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It has been the fate of Milton, the most Hebraic of the great English poets, to have been interpreted in this century largely by those inhospitable to his Hebraism. To remedy this lack of balance, Jason Rosenblatt reveals Milton's epic representations of paradise and the fallen world to be the supreme coordinates of an interpretive struggle, in which Jewish beliefs that the Hebrew Bible was eternally authoritative Torah were set against the Christian view that it was a temporary law superseded by the New Testament. Arguing that the Milton of the 1643-1645 prose tracts saw the Hebrew Bible from the Jewish perspective, Rosenblatt shows that these tracts are the principal doctrinal matrix of the middle books ofParadise Lost, which present the Hebrew Bible and Adam and Eve as self-sufficient entities. Rosenblatt acknowledges that later inParadise Lost, after the fall, a Pauline hermeneutic reduces the Hebrew Bible to a captive text and Adam and Eve to shadowy types. But Milton's shift to a radically Pauline ethos at that point does not annul the Hebraism of the earlier part of the work. If Milton resembles Paul, it is not least because his thought could attain harmonies only through dialectic. Milton's poetry derives much of its power from deep internal struggles over the value and meaning of law, grace, charity, Christian liberty, and the relationships among natural law, the Mosaic law, and the gospel.

\"3 The articulation of Christ's threefold office dates to Eusebius of Caesarea (d. 340); in 1204 Pope Innocent III introduced the idea into Catholic canon law; and in 1522 Erasmus in his commentary on Psalm 2 reintroduced the theologoumenon (a theological statement that is an individual opinion, not doctrine) into the religious debates of the Reformation.4 Elnathan Parr, a minister in Suffolk, emphasized in 1614 the importance of conforming oneself to Christ by embracing the knowledge of a prophet, the sacrifice of a priest, and the self-rule and government of a king.5 The three offices derive from the specific roles in the Bible that are indicated by the act of anointment, and Christians share in these roles by virtue of baptismal anointing, thus achieving oneness with Christ, whose title in Greek - \"Khristos\" (from khriein, to anoint) - means \"the anointed one.\" According to an early English abridgement of Calvin's teachings, [Christ] executed his Propheticall function, or office of a teacher when he was conuersant on earth, in preaching the Gospell, & reuealing vnto vs the secret counsell of God, concerning the great worke of our saluation by him.14 Elnathan Parr similarly writes that Christ through \"the Office of his Prophetship,\" \"hath plainely opened to vs the counsell of his Father. The finality of \"The Church Militant\" suggests that the related poem, \"L'Envoy,\" functions as a conventional poetic envoy, offering \"the author's parting words\" and releasing the poem to its readers.22 An envoy is a self-referential and meta-poetic form, affording the author opportunity to speak in his or her own voice; in that role \"L'Envoy\" evokes the prophetic power of the poet as the poem looks to the future and offers a prayer that Sinne will not prevail. If, as John Rainoldes observes, \"the summe and end of the gospell is set downe by Iohm the summe, that we may beleeue that Iesus is the Christ, the Christ, that is, the soueraine Priest, Prophet, and King, the Sauiour of men,\" then in articulating the sum and end of The Temple, \"The Church Militant\" draws deeply on the motif of the poet as prophet as Herbert also illuminates the corresponding offices of king and priest, in church-porch and church.46 \"The Church Militant\" implicitly celebrates the vocation of the poetic vates working for the spread of Religion: drawing on the poetry of Isaiah and other Old Testament prophets, Herbert as poet conforms his authorship to that of his Author as Herbert releases his inspired poetry to circle the globe.

It has been the fate of Milton, the most Hebraic of the great English poets, to have been interpreted in this century largely by those inhospitable to his Hebraism. To remedy this lack of balance, Jason Rosenblatt reveals Milton's epic representations of paradise and the fallen world to be the supreme coordinates of an interpretive struggle, in which Jewish beliefs that the Hebrew Bible was eternally authoritative Torah were set against the Christian view that it was a temporary law superseded by the New Testament. Arguing that the Milton of the 1643-1645 prose tracts saw the Hebrew Bible from the Jewish perspective, Rosenblatt shows that these tracts are the principal doctrinal matrix of the middle books of Paradise Lost, which present the Hebrew Bible and Adam and Eve as self-sufficient entities.

In this article I offer an historically situated model of the self as an alternative to liberal, communitarian, and Foucauldian conceptions. Through the example of John Milton, I show that the conscience gave rise to a self that was jointly individual and ethical. By participating in public debates at the behest of his conscience, Milton recognized himself as an individual possessor of moral authority. Conscience thus liberated Milton from traditional identifications and beliefs as it bound him to act for his society. The self founded on conscience therefore differs from both communitarian and liberal variants. Moreover, whereas conscience in the Foucauldian account renders the self docile, it empowers the self in my account. I conclude that the self predicated on conscience challenges the divisions between private and public realms, self-regarding and prosocial actions, and self-creating and culturally determined persons.