as he uses the whole Bible, to prove what he likes, and follows Paul no further than he cares to go. Here are the chief Paulinian texts from our point of view: Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance. . . . The body is not for fornication, but for the Lord. Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.5 And I Corinthians 7, entirely: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife and let every woman have her own husband. I speak this by permission, and not of commandment. For I would that all men were even as I myself. . . . I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn. Ephesians 5:22-23 is likewise important: Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the Church. . . This enables us to see how far Milton follows Paul. "To avoid fornication " becomes: By thee adulterous lust was driven from men Among the bestial herds to range. And "the husband is the head of the wife " becomes: He for God only, she for God in him. But Milton refuses to follow Paul in accepting marriage as a necessary concession; and in a passage com 4 Galatians 5:19-20. 5 I Corinthians 6:18. " 6 menting on "the body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body," he concludes: "for marriage must not be called a defilement." The flesh is not naturally evil for Milton. Fornication is the Fall, but "wedded love, as saints and patriarchs used," is holy and good. Milton has on this essential point entirely broken away from Paul; he knows of a sensuality that is legitimate, and even "commanded.” Yet another of Milton's most important ideas is sanctioned by Paul: "Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression." For Paul, as for Milton, Adam fell 8 Against his better knowledge, not deceived, II. LATER JUDAISM Before and around Paul, the elements of what was to become the Christian tradition on the Fall were being shaped. About the first half of the first century after Christ, the Jews came to the idea that Satan and the Serpent were one." The ways had been prepared for this notion. The Wisdom of Solomon 10 had said: "Through the envy of the devil death entered the world." But that was not very precise yet. The Book of Enoch " had said that one of the fallen angels had seduced Eve, but this was contradicted by the rest of the book, in which the angels fell later than man, and it remained a passing trait. 11 6 Apology for Smectymnuus, in Prose Works, III, 122. See above, p. 46. 7 See above, pp. 155 ff. 8 I Timothy 2:14. Bousset, p. 469. A Jewish Life of Adam of the 1st century is the principal proof. But at last the Jews in the first century connected the two origins of evil. The fall of man, from being a confused and obscure legend, took on a definite meaning, and became the source of all evil and suffering for mankind. A curious legend of the same time" tells that after the creation of man, God ordered the angels to worship Adam. Satan refused, and was consequently driven out of Heaven. But he avenged himself by inducing Adam to eat the apple. This legend is extremely logical, and ought to have prevailed. Adam is here the direct cause of Satan's misfortune, and not an innocent victim. Satan's behavior is much more human (if the expression is permissible in this case) than in the orthodox tradition. But there was more. Jewish Gnosis 13 identified Adam with the Son of God, the promised Messiah. So here is perhaps the first origin of the idea that Satan rebelled through envy of the Son; Milton adopts this for poetical purposes without believing it. But there were theologians at the Reformation who held the theory. Calvin condemns them severely in his Commentary on Genesis. The Jewish beliefs about Satan's rebellion and the war in Heaven probably passed into The Revelation. In any case The Revelation is an important source for Milton's tale: . ... a great red dragon. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth. . . . And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels. . . . And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan ... and his angels were cast out with him.14 12 Bousset, p. 469. This is found also in the Koran, 20:115. 18 Cf. Bousset, p. 558. 14 Revelation 12:3-9. This applies to the end of the world. But it is a sort of law in prophetic imagination that the end should be like the beginning, and these texts became, in the tradition, a precious source of knowledge about the origins. Milton in the De doctrina quotes them as proofs for the war in Heaven.15 Here also the Serpent is called Satan; later this will be thought a further proof that Satan was the serpent who tempted Eve. Lastly, the beginnings of the Christian era saw the birth of an erroneous interpretation of a few verses in Isaiah, and this mistake became also an important docu ment: How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! . . . 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 be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.18 The imprecation is aimed at the King of Babylon, and Lucifer is only the morning star. So far as we know, Tertullian and Gregory were the first to apply the passage to Satan, who kept the name Lucifer. From this came the mountain in the North and the chief motive of Satan's revolt: the ambition to be like the most High. The different elements of the tale are now all evolved: Satan's revolt through ambition; sensuality in the fall of the angels; the temptation of Eve by the Serpent, who is Satan; of Adam through Eve; sensuality in the fall of man. 15 Prose Works, IV, 216-17. 16 14:12-15. Gunkel suggests (Schöpfung und Chaos, 1895, pp. 132-34) that this may be an allusion to a myth, perhaps Babylonian, recording the ambition and failure of the Morning Star, which disappears in the light of the sun" hides its diminished head," as Milton puts it (P. L., IV, 35). T CHAPTER III THE FATHERS HE elements of the tale of the Fall were put to gether and more or less worked out by the Fathers. Yet most of the Fathers, before Augustine, seem to the modern reader hopelessly backward and chaotic. It is only Augustine who gives a coherent tale. The astonishment of the modern reader at the eccentric ideas of the early Fathers was fully shared by Milton, who, consequently, frequently looks upon them with open contempt. I. MILTON'S OPINIONS OF THE FATHERS In 1641, in the pamphlet Of Prelatical Episcopacy, Milton expressed picturesquely his feelings about the Fathers, thus: when men began to have itching ears, then not contented with the plentiful and wholesome fountains of the gospel, they began after their own lusts to heap to themselves teachers, and as if the divine scripture wanted a supplement, and were to be eked out, they cannot think any doubt resolved, and any doctrine confirmed, unless they run to that indigested heap and fry of authors which they call antiquity. Whatsoever time, or the heedless hand of blind chance, hath drawn down from of old to this present, in her huge drag-net, whether fish or seaweed, shells or shrubs, unpicked, unchosen, those are the fathers.1 Further on, Irenæus is sharply rebuked, and called "the patron of idolatry" to the papist for having said that 1 Prose Works, II, 422. 2 Ibid., II, 430. |