Notes on William Empson's Milton's God

June 01, 2026

The book overall has an informal, meandering character that is frequently entertaining but leaves you struggling to piece together the argument or “flow” (such as it is). Empson relates standing on a hill in LA and screaming, then being shot at by boys with air guns, to his satisfaction (p 67). This is the most notable such episode of the book, but does not even feel that out of place.

It was generally enjoyable to read, and much less of a slog than Stanley Fish’ Surprised by Sin.

Two of my favourite quotes from this book:

“I think it horrible and wonderful; I regard it as like the Aztec or Benin sculpture, or to come nearer home the novels of Kafka, and am rather suspicious of any critic who claims not to feel anything so obvious.”
“the poem is good not in spite of but especially because of its moral confusions, which ought to be clear in your mind when you are feeling its power.”

Ch 1

Empson locates the beginning of the “extremely thorough reconsideration of Paradise Lost during this century” (9) with Raleigh’s “handbook” from 1900. This departs notably from CS Lewis’ claim that Milton criticism is “essentially lost” between Blake and Charles Wiliam.
Empson sees his role as a mediator between defenders and attackers on PL, and suggests that one’s stance on the poem is largely determined by one’s theology or world-view (9). Empson himself thinks the traditional Xian god “very wicked” (10) suggests “most Christians are so imprisoned by their own propaganda” (10) they can hardly imagine a negative aesthetic/moral response to their God. Empson claims M is “struggling to make his appear less wicked” (11) which is Empson’s interpretation of M’s “justify the ways of God to man” (though others interpret this in a less exculpatory way—M would have taken it for granted that no such justification is necessary, I think that is Fish’s point). E says M succeeds to some degree, though modern critics still feel something has gone “badly wrong about it all. That this searching goes on in PL, I submit, is the chief source of its fascination and poignancy; and to realize that it is going on makes the poem feel much better at many points, indeed clears up most of the objections to it” (11).
PL as evidence that reformation and counter-reformation both making God “legalistic” (12).
PL is an “impressive example of one of the more appalling things the human mind is liable to do” (13)!
“The recent controversy about the poem… has been largely conducted between attackers who find it bad because it makes God bad and defenders who find it all right because it leaves God tolerable, even though Milton is tactless about him. Surely this is an absurd spectacle; the poem is good not in spite of but especially because of its moral confusions, which ought to be clear in your mind when you are feeling its power. I think it horrible and wonderful; I regard it as like the Aztec or Benin sculpture, or to come nearer home the novels of Kafka, and am rather suspicious of any critic who claims not to feel anything so obvious. Hence I also expect that most of the attackers would find their minds at rest if they took one step further and adopted the manly and appreciative attitude of Blake and Shelley, who said that the reason why the poem is so good is that it makes God so bad” (13)!
Empson on Lewis and Shelly: Lewis claims that “‘The truth and passion of the account are unassailable. They were never, in essence, assailed till pride and rebellion came, in the romantic age, to be admired for their own sake.’ Shelley was not doing this; he was accepting as heroic any apparently hopeless resistance to something a man’s own conscience tells him to be wrong, and I think people like C.S. Lewis are very unwise to talk as if this moral attitude was invented by the Romantics” (19).
Pages 20-22 Empson addresses Shelley’s defense of Satan. The core seems to be that “Milton’s Devil as a moral being is far superior to his God, as one who perseveres in some purpose which he has conceived to be excellent, in spite of adversity and torture, is to one who in the cold security of undoubted triumph inflicts the most horrible revenge upon his enemy, not from any mistaken notion of inducing him to repent of a perseverance in enmity, but with the alleged design of exasperating him to new torments” (20-1). Empson reports that Diekhoff is the only critic to have attempted a response to Shelley, but that his argument amounts basically to “God is infinitely good so Satan must be bad” (22) (which incidentally is basically Fish’s take on how Milton expected to be read). Empson argues that Diekhoff is more or less lead into the same logical contortions as Milton is, and leaves open unsettling questions about God’s lack of mercy towards the lesser angels. More significantly, Empson suggests that Adam was “given no official warning about his children” (24) regarding the contract he is alleged to have entered into regarding their eternal punishment should he eat of the fruit.
Empson then proceeds to discuss Eliot’s criticism of both PL’s style and theology, which Empson endorses. “His feelings seem to me evidently right; indeed the poem, if read with understanding, must be read with growing horror unless you decide to reject its God” (25). But Empson also says Lewis was essentially right that the God of PL is basically the traditional Christian God, it’s just that Eliot and his ilk of modern Christians don’t like the “nasty old myths” (25). Apparently Eliot did eventually accept Milton as a Christian poet in 1947, the same year Waldock’s Paradise Lost and its Critics was published (though he still finds M not to his taste (29)). Empson is still tempted to blame Eliot for the “whole neo-Christian movement” which he thinks has been “harmful to literary criticism” (26).
Eliot criticizes M’s style as “so mannered or learned as to cut out the natural energy and up-to-datedness of the spoken language” (26) but says the example he offers from one of Satan’s speeches to his fellow fallen angels actually shows the opposite (with a fun dig at Henry James).
Musgrave claims Satan is continually shown in a poor light by his “unforgivable sin” of despair. Empson attempts to refute this by saying such an impression would “not be immediately obvious to readers way back in early times under Charles II” (31), though I am sure Fish would disagree and am sort of inclined to agree with Fish here. The rest of Empson’s criticism of Musgrave is similarly unconvincing.
Empson seems to think there is a host of (frequently Christian?) critics (e.g. Rajan) who “are just accepting the position of Shelley while inventing means to evade his conclusions” (35) which leaves us baffled as to Milton’s intentions and execution.

Ch 2: Satan

Perhaps the thesis of this chapter: “The chief merit of the shape of the poem… which has often been called magnificent architecture, is that it presents the change of Satan with such force” (71).

Empson suggests that Milton presents Satan’s fall as an “intellectually interesting temptation” (36) otherwise he wouldn’t have been interested in it at all; whereas “most critics assume Milton regarded the story as obvious, and made the devils tell lies” (36). But Empson suggests that until Satan is in sight of Paradise, he “is convinced that God is not omnipotent” (37). Where most other commentators seem to take the devils to be liars and boasters, Empson seems to think we should basically take them at their word, perhaps mistaken but mostly sincere, seems to suggest that maybe Satan “technically” knew about the difference between good and evil but didn’t really know “what doing ill feels like” (39). Empson compares the fallen angels to the English parliament, equals exercising their “reason together”, against God or Charles I (40). Empson repeatedly points at the apparent contradictions of e.g. Satan calling God “Almighty” in the same breath as he congratulates his fellows for having stood against God for a time, but says Satan “cannot intend the metaphysical meaning of the word” (41), effectively explaining away the tension/contradiction.
Satan believes the fact that they held out 3 days against Heaven is proof that God is not omnipotent; but the Father says later that he has “delayed his victory to prove to the loyal angels the unique powers of the Son; however as God knows all consequences, he knew also that these tactics would make Satan argue as he does” (42), God has “intentionally deluded Satan” (42).
Coming to the image that Eliot criticizes where we find Satan in chains one moment then suddenly out the next, based on a reading of the lines around I. 210, claims that “we are specifically told that God’s actions towards Satan were intended to lead him into greater evil” (42). I don’t think this reading is forced upon us at all, we need only recall that Satan was free to choose. God had foreknowledge but did not intend it this way. You may dislike that paradox, but it is central to Milton’s theology I think. Satan truly believes (due to God’s intentional deception) that they shook the throne of Heaven, he awakes from his drugged/drowsy stupor thinking of these and then conveys it to his fellows in his speech (44).
The plots against God from Hell have this rationale: “If the rebels prove they are not nothing in comparison to God, then they have disproved God’s absolute claims, and to remind him forever that he is known to be false would be a moral victory” (50).
Book 6 is “tiresomely absurd” and the bit about angelic armor “must be unusually stupid Science Fiction” (54). (This is maybe a dig at the claim, the origin of which I know not, that Milton was some kind of SF predecessor.)
On the depiction of Sin, Empson argues it is not merely an allegory, that we must take the story at its word; though it is still (also?) a “bad allegory” (59).
When Satan says “Evil be thou my good” apparently “Many critics have thought that this speech cannot be reconciled at all with his previous ones; he has become an entirely new character, they say, as if Milton had become too alarmed at realizing he had made Satan too good. Surely it is only fair to the author to interpret the words so as to make the character consistent, when this is found to be quite possible. The sharpness of the jolt does rather suggest that Milton was fitting in some old material; but he might have judged that the sudden change in Satan’s beliefs needed to be expressed by a jolt” (64). I did not experience this as such a dramatic transition. “On the other hand, it is often confidently asserted that this speech admits his previous speeches to have been all lies; a view which makes the character consistent by making him ridiculous.. Always an extremist, Satan now admits all the claims of God, even his claim to goodness” (65).
Interesting side note about punctuation, Milton was “firm enough about his text to print some very fussy corrections” (66) this contradicts a point I read/heard earlier that the punctuation was not even really Milton’s, since it had been dictated to a nearly illiterate amanuensis.
Empson disputes the image of Satan leering at A&E in the garden: “It may seem absurd to suppose that he could have any good intentions towards them, but the text seems designed to leave the point open. They are pawns in his game, but he may prefer to have them do comfortably once they are on his side”. He does not express ill-will towards mankind in his speeches around I. 650 and II. 400, whereas Beelzebub speaks very spitefully about us… Satan does allow Sin, Death and Chaos to suppose he intends us harm, vaguely expressed… but he would see that as the only way to make them let him pass (67). Very dubious imo. Empson continues: as Satan enters the garden and spies up on them, “you can either shudder at Satan’s villainy or take the offer as sincere, and feel the agony of his ruined greatness. But both are within him; what I had not realized is that he has only just begun to doubt whether he has anything to offer them. He is still partly thinking of himself as a patron of Adam and Eve, who can save them from their wicked master; thus he seems genuinely indignant at hearing the conditions of ignorance which God has imposed upon them” (69). I don’t think we need to attribute any empathy to Satan here, he just hates God and this is another bit of evidence he can latch onto. But by Book IX Satan’s degradation is complete, and Empson fully agrees “with the disgust felt by C.S. Lewis for Satan’s character as it has now become, and could even agree that his doubts about God are now merely a means of deceiving himself. But surely one must also feel horror at the God who has deliberately reduced him to such a condition” (70). “Most critics now agree that there is a gradual calculated degradation of Satan, but this bit of understanding gets obscured by the hunger to argue that he is very bad from the start” (71). I think Fish’s argument accommodates this arc pretty well.
It is hard to extract summaries/argument cores from Empson, but perhaps the core here is: “Satan is bad, but not immediately so, and therefore not so straightforwardly so as critics imagine. “The chief merit of the shape of the poem… which has often been called magnificent architecture, is that it presents the change of Satan with such force” (71).
Empson argues that the lines between Satan and his confidante upon hearing the news of the Son’s elevation indicate both that “private discussion about the claims of God between these two has gone on before, but ‘new Counsels, to debate’, with a capital letter also implies a wider and more formal conference” (72). The proposed timeline is a bit hard to follow here, unclear when Empson is suggesting these conferences might have taken place vis-a-vis God announcing the elevation of his Son, which seems like it was fairly immediate. Moreover I do not think the text justifies “private discussion about the claims of God between these two has gone on before” just that Satan would understandably have had discussions with his subordinates about many topics prior to this.
Empson has an extensive discussion of Satan’s speech to his followers, at the moment of rebellion, noting that “it has rightly been found politically confusing… What is hard to follow about it is that, both for Milton and Satan, it is part sophistry and part truth; and we are not to assume that Milton thought the verbal paradoxes in it inherently dreadful, because he ascribed some of them to God as well” (73). “Whatever Milton’s own political position had been, a man of his learning and breadth could not have intended to make Satan contemptible merely by making him express republican opinions” (76). Satan’s revolt is not against God as such but “against God’s appointment of a ‘regent’ described in detail as a King” (76), Satan objects to the Son’s demand for worship, as “full ancient barbarism, as if he were a Pharaoh” (76). Empson tentatively suggests Satan shows some uneasiness about his own temptations towards tyranny (76), which I find unconvincing. “The renaissance innovation of the divine right of kings had not established itself in England the way it had in Europe; Satan can be imagined as a sort of “Norman baron… Nobody could love Satan for being a Norman baron, but they could not think him farcical or nearly lunatic for expressing the opinions of one” (78), and “the only man in the seventeenth century who had come near recommending the near return of power to barons was Milton himself” (78). Coming to the “democratic” element of the speech (which Empsons contrasts with the already-discussed “aristocratic” element) his main claim seems to be that the apparent confusion of the two is not so damning as we might imagine. “The democratic side of the speech… would have enough relevance to current politics to make the first readers willing to interpret its paradoxes rather than judge them merely absurd” (80). “Our modern reactionary critics tend to assume that nobody could be such a fool as to be a democrat, way back in early times; but a certain amount of democratic sentiment is inherently part of the cost of enjoying a nationalistic sentiment” (81). Not quite sure this is true, seems to confuse democracy with populism. “Surely the first readers must have found this intriguing; the only good writer who had defended the regicide was ascribing to the devils the sentiments still firmly held by himself and his proscribed part. They would not find the speech particularly dull and cooked-up, as Mr Eliot did; and they would not be at all sure how far the author meant the devil’s remarks to be wrong. After all, none of the scandal-mongers accused him of ratting here, and said: “We were astonished that his life was spared, until we found him meekly ascribing to Satan his own political opinions’” (82).
In a note to page 84 Empson says “Prof RJZ Werblowsky, in The Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 18 (1956) claims to refute the whole argument that MIlton was influenced by the Zohar” (279).
Discussion of the confusing and potentially previously esoteric doctrine that God had created the angels through the Son, and Satan therefore being somewhat justified in being confused by and disbelieving it (83). Empson discusses historical precedent, esp amongst Gnostics, for a) Satan denying that he had been created by God, and b) the creation of man as part of divine reaction to Satan’s rebellion (87). Lewis calls this an obvious absurdity, but Empson points to other evidence that this point was “obvious to a theologian in 1825” (88). Milton, “being so learned a man, would not seriously despise Satan for disbelieving his creation” (88). “Lewis’ account of Satan’s moral absurdity is very impressive, and clearly true up to a point. Milton thought it very proper to be sardonic about the enemy of mankind; but he was scrupulously careful to give him strong arguments for his fall. Lewis… treats creation by a personal God as the only theory of origin which is not mere jabberwocky” (88), this is not quite fair to Lewis, I think Lewis is rather arguing that Milton’s audience would have taken divine creation of everything to be axiomatic, and any other stance as heretical.

Ch 3: Heaven

Johnson refused to discuss God in PL, “remarking that the topic was not proper for slight occasion” (91), there is a sentiment like “of course he failed, how could one not, let’s just pass over it”, but also another reaction “has become widespread. It is that of settled disgust” (91) e.g. Yvor Winters: “It requires more than a willing suspension of disbelief to read Milton; it requires a willing suspension of intelligence” basically degrading 1000s years of intellectual activity conceptualizing Xian god and angels, reduce them to Homeric beings and then “must treat his ridiculously degraded beings in heroic language” (92). Empsons rejects this, Milton more or less scorned the scholastic tradition, “was fond of saying that our only sound evidence about God is the text of Holy Writ. He was thus likely to feel that he was sweeping away nonsense, insisting upon reality, when he presented God in this simplified way” (92). Milton could not have made God automatically good in PL, “God is on trial… all characters are on trial in any civilized narrative” (94) though you may still say God does not come out as well as he should. A third of the angels rebel; this would typically give one cause to suspect some mismanagement amongst their leadership, and someone could be forgiven for doubting the leader’s credentials. “God need not have shown his credentials in the manner calculated to produce the greatest suffering and moral corruption for both the malcontent angels and ourselves; it is in this sense, to recall an objection of CS Lewis, that Shelley could reasonably call Satan’s wrong ‘beyond measure’. Regarding PL as written to justify God for creating a world so full of sin and misery, it surely deserves the astonishment with which so many critics have regarded it; and critics who argue otherwise, whether out of piety or not, seem to me to preach an immoral moral” (95). Interestingly Empson says God actually did convince Satan of his goodness and legitimacy on Niphates’ top, which was not how I interpreted that scene, perhaps Empson just means here that it was “all part of God’s plan” somehow (95).
The divine laughter of book V has the effect of aligning the reader with Satan against God.
Bit of an aside, from McColley Empson asserts that “Milton did not decide on the order of the poem till he had composed a good deal of it” (99). This explains (for Empson) the somewhat mystifying lines about Satan’s “next subordinate”, we wonder who? And Beelzebub is not mentioned here because this was originally intended to come earlier in the poem, and serve as a lead-in. Could this fact of composition/re-arrangement also explain the “sudden” character transformation of Satan mentioned above?
Regarding Gabriel’s near-capture of Satan, Empson writes that after God displays his heavenly scales, “Gabriel interprets this to mean that God forbids him to try [to arrest Satan], pointing out that he and Satan can only do what Heaven permits; so Satan escapes, ‘murmuring’, but free to continue with the Temptation. I do not see what the incident can mean except that God was determined to make man fall, and had supplied guard only for show; as soon as the guards look like succeeding he prevents them” (112-3). We can “swallow the general layout of ‘Fate’ by which God arranges what he has preordained, but it feels different when he nips in and prevents his own troops from doing what he had ordered them to do. Afterwards he forgives them for their failure, remarking with his usual grinding contempt that they couldn’t have been the smallest use anyhow” (113). “M. Morand well points out that God was quite right to forgive the angelic guards; if they were punished, there would be a danger of their considering who was the real culprit” (114).
“No scholastic philosopher’, said sir Walter Raleigh, ‘could have walked into a metaphysical bramble-bush with the blind recklessness that Milton displays’; he seems to have been the first to make this very central point. But I do not think anyone who has read the De Doctrina will regard Milton’s treatment as due to ignorance or stupidity. The effect is that of a powerful mind thrashing about in exasperation. Regarding God’s foreknowledge: “a parent who ‘foresaw’ that the children would fall and then insisted upon exposing them to the temptation in view would be considered neurotic, if nothing worse; and this is what we must ascribe to Milton’s God” (116). Raleigh again, quoted on page 117 on Sin and Death: “No one has plausibly explained how they came by their office. It was intended to be a perfect sinecure; there was no one to be let in and no one to be let out. The single occasion that presented itself for a neglect of their duty was by them eagerly seized, (p. 108)”. The solution, Empson says, is obvious: “God always intended to let Satan out. Critics somehow cannot bring themselves to recognize that Milton does this steadily and consistently, after announcing he will at the start” (118). On this view, Empson interprets God’s first lines about Satan being uncontainable as “the first of God’s grisly jokes” and “the strongest bit of evidence for the view of CS Lewis, that MIlton intended Satan to be ridiculous; but even so it does not feel very like a joke… Nobody says it is a joke… [and] what God goes on to say is so lengthy and appalling” (119).
Pages 120-124 discussion of the alleged effects (negative or otherwise) of MIlton’s role as propagandist in the government on his poetry and knowledge of human psychology.
Empson refers to God as a “jovial old ruffian” (124) and characterizes the Son’s offering offering of himself as a “political trick rigged up to impress the surviving angels; the Son is free to remark that he knows the Father won’t let him stay dead, so that the incantory repetition of the word death comes to seem blatantly artificial” (124).
Question of whether the Son has foreknowledge; the poem suggests no, and Milton held so in De Doctrina.
Discussion of absence of mention of the torturous aspect of the Son’s death: basically the reason is it would not be suitably sublime (129). “The broad literary effect is rather one of tactfulness in keeping the Crucifixion out of sight” (130).
Confusing discussion (for me who has not read Saurat or Morand) about whether God intends to abdicate (130). Seems like upon revisiting Saurat’s work Empson realizes that “Milton did expect God to abdicate” (130, emphasis added). Empson’s point seems to be about the “prophecy” that, in the end, the Son’s “regal scepter” shall no longer be needed, and “God shall be All in All” also the Father refers here and only here to the angels as Gods (134). God’s “best” lines (in both moral and poetical sense) in Empson’s opinion come around III 305 where God is celebrating His Son’s offer of sacrifice. They are so compelling because “he is envisaging his abdication, and the democratic appeal of the prophecy of God is what makes the whole picture of him just tolerable” (137).
Ends this chapter comparing Milton to Kafka, and his God to Stalin!

Chapter 4: Eve

Thesis: “Adam and Eve would not have fallen unless God had sent Raphael to talk to them, supposedly to strengthen their resistance to temptation. Merely cheating his own troops to get Satan into Paradise would not have been enough” (147).
Empson notes the concordance between language used by Satan and Raphael, in emphasizing the food that “wee” angels/gods eat. He writes that the line from the argument to book V, “God to render man inexcusable” (151, emp original) reads like an “exasperated confession that he has failed to justify God”. If God really wanted Raphael to go as a warning, he could have mentioned the most important elements which are that “Satan is known to have reached the Garden and spoken to Even in her sleep, and will probably soon address them again in disguise” (151).
A fair bit of Empson’s argument here seems to fit neatly into Fish’s narrative, e.g. claims like it is “hard to feel that both Even and Satan deserved all their punishment because they too wanted glory. They had been taught in a hard school” (156), i.e. God’s own lesson is that of doing everything to advance his own glory.
Empson repeatedly emphasizes A&E but especially Eve’s legitimate confusion at and suspicion of God’s motives and goodness.
More attacks on the goodness of God, “A father may reasonably impose a random prohibition to test the character of his children, but anyone would agree that he should then judge an act of disobedience in the light of its intention” (161).
Empson says that Raphael and Michael have both already been told of the inevitability of the fall (III. 95) prior to their discussions with A&E (173). But rereading those lines from Book III it is not obvious that God is speaking to all or even many of the angels rather than just the Son. In an case, Empson says again on 174 that Raphael has “just recently heard this speech… which made clear that his work can have no use except ‘to render Man inexcusable’; no wonder he seems rather oddly anxious not to let drop anything he mustn’t tell them, because it is an essential part of his assignment not to tell them that they are certain to fall” (174).
In God’s speech of Book VII, around lines 150, MIlton struggles with God both boasting of his power/glory and propagandizing their victory, while also acknowledging (as he must, in accordance with his foreknowledge) that Satan has ruined most of mankind, and also reassuring the remaining angels that not too many of them will enter heaven, as “to have a lot of earthly men put over their heads would be too much even for the loyalists” (176).
Returning to Dr Tillyard’s joke, that “if Milton had been in the Garden he would have eaten the apple at once and written a pamphlet to prove that it was his duty” (172), Empson claims that Sewell’s “detective work” on De Doctrina shows that “at the time when Milton was writing the poem, his beliefs were coming so near to the position taken by Eve that it is actually hard to say where he thought he differed from her” (177). Apparently Milton believed that even Jews living before Christ did not need to obey Mosaic law, and hence “Adam and Even did not literally have to obey the apple prohibition made specially for them, either. This makes even greater nonsense of the assertion by God ‘Die he or justice must” (177). Milton in Treatise of Civil Power (1659) writes “if we be not free we are not sons, but still servants adopted; and if we turn again to those weak and beggarly rudiments [such as ‘Thou shalt not kill’] we are not free; yea though willingly and with an required conscience we desire to be in bondage to them” (179). Milton “thus believed when he wrote the poem that Eve would have been justified if she had eaten the apple with sufficient faith that God wanted her to do so” (180). She does later take a “petulant” tone towards God, but this “lack of tact… Milton could not seriously regard… as enough reason for the appalling consequences to all mankind” (180). This is to be contrasted sharply with his picture of Samson. Miton “abandoned his struggle towards a humanistic attitude in that brief interval [between the two works]. Milton no longer feels… That your own conscience must come first; he now feels that you must do whatever God inspires you to think his will… Milton drove himself into a corner when he settled down to imagine the Fall of Eve, and found the result profoundly disturbing” (181).

Chapter 5: Adam

The “Fall of Adam… has long been considered very defensible; here most readers would agree, probably, MIlton intended to heighten the moral paradox or present the Fall as partly noble” (182). The “beauty” of Adam’s “private reflection” upon first learning of Eve’s fall “at least proves that Milton could understand both sides of the case” (182). Would Fish’s contention here be that this is yet another temptation to false belief?
Empson’s defense of the “Female charm” that overcomes Adam as not such a big deal seems fairly unconvincing. Adam thinks of God “not as an absolute law-giver but as a human father… He is bound to think of God as a jovial though pompous old boffer” when he petitions God for a woman. “Neither in Adam’s secret despair nor in his practical and generous counsel do we find any ‘pinch’ of the kind CS Lewis meant, any recognition that obedience to God is a higher ‘value’” (185).
Adam’s claim that Eve gave the apple to him is a lie, which Empson says Waldock notes “seems to become Heaven’s official version of the story” (186). AFAICT Fish has nothing to say about this. It feels as though PL is full of such little oddities that in sum seem to mean that Fish’s straightforward interpretation cannot be true, unless we are to accept that MIlton is simply rather careless and inexact with such details.
Empson cites, as defense for Adam’s decision, Genesis ii. 24 “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh” (187).
“The poem somehow does not encourage us to think of an alternative plan; Milton would perhaps have said that Adam’s failure to think of one proves his lack of trust in God, but his god is as usual peculiarly unfitted to inspire trust” (189).
Empson mocks Adam’s joy at hearing that some of his descendants may get into Heaven! “But come now, we need not pretend we have never heard of real justice; surely it is obvious that Adam had better put his affairs in the hands of a steady family lawyer” (191). The doctrine of the Fortunate Fall (apparently first put forth by Augustine and developed by Professor Lovejoy (189)) “it seems clear, removes from God the last rag of excuse for his plot to corrupt the whole race of mankind” (192).
Discussion of the lack of warning about punishment to A&E’s descendents. The only mention of it is sort of off-hand by Raphael as he is departing. “It does not occur to either Adam or Eve while they are deciding to eat, and we must suppose from their immense self-reproaches afterwards that they would not have eaten if it had done” (195). Neither the curses on A&E nor the serpent actually mention their descendents (201). This is also not mentioned in Genesis, though Milton has a hearty defense of it (198-99).
Milton really did think that God was in need of defense, specifically His goodness and morality. “Near the end of Chapter III of De Doctrina, we find he has abandoned predestination, and his reason for it is still that he is anxious to absolve God” (205).

Chapter 6: Delilah (Skipping since not about PL.)

Chapter 7: Christianity (Skipping since not about PL.)