Is no return; unless, where guilt makes void,
He for ill pleasure pay with equal pain. 
Your nature, which entirely in its seed
Trangress’d, from these distinctions fell, no less
Than from its state in Paradise; nor means
Found of recovery (search all methods out
As strickly as thou may) save one of these,
The only fords were left through which to wade,
Either that God had of his courtesy
Releas’d him merely, or else man himself
For his own folly by himself aton’d. 
     “Fix now thine eye, intently as thou canst,
On th’ everlasting counsel, and explore,
Instructed by my words, the dread abyss. 
     “Man in himself had ever lack’d the means
Of satisfaction, for he could not stoop
Obeying, in humility so low,
As high he, disobeying, thought to soar: 
And for this reason he had vainly tried
Out of his own sufficiency to pay
The rigid satisfaction.  Then behooved
That God should by his own ways lead him back
Unto the life, from whence he fell, restor’d: 
By both his ways, I mean, or one alone. 
But since the deed is ever priz’d the more,
The more the doer’s good intent appears,
Goodness celestial, whose broad signature
Is on the universe, of all its ways
To raise ye up, was fain to leave out none,
Nor aught so vast or so magnificent,
Either for him who gave or who receiv’d
Between the last night and the primal day,
Was or can be.  For God more bounty show’d. 
Giving himself to make man capable
Of his return to life, than had the terms
Been mere and unconditional release. 
And for his justice, every method else
Were all too scant, had not the Son of God
Humbled himself to put on mortal flesh. 
     “Now, to fulfil each wish of thine, remains
I somewhat further to thy view unfold. 
That thou mayst see as clearly as myself. 
     “I see, thou sayst, the air, the fire I see,
The earth and water, and all things of them
Compounded, to corruption turn, and soon
Dissolve.  Yet these were also things create,
Because, if what were told me, had been true
They from corruption had been therefore free. 
     “The angels, O my brother! and this clime
Wherein thou art, impassible and pure,
I call created, as indeed they are
In their whole being.  But the elements,
Which thou hast nam’d, and what of them is made,
Are by created virtue’ inform’d:  create
Their substance, and create the’ informing virtue
In these bright stars, that round them circling move
The soul of every brute and of each plant,
The ray and motion of the sacred lights,
With complex potency attract and turn. 
But this our life the’ eternal good inspires
Immediate, and enamours of itself;
So that our wishes rest for ever here. 
     “And hence thou mayst by inference conclude
Our resurrection certain, if thy mind
Consider how the human flesh was fram’d,
When both our parents at the first were made.”