THE A S S E R T I O N OF P RO V I D E N C E AFT ER THE FALL IN P A R A D 1SE LOST SIDNEY WARHAFT University of Manitoba W * the fall of Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost, both providence and the epic take on a new character. Before the fall, that is before Book ix, Milton had indicated in countless ways what he calls in his Christian Doctrine God's general government of the universe, the kind of providential governance in which "the Father regards, preserves, and governs the whole of creation with infinite wisdom and holiness according to the conditions of his decree."1 While he had also thoroughly adumbrated, directly and indirectly, through image, statement, dramatization, narration, and many a structural device of parallel and parody, the kind of job facing providence after the fall, together with the kind of world it would have to perform it in and for, his centre of focus had necessarily been on prelapsarian events and on man in his state of rectitude. He had consequently not only touched upon the special government of angels "to watch and tend / Thir earthy Charge"2 (which Satan saw as a grievance), but he had also portrayed the built-in government of unfallen man by that innate rule of conscience or law of nature which nudged the creature in the ways of righteousness (see cd , i, xi; cm, xv, 179). Sufficient to stand by himself in his original innocence, created with "natural wisdom, holiness and righteousness" (cd, 1, vii; cm, xv, 53), man in fact needed little external direction or control. He had the whole law of nature "so implanted in him, that he needed no precept to enforce its observance," this law of nature being "sufficient of itself to teach whatever is agreeable to right reason, that is to say, whatever is intrinsically good" (cd, i, x ; cm xv, 115 -17 ). All of this is finely presented and established in the first eight books of the poem, together with God's one interdiction, which, being direct and explicit and tied to man's free will, is in a sense outside of or in addition to providential surveillance. After the fall, however, the divine polity has other concerns, for providence, as Milton insists in his Christian Doctrine, must be observable not just in the sin and the misery of man, but also in his restoration (cd, i, xi; cm, xv, 179). This means that, even as providence fulfils the divine curse, its ultimate goal of ensuring the primary law of nature, that is, the perfecting of creation, remains unchanged.3 In sum, postlapsarian provi dence has three main obligations: first, punishment (including death as well as misery); second, preservation; which makes the third, restoration, possible. English Studies in Ca n ad a, ii , 3, Fall 1976 But from the strictly logical point of view, it is obvious that such obligations are not compatible, for death can hardly be reconciled with continuation of any sort, and certainly not with continuation towards perfection and immortality. This conflict was clearly resident in God's statement of one of the conditions of his decree delivered to the assembled angels after the war in heaven; although we are fully persuaded, both because of prior knowledge and repeated assur ances within the poem, of the inevitability of the fall, God's statement declares that men are destined to dwell in the world, till by degrees of merit rais'd They open to themselves at length the way Up hither, under long obedience tri'd, And Earth be chang'd to Heav'n, and Heav'n to Earth, One Kingdom, Joy and Union without end. (vii, 157-61) The conflict appears also in the facts both of God's omnipotence and of the ultimate incorruptibility of his creation, which reflects that omnipotence (see cd, 1, vii; cm , xv, 23-25).4 We are here confronted with one of the great paradoxes at the heart of the poem : How can the inviolable be violated ? How can the assurance of the bliss of eternal life, the raising of man to "Joy and Union without end...