Prophet with honor …

… Milton's Morality | The Weekly Standard. (Ht tip, Dave Lull.)

… Paradise Lost is an unabashedly religious work. Early readers, Poole reminds us, shared Milton’s belief “in the truth of his subject”—that is, of God, angels, and demons. Like many readers in the 17th and 18th centuries, John Wesley read the poem devotionally. He even published a religious commentary on it in 1763. Today, however, “the vast majority of readers, both those who defend and those who attack Milton’s project,” Poole writes, look at the work as merely a “technical masterpiece. . . . This is our view today, and Milton would not like it.”