Milton's Jehovah is a grave king, who maintains a suitable state, something like Charles I. When we meet him for the first time, in Book III., he is holding council, and setting forth a matter of business. From the style we see his grand furred cloak, his pointed Vandyke beard, his velvet-covered throne and golden dais. The business concerns a law which does not act well, and respecting which he desires to justify his rule. Adam is about to eat the apple: why have exposed Adam to the temptation? The royal orator discusses the question, and shows the reason: "I made him just and right, Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall. Such I created all the ethereal powers And spirits, both them who stood and them who fail'd.... Not free, what proof could they have given sincere Of true allegiance, constant faith, or love? Where only, what they needs must do, appear'd, Not what they would: what praise could they receive? What pleasure I from such obedience paid? When will and reason (reason also is choice), Useless and vain, of freedom both despoil'd, Made passive both, had served necessity, Not me. They therefore, as to right belong'd, So were created, nor can justly accuse Their Maker, or their making, or their fate; As if predestination over-ruled Their will, disposed by absolute decree Or high foreknowledge: they themselves decreed Their own revolt, not I: if I foreknew, Foreknowledge had ho influence on their fault, Which had no less proved certain unforeknown. So without least impulse or shadow of fate, Or aught by me immutably foreseen, They trespass, authors to themselves in all, Both what they judge and what they choose."[198] The modern reader is not so patient as the Thrones, Seraphim, and Dominations; this is why I stop half-way in the royal speech. We perceive that Milton's Jehovah is connected with the theologian James I, versed in the arguments of Arminians and Gomarists, very clever at the _distinguo_, and, before all, incomparably tedious. He must pay his councillors of state very well if he wishes them to listen to such tirades. His son answers him respectfully in the same style. Goethe's God, half abstraction, half legend, source of calm oracles, a vision just beheld after a pyramid of ecstatic strophes,[199] greatly excels this Miltonic God, a business man, a schoolmaster, an ostentatious man! I honor him too much in giving him these titles. He deserves a worse name, when he sends Raphael to warn Adam that Satan intends him some mischief: "This let him know, Lest, wilfully transgressing, he pretend Surprisal, unadmonish'd, unforewarn'd."[200]