The Father, the Son, and the bargain

The book opens with the second invocation, addressed to "Holy Light" — and to Milton's own blindness. "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 flocks, or herds, or human face divine." It is the most personal moment in the poem. He asks the inner light to compensate for the outer one he has lost.

The scene then opens on heaven. The Father, looking down, sees Satan in flight toward Earth and foresees what will happen. He explains to the Son the doctrine that the rest of the poem will work out: Man will be tempted; Man will fall; Man's fall will be free; justice will demand death; mercy will demand a substitute. He asks who, in heaven, will offer to pay. The poem stages a long silence — "all the Heav'nly Quire stood mute, / And silence was in Heav'n." No created being steps forward. The Son then volunteers. He will become a man, suffer, and die. The Father accepts. The exchange is the theological center of the poem; everything depends on it.

Meanwhile, Satan reaches the outer surface of the universe. He disguises himself as a junior angel — the only time the disguise works in the poem — and approaches Uriel, the angel of the sun, asking innocently for directions to the new world. Uriel, deceived, points out Eden. Milton's note is sharp: "neither Man nor Angel can discern / Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks / Invisible, except to God alone." Satan speeds toward Eden. The book ends with him "throwing his steep flight in many an aery wheel" toward the world he has come to corrupt.