Milton's Messiah provides the first comprehensive book-length analysis of the nature and significance of the Son of God in Milton's poetry and theology. It argues for a radical reassessment of Milton's doctrine of the atonement and its importance for understanding his poetics. Hillier is a brilliant scholar who is attentive to the precise meaning of concepts and words in the English Renaissance and successfully makes use of the poet's interlingual puns in Paradise Lost. Hillier's argument - the centrality of the atonement in Milton's works - carries conviction, and this important and tightly argued study will prove a formidable opponent to the Empson-approach to Milton.