In John Milton’s Paradise Lost many themes are explored, one of which being the right to rule and free will. Milton, in the premise of detailing the account of Lucifer’s fall from heaven, and Adam and Eve’s banishment from the Garden of Eden, discusses these terms in a story well known to the people of his time. He uses familiar characters and settings to explore the fall of man, and what it means to have free will under authority. Thomas Hobbes, a political philosopher in the 1600s, believed in the right of kings to rule, that under one man should the wills and desires be joined, that they may be equally tried and measured, and that no man should feel be able to start war and violence on his own accord, unless he is king. Hobbes thought that men were naturally predisposed to jealousy and violence, and that a consolidation of power in the hands of one man should mitigate this otherwise untempered instinct. Milton, through the guise of Satan, discusses how one sovereign power is too dangerous, and that he believes in the equality of the heavenly choir. Leviathan was written a decade before the restoration of the monarchy, and during the interregnum in which Oliver Cromwell held power and displaced the monarchy or England for a short period of time following the execution of Charles I of England. Ultimately, Charles II was restored to the throne during the Restoration period, during which Milton responded to the civil wars and uprisings with his Paradise Lost.

Milton, in Paradise Lost, Book 9, writes during a soliloquy of Satan’s, “Why then was this forbid? Why but to awe, / Why but to keep ye low and ignorant?”, which is a reference to God forbidding the consumption of the apple (pg. 926, ll. 703-704). Satan is questioning God’s authority,  not for the first time, and wondering why, if not to keep his subjects ignorant and docile, would God forbid knowledge? The forbiddance of knowledge as a form of control is seen time and time again throughout history, such as the burning of books and implementation of ‘newspeak’ in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and is seen here in Milton’s literary version of God. He is someone who would rather keep the humans in the dark and not give them the knowledge that is guarded by a jealous God. In book 5, Satan says, “Is knowledge so despised? / Or envy, or what reserve forbids to taste?” (pg. 895, ll. 60-61). He is calling God jealous, a deity who would hoard knowledge for himself because of jealousy that others may ascend to his power. In Paradise Lost, knowledge is power, and the sovereign God, upon denying knowledge, causes the downfall of man. This is a very thinly veiled response to the belief that one consolidated power would become the downfall of England during the Restoration period.

Hobbes, on the other hand, believed that one power could control all of man’s desires and justly govern. In Leviathan, he states, “Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in a condition which is called war;” which shows Hobbes’s belief in one ruling power (pg. 747). Men, when given equal measures of power, are naturally predisposed to fight one another, because they cannot compromise their wishes, and must, “endeavour to destroy or subdue one another” (pg. 746). Inherently, men are violent, and only the consolidation of power will control this impulse. Hobbes argues that laws are all that can control men, and that the laws must be made by someone equally elected by all men. If the laws are made by someone seemingly unfitting, then those who disagree will naturally rise against them, such is the nature of men. Hobbes notes, “[M]en have no pleasure, but on the contrary carry a great deal of grief, in keeping company where there is no power able to overawe them all,” which shows his belief about there being one power, not power in the hands of the masses as Milton believed (pg. 746). 

Milton, on responding to Hobbes through Satan, clearly disagrees with his views on the government post-Restoration. Milton believes that the consolidation of power and the placement of power into the hands of one sovereign will cause envy, treason, and rebellion, as with Satan and his merry band of demons in Paradise Lost fighting against the power of God and creating their own heaven within hell. Hobbes, however, believes men are naturally predisposed to evil and violence, and therefore need one power to control them with laws and governing or else they will revolt against one another and create war. Despite these two arguments, England fell back into the monarchy with the restoration of King Charles II, and both texts remained in the public history, as fascinating markers of the times.