Against God
Disliking God in Paradise Lost...
Disliking God in Paradise Lost—if it’s an old game to play, it’s backing a winner. In the epic’s electrifying opening, Satan asserts his indomitable will for revenge, assembles at Pandemonium his armies of evil, and sets out for earth and the corruption of humanity. But then, in Book Three, the setting shifts, and we are with God. He notices his adversary’s activities, and delivers a speech to his Son: lo, Satan has escaped from hell, and “man will hearken to his glozing lies,” and fall. God asks,
whose fault? Whose but his own? ingrate, he had of me All he could have; I made him just and right, Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.
Since, however, “man falls deceived” by fallen angels, man
shall find grace, The other [the devils] none; in mercy and justice both Through heaven and earth, so shall my glory excel [...].
About this speech, the critic A. J. A. Waldock was right in 1947: it is “a perfect picture of an immaculate character on the defense.” Even if Milton had been doing it on purpose, he could not have conveyed a “clearer impression of nervousness, insecurity and doubt”:
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