After pursuing the foe far enough to make sure they will not return, the Messiah re-enters heaven in triumph, greeted by saints and angels with hymns of praise.  This account of the war in heaven concluded, Raphael informs Adam that Satan, leader of these fallen angels, envying his happy state, is now plotting to seduce him from his allegiance to God, and thus compel him to share his eternal misery.

  “But listen not to his temptations; warn
  Thy weaker; let it profit thee to have heard
  By terrible example the reward
  Of disobedience; firm they might have stood,
  Yet fell; remember, and fear to transgress.”

Book VII. At Adam’s request Raphael next explains how the earth was created, saying that, as Satan had seduced one-third of heaven’s inhabitants, God decided to create a new race, whence angels could be recruited to repeople his realm.  In terms simple enough to make himself understood, Raphael depicts how the Son of God passing through heaven’s gates and viewing the immeasurable abyss, decided to evolve from it a thing of beauty.  He adds that the Creator made use of the divine compasses “prepared in God’s eternal store,” to circumscribe the universe, thus setting its bounds at equal distance from its centre.  Then his spirit, brooding over the abyss, permeated Chaos with vital warmth, until its various components sought their appointed places, and earth “self-balanced on her centre hung.”  Next the light evolved from the deep began to travel from east to west, and “God saw that it was good.”

On the second day God created the firmament, on the third separated water from dry land, and on the fourth covered the earth with plants and trees, each bearing seed to propagate its kind.  Then came the creation of the sun, moon, and stars to rule day and night and divide light from darkness, and on the fifth day the creation of the birds and fishes, whom God bade multiply until they filled the earth.  Only on the sixth and last day did God call into life cattle and creeping things, which crawled out of the earth full grown and perfect limbed.  Then, as there still lacked a creature endowed with reason to rule the rest, God created man in his own image, fashioning him from clay by breathing life into his nostrils.  After thus creating Adam and his consort Eve, God blessed both, bidding them be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth, and hold dominion over every living thing upon it.  Having placed creatures so richly endowed in Paradise, God left them free to enjoy all it contained, save the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, in regard to which he warned them “in the day thou eatest thereof, thou diest.”  Then, his work finished, the Creator returned to heaven, where he and the angels spent the seventh day resting from their work.