Father, thy word is past, man shall find grace; And shall grace not find means, that finds her way, The speediest of thy winged messengers, To visit all thy creatures, and to all [ 230 ] Comes unprevented, unimplor'd, unsought, Happie for man, so coming; he her aide Can never seek, once dead in sins and lost; Attonement for himself or offering meet, Indebted and undon, hath none to bring: [ 235 ] Behold mee then, mee for him, life for life I offer, on mee let thine anger fall;
Epitome o
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
in this line, to me, recalls back to Milton's efforts to mimic the Homeric / Classical Style of invoking (asking) Divine aid in telling or singing the tale of an epic hero, as can be seen in the opening lines of The Iliad, The Odyssey and The Aeneid. in this particular line, Milton explicitly asks for divine aid (line 6) in singing / telling his song (although in this line and previously, it is not abundantly clear (to me) who the epic hero(es) is (or are).