“Thy pompous delicacies I contemn,
And count thy specious gifts no gifts, but guiles.”(P. R. ii. 390–1.)
So they were, for at a word
“Both table and provision vanish’d quite,
With sound of harpies’ wings and talons heard.”(P. R. ii. 402–3.)
If but one grain of that enchanted food had been eaten, or one drop of that enchanted liquor had been drunk, there would have been no Cross, no Resurrection, no salvation for humanity.
The temptation on the mountain is expanded by Milton through the close of the second book, the whole of the third and part of the fourth. It is a temptation of peculiar strength because it is addressed to an aspiration which Jesus has acknowledged.
“Yet this not all
To which my spirit aspir’d: victorious deeds
Flam’d in my heart, heroic acts.”(P. R. i. 214–16.)
But he denies that the glory of mob-applause is worth anything.
“What is glory but the blaze of fame,
The people’s praise, if always praise unmixt?
And what the people but a herd confus’d,
A miscellaneous rabble, who extol
Things vulgar, and, well weigh’d, scarce worth the praise?”(P. R. iii. 47–51.)
To the Jesus of the New Testament this answer is, in a measure, inappropriate. He would not have called the people “a herd confus’d, a miscellaneous rabble.” But although inappropriate it is Miltonic. The devil then tries the Saviour with a more subtle lure, an appeal to duty.
“If kingdom move thee not, let move thee zeal
And duty; zeal and duty are not slow;
But on occasion’s forelock watchful wait.
They themselves rather are occasion best,
Zeal of thy father’s house, duty to free
Thy country from her heathen servitude.”(P. R. iii. 171–6.)