IsParadise Lostby John Milton biblical?

NOTE. - Milton - I do not know what men of taste will say - was a miserable engrafting of all the heathen mythology on what was, after all, error so as really to make a fresh heathenism; that is the effect for the imagination, and so merge the power of what approached to truth in it. With most beautiful poetry, no doubt, it is a very mischievous book; indeed I have ever thought it so since I read it. But he was full of various learning of this kind, and turned Scripture scenes, and his views of truth (which was not the truth) into it. Purity mixed with corruption is corrupted purity, and that is not purity at all, but as an effect, and an evil worse than new corruption, save indeed, as the word implies, that it is always that, for corruption always implies something good corrupted, there is no evil created. What God has had to bear with in man! but He is perfect in all, and oh! how great the grace which has brought, and brought us, into the perfect light in grace and truth by Jesus Christ.

Do not treat even Scripture poetry as mere poetry. I grant that even from the poetic point of view nothing is like it, and that all Shakespeare or Milton ever wrote so grandly is poor indeed compared with what is therein. Take even Milton, who had the benefit of using Scripture expressly. He puts all wrong where, if I listen to him, the devil is reigning in a very fine palace. What a vain dream! Satan has never reigned in hell. The devil will be the most miserable object in hell through all eternity. This is not reigning. So evident is it that the effect of the Miltonic picture is to disorder men's minds about the truth. The devil is reigning in this world now and here, not in hell. What is still more important is the erroneous impressions he gives of God and especially of His Son. For Christ is ever the test whether one is taught of God, or only glories in man. I press this for the purpose of securing the truth to settle our souls — to give us true objects as seen in the light of God — to make us firm and constant in His grace and truth, His light shining down upon our every step through this wilderness world. May God in His rich mercy grant that these remarks may help to lead some weary wayfarer out of the darkness of the enemy into the marvellous light of God. Amen.

It was the poet, John Milton, who described Satan as preferring to be first in hell, than second in heaven. Indeed we know from Scripture that his fall came by not being content with the very high place God had assigned to him as a creature—the anointed cherub that covereth” (Ezek. 28:14). He dared to say in his hart, “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High” (Isa. 14:13-14). What a fall was his, and his end will be most lamentable—“cast into the lake of fire” (Rev. 20:10). Here we trace the source of the evil spirit of Diotrephes, and of all who have transgressed like him from his day to this.

Scripture indicates three steps in the overthrow of Satan. The first is found in Revelation 12:7-12; the second in Revelation 20:1-3; and the third in Revelation 20:10. Created originally "full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty," set upon the holy mountain of God as the anointed covering cherub (thus Prime Minister of the Universe, guardian of the rights of the divine throne), Satan will finish in the Lake of Fire (Ezek. 28:12-17). Not as king will he be sent thither, but as the principal offender and greatest sufferer. It is a hymn, not Scripture, which has addressed him as "Satan, thou king in Hell." The fall of Satan, from heights to us inconceivable, to depths unimaginable, is appalling to contemplate.

We will now go a little further with the Scripture, and see what became of the man who thus so divinely and gloriously starts on his way. The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, we are told. Eden means "delight." It is called Paradise in the Greek translation — the Septuagint. We have heard of "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained," but Scripture does not speak of the latter; once lost man's Paradise is never regained, but God in grace, opens a heavenly Paradise. In Eden were two trees, "the tree of life," — sovereign grace in Christ, — and "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" — responsibility in man, a test of his obedience.

254 I am not master of the Homeric question assuredly, but the Attic tragic poets using other versions than ours proves nothing, save that there were other traditions of an obscure history. If I were making a tragedy of Adam and Eve, assuredly I should not take Milton's Paradise Lost to make it out of. He would take the facts which suited his poetical power, as Homer or others did, and embellish them according to his genius.

Poetry: What poetry can compare, either in scope or sentiment, with that of the Bible? The great epic of Job, with its wondrous but consistent theme, its magnificent imagery, and its satisfying conclusion, is unspeakably more elevating than that which tells of Achilles' wrath or the wanderings of Ulysses and Aeneas.

Milton's great epics are largely but adaptations of Scripture, and owe their sublimity to the faithfulness with which he has adhered to the inspired page. What elegies can be compared with the pathos of David's lament over Jonathan and his bitter enemy Saul? What odes can rival the majesty of the nineteenth and one hundred and fourth psalms? But we must leave this delightful and attractive theme for later consideration.

Satan has been considered commonly (as one finds in the Paradise Lost of a great poet) to be here as a prisoner broken loose from hell, into which he had been cast immediately upon his fall, a hell in which even now he is supposed to reign, and to reign there eternally over fallen spirits and lost men, the divinely appointed tormenter of those whom he has made his prey. For no part of this is Scripture responsible, and its grotesque horror has been the reproach of orthodox theology. What would be thought of a government which allowed its prisoners so to break their bounds, and which employed the chief criminal to torture the lesser ones?

The Eastern Church (as it is called) wasted much time and blood in disputing about the entry of evil into the universe. Milton has some very highly imaginative allusions to it. I believe that all this would lead us astray, and that we have the Scriptures to keep us aright in this, as in everything else. Sin (lawlessness) has entered into the world; its votaries are of the devil, who sins from the beginning. "Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom because of thy brightness."

The Devil was not always evil, but now there is not an element of good in him. We believe we are right in accepting the view that in Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14 there is given in arresting language a description of his greatness and beauty as he was when in the beginning God created him. In rebuking the King of Tyre the prophet by the Spirit breaks out into the description of a being that can be none other than the Devil. “Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty... Thou art the anointed Cherub that covereth and I have set thee so. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee... thou hast sinned: therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering Cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty; thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness.”

“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground... For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds: I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell to the sides of the pit.” The beginning of his sin was pride, and out of that sprang the determination to be independent of God, and to be as God, ruling a kingdom of his own, a kingdom of darkness, from which the knowledge of God should be utterly excluded. This kingdom bears the character of its founder and must in all things be opposed to God and His kingdom by its very nature. There can be no compromise between light and darkness, no league between good and evil; though with consummate audacity Satan proposed such a compromise to Jesus in the wilderness, when he offered to Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. Did he think that as he had beguiled the woman in Eden so he could beguile the Woman's Seed in the wilderness? If so what a surprise, what a check he got! The lie was detected and resisted and the deceiver was defeated. There can be no fellowship between Christ and Belial, the fight must be fought to the finish; it must end in the final and complete overthrow of one or the other.