We’ve all heard about the classics and assume they’re

The Protestant Reformation

. The religious context into which Milton 

and his writings fit is the Protestant Reformation, which was a century old by 

the time Milton wrote. The central tenet of Protestantism is that the Bible alone 

is the final authority for religious belief and conduct. From this flow the main 

doctrines of the movement: God’s creation of the world and providence over it, 

the sinful state into which all people are born, and faith in the substitutionary 

atonement of Jesus as the means of salvation. These doctrines and more form 

the intellectual foundation of Milton’s writings, including Paradise Lost.

Puritanism

. The English branch of the Protestant Reformation is known 

as Puritanism, which began as a church movement intended to purify (hence 

the name Puritan) the Church of England of its remaining Catholic vestiges. 

Milton is “a Puritan of Puritans.” Some specific emphases of English Puritanism 

within the broader context of European Protestantism include an extraordi-

nary immersion in the Bible, an obsession with vocation and work, affirmation 

of marriage and of sex within it, and the primacy of the spiritual (even though 

the physical is regarded as good in principle). These traits are conspicuous in 

Paradise Lost.