“‘Know ye not, then,’ said Satan, filled with scorn, ‘Know ye not me? Ye knew me once no mate For you, there sitting where ye durst not soar! Not to know me argues yourselves unknown, The lowest of your throng.’” (IV. 827–831.) Zephon, however, points out that Satan should not think that he may still be known, as he was in heaven, by the brightness of his form; for his glory departed when he rebelled, and now resembles his sin and place of doom. “Think not, revolted Spirit, thy shape the same, Or undiminished brightness, to be known As when thou stood’st in Heaven upright and pure. That glory then, when thou no more wast good, Departed from thee; and thou resemblest now Thy sin and place of doom obscure and foul.” (IV. 835–840.) At this thought Satan stands abashed. Lover of the beautiful as he is, he now experiences the pang of its loss in his own life. “So spake the Cherub; and his grave rebuke, Severe in youthful beauty, added grace Invincible. Abashed the Devil stood, And felt how awful goodness is, and saw Virtue in her shape how lovely—saw, and pined His loss; but chiefly to find here observed His lustre visibly impaired; yet seemed Undaunted.” (IV. 844–851.) In Milton, then, whether his mind dwells on chastity or on the consciousness of sin’s effect on the soul, it is to the vision of a world of moral beauty that at last it mounts. The relation of these ideals of holiness, temperance, and chastity to the Christian doctrine of grace, which finds a place in the works of these English poets, can now be clearly seen. The ideals of conduct are essentially moral ideals, and in the attainment of them the soul lives its fullest life. “The being who possesses good always, everywhere, and in all things,” says Socrates in the “Philebus” (60), “has the most perfect sufficiency.” According to Plato the soul may realize perfect sufficiency of itself, it is self-sufficient; but Christian theology taught the necessity of a heavenly grace for man to work out his own salvation. The two ideals are thus distinct; and though the English poets incorporate both in their work, the line of cleavage is distinctly visible, and the doctrine of grace plays no more than a formal part in their exposition of the soul’s growth. In the “Faerie Queene” and in “Comus” Platonic idealism triumphs over Christian theology.