240 MILTON QUARTERLY

Paradise Lost and the Inversion of Catholic Angelology

Feisal G. Mohamed

Mr. [Edward] Symmons thought (after the event) of one retort to

the troopers’ claim that ‘all that did endeavor to support’ bishops
were antichristian: ‘If hierarchy be Antichrist, or monarch or supe-
riority, then Antichrist is in heaven.’ It is a point that ought per-
haps to have troubled Milton rather more than it did.
—Christopher Hill, Antichrist in Seventeenth-Century England (81)

Christopher Hill’s observation on Milton’s inattention to the reconcilability

of his resistance theories with notions of celestial hierarchy is not true with
regard to Paradise Lost. While Milton does, of course, aggressively argue in his
prose against episcopacy and monarchy, he also carefully adjusts the traditional
heavenly hierarchy in his epic so that it coincides with these arguments. This ten-
dency is especially apparent in his presentation of the angelic orders, where he
inverts the Dionysian scheme that places the Cherubim and Seraphim closest to
God and the Archangels and Angels on the outskirts of Heaven. This inversion
allows Milton to construct an angelic hierarchy that is meant to problematize the
accepted Catholic model: the ceremonial worship that is the office of the
Cherubim and Seraphim is distanced from God and subordinated to the minis-
tration of Providence that is the role of the Archangels. This realignment of the
angelic orders is thus consistent with the contempt for Catholic emphasis on cer-
emonial worship characteristic of Milton’s prose.
That Milton’s Heaven is a hierarchical one is an assertion that requires some
qualification. In Milton and the Angels, Robert H. West asserts that “Milton uses the
[Dionysian] orders of rank so fluidly that no one has been able to organize his
use into a consistent pattern” (134). This fluidity allows for a sort of “general allu-
siveness that does not seriously exceed what Protestants would accept nor yet fall
wholly short of what Catholics claimed” (136). In his seminal article “Renaissance
Thought on the Celestial Hierarchy: The Decline of a Tradition,” C. A. Patrides
similarly claims that “Milton did not attempt any classification of the angels”
(163), a posture typical of Protestant thought in its adherence to Calvin’s dismissal
of “the garrulity of the Pseudo-Dionysius” (Calvin 1.140).1 More recently
Stephen M. Fallon has sophisticated these claims somewhat and described
Milton’s angelology as an “audacious” brand of “Puritan Reserve.”2
While it is true that Milton does not go into elaborate detail regarding the
angelic orders, that is not to say that he does not describe several hierarchical rela-
tionships among the angels. West is correct in asserting that many of the
Dionysian orders are repeatedly evoked without Milton particularizing the attrib-
utes of their inhabitants (134),3 but this does not suggest an overriding slipperi-
ness to angelic hierarchy in Paradise Lost. Milton consistently describes the
 MILTON QUARTERLY 241
Archangels Uriel, Lucifer, and Michael as members of God’s innermost circle,4
and consistently subordinates other angels to these three. Only Michael is referred
to as a “Prince” throughout the epic, a position to which Gabriel is clearly inferi-
or: “Go Michael of Celestial Armies Prince, / And thou in Military prowess next,
/ Gabriel” (6.44–46).
Gabriel is of sufficient rank, however, to be placed in command of the
Cherubim guarding Eden,5 a relationship consistent with their construction
throughout Paradise Lost as the lowest order of angels. Unlike their angelic supe-
riors, the Cherubim are limited in their knowledge of Creation to that of which
they have firsthand experience. This is a departure from more traditional,
Thomistic angelology which, as Harold Bloom describes it, confers intelligence
upon all angels: “the great Thomistic insight is that angels have perfect knowledge
of their own spirituality and so of their own freedom. We stumble about, know-
ing nothing but facts, while angels are great Platonists, as it were, and know the
Ideas directly, yet also know all the facts” (55).6 For Milton not all angels know all
the facts. In the battle in Heaven “Zophiel, of Cherubim the swiftest wing” (6.535),
returns from a reconnaissance mission to the rebel camp bearing news that is no
news at all to his intellectually endowed superiors:
this day will pour down,
If I conjecture aught, no drizzling show’r,
But rattling storm of Arrows barb’d with fire.
So warn’d he them aware themselves […].
(6.544–47)

Even after seeing the preparations of the rebel camp, Zophiel’s predictions for
the forthcoming day of battle are speculative: he “conjectures,” and, more signif-
icantly, his powers of conjecture, even when coupled with physical observation,
fall short of predicting the rebels’ invention of cannons.
The intellectual limitations of the Cherubim are also operative in Satan’s
deception of Uriel. By disguising himself as a Cherub, Satan is able to profess an
ignorance of the newly created Earth that can only be remedied by an errand of
observation:
In which of all these shining Orbs hath Man
His fixed seat, or fixed seat hath none,
But all these shining Orbs his choice to dwell;
That I may find him, and with secret gaze,
Or open admiration him behold
On whom the great Creator hath bestow’d
Worlds, and on whom hath all these graces pour’d;
That both in him and all things, as is meet,
The Universal Maker we may praise […].
(3.668–76)

Satan is able to employ this ruse because a Cherub qua Cherub does not have the
intelligence that would obviate the need for the direct observation of humankind.
Like a human this angel is stumbling about, embarking upon, as is described in De
Doctrina Christiana, the necessary “course of instruction” to complement his
“implicit faith”: “implicit faith, which blindly accepts and so believes, is not real
242 MILTON QUARTERLY
faith at all. Unless, that is, it is only a temporary state, as in novices and new con-
verts who believe even before they enter upon a course of instruction” (YP 6:
472).7
Disguised as a “stripling Cherub” (3.636), Satan would appear to fill this
novitiate role. He professes to be attempting to inform his implicit faith, an end
which Uriel lauds: “thy desire which tends to know / The works of God, there-
by to glorify / The great Work-Master […] merits praise” (3.694–697). In a final
display of hierarchical distance between the two angels, Satan bows reverentially
before departing from Uriel’s presence: “Satan bowing low, / As to superior
Spirits is wont in Heav’n, / Where Honour due and reverence none neglects”
(3.736–38).8 The two angels are thus Dionysian in that Uriel is acting as mediator
of divine illumination to his hierarchical inferior, but clearly non-Dionysian in
that he is an Archangel instructing a Cherub.9
That Uriel is deceived by Satan reveals Milton’s reluctance to confer perfect
intelligence upon any creature: “neither Man nor Angel can discern / Hypocrisy,
the only evil that walks / Invisible, except to God alone” (3.682–84). As Fallon
observes, Milton “limits the knowledge of the angels” (217) here in a manner
consistent with De Doctrina Christiana: “The good angels do not see into all God’s
thoughts, as the Papists pretend. They know by revelation only those things which
God sees fit to show them, and they know other things by virtue of their very
high intelligence” (YP 6: 347–48). The “very high intelligence” that Uriel pos-
sesses as a member of the most elite rank of angels is thus distinguished from
omniscience: he and his intellectual colleagues know of the open preparations for
war made by the rebel host, but may still be duped by the hypocritical actions of
their fellow creatures.
The Abdiel episode similarly subordinates the Cherubim and Seraphim to
ranks of intellectual angels. Like his Cherubic counterpart Zophiel, the Seraph
Abdiel attempts to bring news of the activities of the rebel angels to his superi-
ors. After fleeing from the first meeting of the Satanic host, he reports to the
Mount of God only to find his arrival anticipated by the heavenly Powers:
War he perceiv’d, war in procinct, and found
Already known what he for news had thought
To have reported: gladly then he mixt
Among those friendly Powers who him receiv’d
With joy and acclamations loud […].
(6.19–23)

Abdiel’s faculties are inferior in kind to the intellectual capacity which allows the
Powers to know what “he for news had thought / To have reported.” Also sig-
nificant is that while the Powers take him to the “seat supreme” (6.27), he does
not gain a direct audience with God. For Abdiel God is never more than “a voice
/ From midst a Golden Cloud” (6.28). He is clearly not of the “highest heaven”
in which, as is stated in De Doctrina Christiana, “God reveals himself to the sight
of the angels and saints (insofar as they are capable of seeing him)” (YP 6: 312).
Like the Cherubim guarding Eden, to whom God speaks “from his secret Cloud”
(10.32), Abdiel is clearly not of a rank capable of enduring God’s glory firsthand.
Milton’s employment of such an angelic hierarchy may seem relatively
innocuous, but when it is compared to accepted Catholic angelology it becomes
 MILTON QUARTERLY 243
rather less so. The placement of Archangels at the top of the angelic hierarchy,
and of Cherubim and Seraphim at the bottom of it, inverts the Catholic model.
In the Dionysian scheme, three hierarchies of angels exist, each hierarchy con-
sisting of three orders. In descending order these are: Seraphim, Cherubim,
Thrones, Dominations, Virtues, Powers, Principalites, Archangels, and Angels.10
In his Celestial Hierarchy Pseudo-Dionysius states that the topmost triad of these
angels “circles in immediate proximity to God […]. In a pure vision it can not only
look upon a host of blessed contemplations but it can also be enlightened in sim-
ple and direct beams” (165). These “first beings” are “in the anteroom of divini-
ty” since they are the only creatures who directly receive divine illumination, all
lesser ones must receive this illumination through the mediation of their superi-
ors (163). As Farrell describes it in his Companion to the Summa, Aquinas would fol-
low this hierarchy in describing the Seraphim as “the highest of all angels, who
excel in their immediate union with God and their flaming love for him […]. Next
are the Cherubim with the plenitude of wisdom which their name indicates,
excelling in the knowledge of the divine secrets, the wisdom of divine provi-
dence” (402).
Both the Seraphim and the Cherubim would become associated with wor-
ship in Catholic angelology. The duty of the Seraphim is to “sing without ceasing
to God, celebrating above all the other attributes the Holiness of God, a perfec-
tion which characterizes all of God’s attributes” (Parente 65).11 The Cherubim are
heaven’s maintenance crew, responsible for the protection of God’s holiness
through the preservation of holy objects. They are the “heavenly custodians and
protectors of holy places and holy things […, and] the throne-bearers of
Almighty God” (67). The Archangels, on the other hand, play a more ministerial
role in Dionysian hierarchy. They are responsible for the delivery of divine mes-
sages to man and the maintenance of divine virtues: “the Archangels[’] […] work
is the announcement of great things to men and the care of goods that are at the
same time general and particular, such as the truths of faith and the divine cult”
(Farrell 403). This order includes the angels that are most familiar in Scripture,
such as Uriel, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael.12
By promoting the ministerial Archangels to the top of his angelic hierarchy,
and demoting the Seraphim and Cherubim to the bottom, then, Milton creates a
Heaven where the ministration of Providence has greater value than divine wor-
ship. God’s inner circle of Archangels are praised for their efficacy in carrying out
divine decrees:
Th’ Arch-Angel Uriel, one of the sev’n
Who in God’s presence, nearest to his Throne
Stand ready at command, and are his Eyes
That run through all the Heav’ns, or down to th’Earth
Bear his swift errands over moist and dry,
O’er Sea and Land.
(3.648–653)

These celestial errand boys’ constant readiness to fulfill commands marks them
as the angelic order closest to God. This valuation of the angelic ability to serve
the divine will is, as Michael Walzer points out, characteristic of Puritan angelol-
ogy:
244 MILTON QUARTERLY
Puritans tended to praise the angels not for their purely intellectu-
al being, but only for what Sibbes called the “quick dispatch of the
angels in their business.” They “are so prepared for the perform-
ance of God’s commands,” Calvin had declared “that he has no
sooner signified his will than they are ready for the work.” Angels
were superior to men, Perkins suggested, because they obeyed
more willingly and more speedily; they were more “serviceable.”
(163)13

Although, as Fallon rightly asserts,14 Milton’s angelology is far too dynamic to be

derived entirely from Puritan thought, it is similar in that he values the intellectu-
al nature of angels only insofar as it allows them to be of greater service to God,
valuation entirely consistent with De Doctrina Christiana: “what chiefly constitutes
the true worship of God is eagerness to do good works […]. Good works are
those which we do when the spirit of God works within us, through true faith, to
God’s glory” (YP 6: 638). To apply this logic to an intellectual being, one who
does not require the medium of faith, true worship consists in the performance
of “good works” arising from an experiential relationship to the spirit of God.
As we have seen in Satan’s deception of Uriel, even the Archangels’ intelligence
is “very high” at best: it is limited to the extent required for the efficient per-
formance of their divine errands. Because they do not have a ministerial role, the
intelligence allowed the Cherubim and Seraphim is clearly much more limited. If
they were granted an intellectual relationship to the spirit of God, then the fact
that they are restricted to offices of worship rather than of ministry would indi-
cate that theirs was a false “external worship” (YP 6: 666). Their tendency to rely
on empirical knowledge compels them to have faith in God, making their worship
a form of spiritual labour.
West fails to recognize this fact in his discussion of Milton’s angelic orders,
and erroneously allows the Seraphim and Cherubim Dionysian preeminence:
Milton speaks of the ‘Scepter’d Angels’ to whom God gave power ‘to
rule, / Each in his Hierarchie, the Orders bright’ (1.737), and he even
hints that the top two ranks are as Dionysius gives them: ‘The great
Seraphic Lords and Cherubim’ (1.794) sit in hell’s council uncontracted
while the lesser devils swarm reduced in the outer courts. (134)

The detail to which West does not give sufficient attention is that the Seraphim
and Cherubim are leaders in Hell.15 The prominence of Cherubim and Seraphim
in Hell is not an endorsement of the Dionysian scheme, but is rather a reiteration
of its backwardness. Only in Hell is it possible for Beelzebub, the “Fall’n Cherub”
(1.157), to be the second most prominent angel; he is entirely absent in descrip-
tions of the war in Heaven in Books 5 and 6. Only Satan describes Uriel as
“Brightest Seraph” (3.667); everywhere else he is referred to as an Archangel. The
only place where the Cherubim fill their traditional, throne-bearing role is in the
conveyance of Satan during the war in Heaven: “The Apostate in his Sun-bright
Chariot sat / Idol of Majesty Divine, enclos’d / With Flaming Cherubim”
(6.100–02).16 By presenting the fallen angels in the proper Dionysian orders, then,
these instances serve as Milton’s most aggressive animadversions against Catholic
angelology.
 MILTON QUARTERLY 245
The only exception to this pattern is Raphael, who poses a unique problem
in terms of placement in Milton’s angelic hierarchy. Although he is usually
described as a Seraph,17 he is also referred to once as “The affable Arch-angel”
(7.41). This single reference to Raphael as an Archangel may be representative of
what West describes as Milton’s tendency to use the term as “a title of high com-
mand or special mission,” rather than the designation of an order:
Milton names only Satan, Uriel, Raphael, and Michael as Archangels. The
three good angels on the list all have special worldly missions—Uriel to
be regent of the sun, and the others to convey God’s messages to
Adam—but plainly they have a rank in heaven as Archangels aside from
these missions. (133)

That Raphael’s rank in Heaven is equal to that of Uriel or Michael is questionable;

nowhere is he described as a member of God’s innermost circle of angels.
Furthermore, to equate Uriel’s, Michael’s, and Raphael’s missions to humankind
mistakes their relative importance: Uriel directs the motion of the sun; Michael
casts Adam and Eve out of Eden and reveals to Adam the progress of mankind
until the second coming; Raphael, on the other hand, is a “sociable Spirit” (5.221)
sent by God to have a friendly chat with Adam: “Go therefore, half this day as
friend with friend / Converse with Adam” (5.229–30).18 When he does converse
with Adam, he reveals his seraphic lack of intellectual knowledge: he asks Adam
to relate the story of his creation because he was “that Day […] absent, as befell,
/ Bound on a voyage uncouth and obscure” (8.229–30). Like Abdiel, Zophiel, and
the Satan-cherub, Raphael seems to need to gather information regarding aspects
of Creation that he has not seen firsthand.
The limits of Raphael’s knowledge account both for J. M. Evans’s perception
that his narrative constitutes the heavenly view of Creation to which Adam’s is
the earthly counterpart (256), and for Mary Nyquist’s less traditional reading that
describes its allowance of Adam’s relation of the creation of Eve as necessary to
making “sure that the doctrine of marriage is both produced and understood by
the person for whom it is ordained” (117). The point at which these divergent
interpretations intersect is their presupposition that Raphael’s narrative is not
entirely authoritative when taken alone. The dialogical nature of this episode
which, in Evans’ reading, sophisticates the tension between the “Priestly” and
“Jahwist” Creation stories, and which, in Nyquist’s reading, allows Adam’s posi-
tion of domestic authority to be derived directly from God is at least partially gen-
erated by the fact that Raphael’s account leaves itself open to completion. As
Adam himself later declares, such dialogue would be inappropriate with the high-
er-ranking Michael:
I descry
From yonder blazing Cloud that veils the Hill
One of the heav’nly Host, and by his Gait
None of the meanest, some great Potentate
Or of the thrones above, such Majesty
Invests him coming; yet not terrible,
That I should fear, nor sociably mild,
As Raphaël, that I should much confide,
246 MILTON QUARTERLY
But solemn and sublime, whom not to offend,
With reverence I must meet […].
(11.228–37)

Adam instantly identifies Michael as a member of an angelic order more author-

itative than Raphael’s, a recognition that disallows the social interaction on display
in the Seraph’s visit.
The manner in which Raphael receives his command from God also marks
his hierarchical distance from the true Archangels. Although he is described as
having a direct audience with God, it is necessary for him to veil himself while he
is in His presence:
So spake th’ Eternal Father, and fulfill’d
All Justice: nor delay’d the winged Saint
After his charge receiv’d; but from among
Thousand Celestial Ardors, where he stood
Veil’d with gorgeous wings, up springing light
Flew through the midst of Heaven […].
(5.246–51)

Like the “brightest Seraphim” of Book 3 who “with both wings veil their eyes”
(381–82), Raphael must shield himself from God’s glory in a manner entirely
absent in descriptions of Uriel and Michael. Such veiling may be attributed to a
concordance on Milton’s part with traditional presentations of the Seraphim
where “they are described as having three pairs of wings with one of which they
covered their face as a token of profound reverence and in order not to be seen,
with another they covered their feet out of modesty and respect, with the third
they flew” (Parente 65). This arrangement of seraphic wings is directly echoed in
Isaiah 6.2: “each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain
he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.”19
When Milton describes Raphael in his “proper shape” as he alights on the
Eastern cliff of Paradise, however, he defiantly presents him with his head
exposed:
A Seraph wing’d; six wings he wore, to shade
His lineaments Divine; the pair that clad
Each shoulder broad, came mantling o’er his breast
With regal Ornament; the middle pair
Girt like a Starry Zone his waist, and round
Skirted his loins and thighs with downy Gold
And colors dipt in Heav’n; the third his feet
Shaddowd from either heel with feather’d mail
Sky-tinctur’d grain.
(5.277–85)20

Raphael is thus an ideal Seraph who is defined against the Catholic model.
Although as a Miltonic Seraph his rank forces him to shield himself when in
direct audience with God, this is a temporary measure rather than a permanent
condition. When he “returns” to his “proper shape,” his head is the only part of
his body that remains exposed. He is not postured for blind worship as a tradi-
 MILTON QUARTERLY 247
tional Seraph would be, but rather for observation and interaction. This con-
struction of the Seraph is consistent with what Strier describes as Milton’s deni-
grations of “external worship”:
Milton’s account of the perversion of the Eucharist begins to get
at the heart of his objections to prelacy and to all ceremonial reli-
gion: the deception of well-meaning lay persons through voluntary
and improper humility. The ‘putting of holiness’ in ceremonial
objects and procedures. [… is an] improper division of the
Christian community. (264)

Raphael’s veiling of himself is not a ceremonial measure, but an involuntary

expression of humility in the presence of God. We may read this proper humili-
ty, as well as his impulse to make up for his lack of intelligence with an increased
knowledge of God’s works, as indicative of a propriety of worship that is recog-
nized in his commission for light archangelic duties.
Although Milton’s angelology in Paradise Lost draws on Catholic tradition,
then, it certainly does not do so in the conciliatory spirit that West describes. By
inverting the Dionysian angelic orders, Milton subtly asserts the backwardness of
Catholic hierarchical structures. The antichristianity of this backwardness is sug-
gested when he properly presents the Dionysian orders in the ranks of the fallen
angels. The worship that is the predominant characteristic of the Cherubim and
Seraphim is thus subordinated to the ministration of the Archangels. In this man-
ner Milton’s angelology reaffirms the contrast pervasive in De Doctrina Christiana
between the Protestant value for the fulfillment of Providential work and the
Catholic emphasis on empty worship. By undermining the Catholic heavenly hier-
archy in this manner, he simultaneously undermines the ecclesiastical hierarchy
upon which it is modeled and eliminates Catholic forms of ceremonial worship
from the presence of God.

University of Toronto

NOTES
1 See also Patrides’s “Renaissance Views” for the full scope of his argument.
2 “Inasmuch as the writers of the ‘Puritan Reserve’ are marked by a reticence to
say more on the particulars of angel essence and operation than is clear from
Scripture, they differ from Milton. The angelology embodied in Paradise Lost is
audacious, original, and still unique” (158). West and Walzer also deal with the
Puritanism of Milton’s angelology, albeit less effectively.
3 This confusion is notably found in the “Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms,
Virtues, Powers” to which God refers in 5.601 and Satan refers in 10.460, and the
“Thrones, Princedoms, Powers, Dominions” to which God refers in 3.320. While
these lists retain the names of the angelic orders employed by Pseudo-Dionysius,
they do not adhere to the hierarchical order he assigns to them, nor to the order
248 MILTON QUARTERLY
created by Gregory the Great (see Patrides 160 for a tabular summary of these
orders). They also deviate from the “thrones or dominions or rulers or powers”
of Col 1.16, although 3.320 does approximate Eph 1.21.
4 See 3.648–49, 5.658–60, and 6.44.
5 See 4.844–865.
6 Aquinas describes this angelic knowledge in the Summa Theologica: “Some natu-
ral knowledge of God is possible to angels. To make this clear let us distinguish
three ways of knowing a thing. First, by the presence of the thing’s essence in the
knower; as if light itself were seen in the eye […]. Secondly, by the presence of an
image of a thing in the knowing faculty; thus a stone is seen by the fact that a like-
ness of it appears in the eye. Thirdly, when the likeness of the thing known is not
drawn immediately from the thing itself but from something else in which it
appears, as when one see a man who himself is reflected in a mirror […] the
angels’ natural knowledge of God is [the second of] these; and may be likened to
the knowledge one has of a thing by way of an image drawn from it. For, since
God’s image is imprinted on the very nature of an angel, an angel knows God
through his own essence to the extent this resembles God. Yet he does not see
the divine essence itself, for no created likeness is adequate to represent it” (1a.
56.3). The Platonic resonances here recall the Neoplatonism prevalent in Pseudo-
Dionysius’s work, a tendency that occasioned Luther’s dismissal of him as “most
pernicious; he platonizes more than he Christianizes” (qtd. in Karlfried
Froehlich’s introduction to Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works 44).
7 In light of the debate surrounding the authorship of De Doctrina Christiana, I
refer to it only as a text generally consistent with Miltonic theology. See Hunter;
Hill, “Professor William B. Hunter, Bishop Burgess, and John Milton”; Lewalski,
“Milton and De Doctrina Christiana: Evidences of Authorship”; and Campbell et
al. for some of the terms of this debate.
8 These lines effectively nullify Carrol B. Cox’s claim that the Uriel-Satan episode
is an illustration of “the abstract individual existing prior to and autonomously of
concrete social relations” (167). In Paradise Lost and the Rhetoric of Literary Forms,
Barbara Lewalski cites this episode as an example of a dialogue between a hierar-
chical superior, Uriel, and an inferior, the cherub Satan pretends to be (151–52).
9 Each order of the Dionysian hierarchies—angelic and human—is responsible
for mediating divine glory to its inferiors in a transmission of divine illumination
that always proceeds down the hierarchical ranks. See The Celestial Hierarchy 173
and 183; The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy 237–38; and Letter number 8, to the monk
Demophilus, 272. The classic study of these hierarchical relationships and their
classical precedents is René Roques’s L’Univers dionysien, especially 101–11.
10Diane Kelsey McColley somewhat misguidedly portrays Milton as a supporter
of this hierarchy in her examination of his angelology.
 MILTON QUARTERLY 249
11This perception of the Seraphim as a choir surrounding God is rooted, of
course, in Isa. 6.
12 See Bloom 61 and Parente 73.
13For this emphasis on angels as the “ministering spirits” of Heb 1.14, see also
Calvin, I.xiv.9. Walzer also points out the implications of such Puritan and relat-
ed Protestant angelology on ecclesiastical hierarchy: “when hierarchy and domin-
ion were repeated among men, they were no longer entirely a matter of nature
and being. In nature bishops could not be distinguished from their fellows; they
had no less body and no more spirit. And the same could be said of kings. Even
Anglican preachers grew eloquent when they touched upon the commonality of
the grave and they invoked the power of the great Leveller before whom all men
were equal” (155). The implications of this vein of Protestant angelology in terms
of Milton’s work are suggestive, but have not been dealt with here for want of
space.
14 See pages 158–60.
15 In his discussion of the geography of Milton’s Heaven, Demaray interestingly
makes an error which, in the context of the present argument, is related to West’s.
He argues that “Milton came to believe that accurate history and geography might
best be produced, not by depending upon the fictions of medieval chronicles and
related medieval world iconography, but rather by studying authoritative eyewit-
ness accounts by ancient and modern voyagers and travelers” (177). In support-
ing this claim, he cites numerous passages where Satan’s voyages are described as
empirical ones without sufficiently addressing the fact that such empiricism is
associated with a character with whom the reader should be somewhat less than
sympathetic. Demaray’s credibility is further undermined by his repeated descrip-
tion of Books 11 and 12 of Paradise Lost as “Gabriel’s rather flat and imprecisely
delineated presentation to Adam” (179).
16The idolatry signified by this last example lies in direct contrast, of course, with
the Son’s “Chariot of Paternal Deitie”:
Itself instinct with Spirit, but convoyd
By four Cherubic shapes, four Faces each
Had wondrous, as with Starrs thir bodies all
And Wings were set with Eyes, with Eyes the Wheels
Of Beryl, and careering Fires between […].
(6.752–56)

Unlike their fallen counterparts, these Cherubim do not simply add luster to the
chariot which they convey, but rather their multitudinous eyes and faces suggest
that they are endowed with attributes uniquely suited to the efficient performance
of their driver’s will.
17 See 5.277 and 7.113.
250 MILTON QUARTERLY
18 The overriding chumminess of Raphael and Adam’s interaction is underscored

by Milton’s placement of it in the context of the book of Tobit (5.222–23).

19The liturgical implications of the six wings of the Seraphim are elaborated upon
by Pseudo-Dionysius in The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, where the secrecy implied by
these angels’ self-veiling is used as justification of the sacred nature of the sacra-
ment of unction (229) and of the secrecy of the “holy of holies” (195–200; see
also Thomas L. Campbell 115 n. 24). Bonaventure, the “Seraphic Doctor,” would
of course later use it as a model for the soul’s journey into the divine mysteries
and the ideal attributes of a religious superior in The Soul’s Journey into God (55) and
The Six Wings of the Seraphim (3.139).
20 Hughes’s note that “Raphael’s proper shape Milton takes to be that of the seraphs
in Isaiah VI, 2” thus stands in need of some correction. Milton clearly departs
here from the tradition that presents the Seraphim as constantly veiled with their
first set of wings.

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