ABSTRACT
Thomas Luxon, Milton's online editor, observes that like many seventeenth-century Protestants, Milton found the subject of the crucifixion very difficult' and adds that the centuries of iconic treatment' it had already received might account for this. It is highly sensual in a problematic way, given what must be imagined; both in its Gospel accounts and in the Old Testament texts deemed to point towards it, it invites a visual regard, a beholding, as a primary source of understanding. Christ's story is seldom the writer's, never the reader's. John Foxe, in his Paul's Cross sermon for Good Friday, 1570, revised and expanded for the private contemplation of readers the same year, is much more anxious about how the worshipper will regard the visual scene of Christ's dying. The meaning of Christ's righteousness can only be perceived in relation to the absolute bondage to sin which is humanity's condition.
