Their native walk; whose vocal blood arose,
And cried for pardon on their perjured foes.
Their fate was fruitful, and the sanguine seed,
Endued with souls, increased the sacred breed.
So captive Israel multiplied in chains,
A numerous exile, and enjoyed her pains.
With grief and gladness mixed, the mother viewed
Her martyr'd offspring, and their race renewed;
Their corps to perish, but their kind to last,
So much the deathless plant the dying fruit surpassed.
Panting and pensive now she ranged alone,
And wandered in the kingdoms, once her own.
The common hunt, though from their rage re-
strained
By sovereign power, her company disdained,
Grinned as they passed, and with a glaring eye
Gave gloomy signs of secret enmity
'Tis true, she bounded by, and trip'd so light,
They had not time to take a steady sight;
For truth has such a face and such a mien,
As to be loved needs only to be seen.
The bloody Bear, an independent beast,
Unlicked to form, in groans her hate exprest. *
Among the timorous kind, the quaking Hare
Professed neutrality, but would not swear. †
Next her the buffoon Ape, as atheists use,
Mimicked all sects, and had his own to chuse;
Still when the Lion looked, his knees he bent,
And paid at church a courtier's compliment.
The bristled baptist Boar, impure as he, §
But whitened with the foam of sanctity,
*The Independents. See Note II.
+ The Quakers. See Note III.
Free-thinkers. See Note IV.
Anabaptists. See Note V.
With fat pollutions filled the sacred place,
And mountains levelled in his furious race;
So first rebellion founded was in grace.
But since the mighty ravage, which he made
In German forests. had his guilt betrayed,
With broken tusks, and with a borrowed name,
Ileshunned the vengeance, and concealed the shame;
So lurked in sects unseen. With greater guile
False Reynard fed on consecrated spoil;*
The graceless beast by Athanasius first
Was chased from Nice, then by Socinus nursed;
His impious race their blasphemy renewed,
And nature's king through nature's optics viewed.
Reversed, they viewed him lessened to their eye,
Nor in an infant could a God descry;
New swarming sects to this obliquely tend,
Hence they began, and here they all will end.
What weight of antient witness can prevail,
If private reason hold the public scale?
But, gracious God, how well dost thou provide
For erring judgments an unerring guide!
Thy throne is darkness in the abyss of light,
A blaze of glory that forbids the sight.
O teach me to believe thee, thus concealed,
And search no farther than thyself revealed;
But her alone for my director take,
Whom thou hast promised never to forsake!
My thoughtless youth was winged with vain desires;
My manhood, long misled by wandering fires,
Followed false lights; and, when their glimpse was
My pride struck out new sparkles of her own.
Such was I, such by nature still I am;
Be thine the glory, and be mine the shame!
* Unitarians. See Note VI.
Good life be now my task; my doubts are done;*
What more could fright my faith, than three in one?
Can I believe eternal God could lie
Disguised in mortal mould, and infancy?
That the great Maker of the world could die?
And after that trust my imperfect sense,
Which calls in question his omnipotence?
Can I my reason to my faith compel,
And shall my sight, and touch, and taste rebel?
Superior faculties are set aside;
Shall their subservient organs be my guide?
Then let the moon usurp the rule of day,
And winking tapers shew the sun his way;
For what my senses can themselves perceive,
I need no revelation to believe.
Can they, who say the host should be descried
By sense, define a body glorified?
Impassable, and penetrating parts?
Let them declare by what mysterious arts
He shot that body through the opposing might,
Of bolts and bars impervious to the light,
And stood before his train confessed in open sight.†
For since thus wondrously he passed, 'tis plain,
One single place two bodies did contain;
And sure the same Omnipotence as well
Can make one body in more places dwell.
Let reason then at her own quarry fly,
But how can finite grasp infinity?
'Tis urged again, that faith did first commence By miracles, which are appeals to sense,
And thence concluded, that our sense must be
The motive still of credibility;
*See Introductory remarks.
For latter ages must on former wait,
And what began belief, must propagate.
But winnow well this thought, and you shall find
'Tis light as chaff that flies before the wind.
Were all those wonders wrought by power divine,
As means or ends of some more deep design?
Most sure as means, whose end was this alone,
To prove the Godhead of the Eternal Son.
God thus asserted, man is to believe
Beyond what sense and reason can conceive,
And, for mysterious things of faith, rely
On the proponent, heaven's authority.
If, then, our faith we for our guide admit,
Vain is the farther search of human wit;
As when the building gains a surer stay,
We take the unuseful scaffolding away.
Reason by sense no more can understand;
The game is played into another hand.
Why chuse we then like bilanders * to creep
Along the coast, and land in view to keep,
When safely we may launch into the deep?
In the same vessel, which our Saviour bore,
Himself the pilot, let us leave the shore,
And with a better guide a better world explore.
Could he his Godhead veil with flesh and blood,
And not veil these again to be our food?
His grace in both is equal in extent,
The first affords us life, the second nourishment.
And if he can, why all this frantic pain,
To construe what his clearest words contain,
And make a riddle what he made so plain?
To take up half on trust, and half to try,
Name it not faith, but bungling bigotry;
Quasi By-land-er, an old word for a boat, used in coast navi gation.
Both knave and fool the merchant we may call, To pay great sums, and to compound the small; For who would break with heaven, and would not break for all?
Rest then, my soul, from endless anguish freed ; Nor sciences thy guide, nor sense thy creed. Faith is the best ensurer of thy bliss;
The bank above must fail. before the venture miss.
But heaven and heaven-born faith are far from thee,
Thou first apostate to divinity.
Unkennelled range in thy Polonian plains;
A fiercer foe the insatiate Wolf remains.
Too boastful Britain, please thyself no more,
That beasts of prey are banished from thy shore;
The bear, the boar, and every savage name,
Wild in effect, though in appearance tame,
Lay waste thy woods, destroy thy blissful bower,
And, muzzled though they seem, the mutes devour.
More haughty than the rest, the wolfish race
Appears with belly gaunt, and famished face;
Never was so deformed a beast of grace.
His ragged tail betwixt his legs he wears,
Close clap'd for shame; but his rough crest he
And pricks up his predestinating ears.
His wild disordered walk, his hagard eyes,
Did all the bestial citizens surprise.
Though feared and hated, yet he ruled a while,
As captain or companion of the spoil.
Full many a year his hateful head had been
For tribute paid, nor since in Cambria seen;
The last of all the litter 'scaped by chance,
And from Geneva first infested France.
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