“Teach the Erring Soul” 1669–1674presume the classical notion of history as cyclical repetition – what has been must
be again – whereas Jesus must learn to fulfill and subsume the types so as to redefine
history as process and re-creation.^111
The poem’s complex structure develops several interrelated paradigms. At one
level Jesus is the “second Adam” withstanding the temptations to which Adam and
Eve succumbed, which were linked in the exegetical tradition of the “Triple Equa-
tion” to the root sins of humankind enumerated in 1 John 2:16: sensuality (in
Protestant versions, distrust), avarice or ambition, and vainglory.^112 That paradigm
is explored especially in the first temptation (distrust), and in the first three segments
of the second: the sensual banquet, wealth and kingship, and glory. Related to this
are the three kinds of lives Plato defines in The Republic: the sensual life, the active
life, and (in the Athens temptation) the contemplative life. Also, temptations are
addressed to the three functions of Christ’s office: prophet or teacher (the first
temptation); king, i.e. ruler and defender of his church and people (the offers of
Israel, Parthia, Rome, and Athens); and priest, i.e. redemptive sacrifice and media-
tor (the storm and tower temptations).^113 Into all the temptations Milton inserts
bold commentary on fraught contemporary issues.
Satan offers the first temptation – to turn stones into bread – in the guise of a
shepherd “Following, as seem’d, the quest of some stray Ewe” (1.315), a parody of
Jesus’s role as good shepherd. The issues involve distrust – accepting the guidance
of Satan – and also Jesus’s role as prophet or teacher. Satan asks Jesus to accept him
formally as a prophet (he gives oracles to the Gentiles) and to grant him continued
access, as God allowed the reprobate Balaam to prophesy and allows hypocrites and
atheists to conduct religious rites at his altars. If Jesus were to accept him on these
terms he would sanction that Puritan bête noire, the association of holy and profane
together in the established church and the abuses it gave rise to both in the Laudian
church and in the Restoration:
Thy Father, who is holy, wise, and pure,
Suffers the Hypocrite or Atheous Priest
To tread his Sacred Courts, and minister
About his Altar, handling holy things,
Praying or vowing, and vouchsaf’d his voice
To Balaam Reprobate, a Prophet yet
Inspir’d; disdain not such access to me. (1.486–92)But Jesus pointedly refuses to sanction the parish principle and those abuses – merely
observing that God, for the time being, permits them: “I bid not nor forbid; do as
thou find’st / Permission from above; thou canst not more” (1.495–6). Claiming
his own role as prophet, Jesus asserts the Miltonic – and radical sectarian – principle
of the entire sufficiency of the internal Spirit’s teaching, which makes authorized
ministers superfluous:^114