Ochino, in many respects a kindred spirit to Milton, must have been well known to him as the first who had dared to ventilate the perilous question of the lawfulness of polygamy.

In Ochino's "Divine Tragedy," which he may have read either in the Latin original or in the nervous translation of Bishop Poynet, Milton would find a hint for his infernal senate.

"The introduction to the first dialogue," says Ochino's biographer Benrath, "is highly dramatic, and reminds us of Job and Faust." Ochino's arch-fiend, like Milton's, announces a masterstroke of genius.

"God sent His Son into the world, and I will send my son." Antichrist accordingly comes to light in the shape of the Pope, and works infinite havoc until Henry VIII.

is divinely commissioned for his discomfiture.