The Incarnation, exile from Eden

Michael resumes. Milton compresses the rest of the Old Testament and the New into a single book. Abraham is called out of Ur. The Israelites go down into Egypt and come up out of slavery under Moses. The law is given at Sinai — Milton, as a Protestant, treats it as a temporary covenant, "a discipline leading from shadows to truth." The judges, the kings, the prophets, the Babylonian exile, the return. And then, finally, a child is born in Bethlehem to a virgin: the seed promised to the woman.

Adam asks the natural question. How can this seed bruise the serpent's head if he himself is killed? Michael explains. The death is the bruising. The cross looks like Satan's victory; it is the moment the bond holding humanity to sin is broken. The resurrection seals it. Adam, hearing the whole arc, says the lines that justify the title of the book Milton has actually written: "O goodness infinite, goodness immense! / That all this good of evil shall produce, / And evil turn to good — more wonderful / Than that which by creation first brought forth / Light out of darkness!"

Michael adds the last teaching: Adam may now possess "a paradise within thee, happier far." Eden is gone; the inner Eden remains possible. They descend the hill. Eve wakes from consoling dreams; Michael leads them to the eastern gate. Behind them the cherubim glide down with the flaming sword. The poem closes on the most famous lines in English: "Some natural tears they dropt, but wiped them soon; / The world was all before them, where to choose / Their place of rest, and Providence their guide: / They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow, / Through Eden took their solitary way."