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"Into the world, to teach his final will;

"And sends his Spirit1 of truth henceforth to dwell "In pious hearts,—an inward oracle,

"To all truth requisite for men to know."

So spake our Saviour; but the subtle Fiend, Though inly stung with anger and disdain, Dissembled, and this answer smooth returned:

465

66 Sharply thou hast insisted on rebuke,

"And urged me hard with doings, which not will,
"But misery hath wrested from me.
"Easily canst thou find one miserable,
"And not enforced ofttimes to part from truth,
"If it may stand him more in stead to lie,
"Say and unsay, feign, flatter, or abjure?
"But thou art placed above me, thou art Lord;
"From thee I can, and must, submiss, endure
"Check or reproof, and glad to escape so quit.
"Hard are the ways of Truth, and rough to walk,

Where

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"Smooth on the tongue discoursed, 3 pleasing to the ear,

"And tuneable as sylvan pipe or song.

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"What wonder then if I delight to hear

"Her dictates from thy mouth? Most men admire "Virtue, who follow not her lore: permit me

"To hear thee when I come, (since no man comes),

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"And talk at least, though I despair to attain.

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Thy Father, who is holy, wise, and pure, "Suffers the hypocrite, or atheous priest1 "To tread his sacred courts, and minister "About his altar, handling holy things, "Praying or vowing; and vouchsafed his voice

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men." The tempter is made to suspect and to make a feigned acknowledgment that Christ might be himself the Living Oracle, 1. 475--477. 1 His Spirit...an inward oracle.-Compare John xiv. 17, 26.

2 Insisted,-"dwelt" on rebuke. The smoothness and hypocrisy of this speech are admirably in character.

3 Smooth on the tongue discoursed, &c.-Compare Comus, 1. 476-480.

4 Atheous priest,-how many practical atheists were there among the Jews, who made the law of God void by their traditions; and how many such may there be, even in all religions, who practically disbelieve even what they teach to others.

"To Balaam reprobate,-1 a prophet yet
"Inspired: disdain not such access to me."

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To whom our Saviour, with unaltered brow: Thy coming hither-though I know thy scope"I bid not, or forbid; do as thou findst

"Permission from above; thou canst not more."
He added not; and Satan, bowing low

His gray dissimulation, disappeared,
Into thin air diffused: for now began
Night with her sullen wing, to double-shade

The desert; 2 fowls in their clay nests were couched ;
And now wild beasts came forth the woods to roam.

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1 To Balaam reprobate,-the reader who wishes to appreciate Milton's judicious use of the history of Balaam, is referred by Dunster to Bishop Butler's Sermon on the character of Balaam; and Shuckford's Connexion of Sacred and Profane History.

2 To double-shade the desert;-Compare Comus, 1. 335.

"In double night of darkness and of shades."

The images here are taken from the place where the scene is laid. It is not a description of night at large, but night in a desert.-N.

BOOK II.

THE ARGUMENT.

THE disciples of Jesus, uneasy at his long absence, reason amongst them.
selves concerning it. Mary also gives vent to her maternal anxiety; in
the expression of which she recapitulates many circumstances respecting
the birth and early life of her Son. Satan again meets his infernal coun-
cil, reports the bad success of his first temptation of our blessed Lord,
calls upon them for counsel and assistance. Belial proposes the tempt-
ing of Jesus with women.
Satan rebukes Belial for his dissoluteness,
charging on him all the profligacy of that kind ascribed by the poets to
the heathen gods, and rejects his proposal as in no respect likely to suc-
ceed. Satan then suggests other modes of temptation, particularly pro-
posing to avail himself of our Lord's hungering; and, taking a band of
chosen spirits with him, returns to resume his enterprise. Jesus hungers
in the desert: night comes on; the manner in which our Saviour passes
the night is described. Morning advances: Satan again appears to
Jesus; and, after expressing wonder that he should be so entirely ne-
glected in the wilderness, where others had been miraculously fed,
tempts him with a sumptuous banquet of the most luxurious kind: this
he rejects, and the banquet vanishes. Satan, finding our Lord not to be
assailed on the ground of appetite, tempts him again by offering him
riches, as the means of acquiring power: this Jesus also rejects, produc-
ing many instances of great actions performed by persons under virtu-
ous poverty, and specifying the danger of riches, and the cares and
pains inseparable from power and greatness.

MEANWHILE the new-baptized,1 who yet remained
At Jordan with the Baptist, and had seen

Him (whom they had so late expressly called

Jesus), Messiah, Son of God declared,

And on that high authority had believed,

And with him talked, and with him lodged; I mean
Andrew and Simon, famous after known,

With others though in Holy Writ not named;

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1 The new-baptized,-referring to Andrew and Simon, 1. 7. See John i. 19-42, for the facts on which the opening of this poem is grounded.

Now missing him, their joy so lately found,—
So lately found, and so abruptly gone,—
Began to doubt, and doubted many days,

10

And, as the days increased, increased their doubt.
Sometimes they thought he might be only shown,
And for a time caught up to God—as once
Moses was in the mount and missing long ;'

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And the great Thisbite, who on fiery wheels

Rode up to Heaven-yet once again to come.
Therefore, as those young prophets then with care
Sought lost Elijah ; so in each place these,
Nigh to Bethabara; in Jericho3

The city of palms, Ænon, and Salem old,
Machærus, and each town or city walled
On this side the broad lake Genezaret,
Or in Peræa; but returned in vain.
Then on the bank of Jordan, by a creek,

Where winds with reeds and osiers whispering play,
Plain fishermen, (no greater men them call)
Close in a cottage low together got,

Their unexpected loss and plaints out breathed:

"Alas, from what high hope to what relapse "Unlooked for are we fallen! our eyes beheld "Messiah certainly now come,—

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-so long

Expected of our fathers; we have heard

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1 See Exod. xxxii. 1, &c. The great Thisbite,—after the Latin form of the word, for Tishbite, Elijah, the prophet. Yet once again to come,—that is destined to come again, in spirit and power, in the person of John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ. Luke i. 17, compared with Matt. xi. 14; Mark ix. 12, 13. Newton, however, thinks that Milton alludes to the views of Mede, founded on Mal. iv. 5, and Matt. xvii. 11, that a great prophet, in the spirit and power of Elijah, is yet to appear to usher in our Lord's second coming. 2 Sought lost Elijah,-See 2 Kings ii. 17.

3 Jericho, the city of palms,—so called, Deut xxxiv. 3, from the abundance of palm trees which historians describe as growing in its vicinity. Salem old, not Jerusalem, but a town or village near Schechem or Sychar, the site of which has been recently identified by Robinson and Wilson. In Gen. xxxiii. 18, it is called Shalem, for which the ancient Greek version, known as the Septuaguint, has Salem. Macharus,-a castle in the mountainous part of Perca, or the country beyond Jordan. Genezaret,--the Lake Tiberias, or Sea of Galilee, through which the Jordan flows in its course.

"His words-his wisdom-full of grace and truth:1
"Now-now, for sure-deliverance is at hand;2
"The kingdom shall to Israel be restored:

"Thus we rejoiced, but soon our joy is turned
"Into perplexity and new amaze:

"For whither is he gone? what accident

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"Hath rapt him from us? will he now retire
"After appearance, and again prolong
"Our expectation? God of Israel,

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"Send thy Messiah forth; the time is come!
"Behold the kings of the earth,3 how they oppress
Thy chosen ;-to what height their power unjust
66 They have exalted, and behind them cast
"All fear of thee: arise, and vindicate
"Thy glory; free thy people from their yoke!
"But let us wait; thus far he hath performed,
"Sent his Anointed, and to us revealed him,

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By his great prophet, pointed at and shown "In public, and with him we have conversed: "Let us be glad of this, and all our fears "Lay on his providence; he will not fail,

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"Nor will withdraw him now, nor will recall,

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"Mock us with his blest sight, then snatch him hence:

"Soon we shall see our hope, our joy, return."

Thus they, out of their plaints, new hope resume

To find whom at the first they found unsought:
But, to his mother Mary, when she saw
Others returned from baptism,-not her Son,-—
Nor left at Jordan,-tidings of him none;

Within her breast though calm, her breast though pure,
Motherly cares and fears got head, and raised

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Some troubled thoughts, which she in sighs thus clad: 65

1 Full of grace and truth:-John i. 14.

2 Now-now, for sure-deliverance is at hand;-See Luke xxiv. 21. 3 Behold the kings of the earth, &c.-See Psalm ii. 2; lxviii. 1. Acts iv. 27. But, to his mother Mary...within her breast...motherly cares and fears got head,-a purely Latin construction for "within Mary's breast, cares got head." The foreign idiom calls attention more expressly to Mary's anxieties.

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