10. Paradise Lost, by John Milton, pp. 235-265

Book X

_____

As Samuel Johnson said of Paradise Lost, "None ever wished it longer than it is." And when you've reached the Fall, a lot of what remains is anticlimax.

The "Angelic Guards" depart from Eden, and are greeted with sadness in Heaven, although Milton hastens to add that it "violated not thir bliss." Apparently it takes a lot to get an angel down. God smooths things over a bit by saying "I told you so": He had said Satan would succeed in seducing humankind, but that's the way free will works. Meanwhile, he notes that Adam and Eve are puzzling over the fact that they haven't been struck dead yet, so to keep them from assuming that they aren't being punished he commissions the Son to go down and explain it all to them. The throng of angels follows the Son to the gates of Heaven to see him off.

Francis Hayman, 1749

Gustave Doré, 1866

Adam and Eve hear "the voice of God ... Now walking in the Garden" and try to hide, but they come out when he calls for Adam. Eve follows, though "more loath" to do so. "Love was not in thir looks, either to God / Or to each other, but apparent guilt, / And shame, and perturbation, and despair, / Anger, and obstinacy, and hate, and guile." Adam's excuse is that he was naked, which elicits the obvious question: "that thou art naked, who / Hath told thee? hast thou eaten of the Tree / Whereof I gave thee charge thou shouldst not eat?" Adam is reluctant to blame Eve, but he does, referring to her as "This Woman whom thou mad'st to be my help."

The retort is a sharp one: "Was shee thy God, that her thou didst obey / Before his voice"? But the followup is typically sexist: "Thou didst resign thy Manhood, and the Place / Wherein God set thee above her made of thee." Eve, too, tries to pass the buck: "The Serpent me beguil'd and I did eat." God then directs his attention to the serpent in ways that seem to me unfair: the poor snake was just lying there asleep when Satan took over its body. Nevertheless, it gets cursed to grovel on its belly and eat dust.

Between Thee and the Woman I will put
Enmity, and between thine and her Seed:
Her Seed shall bruise thy head, thou bruise his heel.
   So Spake this Oracle, then verifi'd
When Jesus son of Mary second Eve,
Say Satan fall like Lightning down from Heav'n

Though here Milton is getting ahead of his story. Getting back to the first Eve, God tells her, "Children thou shalt bring / In sorrow forth, and to thy Husband's will / Thine shall submit, hee over thee shall rule." (He's had a little bit of trouble making that last one stick, so maybe the reporters got it wrong.) As for Adam, he'll have to work for a living, and it won't be so easy tending a garden because God plans to invent weeds. And since he was created out of the ground, he'll return to it after death, which isn't going to happen right away, as they had feared. But he takes pity on them for being so ashamed of their nakedness and provides them with clothes made from "Skins of Beasts." Milton isn't sure whether God skinned the beasts right then and there or made them shed their skins and put on new ones, like "the Snake with youthful Coat repaid. And then he goes back to Heaven.

Meanwhile, Sin and Death have been at work building a kind of causeway through Chaos, from Hell to the universe. And Death has smelled his "prey innumerable" in the fallen world. Satan is delighted to find that his children have been so productive.

Hee, after Eve seduc't, unminded slunk
Into the Wood fast by, and changing shape
To observe the sequel, saw his guileful act
By Eve, though all unweeting, seconded
Upon her Husband, saw thir shame that sought
Vain covertures; but when he saw descend
The Son of God to judge them, terrifi'd he fled

Now he encounters Sin and Death, and Sin gives him credit for his "magnific deeds."

Thine now is all this World, thy virtue hath won
What thy hands builded not, thy Wisdom gain'd
With odds what War hath lost, and fully aveng'd
Our foil in Heav'n

Satan tells them to go ahead and take over the Earth, "Dominion exercise and in the Air, / Chiefly on Man, sole Lord of all declar'd, / Him first make sure your thrall, and lastly kill." Meanwhile, he's going back to Hell to boast about what he's done.

The fallen angels await Satan's return, by Gustave Doré, 1866

He disguises himself as a "Plebeian Angel militant / Of lowest order," enters Pandaemonium, and invisibly takes his place on the throne, making a surprise entrance when "At last as from a Cloud his fulgent head / And shape Star-bright appear'd, or brighter, clad / With what permissive glory since his fall / Was left him, or false glitter." He addresses his minions with a speech about his glorious deeds, though he fudges some of the details. For example, he claims that "Night and Chaos wild ... fiercely oppos'd / My journey strange," when in fact they helped him. As for Adam, "Him by fraud I have seduc'd / From his Creator, and the more to increase / Your wonder, with an Apple." And he got away without being punished, he claims: Instead, God punished "the brute Serpent in whose shape / Man I deceiv'd."

                                            I am to bruise his heel;
His Seed, when is not set, shall bruise my head:
A World who would not purchase with a bruise,
Or much more grievous pain?  Ye have th' account
Of my performance: What remains, ye Gods,
But up and enter now into full bliss.
   So having said, a while he stood, expecting
Thir universal shout and high applause
To fill his ear, when contrary he hears,
On all sides, from innumerable tongues,
A dismal universal hiss, the sound
Of public scorn

Gustave Doré, 1866

He and his followers have all been turned into snakes, and Milton does a nice job of imagining the metamorphosis: "His Visage drawn he felt to sharp and spare, / His Arms clung to his Ribs, his Legs entwining / Each other, till supplanted down he fell / A monstrous Serpent on his Belly prone." The crowd outside the council hall is surprised to see a writhing mass of snakes emerge from it, and they too are transformed. Then they see a grove of fruit trees that resemble the fatal tree in the Garden, but when they taste the fruit it turns to ashes in their mouths. Eventually they resume their former shapes, but Milton says that they have  to undergo this "humbling" annually "To dash thir prid, and joy for Man seduc't."

Sin and Death arrive on Earth, by Gustave Doré, 1866

Sin and Death arrive on Earth, but Death is disappointed that there are so few creatures to feed on. Sin tells him to start with the plants and the animals until there are enough human beings. She'll spend her time infecting humanity "And season him thy last and sweetest prey." In Heaven, God assures the angels that the ravishment of Paradise will not last forever, but eventually "Heav'n and Earth renew'd shall be made pure / To sanctity that shall receive no stain: / Till then the Curse pronounc't on both precedes." The angels sing a Halleluiah.

Meanwhile, there are some cosmic details to take care of, such as shifting the angle of the Sun to create seasons of extreme cold and extreme heat, and arranging it so the planets and constellations have their zodiacal effect on things.

Some say he bid his Angels turn askance
The Poles of Earth twice ten degrees and more
From the Sun's Axle; they with labor push'd
Oblique the Centric Globe: Some say the Sun
Was bid turn Reins from th' Equinoctial Road 

In other words, either the Earth was moved or the Sun was -- again Milton waffles on the geocentric or heliocentric issue. 

The arrival of Sin and Death also introduces "Discord" and "fierce antipathy: / Beast now with Beast gan war, and Fowl with Fowl, / And Fish with Fish; to graze the Herb all leaving, / Devour'd each other." (Before the fall, all the animals were herbivorous.)  The whole thing depresses Adam, who wishes he'd never been created:

                                                     O fleeting joys
Of Paradise, dear bought with lasting woes!
Did I request thee, Maker, from my Clay
To mould me Man, did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me, or here place
In this delicious Garden? 

He wants to die as soon as possible. But then he thinks that death might be worse: "in the Grave, / Or in some other dismal place, who knows / But I shall die a living Death?" It's the same fear that deters Hamlet from killing himself. And he realizes that he has also condemned his children to the same fate: "Ah, why should all mankind / For one man's fault thus guiltless be condemn'd, / If guiltless?" He frets about future generations blaming him, though his guilt is shared with "that bad Woman."

Adam rejects Eve's comfort, by William Strang, 1896

Eve tries to comfort him with "Soft words," but he orders her "Out of my sight, thou Serpent, that name best / Befits thee with him leagu'd, thyself as false and hateful." He would still be happy "had not thy pride / And wand'ring vanity, when least was safe, / Rejected my forewarning." Why did God create "this fair defect / Of Nature, and not fill the World at once / With Men as Angels without Feminine, / Or find some other way to generate Mankind?" He then imagines how hard it will be for future men to find mates: They'll want some woman who won't want them, or who will be forbidden to marry them by her parents, or they'll meet someone who is already married, and so on. It's a catalog of unhappy love affairs.

Eve begs him to forgive her and to realize that she needs his help, "Thy counsel in this uttermost distress, / My only strength and stay." They may not have long to live, she says, so "Between us two let there be peace, both joining, / As join'd in injuries, one enmity / Against a Foe by doom express assign'd us, / That cruel Serpent." They both have sinned, she admits, "but thou / Against God only, I against God and thee." She begs God to punish her, not him. She is "sole cause to thee of all this woe, / Mee mee only just object of his ire." 

Adam is moved by her selflessness and says he should bear the brunt of punishment -- after all, he's the man and she, well, she's just a woman.

                                                          If Prayers
Could alter high Decrees, I to that place
Would speed before thee, and be louder heard,
That on my head all might be visited,
Thy frailty and infirmer Sex forgiv'n,
To me committed and by me expos'd.
But rise, let us no more contend, nor blame
Each other, blam'd enough elsewhere, but strive
In offices of Love, how we may light'n
Each other's burden in our share of woe;
Since this day's Death denounc't, if aught I see,
Will prove no sudden, but a slow-pac't evil,
A long day's dying to augment our plain,
And to our Seed (O hapless Seed!) deriv'd. 

Eve also realizes the consequences of their having children, and suggests that either they abstain from sex or kill themselves, "So Death / Shall be deceiv'd his glut, and with us two / Be forc'd to satisfy his Rav'nous Maw." Adam is impressed that her "contempt of life and pleasure seems / To argue in thee something more sublime / And excellent than what thy mind contemns," but he's certain that God won't let them take the easy way out. He wants to have his revenge on Satan, and they won't get that opportunity if they kill themselves or don't have children to carry on their vengeance. So no more talk of suicide or sexual abstinence: "That cuts us off from hope, and savors only / Rancor and pride, impatience and despite." After all, the curse on them isn't all bad: The pain of child-bearing will be rewarded "with joy, / Fruit of thy Womb." (Easy for him to say.) And for having to work for his living, so what? "Idleness had been worse." He proposes that they ask God for guidance on how to deal with the changes in the weather, and how to use fire.

So they go to where they had received the punishment from the Son and confess their faults and pray for guidance.

7. Paradise Lost, by John Milton, pp. 138-163

Book VI

_____

Raphael continues to tell Adam and Eve about Satan's rebellion and the war in Heaven. Abdiel, having defied the rebel angels, returns to tell God what has happened and is applauded for his obedience. He now joins in the effort

                                                                 to subdue
By force, who reason for thir Law refuse,
Right reason for thir Law, and for thir King
Messiah, who by right of merit reigns.

"Right reason," like "Christian humanism," is one of those phrases that have an oxymoronic ring to modern ears, but it goes back to Plato and the Stoics and is the basis of the concept of natural law. "Right" is the operative word: Reason alone is not a moral concept.  Of course, for Adam and Eve, who are supposedly not yet aware of the distinction between good and evil, Raphael is getting a little bit ahead of himself in the lesson.

Milton was a pacifist, and the very concept of war was anathema to him, so he depicts it as anarchy and chaos brought on by the false heroics of Satan, who arrives with his hordes in a vainglorious display:

                                     exalted as a God
Th' Apostate in his Sun-bright Chariot sat
Idol of Majesty divine, enclos'd
With Flaming Cherubim, and golden Shields

The war begins with a verbal contest, just as it does in Homer and Virgil. Abdiel comes forth to denounce Satan as a fool for thinking that God wouldn't meet his challenge. Satan in response taunts the faithful angels for giving up their "Liberty" in serving God, accusing them of servility and sloth, and as "Minist'ring Spirits, train'd up in Feast and Song," not proud warriors. Abdiel counters that Satan "deprav's it with the name / Of Servitude to serve whom God ordains, / Or Nature: God and Nature bid the same, / When he who rules is worthiest, and excels / Them whom he governs." And having said this, "a noble stroke he lifted high ... On the proud Crest of Satan." It rocks Satan back "ten paces huge," amazing Satan's troops. The battle begins.

Abdiel smites Satan, by Gustave Doré, 1866

The battle begins, by Gustave Doré, 1866

The wounded Satan, by Gustave Doré, 1866

Satan and Michael have words in the midst of battle, with Michael promising to send Satan "to the place of evil, Hell," and Satan retorting that "we mean to wind, / Or turn this Heav'n itself into the Hell / Thou fabl'st." And Michael deals Satan a blow that "deep ent'ring shear'd / All his right side; then Satan first knew pain ... but th' Ethereal substance clos'd / Not long divvisible, and from the gash / A stream of Nectarous humor issuing flow'd / Sanguine, such as Celestial Spirits may bleed." He is borne away by his troops

Back to his Chariot, where it stood retir'd
From off the files of war: there they him laid
Gnashing for anguish and despite and shame
To find himself not matchless, and his pride
Humbl'd by such rebuke, so far beneath
His confidence to equal God in power.
Yet soon he heal'd; for Spirits that live throughout
Vital in every part, not as frail man
In Entrails, Heart or Head, Liver or Reins,
Cannot but by annihilating die

It's nice that Raphael explains all this, except that it once again raises the issue of his audience: How could Adam and Eve understand the concepts of things they haven't experienced, like pain and death? In fact, as Milton reminds us, these concepts were new to the angels as well, especially the rebels, "to such evil brought / By sin of disobedience, till that hour / Not liable to fear or flight or pain."

Night comes on after the first day of battle, by Gustave Doré, 1866

Michael and the other angels keep watch, by Gustave Doré, 1866

Night comes on and the armies return to their camps, where Satan suggests that "perhaps more valid Arms, / Weapons more violent, when next we meet, / May serve to better us, and worse our foes." And so he urges them to create the first weapons of mass destruction from materials found

Deep under ground, materials dark and crude,
Of spiritous and fiery spume, till toucht
With Heav'n's ray, and temper'd they shoot forth
So beauteous, op'ning to the ambient light.
These in thir dark Nativity the Deep
Shall yield us, pregnant with infernal flame,
Which into hollow Engines long and round
Thick ramm'd, at th' other bore with touch of fire
Dilated and infuriate shall send forth
From far with thund'ring noise among our foes
Such implements of mischief as shall dash
To pieces, and o'erwhelm whatever stands
Adverse, that they shall fear we have disarm'd
The Thunderer of his only dreaded bolt. 

He even foresees the possibility that in the future, if they triumph, "Some one intent on mischief, or inspir'd / With dev'lish machination might devise / Like instrument to plague the Sons of men / For sin, on war ad mutual slaughter bent."

So the next day they wheel out their cannons and blast the unsuspecting angels: "down they fell / By thousands, Angel on Arch-Angel roll'd." Satan mocks them by commenting that it looked like "they would dance, yet for a dance they seem'd / Somewaht extravagant and wild." But as the rebel angels "Stood scoffing, highth'n'd in thir thoughts beyond / All doubt and victory," God's troops

           pluckt the seated Hills with all thir load,
Rocks, Waters, Woods, and by the shaggy tops
Uplifting bore them in thir hands: Amaze,
Be sure, and terror seiz'd the rebel Host,
When coming towards them so dread they saw
The bottom of the Mountains upward turn'd

So the rebels start flinging mountains back, "and now all Heav'n / Had gone to wrack, with ruin overspread," except that God had foreseen all this and let it take place in order "To honor his Anointed Son aveng'd / Upon his enemies, and to declare / All power on him transferr'd." The whole two days of war, it seems, was just to set the stage for the Son's triumph on the third day -- a pattern to be repeated in the crucifixion and resurrection.

So on the third morning, the Son rides forth in a chariot "Flashing thick flames, Wheel within Wheel," accompanied

By four Cherubic shapes, four Faces each
Had wondrous, as with Stars thir bodies all
And Wings were set with Eyes, with Eyes the Wheels
Of Beryl, and careering Fires between;
Over thir heads a crystal Firmament,
Whereon a Sapphire Throne, inlaid with pure
Amber, and colors of the show'ry Arch. 

The destroyed landscape is restored "At his command ... And with fresh Flow'rets Hill and Valley smil'd." Telling the assembled angels to stand aside, the Son bears down on the enemy, and "under his burning Wheels / The steadfast Empyrean shook throughout, / All but the Throne itself of God." (Satan had boasted in Book I that he shook that throne.) The rebel angels retreat,

                                                     for he meant
Not to destroy, but root them out of Heav'n:
The overthrown he rais'd, and as a Herd
Of Goats or timorous flock together throng'd
Drove them before him Thunder-struck, pursu'd
With terrors and with furies to the bounds
And Crystal wall of Heav'n, which op'ning wide,
Roll'd inward, and a spacious Gap isclos'd
Into the wasteful Deep

(Samuel Johnson observed that the flock shouldn't have been described as "timorous" by Raphael before the Fall, but as we've seen, consistency has long been absent from the narrative.) Hell opens up and "Yawning receiv'd them whole, and on them clos'd." And the Son rides in triumph back to "the Courts / And Temple of his mighty Father Thron'd / On high."

Engraving by Francis Hayman, 1749

William Blake, 1808

Gustave Doré, 1866

And Raphael ends his narrative by pointing the moral:

        let it profit thee to have heard
By terrible Example the reward
Of disobedience; firm they might have stood,
Yet fell; remember, and fear to transgress. 

6. Paradise Lost, by John Milton, pp. 113-137

Book V

_____

Morning arrives, and Adam addresses a kind of aubade to Eve. But she's had a troubling dream, presumably caused by Satan's whispering in her ear last night. In it, she heard a voice she thought at first to be Adam's, urging her to go walking in the night. She went to the "Tree / Of interdicted Knowledge," where an angelic figure argued that she should taste of its fruit, and sampled some himself. Though "mee damp horror chill'd / At such bold words voucht with a deed so bold," eventually she yielded to the invitation and "Forthwith up to the Clouds / With him I flew." But she assures Adam that she was "glad ... To find this but a dream!" Adam tells her the "uncouth dream" was "of evil sprung I fear."

Engraving by Francis Hayman, 1749

Adam awakens Eve, by Gustave Doré, 1866

Okay, how does Adam know anything about evil? Isn't the whole point of the Tree of Knowledge that it awakens Adam and Eve to the concept of evil? Yet here we have Adam recognizing it right off, and Eve feeling something like guilt -- a consequence of the ability to know evil when you see it. In Eve's case, the reaction can be likened to a child's fear of the unknown, but Adam specifically identifies the dream as "evil," and questions where it could have come from: "Yet evil whence? in thee can harbor none, / Created pure." He decides that it's a product of "Fancy":

Evil into the mind of God or Man
May come and go, so unapprov'd, and leave
No spot or blame behind: Which gives me hope
That what in sleep thou didst abhor to dream,
Waking thou never wilt consent to do. 

He cheers her up, but nevertheless she weeps "a gentle tear ... From either eye," which he kisses as "the gracious signs of sweet remorse / And pious awe." "So all was clear'd," Milton assures us, though what isn't cleared is the fact that prelapsarian Adam and Eve seem to have a far more sophisticated knowledge of good and evil than they are supposed to have, including a concept of "remorse." How can you have that without the knowledge that you are supposed to feel remorseful for doing something wrong? 

Anyway, they set off to work after their morning prayers, which are "In various style, for neither various style / Nor holy rapture wanted they to praise / Thir Maker" -- in other words, they don't have a liturgy to follow by rote, but their praise of the maker flows out of untrained and spontaneous awe, unlike the scripted prayers of the established church. And in the conclusion of their prayers, the problematic note of awareness of evil arises once again:

                                            and if the night
Have gather'd aught of evil or conceal'd,
Disperse it, as now light dispels the dark.

Adam and Eve see Raphael approaching, by Gustave Doré, 1866

Meanwhile, God summons Raphael, "the sociable spirit," and sends him to "Converse with Adam." Milton follows Raphael's flight until he finds Adam sitting at the door of the bower while Eve prepares their dinner. Finding that they have a guest, Adam sends Eve off to get some more food and set another plate, which she does without complaint. This idealized domesticity does get a little heavy-handed, especially when Milton observes, "A while discourse they hold; / No fear lest Dinner cool."

Adam, Eve, and Raphael, by William Blake, 1808

Raphael lectures on cosmology, by Gustave Doré, 1866

Eve, Raphael, and Adam, by William Strang, 1896

Raphael goes on a while about the way all nature nourishes itself, and when Adam observes that Raphael seems to enjoy earthly food even though it must not be comparable to "Heav'n's high feasts," Raphael replies with a lecture on cosmology. All things, he says, proceed from "one first matter," which grows increasingly "more refin'd, more spiritous, and pure" as one ascends the great chain of being. Milton's concept of the chain is dynamic: The universe is a process of perpetual becoming:

                                                         So from the root
Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves
More aery, last the bright consummate flow'r
Spirits odorous breathes

Matter constantly passes into spirit, which is, Douglas Bush observed,  a kind of "optimistic monism."

And from these corporal nutriments perhaps
Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit,
Improv'd by tract of time, and wing'd ascend
Ethereal, as wee

Adam thanks him for the lesson, but he's bothered -- rightly -- by the command of obedience. Raphael explains that

God made thee perfet, not immutable; 

And good he made thee, but to persevere 

He left it in thy power, ordain'd thy will 

By nature free, not  over-rul'd by Fate 

Inextricable, or strict necessity; 

Our voluntary service he requires, 

Not our necessitated....

....

... freely we serve, 

Because we freely love, as in our will 

To love or not; in this we stand or fall: 

And some are fall'n, to disobedience fall'n, 

And so from Heav'n to deepest Hell; O fall

From what high state of bliss into what woe!

Again, this is knowledge of good and evil. What more can they learn from the fruit of the Tree?

Adam wants to know more, and points out that they have a lot of time for the story, as it's only midday. So Raphael launches into the story of the war in Heaven, though he points out that it was a spiritual conflict, not a physical ones, and that he's only describing it in physical terms because Adam wouldn't understand it otherwise:

                                 yet for thy good
This is dispens't, and what surmounts the reach
Of human sense, I shall delineate so,
By lik'ning spiritual to corporal forms. 

So he tells Adam about the day when God summoned all the "Angels, Progeny of Light, / Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers," to tell them that he has begotten a Son and put him in charge of all of them. There was much jubilation, including a

Mystical dance, which yonder starry Sphere
Of Planets and of fixt in all her Wheels
Resembles nearest, mazes intricate,
Eccentric, intervolv'd, yet regular
Then most, when most irregular they seem:
And in thir motions harmony Divine
So smooths her charming tones, that God's own ear
Listens delighted. 

A dance to the music of the spheres, which is about as mystical as you get. But not everybody was dancing, especially "Satan, so call him now, his former name / Is heard no more in Heav'n." He who must not be named is usually identified as Lucifer, the light-bearer, who was "of the first, / If not the first Arch-Angel, great in Power, / In favor and preëminence, yet fraught with envy against the Son of God." (Again, Raphael is tipping Adam and Eve off about evil: the sin of envy, which presumably they have had no experience of.)

So Satan assembles his followers, which constituted "the third part of Heav'n's Host," to foment rebellion. God warns the Son about the uprising, and the Son assures his Father that he has things under control. In "The Palace of great Lucifer," Satan charges the Son with a power grab, and urges his followers to "cast off this Yoke." The speech goes over well with everyone except the seraph Abdiel (a character invented by Milton, using a biblical name that means "servant of God"), who accuses Satan of blasphemy. God, he says, "made / Thee what thou art, and form'd the Pow'rs of Heav'n / Such as he pleas'd, and circumscrib'd thir being," and who is Satan to challenge that? "Cease this impious rage," he orders, "but his zeal / None seconded." So he departs, "through hostile scorn, which he sustain'd / Superior":

Among the faithless, faithful only hee;
Among innumerable false, unmov'd,
Unshak'n, unseduc'd, unterrifi'd
His Loyalty he kept, his Love, his Zeal.

It's a heroic moment equal or superior to Satan's more familiar heroic moments.

4. Paradise Lost, by John Milton, pp. 60-83

Book III

_____

One reason why so many think Milton was on Satan's side is that once he's off-stage and the Father and the Son start discussing theology, things slow way down. (Dante had the same problem: A lot more people read the Inferno than the Paradiso.)

Book III starts rather magnificently, however, with Milton's invocation to Light and the poignant acknowledgment that he can no longer perceive it: "thou / Revisit'st not these eyes, that roll in vain / To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn." Even in the invocation, there's a recognition that the origins of light are unknown: Was it "offspring of Heavn'n first-born" -- i.e. the first thing God created -- or is it the essence of God and therefore "Coeternal" with him, "Bright effluence of bright essence increate"? Perhaps the question is unanswerable: "pure Ethereal stream / Whose Fountain who should tell?" Did it exist before Creation, "before the Sun, / Before the Heavens"? 

In any case, he welcomes the opportunity to escape "the Stygian pool" of hell, and prays for a compensatory inward light because his blindness prevents direct experience of external light:

                                              Thus with the Year
Seasons return, but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of Ev'n or Morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or Summer's Rose,
Or flock, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the Book of knowledge fair
Presented with a Universal blanc
Of Nature's works to me expung'd and ras'd,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
So much the rather thou Celestial Light
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight. 

So we ascend to Heaven and a scene that corresponds to the one that just took place in Hell. God is seated on his throne, addressing the angels as Satan addressed the devils, and with the Son as his right-hand man, just as Satan had Beëlzebub. Of course, God has an advantage over Satan in that he not only sees what's going on -- i.e., Adam and Eve "in the happy Garden plac't, / Reaping immortal fruits of joy and love," as well as Satan making his way upward from hell -- but also knows what's going to happen next. Milton's choice to make God a speaking character in the narrative has been rightly criticized, especially because in the first things he says he sounds rather peevish, especially with regard to Satan:

                                                     So will fall
Hee and his faithless Progeny: whose fault?
Whose but his own? ingrate, he had of mee
All he could have; I made him just and right,
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.

The repudiation of Calvinist predestination is also a little overdone here, too. He admits that he knew Satan was going to rebel and fail, but "if I foreknew, / Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault."

For many modern readers, the elaborate superstructure of Christian theology is a wearisome imposition, but Milton feels compelled to have Father and Son discuss it, because the Son is bothered by what he knows is about to happen, that Satan is going to tempt humankind into disobedience:

                                         wilt thou thyself
Abolish thy Creation, and unmake,
For him, what for thy glory thou hast made?
So should thy goodness and thy greatness both
Be question'd and blasphem'd without defense. 

In short, why bother creating Paradise if you already know it's going to be lost? It seems like a bad PR move, if nothing else. But God reassures him that "Man shall not quite be lost" and that he has already chosen some "of peculiar grace / Elect above the rest," and that the others will have to work for their salvation. What he really needs is for someone to volunteer to atone for their sins, "Some other able, and as willing, pay / The rigid satisfaction, death for death." And he calls on the "Heavn'ly Powers" for a volunteer. (The scene, of course, parallels the one in which Satan describes the task of going out to check on the world God has created and volunteers himself.)

"He ask'd, but all the Heavn'ly Choir stood mute." Anyone? Anyone? Okay, I'll do it, says the Son.

Behold mee then, mee for him, life for life
I offer, on mee let thine anger fall;
Account mee man; I for his sake will leave
Thy bosom, and this glory next to thee
Freely put off, and for him lastly die
Well pleas'd, on me let Death wreck all his rage;
Under his gloomy power I shall not long
Lie vanquisht

It is, of course, a truly heroic act, unlike Satan's blustering posture of heroism. The problem is that it doesn't have the heroic ring that Milton was able to give Satan's defiance. And this dramatic weakness in the narrative is the poem's central literary defect. We have to remember, however, that Milton wasn't thinking literarily here, but rather religiously. He couldn't have known that the kind of Christian orthodoxy he was dramatizing would fade into irrelevance for many of his future readers.

The Son agrees to atone for humankind's sins, by William Blake, 1808

And so God commissions him to become both human and divine: "Be thou in Adam's room / The Head of all mankind, though Adam's Son." Everything will turn out fine, God assures the assembled angels, who then burst out in cheers and music, accompanying themselves on the harps that have become a cartoon accessory for angels ever since.

The angels rejoice at the Son's decision, by Gustave Doré, 1866

But while they are spending "Thir happy hours in joy and hymning," Satan is steadily making his way to the new world, alighting like a vulture on the outermost sphere of the new universe.where Milton has located a "Paradise of Fools," a kind of limbo for "all things vain, and all who in vain things / Built thir fond hopes of Glory or lasting fame, / Or happiness in this or th' other life." These will eventually include the builders of the tower of Babel, suicides like Empedocles and Cleombrotus who take their lives with the expectation of achieving divinity, and of course a whole host of "Eremites and Friars / White, Black and Grey, with all thir trumpery," especially the Dominicans and the Franciscans, particular targets of the Protestants.

A violent cross wind from either Coast
Blows them transverse ten thousand Leagues awry
Into the devious Air; then might ye see
Cowls, Hoods and Habits with thir wearers tost
And flutter'd into Rags, then Reliques, Beads,
Indulgences, Dispenses, Pardons, Bulls,
The sport of Winds

The Paradise of Fools, by Gustave Doré, 1866

 
Now he sees the stairway to Heaven, which is sometimes drawn up like a ladder, and "Looks down with wonder at the sudden view / Of all this World at once." So he begins his flight down to the Earth at its center -- or perhaps near it: Milton waffles about whether this universe is geocentric or heliocentric. Along the way he passes "other Worlds, / Or other Worlds they seem'd" -- Milton isn't over-concerned about whether these worlds are populated, and neither is Satan: "who dwelt happy there / He stay'd not to enquire." He sees the sun, but it's "hard to tell" whether it's at the center of this universe or not. And he finds a spot to land "like which perhaps / Astronomer in the Sun's lucent Orb / Through his glaz'd Optic Tube yet never saw" -- as the note tells us, Galileo had used his telescope in 1609 to discover sun spots.

Satan in disguise tricks Uriel into pointing the way to Paradise, engraving by Simon Francois Ravenet after Francis Hayman, 1749

There "he soon / Saw within ken a glorious Angel stand," and recognizes the archangel Uriel, whose back is turned, giving Satan time to put on a disguise as "a stripling Cherub." (We think of cherubs, or cherubim, as chubby little baby angels, but those are putti, merely decorative figures in Renaissance and Baroque art; the cherubim of Judeo-Christian tradition are the second order of angels, after the seraphim.) In this disguise, Satan is able to trick Uriel into giving him directions to the Earthly Paradise, "For neither Man nor Angel can discern / Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks / Invisible, except to God alone, / By his permissive will, through Heav'n and Earth." (God seems to permit the oddest things, while banning others that seem less consequential.)

Satan on his way to Earth, by Gustave Doré, 1866

And so Satan makes his fatal way to the top of Mount Niphates.