knowledge of himself that leads to patience.
Harapha's insults are only the catalyst that helps Samson to
understand how his pride and impatience have failed God in'
the past.

Just as Samson's humility is tested repeatedly through-
out the poem, so to is his patience. Late in the poem, the
Chorus provides Samson with the opportunity to prove his
patience. Immediately before the officer comes to order
Samson's presence at the feast to Dagon, the Chorus suggests
to Samson that he will never be able to act on God's behalf

again, but that he must remain quietly patient because of

his blindness. The Chorus understands patience to mean the

165

passivity with which some saints are called upon to endure
the cruelty which the heathen inflict upon them; they expect
that Samson will have to accept whatever ignominy the Phil-
istines force upon him. But Samson has learned in his con-
frontation with Harapha that patience is an active "reliance"
on God's help and plan, not passive suffering. His reply to
the officer is simple, but apparently decisive: "I will not
come" (1. 1342). Samson has the moral courage at this point
to take an active stand for his God and await His disposition
of the circumstances to His ends. Milton gives the conclu-
ding speech of the poem to the Chorus who notes that God's
wisdom, not human wisdom, was best in Samson's case:

All is best, though we oft doubt,

What th'unsearchable dispose

Of highest wisdom brings about.

11. 1745-47

Samson trusts God, and God vindicates him at the critical
time. Samson's newly-found patience provides him with the
‘moral fortitude to turn a heathen feast into a divine rout.

Implicit in Samson's pride and impatience is his dis-
obedience of God by not waiting for God's time for him to
rescue Israel from the Philistines. In his initial soliloquy,
Samson indicates a keen awareness of his failure as Israel's
national deliverer. In shame, he laments:

Why was my breeding order'd and prescrib'd

As of a person separate to God,

Design'd for great exploits; if I must die
Betray'd, Captiv'd, and both my Eyes out,

166

Made of my Enemies the scorn and gaze;

To grind in Brazen Fetters under task

With this Heav'n-gifted strength?

11. 30-36

Though these lines suggest a mild criticism of God's "bet-
rayal" of him, Samson is also personally ashamed that he has
disappointed God by his disobedience. Far from establishing
"the will of God as the paramount rule of [his] conduct"
(CE, XVII, p. 69) in his life before the action of the poem,
Samson has chosen his own means of delivering Israel from
foreign domination. The most important of these means, of
course, is his marriage to Dalila which, we have already
seen, was prompted by his own selfish desires as well as by
his wish to free Israel from the Philistines. Samson's
disobedience, therefore, is closely related to his impatience.

Samson's disobedience is also related to his pride.
When the Chorus reminds him that, for all of his physical
prowess, Israel remains in captivity, Samson rejects the
implicit blame somewhat high-handedly. He replies quickly,
"That fault I take not on me, but transfer / On Israel's
Governors" (11. 241-42) who did not pursue the advantage
‘which Samson's exploits had given them. Samson proudly dis-
dains the Israelite leaders who loved "Bondage more than
Liberty / Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty" (11. 270-

71). In pride, Samson takes matters into his own hands and

kills several Philistines "singly" (l. 244). Essentially,

167

Samson elevates his will over God's will. His impatience
with Israel's leaders becomes disobedience of God; he fails
to wait for God's appointed time for him to defeat Israel's
enemy.

As Hill says of the Son in Paradise'Regained, it is

 

when Samson "will[s] to relax [his] will" in favor of God's
will that he learns obedience. The deliberate choice to
subordinate the human will to the divine is, to quote Hill
again, a "spiritual state which is the apex of self-knowledge
and the apotheosis of human potential" (p. 183). Samson's
development toward this spiritual state of submission to God
is the action of the poem. As William G. Riggs states in

The Christian Poet in "Paradise Lost", "In contemplation of

 

his own acts and potential for action, the Miltonic hero
[Samson, in this case] discovers God in himself. Through
temptation he is perfected in obedience and rectitude" (p. 188).
Samson is given the opportunity to obey God when the public
officer comes to command his attendance at the feast to Dagon.
Samson is in a dilemma when he is commanded to appear
at the Philistine feast. For him to attend would be a blas-
phemous contravention of his Nazarite vow:
Thou knowst I am ani Ebrew, therefore tell them

Our Law forbids at thir Religious Rites
My presence; for that cause I cannot come.

11. 1319-21
Samson refuses to go to the pagan celebration three times.

His refusals to "prostitute holy things to Idols" (l. 1358)

168

demonstrate a returning moral fortitude and strength of
character which he lacked as late as his challenge to Har-
apha to physical combat. Here, at least, Samson "stand[s]
still" on his own moraliintegrity;9 he acts on what he per-
ceives God's will to be at the time.

There is an important irony in Samson's decision to go
to the feast for Dagon after he has refused earlier to go.
This decision is the climax of Samson's experience of devotion
to God in the poem. He states his reason for going to be
"some rousing motions" of divine inspiration:

I begin to feel

Some rousing motions in me which dispose

To something extraordinary my thoughts.

I with this Messenger will go along,

Nothing to do, be sure, that may dishonor
Our Law, or stain my vow of Nazarite.

11. 1381-86
This is the only instance in the poem of Samson's claiming
inspiration for an action that he is about to undertake.10

In Toward "Samson Agonistes", Mary Ann Radzinowicz notes

 

that the irony of Samson's decision to go to Dagon's feast
is that he is doing so in obedience to God. She explains
that Samson "no longer obey[s] the law; [he obeys] the
spirit" (p. 261). By determining to obey divine promptings
when they come to him, then, Samson rises above his own
preconceived notions of obedience to a literal law into a
more immediate experience of God's direction in his life.

His decision to go to the Philistine feast, which, he assures

169

the Chorus, will not involve disobedience of any moral stric-
tures of the law (11. 1407-09), is devout obedience. He
undertakes this task in direct obedience to the "rousing
motions" in him. It is, to quote Radzinowicz again, a "deed
of faith; its value [lies] in his understanding of his God
and his willing not of his own death but of God's glory"
(p. 263). Samson exercises an active choice to obey God at
His time, not his own.

Milton is careful in his presentation of Samson's
decision to obey the "rousing motions" of God in his soul
to go to the feast. He wishes us to be sure that Samson is
not compelled by God to go -- after all, Samson had disobeyed
God before and found himself blind and in prison as a result.
Samson is not God's puppet. He goes willingly, paradoxical-
ly manifesting a "true experience" (1. 1756) of devotion to
God. Samson explains his free choice to the Chorus:

Where outward force constrains, the sentence holds;

But who constrains me to the Temple of Dagon,
Not dragging? The Philistian Lords command.

Commands are no constraints. If I obey them,

I do it freely; venturing to displease

God for the fear of Man, and Man prefer,

Set God behind: which in his jealousy

Shall never, unrepented, find forgiveness.

Yet that he may dispense with me or thee
Present in Temples at Idolatrous Rites

For some important cause, thou needst not doubt.

11. 1369-79
Deliberately choosing God over man, Samson goes to the

feast "freely" and thereby demonstrates his mature devotion

170

in obedience to God's immediate promptings in his soul.
Samson's last weakness to be transformed into devotion
for God rather than pity for self is his despair. In "The

Idea as Pattern: Despair and Samson Agonisres," Don Cameron

 

Allen argues that despair is Samson's primary flaw. Allen's
argument focuses primarily on the "theological dicta on the
genesis and cure of despair" (p. 53) which were contempora-
neous with Milton. I wish, however, to pay attention to the
poet's modulation of Samson's despair, through doubt, and
finally into hope in devotional terms, not "theological
dicta."

Samson betrays his despair in his first speech. La-
menting his blindness, he calls out:

0 dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,

Irrecoverably dark, total Eclipse

Without all hope of day!

0 first created Beam, and thou great Word,

"Let there be light, and light was over all";

Why am I thus bereav'd thy prime decree?

11. 80-86

There is, of course, no hope that he will ever see light
again; everything is "irrecoverably dark ... / Without all
hope of day!" Milton's choice of blindness as a symbol of
despair is fitting, not only because he himself knew of its
agonies, but because it is final; there is no hope for the
blind to see. Milton writes of despair in The Christian

Doctrine, stating that it "takes place only in the reprobate'

(CE, XVII, p. 59). In Milton's view, regenerate men do not

171

experience despair. It casts men beyond God's help. Milton
cites Cain as an example of despair: cast off by God forever,
Cain laments,‘"My punishment is greater than I can bear"
(Genesis 4:13). To demonstrate the extremity of his own
despair, Samson describes himself as living

a life half dead, a living death,

And buried; but 0 yet more miserable!
Myself my Sepulcher, a moving Grave.

11. 100-02
In this speech, the oxymorons such as "living death," be-
tray the despair he feels, completely "dead" to hope of
recovery.

In response to Manoa's reproach that he has brought
"dishonor" to God (11. 433-47), Samson begins to take his
first tentative steps toward hope. He understands that GOd
will vindicate His name; "all the contest is now / 'Twixt
God and Dagon," he says, and God "will arise and his great
name assert" (11. 461-62; 467). He is confident that God
will not be defeated by Dagon, but he doubts that he will
ever be God's instrument to rout Dagon. He regards himself
at this point to be"overthrown" (l. 463), defeated, and of
no further use to God. The conversation with Manoa marks a
movement from despair to doubt in Samson' mind. He no longer
despairs that all is lost for God; he merely doubts his fu-
ture effectiveness for God's work. As Milton states in The

Christian Doctrine, "even the pious [the regenerate] are

 

liable, at least for a time" to doubt (CE, XVII, p. 59).

172

Manoa's indictment of Samson, then, allows Samson to move
from despair to doubt.

Ironically, Harapha is the one who brings Samson to
hope in God. Harapha attacks Samson with the same doubt
that Samson earlier experienced, the fear that God has turned
His back on him. Harapha drives home his attack with every
phrase in this speech:

Presume not on thy God, whate'er he be,

Thee he regards not, owns not, hath cut off

Quite from his people, and delivered up

Into thy Enemies' hand.

11. 1156-59
This is the worst solitude of all for Samson, cut off not
only from his people, but from God. However, Harapha is
_not aware, as we are, that already Samson has begun to move
beyond his earlier despair and doubt.

Samson's reply to Harapha's taunt is lucid and hopeful:

All these indignities, for such they are

From thine, these evils I deserve and more,

Acknowledge them from God inflicted on me

Justly, yet despair not of his final pardon

Whose ear is ever open; and his eye

Gracious to re-admit the suppliant;

In confidence whereof I once again

Defy thee to the trial of mortal fight,

By combat to decide whose god is God,

Thine or whom I with Israel's Sons adore.

11. 1168-77
In this speech, Samson foreshadows his victory at the end
of the poems He grants Harapha that he "deserves" all of

the "evils" which the Philistine has enumerated, yet he

demonstrates a perspective on his situation that Harapha

173

cannot understand. Samson hopes for God's "pardon," not

His justice. God's "ear is ever open," Samson asserts, and
his eye / Gracious to re-admit the suppliant." Even though
he deserves punishment, Samson realizes that his God is
merciful, too. Samson's statement is significant because
it demonstrates that his devotional experience is maturing:
now it is God, not himself, who is the focus of his self
analysis. He realizes that his God is greater than his sin --
not because He punishes sin, but because He forgives it and
"re-admits the suppliant" to His grace. As Galbraith M.
Crump says, Samson comes to "define himself" in a "theocentric
universe" (p. 3). Don Cameron Allen interprets Samson's
speech to be a microcosm of the climax of the whole poem:

With this speech we know that Samson will not die

an apathetic death. Life has returned to him; and

though he does not yet know how it will all be

brought about, he is God's champion once more.

There is no temptation in this scene and no comedy;

it is the most important scene of all, for it is the

hinge of the tragedy. By the victory over Harapha,

who symbolizes all that is valiant in Philistia,

God, working through Samson, has put Dagon down. It

is, in truth, the final event of the tragedy in
miniature.

p. 61
Harapha's goading, therefore, results in Samson's first
statement of hope in God's mercy. This development in
Samson's character is important because he needs hOpe when
ihe decides to obey God and go to the Philistine feast.

In addition to the obedience which he demonstrates so

174

clearly when he defends his decision to go to Dagon's temple,
Samson goes to perform his final act on God's behalf with
hope as well. He informs the Chorus that the "rousing
motions" which prompt him to go to the celebration "dispose"
his thoughts "to something extraordinary" (11. 1382-83).

He is somewhat enigmatic in that he does not explain what
extraordinary thoughts he has. "This day," he says again

to the Chorus, "will be remarkable in my life / By some
great act, or of my days the last" (11. 1388-89). Without
providing any specific detail for the Chorus, Samson intimates
that he has great events in mind. What the Chorus does not
know, however, the reader does. We know that Samson will
pull the temple down in one last "act of conquest" (as

Barbara Lewalski says of the Son in Paradise Regained);11

 

therefore, we can understand Samson's feeling of hope at
this point in the dramatic action. He has lamented God's
apparent desertion of him; at the climax of the poem, how-
ever, "some rousing motions" reassure him that God has more
for him to do. In fact, Samson hopes that God will fulfill
His promise to him that He would use him to deliver the
Israelites from the Philistines. This is devout hope as

Milton defines it in The ChriStian D0ctrine: there is no

 

room for despair, or even doubt, in hope; there is room only

for a certain expectation that God will fulfill His promises

. .. . "~
-- H1s spec1f1c prom1ses.

175

Samson is Milton's everyman. He is fallen; therefore,
he lacks the innocent, spontaneous experience of devotion

which the prelapsarian Adam and Eve have in Paradise Lost.

 

He is defeated; therefore, he does not earn the right, as

the Son does in Paradise Regained, to be an example of the

 

right experience of devotion. However, more than Adam,

and even more than the Son, Samson is alone with his God.
Adam's sin necessitates mature devotion for spiritual growth
to occur; the Son's obedience guarantees devotion to fallen
men; Samson experiences—devotion which helps him to know
himself because he comes to know God. He is no longer in
need of devotion as are Adam and Eve; he is certainly not

an examplar of devotion as is the Son; he is the recipient

of devotion.

CONCLUSION

Milton writes, and his poetic characters live, "with-
in the vast dimensions of a theocentric universe."1 For
Milton as a poet, the omnipresence of God means that he
must "assert Eternal Providence" to men and also express
his own unforced love to God. There is, therefore, an im-
portant tension in Milton's poems which results from their
being simultaneously theodicies and devotions: how does a
poet explain God's ways to men while insisting that men are
free to accept or reject divine providence? The answer
lies in the devotional experiences of Milton's poet-speakers
and poetic characters who "will to relax [their] will[s]."2
Paradoxically, the development of self-knowledge for Milton's

characters results from knowing God.

As he looks back on his life from 1642 in The Reason

 

of Church Government, Milton makes it clear that he delib-

 

erately chose to write poetry and that he had specific pur-
poses in mind when he determined to write. "I assent[ed],"
he writes,

to an inward prompting which now grew daily upon me.
That by labor and intent study ... joined with the
strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave
something so written to aftertimes, as they should
not willingly let it die. These thoughts at once
possessed me ... [that] there ought no regard be

177

sooner had than to God's glory. ... For which cause,
. I applied myself to that resolution ... to fix
all the industry and art I could unite to the adorn-
ing of my native tongue; not to make verbal curiosi-
ties the end, that were a toilsome vanity, but to
be an interpreter and relater of the best and sagest
things among mine own citizens throughout this island
in the mother dialect. That what the greatest and
choicest wits of Athens, Rome or modern Italy, and
those Hebrews of old did for their country, I, in my
proportion, with this over and above of being a
Christian, might do for mine.

p. 668

Personally inclined, by "an inward prompting, to write
poetry, Milton studied to become a poet. He indicates that
he had two purposes in mind when he made this decision: he
wished to raise the English language, his "mother dialect,"
to a high level by writing of the "best and sagest things";
and, second, "being a Christian," he wished to write for

"God's glory.' There is no reason to doubt that Milton's
poetry reflects these purposes.
The poetry that Milton is thinking of in The Reason of

Church Government is, in part, the poems written between

 

1629 and 1637 which the second chapter of this dissertation
considers. In those poems, Milton develops his poetic
talents until, in "Lycidas," he writes one of the finest
pastoral elegies in the English language. These years are
private, preparatory years, a "melic period," as Don

Cameron Allen terms it in The Harmonious Vision (p. 56),

 

though Edward King's death is an intrusion of the real

‘world with its suffering and death. "Lycidas," Milton's

178

elegy for King, is not only a fine pastoral elegy, however;
it is also a perfectly-controlled devotion.

In the "Nativity Ode," written to celebrate Christmas
in 1629, Milton establishes a pattern of devotion which be-
comes useful for him in "Lycidas." The "Nativity Ode"
celebrates God's love in sending the "Heav'n-born child"

(1. 30) to redeem men from their sins. As an act of devotion,
the poem celebrates hope. Reflecting upon the incarnation
of Christ and seeking to write a "humble ode" (l. 24) to
adore the infant, the speaker places himself in the position
of an eyewitness to the nativity. By "observing" the nati-
vity, the speaker experiences the fulfillment of God's Old
Testament prophecies that He would send a Savior. Because
of the trust in God's promises which the incarnation gives
him, he confidently projects the Savior's death at Calvary
"our great redemption from above" to bring (l. 4). It is
this projected hope for redemption that makes the speaker's
experience in the poem devotional.

"Lycidas" is clearly an act of devotion. Its subject,
however, is not religious; its subject is death, a painful
reminder of sin and evil. Just as Bethlehem guaranteed

Calvary for the speaker in the "Nativity Ode,’ so too
Lycidas' resurrection assures the speaker's resurrection.
Devotion is perhaps most difficult in the face of death, for
death seems to undo all that God as creator has done. But

as the speaker in "Lycidas" moves through a complex series

179

of classical and Christian materials, trying to assuage his
grief, he finally focuses on the hope of a personal resur-
rection predihated on "the dear might of him that walk'd the
waves" (1. 173). As a result of facing death, then, not in
spite of the presence of death, the speaker experiences a
mature hOpe in a personal resurrection which is guaranteed
in the poem by Lycidas' immortality. "Lycidas" is, there-
fore, a self-contained devotion which celebrates hope in
God's victory over death.

It is death -- and its cause, sin3 -- that matures the

devotional experience of Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost.

 

Created in innocence and able to enjoy all that God bestows
upon them, Adam and Eve experience love for God and grati-
tude to Him. But God gave them a free will and thereby de-
manded that their obedience to Him be freely-given. In
effect, Adam and Eve's obedience to God's command to cul-
tivate the garden and not to eat of the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil is their expression of devotion to God.
Because they are free to disobey, their obedience is an ac-
tive choice on their parts. When they disobey God in Book
Nine, however, they risk losing their devotional experience
of God altogether -- for the only result of disobedience they
have been taught is death. However, God by His grace offers
forgiveness and a "second chance" to Adam and Eve and "His
Spirit within them" a "paradise within" (XII, 11. 488 and

587). Rather than destroying devotion, therefore, sin results

180

in Adam and Eve maturing in their expression of devotion to
God: whereas, before the fall, they worshipped God only as
their creator and provider, after the fall they worship Him
as their redeemer as well. Adam and Eve learn humility,

patience and hope in Paradise LOSt, all predicated on God's

 

love for them after they have fallen. Just as Milton deve-

lops a justification of God's ways to men in Paradise Lost,

 

so too he expands the devotional experience of the poem's
human protagonists in response to God's mercy.

Whereas the "first Adam" sins in ParadiSe Lost and is

 

restored by God's grace, the "second Adam" -- the Son in

Paradise Regained -- remains obedient to the Father and

 

thereby earns the right to redeem fallen men. By empha-

sizing the Son's humanity in Paradise Regained, Milton is

 

able to develop his character in the poem. As man, the Son
learns patience and obedience to the Father in the face of
Satan's temptations. He "achieve[s] self-knowledge," Mary

H

Ann Radzinowicz states in Toward "Samson AgOnistes", in

 

relation to a conception of God, and [by acting] in con-
formity to that knowledge" (p. 246). The Son comes to
understand himself only in relation to the Father. Because
he remains obedient throughout the poem to the Father's
calling, he himself develops in his character as a man. The
Son not only earns a "fairer Paradise" (IV, 1. 613) for the
sons of men, he also experiences that paradise himself. Mary

Ann Radzinowicz writes, "The Son gives grace to man to live

181

under the guidance of the pattern of behavior which produced
that grace" (p. 250). The Son is both the agent of redem-
ption and the model of the redeemed man. He is both because,

as John Spencer Hill writes in John Milton:'POet,'Priest and

 

Prophet, he "[assists] divine disposal [the call to redeem
men] by his own responsive choices" (p. 179).

In Samson Agonistes, Milton puts devotion to work in

 

the service of God. Though restored by the end of Paradise
Lgsp, Adam and Eve leave the garden of Eden with "The World
all before them" (XII, l. 646). They do not serve God
after their fall in any active manner analogous to their
cultivation of the garden before the fall. Though the Son

in Paradise Regained is "genuinely subject to temptation
4

 

[and] able to fall," he remains sinless. Therefore, his
service for God is uninterrupted. Samson, however, falls,
is forgiven, and finally restored to active service for God.
Samson's sins are legion: he is proud of his physcial
strength; he is impatient with God's apparent delay in de-
livering Israel; he is disobedient to his Nazarite vow in
marrying Dalila; and he is in doubt, even despair, when the
action of the poem begins. Samson is not, however, separated
from God. Though Milton brings no supernatural visitors to
Samson, only the Jews and the Philistines, Samson is always
conscious of God's hand in his life. Indeed, Samson is

alone with God even when others are there in the prison with

him; the action of the poem is internal, that is, in the

182

spiritual development of the protagonist.

Samson does not "pay" for his sins in the poem; he has
already paid a terrible price for his sins before the poem
begins. Rather, he is forgiven of his sins and learns how
to turn them into active expressions of devotion to God.
For his pride in his ability to rescue Israel by his strength
alone, he learns the humility that he is the "Sole Author"
(1. 377) of his own defeat and humiliation. For his impat-
ience in hurrying God's plans by marrying Dalila, he learns
to have patience; in the face of Harapha's derision, Samson
grants that "all the contest is now / 'Twixt God and Dagon"
(11. 461-62), not his own. For disobedience to God, Samson
learns to obey God's "rousing motions" (1. 1382) and to go
to the feast, though he would not go when he was first com-
manded to do so. For the despair that God had cast him off
forever, Samson learns the hope that God will use him in
His service yet one more time. In sum, the meaning of
Samson's life is "to grow toward knowledge of God" and then
to put the "more profound faith" that he learns into service
for God.5

Though Milton presents God's actions in men's lives in
his poems, he writes from the human as well as the divine
perspective. The poems are not versified theological trea-
tises. They are expressions of fallen man's struggle to
know God and to love Him. Milton certainly justifies God

in his poems, but he does so by clothing the "Word" with

183

"flesh” -- by re-creating "paradise" in the experiences of
his characters. The angels' praise of the Son at the con-
clusion of Paradise'Regained applies to all of Milton's
protagonists. Ecah one gains the "True Image of the Father

. enshrine'd / In fleshly Tabernacle and human form" (IV,

11. $96-99).

NOTES

NOTES
INTRODUCTION

1John Milton, The Works of John Milton, Edited by
Frank Allen Patterson (New York: Columbia University Press,
1931-42), XIV, p. 5. All references throughout the dis-
sertation to‘The'Christiafi Bootrine are made to the Columbia
Edition and are cited in the text as CE.

 

 

2William G. Riggs, The ChriStian Poet in "Paradise
Lost" (Berkeley: University of Galifornia Press, 1972),
p. 2. All subsequent references to this work will be cited
in the text of the dissertation. '

 

3Barbara Lewalski, Protestant Poetics'and the Seven-
teenth Century Religious Lyric (Princeton: *Princeton
University Press, 1979), p. 150.

4

5Lewalski, p. 149. All subsequent references to this
work will be cited in the text of the dissertation.

 

 

Lewalski, p. 151.

6Louis L. Martz, The Poetry of Meditation (New Haven:
Yale University Press,fl954), p. 10} All subsequent
references to this work will be cited in the text of the
dissertation.

7Martz, p. 40 and compare Edward Dawson, in "The Prac-
tical Method of Meditation," The Meditative Poem (New York:
New York University Press, 1963), p. 12.

8Isabel Rivers, Classical and Christian Ideas in
En lish Renaissance Poetry (Boston: George Allen and
Unw1n, ), pp. 101-02. Also CE, XIV, p. 15. All subse-
quent references to Rivers will be cited in the text of the
dissertation.

9James Holly Hanford, A.Milton Handbook 4th ed. (New
York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1954), p. 216. Compare
Denis Saurat, Milton: 'Man and Thinker (New York: The Dial
Press, Inc., 1925), p. 273. All subsequent references to
Hanford will be cited in the text of the dissertation.

 

 

 

 

 

185

10Roger Hazelton, "The Devotional Life," in'A CompaniOn
to the Study of St. AuguStine, ed. Roy Battenhouse (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 398. All subse-
quent references to this work will be cited in the text of
the dissertation.

11Louis L. Martz, The ParadiSe Within (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1964), pp. 200 and xiv. All subsequent
references to this work will be cited in the text of the
dissertation.

12All references to the Bible are taken from the King
James Version.

13John Spencer Hill, John Milton; ‘Poet,'Pries 'and
Pro het (Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield, 1979),
pp. 52-53. All subsequent references to this work will be
cited in the text of the dissertation.

 

 

 

 

14Martz, The Paradise Within, p. 180.
15

16John Milton, "The Reason of Church Government Urged
Against Prelaty," John Milton: Complete Poems and Major
Prose, Edited by Merritt Y. Hughes (New York: The Odyssey
Press, 1957), pp. 666-68. All subsequent references to
this work will be cited in the text of the dissertation.

17Arthur Sewell, A Study of Milton's Christian Doctrine
(Folcroft, PA: Archon Books,*1967), pp. 33 and*123. All
subsequent references to this work will be cited in the text
of the dissertation.

 

Hanford, pp. 190-91; 269.

 

NOTES

CHAPTER ONE

1John Milton, "At a Solemn Music," John Milton: Com—
plete Poems andMajor PrOse, Edited by Merritt Y. Hughés
(New York: The Odyssey Press, 1957), pp. 81-82. All sub-
sequent references to Milton's poetry and prose (with the
exception of The ChriStian‘DoCtrine) are to this edition.

 

 

 

2John Hollander, The Untuning of the Sky: Ideas of
Music in English Poetry, 1500:1700 (Princeton: ’Princeton
University Press, 1969), p. 324.

 

 

3Compare Milton's comment in The ReaSon of Church
Government, Hughes p. 670: "Teaching over the whole book
of sanctity and virtue through all the instances of example,
with such delight to those especially of soft and delicious
temper who will not so much as look upon Truth herself, un-
less they see her elegantly dressed... "

4cf. Sewell, p. 19: "true regeneration itself is
'supernatural' and the 'inward man is created 'afresh,‘
the 'old man being destroyed'."

5cf. CE, XIV, p. 91: "It has been the practice of
the schools to use the word predestination, not only in the
sense of election, but also of reprobation. This is not
consistent with the caution necessary on so momentous a
subject, since wherever it is mentioned in Scripture, elec-
tion alone is uniformly intended."

6Milton writes in The Reason of Church Government that
he wishes his poetry "to be an interpreter and relater of
the best and sagest things among [his] own citizens... ."

7A.S.P. Woodhouse, The Poet and His Faith: Religion
and POetry in England from Spenser to EliOt and Dryden
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), p. 92. All
subsequent references to this work will be cited in the text
of the dissertation.

8
9

 

 

 

 

 

Riggs, p. 86.
Hughes, p. 671, note 179.

187

10Maurice Kelley, This Great Argument: a Study Of
Milton's "De DOCtrina Christiana" as a @1088 upon "Paradise
Lost" (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941), p. 92.
.llJames Holly Hanford, "That Shepherd who First Taught
the Chosen Seed," University of Toronto'Quarterly, VII (1939),
pp. 403-19.
12

cf. note 6: for Milton, poetry is "an interpreter
and relater of the best and sagest things ... .”

NOTES

CHAPTER TWO

1Hill, pp. 53-54. "English poetry" is to be distin-
guished from "Latin poetry," the distinction which Milton
is making at this point in "At a Vacation Exercise."

2Rosemond Tuve, "The Hymn on the Morning of Christ's
Nativity," Images and Themes in Five Poems by Milton (Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1957), pp. 42-43. All
subsequent references to this work will be cited in the text
of the dissertation.

 

3For example, Isaiah 9:7. "Of the increase of his
government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne
of David ... for ever."

And, Isaiah 7:14. "Therefore the Lord himself shall
give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear
a son, and shall call him name Immanuel."

4Paul Harvey, ed., The Oxford Companion to English
Literature 3rd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), p. 265.

5Donald M. Rosenberg, Oaten Reeds and Trumpets: Pas-
toral and Epic in Virgil, Spenser and MiIEon (East Brunswick,
New Jersey: Bucknell University Press, 1981), p. 265.

 

 

 

 

6cf. Paradise Lost, XII, 11. 408-09:

 

Proclaiming Life to all who shall believe
In his redemption ...

7

8cf. Leviticus 17 11; "For the life of the flesh is
in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to
make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that
maketh atonement for the soul."

And Hebrews 9:22. "And almost all things are by the
law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no
remission."

Hanford, p. 154.

189

9Rosemond Tuve, "Image, Form and Theme in 'A Mask',"
Images and Themes in Five Poems by Milton (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1962)?)p. 121.

10And also E.M.W. Tillyard, Studies in Milton (London:
Chatto and Windus, 1951), pp. 82-99.

11Mary Ann Radzinowicz, Toward "Samson Agonistes":
the Growth of Milton's Mind (Princeton: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 1978), p. 347. All subsequent references to
this work will be cited in the text of the dissertation.

121 have taken the material on the classical heritage
of the pastoral elegy tradition which this paragraph pre-
sents from Hanford.

l3C.A. Patrides, ed., Milton's "Lycidas": the Tradition
and the Poem (New York: Holt,-Rinehart, Winston, 1961),
p. 56.

14

 

 

John Crowe Ranson, "A Poem Nearly Anonymous" in C. A.
Patrides, ed., Milton's "Lycidas": The Tradition and The
Poem (New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1961), p. 66.

15 '

H. H. Adams, "The Archetypal Pattern of Death and
Rebirth in 'Lycidas'," in C. A. Patrides, ed., Milton's

"Lycidas": the Tradition and the Poem (New York: Holt,
Rinehart Winston, 1961), pp. 123—24.

 

16E. M. w. Tillyard, "Milton" in c. A. Patrides, ed.,
Milton's "Lycidas": the Tradition and the Poem. (New York:
Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1961), pp. 123-24.

17

Don Cameron Allen, The Harmonious Vision: Studies in
Milton's Poetry (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1954),

pp. 56-57. All subsequent references to this work will be
cited in the text of the dissertation.

18Arthur Barker, ”The Pattern of Milton's 'Nativity Ode',"
University of Toronto Quarterly, x (1941), pp. 167-81.

19Rosemond Tuve, "Theme, Pattern and Imagery in 'Lycidas'”
in C. A. Patrides, ed., Milton's ”Lycidas": the Tradition and
the Poem (New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1961), p. 129

20cf.
21

 

 

 

 

Matthew 4:18

. ‘ N

cf. John 21:15-17

190

22Wayne Shumaker, "Flowerets and Sounding Seas: a Study
in the Affective Structure of 'Lycidas'" in C. A. Patrides,
ed., Milton's "Lycidas": the Tradition and the Poem (New
York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1961), p. 129.

 

NOTES
CHAPTER THREE

1Hughes, p. xiii; and Hill, p. 119, note 5.

2John Holloway, "'Paradise Lost' and the Quest for
Reality," ForUm'for MOdern Language Studies, III (1967),
p. 12.

3

4I accept Hill's interpretation of the nature of Adam's
and Eve's need to choose consciously in favor of God even
in their prelapsarian state, not Martz's position in The
Paradise Within, p. 132, that their love for God before the
fall in Paradise LoSt was "intuitive" and, therefore, not
active.

5J.M. Evans, "Paradise Lost" and the Genesis Tradition
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 269.

6Joseph H. Summers, The Muse's Method (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1962), p. 71.

7cf. Ephesians 5:2. "And walk in love, as Christ also
hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering
and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savor."

 

cf. CE, XIV, p. 191.

 

 

 

 

NOTES
CHAPTER FOUR

1Barbara Lewalski, "Theme and Action in Paradise Re-
ained," in Milton's Epic Poetry: Essays on'"Paradise Lost
and ”Paradise Regained", ed. C.A. Patrides (Harmondsworth,
England: Penguin Books, 1967), p. 323. All subsequent
references to this work will be cited in the text of the
dissertation.

 

 

ch. Hanford, p. 274. Compare also the following:

Douglas Bush, John Miltonz'a Sketch of His Life and
Writings (New York: Collier Books, 1964)Tip. 185.

Denis Saurat, Milton: Man and Thinker (New York: The
Dial Press, Inc., 1925), p. 278.

3A.S.P. Woodhouse, "Theme and Pattern in Paradise
Re ained," University of Toronto Quarterly, XXV (1956-57),
p. 181.

 

NOTES
CHAPTER FIVE

1Hill disagrees on p. 153, stating that Samson "is
not an ordinary man; he is a Judge, an Israelite shophet
elect above the rest of mankind."

2Galbraith M. Crump, "Introduction," in Twentieth
Century Interpretations of "Samson Agonistes", e61 G.M.
Crump (EnglewoodCliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc.,
1968), p. 3.

3Balachandra Rajan, The Lofty Rhyme: a Study of Milton's

 

 

 

Ma'or Poetr (Coral Gables, Florida: University of Miami
ress, , p. 133.

4William G. Madsen, "From Shadowy Types to Truth," in
Twentieth Century Interpretations of "Samson Agonistes", ed.
G.M. Crump (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: PrentiEe Hall,
Inc., 1968), p. 95. Madsen agrees with Rajan in this re-
gard.

All subsequent references to secondary materials on
Samson Agonistes are to this volume, unless otherwise noted.

5

6Allen, "The Idea as Pattern: Despair and Samson
Agonistes," in Twentieth Century Interpretations of ”Samson
Agonistes", p. 59.

7
8

 

 

Hill, p. 159.

 

 

 

Hill, p. 158.
cf. Allen, p. 51.
9Rajan, p. 129.

10Manoa claims that Samson argued "divine impulsion”
for his marriages (11. 421-23).

11Barbara Lewalski, "Theme and Action in Paradise Re-

gained," p. 344.

 

NOTES

CONCLUSION

1Galbraith M. Crump, "Introduction," in TWentieth
Century Interpretations of “Samson Agonistes", ed. G.M.
Crump (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc.,
1968), p. 3.

2
3

Hill, p. 183.

cf. Romans 6:23. ”For the wages of sin is death."

4Barbara Lewalski, "Theme and Action in Paradise Re-
ained," in Milton's Epic Poetryg‘ Essays on "Paradise
Post” and "ParadiSe Regained", ed. CTA. Patrides (Harmonds-
worth, England: Penguin Bo6ks, 1967), p. 323.

5Radzinowicz, p. 250.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Crump, Galbraith M., ed. TWentieth Century Interpretations
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