Made head 'gainst heaven's King, though over thrown. I saw and heard: for such a numerous host 'Confusion worse confounded; and heaven-gates Encroach'd on still through your intestine broils, If that way be your walk, you have not far; So much the nearer danger; go, and speed; Havoc, and spoil, and ruin, are my gain." He ceased; and Satan stay'd not to reply, But, glad that now his sea should find a shore, With fresh alacrity and force renew'd, Springs upward, like a pyramid of fire, Into the wild expanse, and, through the shock Of fighting elements, on all sides round Environ'd, wins his way; harder beset And more endanger'd than when Argo pass'd Through Bosphorus, betwixt the justling rocks: Or when Ulysses on the larboard shunn'd Charybdis, and by the other whirlpool steer'd. So he with difficulty and labour hard Moved on, with difficulty and labour he; But he once pass'd, soon after, when man fell, Following his track (such was the will of Heaven,) To tempt or punish mortals, except whom , A glimmering dawn: here Nature first begins G This pendent world, in bigness as a star THE ARGUMENT. God, sitting on his throne, sees Satan flying towards this world, then newly created: shows him to the Son, who sat at his right hand; foretells the success of Satan in perverting mankind, clears his own justice and wisdom from all imputation, having created man free, and able enough to have withstood his tempter; yet declares his purpose of grace towards him, in regard he fell not of his own malice, as did Satan, but by him seduced. The Son of God renders praises to his Father for the manifestation of his gracious purpose towards man; but God again declares, that grace cannot be extended towards man without the satisfaction of divine justice: man hath offended the majesty of God by aspiring to-godhead, and therefore, with all his progeny devoted to death, must die, unless some one can be found sufficient to answer for his offence, and undergo his punishment. The Son of God freely offers himself a ransom for man: the Father accepts him, ordains his incarnation, pronounces his exaltation above all names in heaven and earth: commands all the angels to adore him. They obey, and by hymning to their harps in full quire, celebrate the Father and the Son. Meanwhile, Satan alights upon the bare convex of this world's outermost orb; where, wandering, he first finds a place, since called the "Limbo of Vanity:" what persons and things fly up thither thence comes to the gate of heaven, described ascending by stairs, and the waters above the firmament that flow about it: his passage thence to the orb of the sun: he finds there Uriel, the regent of that orb, but first changes himself into the shape of a meaner angel; and, pretending a zealous desire to behold the new creation, and man, whom God had placed here, inquires of him the place of his habitation, and is directed: alights first on mount Niphates. |