In the sixteenth line of his Essay on Man Alexander Pope announced that his purpose was to “vindicate the ways of God to man.” John Milton waited until the twenty-sixth line of Paradise Lost to state that his aim was to “justify the ways of God to men.” It would be pedantic to inquire why Pope used the singular noun for the human race, Milton the plural. But it might be instructive to investigate why Milton chose to justify the ways of God, and Pope, two generations later, to vindicate them — especially since both words scan equally well. Moreover, even though Pope may have picked his verb to convey a hint of self-parody, Samuel Johnson two generations after Pope misquoted Paradise Lost when he wrote in his “Life of John Milton” that the epic's purpose was “to vindicate the ways of God to man.”

But before one proceeds down any such semantic-theological path he should be aware of two dangers. The first is the general warning that scholars who look for needles in haystacks almost always find them. The second is the specific caution that the word “justify” is a shaky foundation on which to build a case: its designations and connotations were — and still are — many-sided, and Milton may not have used it with any sense of defensiveness, even though today the word “vindicate” has a more positive, more assured ring. Yet despite these dangers, the path is inviting and the destination very possibly significant.