s questionable as his accuracy; the
old Athanasian creed was not made by persons who would allow such a
picture as that of Milton to stand before their imaginations. The
generation of the Son was to them a fact "before all time," an eternal
fact. There was no question in their minds of patronage or promotion:
the Son was the Son before all time, just as the Father was the Father
before all time. Milton had in such matters a bold but not very
sensitive imagination. He accepted the inevitable materialism of
Biblical (and to some extent of all religious) language as distinct
revelation. He certainly believed, in contradiction to the old creed,
that God had both "parts and passions." He imagined that earth is

"but the shadow of heaven, and things therein
Each to other like more than on earth is thought." [18]

From some passages it would seem that he actually thought of God as
having "the members and form" of a man. Naturally, therefore, he would
have no toleration for the mysterious notions of time and eternity
which are involved in the traditional doctrine. We are not, however,
now concerned with Milton's belief, but with his representation of his
creed,--his picture, so to say, of it in "Paradise Lost"; still, as we
cannot but think, that picture is almost irreligious, and certainly
different from that which has been generally accepted in Christendom.
Such phrases as "before all time," "eternal generation," are doubtless
very vaguely interpreted by the mass of men; nevertheless, no
sensitively orthodox man could have drawn the picture of a generation,
not to say an exaltation, in time.

We shall see this more clearly by reading what follows in the poem.

"All seemed well pleased; all seemed, but were not all."

One of the archangels, whose name can be guessed, decidedly
disapproved, and calls a meeting, at which he explains that

"orders and degrees
Jar not with liberty, but well consist;"

but still, that the promotion of a new person, on grounds of
relationship merely, above--even infinitely above--the old angels, with
imperial titles, was a "new law," and rather tyrannical. Abdiel,

"than whom none with more zeal adored
The Deity, and divine commands obeyed,"

attempts a defense:--

"Grant it thee unjust,
That equal over equals monarch reign;
Thyself, though great and glorious, dost thou count,
Or all angelic nature joined in one,
Equal to him begotten Son? b