Beginning as early as seven years of age and continually, throughout his education, Milton was exposed to the teachings of the Church Fathers, specifically those of St. Augustine. As a result and not surprisingly, interwoven into the tapestry of John Milton's Paradise Lost is the theology of St. Augustine. Substantially, Milton's version of the "Fall" is that of St. Augustine, and a reader can find several similarities between Milton's Paradise Lost and St. Augustine's City of God. In fact, clearly Milton depends on Augustine's detailed account of the Creation and the Fall of man to compose Paradise Lost. According to Potter, this relationship is explained in Augustine's conclusion that the serpent in Genesis, which Augustine calls the Devil (Augustine XI 13), was part of the group of angels that fell "from their original perfection" (Potter 68). Augustine describes the Devil's refusal "to be subject to his creator" to explain the biblical statement in 1 John 3,8 that "the Devil sins from the beginning" of creation.
But it would be incorrect to make too much of the theological relationship between Milton and Augustine. Indeed, Potter says (65), Milton was tolerant of all religious sects except Roman Catholics. The fact that Augustine was a doctor of the Roman Catholic Church and Milton a Puritan advocate of Parliament during the Cromwell period accounts for certain differences of theological outlook in Paradise Lost and City of God. For example, Augustine's view that the Devil and other angels "fell virtually as soon as they were created smacked too much of predestination to satisfy Milton" (Potter 68). Potter continues:
By making the creation of the world an answer to Satan's destructive action in warring on God, he was able to emphasize instead the rhythm of divine providence, whereby each Satanic attempt at destruction is followed by a still more wonderful display of God's creative energy (Potter 69).
Now this is not to say...