I stand corrected. I have my own copy, however, and Ralston abridged it. The full text is less open to your attacks. Book III, lines 103-128:
Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell.
Not free, what proof could they have giv'n sincere
Of true allegiance, constant Faith or Love,
Where only what they needs must do, appear'd,
Not what they would? what praise could they receive?
What pleasure I from such obedience paid,
When Will and Reason (Reason also is choice)
Useless and vain, of freedom both despoil'd,
Made passive both, had serv'd necessity,
Not mee. They therefore as to right belong'd,
So were created, nor can justly accuse
Their maker, or their making, or their Fate;
As if Predestination over-rul'd
Their will, dispos'd by absolute Decree
Or high foreknowledge; they themselves decreed
Their own revolt, not I: if I foreknew
Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault,
Which had no less prov'd certain unforeknown.
So without least impulse [impelling] or shadow of Fate,
Or aught by me immutably foreseen,
They trespass, Authors to themselves in all
Both what they judge and what they choose; for so
I form'd them free, and free they must remain,
Til they enthrall themselves: I else must change
Their nature, and revoke the high Decree
Unchangeable, Eternal, which ordain'd
Their freedom, they themselves ordain'd their fall.
I'll agree that the Full Text is less open to my attacks.
But at best -- that excuses Milton of the charge of Heresy, not Ralston.
You would have us accept the argument of a Heretic who butchered John Milton's Paradise Lost into a Denial of God's Foreknowledge of the Fall of Man... and then had the audacity to call his HERETICAL mutilation of Milton "a most beautiful commentary" in support of his thesis!!
Incidentally, Ralston horrifically botches the nature of God's Omniscience in his second Essay, also. And like his first essay, it is easy enough to blow his entire argument completely out of the water by the evisceration of a single Damning Error.
But I'm hardly disposed to waste my time and intellect upon this Fool's (I use the term in the Proverbial sense) subsequent Error when he has so butchered John Milton as to endorse an outright Blasphemy, and called this blasphemy a thing "most beautiful", in his very first, foundational Essay.