Freedom on conscience in Protestantism. How it plays out in Satan. His belief in his own conscience is what makes it possible for him to believe in his own guilt as well. The non-magical powers of the fruit. Milton's suggestion, in inviting us to judge him, that God is just because it's justice, not because he's God. The fiat preventing Adam and Eve from eating it considered in two possible lights: that God may dispose and bid what shall be right; or that it is right to show gratitude to God. The same situation in heaven when Satan rebels against what he regards as the arbitrary apotheosis of the Son. (A difference, not mooted, is that the Son is a person, so in fact more liable to being talked about in inherent terms and not just in the arbitrary terms that the fruit requires on any interpretation the poem considers of the couple's sin. But this may be clarified with respect to the difference between Adam's fall and Eve's. Eve falls for a fruit, Adam for a person.) Satan's nobility in hell.
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