The words that God pronounces at Creation are the final and original linguistic act; as narrated in Genesis and Paradise Lost, it is enough for God to speak and the words come true: And God said: "Let there be light"; and there was light... (Genesis, 1:3) Let there be light, said God, and at once Ethereal light, first of all, pure quintessence Sprung from the deep... (VII.243) Milton reverses the arrangement of l identification of the voice and of the spoken words themselves, thus entirely absorbing the voice of God in the poetic verses. Satan is an inveterate liar who abuses language for his evil purposes. Satan's language is "ambiguous and deceptive with a double meaning" (Paradise Regained, I.435), while the language of the Son (and by extension that of God) imposes a kind of linguistic harmony in which "your actions match with your words" (Paradise Regained, III .9). In Paradise Lost, Satan's "ambiguous words" (V.703, VI.568) act as "persuasive" traps, "full of cunning" (IX.737, 733). Pronounce 'tall words, which bore | Semblance of value, not substance” (I.528), and it is worth keeping in mind if you were tempted to succumb to its seductive rhetoric, as Eve or, more recently, the poets Shelley and Blake did! God's words are necessarily congruent with their meaning (God is unable to lie). But while Satan does not have the power of speech acts, he does have the sophistic ability to dissemble. At the beginning of Book I of Paradise Lost, faithful to epic convention, John Milton invokes the muse, but his muse is none other than the Holy Spirit: And above all you, O Spirit, who prefer before all temples the upright heart and pure, instruct me, for you know it; You were there from the beginning, and with mighty wings spread Dove-l... in the center of the paper... a child whose only response from parental authority was an unsatisfactory "Because I said so!" But then these children grow up and look for their own answers. Blake's point begins to make sense if Paradise Lost is evaluated by its poetic success and its theological failure. Milton “was a true poet and belonged to the Devil's party without knowing it” as his poetry unwittingly brought Satan back to life as he sought to destroy him. Satan, for better or worse, is probably the most memorable presence in the poem and probably all readers retain his memory. Likewise, Milton's theology is so weak and imperfect that it opens the door to a devastating philosophical counterattack. In attempting to justify God, Milton actually achieves the opposite result, as demonstrated by the failure of Book III. For Blake, Milton the epic poet ultimately prevails over Milton the Christian apologist who surely desired the opposite.