If you ask for One Relation, that shall contain all the others, it is this One, Dependency. That is to say, that, so long as you own your dependency, so long is there no true relation that you can deny. But, if you deny your dependency, therewith and therein you deny all your other true relations. The first motion towards (i. e. in the direction of—i. e. relating to) God, of pride in the proud Creature, is the denial of dependency. Satan denies his dependency. Both in the Past—for he denies his Creation, and avers that he had never heard such a thing mentioned. And in the Present, by renouncing his allegiance, opening war, &c. He denies the Creature’s continual derivation from the Creator, when he says, (as if in the Future,) “our own right hand shall teach us highest deeds.”
NORTH.
If it should appear necessary to vindicate expressly and at length the character which has been affirmed as one main character of the Paradise Lost, namely, that it is an Ethico-didactic Poem, the proofs offer themselves to the hand more thickly than that they can easily be all gathered.
They are Implicit and Explicit. The Implicit or inferential Proofs—Proofs involved in the tenor of the displayed History, and which are by reflection to be drawn out and unfolded—are of several kinds, and, in each, of the highest description.
Thus, the Main Action of the Poem, or the Fall of Man, teaches us that the Goodness and Happiness of the Creature subsists in the inviolable conformity of his Will to the holy Will of the Creator. Thus again:—The great Action is inductive to this Main Action—that is to say, The Fall of the Angels, which, by an easily-springing sequence of Moral Causes and Effects, brings on the Temptation, and, too easily, the Seduction of Man—as loudly inculcates the same sublime and all-comprehending Ethical Truth. And thus again:—That Third highest Action, which is incorporated into the Main action—The Redemption of Man—provided, in the Counsel of God, as remedial to the fatal Catastrophe of the Fall, and, according to the reverently-daring representation of the Poet, as undertaken in Heaven even ere the need that asks for it has befallen in Paradise upon Earth—this awful Mystery of the Divine interposing Grace irresistibly preaches the same solemn doctrine. Hell, and Earth, and Heaven proclaim with One Voice:—“Cleave, Oh Child of dust and Heir of Immortality, cleave and cling inwardly, by thy love—by thine obedience, outwardly—to the all-wise and all-righteous Will, which has called the Worlds and their Inhabitants into Being, and has imposed upon the worlds, and upon those which inhabit them, its bountiful and upholding Laws!—O cleave and immovably cling to that holy and gracious Will, which the Angels forsook and they fell!—which Man deserted, and—He fell!—which the Son of Man fulfilled, and He lifted up fallen and lost, but now restored Man to the peace of God upon this Earth, and to the bosom of God in Heaven.”
SEWARD.
Such, explicitly worded, is the admonishment, grave and high, which continually peals amidst the majestic and profound harmonies of this consecrated Poem—the admonishment the most loudly, the most distinctly heard.
TALBOYS.
Milton represents inordinate Pride, or the temper, in excess, of inward self-exaltation, as the chief element in the personal character of Satan; yet the great Archangel has maintained his Obedience to the Almighty King. The opinion of wrong done to himself, of an imposed humiliation in another’s exaltation exasperating his haughty self-idolatry, first rouses him into active disloyalty and rebellion, and to the desire and endeavour of dispossessing the Monarch of Heaven, and reigning in his stead. The open outward war which Satan is represented as waging with sensible weapons and armoury, with innumerable spirits banded in confederacy upon his part—the setting up his own throne in the north—the march across heaven—the attempt, such as it is described, at invading the very throne of Omnipotence—amongst other lights in which they may be contemplated, may be contemplated in this light, namely, that the Outward expresses, depictures the Inward. The proud Apostate Spirit, in conceiving offence and displeasure at God’s rule and ordinance, has already within his own mind rebelled against God—he has made his own Mind the field of an impious war.—We must conceive within his mind a sovereign throne erected, whereupon,—so long as He remained obedient, loyal, good,—the rightful Monarch sate, in undisputed supremacy.—From that Throne within his mind, as soon as Satan rebels, in will, God is dispossessed:—and on that internal usurped Throne the rebel now sits;—in imagination, his own King, and his own God. That which outwardly he attempts, and in which outwardly he must fail:—that inwardly he has attempted—and in that—attempting it—inwardly He must succeed.
NORTH.