“Teach the Erring Soul” 1669–1674May bring them back repentant and sincere,
And at their passing cleave the Assyrian flood,
When to their native land with joy they hast. (3.427–37)At the end of Book Three Jesus is termed “Israel’s true King” (3.441), having un-
derstood that his Millennial Kingdom cannot be precipitously installed, that his
spiritual kingdom, the invisible church, can make no use of civil power, and that
political liberation cannot be won for inner slaves. Yet by teaching people how to
free themselves from religious and monarchical idolatry Christ’s kingship has pro-
found implications for political liberty.
Imperial Rome, with its splendid architecture, sumptuous banquets, and every mani-
festation of dominion and glory, incorporates all the previous attractions: “ample Ter-
ritory, wealth and power, / Civility of Manners, Arts, and Arms, / And long Renown”
(4.82–4). It is the great kingdom of “all the world” (4.105), described in terms appro-
priate to the reign of the degenerate and lascivious emperor Tiberius, but also inviting
the usual Protestant associations of Rome with the Roman Catholic church, and that
church with the great Antichrist in the Book of Revelation.^121 Rome’s imperial palace
evokes St Peter’s basilica, with its “compass huge, and high / The Structure, skill of
noblest Architects, / With gilded battlements, conspicuous far” (4.51–3), and its ban-
quets with rare wines quaffed in rich vessels suggest the Mass. Satan’s observation that
“All Nations now to Rome obedience pay” (4.80) points to the danger to Protestant
England from Charles II’s suspected adherence to, or at least sympathy with, Roman
Catholicism and the openly professed Catholicism of his brother and heir. Satan urges
Jesus to expel the “monster” Tiberius from his throne and take the empire over, thereby
freeing the Roman populace (and Israel as part of the empire) from their “servile
yoke”: the defeat of the Roman papal Antichrist was commonly expected to inaugu-
rate the Millennium. But Jesus refuses to free Romans who degenerately abandoned
republican virtue and so are “Deservedly made vassel” (4.100), a refusal which extends
to Roman Catholics enslaved to the pope and to English Anglicans and Puritans who
have invited that danger by restoring the Stuarts. But he then prophesies, in metaphor,
that his Millennial Kingdom will at last subdue all others:
What wise and valiant man would seek to free
These thus degenerate, by themselves enslav’d,
Or could of inward slaves make outward free?
Know therefore when my season comes to sit
On David’s Throne, it shall be like a tree
Spreading and over-shadowing all the Earth,
Or as a stone that shall to pieces dash
All Monarchies besides throughout the world,
And of my Kingdom there shall be no end:
Means there shall be to this, but what the means,
Is not for thee to know, nor me to tell. (4.143–53)