Abstract
Abstract Chapter 4 asserts that a notion of the sublime pervaded Milton’s theological thought. I first attend to Milton’s 1634 Maske as a work in which virgin purity so sublimes the soul that the threat of God’s wrath is invoked against its enemies. Next I consider the war in heaven in Paradise Lost, arguing that this episode should not be interpreted as farce but rather as a sublime theomachy which closely follows the Homeric pattern praised by Longinus. After this I endeavor to demonstrate that in Paradise Lost and in the theological treatise De Doctrina Christiana Milton portrays a deity whose obscurity and wrath suggest the ultimately incomprehensible sublimity of the divine. The final part of the chapter considers the neglected theological notion of timor idololatricus (“idolatrous fear”) in De Doctrina, Paradise Lost, and Samson Agonistes.
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