Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

Praying or vowing; and vouchsafed His voice
To Balaam reprobate, a prophet yet
Inspired. Disdain not such access to me.'

To whom our Saviour, with unaltered brow:
"Thy coming hither, though I know thy scope,
I bid not, or forbid. Do as thou findest
Permission from above; thou canst not more.'
He added not; and Satan, bowing low
His gray dissimulation, disappeared

Into thin air diffused: for now began
Night with her sullen wings to double-shade

The desert; fowls in their clay nests were couched; And now wild beasts came forth the woods to roam."

So ends the first book of "Paradise Regained." In the opening of the second book Jesus has been missed by the disciples Andrew and Simon, who, after vain search, lament the failure of their expectations.

"Then on the banks of Jordan, by a creek,
Where winds with reeds and osiers whispering play,
Plain fishermen, (no greater men them call,)
Close in a cottage low together got,

Their unexpected loss and plaints outbreathed."

In the moment of their highest hope all seemed to be lost. The Messiah, the deliverer who was to free the chosen people from oppression, was rapt from them. But their short plaint ends with a glad faith in Him upon whose Providence they lay their fears.

"He will not fail,

Nor will withdraw Him now, nor will recall,
Mock us with His blest sight, then snatch Him hence;
Soon we shall see our Hope, our Joy, return."

Mary also, when

"Others returned from baptism, not her Son,
Nor left at Jordan, tidings of Him none,
Within her breast though calm, her breast though pure,
Motherly cares and fears got head, and raised
Some troubled thoughts."

The course of them, by recalling more passages in the earlier life of Christ, completes the work of episode in the construction of the poem, and the doubts of Mary, as the doubts of Andrew and Simon, lead only to the constant burden of the poem "Rest in the Lord, wait patiently for Him."

"Afflicted I may be, it seems, and blest;

I will not argue that, nor will repine.—

But where delays He now? Some great intent
Conceals Him. When twelve years He scarce had seen,
I lost Him, but so found as well I saw
He could not lose himself, but went about
His Father's business. What He meant I mused,
Since understand; much more His absence now
Thus long to some great purpose He obscures.
But I to wait with patience am inured;
My heart hath been a storehouse long of things
And sayings laid up, portending strange events.'
Thus Mary, pondering oft, and oft to mind
Recalling what remarkably had passed

Since first her salutation heard, with thoughts Meekly composed awaited the fulfilling."

Christ meanwhile tracing the desert

"Sole, but with holiest meditation fed, Into himself descended, and at once

All His great work to come before Him set."

Satan rejoined the council of his potentates, and without sign of boast or sign of joy, solicitous and blank, sought aid of them all. Then "Belial the dissolutest spirit that fell, the sensualest" counselled "Set women in his eye." The poem is planned for the strengthening of men's hearts through the example of Christ against all the chief temptations of the world. What was perhaps the foremost temptation to many in the days of Charles II. is skilfully included by giving to Belial the suggestion, disdained by Satan, of the lure of Circe, a temptation inapplicable to Christ, although among those which have to be resisted by the Christian.

"Therefore with manlier objects we must try
His constancy, with such as have more shew
Of worth, of honour, glory, and popular praise,
Rocks whereon greatest men have oftest wrecked;
Or that which only seems to satisfy

Lawful desires of nature, not beyond.

And now I know He hungers, where no food

Is to be found, in the wide wilderness:
The rest commit to me; I shall let pass

No advantage, and His strength as oft assay.""

The first temptation shall be through hunger, absolute want. The poem then turns to Christ hungering, and represents Christ's holy thoughts, that still find rest in God. He sleeps, and hunger suggests sinless dreams of food, in which the recognition of God's providence blends even with dream thoughts "of meats and drinks, nature's refreshment sweet."

"Him thought, He by the brook of Cherith stood,
And saw the ravens with their horny beaks
Food to Elijah bringing, even and morn,
Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they
brought.

He saw the Prophet also, how he fled
Into the desert, and how there he slept
Under a juniper; then how, awaked,
He found his supper on the coals prepared
And by the Angel was bid rise and eat,
And ate the second time after repose,
The strength whereof sufficed him forty days:
Sometimes that with Eliah He partook,

Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse."

When morning came, Christ saw from a hill a pleasant grove, and was met by Satan

"Not rustic as before, but seemlier clad,

As one in city, or court, or palace bred,"

with suggestion that He had been forgotten by God, and with subtle pleading to His brief answer of

content. Then Satan spread a table in the wilderness with all that could entice the appetite. The spirits Satan brought with him there waited as attendant youths, sweet odours and sweet music graced the splendour of the feast. Then Satan asked, "What doubts the Son of God to sit and eat?" but to his solicitation he received temperate answer of unbroken confidence in God, and the table vanished to the sound of harpies' wings. The next temptation was by the desire for wealth as means to great ends. "Riches are mine," said Satan, "fortune is in my hand,"

"They whom I favour thrive in wealth amain; While virtue, valour, wisdom, sit in want.

And Jesus patiently replied that wealth without these three is impotent to gain or keep dominion; but men endued with them have often attained in lowest poverty to highest deeds.

"Extol not riches then, the toil of fools,

The wise man's cumbrance, if not snare; more apt
To slacken Virtue, and abate her edge,
Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise.
What, if with like aversion I reject

Riches and realms! yet not, for that a crown,
Golden in shew, is but a wreath of thorns,

Brings dangers, troubles, cares, and sleepless nights,
To him who wears the regal diadem,

When on his shoulders each man's burden lies;

For therein stands the office of a king,
His honour, virtue, merit, and chief praise,
That for the public all this weight he bears.
Yet he who reigns within himself, and rules
Passions, desires, and fears, is more a king;
Which every wise and virtuous man attains:
And who attains not ill aspires to rule
Cities of men, or headstrong multitudes,
Subject himself to anarchy within,

Or lawless passions in him, which he serves.
But to guide nations in the way of truth
By saving doctrine, and from error lead
To know, and knowing worship God aright,
Is yet more kingly: this attracts the soul,
Governs the inner man, the nobler part;
That other o'er the body only reigns,
And oft by force, which to a generous mind
So reigning can be no sincere delight.
Besides, to give a kingdom hath been thought
Greater and nobler done, and to lay down
Far more magnanimous, than to assume.
Riches are needless then, both for themselves,
And for thy reason why they should be sought,
To gain a sceptre, oftest better missed.'"

[blocks in formation]

Of most-erected spirits, most-tempered pure,
Ethereal, who all pleasures else despise,
All treasures and all gain esteem as dross,

And dignities and powers, all but the highest.'"

Calmly Christ answered; and to men who for earthly glory may be tempted to swerve from the heavenward path this answer speaks:

"For what is glory but the blaze of fame,

The people's praise, if always praise unmixed?
And what the people but a herd confused,
A miscellaneous rabble, who extol

Things vulgar, and, well weighed, scarce worth the

praise?

They praise, and they admire, they know not what,
And know not whom, but as one leads the other.
And what delight to be by such extolled,
To live upon their tongues and be their talk?
Of whom to be dispraised were no small praise,—
His lot who dares be singularly good.
The intelligent among them and the wise
Are few, and glory scarce of few is raised.
This is true glory and renown, when God
Looking on the Earth, with approbation marks
The just man, and divulges him through Heaven
To all His Angels, who with truc applause
Recount his praises. Thus He did to Job,
When, to extend his fame through Heaven and Ear
-As thou to thy reproach mayest well remember-
He ask'd thee: "Hast thou seen my servant Job:"
Famous he was in Heaven, on Earth less known
Where glory is false glory, attributed

To things not glorious, men not worthy of fame.
They err who count it glorious to subdue
By conquest far and wide, to over-run
Large countries, and in field great battles win,
Great cities by assault. What do these worthies,
But rob and spoil, burn, slaughter, and enslave,
Peaceable nations, neighbouring or remote,
Made captive, yet deserving freedom more
Than those their conquerors? Who leave behind
Nothing but ruin wheresoe'er they rove,
And all the flourishing works of peace destroy:
Then swell with pride, and must be titled Gods,
Great Benefactors of mankind, Deliverers,
Worshipped with temple, priest, and sacrifice.
One is the son of Jove, of Mars the other;
Till conqueror Death discover them scarce men,
Rolling in brutish vices and deformed,
Violent or shameful death their due reward.
But if there be in glory aught of good,

It may by means far different be attained,
Without ambition, war, or violence;
By deeds of peace, by wisdom eminent,
By patience, temperance. I mention still
Him whom thy wrongs, with saintly patiene» ban
Made famous in a land and times obscure,
Who names not now with honour patient Jobz

1 "Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil

Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies;
But ves and spreads aloft by those pure eyes
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove;
As He pronounces lastly on each deed,

Of so much Fame in heaven expect thy meed."
(Milton's "Lycidas."

Poor Socrates-who next more memorable?—
By what he taught, and suffered for so doing,
For truth's sake suffering death unjust, lives now
Equal in fame to proudest conquerors.
Yet if for fame and glory aught be done,
Aught suffered; if young African for fame
His wasted country freed from Punic rage,
The deed becomes unpraised, the man at least,
And loses, though but verbal, his reward.
Shall I seek glory then, as vain men seek,
Oft not deserved? I seek not mine, but His

Who sent me, and thereby witness whence I am.'"

To Satan's plea that God Himself seeks glory, Christ fervently replies, leaving the tempter struck with guilt of his own sin, for he himself, insatiable of glory, had lost all. But next he urges upon Christ His right to the throne of David, and that for love of His enslaved people He should reign soon. "The happier reign, the sooner it begins: Reign then, what canst thou better do the while?" The reply is that all things are best fulfilled in their due time. God's time is to be waited for, His trials borne.

"What if He hath decreed that I shall first

Be tried in humble state, and things adverse,
By tribulations, injuries, insúlts,

Contempts, and scorns, and snares, and violence,
Suffering, abstaining, quietly expecting,
Without distrust or doubt, that He may know
What I can suffer, how obey! Who best
Can suffer, best can do; best reign, who first
Well hath obeyed; just trial, ere I merit
My exaltation, without change or end.
But what concerns it thee, when I begin
My everlasting kingdom? why art thou
Solicitous? what moves thy inquisition?
Knowest thou not that my rising is thy fall,
And my promotion will be thy destruction?""

[blocks in formation]

west side of the same mountain he shows imperial Rome, and tempts with a fuller mastery. Tiberius is lost in lust at Capreæ.

With what ease,

Endued with regal virtues as Thou art,

Appearing, and beginning noble deeds,

Mightest Thou expel this monster from his throne, Now made a sty, and, in his place ascending,

A victor people free from servile yoke!

And with my help Thou mayest; to me the power

Is given, and by that right I give it Thee.
Aim therefore at no less than all the world;
Aim at the highest: without the highest attained,
Will be for Thee no sitting, or not long,

On David's throne, be prophesied what will.'"

Christ replies unmoved; but Satan then impudently exalts his gift, offers the whole world, but claims worship for it. To the rebuke thus brought upon himself, Satan replies abashed, but he next seeks to tempt with fame for wisdom.

"As Thy empire must extend,

So let extend Thy mind o'er all the world
In knowledge, all things in it comprehend.''

He shows Athens, and dilates upon its intellectual pre-eminence. The wisdom of Christ answers that

"He who receives

Light from above, from the fountain of light, No other doctrine needs, though granted true.""

But these, what can they teach, and not mislead?

666

'Much of the soul they talk, but all awry,

And in themselves seek virtue, and to themselves
All glory arrogate, to God give none;
Rather accuse Him, under usual names,
Fortune and Fate, as one regardless quite

Of mortal things. Who therefore seeks in these
True Wisdom, finds her not, or, by delusion,
Far worse, her false resemblance only meets,
An empty cloud. However, many books,
Wise men have said, are wearisome; who reads
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not

A spirit and judgment equal or superior,

-And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere scek?

Uncertain and unsettled still remains,

Deep versed in books and shallow in himself,

Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys

And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge;
As children gathering pebbles on the shore.'"

Sir Isaac Newton applied that last line to his own sense of the relation between all he knew and all the knowable. Though it was knowable, few knew that he was quoting Milton. In its subdued tone and ethical purpose "Paradise Regained" has to "Paradise Lost in some sense a relation like that of the story of the wanderings of Ulysses to the story of the Fall of Troy, but the song is of a wisdom beyond that of Ulysses, and its calm note of trust in God attunes all the chief relations of man's life to earth and heaven. Looking to its theme and purpose, as

the light struck in dark days for England that had caused some to despair, Milton might at the end of his life dwell especially upon "Paradise Regained," with the especial regard he is said to have had for it. We who can interpret the events of Milton's latter days by help of those which followed, and which Milton could not have foretold, know that his quiet trust in God was justified. In that which seemed the very hopelessness of the situation lay the elements of a safe rescue. Had Charles II. been a better and a wiser man, and had his brother

JOHN MILTON.

(From a Portrait in Crayon taken about 1666.)

James not helped to dissipate faith in an absolute monarchy, England could not have passed, fourteen or fifteen years after the death of Milton, through a bloodless Revolution to a settlement of the relations between Crown and People that allowed development, with growth of culture, into the full powers of civil liberty.

But we have yet to speak of the close of "Paradise Regained." Of Christ firm against every temptation, Satan asks,

"Since neither wealth nor honour, arms nor arts,
Kingdom nor empire pleases Thee, nor aught
By me proposed in life contemplative
Or active, tended on by glory or fame,
What dost Thou in this world?"

Life of affliction was then contrasted with the ease refused, and the patient Son of God was left alone in a dark night compassed with terrors.

"Sorrows and labours, opposition, hate Attends Thee, scorns, reproaches, injuries, Violence and stripes, and lastly cruel death.

A kingdom they portend Thee, but what kingdom,
Real or allegoric, I discern not;

Nor when; eternal sure, as without end,
Without beginning; for no date prefixed
Directs me in the starry rubric set.'

So saying he took-for still he knew his power Not yet expired-and to the wilderness Brought back the Son of God, and left Him there, Feigning to disappear."

"And either tropic now

'Gan thunder, and both ends of heaven; the clouds,
From many a horrid rift, abortive poured
Fierce rain with lightning mixed, water with fire
In ruin reconciled; nor slept the winds
Within their stony caves, but rushed abroad
From the four hinges of the world, and fell
On the vexed wilderness, whose tallest pines,
Though rooted deep as high, and sturdiest oaks
Bowed their stiff necks, loaden with stormy blasts,
Or torn up sheer. Ill wast Thou shrouded then,
O patient Son of God, yet only stoodest

Unshaken! Nor yet stayed the terror there;
Infernal ghosts, and hellish furies round

Environed Thee; some howled, some yelled, some

[graphic]

shrieked,

Some bent at Thee their fiery darts, while Thou

Satest unappalled in calm and sinless peace.

Thus passed the night so foul; till Morning fair
Came forth with pilgrim-steps, in amice' gray,
Who with her radiant finger stilled the roar
Of thunder, chased the clouds, and laid the winds,
And grisly spectres, which the Fiend had raised,
To tempt the Son of God with terrors dire.
And now the sun, with more effectual beams,
Had cheered the face of earth, and dried the wet
From drooping plant, or dropping tree; the birds,
Who all things now behold more fresh and green,
After a night of storm so ruinous,

Cleared up their choicest notes in bush and spray,
To gratulate the sweet return of morn."

Satan also returns and tempts vainly to impatience, then angrily admits Jesus to be proof against tempta tion, but will try whether indeed He be "worth naming Son of God by voice from heaven."

"So saying he caught Him up, and, without wing
Of hippogrif, bore through the air sublime,
Over the wilderness and o'er the plain;
Till underneath them fair Jerusalem,
The Holy City, lifted high her towers;
And higher yet the glorious Temple reared
Her pile, far off appearing like a mount
Of alabaster, topped with golden spires.
There, on the highest pinnacle, he set
The Son of God, and added thus in scorn:

'There stand, if Thou wilt stand; to stand upright
Will ask Thee skill. I to Thy Father's house
Have brought Thee, and highest placed; highest is bes
Now shew Thy progeny; if not to stand,
Cast Thyself down; safely, if Son of God:
For it is written, "He will give command
Concerning Thee to His Angels, in their hands
They shall uplift Thee, lest at any time
Thou chance to dash Thy foot against a stone."'
To whom thus Jesus:-- Also it is written,
"Tempt not the Lord thy God." He said, and s
But Satan, smitten with amazement, fell."

1 Amice, a priest's robe of fine linen. See Note 1, page 200 d also for any light flowing robe. Latin "amictus," an outer part

Satan returned in dismay to his joyless band, while angels bore the Saviour to a table of celestial food, and hymned His victory. Man now can prevail through Christ, and by vanquishing temptation can regain lost Paradise. But the last lines of the poem pass from the angels' song of triumph to the meekness of the Saviour.

"Thus they the Son of God, our Saviour meek, Sung victor, and from heavenly feast refreshed Brought on His way with joy: He, unobserved, Home to His mother's house private returned."

Not only among maintainers of what they held to be the "good old cause" were questionings here and there that touched their faith in God. Among those who during the Commonwealth had lived in France, influenced by a polite society that affected criticism and wit, while wanting the essentials of both, the spirit of reverence was often weakened. The newlydeveloped middle class was showing the energies of France in writers of its own, whom the polite world claimed as theirs, but whose lead the polite world was too weak to follow; and the corruption of society in Church and State was already prompting the new generation of bold thinkers to doubts aiming at a search for truth by testing all beliefs, doubts lightly accepted by the triflers as indications in them of a

of all religion), a thing too low and mean for their rank and condition in the world; while others pretend a quarrel against the principles of it as unsatisfactory to human reason. Thus religion suffers with the Author of it between two thieves, and it is hard to define which is more injurious to it, that which questions the principles, or that which despiseth the practice of it. And nothing certainly will more incline men to believe that we live in an age of prodigies, than that there should be any such in the Christian world who should account it a piece of gentility to despise religion, and a piece of reason to be Atheists. For if there be any such things in the world as a true height and magnanimity of spirit, if there be any solid reason and depth of judgment, they are not only consistent with, but only attainable by, a true generous spirit of religion. But if we look at that which the loose and profane world is apt to account the greatest gallantry, we shall find it made up of such pitiful ingredients, which any skilful and rational mind will be ashamed to plead for, much less to mention them in competition with true goodness and urfeigned piety. For how easy is it to observe such who would be accounted the most high and gallant spirits, to quarry on such mean prey which only tend to satisfy their brutish appetites, or flesh revenge with the blood of such who have stood in the way of that airy title, honour!

In the following "Preface to the Reader," the plan of the book is thus stated :

As the tempers and geniuses of ages and times alter, so do the arms and weapons which Atheists employ against

fashionable sort of wit. It was to meet this spirit religion; the most popular pretences of the Atheists of our

of doubt that Edward Stillingfleet, then Rector of Sutton in Bedfordshire, produced early in the reign. of Charles II. his "Origines Sacræ; or, a Rational Account of the Grounds of Christian Faith, as to the Truth and Divine Authority of the Scriptures, and the matters therein contained." This book was published in 1662, when Stillingfleet was twentyseven years old. He was born in 1635, at Cranbourne, in Dorsetshire, graduated at St. John's College, Cambridge, and obtained his rectory of Sutton in 1657. In 1659 Edward Stillingfleet published "Irenicum, a Weapon Salve for the Church's Wounds, or the Divine Right of Particular Forms of Church Government discussed." In the dedication of his "Origines Sacræ" to his most honoured friend and patron Sir Roger Burgoyne, Stillingfleet wrote:

Were all who make a show of religion in the world really such as they pretend to be, discourses of this nature would be no more seasonable than the commendations of a great beauty to one who is already a passionate admirer of it; but on the contrary, we see how common it is for men first to throw dirt in the face of religion, and then persuade themselves it is its natural complexion; they represent it to themselves in a shape least pleasing to them, and then bring that as a plea why they give it no better entertainment.

It may justly seem strange, that true religion, which contains nothing in it but what is truly noble and generous, most rational and pleasing to the spirits of all good men, should yet suffer so much in its esteem in the world, through those strange and uncouth vizards it is represented under: -some accounting the life and practice of it, as it speaks of subduing our wills to the will of God (which is the substance

Vizards, masks.

age have been the irreconcilableness of the account of times in Scripture with that of the learned and ancient heathen nations; the inconsistency of the belief of the Scriptures with the principles of reason; and the account which may be given of the origin of things from principles of philosophy without the Scriptures: these three therefore I have particularly set myself against, and directed against each of them a several book.

In the first I have manifested that there is no ground of credibility in the account of ancient times given by any heathen nations different from the Scriptures, which I have with so much care and diligence inquired into, that from thence we may hope to hear no more of men before Adam to salve the authority of the Scriptures by, which yet was intended only as a design to undermine them. But I have not thought the frivolous pretences of the author of that hypothesis worth particular mentioning, supposing it sufficient to give a clear account of things without particular citation of authors, where it was not of great concernment for under standing the thing itself.

In the second book I have undertaken to give a rational account of the grounds, why we are to believe these several persons who in several ages were employed to reveal the mind of God to the world; and with greater particularity than hath yet been used, I have insisted on the persons of Moses and the prophets, our Saviour and his apostles, and in every of them manifested the rational evidences on which they were to be believed, not only by the men of their own age, but by those of succeeding generations.

In the third book I have insisted on the matters themselves which are either supposed by, or revealed in, the Scriptures; and have therein not only manifested the certainty of the foundations of all religion which lie in the being of God and immortality of the soul, but the undoubted truth of those particular accounts concerning the origin of the universe, of 1 evil, and of nations, which were most liable to the Atheist's

« AnteriorContinuar »