Paradise Lost Fate and Free Will

This describes how Satan's associates were allowed to "wander" over the earth because of God's "suff'rance," or forbearance after the Fall. The most important word here is "trial," a word that comes up repeatedly in the poem and in Milton's other writings. It suggests something like a test of man's virtue, which is made manifest when he is tempted and refuses.

God makes it clear that Adam will fall through his own "fault." Even though this sounds like predestination, it's actually foreknowledge. God sees all events – past, present, and future – as simultaneous or present, including Adam's fall, which hasn't happened yet (in the poem). Just because God knows it will happen though doesn't mean he makes it happen; He knows how Adam himself will make it happen.

This passage picks up where the previous left off; things like "fate," "predestination," or "high foreknowledge" don't control one's destiny; in fact, God here places the onus on man's "will," which isn't subject to such external forces as "fate," etc.

The repetition of "free will" in this passage points to its importance and centrality in the poem, but the tortured syntax makes the issue more complicated than a simple matter of emphasis. Adam can control his own happiness ("left free to will"), but free will can turn into something else if he's not careful. What exactly? We're not sure.

At the end of the war in Heaven, the rebel angels throw themselves out of God's kingdom. Wait a minute. What? The fact that they hurl themselves over the edge makes the point about free will perfectly clear: they have nobody to blame – not God, not fate, not predestination – but themselves.

Once again, things could have gone better for Satan if he had "stood." The idea of standing (and its associated rhetoric of uprightness, erectness, etc.) is an important figure or trope in the poem. Courageous figures who do the right thing stand (like Abdiel) while disobedient ones don't. Standing implies effort, which implies free will.

God reiterates a point he's made throughout the poem. Not even the "lightest…impulse" from God has affected Adam and Eve's behavior. Note the importance God places on words associated with the fate versus free will debate: "decree," "necessitate," "impulse," and "inclining."