Abstract
CRITICS have discerned in John Milton's Lycidas a protracted con flict between the outmoded imagery of Greek pastoral and its analogues in the Christian tradition. I shall argue here that this reading will be all the more persuasive if Saint Peter is not identified as the pilot who laces his praise of Edward King with a satire on the delinquent shepherds of the church. The attributes of this figure, when interpreted in the light of Milton's theology and the Protestant creeds of his day, will prove him to be Christ and hence more capable than Peter himself of redeeming the protagonist after emptying the genre of its false gods. The pilot's entrance is the grand peroration to the eulogies on King:
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