in ascribing those words, This day have I begotten thee, to that declaration of the Father before Satan fell, and consequently to a time before the creation; whereas, it is by Interpreters agreed to be understood of the Incarnation of the Son of God, or at least of the Resurrection: 1 see Pool upon Acts xiii. 33.
In a word, Satan withdrew with all his followers malecontent and chagrine, resolv’d to disobey this new command, and not yield obedience to the Son.
But Mr. Milton agrees in that opinion, that the number of Angels which rebel’d with Satan was infinite, and suggests in one place, that they were the greatest half of all the angelick Body or seraphick Host.
“But Satan with his Power,
“An host
“Innumerable as the stars of night,
“Or stars of morning, dew drops, which the Sun
“Impearls on ev’ry leaf and ev’ry flower.
ib. lib. v. fo. 142.
Be their number as it is, numberless millions and legions of millions, that is no part of my present enquiry; Satan the leader, guide and superior, as he was author of the celestial rebellion, is still the great Head and Master-Devil as before; under his authority they still act, not obeying but carrying on the same insurrection against God, which they begun in Heaven; making war still against Heaven, in the person of his Image and Creature man; and tho’ vanquish’d by the thunder of the Son of God, and cast down headlong from Heaven, they have yet reassumed, or rather not lost either the will or the power of doing evil.
This fall of the Angels, with the war in Heaven which preceded it, is finely describ’d by Ovid, in his war of the Titans against Jupiter; casting mountain upon mountain, and hill upon hill (Pelion upon Ossa) in order to scale the Adamantine walls, and break open the gates of Heaven; till Jupiter struck them with his thunder-bolts and overwhelm’d them in the abyss: Vide Ovid Metam. new translation, lib. i. p. 19.
“Nor were the Gods themselves secure on high,
“For now the Gyants strove to storm the sky, “The lawless brood with bold attempt invade “The Gods, and mountains upon mountains laid. “But now the bolt, enrag’d the Father took, “Olympus from her deep foundations shook, “Their structure nodded at the mighty stroke, “And Ossa’s shatter’d top o’er Pelion broke, “They’re in their own ungodly ruines slain.—
Then again speaking of Jupiter, resolving in council to destroy mankind by a deluge, and giving the reasons of it to the heavenly Host, say thus, speaking of the demy-Gods alluding to good men below.
“Think you that they in safety can remain,
“When I my self who o’er Immortals reign,
“Who send the lightning, and Heaven’s empire sway,
“The stern 2 Lycaon practis’d to betray. ib. p. 10.
Since then so much poetic liberty is taken with the Devil, relating to his most early state, and the time before his fall, give me leave to make an excursion of the like kind, relating to his History immediately after the fall, and till the creation of man; an interval which I think much of the Devil’s story is to be seen in, and which Mr. Milton has taken little notice of, at least it does not seem compleatly fill’d up; after which I shall return to honest Prose again, and persue the duty of an Historian.
Satan, with hideous ruin thus supprest Expell’d the seat of blessedness and rest, Look’d back and saw the high eternal mound, Where all his rebel host their outlet found Restor’d impregnable: The breach made up, And garrisons of Angels rang’d a top; In front a hundred thousand thunders roll, And lightnings temper’d to transfix a soul, Terror of Devils. Satan and his host, Now to themselves as well as station lost, Unable to support the hated sight, Expand seraphic wings, and swift as light Seek for new safety in eternal Night. In the remotest gulphs of dark they land, Here vengeance gives them leave to make their stand, Not that to steps and measures they pretend, Councils and schemes their station to defend; But broken, disconcerted and dismay’d, By guilt and fright to guilt and fright betray’d; Rage and confusion ev’ry Spirit possess’d, And shame and horror swell’d in ev’ry breast; Transforming envy to their essentials burns, And the bright Angel to a frightful Devil turns. Thus Hell began; the fire of conscious rage No years can quench, no length of time asswage. Material Fire, with its intensest flame, Compar’d with this can scarce deserve a Name; How should it up to immaterials rise, When we’re all flame, we shall all fire despise. This fire outrageous and its heat intense Turns all the pain of loss to pain of sense. The folding flames concave and inward roll, Act upon spirit and penetrate the soul: Not force of Devils can its new powers repel, Where’er it burns it finds or makes a Hell; For Satan flaming with unquench’d desire Forms his own Hell, and kindles his own fire, Vanquish’d, not humbl’d, not in will brought low, But as his powers decline his passions grow: The malice, Viper like, takes vent within, Gnaws its own bowels, and bursts in its own sin: Impatient of the change he scorns to bow, And never impotent in power till now; Ardent with hate, and with revenge distract, A will to new attempts, but none to act; Yet all seraphick, and in just degree, Suited to Spirits high sense of misery, Deriv’d from loss which nothing can repair, And room for nothing left but meer despair. Here’s finish’d Hell! what fiercer fire can burn? Enough ten thousand Worlds to over-turn. Hell’s but the frenzy of defeated pride, Seraphick Treason’s strong impetuous tide, Where vile ambition disappointed first, To its own rage and boundless hatred curst; The hate’s fan’d up to fury, that to flame, For fire and fury are in kind the same; These burn unquenchable in every face, And the word Endless constitutes the place. O state of Being! where being’s the only grief, And the chief torture’s to be damn’d to life; O life! the only thing they have to hate; The finish’d torment of a future state, Compleat in all the parts of endless misery, And worse ten thousand times than not to Be! Could but the Damn’d the immortal law repeal, And Devils dye, there’d be an end of Hell; Could they that thing call’d Being annihilate, There’d be no sorrows in a future state; The Wretch, whose crimes had shut him out on high, Could be reveng’d on God himself and die; Job’s Wife was in the right, and always we Might end by death all human misery, Might have it in our choice, to be or not to be.
1Mr. Pool’s words are these: Some refer the words, This day have I begotten thee, to the incarnation of the Son of God, others to the Resurrection: our Translators lay the stress on the preposition of which the verb is compounded, and by adding again, (viz.) rais’d up Jesus again, Acts xiii. 33. intend it to be understood of the Resurrection; and there is ground for it, in the context, for the Resurrection of Christ, is that which St. Paul had propounded in v. 30. of the same Chapter, as his theme or argument to preach upon.
Not that Christ at his Resurrection began to be the Son of God, but that he was manifested then to be so.
